Letter to D. A. Khomyakov

The document offered to readers is published for the first time and represents evidence of correspondence between Hieromartyr Hilarion (Troitsky), deeply revered by the Church, and a social and church figure, one of the last Slavophiles, Dmitry Alekseevich Khomyakov, the son of the famous religious thinker and writer Alexei Stepanovich Khomyakov. Caused by the private bewilderment of D. A. Khomyakov, this letter from the then Archimandrite Hilarion allows us to present in more detail his own theological views in connection with his assessment of the views of A. S. Khomyakov, which is especially relevant in the light of the current 200th anniversary of the latter’s birth. Both Khomyakov and Archbishop Hilarion are representatives of two successive stages in the development of Russian theological thought along the paths of patristic theology. All the more worthy of attention is the criticism of certain provisions of Alexei Stepanovich by such an authoritative theologian as Vladyka Hilarion (Troitsky). Let us now turn to the history of the letter itself. As part of the archives of the Khomyakov family, it ended up in the collection of the Museum of Noble Life of the 40s, located in the Khomyakovs’ house on Dog Square in Moscow. This museum existed from 1920 to 1929. After its abolition, its collections were transferred to the State Historical Museum. Thus, the documentary collection of the Museum of Noble Life of the 40s ended up in the Department of Written Sources of the State Historical Museum. Here, the materials of the Khomyakov family were allocated to a separate fund (No. 178), where, among the correspondence of D. A. Khomyakov with clergy, the letter now published is located. We reproduce the source text using modern spelling. Non-standard author's abbreviations are filled in square brackets. Dear Dimitri Alekseevich! Please forgive me for my very late response to your letter, which I had the pleasure of receiving. My laziness is not the only reason for my delay. I received your letter when the holidays began at the Academy and when the academic library was closed, and I could not get some of the books I needed to answer. In addition, the daily service, which had ceased just two days ago, was added. I am writing all this in order to put you in favor of your sloppy correspondent. I fully understand that by my silence I could lead you into the temptation to suspect me of something very unkind. Once again I ask you not to make my silence an unforgivable crime. Your attention was drawn to my passing remark in the review of my candidate's essay, where I say that the main nerve of church life - the idea of ​​salvation - A. S. Khomyakov misunderstood 1. I will try to explain and justify my idea a little. Of the theological works of A. S. Khomyakov, I highly value his polemical articles, in which the main thoughts coincide with the polemics of the ancient fathers. These polemical articles are undoubtedly higher than the contemporary level of Russian theological science and give it a fruitful impetus. I gave a public lecture about this at the Academy on the 50th anniversary of the death of A.S. This lecture was published in the magazine “Faith and Reason” (1911. No. 18). That’s why A. S. Khomyakov’s polemic is wonderful, because it contains the ancient church spirit. I cannot say the same about his teaching on salvation, but I consider the idea of ​​salvation to be the main nerve of church life. In his teaching on salvation, A.S. does not rise above our school dogma, although he talks about salvation philosophically. When A.S. talks about salvation, he is more of a philosopher than a theologian. Here he has more logic than a direct feeling of the religious ideal of the Church. Our school dogma is still able to talk about salvation without even using the word “salvation” itself, but replacing it with the word “redemption”, and this word is given a legal meaning that it did not have in ancient church literature. The church's religious ideal is imbued with the idea of ​​a new creation, a new creature. This new creation is created by the incarnation of God on earth, the perception of human nature into the unity of the hypostasis of the Son of God, the consequence of which is the deification of human nature. Sin is a disease of nature. Salvation is healing from sin, giving the creature new powers of grace. It was precisely this idea of ​​a new creation that the ancient Church lived by and was inspired in the struggle against heretics who rejected the divine dignity of Christ, such as the Ebionites, Arians, and others. The essence of the work of Christ was seen by the Ancient Church in the very fact of the incarnation. I will cite the most characteristic words of Saint Irenaeus of Lyons from his relatively recently discovered work “Proof of the Apostolic Preaching”: “Others do not attach any importance to the descent of the Son of God and the economy of His incarnation, which the apostles announced and the prophets predicted that through this the perfection of our humanity should be realized. And such should be counted among those of little faith” (chapter 99); “Christ brought everything new by bringing Himself. For this very thing was predicted, that something new would come, that would renew and revive man” (Against heresies. IV, 34, 1). I wrote in detail about how the idea of ​​a new creation was revealed in church polemics against the Judaizing heretics in the 2nd chapter of my dissertation - “Essays on the history of the dogma of the Church.” This chapter was published separately as articles in the Theological Bulletin for 1912 under the title “The Concept of the Church in the Anti-Jewish Polemics of the First Two Centuries.” I will add a few words from the period of the struggle against Arianism: “We, people, perceived by the Word, are adored for the sake of His flesh” (Athanasius the Great. Against the Arians. III, 34); “It became man in order to deify us in Himself” (To Adelphius, chapter 4); “The Word, the very existing God, Who... became flesh out of love for mankind and, uniting through it with man, took into himself all of our nature, so that through dissolution with the Divine (nature) the human would be deified, and with the firstfruits the whole composition of our nature would be sanctified together” (Gregory of Nyssa. Antirritik, ch. 15); “Our nature returns again to its previous state” (Antirritik, chapter 55). I will not multiply such statements. I cited a lot of patristic words in my article “The Incarnation” (Moscow Tserk[ovnye] Ved[omosti]. 1912. No. 52). The Holy Church today sighs for the same ideal of deification in its services, especially in the service for the Nativity of Christ, where it reads the wonderful words “To raise up and glorify human fallen nature has clearly come”; “Having seen the Creator of man’s destruction... bowing to the heavens, he descends; from this, from the Divine Virgin, the pure of all things exists, truly incarnate"; "He has renewed us in man"; “From the very unity and communion of God you have made the earthy”; “God the Word now strengthens the weak being of ancient times for us, showing Himself free passions through a second communication.” All this - both patristic words and church songs - is one sermon about the great religious (piety) mystery: God appeared in the flesh. The ancient Church spoke not only in worship, but also in theology about salvation and the incarnation. Now school dogma talks about atonement and, as it were, about God executing His Son for the sins of people. A. S. Khomyakov is closer to school dogmatics than to church theology. Maybe I don’t know the works of A.S. Khomyakov well, but I find it difficult to draw parallels from them to the above-mentioned paternal and liturgical phrases. But I soon find in him abstract legalistic discussions about salvation. See especially Vol. II, pp. 216 ff. (according to the 1907 edition): “The creature bears its sentence” (II. 216); “The Son of God is under the weight of the wrath of God, under the weight of condemnation” (II. 217); “Christ on the cross is judged, so to speak, with God, that is, with the inexorable logic of the universe. He is an innocent victim of this logic” (VIII. 342); “He carries a sentence. This sentence is death” (II. 217); “Christ extinguished the flame of Divine truth with his blood” (II. 119); “Christ, by the power of His boundless love, took upon Himself human sins and the just punishment for them” (II. 119–120); “Sin exposes us to the weight of Divine wrath” (II. 272). A. S. Khomyakov proves the very necessity of redemption by the existence of “a law, a strict, unyielding, inexorable law” (II. 216). In all these and similar words of A. S. Khomyakov, I hear something completely different than in church hymns, rather than in the works of the greatest church theologians. It seems to me that even A. S. Khomyakov’s best ideas about the Church can be reproached: they are not connected with the idea of ​​incarnation and new creation, as, in my opinion, this should inevitably be in Orthodox theology. A.S. says little about the incarnation at all. This is understandable given his dialectical-rationalist way of reasoning even on theological issues. Here, dear Dimitri Alekseevich, is my brief answer to the question why I called A.S.’s presentation of the main nerve of church life—the idea of ​​salvation—wrong. With him, this idea receives an abstract legal development and is even divorced from its embodiment, which ancient church theologians did not do and which the Church does not do now in its worship. But I don’t think at all that A.S. Khomyakov is to blame for this. I am more inclined to blame our theological school, which for two hundred years has been slavishly dependent on medieval Catholic models on the issue of salvation. Unfortunately, we have not yet freed ourselves from the legal representation of the entire matter of salvation. There is an unnatural gap between our theology and worship. Perhaps it is no coincidence that in our services almost all stichera and canons, in which “the wealth of Orthodox theology” is omitted. This theology has been forgotten by us, it has become alien to us. We have lost our taste for it. It would be a sin not to appreciate the merits of A. S. Khomyakov for Orthodox theological science. For many, it still serves as the impetus for the first shift from the beaten path of school dogma. But whoever goes far from these paths, I think, should note that on the issue of salvation one should think somewhat differently than A. S. Khomyakov. A.S. undoubtedly “lived in the Church,” but thought about this life with a great shade of rationalism and scholasticism. Forgive me, dear Dimitri Alekseevich, if I wrote anything unreasonable above, I could not re-read the works of A. S. Khomyakov, but I think I understood their general spirit. I will be glad if you instruct me and correct me. Professor of the Moscow Spiritual Academy, Archimandrite Hilarion, who sincerely honors you. P.S. By the way, we are fellow countrymen 2. OPI GIM. F. 178. Unit. hr. 76. L. 5–10. We were unable to find this review when looking at the issues of the organ of the Moscow Theological Academy, The Theological Bulletin, for 1912–1913, where, as part of the journals of the meetings of the Council of the MDA, reviews of opponents were published on the works of students nominated for the degree of candidate of theology. However, as part of the magazine dated May 21, 1912, No. 15, we came across a review by acting associate professor Vladimir Alekseevich Troitsky (then still a layman) about the candidate’s essay by priest Leonid Arkhangelsky on the topic “The idea of ​​salvation in the living church consciousness through the service of the twelve feasts.” In this review, Vladimir Alekseevich, in consonance with his letter, speaks about the deplorable Western influence on Russian theological thought and critically speaks about the replacement of the idea of ​​salvation of the Ancient Church in school dogma, including in the “Dogmatic Theology” of Archimandrite, later Metropolitan, Macarius (Bulgakov), with the legal theory of atonement: “Such a teaching about salvation is unknown to the Word God, nor the writings of the patristic people plunges the soul of an Orthodox person into confusion and provides abundant material for mockery of the enemies of the Church. After all, who among the thinking Orthodox people has not been tempted to repeat the words of A. S. Khomyakov, said about the dogma of Macarius: “It would be a shame if foreigners accept such pathetic rubbish as an expression of our Orthodox theology” (Theological Bulletin. 1912. November, December. pp. 189–198). Archbishop Hilarion (Troitsky; 1886–1929) was from the village of Lipitsa, Kashira district, Tula province, and D.A. Khomyakov (1841–1919) owned the village of Bogucharovo, Tula district, Tula province.