Fundamentals of Christianity. Volume III. Christian worldview

Volume I * Volume II * Volume IV * Volume V The temptations of Christ in connection with the history of pre-Christian religions and the Christian Church. The method of this third book is the same as the first two: to understand old words through one’s own religious experience and to present one’s religious worldview within the framework of traditional concepts. And here I resolve the question of the purpose and meaning of life, of the Christian worldview, not in my own words, but in the words of the church tradition, - I set out the historically Christian worldview, I set it as my task - to capture in hundreds of volumes of church writing and in the system of church life the most significant, fundamental, deep, to elevate the historically Christian worldview to possibly high ideas, to “justify the faith of the fathers.” Since I insert my personal view into a historical frame - I do not replace what is historically given with my own, but only deepen it - to that extent I am bound by tradition. And if in relation to the Gospel, in the first two books, this connection is revealed in the sense of difficulties associated with finding historically reliable and with the rise of the personal spirit to the height of the Gospel logos, then in relation to church-historical reality, the heaviness is reflected in the sense, in part, of the dispersion of church thought and, most importantly, its insufficient height in comparison with the Gospel. It is not possible to fully interpret it in the pure direction of the gospel spirit due to the lack of historical support. The fact is that the gospel idea was revealed as lightning, cutting through the historical darkness and not illuminating the entire breadth and length of the human path. The Gospel idea is the idea of ​​Christ, in Whom the Son of God was completely embodied, Who barely touched the earth, walked on it in a white robe, not painted in its rainbow colors. In order for a person to follow this idea, he needs to develop it into a system of worldview that embraces the entire life of a person and the entire history of mankind. It is clear that given the imperfection of adherence, even the impossibility of perfectly constructing human life according to the Gospel idea, we must encounter a decline in Gospel thought in this system. This is a decline in ecclesiastical inclination towards one-sided asceticism and superficial symbolism. When presenting a historically Christian worldview, it is impossible to completely avoid this bias: the philosophy of the Christian worldview is inevitably nothing more than a philosophy of ascetic-symbolic sanctification of life, and its final task is to soften the one-sidedness of asceticism and the superficiality of symbolism. I feel the need to make an autobiographical confession that I wrote this book during the years of serious illness and thickening blows of fate - circumstances that brought the author’s thought closer to church-historical ideals, which sharpened his insight into ascetic issues. When criticism noted in this book, along with “independent formulation”, “a rare understanding of the meaning of ancient Christian teaching,” it only, with the usual irony of fate, certified the author’s experience in matters of the book of Job. In the next, fourth volume, I take a different point of view. If here in the foreground is delving into the church-historical worldview, reproducing the past, there the personal critical element comes forward, foreseeing the future. In the Christian worldview, the gospel idea expands to all aspects of human life and the entire length of history, embraces all life with its spiritual cover, colors it in its own way; in Christian freedom, the gospel idea enters into living life, is embraced by it: here a view from Christianity on life, there a view from life on Christianity. However, it would hardly be fair to see in this different stages in the evolution of the worldview: rather, these are two parallel understandings of Christianity. At the last check of the path traveled, while deliberately looking for contradictions that would not be difficult to eliminate, the author found a decisive coincidence of elements, differently combined here and there. Whatever our personal religious perspectives may be, whatever our hopes for the religious future, the Christian worldview can only be the way it is set out in this book. One can say, moreover: two systems - the system of the “Christian worldview”, i.e. views of the world from within Christianity, and the system of “Christian freedom”, i.e. a view from life on Christianity, the order of “justification of life” - not coinciding in angles of view, are connected by a bond of mutual dependence and presuppose one another, since in the highest synthesis both the priestly-conservative element and the prophetically-progressive element are united. In general, the least of all is the contradiction between the particular points of one system and the general tone of another. I can say this regarding the extreme points of the “Christian worldview”, which are the positive meaning of suffering, Christian foolishness, the combination of spiritual love with hatred of oneself and one’s own. I think these points are reconciled not only with the duty of life and natural-historical development, which also constitutes one of the links in the Christian worldview, but also with the entire system of “Christian freedom” and “justification of life.” And for this reconciliation there is absolutely no need to smooth out the protrusions of one and the other system, which is so often resorted to by fans of common sense and lovers of all kinds of compromises - for this we need to turn to the principle of coincidentia oppositorum, without which it is impossible to get out of the religious labyrinth. In addition to logical contradictions, which are certainly inconceivable, in the religious field there are divergences that cannot be reconciled by the mind, but are reconciled in the depths of religious life itself. You see this principle all the time in the gospel. Eg. Alms should not be done “before people so that they can see” (Matt. VI, 1), but at the same time the light of Christian life should “shine before people so that they can see the good deeds” of Christians (Matt. V, 16). Also Lk. IX, 50 and XI, 23; X, 7 and XVII, 10; XII, 37 and XVII, 7–9. Such discrepancies most of all indicate that we are dealing with religious creativity, and not with plausible and polished fiction, and to smooth them out would be to put common sense in the place of the bottomless depth of life itself. Life is multifaceted, and in the house of the Heavenly Father there is more than one abode... Introduction. The main internal contradiction of life Man by nature is characterized by two main aspirations: firstly, the desire for personal happiness and external perfection and, secondly, the desire for the heavenly, for union with the Divine - the desire to manifest divine content in one’s life. What is the relationship between these two aspirations? The initial thing here seems to be the possibility of combining them in their directly given character. Since both of these aspirations are inherent to man by nature, this combination of them is psychologically natural, and therefore man is natural, in the biblical sense of the word, i.e. who lives not by grace, but by nature (secundum naturam suam vivere), expects happiness and external perfection from religion and believes the divine in that which is self-satisfied and externally perfect. This religious mood is characteristic of paganism in all its strength, but it is found more or less clearly in representatives of Christian society. Among pagans at the lower stages of development, this mood is found in a naive form. He expects all happiness and success, even in matters that are entirely accessible to the natural powers of man and depend on his own diligence, knowledge and dexterity, from the gods, from their favor, which he tries to earn through sacrifices. Cultured people know how to appreciate their own strength and expect from religion what exceeds their strength - serene peace and endless perfection. This religious mood of a cultured person can be traced from Zola’s novel “Doctor Pascal”. The most learned Doctor Pascal believed in human powers and especially in the power of reason, in science. He thought and firmly hoped that with the help of science he would be able to regenerate humanity and free it from the suffering with which it was now oppressed. But the aspirations of his niece, Clotilde, were limitless, in any case, they went beyond the means that science has at its disposal; therefore, she turned away from science and began to seek their satisfaction in religion, in Catholicism. Clotilde observed for a long time the hopes of her uncle and the actual successes of science; the results to which these observations led her she frankly expressed to Dr. Pascal. “The years pass as usual,” she told her uncle, “and the sky still does not open up to people. The truth that you want to catch with your research is moving further and further away from you. You propose to wait and wait, perhaps for tens of centuries. I don't want to wait. I want to know everything right now and be happy. Notice that I need to know everything at once and that I want to be blissful and happy forever! You see, it is precisely the inability to rise immediately to comprehensive knowledge and rest in the bosom of perfect bliss, not overshadowed by any doubts and reproaches of conscience, that torments me. Is this life when you move at a snail's pace in the darkness and cannot enjoy a cheerful hour without shuddering at the thought of future grief? No, no, give me omniscience and happiness at once! Science promised us this, and if it cannot fulfill its promise, then it should be declared invalid.” In this conscious striving for the ideal of endless perfection and happiness and the expectation of these benefits from religion, Clotilde was supported by Catholic preachers. Is it possible to recognize such a unification of basic mental aspirations in their immediately given character as thorough and reasonable? No, you can't. First of all, this question should be answered in the negative because this unification is not justified by reality. The fact is that religion is not accompanied by a change in the external conditions of human life, does not bring external happiness and visible perfection to a person, and does not eliminate suffering and humiliation from his life. A clear expression of this nature of the reality of religious life is the suffering and humiliation of the righteous. A person is not freed from suffering and the degradation of life to the extent of his righteousness and moral innocence. The righteous suffer in common disasters along with sinners. “To everything,” writes the biblical sage, “and to all, there is one fate: one fate for the righteous and the wicked, the good and the evil, the pure and the impure, the sacrificer and the non-sacrificer, both the virtuous and the sinful, both the one who swears and the one who fears an oath. This is what is bad in everything that is done under the sun, that everyone has the same fate” (Eccl. IX, 2, 3). But this is not enough. The innocent and the righteous not only suffer along with the guilty in common disasters, but they suffer predominantly. Observations lead us to the conviction that suffering befalls the innocent and the righteous not by chance, but according to some law of both natural and human life, the innocent and the righteous suffer inevitably. In the depths of natural life, “does not that in which the features of innocence are more visible suffer more? A lamb trembles at the wolf, a meek bird at the ravenous one”... In the sphere of human history, this law is revealed incomparably more noticeably. We are equally convinced of this by the testimony of both the Holy Scriptures and church writers, and secular thinkers and observers of human life. According to the apostle Paul, “those of whom the whole world was not worthy wandered through deserts and mountains, through caves and gorges of the earth” (Heb. XI, 38). “Indeed, writes John Chrysostom, look at everyone who was famous in past times, and you will see that through sorrow they all acquired boldness towards God. And, first of all, if you want, let’s go to the son of the first created, the lamb of Christ, Abel: he did no evil, and yet he suffered what the greatest sinners deserve. We suffer temptations as punishment for sins; and that righteous man suffered for no other reason than because he was righteous and perfect, and yet he endured many, many sorrows, and heavy ones. What else can we say about Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, who overshadowed everyone with misfortunes, the long-suffering Job, Moses, Joshua, Elijah, Samuel, David, about all the prophets who had common suffering, and finally, about the New Testament righteous, starting with the Apostle Paul? The fact of the suffering of the righteous cannot be doubted. It is equally certain that sinners often prosper, that the sons of this age, whose interests do not go beyond the limits of material well-being, are wiser than the sons of light in their generation, and material happiness and external glory are on their side. “Everything in the world,” writes I.S. Turgenev, “good and bad, is given to a person not according to his merits, but as a result of some laws that I don’t even undertake to point out.” ... The suffering of the righteous, in contrast to the prosperity of the wicked, has confused the human mind since ancient times. “Behold, these wicked people prosper in this age, increasing wealth. And I said: Was it not in vain that I purified my heart, and washed my hands in innocence, and exposed myself to stripes every day and to reproof every morning?” (Psalm LXXII, 13,14). Besides the fact that the expectation from religion of personal happiness and external perfection is not justified by reality, the combination of the desire for happiness and perfection and the desire for the divine in their immediately given character must be recognized as unreasonable because it leads consistently to atheism. The religion of the natural man takes one of two directions: for him, either religion is only a means of achieving earthly, naturally human goals, or the divine is the opposite of everything natural - human. In the first, worst case, which we encounter in the religion of the Chinese, religion materializes and contains atheism at its core, i.e. denial of the divine in its own, invisible nature. In the second direction that characterizes Buddhism, we are dealing with idealism, which, apparently, is far from atheism. But in fact, extreme idealism leads to disunity between heavenly ideals and human life, between religious and everyday life. If the divine is denied the earthly, then the heavenly is also excluded by the worldly, for which there is no place in natural human life. And this is also atheism. Chinese materialism and Buddhist idealism are not alien to us: we also suffer from them. We have structured our worldly life in such a way and understand religious matters in such a way that an impassable abyss has formed between the one and the other. We are capable of experiencing religious inspiration, we are capable of good and even great deeds, but moments of idealistic uplifting of spirit stand as lonely oases in the endless desert of our everyday life. We think that religion is religion and life is life. We are willingly ready to recognize people who are not of this world, we reverently bow to hermits and hermits, but with surprise and even indignation we meet a “layman” who lives in God’s way: in God’s way one can only live in the world. This is because the worldly man, identifying the ideal with external perfection and personal happiness, worships only external greatness and can believe in holiness only if it appears to him in visible glory, with a smile of self-satisfaction, in freedom from natural limitations, in detachment from everyday life. We look upon the holy life as a life primarily free from limitation and suffering, and we identify religion with the realm of the miraculous; in our opinion, she is disgusted by our everyday life with its petty worries, with its base demands, natural conditions. To enter the realm of religion, we think one must renounce life. A saint, according to our ideas, is the same as a miracle worker - a person free from the conditions of natural life. We consider miraculous power to be a measure of holiness, and the absence of miracles serves for us as an indisputable sign of sinfulness. Miracles are an indicator of the presence and existence of a deity; The absence of miracles when we expect them is the basis of unbelief. In this case, the disunity between heavenly ideals and natural life turns into open atheism. Instead of proving the stated position, we will give two stories to illustrate it. G. Uspensky in the story “Paramon the Fool” depicts Russian society for us in the 30s and 40s, which for the ordinary Russian crowd were the most deaf, deadest time. Everything was intimidated. Eternal, unceasing anxiety about the “guilt” of existence itself in the world permeated all mutual relationships, all social connections, all thoughts. In such and such an environment, Paramon appears - a holy fool who is sheltered by one family. The holy fool Paramon was a real, peasant, peasant holy man. He came from a peasant family, was married, but, obeying a voice and a vision, he left his home, his wife and children and went to save his soul. He also saved his soul in the Russian peasant way, i.e. the most genuine mortification of the flesh, extreme self-torture. Something extraneous to everyday life emanated from him, and in the members of the family where he settled, this something awakened ideally - religious aspirations, raised their thoughts to the stars, to the sky. They began to talk in front of him not only about grief and misfortune, but they began to talk about God and paradise. Paramon settled in the garden, in a gazebo, and spent most of his time praying before the icons of saints and listening to akathists. At the sight of the holy fool praying with inspiration, the whole family was transported in their thoughts to another, unearthly world. Several days of Paramon’s serene life passed under the shelter of the house that sheltered him, when suddenly the peace was disrupted by an insignificant circumstance. The quarterly came to Paramon demanding a passport from him. The holy fool not only did not have a passport, but did not even understand what they were asking him about, and thus aroused even greater suspicions. Due to the terrible appearance of the policeman and Paramon’s extreme detachment from life, his irresponsibility to the demands of the everyday order of existence, all family members were so frightened and indignant against the holy fool that they experienced great relief when the policeman took him away: as if a mountain had been lifted from everyone’s shoulders. “And he flew away from us,” says one of the family members, “the angel of awakened consciousness flew away from us (at the appearance of the quartermaster”). Everything in this story is typical: this worldly life, in which there is no other conversation than about happiness and unhappiness, which is intimidated by the fear of suffering; and this holy fool, who understood salvation in the sense of complete renunciation from real life, removal from the world; and this, finally, is Paramon’s settlement in the garden, in the gazebo, around which in those days the religious life of the family that sheltered Paramon was concentrated. The members of this family were no strangers to religious enthusiasm; in sight of the praying holy fool, they themselves were carried away in their thoughts into the distant superstellar world; but... this inspiration was felt only in the gazebo and was reflected precisely in the desire for a superstellar world, infinitely distant from our planet. There was no connection between all everyday life and moments of religious inspiration; the influence of Paramonane extended to everyday life, and a petty phenomenon of everyday life that threatened trouble was enough for “the angel of awakened consciousness to fly away.” This sharply revealed the lack of those principles, the use of which could reconcile the holiness of the holy fool with the conditions and demands of everyday life. Worldly life does not make room for holiness, it has not set aside a corner for it in its complex system; holiness does not influence worldly life, does not condescend to it, is not embodied in its phenomena and forms. No less significant are the unrest and temptations that arose at the grave of Father Zosima, according to another story - according to the masterful and full of the most living truth story by F.M. Dostoevsky in “The Brothers Karamazov”. Zosima was a holy man, both in his actual inner mood and in the opinion or faith of the majority of those who knew him, although he had many enemies among the monastic brethren. In old age, surrounded by the love of many thousands of believers, Zosima died the wonderful death of a righteous man. And soon, even suddenly after his death, an impatient expectation of miraculous power began to be revealed both among the monastery brethren and among the laity. Unanimously, as many as thousands arose one question about this miraculous power at the tomb of the deceased - the question arose among both enemies and admirers of the deceased. For the first, it was a direct question about the holiness of the deceased elder; the majority of believers expected this power as an undoubted consequence and reward of holiness. Many from the city brought the sick to the tomb, apparently trusting in the immediate power of healing. At the same time, of course, the expectation of decay and a pernicious spirit from the body of the deceased was considered absurd; the completely opposite seemed undoubted. But then, so unexpectedly for everyone, a corruptive spirit began to emanate from the coffin. The news of this instantly spread throughout the monastery, penetrated the monastery, and quickly reached the city. And suddenly, behind this event, such a temptation was revealed, crudely unbridled, which is difficult to imagine. This corrupting spirit, so natural, not only extinguished faith in the holiness of the deceased elder, but they saw in it a deliberate indication from God of the sinfulness of the deceased. His enemies raised their heads proudly, and all those who loved him suddenly became terribly frightened of something and, meeting each other, timidly only looked into each other’s eyes. Even Alyosha wavered in his faith. “I don’t rebel against my God, but I don’t accept His peace,” he repeated, with a wry smile, the words of his brother. If, therefore, the striving for happiness and perfection and the striving for heavenly things cannot be united in their immediately given character, then either the goal of human life can be recognized in the striving for happiness and perfection with complete disregard for the other striving, with a complete denial of religion; or one can see in religion a sufficient basis for human happiness and perfection with the recognition of natural means for achieving good as unsuitable as they are unnecessary, and the very desire to achieve happiness and perfection by natural means is a painful deception from which true religion frees; or, finally, one should find a higher synthesis of both aspirations - to indicate a goal of life that would reconcile unsatisfied aspirations for happiness and perfection with the divine content of life... First of all, we must consider whether happiness and perfection can be recognized as the goal of human life? The purpose of life means the final result that determines the entire chain of unconscious phenomena of life and conscious actions of a person. The unconscious phenomena of life are determined by this result because it is presented to the world mind already at the moment of creation, therefore objectively it is the cause of the origin and process of these phenomena. In its own sense, the final result serves as a goal for a person’s conscious actions, which are determined by the consciousness of the final result. The consciousness of the final result is the idea of ​​a goal (the idea of ​​happiness, the idea of ​​perfection, the idea of ​​the glory of God). This consciousness can be directed either to the final result as something completed and expected at the end of the life process, which gives the ideal of life, or to the laws and ways of realizing the ideal in the process of life, which gives the concept of goal. The concept of purpose is the meaning of life. The true goal of life - not only as a general goal in contrast to the private goals that govern this or that area of ​​human activity, but, mainly, in contrast to falsely understood goals - is defined from the formal side by the following three characteristics. The true goal has a basis in real life, since it serves as the cause of the unconscious phenomena of life and its entire natural course. If not comprehended, then at least the highest goal can be substantiated empirically, through observation and study of the biological and historical past. The true goal is understood in the sense of the ideal final result of life and its proper order, and therefore it has the meaning of the principle of conscious and free activity. The true purpose of life is understood as feasible within it, as achievable within its limits. An unrealizable or unattainable goal of life is a contradictio in adjecto. The final, even ideal, result of life must, of course, be achievable in life: a goal that extends beyond the boundaries of human life cannot be the goal of this life. Let us consider in these respects whether happiness and perfection can serve as the goal of human life. But we will talk about happiness and perfection separately. Although, as we will see below, suffering and humiliation have the same meaning from the highest religious point of view; but happiness and perfection as objects of positive aspirations do not coincide with one another. However, in essence and initially, the desire for happiness and perfection is one: achieving perfection presupposes satisfaction or happiness, and the desire for happiness is the desire for personal perfection. Thus, at the first human temptation, the tree of the knowledge of good and evil seemed to the wife good for food, pleasing to the eyes and desirable because it gives knowledge, because people hoped through eating its fruits to become like gods, knowing good and evil. But since perfection is inaccessible to man and he does not find happiness in the pursuit of perfection, happiness and perfection therefore seem to be incompatible. Striving to find happiness in perfection, people in the pursuit of perfection actually find suffering, just as the first people, having eaten from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, learned first of all that they were naked, as a result of which a painful feeling of fear of God was born in them. From here people come to the idea that in order to be happy they need to limit their aspirations and, mainly, the desire for perfection. And when happiness is understood this way, then the striving for perfection is contrary to the striving for happiness. In any case, a natural person, defining his aspirations quite consciously, can strive either for happiness as such, with disdain for perfection (eudaimonism), or for perfection with contempt for happiness (Nietzsche). Can happiness be the goal of human life? This question must be answered in the negative. Eudaimonism has no basis in the biological and historical past of man. To reveal this situation, let us use the words of two thinkers belonging to two opposing camps. “As the manifestation of the will becomes more perfect,” says Schopenhauer (The World as Will and Representation), “suffering becomes more and more obvious. There is no sensitivity in the plant yet, therefore there is no suffering; Probably a very low degree of suffering is inherent in lower animals, ciliates and radiata; even in insects the capacity to feel and suffer is still limited; Only with the complete nervous system of vertebrate animals does it appear to a high degree, and to a higher degree, the more the intelligentsia develops. Consequently, to the same extent that knowledge reaches clarity and consciousness rises, torment also increases, which, therefore, reaches its highest degree in man.” As a person grows naturally, he becomes more unhappy. Old age is less conducive to happiness than courage; courage is less than youth, and this is less than childhood. Also in the life of nations - the golden age always lies in the past of history. At the pinnacle of power and the highest development of every people, taedium vitae, despair, the extreme torment of suffering always reigns. “I,” writes Nikanor, Archbishop. Khersonsky, - I have become more unhappy since I became smarter and lost the purity and receptivity of a child’s heart; a simple honest Russian person will not feel happier when he resembles Lord Byron, Victor Hugo, our Pushkin or Lermontov; singing and jumping poetry encircles the cradle of the people, and in the era of highest development, tearing-tragic and comic-satirical poetry irritates its dull feelings, or warms the cooling blood of an aging people, fabulous poetry, singing to the old man tales of his dear childhood; By increasing everyday wealth, stock of knowledge, art galleries, means of seeing opera and ballet, a private person rarely becomes happier, and not a single people became happier because of it.” Thus, neither the nature of man nor his history is directed towards the production of a happy person, neither one nor the other has a tendency, so to speak, to create human happiness. In particular, happiness is hostile to human rationality. Even Ecclesiastes, having known wisdom and known madness, came to the conviction that in much wisdom there is much sorrow (I, 18). The newest sages say the same thing, Kant, whose words we will quote below, and Pascal, who writes: “imagination makes people happy, contrary to reason, which can only make its friends unhappy; the first covers them with glory, the second with shame.” Happiness, further, is contrary to the moral nature of man: happiness seeks out vicious hearts (Schiller). Finally, a person’s happiness cannot be measured by the growth of even his sensual-organic life: a person is not happy in moderation of his sensual needs, passions and desires. To put it briefly, a fool suffers less than a wise man, an animal suffers less than a person, only a stone does not suffer. Eudaimonism was supported by the teachings of the Stoics and Cynics, who believed happiness in ataraxia (ἀταραξία) and apathy (ἀπάθεια) - in the absence of passions and suppression of aspirations. A follower of the eudaimonist Aristippus was Hegesius, a hopeless pessimist who was prohibited from teaching in Alexandria because too many of his students committed suicide. Based on the idea of ​​happiness, the newest pessimism, represented by Schopenhauer and Hartmann, consistently recognizes the cessation of life itself as the only path to freedom from suffering. The idea of ​​happiness cannot be the guiding principle of human activity, the basis for the proper order of our lives. The idea of ​​happiness, first of all, cannot be the foundation, or foundation, of ethics, in Schopenhauer’s terminology, i.e. cannot justify the obligation for a person of generally recognized ideals of truth, goodness, freedom, equality. This is because “pleasure is only a general sign of any satisfied desire, both good and evil. The same can be said about the more complex concepts of happiness and benefit that define the moral teachings of (actually) eudaimonism (as opposed to hedonism) and utilitarianism. These concepts, just like the concept of pleasure or pleasure, do not have any strictly moral character in themselves” (B.S. Solovyov Criticism of Abstract Principles). Then the idea of ​​happiness suffers from complete uncertainty as a principle of human activity, in the terminology of the same Schopenhauer, i.e. as a beginning that would determine what exactly a person should do. Happiness is completely subjective; everyone is happy in their own way. One believes happiness in the ideal pleasures of science and art, another - in sensual pleasures, another sees happiness in serving one's neighbors, and another finds it in violence against others - and each is right in the idea of ​​​​happiness. From the idea of ​​happiness came the Epicureans, who preached sensual unbridledness, and from the idea of ​​happiness came the cynics and stoics. Based on the idea of ​​happiness, even followers of the same school contradicted themselves: the first Epicureans preached asceticism, and the later ones preached freedom of sensuality. The idea of ​​happiness cannot serve as a guiding principle for social life. Being subjective from the psychological side, happiness from the material side is the same for everyone, and therefore the happiness of one person excludes the happiness of another person. The same wealth that one person desires for himself is claimed by other people; the primacy and dominance of one is based on the humiliation and slavery of others; the enjoyment of a few in science and art is bought by the hard labor of many, suffering from their dependent position and striving for the same pleasure. Therefore, the idea of ​​happiness applied to social life gives rise to a war of all against all. In the past and present of human history, in total there is much more suffering than pleasure. Each of us is convinced of this by our own experience and observation. This truth is scientifically proven in Hartmann’s “Philosophy of the Unconscious”. But maybe in the future a person will be happier? Let us assume that in the distant future happiness will be a constant guest in the human home - and in this case, the past and present of human history should be considered meaningless if we see the purpose of life in happiness: earthly happiness is understandable only in the sense of the personal happiness of each individual. And what are hopes for the future based on? “No matter how much humanity progresses,” writes Hartmann, “it will never free itself from the greatest of evils or even reduce them. These disasters are illness, old age, dependence on the will and power of others, need and dissatisfaction with one’s situation... The peoples most satisfied with their position are savages, and civilized peoples have uneducated classes; It is known from experience that as the people become educated, their discontent also grows... Among the working masses, the awareness of the misery of their situation increases... The sensitivity of those who suffer from immoral acts becomes more sensitive: a rude person will react with humor to a blow with which his skull is broken, while an educated person will be deeply upset by the most insignificant insult... He who goes from bad to better, of course, feels pleasure; but it disappears with amazing speed, new circumstances are accepted as something completely natural; and a person does not feel one bit happier than his previous situation. Exactly the same applies to nations, the same applies to humanity... From an increase in (technical and material) means, only an increase in desires and needs occurs, and behind them comes discontent... In general, just as suffering grew in the world with the development of organization from the original cell to the emergence of man, so it will grow along with the progressive development of the human spirit.” Hopes for happiness in the future are essentially hopes that the material well-being of a person and even of all humanity will increase in the future. But a person’s happiness is not created by material well-being alone: ​​it depends on the person’s own mood. Material well-being even now often falls to the lot of one person or another. It often, as was said above, goes to the wicked. In any case, they are more prosperous than the righteous; they are wiser than the sons of light in the arrangement of their material happiness, they are persecutors of the righteous. But if the righteous really suffer from sinners, then are the persecutors happy? If the righteous suffer from deprivation, then does material wealth make its owners happy? Were the Herods, Nerons, and Diocletians happy? Do passionate seekers of wealth, fame, honors achieve happiness, being at the pinnacle of fame, possessing untold riches? No. It is impossible to drown out conscience, it is impossible to suppress the highest demands of the spirit, but conscience suffers from lawlessness, and spiritual requests do not give a person peace in the midst of complete external well-being. Who does not know the torment of conscience? Who does not know the story of Ecclesiastes, who so wisely enjoyed life, so abundantly took advantage of all its benefits and did not find satisfaction for his spirit in all this? They advise a person to consciously direct his efforts to improve his life and hope that this will be the case in the future (Bentham. “Introduction to the Foundations of Morality and Legislation”; Selley. “Pessimism, a history and criticism”). But to think, let’s say in the words of F.M. Dostoevsky (“Notes from the Underground”), a profound psychologist, that “a person only does dirty tricks because he does not know his real interests” means not to know human nature; against the proposed “benefits - prosperity, wealth, freedom, peace, against this entire register”, something “so internal (irrational) that is stronger than all his interests” is indignant in a person; this irrational, from the point of view of eudaimonism and utilitarianism, is a person’s “own free and free will” - the highest demands of his nature, which is not satisfied by material well-being. Happiness is not achievable due to the psychological nature of the desire for happiness. The desire for happiness at any given moment is a desire for some particular good, and it seems to a person that only this good is not enough for him to be completely happy. But this good is achieved, the pleasure of possessing it quickly passes, and the desire for a new good grows in the soul with the same or greater strength, and again it seems to the person that only this good is missing for him to be happy. A hungry person puts all his happiness in a piece of bread; but when sensual aspirations are satisfied, spiritual aspirations arise or intensify. A poor man sees complete happiness in wealth, but a rich man suffers from unsatisfied ambition. Thus, “every desire arises from a lack, from dissatisfaction with one’s condition; therefore, there is suffering until it is satisfied; but no satisfaction lasts, but rather it is the starting point of a new desire” (Schopenhauer). It is noteworthy that happiness runs away from a person as he makes conscious efforts to be happy. Kant rightly points out in his “Foundations for the Metaphysics of Morals” that for a being with reason and will, his well-being, or happiness, cannot be a goal. If the happiness of a rational being were the goal of nature, then reason would be superfluous in it, since this goal would be much more likely to be achieved through instinct. The more intelligent a person strives for happiness, the less happy he is. “A person’s thought about building his life on earth according to the principle of happiness,” writes V.V. Rozanov (“The Purpose of Human Life”), is a convulsive effort of a person, but not his correct movement. Because of this, every attempt to implement it in personal life is accompanied by suffering, because of this the face of history has become so distorted, so little happiness has become in the hearts of peoples, as their lives are drawn more and more into the forms of this idea. It’s as if some unredeemed sin of humanity is being punished through this deceptive hope, so that, following it, it will voluntarily experience all the suffering that no outside force and no external conditions could impose on it.” On this basis, the utilitarians Mill and Spencer, recognizing happiness as the goal of human life, at the same time argue that it is not achievable for a person if he attaches importance to it as the main goal of his existence. “The only possibility of achieving happiness,” Mill writes in his autobiography, “is to consider not happiness, but something else as the goal in life” (cf. “Logic”, book VI, chapter XII, §7). It seems to the named authors that there is no internal contradiction in this view of happiness. In the words of Spencer (The principles of ethics, I, p. 9), “one may very well assert that happiness is the ultimate goal of action, and at the same time deny that it can be achieved by making it the direct goal.” But we cannot justify such a goal, which is unattainable if it is recognized as a goal... But arguing that happiness cannot be the goal of human life, we must remember that the desire for happiness in man is ineradicable. However, one should distinguish between the innate human desire for happiness, meaning by it the ability to feel the satisfaction of the private aspirations of life and improvement and to suffer from the dissatisfaction of these aspirations - the desire to satisfy the private demands of bodily and mental life from the derivative desire for happiness as a propensity for pleasure, which, presupposing experiences of a pleasant feeling of satisfaction with the private aspirations of life and improvement, degenerates from them as an independent desire for pleasure, although pleasure can be achieved only on the basis of natural aspirations for life and improvement. This derivative desire for happiness is accompanied by human intervention during his natural life, as a result of which either natural needs are intensified to the intensity of passions, or they are given satisfaction made exclusively dependent on the personal will of the person, very often unnatural. From here nutrition is brought to the point of excess, rest turns into bliss, freedom into self-will and violence. Just as, in particular, according to Rousseau (“Emile”), “conceit produces more libertines than love,” so in general, excesses, originality and unnaturalness in satisfying natural needs are produced by pride, a person’s inclination to enjoyment. The innate desire for happiness makes a person suffer from dissatisfaction with the natural aspirations of life and improvement and thus makes a person capable of feeling his natural limitations. The tendency towards pleasure gives rise to completely special suffering for a person and produces a kind of “martyrs of this world.” These are special burning sufferings of the thirst for wealth, the passion for honors, the pursuit of worldly glory... By an effort of will, a person can free himself from the passion for pleasure, and with it from these special “worldly sufferings”; but the innate desire for happiness in man is ineradicable in him. Even if a person is convinced that happiness cannot be the goal of his life and is unattainable for him, he still cannot help but feel pleasure from satisfying the natural aspirations of life and improvement and cannot help but suffer from his limitations. Criticism of the idea of ​​natural perfection; F. Nietzsche While some believe the highest good of human life is happiness, others see this good in the perfection of human nature and consider the idea of perfection to be the highest guiding principle of human activity. Natural perfection was set as the goal of human life by the classical peoples - mainly the perfection of form (Greeks), mind (Plato) and strength (Romans). In the 19th century, a magnificent, although fragile, foundation for the idea of ​​perfection was erected by German idealist philosophy, which, in the person of Hegel, taught that the development of world life is a process of self-revelation of the deity, that the goal of this development is the complete embodiment of the deity in man, and that this development is subject to the laws of logical necessity. Ardent defenders of unconditional progress were also O. Comte and Renan, who, equally recognizing the three stages of historical development, believed that through this development “out of everything that exists, a resultant will arise, which will be God.” Then, the idea of ​​progress and development found a less grandiose, but apparently more solid basis in the modern philosophy of evolutionism (Darwin, G. Spencer). Many modern philosophers and moralists of all kinds explore the idea of ​​self-improvement. Thus, Wundt in his “Ethics,” referring the ethical ideal to the realm of the infinite, defines it, on the one hand, as the limitless development of man’s spiritual powers and, on the other hand, as the gradual reduction of obstacles opposing this development. The French moralist Guyot places individual life, the most intense and most varied in its forms, as the highest ideal of man. This is also the ideal of the highest individual of Barres. Our Russian philosophers and thinkers for the most part also teach about the ideal of perfection; are: V.D. Kudryavtsev, A.A., Kozlov, who define it as the comprehensive development and improvement of the nature of each person to infinity, or to the limit represented in the Supreme Being; V.V. Rozanov, who believes the highest goal of human life is the realization of the ideals of truth, goodness, beauty and freedom - ideals that are embraced in the concept of the perfection of human nature, etc. But Fr. deserves special attention as a defender of the idea of ​​the perfection of human nature. Nietzsche, who in this regard is distinguished by remarkable consistency. While some of the above-mentioned authors include in the concept of human perfection the Christian virtues of humility, love, compassion, faith, and others combine the ideas of happiness and perfection, believing that as a person improves, he becomes happier, Nietzsche is a fan of the pure idea of ​​​​natural perfection. With complete frankness, he admits that the Christian ideal of humility and love and the ideal of natural perfection lie in completely different areas. The morality of altruism sacrifices a person to society, it restrains his power instincts, smoothes out individuality, and brings all people to the same level. Nietzsche also armed himself against attachment to happiness. Pleasure and pain cannot measure the value of things. The love of peace relaxes a person. Suffering is a school in which everything truly great in a person is developed. Happiness is not a goal, but an end; it is a state that makes a person despicable and ridiculous. Man, according to Nietzsche, is called to develop in himself the power and splendor of his nature - the splendor of soul and body. Through development, he must surpass the boundaries within which his nature lies under the present conditions of life - he must surpass himself. The long unconscious development of nature reached in him the light of individual life; in an equally long and also unconscious historical development, man stood out from the animal kingdom and unlearned how to behave like a beast. Now he must realize his power, and consciously move towards developing himself into a higher biological type. The flourishing of the human personality, before which society is reduced to the level of the crowd, is the calling of man, the fulfillment of which gives meaning to the whole world’s life. Man must become a superman (Uebermensch)... It should be noted that the perfection to which a person naturally strives and which is indicated by the goal of human life is precisely natural or biological perfection, adult perfection, and that the limit of perfection to which a person feels capable and is recognized as called is infinity, i.e. improvement is assumed to be limitless. The endless development of the natural abilities of the body and soul, unlimited by the expansion of the power of natural forces - this is what is recognized as the goal of human life. Can natural perfection be the goal of human life and the idea of ​​perfection the highest guiding principle of human activity? Undoubtedly, the biological and historical past of man presents obvious traces of development. Thus, the origin of man is the final stage of previous evolution. The earth itself, with all its beauty and suitability for the life of living beings, arose gradually from a formless mass; The organic life that arose on it gradually ascended from the simplest species to the most perfect of all forms of earthly life in the person of man. The appearance of man on earth was the beginning of a new development in the field of spirit. History is the evolution of human consciousness. Through communication in thoughts and feelings, through accumulating spiritual content, consciousness develops both in an individual person from childhood to old age, and in all of humanity. However, we must pay attention to the fact that the origin of man, the birth in his person of conscious mental life, was at the same time the beginning of the division between aspiration and real content, which in man does not cover his aspiration - the beginning of a discord between the ideal and reality. Human consciousness itself is the consciousness of the difference between what can be and should be, in general, what a person strives for, and what he actually is. Therefore, soul-conscious life cannot be recognized as simply a product of previous biological development, but it should be seen as a new beginning that has come into biological evolution. This thought in the word of God is expressed in the narrative that the Lord God, having created man from the dust of the ground, Himself breathed into his face the breath of life, after which man became a living soul (Gen. II, 7). The developed organization was not a producer of mental life, but only a condition for its manifestation. Otherwise, this discord between aspiration and reality would be incomprehensible. Nature itself cannot create anything that would surpass itself, even if only in aspiration. In this respect, man is the only phenomenon in nature. And this circumstance in itself forces us to assume that the historical development following organic evolution is not the same biological development, but is subject to different laws. And indeed, the historical development of human consciousness is not biological development, it is not a transition from one biological type to another; it is not subject to the law of continuous progress, as is supposed by those teachings which see the goal of life in natural perfection, but is subject to the law of ages. In individual human life, the limit of development does not coincide with the limit of life itself, but prevents it; Usually the age of the highest flowering of an individual contains at its center a turning point at which progressive development ceases and from which life begins to decline, gradually approaching death. In the field of mental creativity, the middle age of life is the most fruitful: the brilliant thoughts of Newton, Kant, Comte were born and fully formed at this age. The same is true in the field of aesthetic creativity. Even for moral self-improvement, old age is an unfavorable age. “Of course, old age,” let’s say in the words of Demetrius, Archbishop. Khersonsky, “tames the passionate impulses of the heart, cools the imagination heated by passions, dulls the feelings thirsting for pleasures and pleasures, but at the same time it extinguishes that bright flame that could ignite a living desire for everything holy.” “The old age that lies ahead is terrible, terrible,” writes Gogol, “and it gives nothing back and forth! The grave is more merciful than her”... Likewise, the history of peoples does not confirm the hypothesis of unconditional progress. This is revealed with convincing clarity, among other things, in the article by Prof. V.D. Kudryavtsev (“Unconditional progress and true improvement of the human race”), which the ideal of perfection considers unattainable for man without the assistance of God’s grace. And the life of peoples is subject to the same law of ages. Just as, looking at a child, we are sure that he will grow up to be a man or a woman, so every barbarian people, if it is no longer degenerate after a better past, has reason to look forward to its future culture and civilization; but, in the same way, just as an inevitable old age awaits a husband, so for nations, after childhood and courage, their own old age comes. Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Rome serve as proof of this. The development of consciousness is not delayed by this law of ages; it occurs under this law. Already a child can feel his relationship to the world around him and God, and is aware of his material insignificance; but the old man, who comes to the same consciousness after experiencing the flowering of courage, more deeply comprehends his position in the world, more truly realizes his natural insignificance. In childhood, this consciousness is not free, since the child has not yet comprehended his strengths, has not experienced the limitlessness of aspirations; together he feels himself to be the center of everything around him; in manhood, a person is carried away by the manifestation of his powers, but in old age he again comes to a childish consciousness, only he comes freely, because, having experienced his prime, he consciously renounces what his nature carries him towards. Every nation comes to this same consciousness in its old age. But this development of consciousness, from the point of view of the ideal of biological perfection, has no significance. Defenders of unconditional progress and the ideals of adult perfection see the improvement of human nature in historical development. “From an ideal point of view,” writes Taylor (“Primitive Culture”), civilization may be looked upon as the general improvement of the human race through the higher organization of the individual and the whole society.” It is this improvement of the human body that we do not see in history. Let us compare a man of the past nineteenth century, a century of extraordinary and amazing advances in the field of technical and material knowledge and means, with a man of the most ancient history, whose life we ​​more or less know, for example. with the people of the first pages of the book of Genesis: during this period, has man taken at least one step towards the ideals of Nietzsche? No, I didn't. Let today a person rush quickly on locomotives, steamships, fly through the air, blow up the interior of the earth, let him go far in the field of technical improvements, all kinds of telephones, microphones, phonographs; but consider the man himself on a balloon, on a locomotive, on a steamboat, or at the very moment when he is flying headlong from the balloon to the ground, sinking along with an improved steamship into the sea or before this moment - consider him when he is swarming, gasping for breath, in the ground, tearing out precious metals and stones, when he, pale, breathes in the smoke and stench of factories and plants producing telephones and phonographs - this man, suffering from the same diseases, the same ignorant in dealing with essential issues of knowledge, with the same moral weakness, the same beast in war as thousands of years ago - how close is he to a new biological type?! History does not provide any indication of a new biological type in the sense of Nietzsche's teaching. The psychological fact of human dissatisfaction with any stage of development, correctly understood, does not in the least speak in favor of the hypothesis of endless improvement. Words by F.M. Dostoevsky's explanation of this fact is as deep as it is true. “I agree,” he says through the mouth of one of his heroes, “man is an animal, primarily a creator, destined to strive for a goal consciously and engage in the art of engineering, i.e. eternally and continuously pave the way for oneself, no matter where it may be. But this is precisely why he sometimes wants to swerve to the side, because the road almost always goes somewhere, and that the main thing is not where it goes, but that it just goes and that a well-behaved child does not indulge in idleness, which, as we know, is the mother of all vices. Man loves to create and pave roads for himself, this is undeniable. But why does he also passionately love destruction and chaos?.. Man is a frivolous and unseemly creature and, perhaps, like a chess player, loves only the process of achieving a goal, and not the goal itself. And who knows (one cannot guarantee), it may be that the whole goal on earth, to which a person strives, lies only in this continuity of the process of achievement, in other words, in life itself, and not in the goal itself” (Cf. Ushinsky “Man as a subject of education”, vol. II, chapter XLVIII, §10; chapter LI, §§13 and 14). In any case, without contradicting psychological reality, one can distinguish between the desire for perfection, which is actually illuminated by consciousness naturally - a necessary development, and the desire for perfection, which is already a revelation of free personal will, a person’s relationship to his nature. One can then, just as we distinguished above the innate desire for happiness from the derivative desire for happiness, assert that the actual desire for perfection is innate to man, and the desire for perfection is derivative, although this derivative desire for natural perfection arises entirely on the basis of man’s innate desire for improvement and therefore can also be called natural. The idea of ​​natural perfection cannot serve as a principle of activity. A consistent defender of the idea of ​​natural perfection, Nietzsche, frankly recognizes the ideal of natural perfection as lying outside the realm in which good and evil are distinguished. However, not all philosophers, as we have seen, recognize such a sequence as inevitable; and it is important for us not only to prove that the idea of ​​perfection cannot serve as a principle of activity, but also to make some clarifications in connection with this position. Therefore, we, without limiting ourselves to the remark made regarding Nietzsche, will enter into a more detailed consideration of the arguments in favor of the guiding significance of the idea of ​​natural perfection. The idea of ​​perfection, we say, cannot serve as a principle of activity. But what, they will say: aren’t we saying that the ideas of truth, goodness and beauty should not have guiding significance for free human activity? And without these ideas, is cognitive, moral and artistic activity possible? We do not say this, but we distinguish the guiding significance of the ideas of truth, goodness and beauty from the principle of perfection. If the idea of ​​truth were not presented to our minds, then cognitive activity would be completely disordered; If we did not distinguish good from evil and beauty from ugliness, then moral and artistic activity would be impossible. But it’s another matter to strive for perfection, i.e. to desire, through mental, moral and aesthetic development, to master the very truth, goodness and beauty, to make them their personal property. The terms: east, west, north and south define movement on earth without being themselves the goal of movement. You cannot sail on the sea without a compass, but it would be completely absurd if anyone set the goal of the journey to actually reach the east or west. The same applies to mental development towards the ideas of truth, goodness and beauty. Thus, driven by natural curiosity, I, under the guidance of the idea of ​​truth, carry out this or that physical experiment and make sure that water rises in pumps from air pressure, and not because nature is afraid of emptiness, I explore this or that historical event, accumulate knowledge, bring it into a system; but until I have set myself the goal of achieving perfect knowledge, or perfection of knowledge, I do not think through gradual mental development, through the accumulation of knowledge and its systematization, to reach the truth itself, to master it. On the contrary, my mental development may be accompanied by the consciousness that “I only know that I know nothing”; As I accumulate knowledge, the question may arise more and more persistently in me: “What is truth?” The fact is that various knowledge, such as: 2x2 = 4, the earth revolves around the sun, Alexander the Great founded a world monarchy, do not constitute the truth. After all, if everything external only exists, if every external object is subject to destruction and every being is subject to death, if everything we know in the external world is the product of my mind, if outside of me there is no color or sound, then does my knowledge bring me closer to the truth? If Alexander the Great died and no longer exists, if his monarchy disintegrated and was destroyed, then the knowledge: “Alexander the Great founded a world monarchy” is knowledge of what was and what is not, i.e. is not knowledge of the truth. If the visibility of the earth and the sun is only apparent, then the knowledge: “the earth revolves around the sun” is not knowledge of the truth; if it is true that 2 rubles + 2 rubles = 4 rubles, whether rubles exist or not, then this is not the truth. When Socrates said: “I only know that I know nothing,” and Pilate asked Christ: “What is truth?”, this is not because they did not know that 2x2 = 4, etc., but because they knew a lot, but saw that this knowledge is not knowledge of the truth. In the same way, while I am only guided by the distinction of good from evil and beauty from ugliness, I do not yet think of mastering goodness itself and beauty itself through gradual moral and aesthetic development. Personal moral feat does not result in a person’s approach to absolute goodness, and great ascetics condemn a person “who, for the feat, expects perfect and unchangeable repose” and hopes to “achieve the perfection of holiness” (more on this below). The truth that Christ revealed to the world, and that real good - spiritual life - for which He is the source, were not a product of historical development, but were given to the world, were the work of a new creation. On the contrary, the principle of natural perfection means that natural development is recognized as an inevitable and steady path to perfection: according to this principle, the more knowledge a person acquires, the closer he is to the truth - aesthetic development creates a new biological type - through historical evolution “from everything that is, a resultant arises, which will be God.” This is what we deny. There is one clever tale about how one father, in his dying will, pointed out to his sons a treasure buried in the garden. When the father died, the sons began to dig the garden, looking for the treasure. What happened? They did not find the treasure, but the dug up garden brought them abundant fruits. The relationship between digging up a garden and bearing fruit is an image of the guiding meaning of the ideas of truth, goodness and beauty that we accept. Love truth, goodness and beauty, and everything you do out of this love will be good; the very life of a person who loves truth and goodness is good, regardless of the degree to which these ideals are manifested in life. The relationship between digging up a garden and an imaginary treasure is an image of the biological significance of ideals, the actual idea of ​​perfection. There, gradual development is considered as a form of humanity, i.e. conditional perfection, here development is recognized as a progressive movement towards absolute perfection. But, they will say, isn’t morality itself consisted in the striving for perfection? Let us, in turn, ask: what is actually good in a moral sense - is the desire for improvement in itself, or does it receive the highest value from the final ideal of perfection? The desire for improvement is inherent in our very nature; it is actually illuminated by consciousness naturally - a necessary development. By nature we are inquisitive and morally love the beautiful. Human development occurs according to immutable laws, and depends on the will more in a negative than in a positive sense: a person can slow it down by will. Therefore, the desire for improvement can be called good only in an objective sense - in the sense in which the light is good, the firmament of heaven is good, man was created very good (Gen. I), but it is not subject to moral assessment. It in itself does not yet express the direction of personal will, or the relationship of a person to nature. Good and duty apply only to a person, to his relationships. In the desire for perfection, such an attitude of a person to nature is already manifested: in this case, a person gives a certain direction to natural development, sets a certain goal for him in achieving perfection. Is such free-personal striving good? Even if perfection in itself is good, is a person’s desire for personal possession of it good? We see an unshakable reason for ourselves to answer this question negatively in the biblical narrative that the first and main sin of people was their desire to be like gods, knowing good and evil, i.e. the desire for personal possession of divine perfection. This desire is evil because it is a person’s desire to take the place of God, to personally be the center of being, to be self-satisfied 1 . The desire for perfection can be linked to that inclination towards happiness, which we above called a derivative. The desire for happiness from natural development and the desire for personal possession of absolute perfection are one and the same. Therefore, the word of God is directed against adult perfection as personal dignity: “what is high among people is an abomination to God” (Luke XVI, 15), “the power of God is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. XII, 9 cf. Matt. XVIII, 3–4; Mark IX, 33–37; Luke IX, 46–48; Matt. XIX, 13–15; Mark X, 18–16; Luke XVIII, 15–17; I Cor. I, 21, 27–28). The evil of this striving coincides with the unattainability of its goal: the divine is inaccessible to man in the predicate of absolute perfection, the infinite is unattainable for the finite. From the psychological side, the evil of the desire for perfection is revealed in the fact that a person, imagining perfection as achievable, necessarily limits it in his understanding, replaces it with an external symbol, places it at some specific point in his development, and therefore the latter can no longer be accomplished freely, but is delayed by the intended point, mistakenly taken for perfection. There is something fatal in the fact that a hermit, who has been mortifying his flesh for decades, is exposed to such temptations from which ordinary people are free; that the persecutors of Christ were priests, scribes, and Pharisees; that the scientist has to envy the immediate sensitivity to truth that the simpleton has. The desire for perfect knowledge turns hypotheses into axioms, builds a narrow framework, like a Procrustean bed, for the vast reality, makes a person gullible, makes him invent laws instead of actually studying them, creates fanatics. “Not knowing all the reasons and approaching their search without due composure, impartiality and patience, they usually formulate divinatory, illusory and false teachings, perverting or hiding the truth, and putting up barriers to its discovery” (Nicolas). How often has the fanatical conviction of possessing the truth put obstacles in the way of discoveries and inventions!.. But the following objection can be made to our reasoning. Let it be said that the desire for theoretical and aesthetic perfection is a sin; But is it a sin to strive for perfection in the moral sphere? We are called to moral perfection: can this be doubted? That moral perfection cannot be the goal of human life is recognized by Christian preachers. “The purpose of life,” writes the archbishop. Paul, the former exarch of Georgia (in a word on the text: the Lord did everything for himself), “the purpose of human life cannot lie in man himself, nor in his moral perfection, nor in his happiness... This goal would turn out to be unrealizable and therefore unworthy of God”... This truth seems paradoxical only because moral perfection is usually identified with the Christian ideal of love and faith. But you need to distinguish one from the other, as will be shown below. Let's consider human morality: is this the area of ​​exclusively free personal relationships of a person, or is it, at least in part, a natural area of ​​human life? Undoubtedly the latter. Morally - the beautiful is, first of all, the property and character of the natural will - it is good, in the objective sense indicated above, in the field of natural will. Just as the properties of the mind are created by the nature of knowledge, and the mind can be slow or fast, dull or sharp, more or less enriched with knowledge, so the properties of the natural will are created by the nature of the relationship between soul and body, and the will can be more or less free from the shackles of the body. Freedom of the soul from the shackles of the body, strength of will - this is morally beautiful, and slavery to the body is morally ugly. We call this area of ​​morality natural, because in this area a person’s personal desire is limited by nature. Thus, the very desire for freedom from the shackles of the body, for domination over it, as a result of which we have an idea of ​​the morally beautiful, is an innate desire for us; but, on the other hand, a person is not morally beautiful to the extent of his personal desire, since by the time of the development of self-consciousness a person finds his natural will already with certain inclinations, properties and powers, as a result of which there is a contradiction between personal desire and natural will. This confrontation is especially vividly depicted in the famous words of St. Paul: “... when I want to do good, evil is present with me. For according to the inner man I delight in the law of God; but in my members I see another law, opposing the law of my mind... Poor man I am! who will deliver me from this body of death?.. So with my mind I serve the law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin” (Rom. VII: 21-25). Phenomena of morality, as natural ones, are not imputed to a person and are not subject to evaluation from the point of view of unconditional good: natural modesty cannot be praised by a person, although this does not cease to be morally beautiful and desirable, and natural weakness of the will, natural evil cannot, conventionally speaking, be imputed to a person, although it does not cease from this to be morally ugly, deserving of hatred (v. 15). But while the properties of natural will that make up morality, including the natural desire for moral improvement, form the natural domain, man also has a personal relationship to his nature in general and moral nature in particular 2. It is this personal attitude of a person towards his moral nature, as well as towards other aspects of it, that is subject to assessment from the point of view of unconditional good. In the words of the ap. Paul: “Poor man I am! who will deliver me from this body of death? – in this awareness of his natural weakness, a person’s personal attitude towards his moral nature is already expressed. The desire for happiness and the desire for perfection in the moral field, initially coinciding and then diverging, also express a person’s personal attitude towards his nature. The desire for happiness - we mean derivative - gives rise to passions, and it turns out that a person’s personal desire in relation to nature is limited more in a positive direction than in a negative one: for a person who has inherited a morally corrupt nature, it is impossible to achieve moral purity, but he can pervert his nature. The pursuit of happiness is the opposite of good and is sin. The desire for personal moral perfection is the opposite of that consciousness of natural insignificance, which is expressed in the words of St. Pavel. How should we evaluate this human desire for personal moral perfection? Man's striving for natural perfection, both in other areas and in the moral area, cannot be called good. Looking ahead, without the proper connection, which will be indicated below, solely to show the idea that moral weakness, when it does not depend on a person and even overcomes him against his will, has providential significance, we will give the following evidence of the same apostle. Paul: “so that I would not become conceited,” he writes, “because of the extremeness of the revelations, a thorn was given to me in the flesh, an angel of Satan, to afflict me, so that I would not become conceited. Three times I prayed to the Lord to remove him from me. But the Lord said to me: My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. XII: 7-9). The idea that the striving for moral perfection is not good seems inconvenient because what is morally beautiful should, in any case, be recognized as good: why is the striving for perfection in this area not good? But the fact is that the desire for personal perfection in the moral field is an act of will, different from moral improvement, and completely identical with the desire for natural perfection in other areas. In order to properly evaluate the desire for moral perfection, one must keep in mind that the main thing in this desire is not that it is a desire for moral perfection, but that it is a desire for personal absolute perfection, albeit in a good area. But other areas - mental and aesthetic - are good in themselves. To make our thought more understandable, we can express it this way: the desire for personal moral perfection is the desire to personally possess moral absolute perfection, the desire to achieve it with one’s own strength is the desire for moral complacency, self-gratification, self-righteousness. Just as the desire for personal absolute perfection in other areas, the desire for moral perfection is generated by egoism and gives rise to evil, i.e. interferes with moral development itself. And in the moral field, the desire for perfection is like if a person, walking up a ladder, wants to jump from the third step to the highest one: he will fall even lower than the third step. One who truly develops morally is one who loves moral purity, but does not set himself the task of achieving personal absolute perfection. “I thought,” says St. Gregory the Theologian his word to God, - I thought that as soon as I made You alone the desired lot, and at the same time I cast all the scum of life into the sea, then, bringing my pompous mind closer to Your deity, I placed it already far from the flesh; but this entangled me in troubles and inevitable sorrows. Your glory delighted me high; but Your glory has placed me on earth. You are always angry with great pride.” From moral activity, the desire for perfection makes the fight against bodily limitations and conventions through the assimilation of external symbolic actions of legalistic self-righteousness. The frantic hermit of India with savagery disfigures his body, extinguishes all signs of life in himself for the self-invented purposes of liberating the spirit from the shackles of sinful flesh. For the same purposes, the worshiper of Zibella and Mylitta drowns his self-consciousness in orgies of debauchery. The Pharisees and scribes, proud of their outward righteousness, give tithes of cumin and anise to God, but with the letter they mortify the spirit within themselves - with the letter of the law and external symbolic deeds. People pay a high price for their desire for personal absolute perfection. True representatives of moral activity and great teachers of humanity in this field are well aware of the detrimental significance for morality of a proud striving for personal perfection, they confidently and fervently warn a person against presumptuous struggle with the imperfections of his nature, remind him of “the measure of his nature.” “A sign of chastity,” writes St. Gregory the Theologian, “to know the measure of your life. It is equally bad for you to put aside good hope and to have too bold a thought that it is not difficult to be perfect. In both cases, your mind is on a bad road. Always try to ensure that your arrow hits the very target; be careful not to fly further than the commandment of the great Christ; beware of not fully fulfilling the commandment; in both cases the goal was not achieved. And excess is often very useless when, wanting new glory, we strain the arrow beyond measure.” If we were to also consider the area of ​​human relationships, which can be called another side of morality along with the one indicated, we would also see that here the desire for perfection of the social order denies itself in its results. An example is the Roman state. Roman citizens were slaves of their state; they sacrificed their mind, heart, will to him; they knew no other religion than the state, no other honor than the civil. And so the iron organism of state life absorbed all the juices of its citizens, corroded everything that was natural in them, and replaced it with its own artificial: its laws were as heavy and harmful for citizens as vices are destructive for a person. Ut olim vitiis, sic nunc legibus laboramus. Natural absolute perfection is unattainable for humans. Even if we assume that natural development is a direct path to perfection, to achieving the ideals of truth and goodness, that a person, developing and naturally improving, approaches, albeit in infinitely small steps, to absolute perfection, then even in this case perfection should be recognized as unattainable for man. “In order to become like (through natural improvement) an infinite being, you need infinite time” (V.D. Kudryavtsev), and yet the life of each individual person ends in death. “The end of all local power is powerlessness, and the end of all local beauty is ugliness” (B.S. Solovyov “The Justification of Good”). But perhaps such endless time and endless development are given either for all of humanity in endless historical development or for each person in the afterlife? Endless historical development? But not to mention the fact that there is no reason to consider humanity infinite in time, the very concept of endless development is nonsense (B. S. Soloviev). A goal infinitely distant is not a goal (N. N. Strakhov). Endless development in the afterlife? Let us assume that endless development in the afterlife is possible and makes sense; but in this case, absolute perfection, as achievable only in the afterlife, cannot be the goal of our temporary life here. But absolute perfection is unattainable for a finite being in essence. “The difference between absolute and relative perfection is not power or quantitative, but qualitative and significant” (B.S. Solovyov), and therefore relative perfection cannot turn into absolute. And not only cannot, but the desire to transform the first into the second leads a person to directly opposite results, i.e. not only does it not bring him closer to absolute perfection, but also retards his very natural development. We just pointed this out... We noted above that it is possible to distinguish between the desire for perfection and the desire for perfection and that the first is derivative and the second is innate. The desire for improvement, otherwise recognized as natural - necessary development, forces a person to recognize his natural limitations; the desire for perfection - the selfish desire for personal, self-satisfied possession of absolute perfection, the desire to “be like God” - gives rise to evil - delusion, moral evil and ugliness. Both the experimental knowledge of natural limitations and the consciousness of evil generated by the will cause suffering to a person. True, this difference is difficult to discern in the positive direction of the will in relation to natural inclinations. The fact is that evil in humanity is hereditary and in each of us it is not only generated by the personal direction of the will, but also opposes the personal will as given along with nature; and even the very direction of our will is undeniably influenced by both heredity and the environment, and this, together with the fact that the desire for perfection arises completely on the basis of a natural - necessary development, gives reason to call this desire natural. But on the negative side, this difference is quite noticeable. It is by an act of personal will that a person can suppress in himself the desire for personal possession of absolute perfection, and with it suppress in himself the source from which evil is generated and the suffering associated with the evil generated. But he is not able to destroy in himself the desire for improvement, which gives him the experimental knowledge of his natural limitations and hereditary evil - he is not able to destroy the suffering associated with this knowledge. This is how Cicero argues (De fin. V, 18:48) - we know the power of innate modesty, the power of conscience, under the burden of which inveterate sinners fall, the power of aspirations for freedom and beauty... The severity of suffering from evil generated by the will and suffering of the will from natural limitations depends on the direction of the will. For a person who is completely imbued with the desire for personal happiness and perfection, the more difficult are the sufferings that are generated by this very desire, these are the burning suffering of the thirst for wealth and honors, the torment of a criminal conscience, the powerlessness and delusions of a proud mind... But when a person is cleansed of arbitrary evil, when a more divine self-consciousness is born and grows in him, the sensitivity of his conscience increases, the dignity in which he himself is exalted cognizes, then the suffering of the will arises and grows stronger from natural limitations and hereditary infirmities. Spiritual perfection and external humiliation; the bliss of suffering in Christianity; L.N. Tolstoy According to the accepted plan, we will now consider the opinion that sees in religion a sufficient basis for complete human happiness and perfection and recognizes natural means for achieving the good as unsuitable as they are superfluous, and the very desire for happiness and perfection as a painful self-deception from which true religion frees. The representative of this opinion is L.N. Tolstoy. The view of L.N. Tolstoy, in any case, in that respect is diametrically opposed to the philosophy of Fr. Nietzsche - and this opposition, to the credit of our writer - is that Nietzsche’s philosophy denies Christianity, and Tolstoy’s view is an understanding of Christianity. Therefore, an analysis of Tolstoy’s views should lead to a true understanding of Christianity, i.e. to the establishment of a higher synthesis of ideal aspirations with the limitations of nature. L.N. Tolstoy proceeds from the position that life is given to man for joy, and therefore his own good should be the last goal of a person’s aspirations. And in reality, all people want only one thing - to be happy. Why, despite all our enormous efforts, do we not achieve happiness? Because we do not follow the true path to happiness, but the false one: we strive for the happiness of our “animal personality.” The happiness of the animal personality is impossible, because the desire for such happiness leads people to fight with each other, because animal life cannot be free from suffering and, finally, because animal life is subject to death. In order to get rid of suffering and achieve true happiness, one should renounce the recognition of the benefits of the animal personality as the true purpose of life - one should, on the contrary, live in love for others. True good will only be possible for you when you strive for the happiness of others. The pleasure of doing good, says Pierre (“War and Peace”), is the only true happiness in life. All you have to do, thought Kitty (“Anna Karenina”), is to forget yourself and think about others, and you will be calm, happy and beautiful. Love for others is a requirement of rational consciousness. Life, according to rational law, is a new form of existence that replaces animal existence, just as it is necessary to destroy a grain when a sprout appears. Intelligent life stands above space-time conditions and is not subject to suffering and the law of death. One has only to live for the good of others - and the deceptive thirst for pleasure will disappear, which will be replaced by undoubtedly fruitful and joyful activity aimed at the good of others. Growing up to this new form of life, a person throws off the form of animal existence as an unnecessary shell, which for the growth of rational consciousness has no positive significance: rational consciousness is in itself a sufficient, unconditional basis for a good, perfect life; man, as a rational being, is perfect in himself, independent of all forms of animal existence. Animal existence is evil. Tolstoy attributes to the animal personality and the realm of animal existence everything that is inherent in imperfection and with which suffering is associated. All existing forms of civilized and cultural life are forms of animal existence, good for nothing. Human perfection does not lie in the wealth of knowledge, not in technology, not in the forms of political relations and social structure, but in the internal harmony of relationships in the sense of truth, beauty, and goodness. Development not only does not constitute an inevitable path to this ideal, a necessary condition for this perfection, but has a negative attitude towards it; it is an obstacle placed by the Creator to the achievement of this ideal. Man is born perfection, Tolstoy exclaims after Rousseau. Our ideal is not in front, but it is behind us. True perfection is quite natural for a person and does not cost him much effort. Here the point is not in artificial forms of life, not in the laws of the church, sociological, state, but in freedom from all these chains. Leave a person to himself - and he will be good and kind; when he is good and kind, he will be happy. The analysis of L. Tolstoy’s view of Christianity should begin with where we left the analysis of eudaimonism and the idea of ​​natural perfection. It was precisely said that happiness and natural perfection are not achievable for man; Tolstoy, agreeing that a person cannot achieve his good by worldly means and through natural development, argues that Christian good is accompanied by the freedom of man from suffering and evil, that Christianity frees a person from suffering, that a person can achieve his good through Christian life. The good, he says, is accessible to man: it’s all about the means to achieve it. “What you call your pleasures will only be good for you when you do not take it yourself, but others give them (i.e. these same pleasures) to you... Only then will you get rid of real suffering when others save you from them, and not you yourself.” Therefore, let us consider whether the true one, i.e. Christian religion is the basis for happiness, as the absence of suffering, and for perfection, as the absence of evil. And this is not just an abstract possible point of view on Christianity. And in reality such an aesthetic attitude to the teachings of Christ is possible. This or that person may look at Christianity from a worldly point of view, may see in it only a few rules of life in order to use them in worldly interests. In Art. “What is happiness?” Tolstoy writes: “Christ, revealing His teaching, tells people that by fulfilling His teaching, they will be happier than those who do not fulfill it. Christ says that there is a true worldly calculation not to care about the life of the world... Reasoning abstractly, the position of the disciples of Christ should be more advantageous than the position of the disciples of the world... Christ teaches exactly how we can get rid of our misfortunes and live happily.” So, let's consider Christianity as a means of improving earthly life. Christianity, indeed, frees a person from some of the suffering and evil, precisely from those sufferings with which people torment themselves in the pursuit of happiness and natural perfection. The psychological calculation for Christian life in this regard represents an expansion of the horizon of life, an increase in the sources of happiness by one more. It has long been realized that mental work is not Egyptian work, as it seems to someone who is accustomed to working only with an axe, but gives great pleasure; everyone agrees that art is also a source of sublime pleasures. It’s time to realize that Christian life, from a purely psychological point of view, gives a person moments of great joy. This freedom from the persistent and difficult demands of a vain worldly life is a respite from the pursuit of gross pleasures, this new look at human relationships, the manifestation of untested impulses of religious feeling, the sound of still untouched strings of the heart - this is a whole new sphere of inner activity of the spirit! And Tolstoy, opening this sphere to worldly feeling, showed himself to be a great artist more than in his fictional works. In connection with this psychological phenomenon, the truth must be stated that at the beginning of turning to Christ, a person is given extraordinary sweetness. The Word of God knows the delights of the first turn to God, and not only knows, but also depicts them in deeply touching features under the image of first marital love (Jer. II, 2, etc.). The same truth is confirmed by ascetic writing, such as, for example, Rev. Feofan in an excerpt that will be given below. This is the truth of L. Tolstoy. But, freeing a person from arbitrary suffering, Christianity does not extinguish in him the innate desire for happiness and improvement and does not destroy those sufferings that are learned along the way of this desire - bodily and mental limitations, hereditary evil and external suffering. The final result of Christian life is the complete destruction of natural evil and tranquility of the spirit, but this is the result of Christian life, and not its beginning, this is the property of that future life, in which God will destroy the very womb, in which they do not marry, do not get married, live an angelic life, and not the property of this temporary life. Ascetic writing marks with perfect clarity three periods in Christian life: the initial rise of the spirit, the period of intimate communion with God and God’s action in the soul, and the final effective communion with God. Yes, ep. Theophan (“The Path to Salvation”) writes: “to the one converted through the sacraments, the grace that comes unites with him and first allows him to taste all the sweetness of life according to God, and then hides its presence from him, leaving him to act as if alone, among labors, sweats, bewilderment and even falls; finally, after this period of testing, it moves into him clearly, effectively, strongly, tangibly.” This period of testing, generally speaking, continues until the grave. So, Christianity cannot be the basis of human happiness as freedom from suffering, and perfection as freedom from evil, and complete worldly reliance on Christianity turns out to be naive, to say the least. “If in this life only we hope in Christ, then we are the most miserable of all people” (1 Cor. XV, 19). To a direct question: if a worldly person takes the path of Christian life with the direct goal of finding happiness along this path, will he achieve his goal? – this question must be answered in the negative. It is strange to hear a positive answer to this question from Tolstoy, who in his artistic works presents us with numerous types of doers who did not find happiness in doing good. Here before us is Nekhlyudov, who “received with pleasure the idea that love and goodness are truth and happiness, and the only truth and the only possible happiness in the world; love, selflessness - this is one true happiness independent of chance.” And he lived in the village for the happiness of others - so what? A year later, he himself admitted: “For more than a year now, I have been looking for happiness on this road, and what have I found? True, sometimes I feel that I can be pleased with myself; but this is some kind of dry, reasonable contentment. Yes and no, I’m just dissatisfied with myself, I’m dissatisfied because I don’t know happiness here, but I wish, I passionately wish for happiness”... Nekhlyudov turned off this road, and Kitty also did not follow Varenka’s path, and Pierre did not follow Karataev 3)... The good that Christianity bestows on a person is called differently: truth, spiritual life, spiritual perfection, bliss. This benefit is given to man in Christianity, and does not constitute the fruit of his natural development: Christian life is a new form of life, along with physical and mental forms - spiritual, but it is not the result of previous biological development, but is a gift of God, a new Divine creativity, a revelation of divine life. In Christ the life that was with the Father appeared to us: ἡ ζωὴ ἐφανερόυη, ἥτις ἦν πρὸς τὸν πατέρα. Christ is the leader and finisher (ἀρχηγὸς καὶ τελειωτὴς) of this spiritual life. Spiritual life is divine life, but divine life was revealed to us in Christ and is given in Christianity not as limitless perfection, not in visible glory, not in the predicates of external omnipotence, omniscience, visible splendor, but as an internal, invisible good. Man cannot resist the external divine greatness, human nature cannot possess limitlessness: natura humana capax non est divinae. In Christ, the divine life was revealed, tempered by His condescension, so that it, as spiritual life, became bearable for our limitations. For a long time, man believed his dignity either in the external adornments of the body, in physical strength, in muscular dexterity, or in the strength of the mind, in artistic creativity, in social improvement. Christ taught man that any such external good reveals a person’s selfish aspirations, but does not constitute his inalienable property, because it is only his, and not himself. His true good and inherent dignity is the discovery of the divine life in his innermost spirit. The hidden person of the heart in the imperishable beauty of a meek and silent spirit is what is precious before God; the true dignity of a person is the invisible life of the spirit (I Pet. III, 4; 2 Cor. IV, 18; Gal. 16, 18, etc.). Spiritual life is perfection, but not that perfection that seems to stand at the end of natural development, which consists in the wealth of knowledge and flexibility of mind, in the strength of will, in the external splendor of nature, but it is perfection in the sense of the very reality of divine life. Here, the possession of truth coincides with the experience of divine life (I John IV, 7, 8), with keeping the commandments (I John II, 3, 4) and freedom of spirit (John VIII, 32). The commandment of Christ: “Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. V, 48) makes sense: live the divine life and, as this life is primarily love (I John IV, 16), love even your enemies (Matt. V, 44 – 47; cf. XIX, 21). Since love is the primary manifestation of divine life, it is also the totality of Christian perfection (Col. III, 14). Love is not the result of natural development, its source is Christ’s love for us (John XIII, 14; I John IV, 7–11); but there may be a difference in the degrees of a person’s assimilation of it, a person’s growth in Christian perfection: a Christian can be an infant or an adult (Heb. V, 12–14). The fullness of Christian age in the word of God is also called perfection (I Cor. II, 6; XIV, 20; Eph. IV, 13; Col. I, 28). But never in St. In Scripture, Christian perfection does not mean adult or cultural perfection. Finally, spiritual life is called blessedness in relation to the feelings of a Christian. In what way the spiritual life of a Christian is most immediately revealed, how it is born in him and how it grows, we will talk about this below. Now we will show the relationship of spiritual life to human suffering and weaknesses. Giving a person spiritual life, which is communion with God, Christianity presupposes in him an experimental knowledge of his limitations, his weaknesses. Although happiness and natural perfection are not available to man, man’s desire for happiness and perfection is not only ineradicable within him, but is also presupposed by Christianity. What makes a person capable of accepting Christianity is the never-satisfied desire for happiness and improvement, which gives a person an experienced knowledge of his natural insignificance. While proud self-satisfaction, an imaginary possession of natural perfection, and legalistic self-righteousness completely block a person’s path to spiritual life, suffering and experimental knowledge of the power of evil constitute the condition for entry into the kingdom of the Messiah. He came to call sinners to repentance, and not the righteous (Matt. IX, 13 par.), He called to Himself all those who labor and are burdened (Matt. XI, 28), towards His kingdom, tax collectors and harlots walked ahead of the high priests, elders and Pharisees (Matt. XXI, 31), who showed themselves to be righteous before people (Luke XVI, 15). The tributary Pharisee, who thanked God for the fact that he was not like other people, robbers, offenders, adulterers, was, of course, higher morally than the publican, but he stood further from the kingdom of God because he did not have that consciousness of insignificance with which the publican was imbued. Blessing the poor in spirit, the hungry, the weeping, the hated and persecuted, Christ, on the contrary, says: “Woe to you, you rich! for you have already received your consolation. Woe to you who are now satiated! for you will hunger. Woe to you who laugh now! for you will weep and lament” (Luke VI, 20 – 25), etc. Calling the toiling and burdened, tax collectors and harlots, and granting them spiritual perfection and bliss, Christ, however, again sends them to suffering and humiliation, promising complete peace only in the future. “You,” He says to His disciples, “will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; you will be sad, but your sorrow will turn into joy... In the world you will have sorrow; but take heart: I have overcome the world” (John XVI, 20, 33). In the word on Acts. XIV, 21, 22 (“through many sorrows we must enter the kingdom of God”) Metropolitan. M. Philaret rightly writes: “The Lord’s teaching about blessedness began with sorrow (Matthew V, 3, 4) and ended with even greater sorrow” (Matthew V, II). Further citing Matt. XVI, 24,25, the preacher continues: “no matter how you reduce the power, no matter how you soften the meaning of these sayings of the Lord: in any case, it is impossible not to admit that they predict many sorrows for the follower of Christ... To destroy your soul - this expression makes it clear that many sorrows take place here, even extending to mortal struggle and feat.” Also James. I, 2 – 4, 9 – 10; I Pet. I, 6 – 9; IV, 12 – 14; Rom. VIII, 17; Col. I, 24 and many more. etc. And not only the actual suffering is predicted for the follower of Christ, but he is also haunted by humiliation, not excluding the consciousness of moral evil. Here we must first of all remember that “thorn in the flesh” that depressed the apostle. Paul, which was given to him so that he would not be exalted by the extraordinary nature of the revelations, and which even after his threefold prayer was not removed from him by the Lord, because the power of God is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. XII: 7-10). How far from this testimony is St. Paul's consciousness that suffering is only a deception of the senses and that they do not exist for a Christian; on the contrary, how clearly it expresses the idea that human weakness, real weakness, is a condition for the action of God’s power in us. Abundant ascetic writing repeatedly confirms that the test of the apostle. Paul did not have an exclusive meaning, but that it fits well with the general law of Christian life. The testimony of ascetics clearly confirms the idea that, along with other aspects of life, the moral activity of a Christian is subject to this law. Just as the consciousness of one’s natural weakness leads to the beginning of a person’s spiritual life, so spiritual life itself is accompanied by the same consciousness. “The path to perfection,” writes Bishop. Theophan, “there is a path to the consciousness that I am blind, and poor, and naked, in continuous connection with which there is contrition of the spirit or illness and sorrow about one’s uncleanness, poured out before God, or what is the same - constant repentance. At the beginning of a new life there was repentance: it must also be present in its growth, and mature with it. The one who matures matures in the knowledge of his corruption and sinfulness and deepens into contrite feelings of repentance.” This law of Christian growth stands in connection with the fact that “the purification of the passions and the formation of true good morals” depends not only on the person himself, but on grace (I Cor. III, 6). “Just as spiritual life began by God’s grace, so it can only be preserved and matured by it. He begins the work in us and completes it to the end (Phil. 1:6). The first seed of new life consists of a combination of freedom and grace; and its cultivation will be the development of these same elements.” Therefore, on the one hand, a person’s own effort is necessary for the purification of passions, but, on the other hand, it encounters obstacles and boundaries in nature, which in itself cannot in any way be surpassed. From here a true view of the meaning of Christian asceticism opens before us, and the reasoning and instructions of ascetics regarding involuntary falls, evil independent of human will and the nature of the struggle against it receive true illumination. They warn us against immoderate striving for the possession of moral perfection and explain that the essential fruit that comes from moral development is a mood of patience and humility; they convince us that it is no longer in the power of man, that, while succeeding, we should not consider ourselves to have achieved anything, and, subjected to adversity and the involuntary movement of passions, we should not despair: both progressive movement forward and falls must equally be accompanied by humility, which is what is required of a person. “In every rational nature there are changes without number, and with every person changes occur hourly. And with those who stand at the level of purity, like cooling with air, a fall always occurs, while there is no negligence or indulgence in themselves; on the contrary, even when they observe their rank, falls happen to them that are contrary to the intention of their own will. Therefore, if chaste and modest thoughts are followed by a (passionate) impulse, let us not grieve and despair; Let us also not boast during the rest of grace. The mind should not bring painful attacks upon us, but should joyfully accept them as natural and characteristic of us. Let us not give in to despair, like a person who expects something for a feat, even perfect and unchangeable peace... the perfection of holiness and unchangeable joy, and at the same time does not allow exploits and sorrows, and the movement of something contrary to occur in him, which the Lord our God did not find fit to give to this nature in this world... Know that all this is brought upon us by God’s providence to our humility; know that it is not your job or your virtue to resist, but to accomplish this is grace. Therefore, acquire humility and do not despair. Humility and doing nothing makes many sins forgivable. On the contrary, without humility, deeds are useless, and they even prepare a lot of bad things for us. What salt is to all food, humility is to all virtue; it can break the strength of many sins. If we acquire it, it will make us sons of God and present us to God without good deeds. Thank God that you have received a nature so weak and capable of evasion... When exposed to adversity, we sin solely because of our impatience, because we do not want to endure less than a small sorrow, we do not want to suffer anything against our will, we do not want to accept anything with humility. For this reason, misfortunes overthrow us and the more we try to get rid of them, the more they entangle us: we become exhausted, but cannot free ourselves. Those sailing the seas, if they are familiar with the art of navigation, when they see a wave rising on them, they bow under it: it passes along the ship and is cut by it; swimmers do not suffer any harm. On the contrary, if the swimmers decided to resist the wave, it would throw them back and carry them a considerable distance; with further resistance, swimmers are exposed only to useless fatigue. So it is in adversity. If someone endures an attack with patience and humility, then it will pass harmlessly for him. If he indulges in sadness, confusion, and blames everyone, he will burden himself with an unbearable burden. Adversity only brings great benefit when it is endured patiently, without embarrassment. If passion also disturbs us, then we should not be embarrassed further by this. The confusion that appears when passion operates in us comes from unreason and pride, because we do not understand our mental structure and run away from work. We do not succeed for the reason that we do not know our limits, we do not have patience in the affairs we begin, but we want to acquire virtue without difficulty. For one who is troubled by passion, it is better to humbly know his limits, remain patient and pray until God shows mercy to him. Whoever does not renounce everything in his soul, who does not renounce glory, bodily pleasures and, moreover, justifications, will not be able to help but cut off his desires, nor get rid of anger and sadness. Only the one who does not strive to fulfill the desires of his own will always acts in accordance with his own will. Having no separate wishes, he always fulfills his desire and is happy with everything that happens to him: he does not want things to happen the way he wishes; he wants things to be done the way they are done; in whatever it is, he acts according to his strength, leaving everything else to God”... This is how Isaac the Syrian, Macarius, Mark, Dorotheus reason. We have provided such extensive excerpts, which, however, could be continued - for obvious reasons: they confirm not only the main ideas of this chapter, but also the previous chapters of our study. Thus, the God-given nature of spiritual perfection and bliss and the combination of spiritual perfection with visible humiliation and bliss with external suffering - this is what is most characteristic of Christianity from the outside, i.e. in addition to the content of spiritual life itself, which should be discussed differently. “With us everything is the other way around,” says John Chrysostom about Christianity. Spiritual perfection is given to a person in external humiliation; this is not a metaphor, but the true teaching of the Word of God. Christ himself taught: whoever humbles himself like a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven (Matthew XVIII: 4); whoever exalts himself will be humbled; and whoever humbles himself will exalt himself (XXIII, 12; cf. XX, 26; XXIII, II). The apostles also taught Him: let him boast of taking the lowly with his height (James I, 9); God has chosen the poor of the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that He promised to those who love Him (II, 5); humble yourself before the Lord, and he will exalt you (IV, 10); The foolish things of God are wiser than men, and the weak things of God are stronger than men... God has chosen the foolish things of the world to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to shame the things that are mighty, and the base things of the world, and the base things God has chosen, and the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are, so that no flesh should boast before God (I Cor. I, 25 – 31 ); We carry the treasure (of the glory of God) in earthen vessels, so that the superabundant power is (attributed) to God, and not to us (2 Cor. IV, 7 et seq.); the power of God is made perfect in weakness (XII, 9), etc. (From the Old Testament cf. Deut. VII, 6 - 8; I Kings. XV, 17; Is. LXVI, I, 2; Ps. IX, 10; XI, 6; CVIII, 31; CXLIV, 14; Prov. XV, 33; XVIII, 13; I. With. S. III, 19, 20; Wed Is. LXVI; Var II, 17, 18; Ezek. XXI, 26, etc.). Dimitri, archbishop. Khersonsky, expresses the teaching of Christianity on this issue: “These wanderers covered with rags, the poor, where their heads can be bowed, these people with distorted members, in whom the human image barely remains, these rabble of the world, whom we are afraid to even look at, are precisely those members of the body of Christ whom the Apostle calls the royal priesthood, the holy tongue, the people of renewal.” (Compare St. Demetrius of Rostov’s words for the week of the Holy Myrrh-Bearing Women and about prayer on the 4th week in the Holy Spirit.) The word of God equally clearly and definitely teaches about the union in Christianity of one’s own bliss with external suffering. The Word of God not only predicts suffering for the follower of Christ along with bliss (John XVI, 20 - 22, etc.) and inspires Christians to accept suffering with joy (James I, 2 - 4; I Pet. I, 6 - 9; III, 14; also Matt. V, 3 - 12), but also testifies to the actual combination of Christian joy with suffering as a fact of Christian life, not leaves room for doubt about the possibility of such a connection. Thus, “having called the apostles,” we read in Acts. V, 40 – 42, members of the Sanhedrin “beat them and, forbidding them to speak about the name of Jesus, released them. They left the Sanhedrin, rejoicing that they were worthy to suffer dishonor for the name of the Lord Jesus.” Ap. Paul writes about himself: “now I rejoice in my sufferings” (Col. I, 24), “with joy abounding in all our tribulation” (2 Cor. VII, 4) and about the Christians of his time: they “in the midst of the great trial of sorrows abound in joy; and their deep poverty outweighs the wealth of their hospitality” (2 Cor. VIII, 2, etc.). History testifies to the joy with which Christians endured persecution from Jews and pagans. Later, Ambrose of Milan in Op. De off. ministr. with some completeness and system he expounded the Gospel teaching about bliss in suffering (beatitudo in doloribus, lib. II, pp. 4 and 5). But if spiritual perfection by Christianity is bestowed in external humiliation and bliss in external suffering, then what meaning can such a combination have? What purpose does our life have? “The purpose of human life,” writes the archbishop. Paul, “cannot lie in man himself, neither in his moral perfection, nor in his happiness. Only the glory of God can be the true goal of human life.” That the goal of human life is the glory of God, we can read about this in any theological textbook, but usually this goal is understood in the sense of the external glorification of God, and not in the sense of the manifestation of the glory of God in the humiliation of human life. What is the glory of God? Divine life. In God there is no distinction between the perfections of life and life itself: the types of divine perfection are the definitions of divine life. Therefore the world as a manifestation of divine glory must be understood in the sense of the revelation of divine life. World life is a phenomenon or reflection of divine life. But the phenomenon of divine life does not exhaust the concept of the world: it is the manifestation of divine life in nothingness. God created the world out of nothing. This is the church teaching of the archbishop. Nicanor expresses it this way: “creative Hypostatic Wisdom has become between God, on the one hand, and nonentity, on the other, as a mediator between God and creation from all eternity. And so the first idea, the idea of ​​heaven, is imprinted in the insignificance of the creative word,” etc. (Teachings, V, 447). And again: “The Son is the mediator between the deity and first the nonentity predestined for existence, and then the creature called out of the insignificance” (453). So, the plan for the creation of the world is the predestination of nothingness to being, the very creation of the world from nothing is the manifestation of divine life in nothingness, the penetration of life into nothingness, and the goal of creation is the victory of life over nothingness. So that mortal things could be swallowed up in life, this is what God created us for, according to the words of the Apostle Paul (2 Cor. V, 4, 5). As the manifestation of divine life in nothingness, the world cannot be a pure or adequate revelation of the divine nature, but only a limited one. The original form of this limitation was primitive chaos. “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the abyss.” It was into this formless, inert and dark mass that the rays of divine life had to penetrate; the revelation of life was limited to it, from the appearance of light to the creation of man, whom “the Lord God created from the dust of the ground, breathing into his face the breath of life.” Individual acts of creation were successive degrees of the victory of life over insignificance, until rational and free life appeared in man mixed with the dust of the earth. If the creature had been given the purpose of outwardly glorifying God’s own being, so to speak, repeating the glory of the divine life, then it would have been created “kin” to Him, would have been created from His own nature (emanation), would have been purely or only divine. But in reality, the world is indicated with the goal of manifesting divine glory in insignificance, and therefore God, as explained by Gregory the Theologian, creates not only “second lordships, servants of the first lordship, who have only a movement towards good, as existing around God and directly illuminated by God, but also invents another world - material and visible - He creates not only a kindred, but also a completely alien nature to Himself, - not only intelligent and akin to the Divine and comprehended by one mind, but also completely alien to the Divine creatures, subject to feelings, and even creatures that are completely inanimate and immovable, even further removed from the divine nature.” And in particular, the special character of the nature of man - this king of the visible world, this god on earth, is expressed in the fact that man stands in the midst of creatures, at the very boundary of being and non-being, life and death, corruption and incorruption, that in him conscious existence and conscious nothingness reach extreme opposition, that he recognizes this very opposition. “Finally, the artistic Word,” continues Gregory the Theologian, “creates a living being - a person in whom both are brought into unity, i.e. invisible and visible nature, - places on earth another angel, earthly and heavenly, temporary and immortal, visible and intelligible, - an angel who occupies the middle between greatness and baseness. According to the Christian philosopher, Vl. S. Solovyov, “a person combines all kinds of opposites, which come down to one great opposition between the unconditional and the conditional, between the absolute and eternal essence and a transitory phenomenon or appearance. Man is both a deity and a nonentity.” As the manifestation of divine life in nothingness, the creation of the world was God’s self-restraint—it was God’s condescension. “If,” writes Irenaeus of Lyon, “who will say: what then? could not God have presented man as perfect in the beginning? then let him know that God is always one and the same, without beginning, and regarding Himself, everything is possible for Him. Created beings... do not have perfection... Just as a mother can provide perfect food to a baby, but he cannot yet accept food of an older age, so God could at first bestow perfection on man, but man could not accept it, for he was still a baby... Therefore, the perfect Son of God became a child with man, and not by Himself, but for the sake of man’s infancy, he became as accessible as man could accept Him. In His providence, God knew the weakness of people and the consequences that would arise from it, but in His love and power He will overcome the essence of created nature. It was necessary that first nature should appear, and then the mortal should be overcome and swallowed up by immortality, and the corruptible by the incorruptible.” The subjective motivation for God to create the world out of nothing was His love for those creatures that were to be called into existence out of nothingness. “God is good,” writes Athanasius of Alexandria, “therefore He created everything out of nothing with His own word.” This love of God, this desire to give creatures the pleasure of being, must be considered only in connection with condescension. “Wonderful is the reason why God’s Word descended to created things. The nature of created things, as having come from nothing, taken in itself, is something fluid, weak, mortal. God is all good by nature. Therefore, He does not envy anyone in existence, but wants everyone to enjoy existence. As long as God and man remain in their own dignity, God in the dignity of heights, and man in baseness, goodness is incompatible, love for mankind is incommunicable, and there is an impassable abyss that separates the created and transitory nature from the uncreated and permanent." So, it is not another, but one divine life and glory that is manifested in the world; but this is already glory in nothingness, this is a new divine glory. It is the true goal of world and human life. The world does not increase the glory of the being of God, but the world participates in the glory of God; the glory of God is manifested in the world, but this is already a new glory. “God,” according to Gregory the Theologian, “created man so that he would acquire new glory and, having changed the earthly things in himself in the last days, like a god, he would march from here to God.” The usual name for a person in patristic writing is earthly god, because “as God is in heaven, so is man on earth.” The bearer of unconditional life is God; the bearer of life in insignificance is man. This new glory can only be brought to God by a person in whom life is not unconditional, but is mixed with corruption. This is a divine task that only man can perform. “Glory to the immortal Father,” in the words of Ephraim the Syrian, “worship to the One who gave heavenly gifts to the insignificant, so that he too would bring a drachma of glory to the King of all forever.” Acquiring glory for God in nothingness is the goal of world and human life. This goal is inevitably achieved in this reality. The mere fact that the world exists testifies to the victory of life over death. World life is only existence - a transition from life to death, but every death in the world is the beginning of a new life. In all phenomena of world life, God's glory is revealed. In relation to this goal there is no difference between majestic and insignificant phenomena. The glory of God is proclaimed both by the magnificent firmament of heaven (Ps. XVIII, 2), and by the wild flower, and by the birds of the air (Matthew VI, 26 - 30). We are delighted by the sublime phenomena of nature, but the Lord also reveals Himself in the quiet wind (1 Kings XIX, 11, 12). Since ancient times, people have been inclined to see the heavens as the primary dwelling place of God, but the earth is not without the glory of being the dwelling place of God (Isa. XLV, 18). No matter how insignificant man is in comparison with the immeasurable worlds of heaven, no matter how humble he is before the angels, he is nevertheless the bearer of the glory of God (Ps. VIII). True, in the field of human existence they usually distinguish between real life and perfect life, and by the ideals of the latter they judge the dignity of real life; in fact, what we call the natural perfection of life cannot compare in value with the dignity of life itself. Reasonable human life, in itself, precisely because it is life, is above all natural perfections of life, as we understand them. The life of a person thirsting for truth, experiencing doubts, is more beautiful than his acquired knowledge, philosophical systems, mathematical formulas; The moral life of a person who loves holiness, with its falls, temptations and hope, is more beautiful than the righteousness of the Pharisee. Striving forward, no matter how low the level it may be, is more valuable than stopping at the highest levels of development. Not only adult, cultured, righteous people serve to manifest the glory of God, but it is also found in the lives of children (Matthew XVIII, 1–4; XIX, 13–14), and in the lives of savages and freaks, physical and moral. When we look at the wretched, whose life is shackled by the ugliness of the body, at the pitiful crowd that “lives on bread alone,” at the extreme spiritual poverty of the savage, then we must marvel at the infinite condescension of God, who deigned to reveal His immortal life in such squalor, and bow before the greatness of the task that is given to these bearers of life in insignificance. “No one can help but glorify God, even if they wish not to glorify Him. It is necessary for people to proclaim the glory of God, and in wicked people, just as in righteous people, the glory of God is revealed” (Archbishop Paul). The glory of God not only necessarily manifests itself in our lives, but is also our duty, and the idea of ​​the glory of God is the principle of our free activity. The first thing that is instilled in a person with the idea of ​​the glory of God is the duty of life. Man was created for life on this earth and therefore he must live in the fullness of his nature, created by God. We should not be turned away from life by any suffering that is inextricably linked with certain forms and requirements of natural life. Any shortening of life, any kind of suicide and murder is opposition to the most basic calling of man. In particular, those forms of life that visually connect us with the earth and make us feel its burden are obligatory for us - menial labor, earning bread by the sweat of our brow. Man's freedom from worries about his daily bread brings death to his spiritual life and makes him useless for the glory of God. We come into contact with heavenly life through the baseness with which we are burdened, just as the warmth of the sun warms us not from above, but from below - from the earth: the upper layers of the atmosphere are colder than the lower ones. There is a wonderful ancient myth about a hero who lost his strength every time an enemy lifted him above the ground, and became stronger again when he touched it. And our strength is in the earth, we show divine glory through our baseness, through our patient bearing of our infirmities. Then we need those forms of life that are subject to development: in development, the life of the human spirit. The desire for personal happiness and personal possession of absolute perfection is bad because it retards natural development and shortens life. On the contrary, self-denial and love serve as the foundations of life. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; and if it dies, it will bear much fruit. He who loves his soul will destroy it, and he who hates his soul in this world will preserve it to eternal life” (John XII, 24, 25, cf. Matthew XVI, 25, 26); “we know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brothers; he who does not love his brother remains in death” (John III, 14). But the glory of God is not only necessarily given along with human life; she, moreover, is the subject of his free activity. “We must,” according to the word of the Apostle (2 Cor. III, 18), be transformed from glory to glory.” In accordance with this, the idea of ​​glory can serve as the guiding principle of a person’s free activity in a more intimate sense: it not only makes life a duty, but also determines its character. The glory of God as the ideal of human life is presupposed by the original plan of the creation of the world: it is the completion of the victory of life over death. A nonentity, in order to be overcome by life, must deny itself; The glory of God for victory over death must not only be manifested in the world, but also returned by the world to God, recognized by creation as God's glory. If a person wants to defeat his enemy, then he does good to him. But for real victory, doing good alone is not enough: it is necessary that the enemy accept good for good. Only when the enemy accepts the good deed as a deed of love and accordingly changes his mood, changes enmity to gratitude, to love, does victory take place: the enemy is no longer there. The father, both through natural birth and through upbringing, imparts to his son all his blessings, all his glory; but the highest consolation for him lies not only in the communication of benefits, but in the fact that the son accepts these benefits as a fatherly gift, feels filial gratitude, and recognizes his life as a continuation of his father’s life. This is why love in general is limited in its action, which is why it is subject to suffering, because it can only be satisfied with reciprocal love. So the Lord, for victory over insignificance, manifests His life - glory in insignificance, casts His rays into chaos and darkness; but for complete victory it is necessary that the creature freely return this glory to God, that it places its glory in the glory of God and considers the glory of God its own, that it recognizes its own insignificance and renounces personal complacency, from personal possession of an imaginary absolute natural perfection. This task determines the immeasurably high position of man in world life. In him, divine life, illuminated by self-consciousness, comes into contact with dust, in him being and non-being in their opposites reach consciousness, in his person God descended to the flesh, and the divine spirit is clothed in flesh. Therefore, in him the final victory of life over death can and must take place: through him life must return to its original source, the world must recognize its glory as divine. The task of this service of man to the divine glory relates to his personal freedom, to his self-consciousness, inner self-determination; it requires from a person that which is entirely his own business. The first duty of life, which is imposed on a person by his calling, is the duty of life. But natural life is determined by laws independent of human will. Only in his self-awareness is his free – personal attitude towards natural life established. This self-determination is the most essential thing in the human personality, its most sincere and free side, this is exactly what a person brings from himself into a given life. In order to serve the glory of God, this attitude of man towards natural life - as opposed to the desire for personal happiness and personal possession of absolute perfection - must be such that man recognizes himself as an instrument of divine activity: what he naturally recognizes as his own, his life, his natural dignity, he must recognize as belonging to God. The point is that man should not place himself as the center of the world, but should place his center in God, so that he should not be content with himself, should not withdraw into himself, should not live for himself, but for God. This self-determination, or inner mood, is the consciousness of natural insignificance, otherwise humility, combined with trust in God. The gradual acts of creation of the world and man were successive stages of the Revelation of divine life in nothingness, and each lower stage of creation served as a condition for the highest Revelation of divine life in a new form. But the creation of man did not end the gradual Revelation of divine life in the world: the highest form of the Revelation of divine life in the world, in which the Divine is what It is in Itself (John IV, 24; I John IV, 8), is spiritual life. Spiritual life is a new creation of God, but not unconditional: it is a new form of the Revelation of divine life in the same nothingness, conditioned by the last act of primitive creation, i.e. person. Spiritual life, given to the world in Christ, in whose incarnation and life we ​​see the highest condescension of God (Philip. II, 5-11), is divine life revealed in the conditions of temporary life as an internal, invisible good. In order to be a manifestation for the world and in a world that is created from nothingness, the divine life and in the highest form of its Revelation, precisely as spiritual life, must be a manifestation in nothingness, i.e. in misery. Hence the connection between spiritual life and suffering; hence the main character of Christianity is the combination of spiritual perfection with external humiliation and spiritual bliss with external suffering. And this highest form of Revelation of divine life, or glory, is conditioned by the previous act of creation, i.e. person: it could only appear when a person became prepared for it. A person’s preparedness for the perception of spiritual life is his self-denial, his awareness of his natural insignificance, renunciation of his natural dignity, obedience to God and trust in Him. So, the highest meaning of the natural insignificance of the world and the humility of man is that human humility serves as a condition for the Revelation of divine glory in the form of spiritual life, which constitutes the highest meaning of world life. The consciousness of one’s natural insignificance, combined with trust in God, is what a person personally brings to the cause of the Revelation of divine life in the world. Limitedness is from nature, but humility and trust in God are from man. When a person strives for personal possession of absolute perfection, he reaches despair. But humility is necessarily combined with trust in God 4 . Man in himself is insignificant, but his insignificance serves as a condition for the Revelation of divine life; the power of God is made perfect in weakness: in this he finds the basis for trust in God and gratitude to Him. This mood of humility, combined with boldness, is revealed and prescribed to man in patristic writing with persistence and consistency, betraying the high importance of the subject. If we wanted to write out everything related here from patristic and ascetic literature, we would fill many dozens of pages. Let's limit ourselves to a few. John Chrysostom writes: “Let us thank God for everything and be grateful to Him who has blessed us so much. This is the greatest sacrifice, this is the perfect offering, this will be a source of boldness for us before God and this is how. He who constantly keeps in mind and truly recognizes his insignificance, and on the other hand thinks about the ineffable and immeasurable love of God, humbles himself in soul, is contrite in heart, tames all pride and arrogance, learns to behave modestly, despises the glory of present life, laughs at everything visible, thinks about future blessings, about immortal life.” Irenaeus of Lyons well instructs us to thank God, and not blame Him for the fact that we were created first as people, and not directly as gods; so that we first observe the rank of man, and then participate in the glory of God; so that we present our soft heart to God, like clay to an artist - to God, who Himself will conquer the essence of created nature and hide the clay in us. It is remarkable that Christian ascetics, without exalting humility over spiritual life, over love and faith, for humility is valuable as a condition for the birth of spiritual life in a person, nevertheless, with complete clarity, they place humility above any natural greatness, above any natural or, as they put it, external virtue. “It is not dignity, not greatness, not honor that leads one into the kingdom of heaven, but humility, obedience, love, patience and complacency - this is what saves a person... If our prayer is not decorated with humility, love, simplicity and kindness, then such prayer will not bring us any benefit. This, however, should be said not about prayer alone, but about any feat in general - whether it be virginity, or fasting, or vigil, or psalmody, or service, and about any other feat performed for the sake of virtue.” This is how Ephraim the Syrian, Mark the Ascetic, Demetrius of Rostov argue (his words on prayer in the 4th week of the Holy Day and on the Sunday of the Holy Myrrh-Bearing Women are remarkable), Tikhon of Zadonsk. Having pointed out the condition for the birth of spiritual life in man, we have approached the threshold of the latter; but before we begin to reveal it, we would like to say especially about the miseries of human life and about natural development from the point of view of the indicated purpose of life. We talked about natural limitations, but what is the relationship to it of suffering and development: what significance do they have? Suffering is generated and generated by man’s desire for personal possession of absolute natural perfection. That they constitute the consequence of sin and precisely the punishment for sin, this is taught by the Word of God. But it is also certain that they are not only punishment for sin. An exclusively legal view of suffering is refuted by the presence of suffering of the righteous, or, what is the same, unjust suffering. As the goodness of God, according to which the world was created and which expresses the subjective attitude of God towards creation, does not exclude the objective goals of the world and acts in connection with the condescension of God, according to which the spiritual perfection and bliss of a Christian does not exclude his suffering; Likewise, God’s justice, which imposes punishment on man for sin, is a relation of person to person and allows, along with itself, the objective meaning of suffering. In God’s attitude towards a sinned person, two sides can be distinguished: on the one hand, it is the definition of punishment for a person for sin; on the other hand, it is consent for the manifestation of divine glory in the life of a sinner. If God had left the sinner to his own devices, then man would have been destroyed by death. But God subjected man to suffering and thereby allowed the life of a sinner, allowed man to be the bearer of divine glory in the sorrow of suffering. In this attitude of God towards man, it is necessary to see a new manifestation of divine condescension, a continuation of His creative love. Only condescending love disposes a father to let his son go “to a distant place,” where he squanders the inheritance received from his father, living fornication, and not take his name away from him. A person punished by God for his sin is like a prodigal son (Psalm LXXXVII; Isa. LII, 5). The objective purpose of human suffering allowed by God is the glory of God (cf. Isa. XLVIII, 9). Evil and suffering represent the natural limitation of human nature in relation to a sinned person: what was a natural limitation for sinless ancestors, then, generally speaking, appears as evil and suffering for a sinful person. Suffering constitutes the form of life of a sinner. They serve for the glory of God because they give sinful man the opportunity to live. Therefore, the participation of each of us in the glorification of life through suffering is analogous to our attitude towards natural limitations. Suffering is an expression of humiliation: whoever suffers experiences the weakness of his nature, receives a true understanding of his insignificance, and at the same time of the power and goodness of God. To the extent that humility is important, suffering has an objective meaning. Actually, from a moral point of view, suffering cannot be called beneficial for a person. Illness and poverty do not always contribute to the strength of the will and its freedom from the shackles of the body. “Worthy of surprise,” writes Clement of Alexandria, “the Stoics with their teaching that bodily ailments do not in the least affect the soul, and illnesses do not dispose it to vices, and health to virtue... If a person has not developed spiritual firmness in himself that could support him; if he has not yet cultivated in himself that generosity that puts himself above misfortune, then, unable to resist the attack of misfortune, he deserts from under the banners.” “Because of bodily poverty (of course, involuntary) sometimes,” according to Metropolitan. Moscow Philaret, “the soul is no less in poverty than the body.” Along with this, the usual understanding of the pedagogical significance of suffering declines. The valuable fruit of suffering, which remains even after deducting the harm from it for natural improvement, is that it destroys self-satisfaction. “Man,” according to Irenaeus of Lyons, “is devoted to his weakness, so that, having become exalted, he does not deviate from the truth. Strength is perfected in weakness, making better the one who through his weakness knows the power of God. For how would a person know that he is weak and by nature mortal, while God is immortal and powerful, if he did not know both by experience? To know one's weakness through patience is not evil; on the contrary, it is good not to be mistaken about your weakness. The experience of both gives him true knowledge of God and man and increases his love for God. And where love abounds, there great glory is accomplished by the power of God for those who love Him.” 5 But just as natural limitations allow degrees in achieving the meaning of life depending on a person’s attitude to his natural insignificance, so the endurance of sorrows, giving meaning to the life of every sinful person, has the same degrees, also depending on a person’s attitude to his suffering. From this point of view, first of all, it is necessary to establish the difference between unconscious humiliation and conscious endurance of sorrows. To the extent that the significance in achieving the religious goals of human life belongs to the consciousness or mood of a person, it is important that a person is aware of his humiliation: “This is not a virtue,” writes Ephraim the Syrian, “to be dishonored and not feel it; on the contrary, this is virtue - to recognize this and despise it for the sake of piety.” But the consciousness of suffering must also be of a certain direction. From the point of view of the religious goals of life, it is important that a person endures sorrows, not thinking that they are sent to him by blind fate, chance, a formidable deity out of hatred of people, but recognizing his guilt, attributing the suffering to the truth of God (as opposed to self-justification), with a divinely filial self-consciousness (Heb. XII, 5-9). In connection with consciousness is the freedom to endure sorrows. Even in relation to those sufferings that befall a person regardless of his will, a free attitude is possible - freedom of patience. The first stage of free endurance of sorrows is that we endure the punishment that befalls us from God with patience, as deserved by us, as fair. By enduring punishment from God with patience, we restore the truth of God in ourselves, overcome sin, and overcome death with life. In this case, the punishment achieves its full purpose. By enduring sorrows, as rightly sent by God, by enduring them in the name of God, a person rejects sin and again makes his life an instrument for the revelation of divine glory. The next, highest, level of endurance of sorrows is that a person, out of love for God, endures unjust suffering. The freedom to endure these sorrows is the freedom to do a good deed, a good life. There is no unjust suffering that is not suffering for a good cause; the good deed itself is necessarily associated with suffering. Such a connection between a good life and suffering is not only factual, but necessary: ​​only those virtues are true virtues that are accompanied by suffering for a virtuous person and, as a consequence of this, unjust suffering constitutes an honorable duty for the righteous, elevating him to the highest level of religious activity. This connection is established in the divine decree by which suffering is imposed on man for sin. Giving a sinful person the opportunity to live, sorrows at the same time give evil an objective tangibility: suffering is the objective side of evil - the side from which the evil of the human heart is addressed to other people - sorrows constitute the form in which the evil of one person acts on other people, is accessible or exists for them. Therefore, suffering is an inevitable medium through which we can generally respond to the evil of our neighbor and, in particular, wage a fight against evil. A good deed, in order to serve not only the personal improvement of a person, but also the religious and objective goals of earthly life, namely the glorification of this life, must reach the depth of suffering, put on the robe of sorrow. Unjust suffering, or the suffering of a person “for nothing other than the fact that he is righteous,” as John Chrysostom put it, has an objective meaning in that it serves to glorify sinful life and defeats evil. The source of unjust suffering is evil people. Every evil committed by a person secretly or openly generates suffering for his neighbor. Evil either directly causes suffering to one's neighbor, for example, insult to honor, deprivation of property, or indirectly, due to the social connections of one person with others, rightly likened to organic ones, such as heredity, the influence of ideas at a distance of time and space. There is no such evil in our hearts that would not bring suffering to our neighbors. This suffering either causes a curse or is endured with love and patience. In the latter case, the complacent patience and humility of the sufferer are the manifestation of divine life in the sphere of evil, the victory of good over it, the victory of life over death. Undeserved suffering, endured with patience and love, in the name of God, makes amends for the evil that caused it: this is the meaning of unjust suffering. This meaning of the suffering of the righteous is depicted with exceptional clarity in St. Isaiah (chap. LIII). By allowing evil to exist in the form of suffering and desiring that they would be defeated by a mood of complacent patience, God thereby desires unjust suffering. According to Ap. Paul, “it pleases God if anyone, thinking about God, endures tribulations, suffering unjustly. For what is praise if you endure being beaten for your misdeeds? But if, while doing good and suffering, you endure, this pleases God. For you were called to this, because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, so that we would follow in His footsteps” (I Pet. II, 19-21; also IV, 12-16). And the righteous man’s own mood, his love for good and his neighbor, makes it necessary for him to suffer for good. According to the degree of a person’s spiritual growth, his subjective arbitrary suffering, which accompanies life according to the law of the world, decreases, but his objective suffering, caused from the outside, by evil people, increases. “When,” writes Isaac the Syrian, “the goodness of God has increased in a person, then, according to the desire for righteousness, he finds in his soul many reasons why, for the sake of the fear of God, he should endure sorrows. Only when grace is impoverished in a person, the meaning of sorrows appears to him in the opposite form.” In general, the stated view of the suffering of the righteous is strictly Orthodox - ascetic. Here are a few of the ascetic sayings relevant here. “Our promises are hidden in sorrows, sufferings, patience and faith - our very heavenly glory is hidden in them. “We must rise to glory through dishonor.” - Souls filled with heavenly sweetness, but not yet tempted by various misfortunes, have not risen in the least from the state and mind of children and are still incapable of the kingdom of God. – Do not think that you can acquire virtue without sorrow. Having rejected suffering and dishonor, do not think of bringing repentance through other virtues: vanity and the mood of the heart, alien to contrition of the spirit, know how to serve sin and deeds of righteousness. – Our only duty is to believe the truth of God and to know that everything sorrowful that befalls us, against our will, befalls us either out of love or for sinfulness, that for this reason we are obliged to endure temptations with patience, not reflecting them by resisting them, so as not to add new sin to our sins. “When you endure involuntary grief as if it were voluntary, then conclude from this that you have come to the measure of a valiant and humble man.” – It is impossible to approach God without sorrow; without it, human righteousness does not remain unchanged. – He who leaves sorrows is undoubtedly separated from virtue. “And that virtue is not considered a virtue, the accomplishment of which is not accompanied by the difficulty of the task.” Every perfect virtue is called a cross. A little sorrow for the sake of God is better than a great deed done without sorrow. – Let this be a sign of your approach to the city of God: strong temptations will confront you; and the more you approach and succeed, the more the temptations that lie ahead of you multiply. “Whoever prays to God and wants miracles and powers to be in his hands turns out to be boastful and weak in his conscience. True righteous people not only do not desire this, but also refuse when it is given to them; and not only in the eyes of people, but also secretly for themselves, they do not desire this”... Ascetic creations are filled with such instructions. Let us finish our discussion of unjust suffering with a remark regarding the cult of suffering. Sectarian fanaticism, fatalistic submission to chance, psychopathic thirst for suffering - all this is a distortion of the truth, and not the truth itself; this is the same as superstition compared to faith, this is the other extreme, opposite to the extreme of the Babylonian cult of pleasures. But extremes meet: both cults are based on selfishness. Even into the holiest area of ​​self-abasement, flattering pride and arbitrariness creep in, with which a person determines the type and measure of his suffering. How can one not remember the instructions of Gregory the Theologian: “always try to ensure that your arrow hits the very target; be careful not to fly further than the commandment of the great Christ; beware of not fully fulfilling the commandment; in both cases the goal was not achieved.” The preceding discussions provide solid grounds for distinguishing suffering in the name of God from arbitrary and senseless suffering. Suffering in the name of God is that which promotes life, and does not shorten life. Renunciation of the desire for personal happiness and personal possession of absolute perfection serves as the basis for the fullness of natural life and its unhindered development; The very sacrifice of life is required of a Christian for the sake of the life of his neighbors. This rejects fanatical fanaticism, shortening of life and murder. The freedom of Christian endurance of sorrows is the freedom of good deeds. This rejects the psychopathic thirst for suffering for the sake of suffering itself. These points also reject the Catholic teaching about the salvific nature of suffering beyond this life (in purgatory) and about the replacement of good deeds with suffering. Then, patience with sorrows in the name of God is based on the belief that sorrows befall us according to the will of God, but they are caused by evil people. This rejects fatalistic submission to chance and natural disasters. Finally, enduring sorrows is completely opposite to inflicting suffering. On the contrary, the same love by which we suffer evil from our neighbor requires that we ourselves bring happiness to our neighbor along with goodness. It follows from what has been said that, in particular, patience with sorrows does not contradict the fullness of natural development: resistance to natural development is a manifestation of the same senseless cult of suffering. The meaning of natural development will form the subject of the next chapter. Natural development - culture and civilization; L.N. Tolstoy and B.S. Soloviev Apparently, it is very difficult to indicate the meaning of natural development in the sense of the named purpose of human life. At least, L.N. Tolstoy, in the name of the ideals of Christian life, does not recognize the significance of natural development. “The necessary development of man,” he writes, “is not only not a means to achieve the ideal of harmony that we carry within ourselves, but is an obstacle placed by the Creator to achieving the highest ideal of harmony. This necessary law of forward movement lies the meaning of that fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which our forefather ate. A healthy child will be born, fully satisfying the requirements of unconditional harmony in relation to truth, beauty, goodness that we carry within ourselves. Man will be born perfect - there is a great word said by Rousseau, and this word, like a stone, will remain firm and true. Having been born, a person represents the prototype of harmony, truth, beauty and goodness. Our ideal is behind, not in front.” In Tolstoy's later writings this view constitutes the main theme, with the concept of harmony being replaced by the concept of rational life, or rational consciousness, and with the addition of the simplicity of an uncultured village to the demand for childish harmony. The defender of the opposite view of natural development is V. S. Solovyov. In one of his journal articles, he writes: “Opponents of culture, imagining that the existence of uneducated righteous people proves something in favor of their opinion, turn a blind eye to the fact that we have here examples of only very relative ignorance. But the decisive question here is: could even such righteous people appear in an absolutely wild environment? ... Why did the historical Buddha preach his teachings not to the semi-wild Aryans, for whom cow butter was the highest good, but to the inhabitants of cultural Indian states? Why could the God-Man Himself be born only when the fullness of times had come? Why did He appear only in the 8th century after the founding of the eternal city, within the great Roman state, among the cultural population of Galilee and Jerusalem? In Chapter VII of his work “The Justification of Good” he discusses the same topic. Just as it is unthinkable for an absolute being to succeed in goodness and perfection, so for a person, on the contrary, it is unthinkable to achieve perfection at once, without the process of improvement. All historical development - and not only of humanity, but also of the physical world - is a necessary path to perfection. Minerals, plants, animals, natural humanity and spiritual humanity - these are the typical forms of being from the point of view of the ascending process of universal improvement. This idea of ​​Solovyov about the dependence of spiritual life on historical development is the opposite of Tolstoy’s view and completely proves its inconsistency, but doesn’t this idea also contradict our view of the purpose of human life? However, Tolstoy in his article “Religion and Morality” makes the sequence of religions, or religious relations of man to the world: 1) primitive personal, 2) pagan social and 3) Christian or divine, which is based on man’s consciousness of his material insignificance, dependent on the degrees of development; in the first relationship to the world there is a child, and all of humanity was at the first pagan stage of its development, the second relationship to the world is established by a person at the next stage of development, and it is characteristic mainly of mature people; Every old person feels himself in the third relationship to the world, and all of humanity is now entering into it. How can we reconcile this significance of degrees of development with the view that development is an obstacle placed by the Creator to achieving the goals of life? On the other hand, Soloviev in the same Chapter VII of Op. “Justification of the Good” develops the idea that between absolute and relative perfection the difference is not degree or quantitative, but qualitative and essential, and it is logically impossible to deduce the first from the second. The general law of the world order is that the highest type of existence is not created by a previous process, but is only determined by it in its appearance. This does not deny evolution; it cannot be denied - it is a fact. But the evolution of lower types of being cannot in itself create higher ones; it only produces conditions or provides the appropriate environment for the manifestation or revelation of a higher type. Thus, each appearance of a new type of being is, in a certain sense, a new creation... It cannot be said that this new thought of Solovyov cancels his previously cited thought; but between them a certain break must be recognized: a logical transition from one to the other is not indicated. If the historical process determines the revelation of spiritual life, but spiritual life is not the product of historical development, then it is obvious both that spiritual life is not identical with natural perfection, and also that historical development is not a direct path to spiritual life: it is not because a person actually prepares for the acceptance of Christianity that he is naturally improved, which would contradict the direct evidence of the word of God. The only possible connection between these thoughts is the thesis we are defending, that a person’s preparedness for spiritual life consists in a person’s awareness of his natural insignificance, and the assumption that follows from this position that the natural development of a person leads him to this consciousness and this is where it has its meaning 6 . The obstacle to approaching spiritual life is not development, but the desire for personal possession of absolute perfection. The reality of individual and historical development justifies our assumption. Let us consider the ages of individual life. Christ said about children: “of such is the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew XIX, 13–15), and he instructed adults: “Truly I tell you, unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself as a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew XVIII: 3 – 4). Children are close to the kingdom of heaven in their self-depreciation, in their awareness of their helplessness. Adults are instructed to have the same internal mood. Old age naturally leads to it. Of course, not always (otherwise the inner mood would not be free - and this has application to the ages of both individual and historical life) - old age is not always endured with complacent patience: quae plerisque senibus sic odiosa est, ut onus se Aetna gravius ​​dicant sustinere (Cicero, Cat., p. II). However, it forces a person to admit his helplessness. And if we compare old age with childhood in this regard, we will find that self-awareness in old age is deeper than in childhood. Childhood has in front of it, and old age behind it, youth and courage, when a person, full of a sense of strength, manifests all his power and is completely focused on external activity. Old age presupposes these experiences of strength, these hopes and dreams, this power and beauty - hopes disappointed, dreams not realized, power disappeared and beauty disfigured - - and therefore it evokes a deep consciousness of human frailty, which constitutes the precious contribution of old age to the treasury of the human soul, despite all the damage that accompanies it in relation to natural improvement. Let us consider, in particular, mental and moral development. Is it really possible to doubt that ignorance is presumptuous and wisdom is modest? The consciousness: “I know that I know nothing” is characteristic of a sage, not a schoolboy. Those who look at the successes of science from afar, those who have taken their first steps in its field, those who try their first strength in it, are filled with reverence for it. Half-knowledge, half-education are harmful in a religious sense, just like a person’s proud striving for perfect gnosis. What about moral development? “How is it possible,” writes Macarius the Great, “for a person to be poor in spirit, especially when he feels within himself that he has changed, succeeded, and has reached knowledge and understanding that he did not have before? Until a person has acquired this and succeeded, he is not poor in spirit, but thinks highly of himself. When this understanding and prosperity comes to this, then grace itself teaches him to be poor in spirit, and although he is a righteous man and God’s chosen one, not to consider himself for anything, but to recognize his soul as of little value and humiliation, as if he does not know and has nothing, although he knows and has.” Thus, until a person has set out on the path of natural improvement, until he has felt perfection in himself as his own dignity, which he can renounce or which itself eludes him, until the boundless prospect of progress has opened up before him, until then he still does not know the extent of his nature. Natural development or improvement is a form of human perfection, i.e. perfection of the conditional, created, and therefore such development gives a person knowledge of his spiritual limitations. Let us consider the historical development. Every nation has its own old age. We know well the old age of the Greeks and Romans. What does it indicate? How did they live in their youth and courage and how did they live in old age? What songs were sung before and which ones in old age? The brightest streak in the last pages of their history is dissatisfaction with life, turning their gaze to the East, an uncontrollable desire for the heavenly - in short, the consciousness of the prodigal son. It was precisely in this, and not in good military ways, not in the unity of the Greek language and the Roman administration, that the pagan peoples were prepared to accept the gospel preaching. How were the Jewish people trained and prepared? According to the depiction of human history by the ap. Paul, people at first did not glorify God as God (Rom. I, 21) and therefore were deprived of the glory of God (III, 23). God gave up the pagans in the desires of their hearts to uncleanness, gave them over to shameful passions (I, 24 – 26). But the law was given to God's chosen people. For what? Is it to achieve perfection? Those who looked at the law in this way and imagined themselves to be legalistically perfect—those were the enemies of Christ. The law was not given to the Jews for perfection, not for justification before God, but for the knowledge of sin (III, 20). Through the commandment, sin becomes conscious and therefore extremely sinful (VII; IV, 15). The Gentiles were given over to their lusts, and the Jews were brought under the yoke of the law for one purpose: so that man might recognize his weakness, so that no flesh should boast before God (I Cor. I, 29), so that the one who boasts might boast in the Lord (I Cor. I, 31; 2 Cor. X, 17), so that man would boast more readily in his weaknesses, for the power of God is made perfect in weakness ( 2 Cor. xii. 9). And so, at the fulfillment of the times, when humanity with perfect clarity realized its powerlessness for every good work (Rom. VII, 24), then God gave us life in Christ Jesus: through our unrighteousness the righteousness of God was revealed, through our unfaithfulness the faithfulness of God was increased to the glory of God (Rom. III, 5-7), - we were given life by mercy (IV, 16), so that the abundance of grace would be all the greater for many produced gratitude to the glory of God (2 Cor. IV, 15). When sin increased, grace began to abound, so that, as sin reigned in death, so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. V, 20-21; 1 Cor. XV). This sense of historical development does not deprive us of the opportunity to talk about religious progress and, in particular, about the progressive preparation of pre-Christian peoples for Christianity. But this is not a progress of religious gnosis and moral improvement, this is a progress towards the knowledge of human weakness and God’s truth, towards the justification of God. Spiritual life. Jesus Christ. Repentance In man there is a distinction between mental life and spiritual life, flesh and spirit, external man and internal man. Mental life is a personal human life, embracing mental and physical needs and the desire for happiness and improvement and mainly expressed in that special direction of mental and physical life, which is called personal life. The nature of personal life is determined by consciousness: this is my nature, my dignity, my happiness, my perfection. Personal life is closely connected with external limitations: only the external, visible, limited can be mine. Therefore, spiritual - personal life in the word of God is called external man, visible life. However, in historical reality personally, human life is not given in its natural spontaneity, but is known in a certain direction - not only as a natural desire for happiness and improvement, but as a selfish desire for personal happiness and absolute perfection, as a desire for self-satisfaction and self-righteousness. This is how the whole world lived before Christ, and this is how all humanity lives outside of Christianity. Therefore, the life of the soul in Holy Scripture is called worldly. Personality, or self-consciousness, has great religious significance: by the power of free self-determination, a person can renounce himself and thereby make his life an instrument of divine activity; but at the same time it contains within itself the moment of assimilation. Therefore, although everything is from God, yet spiritually - personal life, not sanctified by self-denial, is actually human life in contrast to divine life - there is life in alienation from the life of God (Eph. IV, 18). In this meaning, mental-physical life is called flesh in the word of God. Thus, spiritual, otherwise worldly, carnal life is characterized in general terms by lust for evil and self-righteousness. “All that is in the world, according to the apostle, is the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life (I John II, 16). Spiritual life in Holy Scripture is called illusory, fleeting, only visible, apparent and even direct death. And this is not only because it leads to death and ends in death, but also because it is essentially, by its basic nature, a ghostly life. “Listen,” writes the apostle, “you who say: today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, and we will live there for one year and will trade and make a profit, you who do not know what will happen tomorrow: for what is your life? A vapor that appears for a short time and then disappears” (James IV, 13, 14). “To be carnally minded,” writes another apostle, is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace: because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for they do not obey the law of God; and indeed they cannot” (Rom. VIII, 6, 7). “All that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, but the world passes away (cf. I Cor. VII, 31), and its lust also passes away, but he who does the will of God abides forever” (I John II, 16, 17). One day one of Christ’s disciples said to Him: “Lord! let me first go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him: “Follow Me, and let the dead bury their dead” (Matthew VIII, 21,22). In addition to spiritual, carnal life, we have spiritual life. First of all, and in general, it is the reign of God within us - it consists in the fact that the will of God is fulfilled by people, as in heaven by angels. More essentially, it is defined, from the negative side, as a person’s renunciation of himself, from his personality, from the self-loving striving for personal happiness and absolute perfection, as his dislike of his soul even to death (Apoc. XII, II), and from the positive side, as the revelation of divine life in man. Just as a person sometimes hates his appearance, so he can hate everything about himself, including his mind, his heart, his will - he can hate himself. Of course, in a certain sense, no one has ever hated their flesh, but nourishes and warms it (Eph. V, 29): the natural desire for happiness and improvement in man is ineradicable. But he can suppress in himself the selfish desire for happiness and absolute perfection, so that, by the way, care for the flesh does not turn into lust (Rom. XIII, 14). There is a difference between a mother’s love for her beautiful and intelligent child, who is her pride, and a mother’s love for an ugly and sick child: in the latter case, love is pity, but not self-loving passion... To hate your soul does not mean simply to have an aversion to life, but it means not to value your life (Acts XX, 24), recognizing, however, its significance as an instrument of divine activity - not to value your happiness and your dignity; this is not simply hatred of one’s soul (life), but it is hatred of one’s soul in this world (John XII, 25). “If anyone, Christ said, comes to Me, and does not hate his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters, and, moreover, his own life, he cannot be My disciple... Anyone of you who does not renounce everything that he has cannot be My disciple” (Luke XIV, 26, 33). This free spiritual and personal death brings an amazing fruit - life. The image of such a rebirth is the death of every fruit-bearing grain. “Truly, truly, I say to you,” said Christ, “unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; and if it dies, it will bear much fruit. He who loves his life will destroy it; but he who hates his life in this world will keep it to eternal life” (John XII, 24, 25); “Whoever saves his life will lose it; and whoever destroys her (for My sake and the gospel’s sake) will bring her to life” (Luke XVII, 33 and par.). Human life is a divine gift, which turns into nothing if a person wants to use it for himself, but acquires great significance if he returns it to God. The same human life becomes another life; From life according to the flesh, life according to the spirit is born; from a man who walks in his own ways, a man of God is born (2 Tim. III, 17). However, spiritual life is not covered by death personally - human, and does not arise entirely from it; spiritually - personal death is only a free condition for the birth of spiritual life, and its real source is in God - it is the kingdom of God, or heaven, it is divine life. In ancient times, the Kingdom of God was the Jewish people, chosen from all nations in order to be the people of God: the Lord reigned over Israel (Ex. XV, 16 - 18; Judges VIII, 22 - 23). This was the external reign of the Lord, its expression was the external Old Testament law, the fulfillment of which gave the Jew bodily purity and served as a guarantee for his belonging to the whole people, but did not give spiritual purity. When the Jews chose a king for themselves in the likeness of other nations, they thereby rejected the Lord so that He would not reign over them (I Kings VIII, 4-8). Saul was such a king in the likeness of the pagan kings. However, during the reign of David, who recognized himself as the bearer of the power of the Lord, God treated the Jewish king mercifully and gave this earthly kingdom a high significance as a symbol of the coming reign of the seed of David - the Son of God (2 Sam. VII, 12 - 13,16). When, with the destruction of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah, such a mediocre reign of God over the Jews ceased, then through the prophets it was more clearly and fully predicted, under the symbol of the restored throne of David, the coming reign of the seed of David, as God’s spiritual, internal reign: “and I will give you,” the Lord predicted, “a new heart, and a new spirit I will give you; And I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My commandments, and to keep My statutes and do them” (Ezek. XXXVI, 26, 27). These words, I will put My spirit within you, remind us of the first creation of man by God: “And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Gen. II, 7). These are two creative acts. That primitive inspiration of life separated man from external nature and made him a living soul (spiritual life), and this later outpouring of the spirit of God into the hearts of people (Jol. II, 28 - 32) distinguishes the kingdom of God from the kingdoms of men (Dan. VII) and creates spiritual life within man. As having received the breath of life from God, man is the image of God; By receiving the spirit of God into himself, he becomes in the likeness of God. “We are all people in the image of God; to be in the likeness of God belongs only to those who, out of great love, have enslaved their freedom to God. For when we are not our own, we deny ourselves, then we become like the One who, out of His love, reconciled us to Himself; which no one can achieve unless he convinces his soul not to be carried away by the delights of a self-satisfied and self-indulgent life” (Diadochos). Spiritual man is God's new creation (2 Cor. V, 17; Gal. VI, 15), a new man (Eph. II, 15; IV, 23; Col. III, 10); he is born again (John III, 3) from God, just as a natural man is born from blood, from the lust of the flesh (John I, 13). Spiritual life is not the person himself who says about himself: “this is me; this is mine"; no, spiritual life is divine life in man. She is born in him, just as the life of a child is born in a mother. Just as a mother feels the birth of a new life within herself, but does not know how it was born and how it grows, this is how the spiritual birth of a person happens. Or: the spirit breathes where it wants, and you hear its voice, but you do not know where it comes from and where it goes: this is what happens to everyone born of the Spirit (John III, 8). The inner kingdom of God is like when a man throws a seed into the ground; and sleeps and rises night and day; and how the seed sprouts and grows, he does not know. The difference between natural motherhood and spiritual birth is that the life born in the mother, maturing, is separated from her, and the spirit born in a person becomes his life, so that he lives in spirit (Gal. V, 25) - lives the divine life. The grain, having sprung, dies itself, and a person, having died for personal - spiritual life, finds real life in the divine life that is in him. Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which, having found, a man hid, and out of joy over it he goes, and sells everything he has, and buys that field. A spiritually reborn person is like a tree to which, having been pruned, a graft was made, so that the latter grows on the old tree. He is like an earthen vessel in which treasure is placed (2 Cor. IV: 7). By renouncing himself, man acquires real life for himself in God. God is spirit (John IV, 24), and he who is born of Him is spirit, just as he who is born of the flesh is flesh (John III, 5, 6). Spirit is spirit, and spirit is life (John VI, 63), true eternal life as opposed to temporary illusory life. The Spirit is life because it is truth and freedom. Therefore he who is born of the Spirit has life. He who sows to his flesh will from the flesh reap corruption; and he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life (Gal. VI, 8). Spiritual divine life, being opposite to everything that a person can call his own, that he can see, touch, separate from others as his property, and presupposing personal death - spiritual, is invisible, internal life. Living according to the Spirit means looking not at the visible, but at the invisible, for the visible is temporary, but the invisible is eternal; it means walking not by sight, but by faith (2 Cor. IV, 16 – 18; V, 7). The world cannot receive the spirit of truth because it does not see it (John xiv. 17). We received spiritual divine life through the mediation of Christ (I John IV, 9). What work did Christ do for people? Many different answers are given to this question - abstract, scholastic, confusing... The results of the work of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, must be sought in the reality of our religious life. We Christians live by the spirit (Gal. V, 25). Spiritual life constitutes our inner experience. Where does this spiritual life come from in us? From Jesus Christ. This is the true work of our Savior. He is the head of our spiritual life (Acts III, 15), He is our life (Col. III, 4). Just as our mental and physical life originates from Adam, so our spiritual life traces its origin to Christ. The first man Adam became a living soul (Gen. P, 7); and the last Adam is a life-giving spirit. The first man from the earthy earth; the second person is the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy, so are the earthy; and as is the heavenly, so are the heavenly (I Cor. XV, 45 - 48). Our spiritual life is the life in us of Christ (Gal. II, 19 – 26), in whom we have put on (III, 27). God has poured out the Holy Spirit on us richly through Jesus Christ (Tim. III, 6), His Son, for it is the spirit of the son, which in us becomes the spirit of adoption and by which we cry: Abba, Father! (Gal. IV, 6; Rom. VIII, 15). Christ gave people eternal life, because He Himself was from the highest, and not from this world (John VIII, 23). He was the Son of God - in Him the life that was with the Father appeared (I John I, 2; John XIV, 6; 2 Tim, I, 10). But the life that the Father had was revealed to the world in Christ not in divine form (ἐν μορφῆ θεοῦ), but in human form (ἐν μορφῆ δούλου). The revelation of the divine life in Him was the work of His condescension (Phil. II, 5-9). In order to manifest the divine spirit in human life, He Himself had to experience the divine life under human conditions; in order to manifest the spirit in people and make them sons of God, He had to take upon Himself their flesh, subject to suffering (Heb. II, 10 ff.); in order to generate divine love in them, He had to love them with human love with friendly self-sacrifice (John XIII, 34; XV, 12 - 14); in order to make them believers, He Himself had to be the author and perfecter of faith (Heb. XII, 2); in order to give them the hope of hope, He, although He was a son, had to learn obedience through suffering and be heard for reverence (Heb. V, 7, 8). In contrast to Adam, who wished to arbitrarily become a god (Gen. III, 5), Christ, instead of the joy set before Him, endured the cross, despising the shame (Heb. XII, 2); He, being in the image of God, did not react selfishly to His divine glory, but humiliated Himself, taking on the image of a servant, becoming like men; and becoming in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even to death, even death on the cross (Phil. II, 6-8). He did not seek His own, His glory, but sought the glory of God (John VIII, 50); With God's filial obedience, he fulfilled all the truth of God about man (Matthew III: 15). He had exactly that mood, or those feelings (φρόνησις) that God desires from man. He fulfilled the purpose of man. To the question whether the goal assigned by God to man has actually been achieved, we Christians answer with complete confidence: it has been achieved in Christ, the Son of God. All world life, all human history makes sense because Jesus Christ lived on earth. He is the meaning of the world and history. Since in His person man fulfilled what was required of him by the righteousness of God, God highly exalted Him and gave Him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven, on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. II: 9-11), God gave through Him His eternal life to all people. For just as the Father has life in himself, so he gave to the Son to have life in himself (John V, 25, 26), giving Him power over all flesh, so that He would give eternal life to everything that He had given Him (XVII, 2). For if through the transgression of one, the first Adam, many were subjected to death, much more will the grace of God and the gift by grace of one man, Jesus Christ, abound for many. If through the crime of one death reigned through one, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one Jesus Christ (Rom. V, 15:17). The purpose of world and human life is fulfilled by Christ. For the life of each of us to have meaning, it must be included in the life of Christ. We need to internalize the life of Christ, His spirit. “You must have the same feelings,” writes the apostle, “that were also in Christ Jesus” (Phil. II, 3). To have true life, we need to have the Son within us (I John V, 12), give Him a place within us so that He may live in us (Gal. II, 19-21). The birth of spiritual life in a person occurs through baptism in the spirit, which is symbolized by baptism in water. In the realm of consciousness, the birth of spiritual life begins with repentance and faith. “Repent; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matthew III: 2), preached by John the Baptist. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mr. I, 15): this is how Jesus Christ began to preach (cf. Mt. IV, 17). The apostles also began their preaching with a call to repentance (Acts II, 38). Repentance (μετάνοια), as repentance unto life (μετάνοια εἰς ζωήν), Acts. XI, 18), in contrast to James. V, 16 (confess your wrongdoings to each other), as the beginning of spiritual life, there is a complete change in a person’s thoughts or feelings, inner mood (φρόνησις), so that a person becomes different. This is a change from the desire for self-satisfaction and self-righteousness to the consciousness of one’s material insignificance. A person can come to the consciousness of his material insignificance, his helplessness, perishability and insignificance of everything worldly on his own, he can be brought by the sufferings and failures of his worldly, personally, human life. But this consciousness in itself is completely empty and leads either to despair or to nirvana, which is based on the same despair. This consciousness turns into fruitful death when it becomes a renunciation of oneself for the sake of life for God (Rom. VI, II; XIV, 8; 2 Cor. V, 15; I Pet. IV, 2), when it is united with faith in the gospel, in the advent of the kingdom of God: “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe in the Gospel” (Mr. I:15). Therefore, only the forerunner of Christ—previously and Christ Himself—could truly preach repentance to life. John the Baptist's sermon on repentance was, as one of the later theologians rightly noted, a commentary on Rom. III, 20: “By the works of the law no flesh will be justified in the sight of God; for by the law is the knowledge of sin.” The Old Testament law was given to the Jews in order to create in them a consciousness of their sinfulness, their moral impotence. Meanwhile, the Jews, with the exception of a small “remnant,” in their entirety, and mainly in those parts that considered themselves superior, saw in the Old Testament union with God the basis of their dignity, and in the fulfillment of the law they found the source of their self-righteousness. It was precisely this national pride that John the Baptist’s denunciations were directed at. He clearly and, what is especially important, with an indication of the approaching kingdom of heaven, said what the Old Testament law symbolically expressed. The sermon of Jesus Christ about repentance stands in connection with His entire teaching about the kingdom of heaven, about the kingdom of the meek Son of man, and is especially clear by the first so-called beatitudes: calling for repentance, He called for spiritual poverty, crying, meekness, etc. His sermon about repentance boils down to His instruction: “Truly I say to you, unless you are converted, you will not be like children, you will enter the kingdom of heaven" (Matthew XVIII, 3). Repentance embodies the consciousness of the complete meaninglessness of personal life, the complete powerlessness to give one’s life absolute meaning through personal efforts, the collapse of all worldly ideals - in short, it is a feeling of hunger in the country of the world and the aspiration of the soul to God as the only true good. The man comes to his senses and says: “How many of my father’s hired servants have an abundance of bread, and I am dying of hunger! I will get up, go to my father and say to him: Father! I have sinned against heaven and before you, and am no longer worthy to be called your son; accept me as one of your hired servants." Prayer. Fast. Christian foolishness Spiritual life is the delight of God in man. This pleasure needs appropriate nourishment and proper strengthening, especially at the beginning, when it is tender and easily susceptible to adverse influences. Prayer, fasting and foolishness for Christ’s sake serve as such nourishment and strengthening. What light and air are to a plant, prayer is to spiritual life. Prayer is a person’s mental communication with God, “a conversation of the mind to God,” according to Neil of Sinai, “the ascension of the mind to God.” From the point of view of the true goal of human life as the revelation of the glory of God in humiliation, the last step in a person’s achievement of his destiny is communion with God. The actual manifestation of divine spiritual life in man is communion with God. Man is destined for communion with true God - to become a partaker of the divine nature (2 Pet. I, 4), to be one of his own to God (Eph. II, 19), to be spiritually and physically a dwelling place for God (Eph. II, 22; I Cor. VI, 19). Before His departure to heaven, Christ prayed to the Father for those who believe in Him like this: “that they may all be one: just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, so that they also may be one in Us” (John XVII, 21). This communion with God has various degrees, but in any case, in order to be valid and true, it must first be mental. This is prayer. “Prayer prepares us for a conversation with God and, through long-term skill, brings us into fellowship with Him” (Neil of Sinai). Prayer is an essential expression of what is called religion and what is man’s relationship to the unconditional Beginning of life. God is the highest good, and a person who has recognized the insignificance of external worldly life and his affinity with the divine spirit rushes towards God, just as a plant rises towards the sun. This aspiration of the soul towards God is prayer. It is characteristic of a Christian, just as breathing is necessary for his bodily organism. Prayer is the continuous state of a Christian. “Pray at all times in the spirit (Eph. VI, 18), pray without ceasing (I Thess. V, 17), the apostle commanded. When a person has realized the perishability of all external goods, the insignificance of personal existence, then prayer, first of all, gives positive content to his new existence, fills the emptiness of his personal death. Through it, a person renounces his own insignificance; through it he stands out from the outside world and rises above it. “Having come to his senses, he says: I will get up and go to my father”: and the actual first step in fulfilling this decision is prayer. A newborn baby instinctively reaches out to its mother’s breast, and spiritually the reborn is just as weak and alone in “this world” without God. Prayer nourishes spiritual life and gives it strength. The state of prayer is wakefulness of the spirit, sobriety, composure of the mind, staying inside. Lustful concern for worldly affairs is the same as dreaming. The web of worldly thoughts entangles our mind, and it lives, mistaking dreams for reality, an external ghost for the truth. “Awake, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” (Eph. V, 14). “Watch and pray so that you do not fall into temptation. The spirit is cheerful; but the flesh is weak” (Matthew XXVI, 41). This determines the nature of Christian, spiritual prayer. “The true basis of prayer,” according to Macarius the Great, “is to be attentive to thoughts and perform prayer in great silence and peace. A person praying needs to direct all his effort to his thoughts, and cut off what serves as food for evil thoughts, and direct his thoughts to God, and not fulfill the desires of thoughts, but collect whirling thoughts from everywhere together, distinguishing natural thoughts from evil ones. The soul under sin is likened to a large forest on a mountain, or reeds on a river, or, more often than not, thorns and trees; Therefore, those who intend to pass through this place must stretch their hands forward and with effort and difficulty push the branches apart in front of them. So the soul is surrounded by a whole forest of thoughts, inspired by a resistive force; Therefore, great diligence and attentiveness of the mind are required in order for a person to distinguish between alien thoughts inspired by a resistive force. Those who are attentive to thoughts perform the entire feat in prayer internally. Such, with their understanding and prudence, can prosper, repel rebellious thoughts and walk in the will of the Lord.” Prayer is only “smart doing” and cannot replace Christian life. “Not everyone who says to Me: Lord! God! He who does the will of My Father in heaven will enter into the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew VII: 21). But this intelligent work is absolutely necessary in order to preserve, grow and nurture that beginning of spiritual life, which is laid by repentance and faith in the Gospel. Without prayer, this first fruit will die out, the born Spirit will go out... The seed of spiritual life that the Son of Man sows in the hearts of people falls, some along the road, where birds fly and peck at it, some - on rocky places, where, having quickly sprung up, it soon dries up from the scorching rays of the sun, others - in the thorns, with which it is drowned. The birds are the evil one, who comes to everyone who hears the word about the kingdom and does not understand, and snatches away what is sown in his heart; The thorns are our flesh, the cares of this age and the deceitfulness of riches; stony ground is the world that causes sorrow, or persecution because of the word, temptation. The evil one, the enemy of the Son of Man, sows tares among the good seed, “while people sleep”: he is driven out by prayerful vigilance; the flesh is overcome by fasting, and the world by foolishness in Christ. Fasting is necessary for a Christian; this necessity is determined by the law according to which the inner man is renewed under the condition that the outer man decays (2 Cor. IV, 16). Spirit and flesh are at enmity with each other. Walking in the flesh is directly opposite to walking in the Spirit (Rom. VIII: 4-5). The flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit desires what is contrary to the flesh (Gal. V: 17). For the spirit to live for righteousness, the body must be dead for sin (Rom. VIII, 10). The beginning of this carnal mortification is fasting - abstinence both in the field of nutrition and in relation to sexual function. On the way to the kingdom of God, “publicans and harlots” go ahead of the “high priests and Pharisees” (Matthew XXI, 31); but in the kingdom of God itself there is no place for fornicators (Cor. V, 10; Eph. V, 5). Publicans and harlots precede fasters and virgins only in a certain direction - in the direction of that humility, which, in contrast to self-righteousness and self-satisfaction, is a condition of faith in Christ, who came to call not the righteous, but sinners to repentance (Matthew IX, 13). Publicans and harlots precede those fasters and virgins who see in abstinence a virtue leading to perfection and merit before God, to the self-satisfaction of a tributary Pharisee. But when a certain direction has been passed, then what is the justification for lawlessness? Now the path has changed: what was in front is now behind. For someone who believes in Christ, living according to the flesh is the same as: “a dog returns to its vomit, and a washed pig goes to wallow in the mud” (2 Pet. II, 22). “For if, having escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled in them and overcome by them; then the latter is worse for them than the former. It would be better for them not to know the path of righteousness than, having learned it, to turn back from the holy commandment handed down to them” (20 – 21). Why, although the law was given to the Jews for the knowledge of sin, although the pagans were left to their ways so that they would know their powerlessness, although in general our untruth reveals the truth of God, although the faithfulness of God is elevated by my unfaithfulness to the glory of God, this does not mean that Christians must do evil in order for good to come out. The judgment is just on those who say so (Rom. III, 5 - 8). After all, we died to sin: how can we live in it? Therefore, let not sin reign in our mortal body, so that we should obey it in its lusts (Rom. VI). That is why the apostle distinguishes the fornicators of this world, with whom he allows Christians to communicate, “for otherwise they would have to go out of this world,” from those who, while calling themselves brothers, remain a fornicator or a covetous person, or a drunkard, etc., commanding them to be cast out from among Christians and not even to eat with them (I Cor. V, 9-13). In the direction to spiritual life, in a sense, both paths are indifferent - the path of evil and the path of natural good: they both lead to Christ if both of them bring a person to the consciousness of his material insignificance; they both deviate from Christ if one leads to despair or completely drowns self-consciousness in sensuality, and the other to self-righteousness, so that they can even lead to Christ the path of evil, which, according to the parable of Christ, the younger son walked, who squandered his property on the far side, in a dissolute life, and the path of legalistic righteousness, on which the elder brother stood, can be diverted from it. They only give good results when combined: only the feeling of natural weakness and comparison of it with the height of a beloved ideal gives a person a saving knowledge of his material insignificance. Therefore, with the birth of spiritual life in a person, the meaning of both paths is retained: a spiritually reborn person is not freed from his natural infirmities, but he is not freed from the demands of a good life. But the effect of natural infirmities in a spiritually regenerated person is no longer a delight in lust, but presupposes in him an aversion to it, and the fulfillment of the requirements of the moral law is not a consequence of it, the desire for self-righteousness, for self-gratification with one’s perfection, but has a completely different meaning as a means of preserving the spiritual divine life, this treasure handed over to man by God. Christian fasting is not a virtue leading to perfection and merit before God. Christ Himself taught: “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but what comes out of the mouth defiles a person” (Matthew XV, II). The Apostle explains: “to the pure all things are pure” (Tit. I, 15); “every creation of God is good and nothing is reprehensible if it is received with thanksgiving” (I Tim. IV, 4); “Food does not bring us closer to God: for if we eat, we gain nothing; if we eat, we lose nothing” (I Cor. VIII, 8); and “let everyone act according to the evidence of his own understanding. He who distinguishes the days distinguishes for the Lord; and he who does not discern the days does not discern for the Lord. Whoever eats eats for the Lord; for he thanks God. And whoever does not eat does not eat for the Lord, and gives thanks to God... The kingdom of God is not food and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit" (Rom. XIV, 5, 6, 7, 17). The apostle considers freedom from the weak elements of the world to be the great gift of Christianity: “you, brothers, are called to freedom” (Gal. V, 13). “If you, he wrote to the Colossians, died with Christ to the elements of the world, then why do you, as those living in the world, adhere to the regulations: do not touch, do not taste, do not touch (which all decays from use), according to the commandments and teachings of men? This only has the appearance of wisdom in self-willed service, humility and exhaustion of the body, in some neglect of the saturation of the flesh” (II, 20 – 23). Christian fasting is not a virtue leading to perfection and is not a merit before God: it has other grounds. We are called to freedom; only our freedom should not be a reason to please the flesh (Gal. V, 13). “Everything is permissible for me, but not everything is beneficial; everything is permissible for me, but nothing should possess me” (I Cor. VI, 12). “Do you not know that to whom you present yourselves as slaves for obedience, you are also slaves to whom you obey, either slaves of sin to death, or slaves of obedience to righteousness” (Rom. VI, 16)? Fasting is necessary for a Christian because it protects spiritual life from the grasp of the flesh. “Take heed to yourselves,” Christ commanded us, “so that your hearts are not burdened with gluttony and drunkenness” (Luke XXI, 34). “Do not quench the Spirit” (I Thess. V, 19), the apostle instructs. And intemperance quenches the spirit. Due to this basic nature, Christian fasting has no definite boundaries. “Concerning the image of abstinence in food, or fasting, the same rule cannot be established for everyone; because not all bodies have the same strength, but this virtue is not observed by the strength of the soul alone, but must be proportionate to the strength of the body. Why should the measure of abstinence be determined by the court of everyone’s conscience.” The general principle of Christian fasting is expressed by the apostle in the words: “do not turn cares for the flesh into lusts” (Rom. XIII, 14). “The course of our life should be set in such a way that at no time should we be distracted from spiritual pursuits, unless the weakness of the body prompts us to descend to the necessary care for it,” as John Cassian instructs. The same principle of freedom of spirit should determine the attitude of a husband towards his wife. Marriage is honest and in itself is not fornication or adultery (Heb. XIII, 4). The apostle calls people who abstain or teach to abstain from marriage as from impurity those who are seared in their conscience (I Tim. IV, 2). And in relation to marriage, abstinence is prescribed to a Christian only for the sake of spiritual life, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. And here the last judge is the nature and conscience of everyone, and one must distinguish between physical abstinence and mental chastity. In the first respect, abstinence can be unconditional, unlike fasting in the proper sense, but it is not possible for everyone: “whoever can accommodate, let him accommodate” (Matthew XIX, 12). The unbearable burden and unreasonable jealousy in this area and nature punishes and the word of God restrains: “it is better to marry than to be kindled” (I Cor. VI, 9). Mental chastity is prescribed unconditionally for a Christian, and it should equally determine both the celibate state and the married life of a Christian, i.e. the attitude of a husband towards every wife: “everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” (Matt. V, 28). This looking with lust is the very enemy of spiritual life. Wine, like “every creation of God, is good and not blameworthy if it is received with thanksgiving”; but intoxication is incompatible with spiritual life (Eph. V, 18; I Cor. V, II). Christian ascetics also command abstinence in relation to sleep. “You must strictly observe the time and amount of sleep. And this kind of lust must be cut off with the same zeal with which we must cut off the movements of lustful passion” (John Cassian). Finally, just like reading with prayer, physical labor should be closely connected with fasting. “If anyone does not want to work, let him not eat,” commands the apostle (2 Thess. III, 10). “Choose work for yourself, and it, together with fasting, prayer and vigils, will deliver you from all defilements, because bodily labor brings purity of the heart” (Antony the Great). Let us conclude the teaching of Holy Scripture on fasting with a remark about the relationship of church regulations on fasting to this teaching. Church fasting does not have abstinence as its only principle, otherwise these instructions about times and types of food would contradict the teaching of the word of God; but in it this principle is supplemented by another principle of obedience to the Church, the exercise of the will in obedience to it. This last principle of monastic origin and in monasteries finds its full application according to the rule: “to surrender everything into the will of your spiritual father, as into the hand of God, is a matter of perfect faith. Don’t even ask to swallow a sip of water, even if you happen to be burning with thirst, until your spiritual father, being moved within himself, orders you to do it” (Simeon Nov. Theologian). Church fasting has disciplinary and educational significance. It is clear to everyone that, by outwardly observing the instructions of the Church about the times and types of food, one can lead an intemperate life, as almost everyone does in our country, for example, Maslenitsa; but in the first steps of spiritual life, when the conscience is either weak or rude, church fasting, in any case, is a school of abstinence. “Take care of yourself, Christ commanded us, so that your hearts are not burdened with excess and drunkenness, and,” he added, “with the cares of this life (Luke XXI, 34). In addition to intemperance of the flesh, the enemy of spiritual life is worldly worries, the demands of this world. Consider what the worldly man is completely absorbed in. Look closely at his life, and you will agree that his external worries and sensual concerns are much broader than the demands of his flesh. Eg. The attention that a worldly person pays to sexual love, which requires a lot of time, mental strength, and material resources, is far from being covered by the demands of the flesh. The most lustful animal is not as demanding in this regard as a man is demanding, who, whenever possible, fortunately extremely rare, surrounds himself with dozens and even hundreds of wives. In humans, sexual lust is accompanied by social feelings of pride and hatred, which bring sensual lust to enormous proportions. Moliere's Don Juan, the personification of sexual love, looks at his love affairs like a commander at military campaigns. “The whole pleasure of love,” he says, “consists in change. You feel an incomprehensible pleasure when you win the heart of a young beauty with all kinds of assurances... But since he remained the winner, there is nothing more to wish for; all the charm of passion has disappeared, and we fall asleep in the tranquility of such love, if a new object does not arouse our desires and does not present to our heart the seductive charm of a new victory. In a word, there is nothing more delightful than triumphing over the resistance of a beauty. Then I feel in myself the ambition of conquerors who win one victory after another.” Rousseau (Emil) quite rightly notes: “Pride produces libertines more than love.” Therefore, of course, the physiological satisfaction of lust without satisfying pride does not give satisfaction, and Mark Volokhov, the hero of “The Precipice,” did not feel it when he left the gazebo. Also, the clothes and home of a worldly person are more refined, his table is more plentiful than what is needed for lustful needs, not to mention the modest requirements of a morally healthy body. A society lady dresses up not just because of her inclination towards grace and beauty, but in order not to be inferior to some and to surpass others. All our excess is for the world. We dress and live as luxuriously as possible because “we meet people by our dress,” and we want to be greeted well—we want to impress. We try, therefore, not only to be, but also to appear, and sometimes not so much to be as to seem well-fed, rich, learned, noble. And yet, what a burden this service to the world places on a person! He works for the demands of “light”, which is darkness, to the point of exhaustion, his thoughts are constantly occupied with worldly concerns, for the sake of peace he tramples on the highest demands of the spirit. This power of the world begins with little things, with a fashionable style of dress, but it comes to the point that a person has no time to pray to God, no time to read a good book and no opportunity to allocate a ruble from his large income or salary to the poor; begins with the observance of the rules of politeness, as if coinciding with morality, and ends with the violation of the most essential rules of morality for the sake of the demands of the world. It is shameful to engage in manual labor if you have a high rank and dress fashionably; It is a shame, living in the “light,” to refuse to kill in a duel. Great is this power of the prince of this world: people are mad, there is no place for free thought, templates and fashion reign. Reality shows that you need to be a hero in order to have the strength to resist the customs of the world. And a genius does not always have enough strength for this. The great Pushkin was a slave of the “light,” despising it in his soul: this constituted the bitter tragedy of his entire life. Christian foolishness gives us strength to fight the customs of this world. Foolishness is a voluntarily accepted, humiliated way of life, different from the usual, different (=monk) 7 . Such voluntary, and if involuntary, then complacently tolerated humiliation expresses the fact that a person does not seek anything for himself personally, does not lay claim to any dignity. Such foolishness gives a person the strength to resist the customs of the world. The world itself, which cannot forgive any of its own for deviations from its customs, forgives such a deviation to a person who is not of this world, recognizing his right to such freedom. This is how this is explained by the story of the youth of Elder Zosima (“The Brothers Karamazov”). Having arrived in St. Petersburg in his youth, he became the same as everyone else: “he acquired a gloss of politeness and secular address along with the French language, and we all considered the soldiers who served us in the (cadet) corps as complete beasts, and so did I... When we came out as officers, we were ready to shed our blood for the insulted regimental honor, but almost none of us knew about real honor that it existed.” And so our young officer insults an innocent landowner and challenges him to a duel. “At that time, although duels were cruelly persecuted, there was even a fashion for them between military men - so wild prejudices sometimes grow and become stronger.” But on the eve of the duel with him, a revolution took place, “something as if fatal.” In the evening he beat his orderly, and his conscience awoke, which from the evening riot was transferred to the upcoming atrocity. He began to think: “What am I going to do? I’m going to kill a kind, intelligent, noble man, innocent of anything before me.” In the morning, having asked forgiveness from the orderly and made a prostration before him, he went to the duel with a mature decision and, having withstood the enemy’s shot, refused his own shot. “I myself,” he told him, “are ten times worse than you, and perhaps even more.” Such a Christian act caused him unanimous condemnation. All his comrades gathered to judge him that same day: “He’s soiled his uniform, they say, let him resign.” And it was then that he announced to them his decision to go to the monastery. “As soon as I said, every single one of them burst out laughing: “You should have informed me from the very beginning, well, now everything is explained, you can’t judge a monk,” they laugh, and not mockingly at all, even the most ardent accusers.”... This true story is confirmed by daily observation. It is enough for worldly people to make sure that a famous person is not their rival in worldly aspirations, that he is not of this world, and they forgive him his spiritual life. Christian foolishness is of great importance for the growth of a person’s spiritual life. That revolution in a person, which serves as a condition for the birth of spiritual life in him, first of all contains in itself the consciousness of a person’s insignificance before God. But a person’s feelings in relation to God receive full meaning and acquire the proper strength only when they are manifested in his relations with other people. So humility. Its true meaning is in a person’s consciousness of his material insignificance in relation to the ideal of unconditional perfection; but it becomes a feeling of proper strength only by becoming a person’s humility in relation to other people, as the apostle writes: “All of you, being submissive to one another, be clothed with humility, because God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time” (I Pet. V, 5, 6). Human humility in relation to people is foolishness. A Christian must voluntarily renounce everything that puts him outwardly ahead of others in the direction of worldly life - in the direction of the ideals of natural dignity and well-being, from power, smart appearance, from the reputation of an intelligent person, from everything that impresses him, and, on the contrary, strive for what depersonalizes him and humiliates him. “If I,” the Savior said after washing the disciples’ feet, “the Lord and teacher, have washed your feet; then you also should wash one another’s feet” (John XIII, 14); “Whoever wants to be great among you must be your servant. And whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave” (Matthew XX: 26, 27); “Unless you are converted and become like children, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like a child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew XVIII: 3, 4). In the same mood of humility, Christians should “confess their faults to one another” (James V, 16). Of course, foolishness, like fasting, is not subject to certain regulation - it does not consist of a certain appearance. In any case, rags and antics do not constitute the norm of Christian life, although they can be understood as a voluntary feat due to the exclusivity of the spiritual nature of this or that person, like extraordinary methods of mortification of the flesh, such as chains, etc. Especially in some cases, the change of name practiced during tonsure as a monk can be useful, since all human pride is associated with the name 8 . The norm in this respect is determined by the environment. To be without any pretensions to external dignity, to be more humiliated than those with whom you live and who know you, and, what is the same, not to stand out from the crowd - this is the norm; to be free from the shackles of the world, to live in such a way that external life does not interfere with the fulfillment of the essential requirements of Christian morality, is combined with the Christian spirit, nourishes it - this is the goal of Christian foolishness. The measure here is the same as in fasting: everyone live according to the evidence of their mind. At the beginning of spiritual life, little things matter. Everything that feeds my worldly pride, draws me into the shackles of secular life - all this deserves attention from the point of view of spiritual life, even if it were fashionable gloves, insignificant external comfort that impresses others, a small boss. Equally, no matter how insignificant in itself the circumstance in which the protest of spiritual freedom against secular deadness is expressed, even if it was a slight deviation from fashion in clothing, from accepted customs in everyday life - and this is already a victory. Foolishness is also more important. We said: it is enough for worldly people to make sure that a famous person is not their rival in worldly aspirations, that he is not of this world, and they will forgive him his spiritual life. This is certain. However, this is not the whole truth. The indicated phenomenon is combined with another, apparently its opposite. While forgiving spiritual life to holy fools, on the one hand, worldly people, on the other hand, harbor hatred for spiritual life itself. The world hates people who are not of this world. They feel and reason like this: “Let us put fetters on the righteous, for he is a burden to us; he is before us the proof of our thoughts. It’s hard for us to even look at him; for his life is not like the life of others and his ways are different; he moves away from our ways, and vainly calls God his father. We will see whether his words are true, and we will experience what his outcome will be; for if this righteous man is the son of God, then God will protect him and deliver him from the hand of his enemies. Let us test him with insult and torment, in order to know his humility and see his gentleness; let us condemn him to a dishonorable death, for, according to him, he will be taken care of” (Wis. S. II, 10 – 20). Foolishness, freeing a person from the shackles of secular life, exposes him openly to the blows of this hatred, makes Christ’s suffering possible and necessary for him, in contrast to the worldly, and gives him complicity in the suffering of Christ, according to the words of the Apostle: “If only none of you suffers as a murderer, or a thief, or a villain, or as an encroacher on someone else’s property; and if you are a Christian, then do not be ashamed, but glorify God for such a fate” (I Pet. IV, 15-17; cf. Matthew V, 11-12). And participation in the sufferings of Christ is a necessary condition for participation in His word: “as you participate,” writes the apostle, “rejoice in the sufferings of Christ, and in the revelation of His glory you will rejoice and triumph. If they slander you for the name of Christ, then you are blessed; for the Spirit of glory, the Spirit of God, rests upon you. By those He is blasphemed, but by you He is glorified" (I Pet. IV, 13, 14; also Matt. V, 11, 12; John XV, 18 - 20; Rom. VIII, 17, 18; Phil. III, 10, 11; 2 Tim. II, 11, 12). As much as it is desirable for a Christian to participate in the glory of Christ, which is true life, how necessary is foolishness for him. In order for the glory of Christ to be revealed in us, or, what is the same, His true life, we must bear His deadness in our body (2 Cor. IV, 10; 2 Tim. II, 11, 12; Phil. III, 10). This deadness in the body, this corruption of the outer man - fasting and foolishness 9. True, spiritual life is a person’s life for God (Rom. XIV, 8; 2 Cor. V, 15). The basic rule of this life, its main motive is expressed as follows: live not for yourself, but for God. “This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent” (John XVII: 3). To know only one God and not to consider either your womb, your pride, or the prince of this world as gods - this means living eternal life. The apostle defines this law of spiritual life as applied to his relationships as follows: “I decided to be among you Corinthians to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. II, 2). But eternal life is not only the life of man for God: its more essential definition is that it is divine life in man. Live a true life - this means: live a divine life. What is spiritual life as divine life in man essentially? Divine life is love, and therefore he who abides in love abides in God. “Beloved! writes the apostle, “let us love one another, because love comes from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love has not known God; because God is love (I John IV, 7, 8). No one has ever seen God. If we love each other, then God abides in us, and His love is perfect in us (12). God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him” (16). “Whoever has My commandments, said Christ, and keeps them, he loves Me; and whoever loves Me will be loved by My Father; and I will love him, and I will appear to him Myself. He who loves Me will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and we will come to Him, and make our abode with Him” (John XIV, 21, 23). “If God is love, then he who has love of God has in himself” (Theodore of Edessa). “The most divine thing about a person is that he can do good. You can become a god without doing anything (except for charity): do not miss the opportunity to deify” (Gregory the Theologian). Love is true life, and therefore he who abides in love has life in himself and lives in the light. “We know,” writes the apostle of love, that we have passed from death to life because we love our brothers; He who does not love his brother remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer; and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him” (John III, 14, 15). “Love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself... Do this, said Christ, and you will live” (Luke X, 27, 28). “Whoever says, writes the apostle, that he is in the light, but hates his brother, is still in darkness. He who loves his brother abides in the light (I John II, 9, 10). What are the properties of Christian love? The first property of Christian love is that it is from God. This is love, that we did not love God, but He loved us. We love Him because He first loved us (I John IV, 10, 19). His love was poured out into our hearts, warmed us, revived us - and lives in us. Christian life is the revelation in us of divine love - the love with which God loved us. Christian love is a reflection of God’s love in us, it is our response to the love of the Heavenly Father. The love of God was revealed to us through Christ, the Son of God. “The love of God for us was revealed in this, that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, so that we might receive life through Him. This is love, that we did not love God, but He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (I John IV, 9, 10). Christ revealed to us the love of the Father in that He laid down His life for us (III, 16; Rom. V, 8). And He commanded us to love, but He did not just command love, but gave a commandment about love, having loved us Himself - He gave us the commandment to love precisely with His love. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, so let you also love one another (John XIII:34); as the Father has loved Me, and I have loved you; abide in My love (XV, 9); This is My commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you” (12). Christian love is precisely the love of Christ in us; we Christians love one another with the love of Jesus Christ (Phil. I, 8). The source of our love is the love of Jesus Christ for us. We love because we are loved by Him. This connection of our love with the love of Jesus Christ is not interrupted over the centuries. The love of Christ is passed on from generation to generation (we mean spiritual generations) continuously. The apostles were directly loved by Christ and loved Him; sent by Him to preach, they loved their disciples with the love of Jesus Christ (Phil. I, 8) and gave birth to this Christian love in them. Their students continued their work in relation to subsequent generations. And every Christian of our time is continuously connected by such successive love with the love of Jesus Christ. Whoever has not been loved through someone by the love of Christ, there cannot be love in him; He who truly lives by Christian love has himself been loved. “All saints (Christians) consistently form a kind of golden chain, each being a special link in this chain, connecting with the previous one through faith, good deeds and love - a chain that, being established in God, is indestructible. Whoever does not allow with all love and desire in humility to unite with the most recent (in time) of all the saints, having some kind of unbelief towards him, will never unite with the former and will not be ranked among the preceding saints, even if it seemed to him that he has all the faith and all the love for God and all the saints. He will be cast out from among them, as he who did not deign to humbly take the place previously assigned to him by God, and unite with that last (in time) saint, as this was predestined for him by God” (Simeon. New Theology). Since spiritual life, or, what is the same thing, spiritual perfection, is not the entire result of human activity, but consists in man’s initiation into divine love, in drawing from a source that is already flowing, so that from man, first of all, only the consent to draw from this source is required, then spiritual life, which is divine love, is directly prescribed to man in all its reality. Christ told us: “Love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you and pray for those who abuse you; that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He commands His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust... Be ye therefore perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew V, 44 – 48). It is not said: become perfect, gradually approach infinite perfection, which will always be equally far from you, but it is said: be perfect, i.e. be merciful, just as your Father is merciful (Luke VI, 36, par. Matthew V, 48), live a divine life. Of course, in spiritual life growth is possible and required from a person; and the initial communion with it and this growth presuppose the effort of man, however, spiritual life is given to man in the love of God and his initial effort comes down only to consent to live this love, and growth in it - to the corruption of the old man, to the fullness of its discovery in human nature, but already the first communion with it is participation in eternal divine life, in spiritual perfection. “Be perfect”!.. Christian love is the love of Christ. The first manifestation of this love in us is our reciprocal love for Christ. From this it is clear how great the representation of the image of Christ is for us. We must imagine Christ, carry His image within us in order to love Him. Our personal communication with Christ, the communication of love, is the basis of Christianity. Christian love, as divine, is completely opposite in nature to our earthly, carnal love. Our natural love is a modification of egoism; it is always only partiality. We naturally love our own - our children, parents, benefactors, compatriots, all our property. We love what has our stamp on it, what gives us pleasure. When loving, we always pursue our own pleasure or benefit, and not the beloved, we care about the beloved only to the extent that his well-being or joy gives us pleasure or removes suffering from us. Our love is not our free self-sacrifice, but requires the sacrifice of the beloved: in loving, we destroy. “We most certainly destroy what is dear to our hearts.” The apparent cases of self-sacrificing natural love are entirely due to the (unfree) instinct inherent in man in some respects on a par with animals. In any case, the actual community of people is not created by love itself, but by the social instinct, which is very strong, except for humans, in some species of animals and insects, need and reason. Natural love, although it comes entirely from the heart of the person himself, is not in his power: the feeling of natural love cannot be prescribed to a person in relation to one or another object. Christian love is the opposite of natural love. “You have heard that it was said: Love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I say to you: love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who use you and persecute you... For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Don't publicans do the same? And if you greet only your brothers, what special thing are you doing? Don’t the pagans also do the same” (Matt. V, 43–47)? There is no partiality in spiritual love: it is love for every person. This is because Christian love in its content is, first of all, love for God and for others only in God. “We learn from this that we love the children of God when we love God and keep His commandments” (I John V, 2). But love for God completely excludes self-love and love for the world. “Do not love the world, nor the things in the world: whoever loves the world does not have the love of the Father in him” (II, 15). Spiritual love is conditioned by not loving one’s soul even to the point of death, spiritually by personal death. It is spiritual – personal death that makes love in God for every person possible. “He loves all people who does not love anything human” (Maximus the Confessor). To love the world and what is in the world, and together to love every person in God, is impossible. That is why, although spiritual love is given to man in the love of Christ, it is his free work, since humility and self-denial are in his power. And conversely, nothing else can eradicate addiction to the world from the human heart, neither fear of God, nor striving for absolute natural perfection, but love for God through Christ. Personal love for the Son of Man must be understood in the likeness of sensual love. “People upon whom the dew of the spirit of divine life has fallen and stung their hearts with divine love for the heavenly King Christ, will become attached to that beauty, to the unspeakable glory, to the imperishable splendor, to the unimaginable wealth of the true and eternal King - Christ. They surrender themselves into captivity to lust and love, completely rushing to Christ, and they desire to seize those unspeakable blessings that they contemplate in the spirit, and for this reason they regard all beauty on earth, and glory, and splendor, and honor, and wealth of kings and princes as nothing; because they were stung by divine beauty, and the life of heavenly immortality dripped into their souls. Therefore, they desire the one love of the heavenly King, with great lust for Him alone, having before their eyes, for His sake they renounce all worldly love and move away from all earthly bonds, so that it is possible for them to always have this one desire in their hearts, and not mix anything else with it” (Macarius the Great). The fact that spiritual love is not abstractly opposed to worldly love, but strengthens and grows in the human heart precisely at the expense of its natural passions, is worthy of special note. “Love your enemies” does not mean: love not only your brothers, but, moreover, love your enemies. Love for enemies is not the highest level of love after love for one’s own. But this means that spiritual love works directly against natural partiality and hatred. The commandment to love one’s enemies is not an extension of natural love for one’s own, but has on its reverse side the commandment to hate one’s own: “If anyone,” Christ said, “comes to Me, and does not hate his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters, and, moreover, his own life; he cannot be My disciple” (Luke XIV:26). Therefore, Christian love with which we naturally love our own: this is love for them in God, as children of God. Christian love produces a radical change in a person’s very personality, in his well-being, in his attitude towards his own and not his own. This difference between one’s own and not one’s own changes so that one’s own disappears in God’s, and everything that is not one’s own (and, of course, one’s own, which at first became not one’s own) is embraced by God’s. Therefore, the difference between brother and enemy is not unconditional, but, based on natural partiality and hatred, it falls along with them. As a Christian, I cannot love my own only because they are my own, and hate my enemies only because they are enemies; but, obviously, I am not required to love my enemies just because they are enemies and hate my own unconditionally. It is required of me that I love my enemies as children of God, as well as my own, not as my own, but as also children of God. The natural order is again, as it were, restored: “if anyone does not provide for his own, and especially for those at home, he has renounced the faith, and is worse than an infidel” (I Tim. V, 8), but this is already a renewed order. A Christian takes care of his own, but he wishes for them the same thing that he wishes for his enemies as children of God. This is the main nerve of Christian love. He can no longer wish them beauty, wealth, honors; he wishes them spiritual benefits, honesty, truth, peace, purity, holiness. Nature is not eradicated, but renewed. Like ap. Paul loved his Jews, but for that very reason he did not want national benefits for them, but wanted to bring them, along with the pagans, to the one Christ! This is how every Christian should love his family, his people! The same app. Paul, in words that are inspirationally beautiful, describes the meaning of love for a Christian and the properties of Christian love, as opposed to carnal love: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but do not have love, then I am a ringing brass, or a sounding cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy, and know all mysteries, and have all knowledge and all faith, so that I can remove mountains, but I do not have love; then I'm nothing. And if I give away all my property, and give my body to be burned, and do not have love, it does me no good. Love is patient, merciful, love does not envy, love is not arrogant, is not proud, is not rude, does not seek its own, is not irritated, does not think evil, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth. He covers everything, believes everything, hopes everything, endures everything (I Cor. XIII, 1 - 7). Spiritual love is the opposite of carnal love and grows through it. However, natural love serves as a preparatory form of spiritual love, just as human language serves as a preparatory form of divine Revelation. Everything that a person says himself is not the truth, but the divine truth can be revealed to him only in his language, and in order to perceive the divine truth he needs to abandon - not his language, but his lie. Likewise, we can perceive divine love, because we naturally know love; we can perceive it with our natural ability of love. This is why lukewarmness is far from the kingdom of God. “You are neither cold nor hot; Oh, that you were cold or hot! But how you are warm, and not hot and not cold; then I will spew you out of My mouth” (Apoc. III, 15, 16). Strong in natural love and hatred is strong in spiritual love. But the power of love must be cleansed of natural attachments in order to become spiritual love. Here the energy is the same, but the direction is different. This is a kind of transformation of power. But with this transformation, spiritual love retains what it has in common with natural love. Spiritual love is just as powerful as natural love, reaching its highest tension in falling in love. Spiritual love is a force, a person lives by it, it acts in him, grows, strengthens, matures; with sufficient strength, she controls him, he cannot resist her... Spiritual love is also similar to natural in its incomprehensibility for reason, its freedom from the laws of logic. It cannot be generated by reasoning alone, or persuaded to it by persuasion; Its reality can neither be justified nor refuted logically. It is generated by love, it is perceived by faith and proven by the evidence of one’s own experience, it is justified by one’s own activity. And the possibility of spiritual love is explained personally by the means by which it is actually warmed up and which give it inalienable properties other than those indicated. Spiritual love is love for God; but love for God, like all religious feelings, acquires real meaning in the human heart only when it becomes love in God for people. “Whoever says: I love God, but hates his brother; he is a liar: for he who does not love his brother whom he sees, how can he love God whom he does not see? And we have from Him this commandment, that he who loves God should also love his brother (I John IV, 20, 21). We have come to know love in this, that the Son of God laid down His life for us: and we must lay down our souls for our brothers. And whoever has wealth in the world, but, seeing his brother in need, closes his heart from him: how does the love of God abide in him? My children! Let us begin to love not in word or tongue, but in deed and truth” (III, 16 – 18). This is the property of Christian love for God, which clearly indicates the means by which it can be warmed in the heart: it is active love. Help the poor, do good, have compassion for the unfortunate, practice good deeds - and divine love will be embodied in your heart, from an abstract thought will become a real feeling, take root, strengthen and bear fruit. At the same time, true love for God necessarily generates love for one’s neighbor. “When someone begins to richly feel the love of God, then in a spiritual feeling he begins to love his neighbor, and once he has begun, he does not cease: such is the love about which all the holy scriptures speak. Carnal love, not being bound by spiritual feeling, as soon as even an insignificant reason presents itself, it very easily evaporates. Spiritual love is not like that: but, although it happens to suffer some grief, in a God-loving soul, which is under the influence of God, the union of love does not intersect: for having warmed itself with the warmth of love for God, it immediately returns to a good mood and with great joy accepts love for its neighbor, even if it has received a great insult from him or suffered great harm; because then the bitterness of discord is completely swallowed up by the sweetness of God” (Diadochos). Being active love for neighbors, Christian love is therefore the necessary fulfillment of the law. When asked about the greatest commandment in the law, Christ answered: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is similar to it: love your neighbor as yourself,” and directly added: “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets” (Matthew XXII, 36 - 40). This means that all the essential moral requirements of the law and the prophets are embraced by love. Love is the fulfillment of the law (Rom. XIII, 8 – 10). Two consequences follow from this attitude of love towards the law. Firstly, the requirement of love is precisely the requirement of keeping the commandments. This indicates both the property of Christian love and again the means by which love can be increased in oneself. “Whoever has My commandments, said Christ, and keeps them, he loves Me... He who loves Me keeps My word” (John XIV, 21,23). “Whoever, writes the apostle of love, keeps the word of Jesus Christ, in him truly the love of God is perfected... This is love for God, so that we keep His commandments; and His commandments are not grievous” (I John II, 5; V, 3). So, if you want to have the love of Christ in your heart, practice fulfilling His commandments. Secondly, if, on the one hand, you need to fulfill the commandments of Christ in order to have His love, then, on the other hand, the Christian law is only a form of love. Those who live according to the spirit, according to love, are not subject to the law (Gal. X, 22, 23), in the external “legalistic” sense. Therefore, the law is restored in spiritual life, but in a renewed sense, which does not give room to legalistic complacency and self-righteousness. Growth in Christian righteousness is not a natural improvement that feeds self-righteousness. Then, spiritual love is inextricably linked with suffering and humiliation. This may be a law that governs more than just spiritual love; suffering and natural love give Christian properties, raising it to this height. A mother who loves her sick child, who has caused her a lot of trouble, loves her suffering in him. When Pilate was sitting in the judgment seat, his wife sent him to say: Do nothing to that righteous man, because now in a dream I have suffered a lot for Him (Matthew XXVII, 19). Suffering even in a dream made this righteous man close to her. This is the way in which a Christian can increase his love for God, for Christ. It is necessary to “suffer for Him”—to lose so much for His sake that there is nothing left to return to the world—to break all ties with the world. The Christian in himself is homeless: he died to the world, and his life is hidden with Christ in God (Col. III, 3), just as for a grain that has sprung and rotted, all hope is in this sprout. All thoughts of a Christian are in the realm of the invisible, the divine. There is his treasure (Matt. VI, 21). He becomes a participant in the work of Christ, His friend - he has, so to speak, “common interests” with Christ, he has invested all his capital in the works of Christ (cf. Matt. XIII, 44.46), he continues His work, he, as the apostle said about himself, “makes up for the deficiency in his flesh of the sorrows of Christ for His body, which is the Church” (Col. I, 24). This very community of action and expectations is heard in the words of the apostles who left everything for Christ (Matthew XIX, 27 par.), - and the one who kept Him from suffering and said to Him: “Be merciful to yourself, Lord, let this not happen to you” (Matthew XVI, 22), and the one who said to the other disciples: “let us go and die with Him” (John XI, 16), and the one who writes: “Who will separate us from the love of God: tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or the sword?” (Rom. VIII, 35)? Having sacrificed the whole world, there is no point in stopping in front of new victims. Truly, “no one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God” (Luke IX, 62)... Finally, one more property of Christian love makes it possible - it is believing love. The Christian loves the invisible divine life because he believes in it: it is real for him and even more real than this external world. He loves his neighbor, ugly both in external and moral form, because he believes in his beautiful divine spirit, contemplates his inner man with the eyes of faith. Without faith there is no Christian love... Faith is often understood as an exclusively theoretical, mental, contemplative act, parallel to knowledge and differing from knowledge in its subject. This understanding is wrong. Just as desire is not the same as the idea of ​​what is desired, although desire, or aspiration, is impossible without the idea of ​​what is desired, so faith in its essence is an act of will, although the full concept of faith also includes a theoretical moment: “faith belongs to the heart, although it begins in the thoughts.” Just as Christian love has a natural preparatory form in the human heart, by analogy with which it is understood and by which it is perceived with the replacement of the old content with a new one, so Christian faith has its natural preparatory form in the human heart, and this form is not knowledge, which in Christianity remains knowledge, but a person’s confidence in himself. It is known that the success of a human endeavor depends on a person’s self-confidence: this very confidence is the active will, sanctified by consciousness. It is this self-confidence that serves as a preliminary form of Christian faith. But both with the replacement of natural love with Christian love, and with the transition of personal confidence into the Christian faith, a significant change occurs, completely changing the content of this act. Personal confidence in a Christian is replaced by confidence in the power of God, which is perfected in weakness. This is faith. That it is combined in a person with the consciousness of his material insignificance, that it is preceded by the collapse of earthly hopes and self-denial, that it is one of two possibilities, along with despair, this is sufficiently clear above. And again, just as the strong in natural love and hatred are capable of strong Christian love, so the self-confident is more capable of the Christian faith, although he achieves it through self-denial. Christian faith is a person’s confidence, directed not at himself, not at the will in relation to the visible world, but at the invisible world. For a believer, the invisible, spiritual, divine world - the existence of God and the moral world order (Heb. XI, 6) is reality, just as the visible world is valid for every person. Faith is the vision of the invisible (Heb. XI, 27). It is “confidence in the invisible, as if in the visible.” But the essence of faith is not in the mere recognition that God exists, but in the confidence that this invisible world exists for me, that for me, in this life, it can become reality, that I can live in this world. The fact is that for a person, in earthly life, the spiritual world can either be a ghost, a pure thought, or it can become reality for him; in reality for him it becomes the strength of the person himself - he takes it with effort (Matthew XI, 12; Luke XVI, 16): this strength is faith. It is the realization of what is hoped for and the revelation of what is not seen βλεπομένων Heb. XI, I). Whoever believes that he is the son of God truly becomes the son of God. The believer already has eternal life (John III, 15; V, 24; VI, 40, 47). According to a person’s faith, what he wants really comes true in his life. Such was the faith of the Canaanite woman, the bleeding one, the blind Bartimaeus, the sinner woman who loved much... For a believer, nothing is impossible (Matthew XVIII, 20; XXI, 22 par.). Faith is a creative act. However, faith cannot be called creative in the proper sense because it is only God who can create. In any field, human creativity is limited to perception, reproduction and imagination, materialization, embodiment of an idea. The creativity of faith is subject to the same restrictions. What exists outside man, the invisible divine, becomes reality for him by the power of faith. Only man can believe as a spiritual-physical being, in which the divine spirit is united with humiliated flesh. Faith is a power that realizes the spiritual and divine in external humiliation. It is therefore inextricably linked with external humiliation, with the consciousness of material insignificance; it is established on self-denial. In contrast to human self-confidence, it is the faith of God (πίστις θεοῦ, Mp. XI, 23). This is where the explanation of why faith and the cross are inseparable. Not being completely creative, faith, however, is completely free. It is free because its essence is not in the mere recognition of the invisible, but in the relation of man to the invisible divine. Faith is the recognition of the invisible divine, combined with joy and desire. And demons believe, i.e. recognize the divine existence, but tremble (James II, 19). Therefore, miracles cannot generate faith, much less force one to believe. They force recognition of divine existence, but leave freedom of attitude towards it, to the point of the possibility of hatred and persecution, as was the case with Jesus Christ by His enemies. United, on the one hand, with the cross, the Christian faith, on the other hand, is inextricably linked with love. I believe in the invisible spiritual - divine being - this means: I recognize the reality of this being, consider it my real good, desire it for myself with all my heart and all my thought, am confident that this spiritual world is valid for me, that I live in it - and, finally, I realize this divine world order for myself and in myself. To recognize the divine being as your good and to desire it means to love it. I love because I believe, and I believe because I love. Christian love is believing love; Christian faith is faith that works by love (Gal. V, 6). Separated from love, faith has no meaning (I Cor. XIII, 2); Compared to love, faith and hope are of transitory importance. Now these three remain: faith, hope, love; Of these, only love never ceases—of these, love is greatest (I Cor. XIII. 8:13). It is love that constitutes the divine life. Divine love exists outside of man. But that is why love cannot, on its own, constitute the complete meaning of our life: it is too spiritual for this. It becomes love for a person, for our humiliated world, through faith. Believing love gives meaning to our lives. Love is spirit; faith is the body. Faith without love, like a body without spirit, is dead (James II, 26); love without faith, like spirit without body, is invalid for the world. In faith, love is embodied. Love gives us fellowship with God; but it conquers the world, penetrates into our lives by faith (I John V, I – 4). As our love is from Christ, so is our faith from Him: He is the author and perfecter of our faith (Heb. XII: 2). In order to give birth to human love and faith, He had to undergo the feat of humiliation. Our faith is faith in Jesus Christ: I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God (Acts VIII, 37). This faith in Jesus Christ is, first of all, the faith that Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of man, who had nowhere to lay his head, was persecuted, suffered and crucified on the cross, is the Son of God. “Who do people say that I, the Son of Man, am? Who do you say that I am?” Christ asked His disciples. To Peter’s answer: “You (the Son of man) are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” He said: “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven. And I say to you: you are Peter, and on this rock (i.e., faith) I will build My Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matthew XVI, 13 – 18). Then there is faith in the love of God revealed through the Son of God Jesus Christ. “The love of God for us was revealed in this, that God sent His only begotten Son into the world, so that we might receive life through Him (I John IV, 9). In Him we knew and believed in the love that God has for us” (16). In any case, faith in Jesus Christ is faith in God, in His Revelation: “He who believes in Me,” He said, “believes not in Me, but in Him who sent Me. And he who sees Me sees Him who sent me” (John XII, 44, 45). In Him the life that was with the Father appeared, so that people could see it with their own eyes, examine it and touch it with their hands (I John I, 1 - 3). But this does not exhaust the content of the Christian faith. Faith in Jesus Christ is, finally, a person’s faith in his own sonship with God. If we believe that in the humiliation of the Son of Man, who had no place to lay his head, divine glory was revealed, if we believe in the divine love for us poured out through Him, then we thereby believe that our humiliation serves the same divine glory as we, the children of God. To recognize that Jesus Christ is the Son of God means for us to recognize that God is our Father; To deny the sonship of Christ for us means to deny our own sonship of God. “Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; and he who confesses the Son also has the Father” (I John II, 23). And since faith in one’s sonship with God gives a person real communion with God and eternal life, then “whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God” (IV, 15); “He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life” (V, 12). Thus, by faith Christ dwells in our hearts (Eph. III, 17). Believing in Christ, I also believe in my own sonship with God. But the Christian faith acquires real meaning in a person’s heart only when it becomes his faith in the sonship of God of every other person. This is the law of spiritual life: “whoever receives a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever receives the righteous in the name of the righteous will receive the reward of the righteous. And whoever gives one of these little ones to drink only a cup of cold water in the name of the disciple; Truly I tell you, he will not lose his reward” (Matthew X, 41, 42). The reward of a prophet, a righteous man, a disciple of Christ is the dignity of a prophet, a righteous man, a disciple of Christ. If I give a cup of cold water to a disciple of Christ as a disciple, if I accept a prophet, a righteous man as a prophet and a righteous man, then for me he becomes a disciple of Christ, a prophet, a righteous man. And this, firstly, means that he really becomes a prophet and a righteous man, just as when I learn from someone, I do that he really becomes a teacher, for there cannot be a teacher without a student, someone who is not recognized by anyone as a prophet cannot be a prophet; secondly, this means that the dignity of a prophet, a righteous man, a disciple of Christ is manifested in myself: by accepting a prophet, a righteous man, a disciple of Christ as a prophet and a righteous man, I affirm in myself the dignity of a prophet and a righteous man. Just as in the physical world, action is equal to reaction, so with what we hit, it receives an equal blow; the body that excites electricity is itself electrified, and so in the spiritual world, he who defiles a person, humiliates him, tells his brother cancer or is insane, himself is defiled and humiliated, and he who recognizes or arouses in another the divine dignity affirms it in himself. He who accepts a disciple of Christ by faith accepts Christ in himself, just as, by accepting Christ, he accepts Him who sent Him (Matthew X, 40 par.). On this basis, faith in Jesus Christ requires, as its consequence and the Christian’s faith in his sonship with God, as his affirmation, to recognize all those persecuted for the truth, humiliated and suffering as brothers of Christ. Just as love for God becomes real in love for people, so faith in Christ becomes saving for a person only through serving the lesser brothers of Christ. “When the Son of man comes in His glory, and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory; and all nations will be gathered before Him; and will separate one from another, as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats; and He will put the sheep on His right hand, and the goats on His left. Then the King will say to those on His right hand: Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry, and you gave Me food; I was thirsty and you gave Me something to drink; I was a stranger and you accepted Me; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was sick and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me. Then the righteous will answer Him: Lord! when did we see you hungry and feed you? or to the thirsty and gave them something to drink? when did we see you as a stranger and accept you? or naked and clothed? When did we see You sick, or in prison, and came to You? And the King will answer them, “Truly I say to you, just as you did it to one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did it to Me.” Then He will also say to those on the left hand: Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry, and you did not give me food; I was thirsty, and you gave Me no drink; I was a stranger, and they did not accept Me; I was naked, and they did not clothe Me; sick and in prison, and they did not visit Me. Then they too will answer Him: Lord! when we saw You hungry or thirsty; or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not serve You? Then he will answer them, “Truly I say to you, because you did not do it to one of the least of these; tone they did to Me. And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matthew XXV, 31–46). Believing in Christ, we must believe in our own and other people's sonship with God. But the lesser brothers of Jesus Christ are the hungry, the thirsty, the naked, the sick, the prisoners; but we ourselves, following Jesus Christ and taking upon ourselves His cross, are subjected to the hatred and persecution of the world. Are these unfortunate children of God? Am I the Son of God? This is the temptation of our faith. Our temptations are similar to those that Christ endured and overcame for our sake. His victory is our victory... Just as love is embodied through faith, so faith itself conquers the world through the fight against temptations, through victory over them. Faith affirms only the inner, divinely filial dignity of man. But while a person remains in this world as a spiritual-physical being, for him the divine dignity, as soon as internal, is not complete. Likewise, the divinely filial dignity of a Christian is limited to the kingdom of this world, which does not recognize this dignity. Therefore, suffering as a spiritual-physical being from the world for Christ, participating in Christ’s suffering, a Christian, although he already has eternal life within himself and participates in Christ’s glory, however, only expects full participation in the glory of Christ (I Pet. IV, 13, etc.). Finally, the earthly glory of a Christian is limited by external nature, which also only awaits the revelation of the glory of the sons of God. All this does not mean that glory should become externally visible, externally manifest itself in the body, nature and world: this would contradict the very essence of divine glory, since divine life is essentially spiritually invisible. It is not the glory of God, for the completeness of our participation in it, that will change in its nature, but we and our position in the visible world will change - we will change so that we will already fully participate in the glory of Christ. Therefore, faith in us becomes hope: hope is faith that has overcome temptation. “Look,” writes the apostle of love, “what love the Father has given us, that we should be called and be children of God. The world does not know us because it has not known Him. Beloved! we are now children of God; but it has not yet been revealed what we will be. We only know that when it is revealed, we will be like Him, because we will see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, since He is pure” (I John III, 1 – 3). “I think,” writes another apostle, “that the sufferings of this present time are not worth anything in comparison with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation awaits with hope the revelation of the sons of God: because the creation was subjected to vanity not voluntarily, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in the hope that the creation itself will be freed from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and suffers together until now; and not only she, but we ourselves, having the firstfruits of the spirit, and we groan within ourselves, awaiting adoption, the redemption of our body. For we are saved in hope. But hope, when it sees, is not hope: for if anyone sees, then what can he hope for? But when we hope for what we do not see, then we wait with patience” (Rom. VIII: 18-25). “A Christian must have hope, joy and hope for the future kingdom and deliverance, and say: if I am not delivered today, I will be delivered in the morning. If a person does not have joy and hope before his eyes that he will receive deliverance and life, then he will not be able to endure sorrows and take on the burden and the narrow journey. And the hope and joy that accompany him make him work, endure sorrows, and take upon himself burdens, and walk the narrow path” (Macarius the Great). Hope comes from patience, which overcomes the temptation of faith. “Consider it all joy,” writes the apostle, “my brothers, when you fall into various temptations, knowing that the testing of your faith produces perseverance; But patience must have its perfect effect, so that we may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing” (James I: 2–4). “Having been justified by faith,” writes another apostle, “we... glory in our tribulations, knowing that from tribulation comes patience, from patience experience, from experience hope, and hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. V, 1-5). We are commanded to have patience: “With your patience save your souls” (Luke XXI, 19 cf. VIII, 15); “He who endures to the end will be saved” (Matt. X, 22; XXIV, 13; Mk. XIII, 13). This is the patience of the Lord (2 Thess. III, 5; Rev. I, 9). What are we expecting? We do not expect the visible thousand-year reign of Christ over the whole world, not physical well-being, not external miraculous power over nature, but we expect that kingdom in which God will destroy food and belly (I Cor. VI, 13), we expect a spiritual body (XV, 44), a new heaven and earth (2 Pet. III, 13). We do not expect the materialization of spirit, but the spiritualization of nature. Our citizenship is in heaven (Phil. III, 20 – 21). Our hope is that the mortal will be swallowed up in life, the temporal with the eternal, the visible with the inward and the invisible. In what way will our hope be achieved? The spiritual divine life first of all manifests itself in the world as the inner life of a Christian. And it is through him that the spirit must penetrate nature and the world and subjugate them to itself. Why didn’t Christ pray to God to take His disciples from the world, but only to keep them from evil? He wanted them to be not of the world, just as He Himself was not of the world, but He sent them into the world, just as God sent Himself into the world (John XVII: 15-18). The kingdom of heaven is like leaven, which a woman took and put into three measures of flour until everything was leavened: such is the action of the Christian spirit in relation to nature and the world. This action is accomplished through the Church by grace. It is said above that divine love and faith, which form the basis of spiritual life, in order to be valid in a Christian, must be his love for other people and his service to the lesser brothers of Christ. But this is not the whole connection between a Christian and his brothers in faith. Not only must a Christian love other people and recognize them as brothers of Christ, but for the reality of his spiritual life it is also necessary that people love him with the believing love of Jesus Christ. A Christian can truly live a spiritual life only in the society of Christians, just as he can live a human life only in human society. Christ said: “Where two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst of them” (Matthew XVIII: 20). This gathering of people in the name of Christ, the society of His disciples chosen from the world (John XV, 19) is His Church. Christ said only about His Church, and not about individual spiritual life, that the gates of hell (i.e., all hostile forces) will not prevail against it (Matthew XVI: 18). Here it is appropriate to again recall the above words of Rev. Simeon that Christians form a kind of golden chain among themselves, that each Christian is a special link in this chain, connecting with others through faith, good deeds and love. A Christian lives only by the life of Christ. “Just as a branch,” He said to His disciples, “cannot bear fruit by itself unless it is in the vine, so neither can you unless you are in Me. I am the vine, and you are the branches; He who abides in Me and I in him bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing” (John XV, 4 – 5). But this communion with Christ is confirmed and becomes a real power for Christians only through their mutual communication, outside the Church of Christ. According to the common comparison, Christ is the center, we are the radii. We cannot truly unite with each other without drawing closer to the center, nor unite with the center without drawing closer to each other. The Church has a religious and ethical genesis; it will be engendered in the personal essence of Christianity, in the personally mystical depths. But in its historical appearance, the church is not covered by the basic essence of Christianity: it is broader than it. Inner Christianity is entirely spiritual - divine and motionless as eternity; the church has an earthly appearance, bears the features of human convention and develops historically. – In the church, the white Christianity of the individual is covered with earthly dust, shines with earthly colors, moves in war. The Church will never exhaust the bottomless depth of personality, and personal absoluteness does not cover the historically conditional movement of the Church. Spiritual Christianity is immeasurably deep in its sphere - an unconditionally free, absolutely creative person; Church Christianity is measured in the breadth of socio-historical development, its sphere is “the people”, society. Personal Christianity has no history; the church is a historical form of Christianity. Just as through a chemical combination bodies acquire new properties, so church life has features that are completely unthinkable in individual Christian life. These features of church life are manifested both from the side of daily activities and from the side of mysterious reality. In the first respect, the social convention of the church makes necessary the unity of the symbol of faith, the visibility of the liturgical rite and the harmony of church government, and the historical convention provides the basis for church tradition. From the mysterious side, the grace of the Holy Spirit is a mysterious feature of church life. Teaching His disciples: “Where two or three are gathered in My name, I am in the midst of them,” Christ promised them to pray to His Father so that He would give them, after His departure from the world, the Comforter, the Spirit of truth (John XIV, 16 - 17; XV, 26). After His resurrection, He, having gathered His disciples, commanded them: “Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait promised from the Father, which you heard from Me. For John baptized with water, and you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit" (Acts I, 4 - 5). And indeed, when, after the ascension of Christ, at the coming of the day of Pentecost, they were all unanimous together, they were all filled with the Holy Spirit (Acts II: 1 - 4). From this day on, the church becomes a treasury of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the sacraments receive primary importance in its life. This is reflected in the structure of church life. As established by tradition, the Church has spiritual fathers and teachers; as a community, it has primates, and as a treasury of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Church is governed by primates, sanctified by grace, and everything accomplished through them - teaching, worship and discipline, is overshadowed by the action of grace. Personally, Christian absoluteness, freely combined with every type of natural humiliation and with every form of historical development, is neither a natural nor a historical force. On the contrary, in the form of the church, Christianity acquires natural and historical significance and becomes a cultural force. Personal Christianity and the church come into contact in the religious and ethical foundation of the church and diverge in the cultural and historical area. From a cultural and historical point of view, the church is more important than personal Christianity; from an essentially religious point of view, it is the opposite. Personally-spiritual absoluteness cannot be expressed in any way in social-historical church forms, which not only differ in the nature of the conventionality of the general property of any socio-historical phenomenon, but inevitably clothe Christianity with a symbolic-ascetic veil. The absoluteness of Christianity in the externally public sphere can only be revealed as a symbolic illumination of the fullness of life and ascetic abstinence from the worldly principle. Translate the creative spirit of internal absoluteness into the externally public language of commandment or law, and you will get the best ascetic symbolism. As a creative work and the highest good, Christianity captures the whole soul and places a person above any convention: to demand the same from the whole people, from the whole society - this means starting from the end, from the consequence, it means going from the commandment to the ideal - and this commandment necessarily sounds like a commandment of abstinence and renunciation. To apply Christianity to the natural-social side of life, which is essentially conditional in nature, means to set for it an ideal that lies in a completely different area and therefore is expressed here only in symbolic secrecy. The family and the state can be Christian only in the sense of their symbolic sanctification, since Christianity itself lies outside the family-state sphere, and the latter has nothing to do with personal absoluteness. And since the church’s sanctification of life does not lose its religious-ethical basis, it can truly be a symbol of the Christian spirit, although the latter never finds an adequate church form for itself and always rushes forward, always seeks a new expression, eternally struggles as a prophetically-progressive principle with a priestly-conservative system. If the church in one or another historical period forgets about its religious and ethical foundation and wants to be a self-sufficient value and perpetuate these forms, then Christian freedom is replaced by slavery and spiritual life by idolatry of the form. Already in personal Christian asceticism, since it is part of the system of the Christian worldview, a specifically Christian character is revealed, although personally Christian asceticism is only “nourishment and strengthening" of spiritual life, has the only goal of spiritual freedom and, in this sense, does not restrict the fullness and freedom of natural development. Church asceticism goes beyond these limits, brings something new here, since it turns out to be a reflection of socio-historical conventions. Church asceticism, to put it differently, has a symbolic character. If, moreover, the memory of the religious and ethical foundations of the church becomes dark in the church consciousness, then the church’s symbolically ascetic practice inevitably becomes one-sided and encroaches on the fullness of free-natural development. Despite this constant danger of a one-sided bias, only the church, and not personally spiritual Christianity, sanctifies nature and the world, is a social-historical force, connects Christianity with nature and history and fills a significant gap in the system of the religious meaning of life. The action of the Holy Spirit in believers is called grace. In a broad sense, grace refers to everything given to us by God: God gives us understanding, heart and will, He works in us both to will and to act according to good will (Phil. II, 13). Our entire spiritual life, as having its beginning in Christ, is a work of grace. In the bodily sense, grace is the assistance of the Holy Spirit to our natural powers: grace does in us what we ourselves cannot do with our natural powers. In this sense, grace is the action of the Holy Spirit in our nature, in contrast to our free mood. The necessity of grace is caused by the limitations of our will in its action on nature. If nature were subject solely to the action of our will, then, even with the best direction of our will, over the course of an endless series of millennia it would not move a single step towards that kingdom in which God would destroy food and belly. To expect this kingdom, to expect the resurrection of the dead, a spiritual body, a new heaven and a new earth, and at the same time not to believe in the action of God’s grace can only be due to a misunderstanding. Just as the formation of the world and man, the entire cosmogonic and biological past extends beyond the limits of personal limited will and was and is accomplished through the action of the Spirit of God (Gen. I, 2), so is the future transformation (μεταμορφῦσθαι, μετασχηματίζεσθαι) of our body and all nature in accordance with the glorious body of Christ (Philip. II, 21) can only be accomplished by the action of the Holy Spirit. The only difference between the cosmogonic and biological action of the Holy Spirit and Christian grace is that the gracious action of the Holy Spirit became possible as a result of the moral feat of Christ, after His glorification - the resurrection from the dead and the departure to the Father (John VII, 39; XVI, 7), and is carried out through the Church, which is the body of Christ. The Church acts by grace, in particular, on our body and external nature and, then, on “this world.” First of all, the Church acts by grace on our body and soul. Man is not given the opportunity to achieve natural perfection; even the failure of his efforts in this regard - the well-known “I don’t do what I want, but what I hate, I do” - has the highest religious significance: it gives rise to humility in a person, by which a person is brought to God. However, our flesh is not just an accidental appendage to our spirit: the union in us of the divine spirit with dust indicates our calling in order for this dust to be glorified, so that dust can be overcome by life. In this meaning, our nature is soul and body, which we must glorify. “Your bodies,” writes the apostle, “are members of Christ. Your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit living in you. Therefore glorify God both in your bodies and in your souls, which are God's. Whether you eat, drink, or whatever you do, do everything to the glory of God” (I Cor. VI, 15, 19, 20; X, 31). “Our citizenship is in heaven, from where we also await the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body so that it will be consistent with His glorious body, by the power by which He acts and subjects all things to Himself” (Philip. III, 20 - 21). Already through fasting, a Christian protects his spiritual life from the grips of the flesh, conquers his flesh, but the flesh does not exhaust the entire content of natural life - no, our sinful flesh covers the nature created by God, called to full life and having from the spiritual to become spiritual; Christian fasting does not hinder, but even promotes the fullness of natural development, but fasting cannot produce a transformation of this nature from mental to spiritual: decay is the same lot of the ascetic as of the incontinent - not the flesh, but the body is eaten by worms. Fasting only promotes the action of grace: it cleanses the fleshy crust so that grace can act on the very nature. Fasting is digging, spiritual life is sowing, which can only grow from grace-filled revival. What man himself cannot do is accomplished by grace. “The farmer, having labored and invested seeds, must still wait for rain from above. And if the cloud does not appear and the winds do not blow, the farmer’s labor will not bring him any benefit, and the seed will lie empty. If a person confines himself only to his own and does not accept what is unusual for his nature, then he cannot bear worthy fruits to the Lord. What is the doing of man himself? To renounce, to withdraw from the world, to remain in prayer, in vigil, to love God and the brethren - to remain in all this is his own business. But if he confines himself to his own doing and does not hope to accept something else, and the winds of the Holy Spirit do not blow on the soul, a heavenly cloud does not appear, rain does not fall from the sky and water the soul, then a person cannot bear worthy fruits to the Lord” (Macarius the Great). Grace acts on our nature invisibly; its effect will only be felt in the resurrection of the dead. Therefore, a Christian continues to live in such natural conditions that continuously nourish his humility and require his ascetic deeds. Grace “enlightens the soul only partly, so that within it remains great pasture for vice” (Macarius the Great). Only sometimes is it possible for a person to anticipate, of course not completely, the future state of resurrection, just as the resurrection of Christ was preceded by His transfiguration. A similar anticipation of the future state in the life of a Christian is called in the language of patristic writing the time of “rest of grace.” At the same time, this naturally eliminates the bewilderment that the Christian teaching about grace weakens the will. In a broad sense, our entire spiritual life is a work of grace, but this, of course, is quite in the same sense as all our natural abilities from nature. Just as the circumstance that our mind, heart and will are given to us by nature and that our natural development takes place according to necessary laws does not eliminate our personal efforts in acquiring knowledge and developing the heart and will and does not free us from the debt of life and development, so the circumstance that our spiritual life is from Christ, that without Him a person can neither love nor believe, is fully consistent with the fact that a person can only draw from this spiritual source freely, that spiritual life is his free mood and is accomplished through his personal efforts. In a narrow sense, grace acts in the area to which the action on nature of our will, which has its own corner, is limited, and is granted only under the condition that the will in its corner does everything it can - it is granted only to those who feel an aversion to evil, who through ascetic deeds clear the fleshy crust for the action of grace on nature. Only one who must be quite sure that he does not have grace can weaken in the hope of grace; Indeed, grace operates in those who achieve it through effort. Grace does not act in those who love evil, but consoles only those who love moral purity, but are aware of their powerlessness, in whom, according to the teacher. Abba Isaiah, “the wall of sins constantly stings the heart and the burden of sins weighs heavily on them.” Even participation in grace imposes upon a person with special strength the duty of personal effort of will. “Whenever,” the apostle instructs regarding the Eucharist, “whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the death of the Lord until He comes. Therefore, whoever eats this bread or drinks this cup of the Lord unworthily will be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord. Let man examine himself, and in this way let him eat of this bread and drink of this cup. For whoever eats and drinks unworthily eats and drinks condemnation for himself, without considering the body of the Lord. Because of this, many of you are weak and sick, and not a few die” (I Cor. XI, 26-30). The grace of Christianity acts not only on our soul and body, but also on the entire external nature. All creation awaits with hope the revelation of the sons of God and its freedom from slavery to corruption. Grace meets these expectations. She prepares from all nature the church of God, a new heaven and a new earth. These expectations of the creature are the deepest basis for the church’s consecration of water, fields, dwellings... Along with the essential invisible effect of grace on nature, it is also visibly manifested in the special inspiration of Christians - in particular, in extraordinary spiritual gifts, such as the gift of prophecy, the gift of tongues, and in Christian art. This inspiration, together with the mentioned “resting time of grace,” serves as a preview of the future state of resurrection. On the inside, it is that “foretaste of the sweetness of life according to God,” which is given to a person at the beginning of his conversion to Christ, binds him to Christ and strengthens him for the time when grace “then hides its presence from him, leaving him to act as if alone, among labors, sweats, bewilderment and even falls.” Just as it happens at the beginning of a personal conversion to Christ, so it was abundant in the first days of Christianity, a time of extraordinary spiritual gifts. On the internal side, inspiration thus has meaning for the animated themselves. On the outer side, manifested in extraordinary talents and art, it serves as a symbolic preliminary to the future revelation of the sons expected by creation, and, in this meaning, it is either a sign for the world (σημεὶον τοῖς ἀπίστοις), or an edification for believers. Another medium for the Church’s actions, besides nature, is the world. The Church also acts on the world, in part, through grace. The action of grace on nature is already its action on the world, which lives a natural life. Particularly important in this regard is the sanctification of the church by the grace of family life, which underlies social and state life. The closest way the Church acts by grace on the state is through the anointing of monarchs and through the sanctification of various social and state undertakings by prayer. But here, in contrast to the relationship to nature, the disciplinary-legal relations of the church to the natural forms of social life are added. The legal relationship of the church to the state is especially important here. All this together forms the church-symbolic sanctification of the world. In the question of the church-symbolic action of the church on the world, two sides must be distinguished. Already a comparison of church symbolism with personal Christian reality, with personal Christian service to people with love, indicates two sides in the action of Christianity on the world - real and symbolic. But even within the actual church’s grace-symbolic sanctification of the world, the same two sides can be distinguished. The Church is, first of all, a social and cultural force, which is determined by its immediate programs. And nothing prevents us from placing certain hopes on these programs. It is permissible to wish and one can hope that through these programs the Christian good is actually realized. The Church must be on the side of enlightenment, freedom and happiness of peoples - and our church-practical ideals are that the Church should only be a progressive force, fighting only in the interests of freedom, enlightenment and happiness. But no program can reveal the entire essence of the church, cannot exhaust all its means. To recognize the church only as a historical and cultural force, to outline programmatic horizons for its activities, means to sign a death sentence over it, since within these limits it can be replaced by other forms, more adapted to historical conditions. Those who do not understand this a priori are taught by the empirical results of church history. Moses was given the gift of seeing the “back” of God. And church history sees only historically conditional results of Christianity. Let us no longer talk about the fact that in historical reality the church was the defender of darkness and slavery and at times brought horror and death to the people. And at best, the church cannot create a Christian culture. Christian culture exists only ideally, but worldly culture is realized in historical life. And the culture of Christian peoples is a universal worldly culture. It is here that the “impulses” are “not destined” to come true according to the basic laws of historical evolution. From a socio-historical point of view, there is nothing tragic in this: conditional development requires conditional forms. But for the church-Christian consciousness this is a source of inexhaustible tragedy. The outcome from it can be twofold - personal freedom of internal absoluteness, reconciled with any social and historical convention, and the eschatological aspirations of churchly grace-filled symbolism. In the church-historical sense, the last outcome is the only one. In order not to disappear among various socio-historical organizations, the church must not forget about its specific grace-symbolic tasks. In this light, she must consider not only the mysteriously beneficial effect on the natural basis of worldly life, but also her disciplinary relationship to the world. And the closest legal relationship of the church to the state, aiming above temporary interests, should be a symbol of the relationship of the divine to the human, the eternal to the temporary, the internal to the external. Only then will eschatological prospects not be closed for the church. The relationship of the Church to the world should be presented like this. Living in the world, the Church must preserve unchanged its character “not of the world”; it must keep itself holy and undefiled from the world. First of all, it should not allow any pagan to be considered among its members, and should not tolerate any hypocrisy in the individual lives of its children. The church should be limited to the number of actual Christians. Here, not a distant ideal, but a rule of daily reality should be the example of a community of primitive Christians, about whom it is said: “no one from outside dared to pester them” (Acts V, 13). Of course, here we are not talking about legalistic holiness, not about natural moral perfection, which is inaccessible to a Christian, just like a pagan, but about the mood of a Christian. A member of the Church can only be one who loves goodness, truth, purity, who, if he falls, falls with hatred of sin, not enjoying evil. In this sense, everyone born of God does not commit sin, because His seed abides in him; and he cannot sin, because he is born of God (I John III, 9). The Church must strictly ensure that all its members are born of God, and cast out from its midst anyone who, while calling himself a brother, lives as a pagan, as a man of the world. Christ himself said: “if your brother sins against you and does not listen to the Church, then let him be to you as a pagan and a publican” (Matthew XVIII, 15-17). “If anyone,” writes the apostle of love, “comes to you and does not bring the teaching (of Christ), do not receive him into your home, and do not welcome him” (2 John 10). “I,” says the Apostle Paul about himself, “wrote to you in an epistle not to associate with fornicators; however, not in general with the fornicators of this world, or the covetous, or extortioners, idolaters, for otherwise you would have to come out of this world. But I wrote to you not to associate with anyone who, while calling himself a brother, remains a fornicator, or a covetous person, or an idolater, or a slanderer, or a drunkard, or a predator; You can’t even eat with someone like that” (I Cor. V, 9 – 11). These words ap. Paul clearly show that the purpose of church discipline, according to which everything non-Christian is expelled from the church domain, is not in the imaginary protection of the self-gratifying moral purity of Christians, but solely in the reputation of the Church. It goes without saying that belonging to the Church should not bring people any material or worldly benefits. Then, as a saint, the Church must avoid everything worldly in its social life, in its structure: worldly power, secular court, police, army - should not have a place in the Church in an unconditional sense. “My kingdom,” said the Lord, “is not of this world: if My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would fight for Me: but now My kingdom is not from here” (John XVIII, 36). For church life, one cannot set the goal of the visible establishment of the kingdom of heaven on earth. In connection with this must be put the property of the Church that it is not defined by territorial boundaries and is not separated from the world by a visible social structure: its members enter into the natural forms of social life, so that from this side, church life consists of communication among Christians scattered in the world, and not in their eviction from the world. And the holiness of the Church, its character not of this world, when applied to the individual life of Christians, means only that the spirit of the prince of this world should be alien to Christians, and not that they cannot enter into the natural norms of worldly life - they should not be laymen in the sense of people “of this world,” but can be laymen in the sense of the fullness of natural life. Even “if a brother has an unbelieving wife, and she agrees to live with him, then he should not leave her. And a wife who has an unbelieving husband, and he agrees to live with her, should not leave him.” In general, “let each one remain in the rank in which he was called” (I Cor. VII, 12, 13, 20). But being not of this world, the Church must act on the world. In what ways? As alien in its structure to everything worldly, the Church cannot act on the world by external measures. Such external measures should include both action on the world through the state, i.e. every fulfillment of Christian tasks through the services of the state, every privileged position of the church in the state. But this does not yet lead to the opposite extreme, to the denial of forms of cultural life. The abolition of forms of cultural life is both undesirable and impossible. The question of the limits within which peace is acceptable to every Christian must be separated from the question of the meaning of culture for the world. “Judge not, lest ye be judged” - this rule of personal Christian life and church structure cannot serve as a basis for denying the suitability of courts for the world. The abolition of forms of cultural life for the world is undesirable because from the world a person comes to Christ only through natural development, meaning together both spiritual and physical growth and the specifically religious significance of natural development. The abolition of forms of cultural life for the world is impossible: these forms are not forcibly imposed on the world, but are natural to it, and therefore they cannot be destroyed mechanically. To think that crimes exist only because a court exists in a civilized society, that enmity exists only because an organized army and police exist in a cultural state, that with the destruction of forms of cultural life the evil in the human heart will also be destroyed, is a clear delusion. From here the only way out is that the church and the state are heterogeneous organizations and the relations between them should be completely free. The position of the Church in the world is fully determined by the words of Christ: “You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world." This position of the Church in the world, of course, explains why the Church must strictly monitor the existence of its members and declare as not belonging to anyone who, while being called a brother, remains a pagan, why it must abstain in its organization from everything worldly: salt must be effective, and the light must be pure and visible to everyone. “You are the salt of the earth. If the salt loses its strength, how will you make it salty? It is no longer good for anything except throwing it out there for people to trample underfoot. You are the light of the world. A city standing on top of a mountain cannot hide. And having lit a candle, they do not put it under a bushel, but on a candlestick, and it gives light to everyone in the house” (Matt. V, 13 – 15 par.). This also shows the importance of the missionary and educational activities of the Church, as well as vice versa - Christ’s commandment to the apostles to preach the Gospel to the whole world (Matt. XXVIII, 19; Mk. XVI, 15; Luke XXIV, 47) clearly outlines the position of the Church in the world. "You are the light of the world." This is a double light. “For judgment,” said Christ, “I came into this world, so that those who do not see could see, and those who see would become blind” (John IX, 39). The Church continues the work of Christ. She enlightens the world primarily in the sense that she receives her children from the world. This is its true effect on the world. She does not give birth to her children from herself, she takes them from the world, she not only grows, but also lives at the expense of the world. Its position in the world is the same as the relationship of the soul to the body: just as mental activity is accompanied by the waste of the body, but comprehends bodily life, so the Church lives at the expense of the world and sanctifies it. Her children, being not of this world, nevertheless remain in the world and are not separated from it territorially: they penetrate and animate it, just as nerves and blood channels animate the body. “So that those who see may become blind” is another goal of the Church’s enlightenment of the world. Christianity is light, and the world cannot help but see it. From the time that Christianity shines, the world can no longer live as before, as if there was no light, it cannot live without a relationship to Christ. Just as in the bright light of the sun a person cannot calmly continue the affairs of the night, just as he, knowing that people see him, cannot live with the indifference that accompanies loneliness, so the world can have different attitudes towards Christ, hostile or peaceful, but can no longer live without any relationship to Christ. The entire history of the world since the preaching of Christ and His apostles is the history of the world’s relationship to Christ. He shines over the world like the sun, He hangs over Him like a sword, and the world cannot forget Him: He appears in a blinding light to the persecutor, the conqueror is haunted by the conscience of the dying apostate. Since Christ was preached to the world, people can bring good only to Him, do evil only in opposition to Him, can only be indignant at Him. The French denier laughs with an evil laugh, but he denies Christ; in madness, the German philosopher proclaims himself to be God, but only the Antichrist. What is the meaning of the history of the world's relationship to Christ, or the Christian history of the world? The world can either be hostile to Christ, or peaceful, serving Him in its own way and trying to use Christianity in its own interests. At the beginning of Christian history, both are uncertain, good and evil are mixed in the world’s relationship to Christ. The persecutors of Christianity, the Roman emperors, often did not distinguish it from Judaism and saw in it an absurd superstition that threatened the well-being of the state and their own power; then some of the Christian emperors hardly more clearly understood the essence of Christianity, accepting it outwardly, sometimes even under the influence of the struggle of political parties: the secularization of Christianity begins in the Roman papacy, in which it is difficult to separate the spiritual sword from the secular. But then, with complete certainty, they appear in Christian history with their own, clearly conscious interests - the state, the nation, reason, art, economic society; finally, purely material interests are determined in relation to Christ. Along with this, the world’s understanding of Christianity is growing: the modern denier is not misunderstandingly challenging Christian dogma, but is raising direct questions about the goodness of the Christian principles of love and humility. It is becoming less and less possible to satisfy people with symbols and images: both in the positive direction they consciously demand living truth, and in the negative direction they no longer consider it necessary to hide behind beautiful words that have lost their meaning and banners that do not arouse reverence. This clarification of the world’s relationship to Christ, especially in recent times, has been facilitated by the expansion of history to the limits of the world, the highly conscious clash of Christian and pagan cultures... Christian history is not the progress of Christianity, it is not the history of the gradual expansion of Christianity towards the complete visible victory of Christ over the world, it is accomplished not by the Church alone, but by the Church and the world, it is directed towards separating the wheat from the chaff, towards a clear formulation in the hearts of men of the question: Christ or Antichrist? Spiritual Christianity is gradually emerging from the world and freed from images and symbols, which by the end of centuries may be very small in number of believers; The region of the Prince of Peace is gradually determined as the material for the world fire. Just as in death material elements that are not amenable to the action of the spirit rot, so that man is then resurrected spiritually with a spiritual body, so Christian culture, under the influence of church enlightenment and grace, separates the tares from the wheat, prepared for fire, so that then the full spiritual kingdom of heaven is established and God becomes all in all. Resurrection from the dead. Eternal bliss. kingdom of heaven If we were created so that mortal things could be swallowed up in life (2 Cor. V, 4, 5), if the work of Christ was that those who believe in Him should have eternal life, then, of course, our last enemy is death and the last work of Christ is victory over death. The resurrection of Christ from the dead as the beginning of the general resurrection is presupposed by the goals of world creation, completes the entire work of Christ and justifies our spiritual life. If Christ has not risen from the dead, the firstborn of the dead, if we Christians are not resurrected, then our faith is in vain: and now, hoping for Christ in this life alone, we are more miserable than all people, and dying in Christ we perish. Only when this corruptible has put on incorruption, and this mortal has put on immortality, then will the word that is written be fulfilled: death is swallowed up in victory (I Cor. XV). We live in the hope of the resurrection. Why will we rise again? Not for earthly life. There is nothing more disgusting to the spirit of Christianity than to think that the afterlife is a continuation of our visible earthly life with its personal interests and external benefits. Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, and corruption does not inherit incorruption (I Cor. XV, 50); in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but remain as the angels of God in heaven; we are sons of the resurrection to the extent that we are sons of God (Matthew XXII, 30; Luke XX, 35, 36). We will be resurrected with our bodies, but there are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies - spiritual bodies and spiritual bodies: in death and resurrection the spiritual body is sown, the spiritual body is raised (I Cor. XV, 40, 44). The resurrection from the dead is related to the nature of our spiritual life: it is the transition of the visible into the invisible. Our spiritual life is an invisible life, but it is limited to nature and the world; in the resurrection, our body and all nature are transformed in accordance with our spiritual life, which will therefore become the full or only reality. Therefore, we now already carry within ourselves the guarantee of the resurrection, although it will be accomplished by the power of God; the afterlife is not a continuation of our visible life with its personal interests and temporary benefits, but it is a replenishment of our spiritual life, so that even now we, although not completely, live an eternal invisible life. Our spiritual life is a small spark, and the afterlife is the same spark, but flared up into an all-encompassing flame. “Therefore,” instructs Macarius the Great, “let us try, through faith and a virtuous life, to acquire this robe for ourselves here, so that we, clothed in the body, do not find ourselves naked: and then on that day nothing will glorify our flesh. For to the extent that each person, for his faith and diligence, has been honored to become a partaker of the Holy Spirit, to the same extent his body will be glorified on that day. Therefore, each of us must strive and work, carefully practice all the virtues, believe and ask the Lord so that the inner man may even now become a partaker of this glory.” “If,” writes Diadochos, “anyone is still able to die in this life through ascetic labors, then all of him finally becomes the house of the Holy Spirit; for such a one has already risen before death.” We will be resurrected to the fullness of spiritual divine life. Everything that we now consider ours, to which we are partial, that now divides us among ourselves, spins apparent reality to our worldly interests - all this will become alien to us: we will live only by what is now common to us all - the divine, or, in biblical terminology, the spiritual. Then another law operating in our members and opposing the law of the mind will be destroyed; our body, after purification by death, will be spiritual. And then God will wipe away every tear from the eyes of His chosen ones, and there will be no more death; there will be no more crying, no crying, no sickness, for the present will become past (Rev. XXI, 4). Just as our life will be completely spiritual, it will also be completely blessed. Just as eternal spiritual life begins in us now, so now our eternal bliss begins. This bliss is not complete now. Christ does not call us to happiness - He calls us to bear His cross, to take His yoke, but His yoke is easy, and His burden is light; Christ promises peace to our souls, but still under His yoke, only under His cross, only in suffering. Christian bliss at this time, amidst persecution, is not complete: we expect complete bliss and eternal life in the coming century (Mr. X, 30). However, the bliss of Christians during this time, amidst persecution, is real. This is the bliss of prayerful communication, abstinence and self-denial; this is the bliss of love, faith, the joy of hope; this is the joy of the comforter the Holy Spirit (I Pet. I, 8, 9; Rom. XIV, 17; XV, 13; 2 Cor. V, 7,8; ​​Gal. V, 22; I Sol. I, 6; Acts V, 41; XIII, 52). With the same character of purely spiritual joy, alien to the admixtures of earthly happiness, will be our bliss in the afterlife. Whoever has not acquired the joy of the Holy Spirit here is incapable of the bliss of the heavenly afterlife. When the last enemy - death - is destroyed and everyone in Christ comes to life, then the end will come, then Christ will hand over the kingdom to God and the Father, and God will be all in all (I Cor. XV, 22 - 29). Then the kingdom of God, the kingdom of heaven, will open. It still exists: it was founded for us along with the creation of man, it was restored by Christ, it exists as our spiritual life. But now the kingdom of heaven is not the only reality for us, and then it will be one and everything for us. However, it will become the only reality for us in the future only under a condition, if it now becomes a reality for us and in us. Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, as it is in heaven and on earth. The revival of death is an essential point in the gospel of Christ: He called people to become the sons of God, that is, the sons of the resurrection (Luke XX, 36), - He founded the kingdom of God, that is, the kingdom of the sons of the resurrection. The work of Christ meets the real need of people, since all our grief, all our evil is embraced by death: it is our middle evil, it is the sharpest weapon of sin and hell. Just as the work of Christ overcomes the core of our evil, so death is the central evil of our life because it strikes and poisons the very core of our existence - our attachment to life. People are greedy for life, attached to it: this is precisely the human way of existence, this thirst is the characteristic definition of our life, its difference from the way of existence of other creatures. The thirst for life is revealed in us through our desire for happiness and perfection. Life for us is a boundless impulse towards happiness and limitless improvement. In these basic aspirations of our nature, our natural aspiration to God, to the divine content of life is realized, receiving flesh and blood in them. We want to be blessed and perfect “like gods”: here is the natural basis of human religion, which forms the prius of “human” existence. Our thirst for life, our impulses for happiness and perfection, our religion have the only adequate form of expression in a miracle: we thirst for life, that is, we thirst for a miracle; we want happiness and perfection, that is, we want a miracle; we rush to God, that is, to a miracle. The thirst for life in the form of a desire for a miracle, the thirst for happiness and perfection in the form of an impulse for a miracle, religion in this very form, this is actually human thirst, human aspiration, human religion. This is how our life, our history began: it began with the desire of our ancestors to taste the miraculous fruits of the tree in order to be blessed and perfect like gods. And in all of “human” history, everything that is best, everything that is alive, everything that is human has been reduced to a thirst for a miracle; where it extinguished, there the realm of animal existence began. The Jewish people, as God’s chosen people, were the most life-loving and most attached to miracles. And so our thirst for life inevitably meets death. On the very day when the first parents wished to become gods through eating fruits, the sentence was fulfilled over them: “You will die by death”... Our thirst for life is to face death. Death in all its horror meets only man. Animals are not afraid of death. It is terrible only for us. For us it is not only the cessation of life, but it deprives the meaning of every hour of our life, it poisons our entire life, it makes our lives meaningless. impulses towards happiness and perfection, our religion. What is our happiness, our power, our glory? Isn't the only end for them death - the fate of the happiest, most powerful and glorious of people?.. "Alexander, the son of Philip, a Macedonian, made many wars, and took possession of many fortified places, and killed the kings of the earth. And he went to the ends of the earth, and took spoil from many nations; and the earth fell silent before him, and he was exalted, and his heart was exalted. He gathered a very strong army and dominated the regions, and nations, and rulers, and they became his tributaries. After that, he went to bed and felt that he was dying." "The life of mortals in this world is incomprehensible, unknown, gloomy and short, imbued with suffering. There are no means by which those born could avoid death. Old age comes, and death is near: such is the fate of everything living. Just as ripe fruits hang on the branches, ready to be plucked every minute, so mortals, barely born, are in constant danger of death. Clay vessel made the potter will certainly be broken sooner or later; the same is the fate of all mortals. And the young, and the old, and the wise, and the foolish - all are subject to the power of death, over all people it reigns supreme! Alas, this world is connected with death! "Is it possible to laugh, is it possible to have carefree fun when the whole world is engulfed in a destructive flame? Look at this dressed-up shadow, consisting of wounds, frail, obsessed with desires, having neither strength nor protection. This body is exhausted, frail and weak, as if it were ready to crumble into pieces - life in it is already turning into death. "... “O death! how bitter is the memory of you for a person who lives calmly in his possessions, for a person who is not bothered by anything, is happy in everything, and is still able to eat food... Whether you live ten, a hundred or a thousand years, it’s all the same: in hell there is no study of the time of life.” So what is our life? Continuous fear of death, making us “subject to slavery throughout our entire lives.” Therefore, all the efforts of Adam’s descendants are aimed at one thing - victory over death, all their hopes are concentrated in one hope of immortality! At first glance, immortality appears to a person as a continuation of life beyond the grave - in Sheol, Hades. But from our earthly life beyond the grave there remains only a pale shadow, a bloodless ghost, a lifeless likeness; our feelings of joy, hope, our affections, our works - everything that now makes up our life, living in it - all this cannot cross the border of death, because all this is inextricably linked with the local conditions of life, in them it only finds food for itself, in them it only receives its reality. In Hades, “dead shadows”, devoid of feeling and insane, “blow lifelessly.” The Greek hero, “godlike” Achilles, ruling in the kingdom of dead shadows, envies the fate of the “living” day laborer, who earns his daily bread by serving a poor plowman. In the same way, Jewish Sheol is a region of sleep and darkness, a land of oblivion, a land of silence, where there is no work, no reflection, no knowledge, no wisdom. At the same time, this is the kingdom of those rejected from the hand of God, of whom God no longer remembers, where His mercy is no longer proclaimed and His miracles are no longer known. “It is not the grave that glorifies You, nor death that praises You, nor those who go down to the grave who trust in Your truth. Alive, only living will glorify You” (Is. XXXVIII, 18,19). Where there are no miracles, where there is no bliss, where there is no life, there is no God. To live, a person must either be saved from death or resurrected after death. The pre-Christian pagan world primarily focused its thought on immortality, and the Jewish world on the resurrection from the dead. A person inevitably dies, but death does not eliminate the possibility of immortality. In nature, everything ends in death, but every death is followed by life. The pagan sages understood this truth and applied it to human existence. “Who knows,” said the Greek poet, “if life is not death, and if death is not life?” If this is the connection between life and death, then true life can only be achieved through death. Of course, it is not violent death that leads to immortality - to kill oneself would mean to affirm death: the threshold to immortality is free death, like the death of a person. We find a call to the feat of death in Eastern and Western sages. According to the pantheistic view of Indian religion, world life is the play of Maya, a ghostly web, a deceptive dream, a severe nightmare, the kingdom of continuous death. All living beings of this world, although they really suffer from a difficult dream, do not really exist: only one God truly lives. Our whole life is severe suffering and continuous dying. The world with all the creatures filling it is only a ghostly manifestation of divine life, like bubbles on the surface of water, like sparks from a red-hot iron struck with a hammer. But in the power of man there is a means to free himself from the nightmare of ghostly existence: whoever realizes the illusory nature of existence, frees himself from attachment to life, suppresses desires and passions in himself, he rises above the deception of ghostly existence, awakens, as if from a dream, throws off the shackles of imaginary individuality and, merging with God, becomes divine and immortal. Hence, the final task of human moral activity is to extinguish every desire, every movement of life, in death before death. In this way, a person destroys the mortal material in himself, so that there is no food left for death and it is left only to finish what a person has been doing all his life, to give him the last desired freedom from the shackles of individuality, from the heaviness of the body, from the deception of a ghostly existence. On the path of voluntary dying, a person actually protects himself to a large extent from external troubles, becomes insensitive, dispassionate and fearless, conquers even the fear of death, and overcomes individuality within himself. But this victory is given to him only in his dying breath and ends with him. Here only negative freedom is achieved and there is no positive content for it. This fully corresponds to the fact that the deity itself, understood pantheistically, represents only the negation of living individualities, an abstract unity, meaningless and lifeless. In essence, it is elusive to human quest, unattainable for him, just as the person himself comes to him dead, you make an empty sacrifice out of your life. In Plato's philosophy, the emptiness of the universal basis of world phenomena is filled with content: he recognized reason and its ideas as such a basis, in relation to which the creatures of this world are phenomena. The human soul comes from the ideal world, but is imprisoned in the body, as in a prison. The ideal origin of the soul is revealed in memory, to which true knowledge is reduced, and knowledge forms the only way by which the soul again rises to the ideal world and is cleansed of the sensory shell. Thus, in Plato's system, philosophy has the practical meaning of purification. In this life, our knowledge is conditioned and limited by the plumpness of our body, which, like the bars of a prison, closes the truly existing from us, so that we are the closer to the truth the less we trust our bodily senses, and knowledge in fullness and perfection will be available to us only after death, when we directly contemplate the kingdom of ideas. Therefore, the true philosopher desires death, and philosophy is dying, or preparation for death. Of course, suicide is unacceptable, but philosophy suppresses in himself the sensual affects that bind him to the body, pollute his soul, so that he works towards the gradual liberation of his soul from the shackles of the body and joyfully meets death in due time, which transfers his immortal spirit to the community of the gods. Thus, Plato’s philosophy gives positive content to the immortal life of our spirit and its communication with the ideal kingdom; however, here the ideal world exists only for human knowledge, and not for human life, with ideas a person can only enter into abstract communication, and not into living communication, only the spirit in freedom from the body is intended for immortality, which, however, is accessible only to our thinking and contemplation. There is no reason to believe that even after death a person will retain anything more than abstract thinking, which, however, does not constitute life. Therefore, just as this life is deprived of all meaning, so it does not prepare the afterlife. Along with the idea of ​​immortality, the idea of ​​resurrection was also known in the pre-Christian world, which mainly developed in the consciousness of the Jewish people. The Jews connected the expectation of the resurrection with the times of the Messiah, in which Jewish righteousness would receive its full reward and the Jewish people would triumph over all their enemies. In the Jewish understanding of the image of resurrection, what primarily attracts attention is that it acts as a simple abolition of death and the resumption of earthly life, which is why it turns out to be necessary only for the dead Israelites in order to make it possible for them to participate in the benefits of the messianic kingdom, which will be fully and before others available to the sons of Abraham who lived before it. The blessings of the messianic kingdom appear here before us in a sharply sensual coloring and in the radiance of wonderful grandeur. In the kingdom of the Messiah, a new heaven and a new earth were expected with unprecedented fertility and an unprecedented abundance of all kinds of objects of sensual pleasure. At the same time, the resurrected are presented in the fullness of the properties of mental and physical life, although its boundaries expand to the limits of the miraculous, in which divine protection is revealed for the righteous. Although the possibility of resurrection in Jewish beliefs was almost not affirmed on the properties of human nature and therefore least of all gave room for positive conclusions in favor of the development of the sensual aspects of life, since here in the foreground was nomistic righteousness, which required a commensurate reward, however, the sensual nature of the latter, presupposing the fullness of sensual needs in the resurrected and sensual conditions of their life, stands beyond any doubt. Along with this, the availability of messianic benefits is limited to one God-chosen people, and their participation in the divine life after the resurrection is exhausted by the theocratic structure of the messianic kingdom with an amazingly harsh judgment for all the enemies of Israel. In contrast to pagan and Jewish aspirations, Christ taught not about immortality, but about the resurrection from the dead - about the resurrection not for earthly carnal life, but for heavenly, spiritual, angelic life. What is most remarkable about Christ’s teaching is that He did not base faith in the afterlife on the properties of a human being; He did not teach about the afterlife existence of any part of human nature, the soul or spirit. In His teaching, the afterlife is assimilated only to divine life, which in its very essence is eternal life, imperishable, inaccessible to death. A person can be immortal only in the sense that he accepts into himself divine life, which will not see death forever: with it a person can live after death. Therefore, in order to be resurrected, a person must have eternal life in himself before death. “This is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day” (John VI, 40 cf. 54). ζωη John XI, 25), i.e. He is the resurrection, because He is life. He will resurrect us because He gives us eternal life, which will never perish (John VIII, 51; X, 28; XI, 26). However, the afterlife, according to the teachings of Christ, is not immortality itself, but resurrection - and resurrection not for earthly life, but for heavenly, angelic life. He did not say to His disciples: you are immortal, therefore you will not die, or: you will be resurrected, although you die 10. He said: you must die in order to be resurrected. Man must die and his death is a necessary condition for resurrection. But the fact that he must die is not enough for his resurrection: he must die freely. Christ calls His disciples to death. "Whoever saves his soul (life) will lose it; and whoever loses his life for My sake will save it... If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it; and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it (Me. X, 39; XVI, 24 par.). If a grain of wheat falls into the ground not If he dies, he will remain alone; but if he dies, he will bear much fruit. He who loves his life will destroy it; but he who hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life” (1 John XII, 24:25). The death to which Christ calls His disciples is, in any case, physical death, but first of all it is spiritual and personal self-denial: Christ calls us to self-denial to the point of death, to complete self-denial, the reality of which makes it impossible to resume earthly, carnal life in the fullness of its spiritual and personal interests. This condition of the Christian resurrection sufficiently substantiates the conclusion that the life of the sons of the resurrection will be a completely different life - they will live an eternal divine life. One day, "the Sadducees came to Him, who say that there is no resurrection, and asked Him: Teacher! Moses said: if someone dies without having children, then let his brother take his wife for himself, and raise seed for his brother. We had seven brothers; the first, having married, died and, having no children, left his wife to his brother. Like the second, and the third, even to the seventh. After all, the wife also died. So, in the resurrection of which one will she be the wife of seven? for they all had her. Jesus answered and said to them, “You are mistaken, not knowing the scriptures or the power of God.” For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage; but they remain like the angels of God in heaven. And regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what God said to you: I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living!” We are promised not the immortality of eternal life, but resurrection, since we must die in order to live eternal divine life after death, and this will be a different life than the one that dies. And death is necessary for eternal life because only in this way can we acquire eternal divine life. What deserves special attention in Christ’s call to self-denial before death is that Christian death is self-denial for the assimilation of eternal divine life, so that the voluntary dying of a Christian is quite similar to what happens to a tree to which a graft is made. A Christian will live a different life after death, but he himself will live a different life; he will live the life that he must assimilate before death, but he can fully assimilate it only in self-denial until death. Christ revealed to us that God is Spirit, that He is love. The spiritual life of a Christian, to which eternity is promised, is not the anatomical remnant of a human being, divided into spirit, soul and body, or spirit and body - but it is divine life. Spiritual divine life is not again a mystical abstraction, but it is a living reality - it is the life of love. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples if you have love for one another” (John XIII: 34:35). The life of love is eternal divine life. “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God and God in him... We know that we have passed from death to life because we love the brothers” (I John III, 14; IV, 16). And the knowledge about which Christ speaks in His high priestly prayer - “this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God” (John XVII, 3) - is also love. "Love is from God, and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, because God is love" (I John IV, 7,8). The teaching of Christ is the only one of all religious teachings in that its metaphysical foundations have entirely moral significance. – The fact that divine spiritual life is love is a sufficient reason why it can only be acquired through voluntary death. “Greater love has no one than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John XV, 13). Love and death are inextricably linked. Only love makes a transition from death to life; at the same time, love becomes real and complete only with self-denial before death. Therefore, divine spiritual life is given to us not in immortality, but in resurrection. This is due to the fact that death actually destroys in us the carnal principle, carnal elements, the body death, and thus serves the complete triumph of spiritual life. So the formula of Christianity is this: the divine in love until death for eternal life in resurrection. The risen Christ is for us the firstborn of the dead. He died and rose again. And we are called to the hope of resurrection. In order to rise with Him, we must die with Him. The Temptation of Christ in connection with the history of pre-Christian religions and the Christian Church We have clarified the purpose and meaning of life, shown its religious significance in the extreme limits of human vocation - in the initial creative predestination, in the culminating height of spiritual perfection and in the final eschatological aspirations. Now we will trace how the purpose of human life was understood and achieved in the ways of world history, we will reveal the meaning of historical evolution from a Christian point of view. To illuminate world history from a Christian point of view means to place at its center the face of Christ, the idea of ​​gospel history, to indicate the place of the Christian idea in world evolution. But the idea of ​​the gospel story and the deepest essence of Christ’s face are revealed in His temptations: they give the specimen totius status exinanitionis Christi, they reveal the meaning of His humiliation and victory over the world. Just as the face of Christ stands at the center of world history, so the essence of the gospel history is expressed in the temptations of Christ: therefore, the temptations of Christ clarify the meaning of world evolution and contain the philosophy of human history. We will consider the temptations of Christ in connection with the history of pre-Christian religions and the Christian church: from the history of the temptations of Christ we will extract only that ideological content that throws light on the universal destinies of mankind 11, and we will outline world history in terms of this ideological content. In schematic form, this gives a consistent history of human temptations: the temptations of primitive man, the temptations of pagan peoples, the central temptations of Christ and the temptations of Christian peoples. In the first and second editions of this study, the most difficult problem for me was to understand the concept of universal, universal temptation, a concept of temptation that would affect the essential calling of a person and would be jointly applicable to the initial sinless temptations of man, and to the divine temptations of Christ, and to the temptations of pagan and Christian peoples. Obviously, the moral temptation of lust cannot have such a meaning, and it is too superficial to capture the depths of the human spirit, and too limited in its sinfulness to embrace temptations not only sinful, but also sinless. I called the concept I was looking for after religious temptation. In the first editions of my work on the temptations of Christ, I could only give a general outline of this concept in vague outlines, but I find myself in different conditions now. Two studies that appeared later - on the humiliation of Christ and on the purpose and meaning of life - sufficiently fully reveal the foundations of religious temptation. The first of them contains the idea of ​​the inner feat of Christ as voluntary submission to His laws and conditions of human life. The idea of ​​kenosis, transferred from the metaphysical sphere to the real sphere of spiritual reality, the true self-consciousness of Christ and the historical setting of His activity, gives content to His inner feat. In the sense of this idea, the temptation for Christ was the abuse of miraculous power, the violation in the name of this power of the conditions of human limitation - and conversely, His sinlessness consisted in the unrelenting energy of God-son self-consciousness, in humble submission to the will of the Heavenly Father. In this understanding, the question of the temptations of Christ and His sinlessness has nothing to do with the question of the action of lustful desires in Him and, on the contrary, His temptations reveal the deepest secret of His self-consciousness, His personality, and the essential side of His work. On the other hand, the study of the purpose and meaning of life develops the idea of ​​​​the combination in man of the divine absoluteness of aspirations and natural insignificance, of man’s calling to manifest divine glory in conditions of limited existence, establishes a very important difference between the ideals of natural absolute perfection and internal spiritual absoluteness, which is accessible to man in the very conditions of earthly limitation and existing suffering. From here follows the idea of ​​man’s temptations as his aspirations for the ideal of natural perfection, for personal possession of natural absoluteness and for the sake of violating the conventions and limitations of his life. These temptations also do not have an inextricable connection with the presence of lustful desires, but express the very essence of human vocation. It is not difficult to see a complete analogy between the temptations of Christ and the temptations of man, so that it becomes clear that Christ, through the feat of His temptations, entered into the experimental knowledge of the deepest human problem, the very essence of historical suffering and languor of man, and that the meaning of His temptations illuminates the path of world history. This analogy is not violated by the fact that in historical man religious temptations are hidden behind lust for evil, although this complicates the question of the similarity of Christ’s temptations to our temptations. We can accept the reality of suffering as a consequence of the main religious sin, as man’s striving for the natural ideal of absolute perfection, and in the historical temptations of man we can easily discern his eternal torment over the solution of the basic religious question about the relationship of the divine principle to natural human insignificance. The religious temptation of both Christ and man is actually a divine-human temptation, not in one technical sense of this term, but in the general sense of the union in man of the absolute divine principle with the actual limitations of existing conditions. The concept of religious temptation, established in the first pages of my first literary work, remains one of the main concepts in my theological system. Not resisting this temptation means desiring personal possession of divine perfection and violating the laws of earthly limitation in the name of the divine principle - this creates a mood of religious protest, enmity towards God due to the imaginary irreconcilability of absolute aspirations and actual limitation, while a person, by the unconditionality of his divine principle, as if irreconcilable with a given limited reality, justifies the violation of this limitation. I call this complex mood the name of religious self-justification. Religious temptation is defeated and the religious problem is resolved by a divinely filial mood, i.e., submission to God-established necessity, faith in the combination of divine content with natural limitations, replacing the ideal of natural perfection with the ideal of spiritual absoluteness. I reduce the entire process of religious evolution, with which this study deals, to this confrontation between religious self-justification and divinely filial faith, but my entire theological system also tends to clarify this basic religious problem. The main question at the center of my religious system is the question of reconciling personal religious absoluteness and external natural and socio-historical conventions. This determines the place of this study in a number of others. However, I cannot hide the fact that in this, my first scientific work, the terminology suffered from instability in places, the thought wavered, and that in general at the present time this study takes as much from the complete system in the sense of clarity and certainty as it gives it, being a necessary addition to it in its subject. However, I limited myself to one stylistic correction, leaving the essential content of the first and second editions unchanged: from the first edition the sections on the first temptation of man, the religious consciousness of pre-Christian peoples and the church history of Christian peoples were taken, and from the second edition - the section on the temptations of Christ. Man's first temptation The narrative of the first chapters of the Bible about the temptations of Adam has not only individual historical, but also general religious significance; it does not speak only about what once happened, but also about what always happens, what is experienced by every person; This is not only the first temptation in time, but the main, typical human temptation, logically initial. Here we can say: mutato nomine de te fabula narratur. We take into account what is essential in this narrative and leave aside everything that has the meaning of historical accessories and picture details. According to the biblical narrative, marked by the inexhaustible depth of wisdom, an essential aspect in the temptations of the first people was that they wanted to be “like gods.” Since the New Testament revelation of Christ, in which the original purpose of man was fulfilled and the destinies of the first people and all humanity were clarified, was man’s calling to the perfection of the Heavenly Father, to God’s filial truth, to inner spiritual absoluteness; then, obviously, What was sinful in the desire of the first people was not the desire for divine perfection in itself, for the divine content of one’s life, but the desire for external absolute perfection, which, unlike spiritual absoluteness, is not bearable for the natural limitations of human life. The main religious temptation of man is explained by the ultimate goal of human life and the essential properties of human nature. The final goal of man, predetermined by the essential character of his nature, is that through him divine glory, that is, divine life, should appear in the insignificance of mortal nature, so that God-manhood would be revealed as a combination of the absolutely divine and the conditionally created. The character of man, which predetermines this goal, is revealed in the combination of the infinite and the finite, in the consciousness of the opposition of the extreme poles of existence. The original beginning of human consciousness itself, embracing the poles of absolute and insignificance, contains within itself confrontations, the reconciliation of which is presented to it as the highest ideal. Therefore, the initial property of human nature, human consciousness, as well as the highest human ideal, inevitably create a religious-human, or divine-human, temptation: human consciousness is the arena in which the struggle of two principles unfolds - the absolute principle and the mortal, insignificant principle. Each of the opposing principles strives to completely and one-sidedly take possession of a person, who must lead them to the highest harmony, as the only path of true life for himself. And first of all, the divine principle strives for the exclusive possession of the human soul. As the image of God, man, by creation itself, carries the divine breath in his spirit and participates in the divine life, since his spirit is endowed with endless aspirations for omniscience, omnipotence, holiness, all-bliss and all-contentment. Omniscience and omnipotence, holiness and justice, all-bliss and all-satisfaction are moments of the divine life, these are the properties of an absolute being, but from the time of the creation of man, divine life began to manifest itself in the flesh - knowledge and power were born in conditions of limited existence, holiness and justice in gradual development, bliss and contentment not only in spirit, but also in body. From the day of creation, man was the image of God, and he recognized himself as participating in the divine life. And this consciousness was not only a fact of his inner life, but also had to form the inner basis of his life - in the true sense of the word. The creature was created from nothing, nothingness is its own nature and only in God is the source of its life. Knowledge, power and bliss would have only insignificant content if man, after creation, had been left exclusively to himself; as a reflection of the divine life, his life must continuously connect with its source - God. The true life of a person does not consist in limited knowledge and power, conditional holiness and justice, temporary and accidental bliss and contentment, but in the striving for omniscience, all-bliss, and perfection. The source of this aspiration is man’s consciousness of his divine origin, consciousness of God as his beginning and his goal, consciousness of his life as a divine life. The deeper and more fully he is imbued with this consciousness, the more divine life is embodied in him. And this true life of a person has no limit to when it could stop and when a person would be satisfied with his given state: as soon as such a stop occurs and a person’s striving for the infinite ceases, he recognizes the traversed path of life and its achieved content, tearing it away from the divine source, recognizing it as his own - created, and thereby affirming his insignificance and losing true life. The final goal of this endless striving of man for true life is the complete embodiment of the Divine on earth, not only man’s consciousness of his life as a divine life, but also the consciousness of God in himself. However, if a person were to finally stop on this natural path, if he were to completely surrender himself to this striving for natural perfection, this impulse towards infinite power and all-bliss, he would inevitably have to come to the hopeless emptiness of his natural insignificance, to the hopeless darkness of his powerlessness, since infinite natural perfection is absolutely inaccessible to him and the desire for it leads a person to the experimental knowledge of his actual powerlessness. The natural desire for infinity is as much a necessary condition of human dignity, human existence, as it cannot be the only way of life. Therefore, this desire must linger in human consciousness, must decompose in it into what is given by nature and ineradicable in it, and into what a person brings personally from himself, how he personally relates to nature. He can either personally assimilate this desire, surrender to it completely, move towards personal possession of absolute perfection, or he can recognize God as his center and attribute his glory to Him. This last path - the path of self-denial - provides a way out of the natural contradiction: man’s voluntary memory of his natural insignificance, recognition of natural infinity as unattainable perfection, free submission to the laws of created limitations and makes him an instrument of divine plans, an organ of divine glory, giving him inner absoluteness, spiritual perfection. The secrecy of spiritual absoluteness under the symbolic shell of natural perfection gives the inner divinity of man the features of ideality both in the meaning of future fulfillment, free comprehension, and not a natural given, and in the meaning of the necessary and living object of free will, as a synthesis of a real antithesis. The path of self-restraint (κενωσις) in its main motives and its majestic results has been passed and clarified in the face of Christ. But this path was begun by God Himself already in the act of creation of the world (θεου καταβασις). The fact that God, having created the world, manifested His life in conditions of created limitation and, in particular, having created man, revealed His omnipotence, omniscience and omni-bliss in the form of conditional consciousness and gradual development, presupposes His self-limitation. Self-limiting himself out of love for man, God manifests His glory not only in Himself, but through another and for another and, thus, acquires this other - man for Himself. Not denying the glory of man by the exclusive affirmation of His glory, but penetrating man in love with His own glory, He, thus, posits in man not a glory alien to Himself, but His own, and makes man His bearer. But in order for the divine glory to manifest itself in another - in man, and man must renounce his exclusivity, his opposition to God, so that the divine glory is not alien to him, but assimilated by his love is his own, and so that he places his glory in the glory of God and affirms the glory of God in himself - he must recognize God not as another along with himself, but recognize Him in himself. And for this, he must not assert his limited exclusivity in opposition to God and must not violate the given limitations of his actual existence in the name of the divine principle within himself, just as God does not deny his limitations: he must affirm not himself in his exclusivity, but God in his limitations through voluntary recognition of himself as His instrument. So, in order for God-manhood to be accomplished freely - rationally, God limits Himself in the act of creating man; but in order to give man the opportunity to rationally and freely renounce himself, He initially communicated Himself to man only as an ideal, rationally and freely comprehended by man. And in the very fact that man, on the one hand, by creation itself, was the embodiment of the image of God, and on the other hand, the full incarnation of God in man was only an ideal for him, was an essential condition for the temptation of the first man. In order for the unity of man with God to take place freely and rationally, man had to recognize himself in advance in his opposition to God, recognize himself in his limited exclusivity and the Divine in His unlimited perfection. Such knowledge should have given rise to a desire in him for an infinite ideal; it was precisely this that should have revealed to him both his own insignificance, when he recognized himself in his exclusivity and separation from God, and the unconditionality of that beginning in which the source and goal of his life was supposed to reveal to him that in this infinite Beginning his true life; Due to this opposition of himself to God, he had to consciously accept into himself the objectively divine unconditional principle as the ideal of his life, for his sake he had to renounce his created exclusivity. But if in order for man to see his glory in the glory of God and to place his glory in the glory of God as such, it was required of him to consciously perceive the divine unconditional ideal as the beginning of his life, then on the other hand the same goal required that man, having recognized himself in his opposition to God, renounced his created exclusivity for the sake of the objective - divine principle and took into himself this principle - so that he, recognizing himself as an instrument of the Divine, accepted into himself and assimilated divine greatness and recognized God not as another along with himself, but recognized Him in himself. Opposition of oneself to God should have led a person to self-denial for the sake of the Divine, and self-denial should have been accompanied by the desire to assimilate divine glory. Knowing himself in his created exclusivity and the unconditionality of the divine ideal, man at the same time learned the limitation of his actual existence established by God, as well as the action of the image of God in himself, his natural participation in divine life, that is, he learned the contradiction between the unconditionality of the image of God and the limitation of his actual existence established by God, between the divine unconditional ideal and the conditionality of real life established by God. In view of the knowledge of this contradiction, man had to renounce that real divine content of his life, which was given to it in creation itself, which man actually already recognized as his own and which, although it is nothingness, since man recognizes it as his own and therefore separates it from the Source of life and glory, is still recognized by man as a real good - man had to renounce this content of his life in the name of that God, in opposition to Whom he knew his own good. This is the essential content of the temptation of the first man. He could not resist this temptation. He transgressed the divine law of his limitations in the name of the divine principle within himself, wished to establish divine dignity and be God in his limited exclusivity, and saw in God another God along with himself, who arbitrarily limited his life - only out of unwillingness for man to be the same God. Man had to recognize his insignificance in order to renounce his exclusivity for the sake of an objectively divine ideal; but he, recognizing the participation in divine life given to him in creation as his own and not wanting to renounce his dignity in the name of God, but wanting to affirm divine dignity in his limited exclusivity, thereby recognized his insignificance as the eternal goal of his life. The consequences generated by man's basic religious sin extend to man's relationship to God and the world and to his own condition. The first consequence was the removal of God as a loving Father from the consciousness of man and the external attitude of God towards him, characterized on the part of God by external law and fear on the part of man. The development of man's religious consciousness had to be accomplished in the sense of God-consciousness and should have led to man's consciousness of God within himself and to the embodiment of His glory in the limitations of earthly life. The sin of religious self-justification gave another, opposite, direction to the development of human self-consciousness and therefore was accompanied by the removal of God from man. The purpose of man was to display on earth the divine glory, which was to be manifested through him and for him, but for him only as the image of God: coming from God, this glory should return to Him. The temptation for Adam was to retain this glory for himself, to be god in his exclusivity, to find in himself the source of beatitude, truth and righteousness. Therefore, God becomes different for him, along with himself, God, challenging his glory and his dignity, envying him, and arousing in him the corresponding feelings towards Himself - protest, fear and hatred. Then the consequences of the main religious sin affect the person’s own condition. Defeated in religious temptation, man wished to establish divine unconditionality in his limited exclusivity. Due to the futility of such aspiration, his life became continuous suffering, and due to its unnaturalness, it became continuous evil. The desire to establish divine glory and unconditionality in one’s exclusivity leads man, on the one hand, to limiting divine glory and, on the other hand, to violating the divine laws of one’s limitations, because the fullness of divine glory cannot be the property of man in his limited exclusivity; and the limitation of divine glory and the violation of the laws of limitation established by God is evil both in the sense of sin, since such a limitation of the unlimited and a violation of what is established by God is an encroachment on the divine will, and in the sense of moral impurity, since they violate the ideal of man and distort the normal course of life: the ideal darkens, becomes shallow and is brought down from heaven to earth, and life, breaking the laws laid down for it, receives an unnatural - intense direction - instincts turn into passions and They exceed the measure of what is necessary for life either by the force of their tension or by the self-will of their manifestation. The presence of human enmity towards God involuntarily catches the eye and is easily proven. It is evidenced by facts of a crude, popular nature; it also manifests itself in more subtle forms of meaningful and felt protest. The first order of facts includes belief in evil spirits, in evil deities, in the evil character of the Divine, which constitutes the entire content of religion at its lower levels and declares itself at the highest levels of folk religion, in the most developed systems of religious worldview - in the form of the doctrine of the wrath of God. Crude faith in evil gods and the sublime doctrine of the wrath of God, without revealing to us anything from the inaccessible secrets of the divine being, undoubtedly prove man’s distrust of God, his enmity towards Him and fear of Him. In the more subtle form of religious protest, which can be traced in religious monuments (and in literary works), human enmity towards God appears in a complex system of self-justification. God is blamed for both the endless aspirations of the spirit, which are not satisfied in this life, and the limitations of natural existence, which oppresses the human will. The inexorability of natural laws, the treachery of nature, which strikes the human race with innumerable disasters, its indifference to the moral needs of man - all this serves only as a background to the main “offense” inflicted on man by the dark root cause of world life 12. On the question of consequences of the second kind, one must strictly observe their boundaries from the objective side. One can without hesitation recognize as true the idea of ​​​​the objective consequences of a person’s basic religious mood. Thus, lust for evil, which takes root in the natural mental and physical character and serves as a condition for so-called moral temptations, as temptations of lust, can be taken as a consequence of basic religious sin. Likewise, in the area of ​​suffering, one can call the consequence of sin not only the torment with which natural limitations are endured, but also the external objectivity of some suffering. The desire for the ideals of all-contentment and natural perfection creates special burning suffering for human pride, and these sufferings, due to the organic connection between people, can be fixed in the externally objective side of life. Evil not only brings suffering to the person himself, but the evil of one person acts as suffering on other people. One can even admit a connection between the religious mood of a person and the flow of purely natural phenomena, with the sighing and groaning of the creature, which eludes knowledge and observation. Nevertheless, since we are talking about the conscious area of ​​human life, about phenomena accessible to clear knowledge and experimental verification, not the entire area of ​​desires and passions and not the entire area of ​​suffering can be declared a consequence of sin. In the development of natural life, a certain necessity is revealed, eternally unchanging, independent of changes in the consciously religious relationship of man to God; Also, the desire for happiness in all the accuracy of mental and physical colors and the desire for perfection in all the vicissitudes of conditional development, aspirations that feed on passions and lead to suffering, are inseparable from human existence. It follows that the changes produced by sin in the structure of human life embody religious sin and, due to the reverse effect, fix it. The suffering that fills our lives, giving a specifically vivid appearance to the natural limitations of human existence, provides a visible, outwardly objective basis for the mood of religious protest. However, these sufferings not only do not constitute everything in the question of human salvation, but they do not even constitute the main and essential thing in it. The primary significance remains with the very mood of religious protest, with the internal reality of human religious enmity. Conceivable as a miraculous intervention of heaven, in the sense of the words medicina coelitus venit, the elimination of suffering from human life would not solve the entire religious problem; it would be the elimination of effects without eliminating the cause, since the mood of man’s religious self-justification on the basis of natural limitations alone would sufficiently feed human sin. Celestial medicine appears as a religious panacea only in the false belief that the purpose of human life lies in bodily bliss and natural perfection, that human suffering is required only by divine wrath, legally punishing human sin. On the contrary, a true understanding of the purpose of life, which embraces and comprehends the natural insignificance of man, shifts the center of gravity to the inner region of human religious mood and reduces the matter of human salvation to reconciliation. The theory of celestial medicine also speaks of reconciliation, meaning the reconciliation of God with man, the pacification of divine wrath. Meanwhile, from a religious-philosophical and religious-historical point of view, we can talk about the anger of man, and not about the wrath of God, about the reconciliation of man with God. In order to depict the greatness of the cause of human salvation, they usually resort to a quantitative measurement of the importance of human sin, show the immensity of the insult to divine glory, etc. But if we are able to distinguish between the basis and the cause, then we will have to admit subtle, barely understandable causes for world phenomena. The hopelessness of a sinner was simply the impossibility for him to change his religious mood and create in himself a more filial self-consciousness, just as a slave cannot have filial feelings for his master until he learns that the master is his father. No matter how insignificant this ignorance may be from the externally objective side, in quantitative terms, it nevertheless explains the entire slavish state of man. A sinful man could not renounce his self-justification, could not endure self-denial, because he did not know the delight of spiritual absoluteness, the bliss of divine devotion, because he could not fill the emptiness of self-denial, the horror of death with anything. For him, self-denial was inevitably a hopeless self-sacrifice, a desperate self-destruction: his extreme sacrifice was an expression of horror before the all-consuming fire of divine omnipotence, exclusive all-unity. From the outside, the quantitative task of a sinful man was extremely easy: submit to God, love Him, and your sins will not be remembered. But in essence, this was certainly an impossible task. How could he love this all-consuming fire, before which, at the mere thought of it, his heart trembled? How could he submit with filial devotion to this necessity that bound him with iron chains? The only path of life was open to him - first to recognize God as the father and then to become His son, but this path is absolutely impassable, since one must first become the son of God in order to have God as a father: it is not God who creates the Son, but the Son who reveals the Father. The salvation of man could only be achieved by one in whom sonship with God was natural - and this must be understood first of all in a religious-historical sense, completely independent of the genesis of such God-filial self-consciousness: it can be recognized as a miracle of history, as a completely incomprehensible phenomenon. Salvation for man could be granted only to those who bear within themselves the all-conquering good of absolute self-denial - the Son of God. Understanding the initial religious temptation not only foretells the essence of salvation, but also foretells the method of its accomplishment. Since the salvation of man lies in the change of his hostile, self-justifying mood to a God-filial self-consciousness, in the granting to him by the Son of God of the benefits of absolute self-denial, spiritual perfection, then it could not be accomplished without the feat of the Son of God - without the feat of His religious, God-human, or God-filial temptations. In order to realize His sonship with God in the conditions of a createdly limited and suffering human life and thereby defeat the evil spirit of self-justification in the hearts of people, to give man the opportunity to assimilate His self-consciousness, the Son of God had to enter these conditions, experience human suffering, accept their evil from people, endure their unbelief. But this is not enough. The meaning of the basic religious temptation throws light on the entire religious path of pre-Christian humanity. Although man himself could not achieve his own salvation, all his religious impulses could rise only in one direction from self-justification to God's justification. If there were not even these impulses, then man would be hopelessly dead: the thirst for salvation, the thirst for God-manhood forms a necessary condition for the possibility of reconciliation between man and God. From this point of view, all pre-Christian religious history appears to be a progressive path of preparing the human race for the reception of the Son of God, and all pre-Christian religions are placed according to stages of logical development. Religious consciousness of pre-Christian peoples The religious development of pre-Christian humanity took place in the direction from human self-justification to divine justification, from religious enmity to divine faith. Each significant stage of this evolution represents to us man’s struggle with religious temptation and some victory over it. Pre-Christian history did not give a complete victory over religious temptation, the complete realization of the divine-filial faith, but it showed a series of gradually ascending religious stages, gradually increasing victories, with each new stage of victory corresponding to a changing height in the nature of the struggle. At the lower levels of religious consciousness, the fight against God has a crudely magical character and the reconciliation of man with God takes forms that are sharply naturalistic, one-sided, spontaneous, but at the highest levels, the fight against God is transferred to moral soil, and victory is achieved by fighting temptations located along the rock of ascending degrees of moral height of consciousness and the intensity of the divine-human thirst, the consciousness of striving for reconciliation with God, to a religious union. We are interested in the moral ways of fighting against God, and we only briefly note the nature of the lower phases of religious evolution. The lowlands of religious consciousness are almost entirely filled with belief in evil spirits, in evil deities. The savage either believes in one evil deity, or, if he believes in evil and good spirits, considers the former stronger than the latter, and focuses his religious attention and cult practice on them. The religious practice of the savage consists primarily of sacrifice, with which he hopes to appease the wrath of the evil deity, avert his punishing hand and seize his power. However, the savage’s relationship with the evil deity is not limited to sacrifice. In all religions, at the lower stages of their development, sacrifice, which has the negative meaning of liberation from God’s wrath, is combined with sorcery, through which a person wants to master the dark forces of nature, force evil spirits to serve himself, and put his own arbitrariness in place of their arbitrariness. Sacrifice and sorcery, more or less varying in form and character, persist in all phases of popular religion. A higher level is occupied by the religions of the most ancient cultural peoples (mainly Semitohamic) - the Egyptians, Assyro-Babylonians, Hittites, Phoenicians... While retaining sacrificial-magical features, these religions have a common and most characteristic property of spontaneous religiosity, peaceful naturalism. Here we see the worship of the natural principle, acting in the external world and in man himself, making man related to nature. Especially in this capacity is the husband - a female attitude, and all the gods are represented as married couples. The natural kinship of man with the world and the gods serves as a religiously reconciling principle, and from this side these religions stand above uncultured religions, but since this reconciliation does not yet have a moral character, they are inferior to subsequent religions (mainly Aryan peoples). Although naturalism is characteristic of all paganism and the highest of pagan religions remain on the basis of natural spontaneity, and although, on the other hand, the moral principle, to a weak degree, is already found in the above-mentioned religions, nevertheless they can be contrasted with subsequent religions, as spontaneous-naturalistic religions with ethical (philosophical-moral) religions: in the latter the moral principle was expressed incomparably more strongly. Further arranging these religions in some gradation, we must warn the reader that this is in any case not a chronological sequence, but a logical one, a gradation of the moral height of the religious struggle. On the border between the previous group of religions and ethical religions stands the Chinese religion, strong in moral meaning and overcoming magical elements, but not yet putting the moral principle in the service of the divine-human union - a religion of common sense, utilitarian-rationalistic. Chinese religion rejects magical techniques in relation to the Divine. Nature is not dominated by arbitrariness, not by blind force, which could be somehow changed and directed at will; In nature, rational law reigns, says the Chinese. Yes, a person cannot change it for this reason and therefore has no need to recognize it through sorcery, because he himself is imbued with this same law, he himself is subordinate to it; The task of life is to follow the natural law, which is not alien to man, does not dominate him from the outside: it is within him. “If someone decided to create the world or make certain changes in it, then it is easy to see that both of his attempts would remain unsuccessful. The world is God's creation and therefore nothing can be changed or improved in it... Therefore, the sage is far from any arrogance; he knows that he cannot produce any miracle, that he cannot interfere with the eternal laws of nature, and he is even wary of the thought of such reckless extremes,” said the Chinese sage Laotse. Youth gives way to old age, old age follows death, the place of one generation replaces another, but life does not cease; night turns into day and summer ceases with the onset of winter, but there is always the same order in world life; here or here, for one reason or another, disturbances occur in the normal course of world phenomena, but these disturbances are short-lived, they quickly pass and life again enters into an unchanging track: the law reigning in nature is unchangeable and always acts according to its reasons; and this law is the Deity ruling in the world. It is alien to wishes and aspirations; It does not act arbitrarily, not even by will; It cannot be identified with any particular phenomenon; it cannot be ascribed to Him with a certain internal content. It is not angry with a person, although it does not have special care for him; It is the same for everyone and in everything. Therefore, to have fear, hatred, love for Him is reckless and groundless; The Divinity is not far from man, It is in him, since a single natural law reigns in everything and in him. It does not oppress a person either with mysterious incomprehensibility due to the unattainable distance, or with a menacing, angry appearance before him; It is in himself, but only in him alone out of all nature does it reach self-knowledge. Therefore, man is left to his own devices: “honor the gods with a pious spirit, but keep away from them,” Kongfutse repeated to his disciples; “We ourselves are the source of contentment and we will take care only of ourselves,” said Laotse. A person arranges his life himself and his happiness or unhappiness depends solely on him, on his moral state. Evil does not come to a person from the outside, it comes from him; Yes, it is not any kind of power, it is not anything positive, it is purely negative and consists in a temporary deviation from the general law, in a violation of the world order, which is necessarily restored. The evil produced by man has nothing to do with the Divine: whether he leads a righteous life or a sinful one, whether he follows the law or not, the Divine is indifferent to both, does not mercifully approach man in the first case, is not offended and does not move away from. him angrily in the second. But let man himself see: by violating the law of nature, he prepares suffering for himself, and if he wants to avoid it, let him follow the world order. And for this adherence to the world order, for a virtuous life, no special determination of the will is required, an act of freely rational choice: virtue is a requirement of nature itself, and not an expression of a person’s personal character. He has an innate desire for virtue and it necessarily manifests itself in life. Virtue is following the natural law: everything natural is natural, and everything natural is reasonable. Virtue is not the implementation of some ideal, but the maintenance of a given order, from which one should not deviate either to the right or to the left, sticking to the golden mean. Life is good in itself, just the way it is; there is nothing to change or improve in it; everything goes as it should go; everything is natural. But having fulfilled one task in the history of the religious development of mankind, having served the revelation of the Divine as a world mind, alien to all the ideas unworthy of Him and darkly constraining human self-awareness, which the lower religions connected with Him, having cognized God as free from material and sensory conditions, the Chinese genius stopped halfway and abandoned the fight against evil and suffering of world life that lay ahead of him at the new stage of religious self-awareness. The Chinese are calm not because they seem to have conquered the evil and suffering of life, to defeat the evil spirit, but because they abandoned the struggle itself and did not even want to know it. But by refusing it, he refused to fulfill a necessary condition of real life. The Chinese hastened to take advantage of the partial and negative freedom that he had achieved through a rational attitude towards the world; By refusing to fight the evil spirit ahead of him, he himself blocked the path to true, complete and positive freedom, which consists in unity with the Divine and in His truth. The Chinese was content with the negative revelation of the Divine. The Supreme Deity of the philosopher Laotse Tao is an impersonal mind, immanent in all worldly things, and has no extra-worldly content. With such a God, living, active relations are not possible for a person, which a person can achieve only through victory over the evil spirit. That is why the Chinese do not experience any struggle, because he does not strive for positive communication and unity with God; That is why he did not conquer the evil and suffering of life, because he did not achieve this unity. Kongfutse himself could not imagine any reason for either sacrifice to the gods or prayer. In fact, if everything is done according to an unchanging order, according to the power of the impersonal mind, if it is impossible to change or improve the given conditions of life, if everything is done out of necessity, then what purpose can prayer have? What is the meaning of sacrifice? The Chinese are not aware of their duties towards the Divine; their religion does not give room for self-sacrifice - to any degree - and self-denial for the sake of divine truth. But if a person does not bring his life into connection with the life of the divine, does not seek living communication with God, does not set for himself a divine ideal - which, exceeding everything earthly, thereby causes dissatisfaction with natural life, but also inspires the human soul and puts it in a dominant position among world life - then, it is true, in this case evil has a purely conditional, subjective, negative meaning for a person, all life in its given state is justified as necessary - natural; but for the same reason - without communion with the Divine - human life loses its meaning and everything is natural - natural life, justified as necessary, is justified with all the suffering; freeing himself from the pressure of the Divine, but not uniting with Him - freeing himself from evil as an external hostile force, but cognizing it only negatively and not connecting it with his relationship to God, man himself does not find the strength for real victory over evil, penetrating the natural life justified by him, to which he himself belongs; negatively cognized evil is not actually overcome and man is mired in the shackles of his natural life, not having the strength to break these shackles. The sacred books of the Chinese often speak about the high position of man in the order of world life and indicate his place in the middle of two divine principles, in the middle of heaven and earth. He alone in all nature possesses self-consciousness; to him alone belongs, in the proper sense, the spirit, which neither heaven nor earth has. However, heaven and earth, having no spirit, create; a person who has a spirit cannot create, he cannot even make not only improvements, but also any changes in nature. His task is to follow the natural law, his virtue is to observe the mean. He must maintain the world order, observe constant balance in it, eliminate every deviation from the general norm, from the usual course. These are the limits of the power of a natural man over nature: he does not bring anything into it from himself, does not put meaning into it, does not bring higher justification into it. And regarding himself, a person, outside of union with God, has only negative tasks available to him: and he is a natural organism for himself, unchangeable in his basic direction. A person can only preserve himself, but not change and improve - only balance the phenomena of the spirit, but not develop himself in phenomena - refrain from extremes, from everything that can disturb and excite the spirit, but not strive for anything specific. This is the morality of the Chinese: he does not have an ideal, and therefore can only influence the surface of the soul, maintaining a natural balance in his life, but without realizing any inner content. The Chinese stood indifferently before this fatal necessity; but the living, ardent and noble Indian genius, in all the depth characteristic of his direct and consistent nature, felt this burden of life and ardently, fearlessly and steadily, with all the tension of his rich forces, armed himself to fight evil, setting for himself the goal of complete freedom from it. Freedom from the evils and sufferings of life and perfect union with the Divine - these are the goals for which the Indian people sacrificed their lives; and he accomplished so much in his striving and work that he boldly answers the Christian missionary: “there is no sin in me and there is no guilt on me, Brahma acts in me and through me.” And the Indian achieved such freedom through a difficult struggle; he called his enemy out of the blue and looked straight into his face and was not afraid of his undisguised and gloomy nakedness. Individual life, he says, is necessarily evil, because individual life is not real life, does not have stability and constancy; even if the entire course of world life were unchanged, then each individual life in its isolation, for itself, has no real existence, it is only a momentary phenomenon, only a transitional moment. But all world life is the sum of individual lives, and in the world there is no place for constancy and immutability; life is only existence; everything is born, beginning at one time or another, grows, changes, and dies at the appointed hour. What we see now did not exist yesterday and will not exist tomorrow; in a day we ourselves will not be the same as we are now: all-generating time itself absorbs everything; what comes from Brahma and is supported through Vishnu is destroyed through Shiva. The life of individual beings is the fleeting sparkles of the sun reflected on the surface of disturbed water, these are drops of dew on a lotus leaf, this is a toad on dry, desert sand. But because individual life is not anything real, that it is deceptive and illusory like a dream, and the desire for life, never satisfied, is constant and continuous suffering. If life itself, if the very desire for individual life, if individuation itself - this is a necessary condition of life - is evil and suffering, then liberation from them is possible only in death. And the Indian was not afraid of this logical - necessary conclusion, he gave up life; it does not support life, does not develop it, but destroys it; he not only limits it, restrains it, curtails it, he strives for complete death; it destroys life at its core, destroys life precisely as such, suppresses all individual self-awareness and well-being. Life is evil at its very beginning, the very desire for individual life is evil and therefore removes you from the source of real life, removes you from the Divine and deprives you of unity with Him. And only through the complete suppression of life is it possible to achieve this unity again. What is Deity? Where to look for Him and where is His place in this whirlpool of life, in this constant change of unstable phenomena? The Indian looks for Him everywhere and finds Him everywhere. The Divinity is one in everything; everything is from Him and everything is in Him. It manifests itself in the origin of every being and every thing, It manifests itself in their life, in their changes, It also acts in their demise; from Him is the beginning of everything, in Him is the basis of life and change, and everything returns to Him. But remaining one in birth, in life, and in death of world beings, It itself is obviously not born, does not experience changes, has no diversity, and remains equal to itself in death; It is everything, therefore it is nothing: everything in general and nothing in particular. It is the same in the world as a ray of sunshine, which manifests itself in an elusive variety of colors, remaining essentially one; It has neither form nor name, It cannot be defined, it cannot be comprehended. It manifests itself in everything, It thinks in man, acts in animals, slumbers in plants and sleeps in stones; but It is neither man, nor animal, nor plant, nor stone. If anyone thinks that he knows the Divine in this or that way, then he does not know Him; only he who knows nothing of the Divine really knows Him. In order to comprehend Him, one must think of pure nothingness, suppress any definite content of thought, concentrate it on pure being, as such, which is not anything definite; in order to understand the Divine, you need to distract your thought from everything concrete, turn your feelings away from everything external, and suppress your self-consciousness; dreamless sleep is the state when a person is closest to the Divine; complete death unites a person with the Divine and likens him to God, makes his life a divine life, alien to evil and suffering, alien to everything random, impermanent, individual. But if the Divinity is one, alien to any definite content, then life with its diversity, inconstancy and instability, with its evil and suffering does not have a reasonable and sufficient basis, has no justification for itself, is something deceptive and false. All life is a dream, a mirage, a phantom, a deception. There is an impassable abyss and eternal antagonism between the unity of the Divine and the diversity of world life: if the one exists, then the diverse, individual should not exist. The life of the world is a sad game for created beings, which the Almighty plays for his pleasure - a ghostly dream, the seduction of Brahma himself. In this world, which is the self-development of the Divine, His outflow, in this ghostly web, now emitted, now reassembled, in this game of dreams, along with the Almighty, there is no place for the independence of a created being; that in which, apparently, the very essence of life is manifested - personality, self-consciousness - is deception and evil: Brahma lives and acts in man and through man, and He alone lives real life. But the deception of world life, the dream of Brahma, becomes a real deception and a source of suffering for a person when he succumbs to this deception and takes a dream for reality, a dream and a ghost for a fact. A true sage, who has comprehended the essence of Brahma, does not succumb to this deception, he does not get carried away by the whirlpool of life: he does not strive to find out anything, knowing in advance that he will learn nothing real; he does not desire anything, confident that only for the desirer does the object of desire acquire the appearance of reality; he does not act because he sees that to act in life, to deal with worldly things, means to act among ghosts and deal with shadows. Life is evil in itself and, as having no justification, must be destroyed. Self-destruction is the last moral and practical goal of the Indian. He was the first to reach the idea of ​​self-sacrifice in the name of the Divine. The Indian was the first to renounce all transactions, all restrictions caused by selfish attachment to life; he was the first to realize that true sacrifice is self-sacrifice in the proper and full sense of the word - self-sacrifice not of the body, but of the spirit. Not in the church and solemn processions, not in noisy meetings and lively events, but in the silence of solitude and in the depths of the spirit, this self-sacrifice must be performed, as the suppression of every thought, every feeling, every movement, as complete solitude from everything external, renunciation of all activity, from all communication and communication with the outside world, as the destruction in the very spirit of everything that in one way or another can resemble life... The sage is satisfied with himself. himself, he is not interested in anything, he has no hope, he is the same in grief and in contentment and is equally inaccessible to joy, anger, or fear. Having made such a self-sacrifice, renouncing life itself, full of evil and suffering, the Indian thereby completed the feat of liberating man from the external pressure of the Divine, from the pressure of evil and the suffering of life. But by the very fact that the Indian accomplished the feat of negative human liberation, his self-sacrifice did not give him positive freedom. If the world is a ghost, a phantom, a game and seduction of the Divine, if life itself is evil and suffering, then a person does not recognize such a life, cannot agree to suffering for the sake of Maya Brahma, for the sake of the mistake and seduction of the Divine; if he does not have any independent meaning, if he does not have freedom, then he does not want to be a toy in the hands of the Almighty and more willingly renounces life itself and sacrifices himself to Brahma - this boundless hunger, this all-consuming being... This is the meaning of human self-sacrifice to the Divine. This self-sacrifice stems from anger and despair; as a negative it leads to death, but does not fill life with divine content; through death it frees a person from the evil and suffering of life, but does not reconcile life itself with evil and suffering - through death it deprives the evil spirit of power over a person, but it does not contain a positive struggle between a person and an evil spirit: a positive struggle with an evil spirit is possible in the heart of a person who comprehends the divine. That is why the Indian, who so energetically renounced life, left the positive struggle against the miseries of life to the Divine. The Indian of the Vedic period expected salvation from the evil and suffering of life from the Divine himself. Convinced that the Deity needs His sacrifices and libations, from which It receives its strength and its greatness - that by feeding Him with sacrifices, drinking soma and praising Him in songs, he obliges Him to do good deeds in reward for these sacrifices and hymns, the Indian passively expected that the Deity he fed would calm down his anger, change his formidable and stern face to a benevolent one, forgive him his sins, will correct his shortcomings and vices and bring him happiness. He believed in the omnipotence of God and his main concern was to attract divine power to his side and use it against his enemies; He tried for one thing, so that divine wrath would break out not over him, but over his enemies - and believed that as soon as he acquired the favor of God, he had nothing to fear, that it was even useful for God to defeat his enemies, since this increased His glory in the eyes of man. These enemies of his were mainly the forces of nature hostile to him, and human enemies, and by evil he understood nothing more than physical evil and suffering. Therefore, his deities are in constant struggle with their enemies and the enemies of man: it was a purely external struggle. Later, during the period of his full development, the Indian, having set his only task as freedom from evil and the suffering of life, still left the fight against evil to the will of the Divine. During the epic period, the Divine appears on earth in one form or another and enters into a fight with demons. But since it is true that an internal struggle with an evil spirit is possible only for a person, and the Indian refused this struggle, then the struggle of his Deity with demons was still a purely external struggle: the Deity uses all kinds of tricks to take away its possessions from the evil spirit - it is incarnated to defeat evil spirits in the form of certain animals and in the form of a person it defeats demons with external weapons. When Rama, the young hero, the miraculously born royal son, was given into the obedience and service of Visvamitra, a strict anchorite, the latter, telling Rama how in a solitary abode the beautiful and magnificent Vishnu indulged in severe penance under the guise of a dwarf, and how by cunning in this form, in which he could not be recognized, he deceived and defeated Bali, who had stolen the scepter of the three worlds from Indra, - added that he himself now visits this dwelling for the sake of sacrifices, but that rakshasas (evil spirits - giants) are hindering his exploits; and the anchorite asked the divine hero to deliver him from his enemies. The young hero agreed and, having listened to instructions from the anchorite, whose soul was completely devoted to the contemplative life, he, together with his brother Lakshmana, guarded the anchorite’s victim for six nights, with a bow in his hand, completely refraining from sleep and movement, motionless like a tree trunk, impatiently awaiting the attack of the rakshasas on the home. Then, when the sixth day arrived, the faithful keepers of the vows, the generous anchorites, erected an altar. And now, solemnly and according to the ritual, a sacrifice was made, sprinkled with clean water, while hymns were sung; and the flame was already unfolding over the altar, before which the contemplative anchorite was praying, when suddenly a strong noise was heard in the air, like thunder spreading across the sky in rainy times. And so Maricha, Subagu, and the servants of these two rakshasas attack headlong, showing all the power of their magic. As soon as Rama, with his eyes, beautiful as a lotus, noticed that they were approaching, shedding streams of blood like rain, “look, Lakshmana,” he said to his brother, here Maricha is walking, accompanied by his troop and his voice is like the crack of thunder, “and here is Subagu, the night tramp. Take a good look! These black demons, like two collier mountains, will now dissipate before me in a minute, just as clouds dissipate when the wind blows.” With these words, the skillful archer took from his quiver an arrow called a man's arrow, and, not irritated by anger, he fired a dart into Marichi's full chest. Thrown all the way to the sea by the swift blow of this arrow, the evil spirit of Maricha fell like a mountain, trembling with fear throughout his whole body. Then the courageous son of Ragu selected from his quiver a dart called a fiery arrow and shot this celestial arrow into the chest of Subagu, and the evil spirit (rakshasa), struck, fell to the ground. Then, armed with a windy arrow, the magnificent descendant of Ragu killed all the other demons 13. But while Rama was striking with arrows the demons who were offending the anchorite, the latter was entirely occupied with self-absorbed contemplation, powerless against evil spirits. Brighter than Rama and the later developed type of incarnation of Vishnu, Krishna is of a more moral character, but he himself taught man only a passive contemplative life. Having risen high above the religious consciousness of previous peoples in the history of spiritual development, the Indian genius shares with them one fatal delusion. This mistake consists in identifying sin, as a direction of human consciousness, with evil and suffering, as an objective force. Evil is cognized from the positive side insofar as it is reduced to the freely personal created spirit as its constant cause, and insofar as it is reconciled with the religious and moral point of view, insofar as it relates to the Divine as an object denied by man’s self-justification. Known from the positive and religious-moral side, sin awakens the human spirit to life as an active principle, causes it to discover its positive content and directs it towards divine truth. Meanwhile, the Indian, who recognized the evil in himself from the side of objective consequences, and not from the side of its subjective origin, recognized his spirit not in its positive content, but in its negative unity, since the present content of life was rejected by him as in itself evil and suffering; he did not conquer evil and suffering, did not master the evil and suffering life, did not penetrate it with his personal beginning, but threw it off like a dead and worthless shell, and remained empty and meaningless. The Indian did not create in his activity, but liberated and destroyed; and he also recognized the divine spirit only from the side of negative unity, which is not reconciled with the evil and suffering diversity of world life, and not from the side of the positive principle that conquers evil and fertilizes the human spirit. The unity of the Divine cost the Indian his world life and was paid for by the death of everything individual; even self-consciousness with the sole content of a personal “I” was rejected by him as evil. He tirelessly sought the Divinity and unity with Him, but if the Divinity is nothing - a negative unity, then communication with Him, becoming like Him, is possible only with the cessation of individual life. The Divinity, revealed on its negative side, did not give the Indian the strength for a real victory over evil and, although he lived in that region of the gunas (Radschas), which is primarily a place of struggle, this struggle gave him only freedom, and not real victory, not real reconciliation with the Divine. Not recognizing the cause of sin in himself, the Indian had to blame the Divine for its origin, which he did with his characteristic consistency; That’s why he left the external fight against the evil spirit to the Divine himself. And if the Chinese were already dully and vaguely aware that the final cause of evil was in the divine passive principle (Υn), then the Indian was positively convinced that he was suffering for the sin of the Divine. The epic period of Brahmanism is a period of constant incarnations of Vishnu, the so-called avatars: the Deity leaves its inaccessible and elusive unity, receives more specific forms and descends into the realm of real existence for the purpose of fighting evil and defeating evil spirits and liberating man from the suffering of life, but this struggle remained completely external to man. This struggle was decisively put on a moral basis by Buddhism, which, with its teaching about rebirth in man himself, pointed out the source of his evil and suffering - in his constant falls from the temptations of world life, and called on man to fight these temptations. A person, according to the teachings of Buddhism, suffers according to the law of retribution for his own sins committed by him before his present birth, and in the fight against the temptations and seductions of Mara - the only way for him to achieve moral powers that free him from the torment of existence. Already in the Ramayana, the evil spirit confesses that it must be defeated by none other than man himself; for the Buddha, who recognized the guilt of suffering and the evil of life behind man himself, all life was a temptation and the task was to fight them. This struggle has now been transferred to the realm of the human soul, and the temptations of the Buddha, with which he fought with moral forces, are already closer to temptations in the religious sense. When Sarvartasidda, having had his fill of all the pleasures that the life of a king’s son could imagine, and having enjoyed the joys of harem life, gradually came to the consciousness of the insignificance of existence and to the desire to leave the palace, which he announced to his father, the king used all means to deviate his son from his intention. The prince visits his wives once again. A celebration was organized in the harem: they sang, played, danced to cheer him up and change his intention. But in vain. Little by little, the harem women, seeing that their efforts remained unsuccessful, began to fall asleep. Looking around at the sleeping harem, Sarvartasidda exclaimed: “I am truly in a cemetery” and jumped up full of horror. Then the tempter appears before him and offers him dominion over the whole world on the condition that he renounces his intention to leave the royal palace and accepts the royal crown. But this proposal was so disgusting to his ears, as if his ears were pierced with a hot iron. The prince left. Having spent some time in the company of famous teachers, Arata Kalama and the rank of Rama Rudraka, he leaves them and goes to a completely secluded place, where he subjects himself to strict repentance and severe self-torture: he endures heat and cold, storm and rain, hunger and thirst and comes to a state of complete powerlessness and unconsciousness. His mother comes to him and convinces him to leave these deprivations; The tempter also approaches him and tells him that to maintain life a person needs to eat, and invites him to light a fire on the altar and make a sacrifice, without which repentance has no merit. Finally, under the shadow of the tree of knowledge (Bhodhidruma), at this place of the throne of wisdom (Bhodimanda), the former prince suffers the last, most powerful temptation, after which he becomes the Buddha. While he was sitting under the tree, Mara appears before him, this god of love, sin and death, the prince of this world of illusory hobbies - samsara. Seeing that his previous temptations were unsuccessful and that the Bodisattva is approaching his goal, with the achievement of which the entire kingdom of Mara - the entire area of ​​sensual life - will be deprived of living beings, the tempter gathers all his forces and attacks him with the goal of destroying him. He beats the war drum and then his countless troops gather under the guise of lions, tigers, panthers, snakes and other animals, and monsters of all kinds. The army stretches over a distance of several days. When the leader of this detachment approaches the hermit with thunder, all the gods, who had hitherto benevolently, flatteringly and pleadingly surrounded him, abandon Bodisattva and flee from fear. A strong storm arises, huge rocks move, lightning flashes, fiery rain falls from the sky - but the Bodisattva sits calm and imperturbable, for whom the whole play of the world's elements is only a dream, deception, a cloud. Then the entire demonic army is divided into two parties - black and white, of which the latter recognize the enemy as invincible. After long negotiations between both sides, the attack began. Demons throw stones, arrows, spears, clubs, tree trunks, but as soon as these weapons touched the hermit, they turned into garlands of flowers; the poison they sprinkled on him shone like a brilliant crown on his head. When the tempter is then defeated in the verbal strife that he entered into with the Bodisattva, he leaves with his entire army. Now he resorts to the last, most dangerous weapon for the enemy: he sends his daughters. they use all their charms and seductions and do not forget anything with which they could seduce the hermit. But in vain. Solid Bodisattva. “Passion,” he says, can never be satisfied; it grows like thirst when they want to quench it with salt water. When I look at you, you are the same to me as a dream and a deception; your body is to me like a water bladder. I see his uncleanness, I see how worms gnaw at him.” – After this, Buddha’s enlightenment took place; he achieved knowledge, before which space and time, all being and existence, origin and dying disappeared - with their deceptive changes 14. Due to its moral character, the Buddha's struggle with the evil spirit is higher than any external struggle with it, but in religious terms this struggle is very low. The temptations of the Buddha stemmed from Mara - this god of all sensual life, who lived in the sixth heaven, therefore standing above all the gods of nature - but at the same time the god of that sensual life, which must be defeated and destroyed through victory over temptations; the gods surrounding Buddha flee from fear and leave him to his own powers. Thus, these temptations had nothing to do with the good Deity, with the religious mood of man. But without a relationship to the Divine, temptations can come from sensual-natural life, as seduction by it. Such a struggle cannot lead to real victory. Communication with God gives strength for real victory, and only the struggle against the evil spirit of self-justification, which has torn a person away from God and led him to enmity against Him, can lead to such a victory. Without this communication with God, as the source of real strength and positive content of the human spirit - without this communication, achieved by victory over the evil spirit, only a passive struggle with a naturally sinful life is possible for a person, and freedom in its negative sense of self-conclusion - the goal of this struggle - is given only by death. It was not for nothing that Mara feared that with the fulfillment of the Buddha’s goals, the entire sensory world would be deprived of intelligent beings and would turn into a dead kingdom: Buddhism leads to nirvana. The fight against the temptations of life in Buddhism has a completely passive, retreating character, the character of protecting a person from seduction, and not a positive victory over them, and therefore its result, along with anthropotheism, was atheism. Brahmanism, which so openly blamed the Divine for the suffering and evil of life, consistently had to lead to Buddhist atheism, and the transition from the first to the second was not abrupt either from the side of dogmatic consciousness or from the side of moral and practical ideals. Buddha was completely Indian, not only in origin, but also in spirit. The One Deity and the multifarious life of the world cannot exist side by side with one another; and if for the Brahmin the unity of the Divine cost the world’s life, then in the consciousness of the Buddha, wholly occupied with the suffering and evil of life, there was absolutely no place left for God-consciousness: it was finally defeated by the undefeated evil. The Buddha's thought stopped and froze on one point: all life is samsara - the region of passionate desires for illusory objects; the only ruler of everything - Mara - Brahmin Maya, seduction, temptation; the only goal is nirvana, complete nothingness. The Brahmin strove with all the strength of his soul for union with the Divine; but having understood sin from the negative side, and not from the subjectively positive side, he left the (external) fight against evil to the Divinity itself. Buddhism, recognizing the guilt of man in the origin of evil and the suffering of life (although it attributed it to the distant past, protruding beyond the limits of consciousness and freedom), but not attributing human sin to the Divine, as an object denied by man’s self-justification, comprehended the moral struggle against evil, but did not comprehend the religious struggle against the evil spirit. The cause of the positive revelation of the Divine was primarily served by the Western Aryans, these true fighters against the evil spirit - with temptations from it, true warriors of the god Mithras, who were called that way. During the period of his frivolous youth, the Indian, with the courtesy and arrogance characteristic of youth, fed his gods with the wonderful drink soma, for which they were so greedy. Intoxicated, they retreated to their distant dwellings and indulged in deep sleep, in which they retained only a vague consciousness of their divine unity; and the Indian fell into a deep, dreamless sleep and plunged into nirvana. This was not the Deity of the Iranians. Ahuramazda was a sober, awake, intelligent and active god; The Iranians were also distinguished by the same qualities - this prudent, educated and active people. “A long sleep, man, is not becoming for you,” said Ahuramazda. The Persian was a vigilant and tireless fighter against evil; he was awake even at night. For him, all world life was a struggle between two principles - good and evil, Ahuramazda and Angromine 15. – If you look at life not with the malice of despair, which leads to death, but impartially, then there is no doubt that world life is not only evil and suffering; in it, good and evil, joy and suffering alternate like daylight and darkness, like youth and old age, illness and health. True, these two series of opposing phenomena are irreconcilable with one another, but this only means that, along with the independent evil kingdom of Angromine, there also exists the independently good kingdom of the good and wise Ahuramazda, and that these two kingdoms are in constant struggle with each other. This struggle was begun by Angromine, who was in vain turned away from it by Ahuramazda; but now, when evil forces have invaded the good kingdom of the good Lord, when evil and suffering poison the life of Ahuramazda’s creations created for happiness, and they must enter into an active struggle with evil until it is completely expelled from world life. This struggle is the direct task of man. A prudent and sober Iranian clearly understands that salvation from evil and suffering must not be achieved without human participation, that his job is not to indulge in empty dreams and deceptive hopes for some mysterious salvation, but to actively and boldly enter into the fight against evil. Evil and suffering are a fact of life, an undeniable fact; the fight against them is a human duty, no less undoubted. And the Divine, without the participation of man, cannot make him happy and righteous; the power of evil and suffering, completely independent in its origin from the good God, must be defeated by man himself. The Divinity calls him to this struggle; through victory over the evil spirit he must spread the good dominion of Ahuramazda; in this struggle is the meaning of his life, the basis of his high position in the world order; It was for this struggle that he was created by God. An evil spirit, the unclean Angromine, attacked a man, deprived him of his well-being, caused him illness and even death; where previously there was abundance, bliss, health, the evil spirit sowed disease, uncleanness, misfortune and poverty; and all these benefits will not return before the evil spirit is defeated. By entering into the struggle and defeating the evil spirit, a person thereby contributes to the dominion of the good Lord. The strong, strong and warlike Persian people were the first true fighters against the evil spirit. The enemy appeared to the first fighters of purity and truth in a formidable form. The Persian recognized the evil kingdom as an independent kingdom. He did not dwell much in his thoughts on the first moments of the spread of the power of the evil spirit in the human race; he accepted it as a fact. But having entered into a struggle with her, he learned from experience that this power was extended to him not against his will, not without his fault; and he expressed, remarkable for his time, the truth of the multiplication of evil spirits through the unclean and evil deeds of man. Therefore, he was aware of his guilt before the good Lord and considered himself His debtor. He realized that he himself was personally to blame for the suffering and evil of his life, having allowed impurity into himself. Therefore, the struggle of the good principle with the evil, according to the consciousness of the Persian, was his struggle with uncleanness - both physical and moral; the last goal of this struggle was for him to be in a good mood; purity in thoughts, words and deeds was the usual subject of his prayers to the all-wise Lord; cleanliness was the highest good for him. Due to all these conditions - the consciousness of personal sinful guilt in world evil and suffering, the consciousness of sin as an unclean mood contrary to the good Divine - the Iranian was the first true fighter against the evil spirit, that is, against temptations from it. In the temptations of the Persian Golden Star - this representative and ideal of Persian religious life - we meet the first struggle with the temptations of man, torn from God by an evil spirit, but again through an active struggle with the latter achieving unity with the Divine. This is how these temptations are described in the sacred books of the Persians 16. From the north, from the north, rushes Angromine, the deadly prince of demons. This is what this little-informed Angromine, the deadly one, says: “Drux, run, kill the pure Zarathustra.” - Drux revolves around him (Zarathustra), - the demon Byiti, fickle, deceiver of mortals. Zarathustra says the ahunavairya prayer: “gathâahû. vairyo." He calls upon the good waters of the good (stream) Daitiya, he professes the Mazdayan law. Confused, Drux, the demon Byiti, fickle, deceiver of mortals, runs away from him. Drux informs him (Angromine): “tormentor Angromine! I don’t see a mortal in him, in Saint Zarathustra. Saint Zarathustra is full of splendor (greatness). – Zarathustra foresaw in spirit: evil, ignorant demons are conferring about my death. Zarathustra stood up, Zarathustra spoke. Zarathustra is not amazed by the very painful questions of Akaman (the evil spirit), holding in his hand the stones - they are the size of a kata - which he received from the creator Ahuramazda. Where did he get them? On this land, wide, round, spacious for running, at the ledge of Daregia, the dwelling of Purushasp. Zarathustra informed Angromine: “evil-minded Angromine! I want to defeat the creation produced by demons; I want to destroy the nasa (corruption) that the demons created; I want to destroy Pairika, idolatry, until Saoshyant (Savior), victorious, is born from the waters of Kasu - from the eastern country, from the eastern country.” This is how Angromine, who produced evil creations, answered him: “Do not kill my creatures, O pure Zarathustra! You are the son of Purushasp and received life from a (mortal) mother. Curse the good law of Mazdaya and achieve bliss, as Vadagna, the earthly ruler, achieved it.” This is how Saint Zarathustra answered him: “I do not want to curse the good law of Mazdaya, even if the bones, soul and consciousness were decomposed.” This is how Angromine, who produced the evil creatures, answered him: “With whose word do you want to strike, with whose word do you want to destroy, with whose weapon do you want to defeat my, Angromine’s, blessed creations?” Saint Zarathustra answered him: “The mortar, the cup, the haoma and the words that Ahuramazda spoke are my best weapons. With this word I want to strike, with this word I want to destroy, with this weapon (I want) to defeat (your) well-created (creations), O evil Angromine.” – Then Zarathustra turns to Ahuramazda and asks him many questions about the means of protecting his creations from evil spirits, about various purifying laws and about the promises of the afterlife for pious souls. The virgins, hearing all this, become very confused and lost; in vain they, turning to each other, seek means to harm Zarathustra; Defeated and embarrassed, they run away into the dark depths of the abyss. Thus, although the evil spirit begins the fight, after Angromine’s unsuccessful attempt to kill Zarathustra, the latter himself attacks him with the weapon he received from Ahuramazda. The evil spirit now understands that external force will not help him in this struggle with the holy prophet, and he resorts to tricks, and in his proposal he contrasts the law of Ahuramazda with earthly goods. Zarathustra rejected the latter for the sake of the law of the wise and good Lord. – But having repelled the attack of Angromine, having rejected his temptations, Zarathustra is not content with this; he seeks means for a positive victory over the evil spirit, for expelling and destroying his creations - and for these means he turns to Ahuramazda and sees them in purifications, in the expulsion of impurity from the person himself: thus, the external struggle with the evil spirit should lead to an internal victory over sin. The fight against evil and the suffering of world life, like the fight against temptations from an evil spirit, leads to real victory over them and to communion with the good Divine, in whose name and justification victory is achieved. The Persian looks at evil and suffering from a religious point of view; the source of both is sin, produced by Angromine, as opposition to the wise and good kingdom of Ahuramazda, and the good Deity itself calls the work of the evil spirit sin and evil; the evil of world life - like the work of Angromine - causes resistance on the part of man not only because it causes him suffering, but because it is a sin from the point of view of divine holiness and divine reason; and therefore the fight against it, like its expulsion from man, is accomplished by the assimilation of divine holiness - by divine forces, borrowed by man from communication with the Divine. For the Divine and man, evil is equally disgusting, and in the fight against sin, man fulfills the divine work: this community of struggle brings man closer to God, reconciles him and unites them; The Divine, through man, carries out His wise plans, man fulfills them with divine powers. The deity is close to the Persian; with trust and love he listens to His word; his prayer breathes sincerity and warmth; he strives not for external, but for internal and positive communication with the Divine. External sacrifice as such loses its meaning: in fact, sacrificing the evil creations of Angromine to the Divine makes no sense and is unworthy of the Divine; The life of the good God’s own creations must not be stopped, but supported, since by Him everything was created for life. Prayer, accompanied by a bloodless sacrifice, and purification, which make up the cult of the Persian religion, have the goal of, first, achieving divine powers to fight evil, and second, expelling uncleanness from the person himself. As a person realizes his high position in the order of world life, his high calling in the fight against evil, as the work of an evil spirit that is contrary to God, he at the same time recognizes his work as a divine work - and the divine power truly lives in him. The Persian served to manifest it as a life-giving force. Ahuramazda is the creator of life, the source of truth and reason; death, lies and everything unreasonable - this is the work of Angromine. Therefore, the first religious duty of the Persian was to maintain life and especially intelligent life - the reproduction of plant and animal life and the development of human rational powers. The Persian did not burst into nature as its enemy or despot; he stood before her as a conductor of divine life into her, he revived her, and nature bloomed around him as if near a life-giving spring. To live for a Persian meant to act—to act—to revive and develop. He considered laziness to be the highest sin, the heaviest was lying, killing the creatures of Ahuramazda, and especially suicide. Asceticism was least reconciled with the way of life of the Persians; they did not know fasting, deprivation and self-torture; but they were the most educated and active people: the reasonable satisfaction of human needs and the highest development of the rational powers of the soul was for them a religious matter, the divine truth, for the sake of which they so energetically armed themselves against all lies and so sincerely hated all pretense that this side of their character attracted the attention of the entire ancient world. But although Zarathustra came to the consciousness of man's personal guilt in the origin of evil and the suffering of life; however, he saw an independent and independent principle of evil neither from the Deity itself nor from the will of the created beings created by Him, almost equal in strength and power to the good Deity: this crude and harsh dualism, which recognized the Deity as half good and half evil, led to no less crude final results in the fight against evil. Internal and spiritual cleansing was almost overshadowed by the numerous demands that were attached to external cleansing; reviving the creations of Ahuramazda, the Persian with even greater jealousy and tirelessness deprived the creations of Angromine of life. The killing of evil creatures is not yet a real victory over them. Victory over evil is the triumph of holiness and bliss over evil and suffering in the most evil and suffering creatures: they themselves must be brought to life and purity. The source of this victory is in the human heart: in a change in his mood. The human spirit in its struggle must penetrate everything that bears the stamp of evil and suffering alien to its own God-created nature, spiritualize everything that is corruptible and dead; he himself, by the power of his inner feat, must bring meaning and sanctification into the meaningless, evil and suffering nature. The fulfillment of this historical religious task fell to the lot of classical artistic Greece - this country of the demigod Hercules and the divine Plato. At the best time of the heyday of his historical life, the Greek seemed not to feel at all the burden of evil and the suffering of life, the pressure of the Divine and external nature - the constraint from the sensory side of his own being: thus, under the wonderful influence of his spirit, nature submitted to him, so he was able to pour his inner content - to breathe into the depths of a previously external and alien world. He personified all of nature and gave it a rational, human character, and through this he gave a human appearance to the Divinity that acted on him through this nature; when the Divinity received a human character, then man himself was imbued with His meaning, human nature was enlightened by the action of the divine Logos. The Greek recognized himself as a demigod and his being as divine. Thus, through him, the pagan world was prepared to receive Christ, the Son of God. In view of this last goal of the religious development of the ancient world, the entire historical process of the development of its consciousness of God is explained. The evil spirit conquered the man he tempted, deprived him of his royal greatness and placed him in a slavish attitude, filled with feelings of fear and hatred, towards all existence external to him, and all existence became external to the sinful person. Slavery, internal contradiction and self-justification made the Divinity begin to reveal itself in human consciousness in conditions of external necessity, internal struggle and the violent assertion of its dominance. But just as the final goal of the development of human consciousness of God was the reconciliation of man with God, liberation from His yoke and consciousness of Him by man in himself, then the Divine, in the historical process of development of man’s religious self-consciousness, through constant internal struggle, was freed from the conditions of external necessity and approached man as freely - rational and human-like, thus penetrating the very essence of man. The mythology of the Greeks, who completed the development of the ancient world, a mythology generally similar to the mythology of other peoples, bears vivid traces of such a revelation of the Divine in human consciousness. We see in it a gradual transition of the Divine from an indefinite form to a more concrete and individual form, from the necessary to the more free, from the natural to the human; We observe in it the infanticide of the gods and parricide, the victory of the latest gods over the earlier ones, the replacement of the kingdom of wild, harsh and natural gods with the kingdom of bright, humanoid ones. Born from a common external existence - chaos - Gaia, Uranus (Varuna, sky) is weakened by his son Kronos, who in turn is overthrown by the youngest, but wisest of his sons, Zeus; the kingdom of astral and natural gods with a wild titanic nature is replaced by the kingdom of the Olympians. These latter experience a constant transformation of their natural qualities into rationally human ones. Such a process of revelation of the Divine in human consciousness gradually led and in Greek religion actually led to the most extreme polytheism and human-likeness of the gods: anthropomorphism was the last result of the development of pagan God-consciousness; This is why Greek heroes, divine by nature, are the most characteristic phenomenon in Greek religious life. For the Greek, all external nature was only material for expressing the inner content of his spirit, the arena of his activity, the external decoration of his inner life. Nature in itself has no meaning or significance; she receives both through revival and spiritualization by man’s own activity. And the artistic and creative Greek genius, unattainably high even for subsequent centuries, penetrated into nature, spiritualized matter and thereby subdued it to himself. It is difficult to imagine how great this power of the creative genius was. Rough matter under the hand of the artist-sculptor received human expression, as if embodying his own spirit; He treated his work as if it were a living, intelligent being, he felt life in it, he saw in it a meaningful and reasonable phenomenon, his statue seemed to speak to him. Pygmalion falls in love with the statue he created and, through his prayers, the gods revived the marble: this myth has a deep meaning and the idea it expresses is very close to reality. And all of nature for the Greek who inspired it received a human-reasonable meaning: the natural life conveyed in the artistic epic became close to him, in the rumble of thunder he saw the manifestation of intelligent life, in the movement of the heavenly bodies he noticed the life of intelligent humanoid creatures. Not only that. The very evil of life before the creative genius of the Greek lost its outwardly terrifying appearance: vice appeared before him in an artistically beautiful form, suffering yielded to its spiritualizing effect and, conveyed in an artistic story, presented in a wonderful plastic form, it reconciled man with itself. Thus, the brilliant creativity of the Greek brought him closer to positive freedom: evil and suffering did not oppress him, as externally - a natural force, did not frighten him, as manifestations of a power distant from him and alien to him - he recognized their beginning close to him, as human it was in himself. Evil did not approach him in wild, terrible and external forms for him, it did not attack him with brute and sharp force - it approached him in a soft, seductive form: without intimidating him, it allowed him to see itself and he discerned vice and suffering in it, he realized that the path of suffering is the path of virtue and victory over the suffering of life is given by victory over sin. It was truly divine creativity. By mastering nature, the Greek also mastered the divine principle that was revealed to him through this nature. The art of the Greeks served the revelation of the divine principle; in it the Greek tried to comprehend the Divine and bring Him closer to himself. Divine life was revealed to him in epic, lyricism and drama, through music the Divine acted on him, in plastic he imagined Him; He built dwellings for Him - churches and created a sensually - tactile humanoid form for His manifestation. By spiritualizing matter, the Greek embodied for himself the divine in his human form; penetrating nature with divine creative activity, he himself was imbued with the divine spirit. And what enormous religious significance art had for the Greeks! In the statue of the Divine created by his creative genius, he contemplated the Divine itself close to him - in his humanoid form, he saw the Divinity in human features, but he also saw man in divine greatness, he contemplated the divine in himself. Thus, conquering the external world, conquering the evil and suffering of life through his striving for divine beauty and divine Reason, the Greek genius really revealed divine beauty to the world, as it is revealed in man himself, really comprehended the god-like beauty in himself, so that not with his personal powers, but with the power of the divine beauty revealed in him and through him, he conquered the evil and suffering of life. In him and through him, the Divine fought, suffered and won. That is why the pagan religious mythology, common to the Indians, Egyptians, peoples of Asia Minor and the Greeks, among the latter, compared with others, received further, so to speak, historical development: the struggle from the area of ​​​​divine life in the Greek religious consciousness moved into the area of ​​the human heart. This transition took place gradually. The first Greek heroes in whom the divine, i.e. the natural, prevailing over the human-reasonable, are still in an external and wild struggle with air monsters - personifications of life’s evil and suffering; but human heroes - divine children - experience struggle within themselves, evil and suffering are conquered by them through victory over temptations - in them and through them the Divine conquers vice. All the conditions we have outlined for the development of the religious consciousness of the Greek determine the type and form of the struggle of the Greek genius with temptations, as we find them in the temptations of Hercules - this ideal and representative of Greek life. According to Prodicus, Xenophon depicts these temptations as follows. After the end of childhood, having entered that age of adolescence, in which young people experience a crisis of self-determination, showing whether they will go into life along the path of virtue or the path of evil, Hercules, sitting in a solitary place, was at a loss whether to turn to one life or the other. At this time, two women, both of a majestic appearance, appeared to him and approached him. One of them had a polite and noble expression on her face, her body was adorned with unfeigned (natural) beauty, her eyes with modesty, her body movements with modesty, she was wearing white clothes. The other, whose upbringing was aimed mainly at the fullness and tenderness of the body, from the decorations seemed whiter and more ruddy than she really was, and behaved unnaturally - straight; she had a shameless look, and her clothes made her beauty seem more brilliant. She often looked around herself and paid great attention to whether anyone else was looking at her; often she looked back at her shadow. As they approached Hercules, the first kept herself level all the time; the second, wanting to warn her, quickly ran up to Hercules and addressed him with the following speech. “I see, Hercules, you are thinking about which path in life to choose. And if you choose me as your friend, I will lead you along the most pleasant and easiest path: nothing pleasant will remain unexperienced for you, but you will be free from the burdens of life... I will not put you in the need to acquire pleasure in work and sorrow”... After listening to all this, Hercules said: “What is your name, woman?” She answered: “My friends call me happiness; those who hate me call me by the shameful name of idleness and vice (Κακια).” - At this time, another woman approached, saying: “And I come to you, Hercules, for I know your parents and I studied your nature during your childhood. Therefore, I hope that if you choose the road that leads to me, then you will accomplish many wonderful and honorable deeds, due to which I myself will appear more honorable, brilliant and noticeable to the good. I do not deceive you with the hope of pleasures, but I will tell you the truth of life, in accordance with divine definitions. The gods do not give anything good and beautiful to people without labor and care on their part. If you desire the mercy of the gods, you must honor them; if you desire the love of friends, you must do good to them." Then, interrupting the speaker, the vicious woman said: “You see, Hercules, what a difficult and long path this woman offers you to achieve peace of mind: I will lead you along an easy and short path to pleasure.” But virtue objected (to the one who said): “Unfortunate one, what good do you have? and what true pleasure do you know if you don’t want to do anything for the sake of it?.. And being immortal, you are rejected by the gods and dishonored by people; you cannot hear what is most pleasant to the ear - your praise; you cannot see what is most pleasing to the eye, because you do not see any of your wonderful deeds... I live in the community of gods, in the community of honest people; not a single beautiful deed, either divine or human, is accomplished apart from me. I am most honored by both gods and people, who honor me properly - I am a beloved collaborator of artists, among masters I am a faithful keeper of houses, for slaves I am a benevolent protector, a kind helper of peaceful labors, a steadfast companion in military affairs, the best accomplice of friendship... For my sake, people are friends of the gods, beloved by friends and honored by the fatherland. The predetermined end comes: but they do not lie in oblivion and not without honor, but always glorified in the memory of their offspring, they flourish even after death. So, Hercules, descendant of noble parents, through long labor you must achieve complete bliss and happiness.” Hercules chose virtue as his guiding star, and his whole life was a series of victories over the various enemies of mankind - a series of feats he performed in honor of his Olympian father, Zeus; he saved Prometheus himself, on whom the wrath of the Thunderer was burdened, from the suffering - the wise Kronid, who was favorable to his son, agreed for his sake to this salvation of the mortal he cursed: active virtue freed human consciousness from divine wrath; upon his death, Hercules was assigned to the Olympian family. Moral and religious feats served as a ladder from earth to heavenly Olympus. Virtue, highly valued by the Greek, which for him - in itself - was more precious than any gold 17, made him akin to the Divine: as the highest criterion and reason in his eyes for every beautiful deed, both divine and human, it deified for him both the human and humanized the divine and served as the basis for his conviction: παντα θεια και ανθρωπινα παντα. Not only that. She gave him the strength to defeat the natural principle of his Divinity, since the ideal of a morally perfect Divinity, presented to his mind, and he himself, as having comprehended this ideal, was placed above the ancient Olympian gods. These gods not only did not help man in his struggle with temptations, but they themselves tempted him, deceived him, seduced him and seduced him into evil. Zeus himself sends a deceptive dream to Agamemnon, the powerful son of Atreus, in order through him to involve the Achaeans in a battle in which he wanted to destroy them; in a general and solemn meeting, the Olympians decided to ask Zeus to send Athena to the Trojans as a temptress and persuade them to break the oath they had previously given; the goddess herself, rousing the mortal to battle, warns him and encourages him in case “if the immortal, tempting him, appears,” and the mortal woman boldly directs a formidable speech to the immoral seductress - the goddess. These Olympians, jealous of their glory and strength, vigilantly watch to make sure that mortals do not surpass them in one thing or another, and, unscrupulous in their means, they forcibly deprive a person of his best blessings and thus justify the accusation brought against them by mortals: “the gods alone are to blame for our disasters.” But the most powerful of them was most subject to these reproaches: “Zeus, not one of the immortals is evil like you.” – Having comprehended the moral ideal of the Divine and realizing the presence of the truly divine in himself, the Greek became higher than his ancient gods and, in the gradual development of his God-consciousness, reached that high teaching about God of the “divine” Plato, which was respected by almost all the fathers of the church. This θεοφορονμενος Plato comprehended the Divine as a perfect good, alien to envy, and saw in Him the cause of good, but not evil. τῶν δε κακῶν ἄλλ’ ἄττα δεῖ ξητεῖν τὰ αἴτια άλλ’ οὐ τὸν θεόν. This lofty teaching about God, developed in Greek philosophy, was the precious crown that completed the history of the development of pagan God-consciousness - the highest light that illuminated the pagan world, the last accessible to it, the ray of the Divinity revealed to it and in it. And the victory of the Greek genius, won in the depths of his heart, his self-consciousness (γνωθι σεαυτον), was the highest victory of the pagan world. But even the Greek world, with its victory, could not overstep the boundaries of the natural powers of man, who “walked in his own ways.” The temptations of both the entire pagan and Greek world - temptations, the degree of victory over which determines the degree of closeness to the Divine and unity of a person with it, were never directed towards this very unity and communication with the Divine as such; for the pagan world, temptations never stemmed from the contradiction that presupposes a clear consciousness, on the one hand, of the high position of man, as being in direct and special union with the Divine, and, on the other hand, of the evil and suffering endured by him. If in general the nature of temptations testifies to the degree of religious and moral development of a person, then the nature of the struggle against evil of the entire pagan world shows that he has not developed to the possibility of those temptations that are directed at God-consciousness itself, as such, and victory over which leads to personal unity with the Divine. Not to mention the Buddha, who did not at all mean unity with the Divine, and for Zarathustra his special position among world life, as a servant of Ahuramazda, was an incentive to fight evil, but never a reason for temptation - the consciousness of his closeness to the Divine gave him the strength to defeat evil, but did not cause in him a contradiction, on the one hand, this closeness to the Divine and, on the other hand, the evil and suffering he endured. Hercules was the natural son of Zeus, but the consciousness of this sonship was not a source of temptation for him; such sonship, entirely given at birth as carnal, did not provide the opportunity to deepen and improve the kinship relationship with the Divine as an internally personal unity with Him. Such internal - personal unity, as the last divine-human goal, presupposes as the initial principle the consciousness of man in himself of the Divine, as an ideal, and is achieved through victory over temptations from the contradiction between the unconditionality of the ideal and personal limitation - is achieved by man as the realization by him in himself and through himself of this ideal. Paganism in the Greek world reached the consciousness of the Divine as a perfect ideal, but did not go further. The very unity with the Divine, as such, did not cause a struggle with temptations in the pagan world; the union he achieved with the Divine did not pass through the crucible of temptation. The revelation of the Divine in paganism was natural, natural; for him the Deity was revealed as the divine (impersonal) in nature, and not as a supernatural Deity. Man found and recognized the divine within himself, but he recognized it as already entirely given. Therefore, the pagan did not know the beginning of his union with the Divine, just as he did not know the beginning of sin. He found the sinful in himself as natural, and did not remember its beginning as a personal sin against a personal God; He did not know the beginning of the unity of the personal with God as a person. “O Varuna,” cried the Indian, “I am now blind; I ask where this evil comes from and turn to the sages for an answer. The sages unanimously answer me: “Varuna is angry with you.” O Varuna, what a great sin have I committed that you want to strike your friend, the singer (of this hymn). Invincible and strong, tell me. Innocent one, I serve you diligently. O king, forgive hereditary impurity; forgive also the uncleanness for which we ourselves are to blame. Free us from the bonds (of prison), as one frees a thief from a chain or a calf from a rope... Sleep, too, serves as a source of impurity. I, your impeccable servant, wish to honor the great and beneficent God” 18, etc. I stopped little and focused my thoughts on the first origin of evil in the human race. He knew that the first man did not tolerate hunger, thirst, or any disasters, but Angromine attacked him, killed him, and from that time evil began to spread throughout the human race; he was even sure that Ahuramazda created the human race precisely for the purpose of fighting evil, which already existed as an independent kingdom - and only through deepening into his self-awareness did Zarathustra feel that man was personally to blame for the evil he tolerated. – In the famous myth about the fall of the soul, set out in the Phaedrus, Plato tries to capture the features of this fall at its beginning. But the essential meaning of this myth actually speaks of the falling away of the soul from God, but not of the Fall. True, the soul itself is to blame for its fall, but the final reason for it is not the free will of the soul, but the weakness of its natural powers, its natural powerlessness to embrace the divine with its mind - to cognize it. This varied powerlessness of each of the souls, initially seemingly equal in strength, which was felt from the beginning of their development, determines the degree of their fall, but every sin comes down to ignorance as its essential basis. – And the beginning of the pagan’s unity with the Divine, in the same way, was not determined by the act of his free self-determination, he found the divine in himself - if only he found it - as naturally given, which is why this unity did not cost him a struggle with temptations, and because of this, it could not be internally personal. The Persian was aware of his closeness to the Divine as his creation; and the Greek spoke about the natural kinship of the divine and the human: “in nature everything has an affinity and the soul knows all things; the truth of existence is always in our souls” 19. What is permanent, truly existing, actually divine in a person is the divine idea according to which he was created and of which he is a real embodiment. The ideal in man is the mediocre between the infinite and the finite, between the Divine and man, it is the infinite itself in man; it is the basis of a person’s constant connection with God and the reconciliation with Him of a soul that has fallen away from Him. The task of human activity is, through liberation from the material and external and through self-knowledge, to master this idea within oneself in its entirety - to free it from those obscurations that it undergoes at the birth of a person in this world. Thus, the Divinity in man is revealed only as ideal; but since It is different from each of the ideas, the totality of which It embraces, and infinitely surpasses each of them, It in itself is inaccessible to man. Plato's divine good has no living relations with the world, and man's relationship to such a Deity can only be speculative. Socrates clearly and definitely preached that virtue is knowledge; Plato's state is the state of philosophers. And Platonism not only cannot be called alien to the Greek religion, but it is an essential expression of the Hellenic spirit. If there was no other philosophy imbued with such a religious character as that of Plato; there was no other religion with such an artistic and philosophical direction as the religion of the Greeks. If in ancient times the Greek saw sacrifices as a propitiatory means against divine wrath, then during the period of the full development of Greek religion, the most characteristic expression of man’s relationship to the Divine were oracles, through which man recognized the divine will; the sacrifice itself received a mediocre meaning in the relationship between man and God: this relationship continued while the sacrificial fire burned; the religious offering took on a completely artistic character: a poetic work was dedicated to the Deity, a mystical relationship was assumed between the artistic statue and the Deity himself, the Olympic and other games had a religious character. Due to this speculative direction, the Greek genius mastered the idea of ​​Logos, the development of which constitutes both the essential content and the highest merit of Greek philosophy, which has been working on it since the time of Heraclitus. Already speaking in religion as Mathis - the goddess of reason and fatal law, the Word of God in Plato's philosophy received the expression λογισμος θεου καὶ εκγονος του αγαθον. But being identified with the life of world existence, the Logos, separately from world life, was revealed to the Greek consciousness only as an abstract idea. But the lifeless contemplation of the divine idea can no longer satisfy the religious consciousness of a person who has risen above natural life; with his whole being he demands living communication with the Divine, with all the strength of his soul he strives for direct participation in divine life. The mysteries served as a characteristic expression of this requirement and the aspiration of religious consciousness in the pagan world. Belonging in its origin to the East, developing in a sharp and wild form in the cults of Cybele and Mylitta, the mysteries in Greek religious life acquired a lighter, more human character, remaining the same in essence. High, pure and completely worthy of a person in its basic idea, having lost its rough eastern form under the influence of the Greek genius, the mystery cult, however, in Western paganism led to the same results as in the East; and in Greek religious life it remained natural in its inner content, and here living communication with the Divine was paid for by the death of the individual, his immersion in natural life, his self-sacrifice for the sake of the ancestral life. – Such was the double outcome for natural man: either lifeless contemplation of the divine idea or hopeless death for the sake of union with the Divine. In order to internally and personally unite with the Divine and at the same time defend his independence during this union, a person must overcome the religious temptation that befalls him on the path to this union. The combination of the divine Logos with man, complete and personal unity with him, requires from man not the same passivity that characterizes the feminine, material principle in pagan religions, fertilized by the divine, masculine, active principle; this relationship of the principles of the divine - male and female - religious consciousness of man, corresponding to the natural life of pagan humanity, must significantly change its character after man has risen above natural life, recognized himself as the highest in nature and the Divine as above-natural. The revelation of the Divine requires not dead passivity on the part of man, but self-conscious and free service; the true Divinity does not suppress the human, but the truly divine is comprehended by the human. The Divine, rationally and freely desiring His revelation and incarnation in nature through man, does not deny the best aspirations of the human spirit for full life and dominion, for the full development of spiritual, rationally free forces and the dominance of man over natural life; but these aspirations are freed from their illusory nature and receive a true basis and content only through human participation in the divine life, through the divine revival and enlightenment of the human spirit itself. Since such revitalization and enlightenment should not be external to a person, but have an inexhaustible source within his own spirit, and participation in the divine life should be internal and complete as a person’s acceptance of the Divine itself, as a personal unity with God, achieved through victory over temptations. The whole life of a person consists of struggle, and there is no doubt that this struggle in its final basis boils down to a struggle with the Divine; but this fight against God is not in itself the last goal of man, nor does it have such a goal as the self-deification of man: the true victory of man consists in his complete unity with the Divine; fight against God must lead to God-manhood. Such a fight against God - Israelism, leading to God-manhood, presupposes the highest tension of human well-being, self-awareness and at the same time the strongest desire for communication with the Divine - it does not come from hostility to God, which has already been defeated, but from the desire of man to enter into an internal union with God and to defend his independence in communication with the Divine. We see the first free union of man with the Divine, as morally homogeneous beings, in the people of Israel with God, who were the son of God - filius Dei collectivus. In the conclusion of this theanthropic contract, as a free one, both man and God participated - man, defending his independence and desiring the incarnation of God, and God preparing man for His incarnation, man, fighting against God, and God, testing, tempting. Since the beginning of this theanthropic work came from God, the history of the Jewish people began with the temptations of Abraham. These trials of Abraham are too well known to be dwelled upon, but we think it necessary to point out their character and their significance. Abraham's trials came from God because the purpose of overcoming them was the union of man with God; but these trials of Abraham were not similar not only to the temptations of the Buddha from Mara, but also to the temptations of the Greek from his celestials; they were not temptations to evil, but were a means for preparing man for the divine-human union. The Divine Himself condescends to man, but condescends to him not because he is forced to do so by some kind of necessity, and not in order to cause evil and suffering to man; It calls a person to a free union. It does not need human sacrifices and Itself gives him promises at every appearance; but in order to participate in this union and in these promises, sacrifices are necessary for a person, self-denial is necessary for him precisely for the sake of the divine-human union. These sacrifices, as an expression of man’s self-denial in the name of God, must be completely free on his part, since he himself desires a union with God and at the same time desires to preserve himself in this union, desires for himself the assimilation of divine glory; as free ones, sacrifices constitute temptations for man. We know nothing about the internal struggle that these sacrifices cost Abraham, starting with his abandonment of his native land and home and ending with his readiness to kill his only beloved son (cf. Heb. XI, 8. 17); We also do not know about that beginning in Abraham, due to which the divine demands could have a tempting meaning for him and which could lead him to enmity against God and to self-justification. Later Jewish theology, which focused with such attention on Abraham's temptations and numbered ten of them, also pointed to the intervention of an evil spirit in Abraham's life. But it is no coincidence that Holy Scripture itself is silent about this intervention. In the history of Abraham's personal relations with God, the evil spirit, to victory over which his union with the Divine called man, had not yet stood out and emerged; Man had to come to the knowledge of the evil spirit gradually according to his positive and free desire for internal unity with the Divine, but at the beginning of Jewish history, the good and evil elements in man were still in a chaotic mixture; a person called to union with God does not yet distinguish between the demands of this union as the goal in view and about which temptations arise, and the evil spirit that deviates a person from this goal, as the source of temptation. Personal relations between God and man teach him one thing for now - to attribute everything to God, to look at everything from the point of view of the divine-human union. In order to recognize the evil spirit as the enemy of the true divine-human union, a person must first not only freely enter into this union, but also defend his independence in it. In Jacob, the human side of the union opposes the divine in its desire for independence, and in him we already encounter the divine-human struggle. Although in his struggle the Divinity is not yet highlighted as the positive goal of human struggle, and the evil spirit is not highlighted as the negative goal of this struggle - the positive goal of the struggle is not highlighted - unity with God and the negative - victory and expulsion of the evil spirit - his struggle is still taking place in the darkness of the night (Gen. XXXII, 25 - 31); however, this feat of Jacob gave him the name Israel, “for he wrestled with God,” and made him the ancestor of God’s chosen people. God-manhood does not require the destruction of humanity, which must be established in the fullness of its development, although the true content of this fullness for man is only in his communion with the Divine; God-manhood is not man’s passive perception of the divine, it is the fruit of struggle and is accomplished in Israel. The life of Israel as a people begins again with temptations and trials - during the forty-year wandering in the desert after leaving Egyptian slavery - not only external, but also spiritual. For forty years the Lord led the chosen people through the wilderness in order to humble them, to test them and to find out what was in their hearts, whether they would keep His commandments or not; He humbled him, tormented him with hunger, and fed him with manna, which he did not know and his fathers did not know, in order to show him that man does not live by bread alone - he fed him with manna in order to humble him and test him, in order to subsequently do him good (Deut. VIII, 2-16). But even during the forty-year wandering in the desert, the God-fighting nature of the chosen people is again evident, reflected in features more defined and sharper than in their forefather, Jacob. The people of Israel themselves tempted the Lord. He began to become faint-hearted on the way and spoke against God (Num. XXI, 4). And he tempted the Lord God at Massa (Deut. VI, 16), tempted God in his heart and demanded food according to his soul and spoke against God and said: “Can God prepare a meal in the desert?” And again he tempted God and insulted the Holy One of Israel (Ps. LXXVII, 18.19.41). The holy, omnipotent, but also merciful God, condescending to human weakness, satisfies the demands of His people, miraculously providing them with manna, meat and water; but in His relations with Israel new features are now noticeable: “and He ended their days in vanity and their years in confusion (v. 33).” And it is not the grumbling that causes the punishing hand of God among the people, but submission: “when He killed them, they sought Him and turned, and from early morning they ran to God” (v. 34). – When the path of trials in the desert was passed and God revealed Himself to the people both as merciful and as punishing, and when the people of Israel, upon arriving in the promised land, could freely, not constrained or forced by an external situation, determine their relationship with God, He concludes a free agreement with them, enters into a free union with the whole people (I. Josh. XXIV, 14 - 16. 19 - 21). In this divine-human union, as the beginning of the personal relationship between God and free man (the people), the Divinity is revealed to man as desiring free service from him, as choosing a special people for the purposes of His incarnation. The people of Israel, as chosen for the divine-human union, are characterized, firstly, by a strong development of religiosity and, secondly, by an equally highly developed sense of well-being and self-awareness. Chosen by God as a zealot, the people themselves are imbued with zeal for the divine-human cause: God chose the Jewish people for Himself, for the purposes of His incarnation, - the people of Israel also chose God as their God, for themselves. Union with God led the people of Israel not to self-mortification, but to the rise of national life; For him, the religious matter coincided with the national matter; the affirmation and spread of Jehovah’s rule by the people of Israel was not separated from its own affirmation and spread. That is why pharisaism, into which at the end of the history of the Jewish people its worst instincts degenerated, is the characteristic national sin of this people - this is the sin of religious national pride, positively unparalleled in world history. But along with this consciousness of God’s chosenness, the God-fighting people were no less vividly imbued with another consciousness - the consciousness of personal sin before God, a personal insult to the Holy One of Israel, due to which they looked at all the suffering they endured as a well-deserved punishment from God and expected perfect freedom from them only in the future redemption and sanctification of man. The free union of God with the chosen people, which initially expressed, although personal, but still the external relationship of God to man, in its goals, in its complete implementation, also belonged to the future time. This goal at the beginning of the external union - its internal deepening - was supposed to lead to the internal, complete and personal unity of God and man in Christ Jesus. The gradual internal deepening of man's connection with God presupposes the gradual internal rebirth of the human being as his redemption, sanctification and reconciliation with God. Since the will of the one God at the beginning of revealed history was given for the people of Israel as an external will, and three acts of human rebirth were performed in the field of his external relations as a sacrifice for sin, a burnt offering and a peace offering (Lev. IX, 22). Union with a holy God imposes on the chosen people the requirement of permanent holiness; every sin committed must be atoned for, cleansed and reconciled; the evil spirit should not have access to the holy society of the Israelites. Thus, the desire for real communication with God, for real rebirth, also leads to the knowledge of the evil spirit; but with the initial external attitude to the matter of rebirth, the evil spirit appears in vague features and external relations. “And (Aaron) will take two goats and set them before the Lord at the door of the tabernacle of meeting; And Aaron will cast lots for both goats: one lot for the Lord, and the other azazel lot. And Aaron will bring the goat on which the lot was drawn for the Lord, and offer it as a sacrifice for sin, and the goat on which the lot was drawn azazel will present it alive before the Lord, to make purification over it and send it away into the wilderness of azazel” (Lev. XVI, 7-10). The sacrifice is made only to the one true God, and the Jews did not know another God and spirit to whom it would be necessary to make a sacrifice along with the true God; That is why the other goat, designated azazel, was not killed, but was sent alive and burdened with the weight of the sins of the people of Israel into the desert: sinful uncleanness must be removed from the society of the chosen people. But this removal of the goat with the burden of sin into the azazel desert was, obviously, only a shadow of true internal relationships, a symbol of internal cleansing and expulsion of the evil spirit from the human heart. “Why do I need the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord. I am satisfied with the burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fattened cattle; I do not want the blood of bulls and lambs and goats. When you come to appear before My face; who demands of you that you trample My courts? Carry no more vain gifts... wash yourself, make yourself clean; remove your evil deeds from before my eyes; stop doing evil” (Isa. I, 11 – 16). It is not through external sacrifices that the true purification of man is accomplished, and it is not through external symbolic actions that the evil spirit is driven out of the human heart: the struggle must be transferred to the very heart of man. But if the entire life of God’s chosen people is a life of purification and reconciliation, then it must entirely be a life of temptation. “Is not man’s life on earth a temptation” (Job VII, I)? And these temptations for God’s chosen people are inextricably linked with their service to the true God. “My son,” says the Wise One, if you begin to serve the Lord God, then prepare your soul for temptation” (Prov. I. pp. II, I). Standing in close connection with the service of the true God, temptations originate in this special relationship of man to God - in the contradiction that is born when the chosen servant of God collides with the evil and suffering of life; temptations understood in this sense are necessary for every zealot of the theanthropic cause, since participation in the theanthropic union is determined by an act of free decision and is accompanied by voluntary efforts. Later Jewish theology expressed this idea in the proposition that temptation awaits everyone whom Providence wants to raise to a certain dignity. And the entire Israeli people had to go through the path of such temptation. Called to a free union with a holy and omnipotent God, Israel quite naturally and lawfully saw the immediate end of this union in its righteousness and in its blessedness. All the divine institutions, in the fulfillment of which he was distinguished by such zeal, tended towards his sanctification and purification; then the historical experience of personal relationships with God, and confidence in His omnipotence, justice and mercy, and the very meaning of the divine-human union convinced Israel that personal righteousness must necessarily be accompanied by bliss and that all evil and suffering indicates guilt. But when, with the zealous fulfillment of divine instructions, he already thought that he had achieved the highest righteousness required by the divine-human union, and considered himself, as God’s chosen people, to have the right to demand reward and bliss, then evil and suffering, especially clearly unfolding before his consciousness in contrast to his expectations, appeared before him as the highest injustice. The story of Job points to a critical, transitional time in the development of the religious consciousness of the Israeli people: it is full of truly religious and high drama. Job was a blameless, just and God-fearing man and shunned evil; he offered burnt offerings and sin sacrifices unacceptably. At first, wealth and, in general, external well-being were fully consistent with his righteousness; but then unexpected and completely independent disasters, one after another, deprive him of all his well-being and expose him to the most severe and unclean illness. Where is the cause of this evil and suffering and how to reconcile them with the chosen position of the righteous, as a member of the divine-human union, as a special servant of God? - this is the form in which temptations from the evil and suffering of life approached Israel. “These wicked ones prosper in this age and increase wealth. (And I said:) Was it not in vain that I purified my heart, and washed my hands in innocence, and exposed myself to wounds every day and to reproof every morning” (Psalm LXXII, 13-14)? The usual, centuries-inherited, traditional view of external righteousness, expressed by Job's friends, sent the sufferer for explanations to his former life and pointed out the cause of evil and suffering in evasion of external divine instructions and the only consolation in submission to the unsearchable will of God. But this Pharisaic view of the divine-human work found condemnation in the speech of the Lord Himself to Eliphaz the Temanite: “My anger burns against you and against your two friends, because you have not spoken of Me as truly as My servant Job” (Job XLII, 7). The temptations of Israel were strong; he was not far from blaspheming God and dying, and adding apostasy to his previous sins, preferring wickedness to suffering. But temptations were defeated - they were defeated by the sufferer’s faith in the Redeemer, by faith - to see God in his flesh, to see Him with his own eyes, so that one could speak with Him face to face as man to man - by faith in the full future revelation of the Son of God in the conditions of evil and suffering of human life: this goal - the revelation of the Son of God - justified evil and suffering as necessary for its achievement through victory over them - this faith gave strength for victory and made victory true. The thirst for God-manhood (“my heart melts in my chest!”) did not allow God’s chosen people to rest on external righteousness and led them to true and complete God-manhood, bringing them closer to true and complete victory over the evil spirit. During the period of critical struggle with the temptations of the Israeli people, Satan appears before their religious consciousness in clearer and more definite features - and these features are highly characteristic. The Satan of the Israeli religion, as we see him in the book of Job, does not oppose God in hostile independence and does not dominate man as the irremovable cause of his sin. On the contrary, Satan appears before God among His sons and serves as an instrument of His providential activity on people: this is how that dualism is defeated, from which the pagan religious consciousness was not free and which was far from alien to the best pagan - Platonic philosophy. – The religious consciousness of God’s chosen Israeli people does not know any external struggle of the Divine outside of man. Evil and suffering in life have two sides: subjective - the personal sin of a person as the first cause of world evil, causa efficiens, in the language of the scholastics - and externally - objective, since the evil and suffering of life, affirmed by the personal will of a person, themselves serve as the causa materialis of his sin. Complete victory over the evil spirit is accomplished by the eradication of man's sin itself and is achieved in his complete and personal unity with the Divine; but in the process of historical development of man's religious consciousness, the victory over the evil spirit did not come from the center to the periphery, but from the periphery to the center. The people of Israel no longer identified their personal sin with external evil and suffering; they saw in Satan the cause only of this external evil and suffering; Moreover, imbued with a strong religious feeling, the worshiper of the true God and Satan did not give irresistible power over him, but subordinated him, as an instrument, to the providential activity of the Lord, to Whom he attributed both the evil and suffering of his life. Since these evils and suffering overtook him on the way to union with God - since they existed for him in view of the requirements and conditions of the theanthropic union, since he endured and endured them for the sake of the divine-human cause, for the sake of his loyalty to the divine-human union (“blaspheme God and die”), God Himself was the cause (causa finalis) of the external evil and suffering that befell him - God, who tested man through them and prepared him for His incarnation, righteously punishing his sins (cf. Isa. XLV, 7). The Lord himself rained brimstone and fire on Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen. XIX, 24); The angel of God stretched out his hand against Jerusalem to devastate it (2 Ts. XXIV, 16). Evil and suffering sent down on a person - to the extent that they are necessary and inevitable for a person who, through victory, achieves communion with the Divine - is related to the establishment of this communication as the goal of the struggle, and is justified in view of this goal; but since their necessity and inevitability is not determined by the very nature of the Divine, but is caused by the abnormal state of this life, evil and suffering must be defeated and expelled from the world order: and their bearer as a tempting force for the religious consciousness of the Israeli people was Satan. Victory over Satan, victory over evil and suffering, since the abnormal state of this life is manifested in them and through them, leads a person to a humble recognition of their necessity - to reducing them to that type of evil and suffering, which, comprehending a person according to the divine institution, at the same time affirms the divine truth - leads a person to the justification of God. The reality of the victory of the Israeli people over temptations and their liberation from the power of Satan was reflected in the fact that Satan himself was subordinated to the action of divine providence by the religious consciousness of the Israelis. The dilemma posed by religious life (the content of which we can see from a comparison of two passages in the Old Testament, according to which divine wrath and Satan produce the same effect - national disaster) 20 was resolved in the sense of reducing Satan as the bearer of external evil and suffering to a simple instrument of divine wrath. (See I Kings XVI, 14: XVIII, 10; XIX, 9, – Judges IX, 23). When Satan is reduced to a simple instrument of divine truth, and the reason for the inevitability of life’s evil and suffering is recognized by a person in his personal sin, then Satan loses all power over religious consciousness. – As evidence of the dualism of the Jewish religion, they point to the teachings of later Jewish theology; but this proof is double-edged: the teaching of Jewish theology, testifying to the power of the devil over pagan peoples, speaks at the same time about the complete freedom from this power of God's chosen people. How free the Israeli people were from ideas about the power of the evil spirit as an external power is shown by the fact that later Jewish theology even identified the evil spirit with the evil principle in man himself. Satan is nothing more than the evil principle personified. In order to strengthen himself in goodness, a person must cause a struggle between both principles - the evil one, which threatens to deviate him from a good intention or plan, from a high idea - and his opponent, the good principle, and give the latter the upper hand. However, the evil principle - this primary enemy of all good - also has its good side, for without it there would be no struggle and no victory for man. The fight against the evil spirit and the victory over Satan, as the bearer of external evil and suffering of life - a struggle that took place in the conditions of a free divine-human union - presupposes an internal and positive struggle with the evil principle in man himself, as a justification of God in the existence of evil and suffering in life and recognition on the part of man of personal guilt, personal sin, as the real cause of the abnormal state of world life: such a struggle must lead to divine humanity and be accomplished by faith in this God-manhood. That the Israeli people in their best part, in that small “remnant of the saints”, which, despite all the historical temptations of the descendants of Abraham, remained faithful to the covenants of God, was imbued with the conviction of personal sin before God, endured punishment with humility and looked forward with faith to the coming Savior, it is enough just to mention this. If we imagine all the difficulty for an unredeemed person to live by faith alone in future salvation, for the sake of this faith alone, in the face of all kinds of internal and external suffering, to invariably keep the covenant of God - if we imagine all the strength of the internal struggle that must be endured by a person called by God to loving communication, sacrificing everything for the sake of the future perfect kingdom of God and at the same time realizing internal impurity and the insufficiency of external means of sanctification and purification - sacrificing everything for the sake of the future the bliss of man and at the same time constantly persecuted and oppressed by enemies, as if abandoned and forgotten by God, - wholly serving the cause of the coming loving revelation of the Heavenly Father and at the same time, in fear for his life, afraid to behold the face of the great and terrible God - if we imagine all the power of faith that Old Testament Israel needed to have, and all the thirst for God-manhood, which could only give him sufficient strength of faith, then we will understand the great religious-historical significance for the divine-human cause that belongs to the religious spirit of Israel. However, Israel recognized itself as the son of God only in its national community (Ps. LXXII, 15 cf. Ex. IV, 22). Of all the nations, one Israelite was chosen (Deut. XIV, I; Exod. XIX, 5–6) for special service to God. This election and isolation of one people was a necessary step in the divine-human work accomplished in the personal sonship of Christ; Before internally uniting with man, the Divine enters into a free union with one people - a union in which the general providential universal activity of God, His providential attitude towards all humanity receives more specific and individual forms. Therefore, in relation to all nations, the chosen Jewish people had to serve as a mediator of the divine-human union, and in relation to their future goal, they had to perform preparatory service for the personal sonship of Christ through the gradual internal deepening of free relations with God. The union of a person with a holy God makes a person holy, which is why the sanctification and salvation of a person consists in his unity with God. And the people of Israel, as chosen by God, were to be a holy people; For this purpose, the law was given to him and ritual actions were established. But the holiness that was achieved by this law did not belong to an individual, but to an entire people, and this very law, including the Decalogue, was given to the entire people as such. That is why for each individual the law was external and its holiness consisted in continuous communication with the religious life of the people, which communication was supported by the fulfillment of the externally ritual law. And the very thing that justified popular sonship and external divine law, that is, their temporary significance as a necessary transitional stage in the development of religious self-consciousness, condemned their absolute significance. The people of Israel could serve as a medium for either the permanent visible presence of the Divine, but non-human, or human-shaped theophanies, but not complete and temporary, since only a person as a person can be a permanent and true church of God. And humanoid theophany actually remained external to the human being; the action of the Divine on man was an action from outside; but the religion of Israel was to prepare him for inner sonship with God. External relations had to gradually degenerate into internal ones, and this gradual deepening by man of the divine-human union should have led to the denial of the exclusivity and absoluteness of the external ritual law as such and to evoke, support and strengthen the thirst for perfect, internal sonship with God. Thus, the external ritual law, which constituted an essential aspect of the Old Testament religion, served for the Israeli people, as a conditional form of their temporary relations with the Divine, the starting point of their religious temptations, victory over which was achieved by faith in the future perfect sonship of God, but which led the Israeli people to self-justification. The external and fractional nature of the law, since the Jew saw solely in it the entire power of justification for man, led him to understand sin as a single, accidental crime, the guilt of which is also eliminated by external and separate acts of sanctification and reconciliation. Pharisaism was a statement of the absolute significance of the externally ritual law and national exclusivity: the affirmation of both was based on the complacency of external holiness, certified by the accuracy of the fulfillment of external instructions. On the contrary, the external ritual law revealed all its insufficiency when Israel, not content with an external relationship to the Divine, external sanctification and purification, desired internal union with God, desired true, internal holiness. The true Israelite said: “I desire to do Your will, O my God, and Your law is in my heart. The judgments of the Lord are true, all are righteous. They are more desirable than gold and even much pure gold, sweeter than honey and drops of honeycomb” (Ps. XXXIX, 9; XVIII, 10 – 11); but at the same time he had to exclaim: “Who can see his own mistakes? Cleanse me from my secrets; and restrain Thy servant from those who are willful, so that they do not prevail over me. Then I will be blameless and pure from great corruption. Let the words of my mouth and the thoughts of my heart be acceptable in Your sight” (Ps. xviii. 13-15). And the more the approach of the Deliverer was felt, the more the insufficiency of righteousness from the law was realized. “We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteousness is like filthy rags; and we have all faded like a leaf, and our iniquities carry us away like the wind” (Isa. LXIV, 6). The Old Testament religion placed man in an external relation to the Divine; but true God-manhood requires internal relationships. “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Judah... I will put My law within them, and write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they will be My people. And they will no longer teach each other, brother to brother, and say: “Know the Lord,” for everyone themselves will know Me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord, because I will forgive their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more” (Jer. XXXI, 31 – 34). This inner relationship of God to man, which completely cleanses his sins and reconciles him with God, is a work of divine love: “I have loved you with eternal love, and therefore I have extended favor to you” (Jer. XXXI, 3). But when a person perceives divine love within himself, then the mutual relations of people should be imbued with this same love. “This is the fast that I have chosen: loose the chains of unrighteousness, untie the bands of the yoke, and set the oppressed free, and break every yoke; divide your bread with the hungry, and bring the wandering poor into your home; When you see a naked person, clothe him, and do not hide from your half-blood. Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly increase, and your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will follow you. Then you will call, and the Lord will hear; You will cry out, and He will say: Here am I!” (Isa. LVIII, b – 9). The internal rebirth of humanity must be followed by the rebirth of all nature. Then “the desert and the dry land will rejoice, and the uninhabited country will rejoice and bloom like a daffodil. Then the wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the kid; and the calf, and the young lion, and the ox will be together, and a little child will lead them..., and the baby will play over the asp’s hole, and the child will stretch out his hand into the snake’s nest” (Isa. XXXV, I; XI, 6 - 8). If we call the religious temptations of every person divine-human, then primarily the divine-human temptations of Christ should be called divine. The nature of His temptations was primarily determined by the properties of His face, but one can say even more: His face was perfected in temptations (δια παθηματων τελειωθαι), i.e. His God-manhood was adequately expressed in His God-filial self-consciousness, and His God-filial self-consciousness was fully revealed in redemptive suffering. In both of these – both in the properties of His person, His self-consciousness, and in the essence of His life’s work – Christ revealed the fulfillment of the religious aspirations of mankind, reconciled man with God, realized a more divine self-consciousness in the historical conditions of human life and justified God. Both the fulfillment of His person and the completion of His work were revealed in God-filial, or God-human, self-abasement, which forms the essential side of His temptations. We will consider the temptations of Christ from three sides: firstly, from the side of their essential basis, secondly, in their relation to universal human temptations and, thirdly, in their ideological content. Coming to the first point of this plan, we must begin with an outline of the temptations of Christ in terms of the Christological formula, which in any case is part of the Christian worldview and can be interpreted in its system 21. The reality of the incarnation of the Son of God was that, having become hypostatically human, He was aware of His conditions of limited human existence, all the normal functions and needs of human nature became natural to Him, and He could no longer act and feel otherwise than in forms characteristic of human nature. The Eternal Son of God, upon His incarnation, truly recognized His nature as weak, limited, and susceptible to suffering—he had to believe and hope, although divine self-consciousness never ceased in Him. – But if the Son of God had become incarnate only hypostatically, then for Him, with the memory of the former divine greatness and the reality of this limited existence, the entire duration of earthly life would have been continuous passive suffering, and not temptation. The latter presupposes in the hypostatically incarnate Son of God the real presence of divine life, the real possession of divine glory. The Son of God was not incarnate in one hypostasis, but was incarnated in His entire divine nature - and in His incarnation He possessed all the fullness of divine life, which is why He could communicate this fullness to His humanity. That is why temptations were possible for the incarnate Son of God, because despite the limitations of His earthly existence, He actually possessed divine unconditionality. But just as, on the one hand, theanthropic temptations would have been impossible for the incarnate Son of God if He had been incarnated only hypostatically and did not really possess the fullness of divine life, so, on the other hand, with the real possession of the fullness of divine life for. Temptations would still be impossible for Him if the real possession of the fullness of divine life was accompanied by an objective - external manifestation of this fullness, if divine knowledge were given in Him as human omniscience, divine bliss as bodily omnipotence, if He possessed human omnipotence - with such an objective - external manifestation of the fullness of divine life, the desire for divine glory in a given exclusive limitation as such could not be tempting. that objectively - externally manifested divine glory cannot be only desirable - and because with an objectively external manifestation it would not give room for a conditional limited existence, for which the desire for divine glory can be tempting. That is why Cyril of Alexandria, condemning those who speak only about the incarnation of the hypostasis of the Son of God, on the other hand also condemns those who speak about the direct union of the divine nature with the human, because only the freely rational hypostatic mediation in this union makes the Divinity bearable for human nature. Really possessing the fullness of divine life, the Son of God in the incarnation by the power of His free will refuses the manifestation of divine glory, restrains this manifestation and thus makes room for the fullness of human life. But given the internally close relationship of the hypostasis of the Son of God to His divine nature, this renunciation of the manifestation of divine glory for the duration of earthly life cannot be understood in the sense of a single, outwardly mechanical act that took place during the incarnation, but since He continuously and truly possessed divine glory throughout His earthly life, the feat of renunciation of its real external manifestation was a continuous feat of His earthly life. The feat was determined by the fact that the free personal self-restraint of the incarnate Son of God, as His renunciation of the objectively external manifestation of the glory of His divine nature, really degraded only the external manifestation of the divine nature, but did not extend to the inner strength of the divine nature, to its internal action - divinely - natural desire, divinely - natural will and freedom. And after the incarnation, divinely natural action, divinely natural will and freedom were preserved in Him, so that His personal self-denial from the manifestation of His freely acting divine will by nature was continuous throughout the entire continuation of His earthly life. And due to the fact that the personal self-restraint of the Son of God in the sense of His renunciation of the objectively external manifestation of the divine nature, from the objectively external manifestation of the divine glory, really humiliated His objectively external glory, its objective complete revelation was ideal for the Incarnate One; but because this self-restraint did not destroy the internal action of the divine nature, as divine aspirations and desires, the objective manifestation of the Divine for the Humiliated One was positively desirable, i.e. naturally desirable; since, finally, ideally - given, as by free will, humiliated in an objectively external revelation, divine glory did not constrain the free gradually - conditional development of Christ's humanity, then, in the reality of humanly - limited existence, the desire for the discovery of the divine will, the objectively - external affirmation of divine glory was directly tempting for Him as the desire for the affirmation of divine glory in a given exclusive limitation (of the humanity of Christ) through the denial of this limitation, so that the affirmation of divine glory in the conditions this limitation as the free gradual development of humanity was a feat for Christ. At the same time, for the incarnate Son of God, for His humanity, for whom the complete objectively external revelation of divine glory was given ideally, the possibility of this objectively external manifestation was a matter of faith, just as the manifestation itself was a continuous desire. In the victory of the Son of God over the satisfaction of this desire, natural for His humanity, through the denial of this limitation in the name of the divine glory inherent exclusively to the Son of God - in the victory by the power of faith in the accomplishment of divine glory in the conditions of existing limitation - consisted of the divine-human feat, which acquired the entire human race for the Divine and won the mercy of the Divine for all people. In Christ, the Divinity appeared in conditions of createdly limited life, but according to the idea of kenosis, He united not externally - the manifested divine glory, omnipotence, omniscience, all-contentment with human weakness, with bodily conditionality, which connection would be impossible in reality, a natural contradiction, but in Him the unconditionality of divine - natural aspirations and desires, the possibility of unconditional actions, on the one hand, were united. and the given limitations of human life, on the other. This relationship between the unconditionality of the divine principle, as the unconditionality of divinely natural aspirations and desires, which is reflected in a certain sense in the human mind, and the given limitations of human life can be perceived by the mind as a religious contradiction: the reconciliation of this contradiction, as a victory over the divine-human temptations, constitutes the meaning of universal human religious life and the essence of the divine-human redemptive feat of Christ. This or that relationship of the mind to the Divine and a given bodily limitation gives an exceptional religious appearance to each individual and forms his own character. Suffering from the contradiction between bodily limitations and the unconditional aspirations of the spirit is generated by the impossibility of unconditional activity in the given exceptional limitations of human life, the impossibility of comprehending the Divinity for every person in its exclusivity, the impossibility of man in himself to be a god, that is, unconditional and unlimited. But the meaning of victory over religious temptations lies in man’s renunciation of his exclusivity in the name of the Divine and, therefore, in the affirmation of the divine principle in the given limitations of human life. And in Christ, the Divinity at His birth, but before His redemptive feat, was given exclusively for Him as an individual - and He would have been the only person who can create the divine even in human corporeality, if He had not, through the redemptive feat, made all people participants in His sonship with God. In order for the works that He did, and everyone who believes in Him to do, and even more than these, He had to voluntarily renounce the external manifestation of divine glory as the exclusive property of Him - the Son of God and, thus, having assimilated to Himself truly human limitations, establish divine glory in the conditions of universal human limitations. Given the contradiction between divine unconditionality and created limitations, the theanthropic feat in its entirety consisted in the renunciation of the Son of God from the external manifestation of divine glory and from human exclusivity in order to communicate divine glory to limited man, to justify God and to gain man for God through victory over the spirit of exclusivity and enmity. This redemptive feat of self-restraint was accomplished by the incarnate Son of God, in conditions of human limitation and by divine-human forces, since it was necessary to defeat human sin, destroy human exclusivity, communicate the divine to man, for the sake of which man himself had to renounce the self-willed assertion of divine dignity in his exclusivity, renounce his natural will in the name of God - since, further, the work of this self-restraint was human work, for only for human exclusivity limitations can be tempting to desire divine glory. That is why we distinguish the self-restraint of God, as a condition for the creation of the world and the birth of the Son of God, as a condition for the divine-human temptations, from self-restraint as the redemptive feat of the earthly life of Christ. What in the self-restraint of God was a dispassionate act of divine love, in the divine-human feat of the incarnate Son of God was a matter of struggle and victory. God eternally desires, out of love for man, his salvation and, therefore, eternally desires His self-restraint in the name of man. And the Son of God personally, as one with the Father, desires both the salvation of man and the self-limitation of God. That is why He who came to do not His own will, but the will of the Sender, spoke of Himself: “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to complete His work.” But as one who became incarnate and took upon Himself human limitations and, therefore, had to renounce His limited exclusivity, for which the desire for divine glory was tempting, He experiences labor and struggle during self-limitation and says: “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me.” He, who personally, as one with the Father, and wants one with the Father as the Son of God by nature, by human nature wants something else - and the renunciation of this other, that is, naturally - human will was a difficult feat for Him. It was characteristic of Him to desire the divine, but it was also characteristic of Him to desire the human - equally and equally characteristic. And to think that it was not worth any effort for Him to give predominance to the desire, one with the desire of the Father, over human desire, because the Divine is infinitely more powerful than man, means to misunderstand the mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God. The difficulty of the feat lay in the fact that to the Incarnate the human was as natural as the divine; and just as for a mother the well-being of a sick and weak son is as dear as the well-being of another son, healthy and beautiful, for Christ human desires were as close, dear and strong as desires that were one with the desires of the Father. His struggle was not a petty struggle with petty passions, which a morally strengthened person easily overcomes - it was a truly divine-human struggle. Just as for every person, the higher and more difficult the struggle with religious temptations is, the more vital the divine ideal is in him, because the stronger his desire for divine glory in his given exclusivity; so for Christ, the more difficult the struggle, the more difficult the feat, the more fully the Divinity dwelt in Him. The more natural it was for Him, together with the Father, to desire the salvation of man and His self-restraint, the more difficult it was to accomplish this salvation through human forces. That which in the self-restraint of the Divinity is conceived as a dispassionate act of divine love and what the Son invariably and equally with the Father personally desired in the days of the flesh, as one who freely endured self-restraint, was a feat for the Son of God, since, due to the renunciation of divine glory, the divine life was given to Him not in its omnipotent objective - external manifestation, but in its internal energy, so that for Him it was all the more difficult to renounce the objective - external manifestation glory, the more natural was for Him the desire for this glory, given in inner power, - the more natural were in Him the desires and aspirations of the divine will, given in internal energy. Since the purpose of the redemptive ministry of Christ was to acquire for humanity that divine glory, which He voluntarily renounced, and to acquire man for God - consisted in the self-restraint of the divine - natural will for the sake of communicating divine glory to man and in the subordination of the human will to the divine will, then the power and significance of the divine-human self-restraint, as a feat, consisted in the fact that Christ, personally desiring one with the Father, as one with Him, desiring the salvation of man, refused objectively - the external detection of the divine glory inherent in Him, from the external manifestation of the divine - natural omnipotent will. This renunciation cannot be understood in the sense of a single act, but since it really degraded only the objectively external manifestation of divine glory and did not extend to the internal energy of the divine nature, it was continuous throughout the entire continuation of Christ’s earthly life. By virtue of such self-denial of the divine - natural omnipotent will, on the one hand, which really humiliated its objective - external manifestation and, on the other hand, did not extend to the internal energy of the divine nature, Christ - man had a human will different from the Father, which freely by nature desired the manifestation of divine glory in the limited exclusivity of the human nature of Christ, and therefore - together with the renunciation of the divine - natural will - had to to renounce this other will of the Father - the will of man. Because the free action of the natural human will was conditioned by Christ’s self-denial of the divine-natural will, this self-denial, which constituted His life’s feat, was both a self-denial of the divine-natural will, and a renunciation of the human will other than the will of the Father; but thus this feat of double self-denial was also a feat of subordination of the human will to the will of the Father. Since God in the person of Christ, the Son of God, freely renounced His omnipotent will in its relation to man, from the external manifestation of His glory in human nature, Christ, as one with the Father, desired one with Him; but since, precisely because of this self-denial, for His humanity the objective external manifestation of divine glory was ideal and desirable, then for Him the renunciation of the human will, which naturally desired this glory, was a feat, and it was a feat of His submission to the will of the Heavenly Father. He endured this feat of self-abasement as the Son of God, and thus God’s participation in His victory over temptations was based on His God-son self-awareness: it was a real participation that strengthened His human powers, but it was not magical help. This is how the religious temptations of Christ appear to us in terms of the Christological formula. Since we understand this formula according to the idea of ​​kenosis, we can retain the same ideas from the evangelical, religious and historical point of view. In this case, we must confine ourselves to the facts of the God-son self-consciousness of Christ and His miraculous power, we must build on these facts. However, we can talk about divine-human temptations; we can talk about self-denial not only human, but also divine. What is especially important here is that in the person of Christ God loved the world so much that he gave His Son - and the love of Christ was not only a moral force, but also had a religious and objective meaning, since He revealed the Father’s love for man. Further, remaining on the religious-historical basis of the gospel, we can speak in relation to Christ and about the experience of divine life, both in the sense of the internal bliss that He experienced in the form of divinely absolute, spiritually boundless love, and in the sense of divine omnipotence, which was available to Him in the form of pneumatic inspiration and miraculous deeds. In these religious-historical terms, the temptation for Christ was to use miraculous power for His external glory, and the victory over temptations was accomplished in divine submission to the laws of human limitations. The redemptive significance of Christ’s temptations on religious and historical grounds is fully maintained: Christ’s abstinence from the personal use of miraculous power is interpreted in the sense of a condition for the assimilation of His personal divine-filial self-awareness by all who believe in Him, in the sense of the realization of His divine sonship in the universal human conditions of earthly life. In general, Christological formulas, understood according to the idea of ​​kenosis, are easily explained when applied to the historical feat of Christ. But whether we stand on the basis of Christological concepts, or on the basis of religious-historical ones, we must equally put the temptations of Christ in connection with His redemptive ministry, we must supplement the foundations of His temptations, given in the properties of His person, with the severity of human sin and historical suffering. In this case, we could simply refer to the fact that this was in reality; but it is not difficult to indicate also an ideological explanation for this connection. Whatever the internal foundations of the divine-human temptations of Christ, we must imagine His inner world as given by nature in a state of complete peace and balance. It is easy to understand that Christ was brought out of this state of internal balance by the presence of human sin and historical suffering, which provide the final explanation for the reality of His temptations. The first condition for the possibility of Christ’s religious temptations was given in the fact that He, as the Son of God, was characterized by both a natural desire for divine glory and the given limitations of human life, due to which a tempting desire to manifest divine glory in a given human limited exclusivity could be generated. But if the victory over the temptation to manifest the divine glory in a given exclusivity had the redemptive significance that it united all people with God and made it possible for all of them to participate in the divine glory; then the relationship of the natural desire in Christ - to manifest divine glory in human exclusivity and thereby glorify humanity - to actual limitation became a real contradiction between divine unconditionality and the given limitation of human life only due to the communion with historical humanity into which the Son of God entered. Through communication with people, the Son of God endured the evil and suffering of human sinful life, due to which the conditions of His earthly life really contradicted His divine dignity. In order to enter into living communication with historical humanity, Christ had to take upon Himself the suffering of real human life: He could enter into the heart of man only by taking upon Himself evil and suffering, because to be imagined by the Son of God in real humanity meant to be imagined by Him in an evil and suffering life. For the rebirth of the evil and suffering life of a person, it was necessary not to destroy this life, but to defeat evil and suffering in it and in it itself, in its actual conditions, to create a new life-giving mood, to establish sonship with God in the conditions of a creaturely - limited and full of evil and suffering human life; but in order to regenerate the sinful mood of man and thereby defeat human sin - in order to defeat the evil and suffering of human life, which led man to the sin of self-justification, the Son of God had to take upon himself evil and suffering, be tempted by them and overcome these temptations. – The power that reconciled God and humanity in Christ was love: it defeated evil and suffering in human life, but in Christ it accepted evil and suffering, since only love can justify sacrifice and self-denial. The divine-human religious temptations of Christ, caused by the evil and suffering of human life, which were both accepted by His love and defeated by it, related to the divine-human love of Christ, were temptations for His love. But love, because it is self-sacrifice and self-denial, just as on the one hand it is the source of all-conquering faith, on the other hand it conditions and causes the feat of faith necessary for self-denial: all-conquering faith is possible only for one who loves, and the feat of faith is caused by self-sacrifice. Therefore, the temptations of Christ, in Whom love united God and man, were both temptations for His love and temptations for His faith. And, moreover, since the feat of Christ was divine-human, and His temptations related, on the one hand, to His love and faith in God the Father, on the other, to His love and faith in man, why His victory over temptations was the acquisition for man of the Father’s love and victory over man’s malice and unbelief. Since the feat of Christ was conditioned by His communication with historical man, like the indwelling of the Son of God into the human heart, His temptations related to His love and faith in man, to faith in the possibility of the indwelling of the Son of God in him, to faith in the sonship of God in man, subject to evil and suffering and filled with malice and unbelief; but since in order to defeat the evil and suffering of the world, Christ Himself had to take upon Himself evil and suffering, so as to personally establish His sonship with God in the conditions of a createdly limited and filled with evil and suffering of human life, then His temptations, beginning with the feat of love and faith in man, passed into His personal feat of human faith in His sonship of God, so that He truly affirmed in Himself with human faith sonship with God in the conditions of a createdly limited and filled with evil and suffering life and thereby gave birth to all-conquering and saving human faith and human love - faith in the sonship of God of the Son of Man and love for the Son of God. Having established human faith in the Son of Man and love for the Son of God, Christ defeated the evil spirit of self-justification and thereby brought man to participate in His God-son self-consciousness and united him with God. The meaning of Christ’s victory over the divine-human temptations, as a victory over the natural desire in Him to establish divine glory in bodily exclusivity, was to make all people partakers of the divine glory, to unite them all with God, so that the divine-humanity of Christ would be general and universal, since all humanity is united in Him, and His sonship with God, since it is assimilated by all people. In accordance with this meaning and the real cause of Christ’s temptations was the evil and suffering of human life, which He had to take upon Himself in order to enter into communion with all people and make His personal God-manhood and God-sonship universal. There should be no talk of externally transferring to the sinless Christ the punishment for sin alien to Him. He took upon Himself our evil and our suffering because otherwise He could not enter into living and saving communion with us; the evil and suffering of human life had for Him the same meaning in the matter of uniting man with God, which they have for every person on the path of his union with God: He was tempted by them like us. His sufferings were of a human nature understandable to us - He experienced in them the same religious struggle that every person should experience. That is why His sufferings had a redemptive meaning, because in them He did not externally take upon Himself the punishment for human sin, but took upon Himself human sin itself as a sinful force, endured its power, since He was just as tempted by the evil and suffering of human life, as every person is tempted by them; in victory over these temptations, He could defeat human sin, establishing a new, God-filial mood for humanity in the conditions of its created-limited life, filled with evil and suffering. In order to save man, to regenerate his sinful mood and impart to him His holiness, the Son of God Himself had to suffer humanly, in Himself to create a new human, God-son mood, to produce human faith and human love - in conditions of life full of evil and suffering. The Divine dignity and self-awareness of the Son of God can be acquired by man only through his free love and faith, through his free self-denial from the evil spirit of self-justification. In order to make all people participants in His personal God-manhood and God-sonship, the Son of God had to arouse in them free love for Himself and faith in Himself as an inevitable condition of free love, and at the same time faith in the God-sonship of every person, even if filled with evil and suffering, that is, He had to, having appeared in the humiliation of a person who, like us, is subject to evil and suffering, to arouse loving faith in Himself as the Son of God. In the midst of the human race, Jesus Christ acted as the Son of God and as the Son of man, but the divine in Him was revealed only through the human; outside the boundaries of His humanity, the Divinity did not appear to people, so they could and should have seen the Son of God only in the Son of Man. His appearance among people as the Son of God and as the Son of man demanded from them love for Him as the Son of God and faith in the sonship of God as the Son of man, but in reality it aroused their anger and unbelief. And Christ conquered the world, conquered its malice and unbelief with His love and faith in man. On this side, the temptation for Christ was to “inflame with hatred of the people who were plotting against Him,” to despair of the possibility of their free salvation. But “Christ showed love instead of hatred” and responded to unbelief with faith in human freedom. Finally, taking upon Himself the historical suffering, anger and unbelief of people, Christ Himself became in conditions of carnal abandonment by God the Father, which caused the feat of His faith in His sonship of God, faith in the love of God for man. Thus, moving from the feat of faith of the Son of man in man’s sonship with God to His personal feat of faith in His sonship with God, we at the same time move from the feat of faith of the Son of man in man to the feat of His faith in the love of God for man. The Son of God, in order to regenerate the sinful mood of man, had to overcome both man’s unbelief in his sonship with God and his unbelief in divine love - to defeat man’s unbelief in his sonship with God by faith in his sonship with God and his unbelief in divine love - by human faith in God’s love for man and love for God the Father, affirmed in the conditions of a sinful life. And just as the Son of Man overcame man’s unbelief in his sonship with God in Himself through victory over temptations from human malice and unbelief, so He overcame man’s unbelief in the love of God in Himself through victory over temptations from abandonment by God the Father. Conquering human malice and unbelief, the Son of Man conquered universally - historical, universal temptations. These temptations of mankind throughout the long course of its historical development were expressed in unbelief that the Son of God can be incarnated in man, that man should and can be the son of God, in unbelief in man’s sonship with God - in his divinely filial dignity and in the love of God the Father for him. Taking upon Himself the evil and suffering of the world, the anger and unbelief of people, the Son of God thereby took upon Himself the temptations of mankind and, conquering the first with His love and faith, conquered the latter - conquering with love for man and faith in him, thereby winning for man and for him. The fruit of such a victory of the Son of Man over the world can be the actual communication of the Son of God with man, the indwelling of the Son of God in the human heart and the adoption of man by God, his reconciliation with God. Conquering the malice and unbelief of the world, reconciling and sanctifying man, He reconciled the world to God, by Himself, and through Himself accomplished the cleansing of our sins. The saving significance of the feat of temptations of Christ, the Son of God, was based on the fact that in temptations He became in every way like people. But at the same time, Christ’s temptations were sinless. Ap. Paul calls Christ “tempted in all things like (us) except in sin” (Heb. IV, 15: ἁμαρτίας). This creates a theological question about the psychological reality of Christ's temptations. The difficulty of the question, apparently, coincides with the hopelessness of the dilemma: if the temptations of Christ were sinless, then they could not be psychologically valid and similar to ours; if they were similar to our temptations in psychological reality, then they could not be sinless. Here, of course, the sinlessness of Christ is not so much based on their results, but rather His sinlessness based on their origin. The temptations of historical man are associated with the presence of lust; therefore, Christ has to either assimilate lust in contradiction with the concept of His sinlessness, or, together with lust, deny the reality of His temptations. The history of this issue really gives, on the one hand, teachings that attributed to Christ lust and changeability for soteriological reasons 22, on the other hand, teachings that, along with lust, denied the reality of Christ’s temptations, their similarity to our temptations 23; and, finally, we have, in later theology, completely unsuccessful attempts to construct the concept of sinless struggle in the area of ​​carnal temptations 24 . If the entire area of ​​temptations is limited to carnal temptations in the sense of seduction by evil, then the hopelessness of this dilemma is completely irremovable. Our theory of religious temptations occupies a completely unique place in the history of this issue: it indicates real temptations outside of any positive attitude towards lust 25. The difficulties that have hitherto been associated with the question of the reality of Christ’s sinless temptations absolutely do not exist for this theory. But for the theory of religious temptations, another difficulty arises - to indicate for the divinely filial temptations of Christ the point of application in the area of ​​lustful human temptations. The likening of Christ to people in temptation in everything has the meaning that Christ experienced the power of human sin and therefore can sympathize with us in our weaknesses. Therefore, when studying the entire area of ​​​​human temptations, our task should be to indicate what the power of sin is based on and what, in particular, it has to do with our weaknesses. Sin affects a person with moral evil and bodily suffering. Through moral evil, sin seduces a person (Rom. VII, II), captivates him with its sweetness: he, taking the occasion from the commandment, produces in a person every sinful desire or lust (VII, 8). This is how sin acts on a person because it lives in him (VII, 17), in his disordered nature (σαρξ) and feeds in him an unconscious love for moral evil. For a sinful person, moral evil - the very moral impurity - constitutes the sweetness that he desires: he lusts for evil - ἐπιθυμητὴς κακῶν (I Cor. X, 6, cf. 2 Pet. II, 14). Being itself born of sin (Rom. VII, 8), lust again gives birth to sin (James I, 15), through which a person personally participates in hereditary sinfulness. – In this effect of sin on a person, it is necessary to distinguish two sides: internal - the action of a person’s own lust, which thirsts for its satisfaction, seeks its object, and external - the influence on a person of external objects of lust that excite it. The effect of sin on a person, as temptation through one’s own lust, is described by St. Jacob: “When tempted, let no one say, God is tempting me; because God is not tempted by evil and He Himself does not tempt anyone. But everyone is tempted, being carried away and enticed by his own lust” (I, 13.14). Christ points to the external side of the same action of sin in the parable of the sower, according to which “what was sown among thorns signifies the one who hears the word, but the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and it becomes unfruitful” (Matt. XIII, 22; OK. VIII, 14). In any case, temptation on both sides manifests itself in the form of seduction by sin (Heb. III, 13) or evil (Eph. IV, 22). The Apostle Paul calls temptation in this form a properly human temptation (πειραθμ[ος ἀνθρώπινος, I Cor. X, 13). Satan can act on a person through deception (1 Cor. VII, 5), but God does not tempt a person with evil or desires (James I, 13). This temptation should be called human because it has its entire basis in man himself, in his sinfulness. And external objects act on a person by seduction only because they meet passions in him. Seduction is one type of temptation. Another type of temptation is an attack, or a trial of sorrows (δοκιμή θλίψεις 2 Cor. VIII, 2), or the temptation of suffering (Matthew XIII, 21). – Any suffering, like limitation, humiliation, can be perceived either by feeling or by will. By feeling, suffering is felt as pain; for the will it exists as a limitation. The feeling responds to any suffering with physical necessity; For the will, suffering is possible with the highest development of human consciousness and predominantly religious, it is perceived by the will from the moment when it meets as a limitation with the highest aspirations of the spirit, when it is accepted by a person with a clear consciousness of his highest religious tasks, his divine filial dignity 26. By will, a person experiences suffering (and the power of sin based on suffering) more strongly than by feeling. Perceived by feeling, suffering causes a natural disturbance of nature and an unconscious murmur; as existing for the will, it serves as a temptation to faith. Suffering, or sorrow, gives rise to temptations for a person’s faith in the Heavenly Father and in his sonship with God: sorrow can shake this faith. Ap. Paul knew about this temptation to faith. When tribulation befell the Thessalonians, he, fearing for their faith, although he had predicted their suffering in advance, “sent Timothy to them... to strengthen them and comfort them in the faith, so that no one would waver in tribulation... He sent to find out about their faith, lest the tempter tempt them and make the work of the apostle among them in vain” (I Thess., III, 3-5). Christ himself pointed out in the parable of the sower the temptation from suffering as one of the ways in which sin takes possession of a person: “what is sown on rocky places means the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, but has no root in himself and is fickle: when tribulation or persecution comes because of the word, he is immediately tempted” (Matt. XIII, 20. 21), - means those who “believe for a time, but during temptation fall away” (Luke VIII, 13). Christ pointed out to his disciples the times when “they will hand them over to be tormented” and when “many will be offended” (Matt. XXIV, 10). In particular, it was revealed to the angel of the Smyrna church: “Do not be afraid of anything that you will have to endure. Behold, the devil will cast you from among you into prison to tempt you, and you will have tribulation” (Apoc. II, 10). What kind of sorrows and suffering can serve as a temptation for a person? These are, first of all, the suffering that the world deliberately inflicts on people who are not of this world, and those trials that are sent to people from God. The world loves its own, and on those who live according to its reason, it acts with an easy and pleasant seduction: it serves their passions, pleases their lusts and, completely dragging them into the abyss of destruction, does not cease to flatter their pride. But the world does not like everything that is not its own and even hates, persecutes and persecutes. Christ Himself testified to the hatred of the world towards Him and His disciples. – The tests sent to people from God consist either in commandments that limit a person, as the commandment was given to the first people, or in sacrifices that are required of a person, such as. Abraham was tempted, or in the sufferings that befall a person, as for example. in Job's temptations. And the suffering inflicted on the righteous by the world, constituting a natural consequence of worldly hatred of everything holy, is at the same time determined by the will of God - for all who love Him. “It pleases God, according to the words of the Apostle Peter, if anyone, thinking about God, endures sorrows, suffering unjustly” (I Pet. II, 19). This is how, according to Isaac the Syrian, the sons of God differ from others, that they live in sorrow, while the world prides itself on luxury and peace. For God did not wish that His beloved should rest while they were in the body, but rather He would rather that while they were in the world, they should remain in sorrow, in hardship, in labor, in poverty, in nakedness, in loneliness, need, illness, humiliation, in insults, in a weary body, 27 etc. The seduction of evil and the trial of sorrows, or temptation from suffering, constitute two types of temptations, the differences of which should never be overlooked. Athanasius of Alexandria speaks about these two types of temptations. According to him, some temptations concern the soul, others the body, and others surrounding the body. Temptations affecting the soul are called unclean thoughts, which give rise to sins and false teachings. Temptations related to the body are the cause of blows, torment, persecution, imprisonment and violent death. Temptations surrounding the body include damage to money and property, the loss of children, and the loss of a wife 28 . Isaac the Syrian not only speaks about these two types of temptations, but, comparing them, shows that the temptations of sorrows constitute the highest type of temptations. While a person, in the temptation of desires, is carried away and deceived by his own lust, and the necessity of these temptations for him coincides with the inevitability of hereditary sin, temptations of another kind are necessary in the sense of duty, necessary by the will of God for human perfection. Do not refuse, he writes, from sorrows, because through them you enter into the knowledge of the truth; and do not be afraid of temptations, because through them you gain what is worthy. Pray not to fall into spiritual temptations, but prepare for bodily temptations with all your strength. For outside of them you cannot approach God, because divine peace is prepared among them. He who runs from temptations runs from virtue. I mean the temptation not of desires, but of sorrows 29. The positive meaning of temptation from suffering is based on the properties of human faith. Faith, according to the predominantly revealed teaching about it by the Apostle Paul, is inextricably linked in a person with humility, with the awareness of one’s own weakness, and bold (μετὰ παῤῥησίας) trust in God’s help. On this basis, the word of God praises the weaknesses of human nature, which the Apostle Paul boasted about (2 Cor. XII: 9), who taught that “the power of God is made perfect in weakness” (ibid.). All trials sent from God to man have precisely this goal—to evoke in a person an awareness of his own weakness and a bold hope in God’s help. “Accept it with great joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience, and let patience have its perfect effect, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing” (I, 2-4). “Rejoice,” writes the Apostle Peter, “having now been grieved a little by various temptations, so that your tested faith may be more precious than gold for the glory of Jesus Christ” (I Pet. I, 6.7), cf. Rom. V, 3 – 5 30 ). Seduction and temptation constitute two types of actions of sin 31 on a person through evil and through suffering: through evil on sinners and through suffering on the righteous 32 . Seduction by sinful sweetness is the most common type of temptation of a sinful person. But it does not yet express the full power of the action of sin through evil. This power is revealed more fully in the fight against evil, according to the law: action is equal to reaction. Seduction presupposes the will's sympathy with evil. The more fully seduction operates, the more complete is this sympathy, the less opposition, the less power evil manifests. On the contrary, the stronger the opposition, the more the power of evil manifests itself, the stronger the temptation. It is known that people devoted to passions and lusts experience almost no temptations as struggles, and sin, figuratively speaking, needs too little effort to master them; The severity of temptations, or suffering in temptations, is experienced rather by the righteous, that is, those who generally resist lusts and passions and, even more so, have an aversion to them. The fight against evil has different types: it can be either resistance to lust and passions, according to some calculations, according to the requirements of the moral law, or grief from passions with a real aversion to them. Seduction itself already contains struggle. But this struggle, according to the definition of Ephraim the Syrian, is resistance of thought, tending either to the destruction of passion in thought, or to consent to a passionate thought, as the apostle says: “the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit is contrary to the flesh; they oppose each other” (Gal. V, 17) 33. This is a struggle in the field of human nature itself, a struggle between its various natural aspirations. Although the will takes part in it, it still acts as a natural principle, and not as a personal principle - rational, controlling itself with self-consciousness, rising above nature and objectifying it. When fighting in the field of seduction, the will itself splits, partly deigning to desire, partly resisting it. And during this struggle there is sympathy for evil. This is a partial struggle. The complete struggle opens with the replacement of seduction by aversion to passions and lusts, as objectively given to the conscious will of man. Then evil affects a person with sorrows: these are sorrows from passions, in ascetic expression. Already human language in the very naming of passion indicates suffering. Passion always contains two sides - attraction and suffering. The latter, although it would not be recognized when passion is satisfied, always constitutes the negative basis of passion: unsatisfied passion is suffering. Therefore, in any struggle with lust, it manifests itself as suffering. While you give in to lust, it acts as a pleasant seduction; but as soon as you resist it, it presses on your will with suffering. - Moreover, with the highest development of moral and religious consciousness, when a person objectifies his nature, opposing it to himself as an objective condition of his self-activity, every passion - the very attraction of passion - is completely suffering for him. So to the Apostle Paul (2 Cor. XII, 7), so that he “would not become proud of his extraordinary gifts, he was given a thorn in the flesh, the angel of Satan, to oppress him, so that he would not become proud.” The same apostle, contemplating in himself the confrontation between flesh and spirit, common to every person, “finding delight in the law of God according to the inner man, but seeing another law in his members,” exclaimed under the burden of the evil created for man by sin: “Poor man that I am! who will deliver me from this body of death” (Rom. VII, 22 – 24)? The distinctive feature of this suffering is that it is perceived not so much by feeling as by free will, that it exists as a limitation of the will - and in this very capacity it is called in the language of ascetic writing grief from passions. The difference between this grief and the struggle with passion when seduced by it can be illustrated by an example. Anyone preparing to commit murder under the influence of passion may hesitate for a long time either from remorse, or from fear of punishment, or from natural sensitivity: this is a fight against seduction. The very reproaches of conscience indicate that a person is carried away by passion, which, due to the indicated obstacles, may weaken or be delayed, but does not change the nature of the seduction. A different thing is experienced by a person who sincerely loves his neighbor, wholly imbued with ideal altruistic aspirations, when he suddenly notices in himself an unexpected gloating at the sight of the misfortunes of another, which arises in him completely against his will! He will tremble before his nature, as if he had touched some reptile. Of course, bearing in mind this difference between sympathy for passion and aversion to it, Mark the ascetic writes: joy will follow arbitrary sinful thoughts; sinful thoughts that arise against the intention will be followed by sadness 34 . This sadness from passions gives a truer understanding of the power of evil over man. The power of evil over a person is especially recognized when striving for good out of love for him, when a person not only outwardly follows, but also enjoys the law of God, when he strives not only for good deeds, but also for inner purity. With such love for good, the power of evil, like grief from involuntary passion, is comprehended in all its depth. – And in general, passion brings sorrow to a person every time the fight against evil goes beyond the limits of seduction. In addition to the direct struggle with passion, as with seduction (in addition to resisting it), we also have to struggle with it in its various clashes with good aspirations, when it has the meaning of a negative (limiting) force. Thus, we recognize greed not only as a desire to acquire greater and greater wealth, but also as our weakness, which prevents us from helping our neighbor in the way we would like out of conscious love for him and beyond. In all these combinations, sorrows from passions also serve as a temptation for a person, but this is a temptation of faith that is different from seduction. The difference is that seduction leads a person to revel in evil as if it were sweetness; and in grief from passions, inclinations are a limitation for a person’s free will and cause in him a desire to transcend this limitation, either by satisfying passions in a way that would reflect the person’s self-will, otherwise by satisfying a natural need by illegal means, or by denying those natural needs to which passions are associated 35 . – Sorrows from the passions are a temptation for faith because, when overcome, sorrows from the passions first of all shake faith, and the temptation from them is overcome by faith in the possibility of the manifestation of the divine dignity in any limitation. Temptations by sorrows from passions, as is clear, are not a common occurrence in our everyday life, because they imply aversion to moral impurity. But ascetic writing recognizes these temptations as a state quite characteristic of ascetics. In the word 46 of Isaac the Syrian “about true knowledge, about temptations,” etc., the variability of human nature, well known to ascetics, is noted: “in every rational nature there are changes without number, with every person changes occur hourly, and with those who stand at the level of purity, like cooling with air, a fall always occurs, while there is no negligence or indulgence in themselves; on the contrary, even when they observe their rank, falls happen to them that are contrary to the intention of their own will.” What kind of state is caused in an ascetic by the appearance of thoughts contrary to the intention of the will and, in general, “falls”? A state of struggle in which faith in God's providence is tempted by the involuntary fall. Such a state can be resolved by despair in the possibility of moral perfection - despair, which, together with the desire for perfect dispassion, constitutes two extremes, while true salvation is accomplished by humble hope in God's help, faith, together with a humble consciousness of the measure of human nature. In view of this struggle, all ascetics are given the appropriate advice: “if chaste and modest thoughts are followed by an impulse, let us not grieve and despair, let us not boast during the rest of grace, but during the time of joy we will expect sorrow. The mind should accept painful attacks with joy, as natural and characteristic of us. Let us not give in to despair, like a person who expects something for a feat, even perfect and unchangeable peace, and at the same time does not allow exploits, sorrows, and the movement of something contrary to happen in him, which our Lord God did not find proper to give to this nature in this world” 36, etc. In ascetic writing, we find a whole series of instructions about the fight against evil, through humility and trust in God’s help, and not resistance to passions, as is the case in the fight against seduction; we encounter discussions about the great importance for a person of grief from passions, about a person’s impatience and ignorance of his limits, as the reason for his falls. “When exposed to adversity, writes Abba Dorotheus, we sin solely because of our impatience, because we do not want to endure less than a small sorrow, we do not want to suffer anything against our will... For this reason, adversity overthrows us, and the more we try to get rid of them, the more they entangle us... Adversity then brings great benefit when it is endured patiently without embarrassment. “If passion also disturbs us, then we should not be embarrassed further by this... We do not succeed for the reason that we do not know our limits, we do not have patience in the affairs we begin, but we want to acquire virtue without difficulty” 37, etc. The nature of the fight against evil, when seduction is replaced by aversion to moral impurity, completely changes. In seduction, struggle is resistance to passions; with disgust, it arises in connection with objective natural attractions. The fight against seduction is aimed at moral perfection, moral action; the fight against sorrows from passions gives a positive result to humility and faith - a religious matter. To see all this difference, it is enough to read the following words of Isaac the Syrian. “Humility and doing nothing makes many sins forgivable. On the contrary, without humility, deeds are useless, and they even prepare a lot of bad things for us. What salt is to all food, humility is to all virtue; it can break the strength of many sins. If we acquire it, it will make us sons of God, and present us to God without good deeds; because without humility all our deeds, all virtues and all work are in vain.” Therefore, “give thanks and silently confess to God that you have received a nature so weak and capable of evasion... Keep in mind the poverty of your nature and the speed with which changes will follow in you” 38, etc. It is easy to see from here that sorrows from passions have the same meaning for a person as temptation from external suffering: both serve as a test of faith. That is why the meaning of temptation and grief from the passions in patristic and ascetic writing is usually spoken of inseparably and in the same way. “Because of the love,” writes Isaac the Syrian, which the saints showed towards God because they suffer for His name, the heart of the saints acquires the boldness to look at God with an unveiled face and ask Him with hope. Great is the power of bold prayer. Therefore, God allows His saints to be tempted by all kinds of sorrow, because through temptation they acquire wisdom. - For only then (they recognize the weakness of nature and the help of Divine power) when God, having first withheld His power from assisting them, brings them into awareness of the weakness of nature, the difficulty of temptations, the cunning of the enemy, and how they are endowed with nature, and how they were protected by Divine power, how much God’s power elevated them, and how weak they are in the fight against any passion, if this power moves away from them, so that they acquire humility from all this, draw closer to God, begin to expect His help and remain in prayer. And where would they have taken all this if they had not acquired experience about many bad things, having fallen into this bad thing by God’s permission, as the Apostle says: “So that I would not be exalted by the extraordinaryness of revelations, a thorn was given to me in the flesh, the angel of Satan, to depress me, so that I would not become exalted” (2 Cor. XII, 7)? But in temptations, repeatedly experiencing God’s help, a person acquires firm faith” 39. Due to this meaning, sorrow from passions, just like suffering from the world, is necessary for a person according to the divine will. The very passions and lusts are generated by sin, but for them to be sorrows for a person, this is the will of God. As identical in meaning with temptation from suffering, sorrows from passions are embraced with it in the same concept of temptations of faith, in other words, religious temptations. In the temptations of faith by sorrows from passions, the latter, with the exception of their moral impurity, are manifested from the (involuntary) side in which they are φυθίκὰ καὶ ἀδιάβλητα πάθη. - To put it differently, these natural and immaculate infirmities, which also constitute a consequence of sin, but only completely objective for the will, that is, involuntary and existing only in the quality of limitation and suffering, so that they can be not only in sinful flesh, but also in the likeness of sinful flesh - and these infirmities can be quite the same temptations for faith. Even on the basis of the divinely established limitations of man, as it is given in creation itself or is determined directly by the will of God in one case or another, for example. commandment given to the first people - the same temptations of faith may arise. In fact, in addition to the fact that natural weaknesses, firstly, consist in a genetic relation to passions, since every natural need can degenerate into a passion and every passion is based on a natural need; in addition to the fact that, secondly, they form a subjective basis for external suffering and restrictions, since the latter is accessible only to those who are subject to natural infirmities - in addition to all this, natural and immaculate infirmities themselves serve as a limitation of the will and can give rise to suffering for faith. Attractions that give rise to sorrows from passions can equally arise from both vicious and natural passions. A person’s state of mind does not change depending on whether his philanthropic feeling is delayed by hereditary greed, an ignoble attachment to earthly life with its joys and pleasures, or by natural impotence, natural sensitivity and even temporary personal hunger. The highest aspirations of the human spirit meet in natural weaknesses and natural limitations the same obstacle as in vicious passions, despite the appendage of moral impurity that is exclusive to the latter, which does not strengthen this obstacle, but only gives it a certain coloring. Weakness of health can no less hinder charity than passionate attachment to family. The love of enlightenment is as often suppressed by poverty as by the inclination to profitable pursuits. The fear of torment and death itself makes the path of a good life no less difficult than ambition. And for faith in the divinely filial dignity of one's neighbor, given the general sinfulness of the world, natural infirmities serve as the most powerful temptation. Christ himself calls faith in the sonship of the hungry, thirsty, strangers, naked, sick (Matt. Ch. XXV), etc., a particularly difficult feat, which will form the basis for the division of people at the future judgment into sheep and goats. In general, in the field of religious temptations, the action of natural infirmities can be considered completely parallel to the action of vicious passions. True, usually natural passions in this respect are absorbed by vicious ones, just as pure silver is hidden in ore; but as soon as a person is freed from the admixture of moral impurity with natural weaknesses, he is brought to the consciousness of natural limitations by a wave of temptations of faith. So, according to the meaning of these temptations, as they manifest themselves in universal human history, as they determine the essential content of pagan religions, which is expressed either in the hope of destruction by the miraculous intervention of divine power of the very limitations of man, or in the violent suppression of the natural needs of human nature, the religious consciousness of man, through the shell of subjective impurity, reaches natural limitations, or the natural infirmities of nature. Thus, the religious consciousness of an individual person, if it rises in him in its intensity above the general level of everyday interests, must go through the temptation of the natural limitations of nature. It can be recognized as a general rule that the temptations of faith by the natural weaknesses of nature, inevitable for every person, at least in the form of suffering from vicious passions, at least to one degree or another and in strength, constitute in their undisguised purity the lot of God’s chosen ones. But the same in meaning, are the temptations that arise due to the attractions of sinful passions and the temptations that arise due to the attractions of natural and immaculate passions the same in strength? If we only understand the temptation of desires, then of course the temptation of sinful passions should be recognized as stronger than the temptation of natural attractions: the attraction of sinful passions is stronger than natural attraction. But in the temptations of faith, the strength of the temptation is not directly determined by the strength of the attraction about which it arises, but is created by the contradiction between a given limitation and the ideal that is presented to a person, or the dignity in which he recognizes himself. In the temptation of the first people, according to the biblical narrative, it is not the greed for the apple that constitutes the strength of temptation, but the (imaginary) contradiction that the tempter put in place between the love of God and the limitations He established (man’s commandment). But just as distance is determined not by one point, but by two, and as one approaches, it may not decrease as the other moves away; Likewise, the strength of the contradiction in question is determined not only by the degree of attraction - passionate or natural, but also by the character or height of the ideal. Therefore, even with a theoretical comparison, the strength of both temptations can be equal, but in reality the temptation of faith from natural passions, as implying increased intensity of religious consciousness or the high dignity of the tempted one, should even have an advantage in strength over the temptation of faith from vicious passions. Thus, temptation has several types: seduction by evil, temptation from suffering, sorrow from vicious passions and sorrow from natural infirmities. Seduction is actually the temptation of a sinful person, which has its entire basis in sinfulness itself. The temptation from suffering is a temptation that is completely external (for the tempted one) in origin. Seduction and sorrows from the passions have this in common, that they equally relate to the sphere of action of moral evil on a person, but they differ from each other in the person’s attitude to this evil - infatuation in the first case and aversion in the second, - in the nature of the struggle - temptation by desire and temptation of faith - and by force, since the power of sin is manifested in sorrows from passions more fully than in seduction. Sorrows from infirmities and temptation from suffering are generalized in one concept of sinless temptations of faith, but differ from each other in that temptation is caused by suffering, from which a person turns away, while sorrows from infirmities arise due to natural inclinations that require their satisfaction. Sorrows from the passions not only fit together with temptation and temptation from infirmities under the general concept of temptations of faith, but more often coincide with sorrows from infirmities, or natural passions, in that both arise due to inclinations; however, these two types of temptation differ from one another in that the attractions in one case are sinless, in the other they are vicious. As for the strength of these two types of temptations, theoretically they should be recognized as equal, but in fact, preference should be given to sorrows from immaculate passions. – Sorrows from natural passions have in common with seduction the fact that in them (as well as in sorrows from vicious passions) sin acts through attraction, but they differ from seduction, as from temptation by desire (in which the strength of temptation coincides with the strength of attraction), in that they (as well as sorrows from vicious passions) give rise to temptation for faith, and in that they (as well as sorrows from vicious passions) give a more real, experimental knowledge of the power of human sin, as it manifests itself through the attractions of nature; meanwhile, in contrast to both seduction and sorrows from vicious passions, sorrows from infirmities are sinless in their subjective origin 40. – How sorrows from infirmities give sinless, but real, experimental knowledge of the power of the action of sin on a person through attraction and even more real knowledge than that which is given by seduction; Likewise, temptation gives a sinless, but real, experimental knowledge of the power of the action of sin on a person through suffering 41 . If Christ had to become like us in temptations in everything (πεπειρασμένον κατὰ πάντα καθ’ ὁμοιότητα) in order to experience experimentally the power of human sin, in order to be the author and finisher of faith (ἀρχηγὸς καὶ τελειωτὴς τῆς πίστεως Heb. XII, 2), so that through suffering we may learn obedience (V, 8), in order to be a merciful and faithful high priest (II, 17), who could sympathize with us in our infirmities; then, of course, His temptations were temptations of faith, or - which is also - a feat of obedience, and not deception. It is the temptations of faith that provide the deepest knowledge of the power of human sin: sorrow from passions - about the action of sin through natural attractions and temptation - through external suffering; further, these temptations of faith constitute the highest type of temptations necessary for a person not in the sense of the hereditary inevitability of evil, but in the sense of duty, according to the very concept of the essence of a person’s religious vocation, as his voluntary obedience to God, according to the very meaning of his faith 42. Christ, being like us in this respect in everything, was subject to temptations of faith in both forms: temptation from natural inclinations and temptation from external suffering. So, in the desert, the tempter approached Him after He was hungry, and through the Apostle Peter, who tried, due to the weakness of his faith, to turn Him away from suffering, Satan acted on Him with temptation (σκάνδαλον εἶ ἐμοῦ Matt. XVI, 23). But it is easy to see that those temptations of Christ that related to the attraction of nature acted on Him not through seduction, but through sorrows, and those temptations that arose from external suffering did not direct Him to evil, but were a feat of obedience, a temptation. Both are embraced in the same concept of temptations of faith. But, like ours, the temptations of Christ were sinless. This limits the area of ​​temptations of faith as they apply to Christ. As completely sinless, Christ could be tempted by sorrows only from natural and immaculate passions (πάθη) 43, or infirmities; He was not accessible to vicious passions, the action of lust. He was tempted by sorrows from natural infirmities and temptation from external sufferings, but no more. That the temptations of Christ so defined were sinless in origin is obvious: natural weaknesses and external sufferings, limitations by nature and humiliation in life, are just as consistent with the absolute sinlessness of man, as they are undoubtedly and even strongly assimilated to Christ in the word of God and patristic writing. But was their inner reality similar to the power of human temptations? Christ was subject to those temptations, the strength of which is determined by the limitations of the will and the suffering of faith and therefore depends not on the degree of attraction about which temptations arise, and not on the degree of external suffering, visible torment, but on the severity of the contradiction between this limitation and a person’s own dignity. The severity of this contradiction is created by the distance from the given limitations of nature and the given humiliation of life to the height of the ideal or dignity of man. In each descendant of Adam, this distance extends not so much into the height of the ideal, but into the depths of fall and moral impurity. In Christ, on the contrary, the strength of temptations was determined by the height of His divine dignity. A person with a poorly developed religious consciousness easily puts up with the most disgusting movements of his unclean heart. On the contrary, a holy person notices with excruciating pain the weakest manifestations of sin in his nature. Likewise, the strength of external suffering and humiliation for one is measured by the degree of physical pain, for another, the degree of moral humiliation, the degree of anger and disbelief by which the humiliation is caused. Under certain conditions, even natural infirmities, even anger and disbelief in themselves in inner dignity can constitute the strongest suffering for faith and a limitation for the will, and can give rise to a contradiction for religious consciousness. The proper area of ​​suffering for this contradiction is the religious life of man, his relationship to the Almighty, as a relationship to the Creator of creation, created in His image, and to people, as sons of God. Mostly these sufferings are the lot of the messengers and chosen ones of God. And the temptations of Christ must be considered as temptations of the Son of God and the Savior of the world. Outside of this connection of the temptations of Christ with His divine dignity and His saving ministry, their power, as well as their meaning, will remain incomprehensible. The words of the tempter: “if you are the Son of God” serve as the main key to understanding the power and nature of Christ’s temptations. Let us now turn to the ideological content of the temptations of Christ, as it is conveyed in the Gospel narrative about the temptation of Christ in the desert (Matt. IV, 1 - 11; Mp. I, 12. 13; Luke IV 1 - 13) 44. It is worthy of note that in the appeal of the tempter, according to the Gospel story, Christ is not called ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοϋ, as He was called by a voice from heaven, but υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ. Ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ is the exclusive, or par excellence (κατ’ ἐξοχήν) Son of God, and υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ indicates many sons (πολλοὶ υἱοί). In this circumstance, the saving significance of the temptations of Christ is revealed, as it is revealed in the Epistle to the Hebrews (II, 10 - 18). God's paternal attitude towards man is based on divine condescension. God calls and reveals Himself as the Father of man, not because man is worthy of this by nature or by his deeds, or in general has external dignity, but because of love, which condescends to man’s weakness and elevates him to inner, divinely filial dignity. Thus, the latter does not find a correspondence in the external dignity of man; in other words, the divinely filial dignity is not manifested externally, but is revealed in the weakness of human nature and in the insignificance of human affairs. The weakness and insignificance of man not only do not hinder God’s condescension towards man, but serve as a condition for man’s inner, divinely filial dignity. God bestows upon man a more divine dignity because he is weak. This hidden work of divine condescension is noted by the psalmist. God praises Himself from the mouths of babes and sucklings. Compared to the greatness of heaven, man does not deserve to be remembered and visited by God. But God, having made him a little lower than the angels, crowned him with glory and honor (Ps. VIII). So the Jewish people, in the Old Testament, were chosen by God’s people not for their greatness and power, not for their dignity and virtues, but were chosen by divine love at a time when they were weak and insignificant (Deut. VII, 6-8). So in the new covenant, God was pleased to save the believers through the foolishness of preaching. He has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise, and He has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the strong; He chose both the base things of the world and the things that are despised, and the things that are not, to bring to nothing the things that are (I Cor. I, 21.27-28). What is high among people is an abomination to God (Luke XVI, 15). The power of God is made perfect in weakness (2 Cor. XII: 9). – What is needed for the weakness and insignificance of man to serve as an instrument for the manifestation of divine glory, so that they deserve the condescension of divine love? To do this, it is necessary for a person to endure the infirmities of nature and the suffering of life with love for God, with faith in His fatherly providence, with patience and hope, with renunciation of personal happiness and external perfection in the name of divine glory. Man's faith in his sonship with God, the consciousness of his insignificance and recognition of divine love, patience and self-denial serve as another condition for the condescension of divine love towards man, according to which God grants him the dignity of God. Weakness and suffering from nature, free faith from man - these are the foundations on which the divinely filial dignity of man is affirmed. He must recognize his insignificance and attribute all his dignity to God’s love for mankind. Regardless of his humiliation and suffering, renouncing earthly happiness and external perfection, loving God and God, he must believe in the love of God and in his sonship with God, must think not about what is human (τὰ τῶν ἀνθρώπων), but about what is God (τά τοῦ θεοῦ), to direct one’s gaze not to the visible, but to the invisible. But thinking in human, earthly terms (φρονεῖν τὰ τῶν ἄνθρώπων), people consider the visible favor of God, their personal well-being and external perfection to be a necessary condition for their divine-filial dignity. If God created us for His glory and chose us to be His sons, then we must have personal prosperity and external perfection. Otherwise, how will we know that God loves us like a father, that we are His children? And so, restrictions and suffering serve as a temptation for a person’s faith in his sonship with God. To someone who thinks earthly, it seems impossible that man, the son of God, could suffer. Our minds are especially troubled by the suffering of the righteous. Here the righteous man is humiliated, he is, as it were, “a worm, and not a man, reproach among people and contempt among the people. And everyone who sees him mocks him, saying with their lips, nodding their heads: he trusted in the Lord, let him deliver him; let him save if he pleases Him” (Ps. XXI, 7 – 9; cf. Isa. LII, LIII). The chosen one of God himself is embarrassed by his suffering. For the sake of the glory of God, he considers it necessary to deliver himself from suffering; he does not find it possible for this glory to manifest itself in humiliation: “Will the dead rise and glorify You? or will Thy mercy be proclaimed in the grave, and Thy truth in a place of corruption? will they know Your wonders in darkness, and in the land of oblivion - Your righteousness” (Ps. LXXXVII, 11 - 13)? His faith in the love of God and in his calling wavers from suffering: “Why, he says, is my illness so persistent and my wound so incurable that it refuses healing? will You really be for me like a deceptive source, like unfaithful water” (Jeremiah XV, 18)? – Such unbelief in the love of God, typically depicted by the prophet, is characteristic of all sinful humanity and even characterizes sinfulness itself. It is inextricably linked with a person’s self-loving attachment to the world and what is in the world - to the external and visible, as opposed to the eternal and invisible. It is precisely this self-loving attachment of a person to the world that kills faith by the demand for visible evidence - personal happiness, external perfection; At the same time, it feeds in man fear for his earthly existence and therefore makes him a slave to the fear of mortals and those who have the power of death. Only then, according to the words of the Apostle Paul, when “we walk by faith and not by sight, we are content and desire to be at home with the Lord (2 Cor. V, 7.8); when we look not at what is seen, but at what is unseen, then the momentary suffering of our outer man produces eternal glory in an immeasurable abundance: for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal (IV, 16 – 18). Thus, God desires that man, through patience and faith in suffering and limitations, should demonstrate and assert his divinely filial dignity; on the contrary, a sinful person makes personal well-being and external perfection the condition of his love for God, and in the suffering of his life he finds justification for his unbelief and even enmity towards God. What did God need to do to deliver those who, from the fear of death, were subject to slavery all their lives, to bring them to the glory of sonship with God? For this, He had to “perfect the Leader of their salvation, the Son of God, through suffering”: the Son of God had to “become like people in everything.” According to the same Apostle Paul, “Christ Jesus, being in the form of God, made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a servant, becoming in the likeness of men, and becoming in appearance like a man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even to death, even the death of the cross” (Phil. II, 5-8). “Although He is a Son, He learned obedience through suffering; and having been perfected, he became the author of eternal salvation for all who obey Him” (Heb. V, 8.9). In these general images of the likeness of the Son of God to us, in order to bring many to the glory of sonship with God, there is hidden a double meaning of this likeness - objective and subjective. First of all, in order to manifest the divine-filial dignity in the conditions of human life, without regard to the mood of the people themselves, but on the objective side of the matter alone, the Son of God had to assimilate to Himself the conditions of human life and establish His own divine sonship in these conditions. The subjective side of the affirmation of the divine sonship of the Son of God consists in the assimilation by each person of this divine sonship, or “the spirit of the Son of God” (Gal. IV, 6), by faith in the divine sonship of Christ, so that “by faith Christ may dwell in our hearts” (Eph. III, 17), “so that we all may be sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus” (Gal. III, 26). But this faith of a person in the sonship of Christ must be at the same time his faith in his own sonship of God, in his own adoption of God. To arouse such saving faith, Christ had to become like his brothers in everything, so that a person, seeing in the face of Christ the humiliated and suffering Son of God, would see himself in Him - a man in the inner all-conquering greatness and dignity of the Son of God - so that he, seeing the Son of God himself subject to the conditions of his life, would also see how the conditions of his own life are sanctified by the inner, divine dignity. In order for a person to accept Him into himself by faith in the Son of God, for this it was necessary for the Son of God to become like people in everything; otherwise, a person’s faith in the sonship of Christ would exclude every person’s faith in the possibility of his own adoption of God. In order for a person who is confused and made an enemy of God and a slave of the devil by the suffering of his life to believe God’s love for him, for this the Son of God had to appear in the conditions of human life, full of suffering. But the very thing for which the Son of God had to become like us in everything served as a source of temptation for Him. In order to generate in people faith in the love of God, the Son of God had to become like us in weaknesses and suffering. But the sinful world places external well-being and visible perfection as a condition for its faith in man’s sonship with God. Hence the question arose: will man believe in the sonship of God of the humiliated and suffering Son of God? Thus, Christ, with deep love for mankind, took upon Himself our temptations... The mystery of this real temptation of Christ must be understood in such a way that He was first of all tempted as the incarnate only begotten Son of God, with a clear consciousness of His sonship of God, as a witness of His love sent from God to earth: by condescension He entered the area of ​​human temptations by the feat of His own temptation in order to be a merciful and faithful high priest, in order to sympathize with us in our infirmities, having experienced them experimentally. But having accepted our weaknesses, He was tempted like us, as a man, according to the weakness of our nature. From here, like the temptations of the Son of God, the temptations of Christ tended to ensure that He isolated Himself from the society of people, showed His exclusive attitude towards God and people; but as temptations of man, they tended to give rise to doubt in Him regarding His sonship with God. The tempting thing can be conveyed by a dilemma: either show Your exceptional attitude towards God and people, or You are not the Son of God. By defining the meaning of the words “if you are the Son of God” in this way, we thereby give grounds to understand in a certain way the meaning of hunger in the temptation of Christ and the power of the tempting sentence: “tell these stones to become bread.” – While in the temptation of desires the sensual urge and every attraction of nature has the meaning of a force that directly determines the temptation, in a struggle of a different kind, which includes the temptation of Christ, the attractions of nature have the meaning of suffering or limitation, which, according to human reasoning, must be magically fought or which must be eliminated from human life in the name of man’s sonship with God. Moreover, the hunger of Christ had this latter significance because it served as the point at which our Savior participated in universal human suffering... The temptation for Christ was to stop or destroy His hunger and that of all mankind: to stop the hunger meant, in other words, to satisfy natural needs in a miraculous way, through the divine power that Christ possessed. In this relation of hunger to the omnipotent divine power of Christ, it is necessary to see the most characteristic thing in the first temptation. What was the motivation for the tempting offer and what was its power based on? On the character of human faith. According to the nature of human faith, Christ had to be free from the sufferings and restrictions of human life, so that the people whom He loved so much and whose salvation He so desired would believe in His sonship of God. The tempting offer was closely related to the messianic ministry of Christ: He was tempted, like the Messiah, by the question of the omnipotent power that He possessed - by the question of the application of this power to the goals of the messianic ministry. The question was created by the conditions that a sinful person sets for his faith; the importance of the question, in addition to the immediate goal of Christ's ministry - to generate faith in a person, was affirmed on the fact that the last goal of the ministry had contact with these conditions. What was proposed by the tempter, in some respects coincided with the ultimate goal of Christ’s ministry. About the times of the Messiah, it was predicted from ancient times that then “the desert and the dry land will rejoice, and the uninhabited country will rejoice, and will blossom like a daffodil” (Is. XXXV, I), that then, so to speak, the stones of the desert will become bread. And the events from the area of ​​which Christ borrowed the answer to the tempting offer of the devil, apparently, pointed to the same ultimate goal of the ministry of Christ Jesus. His answer: “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Matt. IV, 4 – Deut. VIII, 3) is borrowed from the story of the forty-year wandering (or temptation) of Israel in the wilderness, as it is set out in Deuteronomy. During the forty-year wandering of the Jews in the desert, the Lord performed many miracles for them (Ps. LXXVII). If there was a shortage of water, He miraculously produced it from the stone; if they wanted meat, He sent them birds; If there was a shortage of bread, He fed them with manna: “He fed you, it was said to Israel, with manna, which you did not know and your fathers did not know, to show you that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord. Your clothes have not worn out on you and your legs have not swelled for forty years. And know in your heart that the Lord your God teaches you as a man teaches his son” (Deut. VIII, 3-5). The history of the forty-year wandering of the Jews in the desert taught them that for His son, as the Jewish people were collectively - filius Dei collectivus - and as every person should be, God works miracles and satisfies his needs with almighty power. So Christ could hope for the same miraculous satisfaction of His needs - and even more than any other person. Christ was not only the Son of God in the sense in which every person should be the Son of God. He was not only man’s representative before God the Father, but He was the only begotten Son of God, sent from Him to man, as a witness of God’s love, He was God’s representative before men, the bearer of His powers. As the representative of God before people, He should, according to human reasoning and according to the visible meaning of the biblical narrative about the forty-year journey of the Jews, Himself possess divine omnipotence and be able to miraculously satisfy the needs of His nature: command that these stones become bread. And this use of divine omnipotent power was not only embraced by people’s faith in the Messiah itself, but was appropriated by every person. All of humanity, in the reality of its historical life, strives for the unauthorized satisfaction of the needs of nature: each person satisfies the needs of nature not as its legal, God-established requirements, out of obedience, but to obtain personal pleasure, visible glory and external perfection. Satisfaction of natural needs for the purpose of personal pleasure and apparent perfection is necessarily accompanied by the violent cessation of some needs, the unauthorized strengthening of others, is always achieved by illegal means and leads to a magical struggle with the limitations and suffering of life. Such satisfaction does not constitute joyful obedience to the will of God, which laid down the laws of the world and the limits of life, but selfish and self-willed resistance to this will. – The final goal of human life, which coincides with the ultimate goal of Christ’s ministry – the fulfillment of the glory of God and the removal of the curse from the world – is achieved by the fact that a person humbly and selflessly endures the limitations and sufferings of life. The consequence of human humility and submission should be the removal of the curse from the earth, the flourishing of the desert. The work of man is joyful obedience to the will of God, and the work of God is the turning of stones into bread. To begin with the latter was the temptation for Christ Jesus. To the tempting offer to turn stones into bread, Christ answered: “it is written: man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God” (Deut. VIII, 3). This response of Christ, when mechanically compared with the narrative from which it is borrowed, seems at least incomprehensible. In fact, as for the Jewish people, the Lord fed them with manna to show that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God. Christ, refusing the miraculous satisfaction of hunger, cites the same words that man does not live by bread alone. After all, only if the tempting offer related to the satisfaction of hunger specifically with bread, Christ’s answer in its mechanical connection with the story of the temptation of Israel would have meaning - the meaning that not only can God feed a person with bread, but also with manna and other miraculous means. But such a meaning is completely inconsistent with either the content of the temptation or with Christ’s renunciation of any miraculous satisfaction of His hunger. As unworthy as Christ would have been if the devil’s first tempting proposal had only been about satiation, just as and even more unworthy would have been His victory over temptation if it had consisted of renouncing only bread as one type of food. – To understand Christ’s answer, you need to delve into the inner meaning of the history of the forty-year wandering of the Jewish people. God led the Jewish people through the wilderness for forty years to humble them, to test them and to find out what was in their hearts, whether they would keep His commandments or not. The Lord humbled him, tormented him with hunger and then fed him with manna to show that man does not live by bread alone. From the fact that the clothes of the Jews did not wear out, they should have learned that God taught them as a man teaches his son (Deut. VIII, 2-5). This history of God's forty-year relationship with the Israelites was, on the one hand, the humiliation, or pacification, of the Israelites, and on the other, a confirmation of divine love for them. Both had conditional, pedagogical application. The Lord led Israel through the desert, tormenting them with hunger and thirst in order to humble them. Natural infirmities and universal human suffering are generally sufficient to generate humility in a person. But in order to humiliate a hard-hearted people, such as the Jewish people, God's providence used deliberate means - a forty-year wandering, hunger, thirst, etc. Similarly, in order to testify to God's love for Israel, the Lord also used deliberate means - miraculous nutrition with manna, non-wearing of shoes, etc. But as God's chosenness of the Jews, for the confirmation of which the Lord used deliberate means, it did not constitute the final goal (it should have been serve as a preparation for the incarnation of the only begotten Son of God and for the adoption of God by all people); Likewise, the exclusive miraculous providence for man cannot be the universal, normal attitude of God towards man. Humility and faith in one’s chosenness by God, sonship with God, which were brought up in Israel by the history of his forty-year wandering and in every person bring up the natural limitations and suffering of life, in turn should become the beginning of free human activity in the spirit of faith and self-sacrifice. Faith and humility must meet limitations and suffering and overcome them with their own strength - humble patience and hope, complete devotion to the will of God, so that then the desert really blossoms - not in the sense of an externally communicated good, but according to the law of faith, in the sense that man himself no longer looks at the visible, but at the invisible. Man himself must introduce into external nature the forces that revive it. In the work of divine providence, humiliation and miracles served as the beginning that led a person to faith as the immediate goal; in the matter of free human activity, the beginning belongs to faith, which must overcome suffering by devotion to the will of God in order to prepare the ground for the action of God’s grace, which creates the divine dignity of man and liberates nature from the slavery of corruption. In this sense, the Apostle Paul writes that “the creation awaits the revelation of the sons of God in the hope that it itself will be freed from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (Rom. VIII, 19.21). – With such devotion to the will of God Christ responds to the tempting offer of the devil. He repeats the words: “man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God,” refusing any miraculous satisfaction of the needs of His human nature, any arbitrary cessation of the limitations and sufferings of life for the sake of personal well-being or visible glory. Man lives not by bread alone - not by satisfying the demands of nature in the name of personal happiness and external perfection, not by spontaneous struggle with natural limitations and suffering, but by every word of God - by complete devotion to the word - to the will of God, obediently - by joyfully enduring the sufferings of life, with faith and hope, patience and humility. Such an answer prescribes humility and patience to each person, and in the mouth of Christ it points to His free humiliation to universal human conditions of life, from which He did not want to free Himself by the power of His omnipotence. Christ could have given an answer to the devil’s tempting proposal that was exclusively characteristic of Him as the only begotten Son of God (κατ’ ἐξοχήν); but He answers as a man. In this way He won victory over temptation for all mankind and for the sake of all mankind. He could respond with divine omnipotence, but he responds with human devotion to the will of God: He does not use divine omnipotence, because this would not benefit man, but (as a man) resorts to the help available to every person. Having used human weapons to fight, He won for man—he gave us victory. By responding as a man, the Son of God thereby made it possible for man to respond to the tempter as the Son of God - by adopting man as son to God. And man is the Son of God: from this self-awareness he must draw strength to fight temptation. If Christ had revealed himself to the world in external greatness and, by the power of divine omnipotence, had delivered man from suffering, He would have redeemed only human flesh and would not have been the founder of that kingdom of the spirit, which flesh and blood cannot inherit (I Cor. XV, 50) and in which God will destroy food and belly (I Cor. VI, 13). Having revealed himself in outer humiliation, He bestows upon man inner, divinely filial dignity. He calls man instead of visible perfection to the glory of God, which is available to him in humiliation, and instead of happiness to bliss, which is comprehended in suffering (Matthew V, 3 - 12). The apparent contradiction between God's love, which, apparently, must manifest itself in external goods, and human humiliation, which must be overcome by faith, is reconciled in the fact that God's glory, which constitutes the goal of human life, and the bliss inextricably associated with it do not deny the given limitations of life and its suffering, but are achieved by man precisely in these conditions, by the power of faith, which looks not at the visible, but at the invisible. The second tempting proposal on the wing of the church was expressed in the words: “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written: He commands His angels for You, to keep You, and in their hands they will bear You up, lest You dash Your foot against a stone” (Ps. HS, 11:12). – This second temptation is in close connection with the first, as indicated by the repetition of the initial words: “if you are the Son of God.” This repetition shows that the second temptation constitutes actually a second attack of the same temptation, the other half of the same dilemma. It’s as if the tempter said this: if you are the Son of God, then do either one thing or the other. The splitting of temptation into two parts is fully consistent with the psychological reality of human temptation. The fact is that sin does not represent, from a psychological point of view, only one opposite of good, but forms two extremes, along the golden mean of which the path of good follows. For example, slavery to sensual passions undoubtedly constitutes one of the severe types of sin, or sinfulness, and the ancient church with great indignation cast out from its midst people who gave full rein to sensual inclinations in the name of Christian freedom from external law. But with the same severity, the ancient church cut off from itself persons who abstained under the guise of piety, but in reality out of disgust, from meat, wine, marriage, etc. The Church considered and still considers as sin both slavery to the passions, and abstinence from natural needs, both in the name of personal happiness and external, self-satisfied, pharisaical perfection - both the unauthorized satisfaction of needs, and their spontaneous suppression, or resistance nature, considering the ideal to be submissive—the joyful bearing of natural limitations. So, in the second temptation, Christ was offered a different extreme, compared to the one He rejected. While in the first temptation Christ was challenged to distrust divine love, now the tempter is trying to draw Him into the sin of exalting faith. – Natural limitation remains in the second temptation as the natural basis of that desire, the object of which is proposed by temptation; it only appears in a different form in accordance with the meaning of this temptation. The tempter puts Christ in a position from which, it is true, a natural way out was possible, but difficult, involving great difficulty and caution, and in which, therefore, divine exceptional help would be appropriate in accordance with the words of the psalm: (the angels) “in their hands they will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.” – Again based on the natural limitations of human nature and already bearing in mind Christ’s renunciation of the spontaneous cessation of this limitation, of the miraculous, by the power of his own omnipotence, satisfaction of natural needs in the name of personal happiness or visible glory, the tempter now proposes a different path in a spontaneous relation to the natural limitations of human nature. He proposes, instead of the rejected spontaneous satisfaction of the needs of nature, the renunciation of even the natural, i.e., conditional satisfaction of these needs in accordance with the laws of human life. After all, the natural needs of nature or the conditions of a limited life are offensive to the pride of the human spirit, not only because they contain suffering (in limitation itself), but also because the needs presuppose satisfaction by conditional means, connecting the flights of the spirit, drawing attention to the petty, that the very laws of human limited life constrain the spirit. One of the possible ways for a person to free himself from natural limitations consists in a spontaneous magical struggle with it (in particular, through the use of omnipotence, as Christ could have done and as a sinful person wants to appropriate it to himself); Another way to the same goal, to freedom from the need to be continuously occupied with the conditional satisfaction of the needs of nature, is to provide this satisfaction to the will of God. The tempter offered this last path to Christ in the second temptation. Should not, the tempter suggested, God take upon Himself the care of the needs of a person so devoted to His will? Doesn’t a person, having completely surrendered himself to the will of God, have the right to count on heavenly help replacing natural conditional means for satisfying natural needs, for fulfilling the laws of human life in general? Doesn’t he have the right to wish that the angels would lift him up in their arms instead of him himself looking for some way out, probably difficult and dangerous, undoubtedly requiring attention and effort? It cannot be said that this tempting offer of the devil has no basis in the area of ​​historical reality. It is no less designed for the actual inclinations of the human heart than the first temptation. Human life is full of contradictions corresponding to the two extremes of the sinful path. On the one hand, it is determined by the mood that characterizes every worldly civilization; this is a complete striving for earthly happiness and the fight against natural limitations in the name of external perfection. But on the other hand, this mood in historical reality is combined with another direction of the human spirit, according to which man not only renounces the mechanical struggle with the limitations of nature and the suffering of life, but even renounces the normal development of the needs of nature, their natural satisfaction, even the instinctive resistance to all kinds of suffering. This is a mystical direction. Affected especially characteristically in Brahmanism and Buddhism and in all kinds of mystical societies, it has many carriers among members of worldly civilization. Even the same person, at one time or another, to a greater or lesser extent, in one way or another, is inclined one way or another. In general, a person of a mystical orientation wants to be only a passive instrument of divine omnipotence. This passivity is not the same as a person’s apathy towards his fate, and even more so it is not submission to providence. A person of this direction, no less than a bearer of opposing views, dreams of happiness and visible perfection, of freedom from given conditions and the suffering of life. But only he hopes to achieve happiness and perfection through the direct action of providence, through the exceptional help of angels, in a word, through a sign or miracle from heaven. This is a man who does not plow the land and prays for manna, neglects enlightenment and seeks the gift of understanding and languages, who, without taking precautions, invites himself into danger in the sole hope of God’s help. This is a person for whom the good and divine coincide with the miraculous and supernatural and are exhausted by the latter, who demands signs from heaven from every heavenly messenger. The more passive he is towards this earthly reality, the more he dreams of magical means of influencing God. Hence his attachment to talismans and amulets, hence his instinctive awe of any magician. Likewise, the Jews demanded signs from heaven from Christ. He was supposed, according to the popular view, to appear in the glory of omnipotence and in the radiance of miracles. So in the second tempting offer, Christ was tempted as the Messiah. Moreover, what the tempter offered again seemed to coincide with the ultimate goals of the messianic ministry. So the psalmist already said: “He will command his angels concerning you, and they will bear you up in their hands, lest you dash your foot against a stone” (CS, 11:12). Christ Himself sent His disciples to preach worldwide when all power in heaven and on earth was given to Him (Matthew XXVIII, 18). Encouraging the preachers in view of the sorrows awaiting them, He told them: “When they lead you to betray you, do not worry in advance what to say to you, and do not think about it; but whatever will be given to you in that hour, then speak, for it is not you who will speak, but the Holy Spirit” (Mp. XIII, II; Matt. X, 19; Luke XII, II; XXI, 14). He said: “These signs will follow those who believe: in My name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will take snakes; and if they drink anything deadly, it will not harm them; They will lay hands on the sick and they will recover” (Mp. XVI, 17 – 18). If Christ had agreed to the second proposal of the tempter, then, it is true, He would have satisfied the human thirst for the miraculous, the people would have willingly recognized Him as the Messiah; but the people's faith in Christ, based on a miracle, would exclude man's faith in his own sonship with God and would not be accompanied by the indwelling of the Son of God into our hearts. The people would believe in Christ, marveling at His miracles, but they would fear Him. Having agreed to the tempter’s proposal, Christ could have imparted to man the heavenly gifts of divine omnipotence, but these gifts, as externally received, could not have manifested themselves in man’s own life. The sinful mood underlying the second temptation of Christ is so destructive that man, treating the divine as only an external omnipotence that must be influenced by magical means, cannot accept this divine into himself as his own internal good: the unconditional is denied the conditional, the omnipotent destroys the limited. The Divine can be accessible to man not in the predicates of the unconditional and unlimited, but as a spiritual good: as such, it is available to him in the limitations and conditionality of his life, and even only in this limitation. Therefore, the divine, as the ideal of human life, not only does not require a mechanical struggle with natural limitations, or an external expansion of the boundaries of earthly existence, but does not put up with man’s passive attitude towards his earthly fate. Not living for personal happiness and external glory does not mean looking at the sorrows of earthly existence as an unusable shell, which the sooner you throw off, the better. Not living for personal happiness and visible glory does not mean relegating the same ideal of happiness and external perfection to a future afterlife, understood in the sense of a chronological continuation of the present, and generally expecting the fulfillment of this ideal from the direct intervention of divine omnipotence. Bliss and divine glory are not the same as happiness from God or external perfection in the future afterlife. And the happiness expected from God is still happiness, and the self-satisfied perfection attributed to the future life is still external: they deny present life. On the contrary, bliss and glory have the significance of the manifestation of divine life in man because man serves as an instrument for the manifestation of this life in conditions of worldly limitation and worldly suffering. To affirm and manifest divine glory precisely in the conditions of natural limitation and suffering of life - this is the calling of man, and on this path it is of great importance. Bliss and glory do not deny the limitations of earthly life, but self-satisfied happiness and apparent perfection; Bliss and glory are available to man in suffering. To live for divine glory means to affirm and demonstrate inner divine dignity in the conditions of life here. True self-denial of a person does not deny these conditions, but consists of patiently enduring God-established conditions of life through faith in divine love, in the patience of the Lord. In the truth that the divine is accessible to man not as a predicate of the unconditional, which denies earthly limitations, but as an internal spiritual good, patient bearing of the conditions of earthly life is also included. To say that a person should seek true divine good within himself means to say that this good is achieved by patiently enduring suffering. The immortal, divine, invisible does not constitute an afterlife continuation of the present mortal, corruptible, visible, and does not deny it, but is hidden in the world, like an idea in a symbol, and is combined with it, like the invisible with the visible. No matter how much a person walks towards the horizon, where, apparently, one can step from the earth to the sky, he will always be equally far from the sky. The path to heaven is through a person’s own spirit. – Accordingly, divine help, not as external and denying earthly limitations, but as mediated by a person’s own moral activity, is determined by his limitations. In this regard, the change with which the biblical saying is conveyed in the tempting sentence is very characteristic. The tempter quotes from the psalm the words: “He will command his angels concerning you,” but omits the following: to guard you in all your ways (CS, II). The psalm generally speaks of the righteous; according to the meaning of the psalm, angelic help is given to a person only when he follows the paths determined for him by God. Man should not deviate from the paths of earthly life. To wait for the cessation of natural limitations and suffering from the direct intervention of divine omnipotence means to tempt the Lord - to tempt, that is, to call Him to manifest external glory, to count on His external help, neglecting natural conditions and means and even asking for danger, and making the manifestation of omnipotence a condition of faith. This exaltation of faith is also unbelief. It is based on the same self-loving attachment of a person to his individual existence, the same disposition towards the external and visible, which prevents him from striving through the shell of the visible to the invisible, through the worldly to the divine. – The words: “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God,” with which Christ answered the tempter, are contained in Deuteronomy. VI, 46: “Do not tempt,” the Jews were told, “the Lord your God, as you tempted Him at Massa.” Brought out of Egypt into the desert, the Jews had to face many hardships. They did not want to endure these hardships for the sake of the Lord: they were a stubborn and rebellious race, unsettled in heart and unfaithful to God in their spirit (Ps. LXXVII, 8). They did not believe in God and tempted Him. So they tempted Him when they lacked water (Ex. XVII, 2); “They tempted the Lord, saying, Is the Lord among us or not” (v. 7)? God gave them water. But they again “tempted God in their hearts, demanding food for their souls” (Ps. LXXVII, 18). And so they repeatedly tempted God (v. 41). If the Jews loved God and His invisible blessings, if they were not attached to the earthly and visible, then they would not ask: is God among us or not? they would not ask for physical evidence of His presence in their midst. Their question: can God prepare a meal in the desert (Ps. LXXVII, 19)? expresses fear for life. They asked: can it? because they measured His power, omnipotence, before which man trembles. Christ calls a person to love in order to free him from fear: whoever loves God does not fear for his life. God does not deny by His omnipotence the limitations of human life, but as good in it He reveals His inner glory according to man’s faith. In order to make man a partaker of divine glory, Christ again responds to the tempter as a man, without separating Himself from the society of men. Having shown Christ all the kingdoms of the universe, the tempter said to Him: “I will give you power over all these kingdoms and their glory; for she is devoted to me, and I give her to whomever I want. So, if You worship me, then (all power will be Yours or) everything will be Yours.” What is the meaning of this third temptation and what is its strength? The third tempting proposal, no matter how it is understood, in any case concerned the area of ​​​​Christ's relationship with people, and therefore should be considered as a temptation parallel (corresponding in another area) to the dilemma that constituted the first two temptations. The most characteristic feature of the human being is, according to the definition of Gregory the Theologian, “the mixture in him of mind and feeling, the combination of invisible and visible nature, the material body with divine life: man is one and the same, earthly and heavenly, temporary and immortal, visible and intelligible, occupies the middle between greatness and baseness, one and the same is spirit and flesh, - spirit for the sake of grace, flesh for the sake of exaltation, spirit, so that to abide and glorify the Benefactor, the flesh, in order to suffer and, while suffering, remember and learn how much he has been disadvantaged by greatness,” etc. Such a relationship in a person between the earthly and the heavenly forms the first area of his free moral activity. But in addition, a person’s moral activity is determined by his attitude towards other people. Society is essential for a person; publicity is as characteristic of him as the combination of the earthly and the heavenly in him. A person must fulfill his calling, whatever it may be, in a society of his own kind. In accordance with this, love for truth, goodness, beauty, in general for the highest good, coincides in a person with the desire that the truth recognized by him be recognized by everyone, so that the good he loves dominates the world, so that all people bow before his highest good. In general, the desire for good is inseparable from the desire for social unity. Society constitutes the second area of ​​moral activity. Both areas have their temptations. But just as a person’s relationships in the second region strictly correspond to his relationships in the first region and are determined by the same mood that is developed in him on the basis of the connection of the earthly with the heavenly, then the temptations of the second region correspond to the temptations of the first and even constitute their complement, as a different side of the same temptation. The temptations of the second area are adjacent to either victory or fall in the temptations of the first. This or that principle, derived from one temptation, requires its application to another area and causes corresponding temptations from this latter. So the victory of Christ over the first two temptations, in order to be a victory over all temptation (Luke IV, 13), caused a third temptation, corresponding to the victory achieved and directly adjacent to it. In the third temptation, the question was raised about the application of those principles, in the name of which the first tempting proposals were rejected, to the work of the messianic ministry, and it should primarily be called messianic before the first ones. Christ defeated the first two temptations by renouncing the manifestation of his own omnipotence and the use of exclusive heavenly help, from giving the world happiness and external perfection, from the revelation of signs from heaven. But in this case, for Him, precisely as for the Messiah, as for the Savior of the world, the question arose about the way, or means, of victory over the world (John XVI, 33). The tempter, answering this question, offered the path of power and worldly glory. The tempter’s proposal indicated power not in the sense of an imperial crown with court splendor, not in the sense of a state principle, as it is applied for its own purposes, but in the sense of a well-known principle that determines the attitude of the sinful world to the rule of truth and goodness: in the temptation it was proposed to apply external power to the cause of religion, to the cause of human salvation. The ideal goal of human relationships is the unity of the human race. But one should distinguish between the unity of the world (or society) on the basis of the admiration of all for truth and goodness and unity on the basis of external power, or coercion, with the aim of giving dominance to truth or goodness. The meaning of the last unity is that man, due to his sinful attachment to the visible, values ​​only triumphant truth, goodness only in external greatness. Without comprehending the inner beauty of truth and the inner greatness of good, he cannot understand persecuted truth and humiliated good. Based on his attachment to personal happiness and visible perfection, he not only expects both as a reward for virtue, as a consequence of goodness, but also considers them signs of goodness and truth. He bows before visible splendor, presuming goodness in it; he recognizes the truth on the side where he sees strength. This is where the temptation arises (which has nothing to do with civic ambition) to use external power and worldly glory as a means of giving triumph to truth and goodness. Just as everything pure can become polluted in unclean hands, everything noble can be defiled in an unclean heart, so this temptation can sometimes coincide with an outburst of simple ambition; but mainly this is the temptation of noble people, the chosen ones and messengers of God, religious reformers. Shouldn't God's chosen one - without any fear of falling into the sin of ambition - first seize the power of the people, appear before the crowd in outward greatness, and then, by the power of power, implant goodness in the human heart? This is a question close to the heart of everyone who loves the truth, grieves for the oppressed good, and even more for those who do not comprehend the inner greatness of virtue. Likewise, the tempter pointed to worldly glory to Christ as a means to conquer all the kingdoms of the universe. This temptation was least of all designed to seduce Christ with power. Its strength lies in the actual mood of the world. Having rejected the first tempting offers, Christ refused to acquire the people's faith through the power of miraculous feeding of people and signs from heaven. But in this case, said the tempter, how can He attract this world to Himself? After all, all the kingdoms of the universe are in the power of the devil (due to the well-known mood of man, his attachment to the external, to the worldly); the world can submit only to the one who conquers it with external power, external splendor, including signs from heaven, the miraculous nutrition of the people - only to the one who adapts to the spirit of the world and through this worships the devil who rules over the world. The temptation pointed to the real evil in which the world lies, and in this indication was its power. After all, a sinful person really bows before truth and goodness only when they appear in the clothes of external self-satisfaction, visible triumph, visible glory. For human reasoning, the most sound, there is no doubt that truth can take possession of such a world only through external violence. On the other hand, Christ, as the Savior, had to take possession of the world. Therefore, He had to deal in one way or another with the evil spirit already reigning in the world. It was in this necessity that the strength of the third temptation lay. To the tempting offer, Christ answered: “it is written: Worship the Lord your God, and serve Him alone” (Deut. VI, 13; X, 20). Especially about these words it can be said that they are written on every line of Scripture. Christ applies them to those circumstances of human life that, according to human reasoning, can most of all justify any deviation from them. The above words are extremely clear and strong: they exclude any human reasoning that is inconsistent with divine reason, any arbitrary deviation from divine truth. A person must remember that bringing people to the Heavenly Father is the work of God Himself: although it is accomplished through man, it does not depend on his own strength. – A person should always worship only God and serve Him alone. Even if there were no danger from ambition, then in any case the visible assimilation of the evil principle of violence as a means necessarily entails internal service to it. In fact, whoever, reasoning according to humanity, considers external violence necessary in the name of truth and goodness, reveals disbelief in his own power of truth and goodness, disbelief in the invisible dignity of man, in the invisible good, and involuntarily assimilates the worldly understanding of good as external. Love for the spiritual, invisible good must coincide with the renunciation of spontaneous, based on human understanding, service to it: the invisible good must be served according to God. “For the preaching of the Gospel, one should not take advantage of human advantages, so that the grace of God is not eclipsed by them.” Worship of God alone in the field of human relationships is expressed not in dominion over man, but in love for him, in serving him in the name of truth and goodness, out of faith in his inner, divinely filial dignity. This faith is a great force that can truly incline a person to the free service of the truth, can awaken his own divine dignity, call to life the best inclinations of his heart, and prepare from his soul an abode for the Son of God. It is by this faith in the inner dignity of man, hidden in his outer humiliation, under the shell of moral filth, that Christ defeated all temptations in general, and especially the third; with it He reconciled the contradiction from which this temptation arose. This peace, as it can be acquired by external force, is not needed for the kingdom of God; but people who are under the power of the devil can be drawn to the Father by another force - the power of faith; with this latter the world can be conquered. Christ was the Author and Finisher of this power (Heb. xii. 2). “My kingdom,” He said to the representative of the worldly authorities, is not of this world: if My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would fight for Me, so that I would not be betrayed to the Jews; but now my kingdom is not from here. Pilate said to Him: So are You a king? Jesus answered: You say that I am a king. For this purpose I was born and for this purpose I came into the world, to testify to the truth; everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice” (John XVIII, 36.37). He has overcome the world (John. XVI, 33), but precisely because He did not come to be served, but to serve and give His soul as a ransom for many (Matt. XX, 28). He conquered the world by faith in his own power of the truth of man's sonship with God, by faith in the inner, free, rational life of the Son of God in the hearts of men. True unity of human society can only take place on the basis of the love of God and the free assimilation of it by all people. The same love that should unite a person with God will unite all people with each other; the same faith in the inner dignity of man should determine the mutual relations of people. Whoever wants to be first must be a slave (Matt. XX, 27). Any external forceful aid in establishing the truth exposes disbelief in its own power, disbelief in God and distrust of man and therefore leads to the worship of an evil spirit. Ecclesiastical history of Christian peoples By victory over temptations from the evil spirit, Christ confirmed His sonship with God, His inner, divinely-filial dignity, in the conditions of a createdly limited human life filled with suffering, and thereby gave rise to a more divinely-filial mood in man. He did not magically free people from the suffering of his life, but a person’s godly mood serves as a force that internally liberates a person from the power of the evil spirit, internally cleanses his nature and fulfills God’s truth about man. By generating in a person a more Godly mood, Christ truly redeems him from the power of the evil spirit, purifies his nature and reconciles him with God. The liberation of man from the power of the evil spirit, the purification of his nature and his reconciliation with God are the immediate fruits of Christ’s victory over temptations. These are the consequences for man of the victory of Christ. But in order to be redeemed, in order to benefit from the fruits of Christ's victory, a person must assimilate this victory itself. Spiritual victory is not like violent conquest and material acquisition, which can be enjoyed not only without participation in the labors of the conquerors, but even without knowledge of these labors. Every spiritual acquisition, paid for by heroism and accompanied by freedom at the beginning, must be a free act of heroism in its fruits. – If the miseries of life, which led a person to self-justification and defeated by the feat of the Son of God, are not destroyed by Him magically, but are defeated in the depths of the human spirit as anger and unbelief, as self-justification, then the fruit of the victory of Christ that a person must learn does not consist in external and material benefits, but in a God-filial mood and self-awareness, as the real internal cause of freedom, holiness and bliss believers. But mood can only be a free matter of the person himself; a change from a mood of self-justification to a mood of being more filial with God can only be the fruit of a person’s free exploit. How Christ, in order to establish His sonship of God in universal human conditions of life, had to endure the free feat of religious temptations; Likewise, every Christian, in order to assimilate God’s filial self-consciousness, must endure a similar free feat. This feat of a Christian presupposes, firstly, the full and free development of his natural life and, secondly, his struggle with suffering in the conditions of this very natural life. – To be a Christian means to be a bearer of Christ, to be a church of God, a participant in that divine content of life, which was confirmed by the feat of Christ in the conditions of human life. The fullness of divine life is given to believers in the person of Christ as a fact. But just as in the life of Christ the fullness of divine good was revealed in the freedom of universal human development; so in Christians the spirit of Christ must be revealed in all the fullness of natural forces and historical development. This development must be free and complete. The Christian is the bearer of the Holy Spirit, the bearer of divine life; but as a bearer of the Holy Spirit, he must be aware of the height of his dignity, and this consciousness must serve as the basis for his free natural development; as the bearer of the divine Spirit, he is called to a free life, having in himself a guarantee of the dignity and rationality of this life. And the grace imparted to a Christian sanctifies all aspects of his freely rational life; the sacraments in their totality embrace the whole of human life, give the Christian the grace necessary for the fullness of his life, and call him to the fullness of his human development. – But if, by the power of the victory of Christ, accomplished by Him in human humiliation, man must rise together with Christ in all the greatness of his God-like nature, enter into the God-human union in all the strength of his natural development, then this development, in order to be development in the name of Christ, must be guided and inspired by the divinely filial mood of man. And this is the basis of the Christian’s feat. A person’s own godly mood is a necessary condition for his freedom, holiness and bliss. However, internal good cannot provide content for the fullness of external life, and grace, acting invisibly, does not change its natural character. The completeness and freedom of a person’s natural development becomes a feat for him, since this development must be freely combined with a divinely filial mood and dignity. The content of this feat is created by the conditions of his natural life, which is createdly limited and full of suffering. The Christian is called to the fullness of his natural development, but natural development is subject to physical and moral weaknesses. In view of these conditions, the Christian’s feat is defined as his struggle with the limitations and weakness of his natural life. This is why the fullness of his natural development is required, so that the sufferings of life are defeated in all the fullness of their manifestation and so that, by the power of this victory, the divinely filial mood spiritualizes the entire natural life of a Christian. So, the essential moments of a Christian’s struggle with religious temptations are made up, on the one hand, by the fullness of divine life, given in Christ and requiring for the assimilation of it by every person the fullness of his natural life and its freedom, and, on the other hand, by the action in the Christian along with the grace of the suffering of his natural life. The first moment of a Christian’s struggle requires from him the free and complete natural development of his humanity in the name of Christ - a free feat; the second point indicates the content of this feat - the fight against the suffering of natural life. The first moment of victory is achieved in a Christian by his confidence, boldness and freedom in the name of the Son of God, and the second moment of victory is achieved by his self-denial in the name of Christ, love for Him - victory is achieved by love and faith, which in man himself establishes a free relationship between the human and the divine, the conditional with the absolute, the natural with the grace-filled. The first temptation for a Christian may be a magical view of grace, a passive attitude towards it, as a temptation to leave the whole business of life to mysteriously and unconsciously acting grace; the evil and suffering of human life, which determine the content of the Christian feat, make the Christian’s faith in the truth of the divine life given to him a feat. If faith in the fullness of the divine life revealed in Christ and communicated to the Christian may be in danger of passing into a dead and passive expectation of the salvation of man from the exclusive action of divine omnipotence; then for a Christian, when he encounters the evil and suffering of life, there may be a danger of doubting his faith in the incarnate Son of God and the salvation of man accomplished by Him. He is not a Christian who does not believe in the Son of God and does not love Him; but he who believes in the Son of God and is ready to love every person as the son of God may weaken in his love for this or that person when faced with the humiliation of the latter, which serves as a temptation for his faith in the sonship of God of this particular person, whom he, however, can only love as the son of God. And if this fact can be a danger to a Christian’s faith, then his affirmation of the divinely filial mood in the historically given conditions of life should fulfill his divine-human calling. Just as the fullness of the grace imparted to him should not serve as a reason for passively waiting for a magical salvation; so the fact of evil and suffering should not push him away from real life. Since the spiritually divine life given to every Christian at his spiritual birth serves only as the basis of his freely rational activity, and sets the latter goal as the complete embodiment of the divinely-filial mood in a historically developing life, the Christian’s own freely rational life consists in his feat (ἀγὼν) of struggle against religious temptations. This is, first of all, the personal feat of every Christian. Christ brings man into personal communion with God; Therefore, in Christianity, each human person is a goal in itself and each personal feat has meaning, since Christ must dwell in the heart of every Christian. The personal feat of a Christian embraces his entire life in all the fullness of its development. In view of this completeness of development and diversity of natural characters, the individual feat of Christian life can have various manifestations. However, it remains united in meaning and essence, since it must always lead to one goal - to a person’s personal, God-filial mood; and due to this identity of the meaning and essence of the feat of each individual life, its various forms are only random in nature and their study can only have pedagogical significance. However, the Christian feat is not limited to individual life: going beyond its limits, it has its own development, although governed by a unity of purpose, but representing different historical periods, each of which, being necessary in the general course of development, has its own specific meaning. The personal feat of all Christians merges together in the historical life of Christian peoples - in the history of the Christian Church - it manifests itself as a church-wide Christian feat, constituting the essential meaning of church-wide Christian life. The personal achievement of all Christians merges into one. And this, firstly, because, while remaining united in meaning and essence, the feat of every Christian coincides with the feat of all others: every Christian desires the indwelling of the same Christ in his heart, everyone encounters the same evil and suffering of human life. Unity of purpose and conditions creates a Christian society. This is not enough. The personal feat of a Christian merges with the feat of others, secondly, because every Christian, striving to establish sonship with God in his life, in this striving finds an irresistible impulse to affirm the faith of all in his sonship of God and his faith in the sonship of all. Truth, goodness and beauty are one; and there is no person who, while he himself worships a certain ideal, would indifferently endure the disdain for it from other people. By affirming faith and love for the Son of God in himself, a Christian naturally desires from everyone else faith in his sonship with God and love for himself as the son of God, and this desire has its reverse side his own recognition of the inner dignity of all, his own faith in the sonship of all. Thus, the feat of every Christian passes on to all other people and from them returns to him again. This forms the basis of the internal, invisible connection of Christian society - that connection that, for the sake of ten righteous people, saves the world, which makes everyone suffer for the evil of everyone and makes everyone responsible for the evil of everyone, but which also gives everyone the opportunity, according to the measure and breadth of his love for his neighbor, in the name of Christ, to bear the sins of many and save them by faith in the Son of God. Such a general church Christian feat, in which the personal feat of all Christians merges, creates church Christian life, constituting its essential content. - Church historical life is not only the replacement of one Christian generation by another, - it follows the laws of a certain development, which leads to certain goals: despite the personal religious and moral level of Christians, sometimes increasing or decreasing in one era or another and in any case independent of the religious and moral state of previous eras, - the development of Christian church life occurs continuously and continuously moves forward towards a specific goal, affecting the spirit of entire Christian communities. This is the definite goal of church-historical development in the grace-filled sanctification of nature and the world, in the creation of Christian forms of thought and life. Church feat expresses the essential meaning of the general church historical life and constitutes the own life of the church. The meaning of this feat, by analogy with the individual Christian feat, is the complete development of the natural human principle with the fullness of the divine life given through Christ, and the establishment of a free relationship between the human and the divine, the natural with the grace-filled, the worldly with the spiritual - that relationship in which the human is imbued with the divine, while maintaining the independence of the latter, the natural acts together with the grace-filled and the worldly is spiritualized. The content of the church-wide feat is again defined as the fight against evil and suffering in natural life. But just as the fruit of church feat is reflected not in the individual religious and moral state of the members of society, but in the spirit of the whole society, expressed symbolically in general church institutions and regulations, so by evil and suffering, against which the church feat is directed, is meant not evil and suffering of individual human life, but natural - social ulcers. Just as in a Christian spiritual good meets with the imperfections of individual natural life, so the church feat meets with the disorganization of natural and social life: church life meets with the life of the old pagan society, with worldly civilization, with the state system. If the Christian feat is expressed in the free and full development of the natural human principle with the fullness of divine life, then state life, as the highest form of natural human life, should not be rejected by the church; if the content of the Christian feat is the struggle against the evil and suffering of natural life, then state life, sanctified by church grace, must be cleansed of its pagan content: this constitutes the church’s own task in its relation to the state. The essentially free relationship of Christian spiritual perfection to natural development is established within personal life, but it is also expressed symbolically in the visible relationship of the church to the state, in church-state institutions and regulations. However, the relationship of the church to the state gives rise to ecclesiastical feats due to the unity of the main (human) factor of state and church life: this factor is nationality. The state is a form of public people's life; Each of the elements of civilization receives a unique coloring and an original direction depending on the natural qualities of one or another people. It is through the power of Christian peoples that the relationship between the principles of the human and the divine is established under the symbolic relationship of the church to the state. The Christian people are the collective ascetics by whom church life is accomplished. Pagan civilization is one in its essence, but the peculiar spirit of one or another people creates a variety of relationships between the church and the state and creates periods in the history of common church Christian feat. Christianity does not deny the participation of natural popular forces in the creation of church history, but each of the peoples, when they enter the arena of church history, faces a feat in which free and at the same time selfless activity is required. These demands are contrasted, on the one hand, with the passivity with which the Christian people can relate to the action of divine grace; on the other hand, the demands of Christian achievement are opposed to religious pride, to which one or another of the Christian peoples may succumb in the consciousness of their chosenness by God. In a strict sense, one can speak of a Christian people, as well as of a Christian state, Christian science, Christian politics, Christian marriage, only in a historical and not an essential sense. Essentially, a people cannot be Christian, just as there cannot be a Christian marriage, a Christian state, science, politics, but there can be historical experiences of creating a Christian marriage, a Christian state, Christian science and politics, and there can be a historical period of Christian self-awareness among people and peoples. This is the ecclesiastical Middle Ages, more precisely limited than the civil Middle Ages. Of course, these experiments could not be successful, and most importantly, this self-awareness could not cover the entire content of people's life. Christian forms of life created a special symbolically - ascetic atmosphere and as a result, they revealed more the weaknesses of the people's geniuses than their strength. In this case, it is especially appropriate to remember the fragility of straw buildings and distinguish between serving Christ and using Christianity for worldly interests. However, in the sense of the personal salvation of the national genius, in the sense of its historical and ecclesiastical significance, the erection of a straw structure of church symbols makes it possible to talk about a Christian folk feat. A person’s free participation in Christian salvation is based on his free, life-experienced knowledge of the evil of those paths that are rejected and defeated by Christ. Since the prospects of these paths transcend the boundaries of individual life, in contrast to the positive spiritual good, the bearers of which are individuals; in so far as the heroic deed of the people turns out to be appropriate in Christian history. Just as Christ defeated temptations from the evil spirit for all humanity and for the sake of all humanity, so the Christian peoples themselves recognize through their own experience the futility of those paths that Christ rejected. This experience, already in view of the completed victory of Christ, cannot be an indefinite wandering of the human desire for perfection and happiness, but as being in direct relation to the victory of Christ, to the inner good bestowed by Him, according to its final results it should lead to the free union of natural human life with Christian truth. The natural-historical development of Christian peoples, in order to be a development in relation to Christianity, must, in its religious content, be directly related to the threefold type of temptations of Christ, which exhausts the three categories of religious-human relations. But since, at the same time, this development has the meaning of the Christian peoples’ experimental knowledge of the futility of the paths of religious salvation rejected by Christ, the religious temptations of the Christian peoples should follow in the reverse order compared to the temptations of Christ, just as the first step of a ladder when ascending should be the last when descending. V. S. Solovyov, who only owns the idea expressed about three religious temptations in the history of the Christian church, with the usual depth of thought reveals the emergence of the first of them. “The historical emergence of Christianity divided all of humanity into two parts: into the Christian Church, which possesses divine truth and represents the will of God on earth, and into the world that remains outside Christianity, does not know the true God and lies in evil; and now external (i.e., those who have externally accepted Christ) Christians can feel the need and even accept it as their duty to conquer this entire external and hostile world to Christ and His Church, and since the world lying in evil will not voluntarily submit to the sons of God, then to conquer it by force.” In the opinion of our philosopher, “a part of the church led by the Roman hierarchy fell to this temptation of religious lust for power, and carried away with it the majority of Western humanity in the first great period of its historical life - the Middle Ages.” But justice demands that we say that the “eastern sister” of the Catholic Church, the Byzantine Church, did not remain alien to this sin, although they carried out their power-hungry aspirations in different forms: while the Catholic Church, apparently subduing state power and adopting its methods, yielded to the devil rather internally, the Byzantine Church apparently submitted to state power in order to win it over to its side and use it in the relations of church power to to the flock, to heretics and unbelievers. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that the most historical vocation of the church in the first period of its existence pushed it towards the path of power. In fact, the first calling of the church was to subjugate the pagan world to Christ, defeat it, expel pagan gods from all spheres of natural and social life and extend the kingdom of the one Heavenly Father to all spheres. This is precisely the purpose that the symbolically blessed ascetic sanctification of the filthy pagan world served. This attitude of the church towards the pagan world came so close to the idea of ​​ecclesiastical power that the temptation to lust for power was almost inevitable. However, before giving rise to the practice of ecclesiastical authority, Christian truth must receive ecclesiastical expression and become orthodoxy. This church task was fulfilled by the feat of the Greek people. The task of the Orthodox expression of Christian truth required the people's renunciation of national exclusivity and the universal unity of the church. The first enemy of Christian truth is the arrogant spirit of the people, exalting itself in its worldly wisdom, proud of philosophical knowledge, partial, capricious and self-loving. The national pride of a people who have achieved far in worldly civilization, who have made rich acquisitions in folk wisdom, who have given birth to great minds - this national pride is devoid of a sense of Christian truth. The time of the ecumenical councils was devoted to the positive definition of Christian truth: this definition constituted the own life of the Greek Church, and all the forces of the Christian Greek people were devoted to the task of this definition of Christian truth. With a subtle, dialectically developed mind, with a habit of mental work strengthened over centuries, with a richly developed language capable of expressing deep thought and its various shades - the Greek people, even with their pagan development, were prepared for Christian wisdom. Pagan gnosis provided logical formulas for Christian truth and this was its positive significance, but it also sought to penetrate the secrets of the Christian heaven, to give content to the Christian confession, and from this side it was an almost inexhaustible source of heresies until it was finally suppressed by the people's Christian feat. This feat, unprecedented in its kind in history, testifies both to the great powers of the religious genius of the Greek people, and to the deep inner rebirth that they experienced under the influence of Christian grace. This is a feat of renunciation of national pride, of national traditions brought up in the spirit of paganism - of all popular manifestations of worldly civilization - everyday, civil, scientific, artistic. Christian truth became Orthodoxy on the basis of the Greek language and Greek philosophy. But - a wonderful thing - the name Hellene, with which was connected the entire pagan past of the Greek people, all its worldly glory, all the traditions and testaments of its ancestors, all national aspirations - this name Hellene in Christian Byzantium was the name of a pagan, an idolater - adherence to Hellenism was accused as adherence to paganism and was punished as the latter. During the later, more reasonable and deliberate persecution from a pagan point of view, raised by the Emperor Julian against Christianity, the banner of this persecution was Hellenism - Hellenic paganism with all the forms of its folk life. And the new victory of Christianity over Julian was not only a victory over paganism, but also a victory of the Greek people over their pagan nationality, over the spirit of their national pride. The name Hellenes was so hated and so not reconciled with the feelings of the Christian Greek people that even the inhabitants of Hellas were more willing to be called Hellas (ἐλλαδικοὶ), avoiding the name Hellenes. This continued until the dogmas of faith were precisely defined and until heretical trends in the field of Christian theology were finally condemned - until the danger from Hellenism passed. The attitude of Byzantine society towards Hellenism changed significantly only from the twelfth century. Such a renunciation of the Greek people from their nationality gave them the opportunity to completely devote their spirit to the service of Christian truth - gave them the opportunity to use all the rich treasures of Greek philosophy, Greek art and language as a form for Christian truth, but at the same time preserve Christian wisdom and Christian art from the admixture of pagan elements, from pagan content. This explains the truly amazing phenomenon that the Greek church fathers were brought up on pagan philosophers, that Hellenic wisdom served Christian theology. Pagan wisdom remained essentially unchanged, its inclinations and influences were still imbued with tendencies of national pride; but in the depths of the soul of every Christian theologian a revolution took place, thanks to which method and form were separated from content, the general was cleared of the impurities of the individual and narrow and served the new Christian content. Each of the Christian theologians was an ascetic. This is the reason for that truly Christian humility that created ecumenical councils that united the entire Christian world for the sake of Christian truth and on the basis of this truth. The Greek people, the only educated people at that time, did not declare anything at the ecumenical councils about their national claims. – Truth must dominate the world, but it should not serve as an instrument for the domination of the one through whom it is revealed. In the name of this truth, it was necessary to recognize the final judge in resolving Christian disagreements not as the exact formulas of logic and philosophy, but as the general agreement of Christians; in the name of this truth, it was necessary to give the first voice not to the scientist, but to the ascetic and hermit, no matter who he was by origin, as long as his voice was the common voice of all Christians; in the name of this same truth, it was necessary not to restrict the freedom of all beliefs and to see the struggle of parties for the sake of a single truth. Among this discord of opinions, apparently irreconcilable and often dividing the entire Christian world into hostile parties, the full power of faith was felt - faith in the truth of the one universal church - that faith that does not allow violence and has hope for the reconciliation of all warring parties. This faith created ecumenical councils, in the person of which the entire Christian world represented a single flock of the one Christ. Another side of the Christian feat for the Greek people arose in the area of ​​relations between the state and the church. – Constantine was the founder of the Christian state and Byzantium, which he built, was the first center of state life for the Christian people. Ancient Rome was imbued with a pagan spirit, which was embodied in all its institutions, in its art, science, architecture, which lived in family, social and state traditions: this necessitated the need for a new capital of the Christian state, the fate of which, from its foundation, was closely linked with the fate of the entire Eastern Church. In the newly built capital, state life flowed in close connection with the life of the church. The sovereign himself was the general epistemonarch of the church and his participation in church affairs was as great as his authority in the religious life of his people. The connection between state life and church life was so close that neither significant changes in the state government remained without important consequences for church life, nor did more or less general, more or less important facts of church life pass without leaving a mark on state life. Under such conditions, there was a danger for the church to fall under the influence of state power and lose its freedom. There was all the more reason to fear such claims of state power that in the Greco-Roman pagan state, secular power was at the same time the supreme power in religious affairs, the emperor was also pontifex maximus. And indeed, to the extent that the Greek people managed to overcome national weaknesses in the matter of creating universal Orthodoxy, they were so weak before the pagan power in their national home region - in the field of internal relations between the church and the state. And this was not a concession to the external violence of state power, but representatives of the church voluntarily put on the yoke of dependence on state power. From the actions of the ecumenical councils it is clear that the primates of the church who participated in them joyfully welcomed the church activities of the emperors for the benefit of Orthodoxy, pointed to this activity as one of the essential duties of sovereigns, and sometimes, in a fit of delight, even attached the title of bishop to the emperor. The Church submitted to state power in order to win it over to its side and use it in its interests. The struggle of the Orthodox against heretics has always taken, first of all, the form of competition in attracting state power to their side. True, in this case it came to such extreme manifestations of state absolutism that the church could not tolerate. Emperors often wanted to be categorical judges in matters of faith, issued confessional formulas, and acted in favor of heretical opinions. These extremes evoked the feat of that faith that “does not fear power, no matter what happens and no matter what it itself suffers,” (i.e., faith), which, with all its modesty and humility, “when it comes to God and they dare to rebel against Him, then, despising everything, has one God in mind,” which “despises the fear of the world” and “is not afraid of external warfare.” Reading the church chronicle during the period of the ecumenical councils reveals to us an innumerable number of ascetics of the faith who did not hold back the truth in the face of the rulers and even “wanted to be among those who strive and are persecuted for the truth.” But these feats of faith leaned entirely towards universal Orthodoxy, here they were successful and here they found their support. They were not only balanced by the abyss of court intrigues and backstage moves in dogmatic movements, but - what is most important - universal Orthodoxy with its ascetics did not in the least constrain state power in its internal relations with the church, which were alien to the spirit of religious freedom. The church stood in alliance with the state, and this alliance was harmful to it both in the services and privileges that the state provided it, and in the obedience with which it paid the state. This harm, perhaps, was covered by the historical significance that this church-state union had in the matter of symbolically consecrating the entire fullness of state life, in the matter of expelling traces of pagan polytheism from all its corners. But as paganism receded into the realm of tradition, the union with the state for the church brought only religious damage. In vain did later Byzantine theologians develop the theory of church freedom, as that freedom of Christian truth, which could not be shaken by any claims of imperial power; in vain they preached that Christians submitted to state power not out of fear, but in conscience, as free sons of God, they submitted insofar as obedience did not harm the truth, since divine love and faith did not tolerate it (ὅσα μὴ τὴν θείαν ἀγάπην καὶ πίστιν ἐπιλυμαίνεται, πειθηνίους εἶναι τοῖς νόμοις παρασκενάξειν), - these theories spoke only about what did not happen in reality. The combination of a predominant dogmatic interest with a passive attitude towards state power gave the religious life of Byzantium an abstract-contemplative character and the uncertainty of its results in relation to the natural development of popular forces spoke of the exceptional predominance of church-traditional principles over the freely rational human principle. As in relation to science, the Greek Christian people took advantage of pagan enlightenment to express Christian truth, but did not take advantage of the freedom of the Christian spirit to develop enlightenment itself, due to which the time of Byzantine history was a time of gradual decline of classical education; so in relation to state life, the Byzantine church took advantage of it in the interests of the church, but limited itself to the grace-symbolic sanctification of state life and did not take advantage of the principle of Christian freedom to create a free state life, a free culture, as an area not only independent of the church, but also irrespective of it. Finally, abstract dogmatism, as dogmatic activity declined, elevating loyalty to church tradition to the level of a fundamental virtue, could not fill all religious feeling and led it to ritual practice, which found support in cultural decline and popular ignorance. In these features, Byzantine Orthodoxy was transmitted to Russia, which, in the extremes of, on the one hand, monarchical autocracy in the church- in affairs and, on the other hand, ritual belief brought the principle of Byzantium to its final limits. On the contrary, in Western European history Christianity became related to a widely developed cultural principle. The civilization of Western European peoples differs significantly from any of the ancient pre-Christian civilizations; it differs in the completeness of development of all human principles and the freedom of this development. Take any of the ancient civilizations, you will involuntarily notice monotony and despotism in its development. Due to the first feature, each of the ancient civilizations is imprinted with its own special, individual character, and just by its name, such a definite idea arises in the mind that the character of any other civilization is remembered only by contrast, and not by similarity. It is enough just to mention the despotism and stagnation of ancient civilizations. Differing from them, Western European civilization, with all its unity, with all the close connection of the lives of its individual peoples, is full of such diversity in its development that in the history of this development it is impossible to indicate either a specific place or a specific time when in the life of one or another people exclusively one or another principle prevailed. All the principles of state and social life in the history of European civilization are in constant struggle, in which none of them can retain exclusive dominance, but each makes room for all others, limiting itself for their sake. This struggle of all sorts of principles already indicates that freedom of human development is the first and last goal of European civilization. The desire for personal and social freedom is an undoubted fact of Western European life. – But with all the completeness and freedom of natural human development of Western European peoples, their life bears a Christian-religious imprint, at least in the sense that their civilization at all times develops in one way or another, positive or negative, but always in direct relation to Christianity. Christianity is not only not something alien to Western European civilization, but the latter was born and developed under the living and direct influence of the Christian spirit. In view of this close connection between the civilization of European peoples and Christianity, its development has the meaning of free natural human development in relation to Christianity. However, even here a free combination of human principles - natural and religious - was not given. But, in contrast to the Eastern Church, in the life of Western European peoples, the human principle prevails over the divine: first, human means are used to achieve theanthropic goals (in Catholicism), then the divine is considered as a means to achieve human goals (in Protestantism), and finally the predominance of the human principle over the divine is reflected in the use of human means to achieve human goals. For the peoples of Western Europe at the beginning of their Christian history, Christianity was given as Catholicism. The certain character of the Roman church, which was fully formed at a later time, was already evident in the 4th - 5th centuries - it was reflected as the desire of the Roman high priests for primacy among all the hierarchs of the Christian church. But this desire for primacy represents only the germ of that very vital idea, the exponent of which was Catholicism in the period of its full development, and which was fully developed only through a gradual historical path. – The peoples of Western Europe, predominantly the Romanesque group, in whose lives this idea of ​​the Roman Catholic Church fully developed, first became acquainted with Christianity at the earliest time of their history, during the period of their barbarian life. When, little by little, the great migration of peoples calmed down, crowds of barbarians completely alien to civilization appeared before the eyes of the Roman Church both as its worldly conquerors and as its dangerous neighbors. Violence, arbitrariness, inattention and disrespect for the spiritual dignity of man were the distinctive features of these, like all other barbarians. The Christian Church, entering into relations with these peoples both out of necessity of proximity and out of obligation to preach Christ, enters their lives as a new beginning, completely alien to it and with all the advantages not only in the essence of the Christian religion, but also in the fruits of development that it inherited from Greco-Roman life. Among barbarian life, it is the source of not only the highest religious life, but also worldly enlightenment: it preaches about the rights of the human person, it reveals to the consciousness of the barbarians the meaning of divine and human laws that stand above any personal arbitrariness, it preaches about the boundaries of secular power along with spiritual power - for several centuries it was the center of all enlightenment, science, art. – Meanwhile, speaking about the Catholic Church and its spiritual superiority over society, we have to, according to history, mean only the clergy by church. Very early on, it began to stand out sharply from the people, like a strictly structured corporation, surrounded by laws and rights; Very early on, it began to exclude the laity from participating in their spiritual management and has also long been concerned about acquiring all sorts of privileges from the state for itself. And the same thing that, during the period of the barbaric state of Western European peoples, was a characteristic feature of the church, in contrast to the barbarian states, also distinguished the clergy from the laity: the educational center among the barbarian society was the clergy, separated into a corporation and seeing the church exclusively in themselves. By the 10th century, all aspects of the mental life of Western peoples had a theological character; all questions, both political and purely scientific, even mathematical and physical, were resolved from a theological point of view, and at the same time, for a long time, education was concentrated only in a close circle of the clergy: in its schools almost exclusively candidates for the clergy were trained. This attitude of the church towards people's life gradually inspired the Western clergy with the idea of ​​its power over people's life as legal power and based on spiritual superiority. The Church saw the actual dependence on it of all the best aspects of the spiritual life of the barbarians and understood that this dependence was not based on external violence, but on actual domination in the minds of the barbarians. Sad and irreconcilable from either a moral or legal point of view, the manifestations of the secular power of the barbarians brought church power into conflict with it and inspired the latter with the idea of ​​​​the superiority of its foundations over the foundations of the former. Christianity slowly degenerated the inner life of the barbarians: despotism, arbitrariness, external violence and caprice were still too frequent phenomena in the actions of secular power. In view of these phenomena, the temptation came to the Catholic Church power - to take secular power into its own hands, to take possession of the people and, on the basis of external dominion, to strengthen itself with all external means of secular power. And this desire of the church for secular power was not the whim of a few individuals, random in its motives, it was not their personal ambition: it had justification for itself in real life. If the spiritual power here or here, at one time or another, declared the people free from royal power, then such intervention in the state people's life was often beneficial, truly liberating the people from gross despotism and arbitrariness and proceeding from the Christian principle of personal freedom. The reasons for this desire for spiritual power were deeper than the caprice or ambition of a few individuals; That is why it did not perish with the death of its first bearers, but steadily developed into a whole system of church life. This was a desire for power in the name of Christianity itself - in the name of the conviction that the spirit of Christ should rule in the life of the people, that complete power over the people should belong to the one who demands it not in the name of his own arbitrariness, but in the name of Christ, who is the only one worthy of such power, who alone can use it not for personal gain, but for the good of the public. Such aspiration cannot depend on the accidents of state-national or church life; it can always find justification for itself, because the life of the state and the people always stands lower than the Christian ideals, the preacher of which is the clergy. That is why the desire of the Catholic Church for dominion over the people did not perish even at a time when, after living in a barbarian society for several centuries, the clergy itself was strongly influenced by the barbarians, on the one hand losing its advantage of spiritual enlightenment and becoming ignorant like the laity, on the other hand having adopted a secular way of life - when the clergy itself was immersed in the interests of feudal life, became variously dependent on sovereigns and forgot its unity. These sad phenomena in the life of the clergy themselves further exacerbated their theocratic aspirations, which found their full expression in the person of Pope Gregory VII. This Roman high priest, possessed of great intelligence and strong will, was not a champion of the absolute power of the Roman Curia for the sake of power itself, was not a champion of stagnation, darkness and an enemy of progress; no, he sought this power in order to, with its help, build the life of society on Christian moral principles, in order to realize Christian ideals in this life - he fought in the name of progress and enlightenment. But given the barbaric debauchery of society, with its wild and unbridled morals, with the extreme moral decline of the clergy itself, it seemed that only the Roman high priest could organize the social life of the people with his authority. That such hopes for the authority of the Roman throne had a solid foundation is evidenced by the brilliant successes of the power of the Roman high priest. But it is not these successes that are particularly interesting; it is the motives and forms of action of the power of the Roman high priest that are interesting: both served as a complete expression of the strong idea of ​​the Roman Church. If only Christianity is capable of regenerating and enlightening the life of the people, if only one church can be the source of true progress and moral order, then it alone (i.e., the clergy) has the right to all power over the nations; Moreover, this power is necessary for it, it is necessary so that it can be a real source of enlightenment and moral order, since the people themselves cannot appreciate its saving significance and, mired in vices and turmoil, remain indifferent to its saving call: for the sake of the people themselves, for the sake of their improvement and salvation, church power over them is necessary. But in order to have such power over the people, the church itself must be organized on the basis of power, the clergy itself must be subject to strict order and discipline. This was the idea of ​​the Roman Church. To subordinate all the clergy to the strict unity and unquestioning authority of the Roman high priest, to subordinate the entire life of the people to the power of the clergy and in such a single life to realize the principles of morality and enlightenment - such was the task of the activities of Gregory VII and his successors. The best people of Christianity, the vicars of Christ Himself, the deputies of His apostles, the successors of all the traditions of the church, should belong to all power over the nations. This is how the Roman Curia decided the great religious questions of the Christian Church - decided humanly, but in the name of Christ; With such answers and convictions, the great pope began church reform - reform in favor of the Roman throne, but in the name of the improvement and moral order of the people; In the name of this idea, Gregory VII sought to subjugate the whole world to the clergy, the clergy to the power of the Roman high priest. Let in the past the church preached about the separation of secular and spiritual powers: this sermon now led to the conclusion that secular power, as such, should have been subordinated to spiritual power, that secular power should also be in the hands of the Roman high priest. But it was not secular power in itself that constituted the final goal of the aspirations of the Roman Curia: it strove for power over the people - this is so, but for complete power - first spiritual, and then secular, for power not for the sake of power itself, but in the name of the moral well-being and well-being of the people. This is why it is a remarkable fact in the history of the Catholic Church that the time of the reforms of Gregory VII, the time of the Pope’s aspirations to subordinate the whole world to the Roman Curia in the name of the moral improvement of the world, coincided with the reforms of monastic life on the principles of strict discipline and morality. Reform of St. Bernard, the reforms of the canons, the reforms in Cluny, Robert of Molemsky in Citeaux - these reforms coincide with the times of Gregory VII. So, in the person of its highest representative, the Catholic Church set for itself the great Christian goals of the moral improvement of the whole world and proposed a great human means to achieve these goals - the absolute power of the pope over the whole world - power based primarily on the spiritual dominion of the representatives of the church. Life of Western peoples in the 12th and 13th centuries. shows what results the Western Church has achieved in the steady application of the remedy it proposed. The Crusades against the Asian Mohammedans, undertaken for the sake of spreading and establishing Christianity, began at the end of the 11th century. and filling the next two centuries - a phenomenon unparalleled in world history. It amazes, first of all, with its ubiquity and universality. In the name of one idea, all nationalities, all classes, all ages of the Christian West united and walked together as one person. Kings, princes, barons leave their capitals and castles and leave the government, obediently obeying the general spirit of the times and obediently following the crowds of people; townspeople forget the interests of trade, villagers abandon the plow, children part with their parents - and all these crowds, previously separated by the conditions of feudal life to such an extent that there was no unity of either the people or the class, are now united into one whole, animated by a single religious idea. What brought all these disparate elements of society together into one family? What instilled in these previously indifferent and often hostile parts one spirit, one idea? What kind of power united a previously disparate life into one whole? This was Christian spiritual power in the most literal sense of the expression - it was the despotic, exclusive dominance of Christian religious ideas, instilled, forcibly implanted into the souls of entire peoples - instilled and implanted through the efforts of the church administration headed by the pope. The Pope, as the center of religious excitement, was the sole ruler of this two-century movement without any rivals, was the sole ruler of the popular mood, which did not want to obey any leaders, unless the latter had a desire to subordinate the crowds to their personal views, which absorbed in itself all personal will, all personal interest... Such was the success of the Roman Church in applying its proposed human means to the Christian end; but these were not yet successes in achieving the goal itself, although the religious nature of the people’s submission to church authority pointed to it as the last task of the authorities. But if the Roman Church wanted to achieve Christian goals through power, then what results did its means actually lead to? Christian goals can be achieved only by Christian means, only by the path indicated in Christ's victory over the temptation of power. Contrary to all human reasoning, only free faith alone, combined with free love, can regenerate a person in the image of those ideals in whose name they believe and love. The great and the first among Christians should not essentially dominate and rule over the people, but should serve everyone and be slaves. It is a great evil for church-state life when the clergy, separated into a corporation or caste, in their relations with the laity acquires the character of secular power, is based on law, right, orders, demands; but an even greater evil is when the clergy not only assimilates the character of secular power, but acquires spiritual dominion over the people, over all aspects of their natural life. The forced, despotic instillation of Christian ideas leads to two results - on the one hand, to the distortion of the Christian spirit, and on the other, to darkness and stagnation of the people's life. And above all, the Crusades represent a gross distortion of the Christian spirit - that distortion in which Christian freedom degenerated into Mohammedan violence. In the form of these military campaigns to spread Christianity, the Catholic Church came to clear conclusions about the non-Christian character with which its human resources were permeated. War is contrary to the very spirit of Christianity and, no matter who it is waged, no matter who it is directed at, it can never serve the spread of Christianity, because in itself and in all cases it is a war against Christianity, against the Christian spirit. Meanwhile, war in the name of Christianity is not an accidental phenomenon in the Catholic Church, but a necessary conclusion of its main direction. The very idea that a person can be saved only by power is a product of disbelief in man and dislike for him and therefore leads to the suppression of everything truly human, everything free and reasonable in a person. In order to revive and increase in a person his free rational power and lead him to Christian sonship with God, one must believe in his reason and freedom, believe in his sonship with God. Lack of faith in a person leads to the suppression of his reason and freedom; spiritual power necessarily becomes the protector of darkness, stagnation, ignorance, slavery. In all the demands of reason and manifestations of freedom, the Roman Catholic Church saw its enemies. While the popes, in the name of Christian ideals, demanded power over the world, and the monasteries, in the name of the same moral improvement, carried out reforms in their lives, in the person of, however, a few and unconnected individuals, reason boldly raised its voice in the name of its freedom. We mean John Erigene, Roscelin, Abelard. Obviously, these were friends of the Roman Church, if only she really wanted true enlightenment and moral improvement for a person. But she saw her enemies in them; The end of the 11th century and the 12th century were a time of struggle between the clergy and free thinkers. The Catholic Church considered any personal freedom and enlightenment dangerous for itself. There is no need to list the well-known measures that the Catholic clergy took at various times to maintain darkness and ignorance, to fight light, freedom and reason. In order to fight freedom, the Catholic Church undertook crusades against heretics, established the Inquisition and resorted to physical coercion in matters of faith and belief. In order to spiritually dominate, you need to subjugate the entire inner life of another, master and control all her movements and actions, you need to paralyze her independence. These are the most characteristic methods of the Catholic clergy in influencing the laity positively. They can be observed from the very first time of the activities of the Catholic Church among the European peoples - they loudly declare themselves during the last heyday of the activities of the Catholic clergy. But they received their full development gradually; only long historical experiences gave them the brilliant application that they found in the person of their extreme bearers - the Jesuits. From the very first time, the Catholic Church did not care about the actual enlightenment of those barbarians whom it often only apparently converted to Christianity; she wanted to conquer them in the name of Christ and nothing more. Here find their explanation for those magnificent ceremonies with brilliant surroundings, those spectacular festivities and rituals that strike the coarse heart, with which the preaching of Christianity among the European peoples began and which remained in the Catholic Church until very recently. – After the Catholic Church, in the person of Pope Gregory VII, clearly realized its direction, it turned its main attention to secular power. At times she achieved enormous success in this regard, but not long-lasting. And what was saddest for her was that she suffered from the same weapons with which she fought herself. The shameful “Babylonian” captivity of the popes should have greatly sobered them up. Then, regarding the great Western schism, voices were heard from everywhere about the need for transformation, the church at the head and the members, freedom and reason began to declare themselves more often and more sharply, and finally the Protestant movement that had so amazed the Catholic Church broke out... All these events had various consequences, but for the popes they were a time of continuous struggle for their power - a time of higher education, in which the character of this power, so brilliantly reflected in the Jesuits, was fully developed. It is remarkable that the Jesuits needed the pope only for external sanction of their activities. To secular power they paid little attention, although they did not neglect any means. Their main concerns were directed towards complete spiritual domination in the souls of people. Their main weapon is the ability to penetrate a person’s soul: evoking and maintaining in it, in accordance with the character of each, either fear of the terrible judgment of God, or an enthusiastic mood, leading it either to tears of tenderness, or plunging it into the horror of despair, they bring a person to numbness and take possession of his soul. The Jesuits were a terrible force: in front of their father’s eyes, they kidnapped a son, took away a husband’s wife, took possession of families, societies, spread their power throughout all states, and all this quietly, silently, but firmly and thoroughly. And it would be a mistake to think that all this activity, amazing in its steadfastness and tirelessness, was guided only by human passions. Of course, things couldn’t get by without them; but according to their basic idea, their activity stood above personal passions: they sought complete power over man in order to make him holy and blessed. One can say even more: a characteristic feature of Jesuit activity has always been the consciousness of its goals. Only this can explain why the activity of the Jesuits could (and can) continue for so long, despite all the hatred that they aroused towards themselves in societies, with all the persecution that they endured. But in the results of Jesuit activity, in which the principles of the Catholic Church found their full and essential expression, the human lie of the direction of Catholic life was also fully reflected. The activity of the Jesuits was entirely based on the conviction that the popular crowd could not save itself without despotic leadership, without absolute authority - and proceeded entirely from a lack of faith in man. But as always, lack of faith in a person leads to his death, so these consequences of unbelief were especially reflected in the activities of the Jesuits. They did not believe in the strength of man, in the possibility of his free religious life and moral improvement, and therefore, quite consistently, having made obedience to their authority the only condition for a person’s salvation, they had to justify and excuse every sin, as long as it was committed with their permission: the Jesuits had to direct almost their main efforts to finding and inventing the “easiest methods of justification.” Catholicism had to lead to Protestantism, which at first was an indignation of personal freedom and human reason against the violence and despotism of the Catholic church power, an indignation in the name of the free and full development of the natural powers of man, in the name of the free manifestation of Christian faith and love. The conditions under which the Protestant movement was born and grew show that it was not caused by one or another random phenomena in Catholic church life - not by abuses of church power, but by the main direction of Catholic life, expressed in the division of Christian society into rulers and subordinates, that it was guided not by some random and vague, only negative aspirations as opposed to the abuses of the Catholic clergy, but by a completely conscious and generally definite desire for the free development of the natural forces of man and free action of the Christian faith. About the Catholic Church Authority of the 16th Century. It should be noted that in many ways it did not resemble its brilliant past, that it not only did not show new aspirations for its expansion, but even weakly asserted itself, wanting only to preserve the limits and advantages that it had achieved in the past: it was a careless power, complacently enjoying the fruits of its previous activities. It also cannot be said that in moral terms the popes of the 16th century. and their closest assistants stood noticeably lower than their predecessors: in the past history of the papal curia, one can find quite a few facts that, with their morally outrageous nature, surpassed everything that the papal power of the 8th century represented. On the other hand, the Protestant movement coincided with many new facts in the spiritual life of European peoples, equally testifying to man’s desire for free and natural development. In philosophy, the new direction given to it by Bacon and Descartes, in political and social life, the desire for a new structure based on national unity and the division of classes, many discoveries and inventions that are essential for the spiritual development of man, all this actually testifies to the awakening and rather strong growth of the free spiritual power of man. We should not forget that one of the strongest factors that created the culture of the era of the emergence of the Protestant movement in the church was that direction not only in science and art, but also in life itself, which is designated in history by the name of humanism and which took its juices from the pagan civilization of the classical world. Such a revival and strong growth in the natural development of man, sometimes still causing repressive measures on the part of the Catholic church authorities, but steadily moving forward with the general carelessness of this power in the 15th and 16th centuries, created the content of life that was not reconciled with the very foundations of Catholic church life and in the name of which they began to demand freedom from the despotism of the church. In view of the close connection between the life of the European peoples of that time and church life, this new direction could not be limited to the demand for freedom only in the negative sense of the church’s non-interference in its development: just as before the church was not content with religious and moral influence on people’s life, but strived for power over all its aspects, so now the new direction of people’s life, generated by the successes of its natural development, demanded a basic transformation of church life adaptive to its own character. This demand was expressed in the church movement of Protestantism, which sought to create a new religious and popular life on the basis of free faith. The fact that Protestantism developed in European life as an opposition to Catholicism and its darkly despotic character gave the new church movement a bright and Christianly free expression. The struggle of Protestantism with Catholicism was a struggle for the rights of the human person, acquired for it by the feat of Christ, for the freedom of its direct communication with Christ, for the free and reasonable foundations of Christian morality - it was a struggle in the name of free faith in every Christian as a legal subject of the kingdom of God. The time of Protestantism in European history is a time of broad and brilliant development of human culture. Human genius receives its highest development, unfolds in all the greatness of its natural powers. Science develops in all the diversity of life's demands, in all the completeness and harmony of the laws of logical thinking; art completes the circle of its free development, serving only the earth and throwing off the despotic yoke of religion; the state system, taking into itself all the elements of people's life and not suppressing any of them, strives to embody their free unity, determined by their common needs; Man's power over nature is evident in astonishing proportions. – Without identifying the limits of Protestantism, which embraced the peoples of the predominantly German group, with the limits of this cultural flourishing, one should keep in mind two extreme facts: firstly, Protestantism everywhere declares itself to be free of cultural development, and, secondly, specifically Catholic countries, Italy and Spain, where Protestantism in its very bud was suppressed by the harsh measures of the Catholic Inquisition, are doomed to obvious stagnation even until the last days. The unchanging union of Protestantism with culture, not typical (either on the positive or negative side) for cultural countries, for example. France, characteristic of Catholicism and Protestantism. From the first days of its history, Protestantism became closely connected with the free life of the people, as it largely owes its origin to it. Its first preacher, in the name of his religious reform activity, appeals to the popular pride of the German nation, pointing out the shame of its humiliation under the yoke of Catholic power and drawing a bright prospect for a free life in union with a new religious direction - and the fate of Protestantism from the very beginning was closely and inextricably united with the state by internal and mutual ties: just as its own success was entirely determined by the favorable attitude of the state authorities towards it, so it is in in turn, it penetrated state life in its foundations, again being imbued with the very spirit of the people and even submitting to it. Never has church life been so closely and inextricably linked with the natural life of the people as we see in Protestantism. And this connection of Protestantism extends not only to public life itself, but it covers all aspects of people’s life, starting with personal and family relationships and ending with national phenomena of science and art. It is no coincidence that Luther himself left monastic life for family life, which constitutes the main element of naturally popular life. It was not for nothing that he was such a lover of music and, through it, all art. Likewise, science, to whose help Protestantism so insistently turned at first for the purpose of combating Catholicism, found its noble patron in Protestantism and its highest representatives in Protestant peoples. – Due to such a close connection in Protestant countries between people’s life in its free and full development and church-religious life, the name Protestantism cannot be understood only as well-known Christian views and a well-known church system, but it is a well-known direction of people’s life in its relation to Christianity. Having initially emerged as an opposition to the despotism of the Catholic Church, as a demand for freedom for the people's life and for the manifestations of the Christian faith, Protestantism, consciously asserting its connection with the people's life, which it called for free and natural development, determined its attitude towards Christianity itself, towards the cause of Christ, under the direct influence of its connection with the people's life. Just as in Catholicism the church authority demanded the death of the natural life of the people in the name of Christianity, so in Protestantism the human person and the people demanded the complete service of Christianity to themselves in the name of their free and natural development. The free manifestation of the Christian faith, which was the subject of the initial demand of the Protestant church movement, under the influence of the strongest development of popular and personal well-being, turned first into an arbitrary attitude towards the divine content of Christianity, then into the exclusive predominance of the subjective - human principle over the objective - divine. In Catholicism, the divine content of the Christian Church, hidden from man by the despotism of church power, absorbed the human spirit, not giving room for its free development and not penetrating it freely; on the contrary, in Protestantism, man fully took advantage of the divine content of Christianity for the purposes of his free - natural development and - this is not enough - completely subordinated Christianity, as a means, to his human goals. Rightly aware of the high calling of the Christian people and duly appreciating the great significance for the Christian church life of its free and natural development, Protestantism, not overcoming national pride, but submitting itself to it and being imbued with its feelings, demanded the complete service of Christianity to man and the life of the people, the complete predominance of the human principle over the divine content of Christianity. The main idea of ​​Protestantism must be seen in the religious view that free Christian holiness, the holiness of faith, should have a reward in cultural flourishing, in the people's public good. Just as alien to the idea of ​​​​the separation of church and state as Byzantism and Catholicism, Protestantism primarily sees in Christianity the power of external natural-historical significance and, in this most characteristic feature, primarily expresses the Christian religion in terms of its miraculous power. Too complex and not so much obvious as undoubted in the general system of Protestantism, this religious trend was especially pronounced in Protestant mysticism, which does not value the historical foundations of Christianity and places all its hope in the inner light that illuminates the Christian. The privilege of Protestantism is to give birth to mystical sects, 45 and the reason for this, of course, is that at the deepest basis of Protestantism is mysticism, a magical view of the historical and social significance of Christianity. The wide revelation of mysticism is not hindered by the powerful wave of cultural reality. Without personally distinguishing the Christian absolute principle from the conditional social-historical principle, Protestantism lost the opportunity to achieve a free union of the Christian spirit with external culture and in this way give it the highest religious justification. Protestantism, having given man the full opportunity to take advantage of Christianity for the purposes of his free - natural development, did not again combine this free - natural development of man with the ultimate divine-human goals, but placed the human principle in exclusive predominance over the grace-filled principle, so that the natural development of man became a goal in itself in Protestantism. With such a relationship between the human principle and the divine, the latter serves the former, but the former is sterile in the sense of direct and positive service to the latter. Alien to Christian self-denial, but proud of its successes, so free - the natural development of man recognizes itself as powerless to actively participate in God-manhood. Hence the teaching that man is saved solely by passive faith, that he is a pillar of salt in himself and not only cannot freely and actively participate in the divine-human union, but is also incapable of any morally good deed - hence the thought and belief in predestination, outrageous for truly Christian feelings, preached with such stern consistency by the founders of the Reformed communities. Such a conviction of man’s powerlessness to contribute to his own holiness and bliss is completely contrary to the saving faith in man’s sonship with God, nourished by love for him not in his given reality, no matter how attractive it may be to natural feeling and no matter how much it promises for the success of natural development, but in that ideal possibility of his sonship with God, which is realized by the feat of faith. Truly divine-human faith gives scope to the natural – human principle, without losing sight of religious goals. But the success of natural development, which has a goal in itself, pushes into the jungle of mysticism. Catholicism and Protestantism, as two forms of Western European Christianity, consistently led to a materialist-socialist direction. This direction is not only practically - economic, but also metaphysically - religious, namely materialistically - religious, essentially anti-Christian and from a Christian point of view completely atheistic. The materialization of Christianity, in contrast to Eastern spiritualism, is already manifested in Catholicism and Protestantism - in the material-human means of the first and in the human-earthly goals of the second, but this is not complete materialization; We see such complete materialization in materialist philosophy and the socialist movement. Materialist philosophy says: wir verlangen, dass endlich das Wort Fleisch, der Geist Materie werde 46; Echoing, socialism proclaims earthly happiness, economic contentment as the highest principle of life - it wants to live “on bread alone.” In Byzantism, Catholicism and Protestantism we see three positive forms of church-historical Christianity; socialism decisively moves away from Christianity and its connection with Christianity in its conscious and direct anti-Christianity. This connection, however, is sufficient to give reason to see in the paths of socialism one of the paths rejected in the victory of Christ - the path of life “by one bread.” Socialism, which has embraced all European peoples and united the east and west of Europe, has a lot of charming and fascinating things in it from the outside: it realizes in the social system the most sacred requirement of justice and love for the oppressed. In the Christian issue of church-state relations, he also does not pass without a trace: he proclaimed the most fruitful idea of ​​​​the separation of church and state, the idea of ​​decisive irrelevance and mutual independence of the ways of life - religious and social, he preaches the great idea that religion is a personal matter and people should unite not on the basis of religion, but on the basis of conditionally - social tasks. However, in essence, socialism is a path away from Christianity: it is hostile to the Christian religion because it is limited to earthly goals and does not know any other means other than social violence. Therefore, the great principle of separation of church and state in his mouth does not have the deep meaning of the mutual independence of absolutely religious and conditionally social values, but the crude meaning that socialism does not want to know religion, does not want to have anything to do with absolute value, does not want to encounter the absolute world either in the social sphere or in the human soul, in the sphere of human aspirations and desires. Therefore, socialism, just like the historical forms of church Christianity, and even primarily before them, does not provide the highest justification for earthly life. We can easily imagine materialist socialism as standing on the path that European humanity has long followed. The first half of Christian European history reveals Christianity to us as a public religion, embracing all aspects of natural-historical life in the grace-filled symbolic-ascetic sanctification of them. This is the heyday of Byzantineism and Catholicism. The second half of European history, which began with the revival of pagan humanitarian ideals, sanctified by Protestantism and now revealing itself in the broad socialist movement, is a time of clear consciousness of natural-historical necessity and the free action of natural-social laws, free natural development. If Catholicism turned to earthly means for heavenly purposes, then already in Protestantism Christianity turned to a means for earthly goals, for free - natural development. Materialistically, the socialist movement does not renounce the freedom that Protestantism demands for the natural development of man; it pursues this demand to the end. Materialist philosophy teaches that the freedom of natural-historical life is the freedom of the laws of natural-social limitation, that space and time are the basic conditions of all being and existence, all thinking and action, all development and success (sind Raum und Zeit die Grundbedingungen alles Seins und Wesens, alles Denkens und Handels, alles Gedeihens und Gelingens) 47 . Therefore, she not only rejects every miracle, but also throws out of life all heavenly content, all ideal impulses. The expired church history of Christian peoples predetermines our tasks. We need to recognize the insufficiency of the church-historical sanctification of life, we need to recognize the freedom of natural historical development. However, the conventionality of natural-social life does not eliminate the possibility of its religious sanctification, the possibility of combining absolute content with it: the bearer of this absolute content can be a Christian spiritual person. We must raise the word thrown out by socialism about the separation of church and state and proclaim this principle not forcedly, as socialism does, but freely, based on our own foundations of Christianity; we must declare the absolute Christian religion the property of a free individual - not out of hatred of religion, but based on the deepest understanding of Christian principles. We place our hopes on the free combination of Christian internal absoluteness with natural and social conventions. Our so-called Slavophiles pointed and point to the solution of world Christian problems as the great calling of the great Russian people. It is not the business of the human mind to predict, but it is our direct duty to know the conditions of Christian life. Byzantism, which was inherited by Russian Orthodoxy from both the best and the worst sides, and the ritual faith in which this religious inheritance was revealed, do not represent the true path to solving great problems. But there is one feature of the Russian people, developed by them in a historical feat, which foretells a great religious future for them: this is faith in the “man of God,” in the suffering and humiliated person, in the independence of the Christian good from the conditions of external contentment and visible perfection. And the poet was right when he said that Dejected by the burden of the godmother, In slave form, the King of Heaven A Russian person is able to understand the meaning of the feat of faith, love and patience. There is feat in battle, The highest feat in patience, That science and art can be desirable from a eudaimonic point of view is beyond doubt psychologically and is even confirmed by the history of philosophy. And asceticism can be eudaimonic, and a strong will can be evil, but it can also be good... They say that lately L.N. Tolstoy has been softening his account on many points and making concessions. This is certainly relevant to our question. So in Journal. for everyone 1903 Jan. p. 79 (From the letters and papers of L. N. Tolstoy) we read his words: “I have recently often thought about one long-known consideration, but which comes to my mind with particular vividness all this time and invigorates me; namely: if I express in just one simplest and clearest sentence the meaning, essence, purpose of life, then I express it for myself as it is said in John VI, 38 and especially 39 (?): to grow in myself, to bring to the highest possible degree of divinity that spark, that rational thing that is given, entrusted to me, like a child to a nanny. This definition of the meaning of life is broader than all others and includes all others. What is needed in order to fulfill this, to grow this child? Not bliss, but labor, struggle, deprivation, suffering, humiliation, persecution, the very things that are said many times in the Gospel. And this is what we need, and it is sent in a wide variety of forms, both small and large. If only we knew how to accept it properly, as we need it, and therefore as a joyful work, and not as something annoying that disrupts our so well-ordered life... The will of the Father, what it is, what He needs, why He did and is doing everything, what the purpose of life is, this is not given to us to know. But we know and we can always know whether we are doing His will, why we live, what He wants from us. He holds us as if on the reins, and we, like a horse, do not know where we will come, why; but we know by the pain when we go to the wrong place, and by freedom, the absence of constraint, that we are going where we need to go. And therefore, through experience and with our whole being, we learn that the first, main and only sign of the fulfillment of God’s will is that it is easy for us, not painful, even joyful... The very first, main, undoubted sign that we are so inclined to neglect is the absence of a feeling of spiritual suffering."... It is the absence of spiritual suffering, and not the presence of happiness. The combination of greatness and insignificance in a person is Pascal’s favorite theme of reasoning in his “Pensees” “The first truth that Christianity imprinted on the spiritual life of mankind is: suffering is an essential aspect of human life. For the Greeks, this truth remained, strictly speaking, unknown. They know suffering, but only as a fact that should not exist... Christianity has opened the way to understanding suffering. The latter is not just a brute fact, it is necessary for the full development of the inner man: suffering does not allow the soul to completely surrender to the temporary and transitory; it is an antidote against vanity and passion for appearance; it is a great educational means with the help of which God draws hearts from the earthly and temporary to the eternal, to Himself. Thus suffering is the path to inner peace. He who knows suffering, his mind is open to understanding Christianity. Where suffering is constantly experienced, there usually appears a passionate search for Christianity and a passionate desire for it; a healthy life, full of strength and energy, will rather rest on the Greek worldview. But since no life is completely free from suffering, then in each there are at least periods and minutes in which receptivity to Christianity appears” (Paulsen). And this thought is found in Solovyov’s “Readings on God-Humanity” - at the end of the tenth reading in relation to pre-Christian history and at the end of the twelfth reading in relation to the history of Christian peoples. Formed monasticism treats this “monasticism” as an abuse and distortion: here the aspiration for freedom turns into slavery, the denial of the (worldly) form becomes a (certain) form. Which, when tonsured into monasticism, turned into an empty form. The idea of ​​foolishness, as a link in the system of the Christian worldview, is one of the extreme points that make the Christian worldview madness in the eyes of common sense, making it irreconcilable with the superficial and frivolous “reasonable” worldview. Criticism reproached me for lack of common sense. Having changed my mind again and again about my pages on foolishness, I do not change anything in them: religion, like philosophy, should not take into account the anxieties of common sense. The example of L.N. Tolstoy convinces me again and again that foolishness, even if it is expressed in sewing boots and wearing an overcoat, is a necessary condition for spiritual freedom. John XI, 25, 26 expresses only the moments of the system, but not its essence. Therefore, the extensive material I gave in the first two editions of my monograph on the temptations of Christ is significantly reduced here. First of all, I am not reprinting the treatise on the literary and historical reliability of the Gospel narratives about the temptation of Jesus Christ in the desert: it had its place in the monograph and now turns out to be superfluous, both in view of the general concept of the Gospel facts in the Philosophy of Gospel History, and because the ideological content does not depend on one or another solution to the issues raised in this treatise. A review of the entire life of Christ from the point of view of temptations is now also completely unnecessary, since we focus our attention only on the ideological content of Christ’s temptations. Other abbreviations and the immediate reasons for them are discussed in their places. In the first edition, pp. 46–58, this idea about man’s religious anger was illustrated with abundant extracts from religious and literary monuments. Now I find these extracts in the sense of proof unnecessary. If the One of the Brahmins resembles the One of the Eleates, their Maya - “necessity” of Parmenides, and the samsara of Buddhism - παντα ρει of Heraclitus, then the religious teaching of Zarathustra also relates to the teaching of the Brahmins and Buddhism, as the teaching of Empedocles with his Love and Enmity to the teaching of the Eleates and Heraclitus. 2 Sam. XXIV, 1: The wrath of the Lord kindled against the Israelites and He aroused David in them to say: Go, number Israel and Judah. ​​- 1 Chron. XXI, 1: and Satan rose up against Israel and stirred up David to number the Israelites. For this section, borrowed from Chapter III of the first edition, cf. Humiliation of Christ. In view of the latest research, in order to avoid repetition, the material in Chapter III of the first edition is significantly reduced. Theodore of Mopsuetsky, Pelagian Julian, Adoptians, etc. Augustine, Catholic theology and some of the Protestant theologians. Ullman (Über die Sündlosigkeit Iesu) and others. That is why the history of the question of the relationship of Christ’s temptations to His sinlessness, set out in the second edition of my monograph, pp. 89 next. and 143 next, I am not reprinting here: it is of exclusively scholastic interest. The same suffering is perceived differently by feeling and differently by will: feeling perceives a blow, and the will perceives a blow inflicted by malice. Words of asceticism, page 192. According to this objective side, the temptation from suffering is δοκιμὴ or δоκίμιον τῆς πίστεως. Although the suffering that gives rise to a temptation or test of faith for a person is determined by the divine will, at the same time it is caused by sin, just as a medicine prescribed by a merciful doctor is at the same time caused or caused by illness. Suffering serves as much for God as an instrument of testing faith as it does for sin or the devil as an instrument of temptation (such were the sufferings of Job). At least a person's righteousness was relative. On the patience of sorrows, the teaching of St. fathers, collected by bishop. Ignatius, ed. 3 SPb. 1893, p. 41 (Sermon on the Spiritual Law, ch. 190). Of course, in this different kind of struggle, different from seduction, it is also a matter of satisfying the desire. But the author would like to point out a very important difference between satisfying a passion through direct seduction by it and between satisfying an instinct through the desire to get rid of it because of the constraints that it brings to the highest aspirations of the spirit. A similar application that will be made from here is that the temptation for Jesus Christ was not the satisfaction of his own hunger, but a miraculous satisfaction, just as the Samaritan woman wanted such a quenching of her thirst so that she would no longer have thirst and would not come here to draw (John IV, 15; cp. VI, 34). On the patience of sorrows 114–117, etc. Compare. for this place and for this department in general, the purpose and meaning of life. Page 244; Wed Ephraim Sir. IV, pp. 364–365. -From all the discussions about seduction and about grief from passions, it turns out that passion is either something that should be resisted, or something that in another kind of struggle we accept with thanksgiving. Is there a contradiction here? Essentially, the answer to this question is given by all the reasoning in the text, and from the formal side it can be solved by analogies. Geometry teaches that as the arc increases, the chord increases, but only up to a certain limit, until the chord = diameter, after which, as the arc increases, the chord decreases. Is there a contradiction here? In the area of ​​our reasoning, this diameter is aversion to evil. Or: the absence of consciousness of sin can indicate both complete sinlessness (like Christ) and extreme sinfulness (self-justification of the scribes and Pharisees). Here is one of the cases of application of the coincidentia oppositorum principle. Let weakness be a consequence of sin; but in each given person they are as sinless as they are necessary. If we knew only about the temptation of desires, then neither natural weaknesses nor external suffering could give sinless, experimental knowledge of the power of sin, because natural attraction and external suffering, not in themselves constituting a temptation, give rise to the temptation of desires indirectly, as for example. hunger can motivate theft, etc., only in combination with the actual sinfulness of the tempted one, and even in this case they give a temptation less powerful than the temptation of lust. In addition to what has been said above, the following can be noted about the mutual relations of various types of temptation. Temptation of faith must precede deception. For the first people, who had a pure nature, only temptation of faith was possible, but not deception. Such a temptation arose regarding the commandment. The Fall gave rise to lust in man and made it possible and even inevitable for him to be seduced by lust. This connection of moral depravity with falling away from God, or unbelief, is established by St. Paul in the first chapters of the last. to Rom. -The whole life of a sinful person is full of deceptions, for him all worldly existence is exhausted by the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life. σαρκὸς, καὶ ἠ ἐπιθυμία τῶν ὀφθαλμῶν, καὶ ἠ ἀλαζονεία (We must distinguish from τυφλωθείς 1 Tim. III, 6, and also from ὑπεραίρωμαι 2 Cor. XII, 7) τοῦ βίου (1 John II, 16). -But just as unbelief is the beginning of lust, so complete healing from lust is given by faith by grace and is obtained through that struggle, which, excluding sympathy for evil, is based on aversion to moral impurity. This is taught by the entire word of God, especially St. Paul, and all ascetic writing. John of Damascus De fide orth. lib. III, 20. This section is reprinted from the second edition: coinciding with the corresponding chapter of the first edition in content, it is presented in the second edition in a shorter and more focused manner. It is curious that in the 14th century, during the heyday of medieval mysticism, the German countries were the birthplace of mysticism. L. Feuerbach's Werke, t. 8 (Leipz. 1851) S. 2.