Fundamentals of Christianity. Volume II. Gospel

Volume I * Volume III * Volume IV * Volume V The exposition of the Gospel teaching is part of biblical theology, and at the same time a fundamental part, of exceptional importance and decisive originality. The science of biblical theology is based on two principles, against which one cannot fundamentally object and which form a necessary condition for the scientific presentation of Christian primary sources. The first principle is that the sources of Christian teaching - the Bible and patristic works - and even individual parts of the Bible, such as the Gospels and the writings of each apostle, cannot be considered scientifically as colorless parts of a monotonous whole, that, on the contrary, each of them has its own not only external, but also internal character, created by the personal characteristics of the author and the conditions of the time. Of course, all Christian monuments and, in particular, all sections of the New Testament Bible have something in common that gives the “religion” of the New Testament, but this commonality does not embrace what is the soul of each more or less original section. Biblical theology deals, first of all, not with the Bible as a whole, not with those headings that are equally applicable to all parts of the Bible, but with each of its sections, which has its own internal character, and then with the historical connection between the various subsequent sections. The second principle of biblical theology is that both each literary monument and the biblical writings must be considered in the light of contemporary ideas that have the meaning of language, in the broad sense of the word, or the background against which the original content of the monument is revealed. To understand a literary monument means to determine the range of ideas of the time to which it belongs, and to understand what is borrowed and what is original in it, what is the material floating in the air, and what is the author’s response, his reaction to the environment. Without this condition, it is easy to mistake for the content of the monument what is merely the background of the picture, and to overlook what constitutes its individual appearance. In particular, for the gospel teaching, for the teaching of Christ, such a background is the Old Testament ideas in the understanding of later Judaism - there can be no talk of any relation of the gospel teaching to pagan religion and philosophy, according to the decisive conclusion of theological critical science. For evangelical science, the question of what exactly Christ taught is essential, and what is only the Old Testament-Judaic language in which He taught the Jews, without which His listeners could not understand Him. Not every word of the Gospel needs to be seen as its own teaching. When we read in the Gospel that he who brings his gift to the altar, remembering a quarrel with his brother, must first be reconciled with him and then bring his gift (Matthew V, 22-24), then we here cannot see the Gospel teaching that it is necessary to bring gifts to the altar, we cannot look here for an answer to the question of whether ritual sacrifices are necessary. This question is clearly resolved elsewhere - and is resolved in the sense of the prophetic words that God wants mercy, not sacrifice (Matt. IX, 13; XII, 7); but here we are only talking about the fact that he who makes a sacrifice to God must first be reconciled with his brother. The Gospel says to the Jew: you consider sacrifice to God the highest thing; know that peace and mercy are higher than even sacrifice. This is what the Gospel teaches. Likewise, the praise of the poor woman, who put all her food into the treasury at the church (Matthew XII, 41-44; Luke XXI, X-4), does not contain the gospel teaching that one should sacrifice for the church, for after this praise Christ predicted the destruction of the church, but here, there is only a teaching about the nature of every religious matter, the teaching that every God's work must be done without looking back, without compromise and without hypocrisy - to love to death, to sacrifice everything. In the words of Christ about the unclean spirit, which, having left a person, walks restlessly through waterless places, takes with it seven other spirits more evil than itself, and again takes possession of a person, so that for a person the last is worse than the first (Matthew XII, 43-45), only the thought is expressed that for the Jews who rejected Christ, it was worse than before - and in His words about the Angels assigned to the “little ones” this” and always contemplating the face of the Heavenly Father in heaven (Matthew XVIII, 10), only the thought of the value in the eyes of God of everything humiliated, humble and weak is expressed. And this must be understood completely without regard to the question of the whereabouts of unclean spirits and angels, their existence - the Gospel does not solve it in either direction, does not pose this question, it expresses its thoughts in the language of Judaism. The point is not in this or that solution of religious-gnostic issues, not in the truth or falsity of certain religious ideas, but in the content of the evangelical teaching, in what constitutes the proper subject of the evangelical gospel, which, from the evangelical point of view, “weighs heavily”, has the first meaning. It is not the difference between truth and falsity in the presentation of the Gospel teaching that depends on attention or inattention to this biblical-theological principle, but the difference between spirit and letter, meaning and outer clothing. In order to grasp the spirit of Christ's teaching, the fire of the Gospel gospel, its original content, it is necessary to distinguish in the Gospel between Christ's own teaching and the Old Testament Judaic language in which it is set out. This principle applies to the gospel even more than to any other philosophical, religious, or ethical teaching. The speech of Christ is continuously an influx of speech. He taught in parables not only when he spoke the parables themselves, but also at other times, and the literal understanding of His speech was always the reason for its misunderstanding on the part of His disciples. Christ spoke about the kingdom of God, about His messiahship, about the fulfillment of the law as a condition of salvation, since the Jews expected the kingdom of God and the Messiah and relied on the works of the law; but by the kingdom of God, His messiahship and law, He meant something completely different from the Jews. This influx of the Gospel, this self-protection of the Gospel teaching, its isolation from the language in which it is presented, is highly characteristic of the Gospel. Biblical theology, a recent birth, has developed rapidly and brilliantly in the West. But in our country, its principles apparently have not found any application. Our theology remains at the stage of medieval scholasticism, which took from the Holy Scriptures not content, but only evidence of their thoughts - along with church writers, pagan literature and mythology. And we have topics about truth, church, spirit, etc. they cite evidence in exactly the same sense from the Old Testament, the Gospels, and the writings of St. Paul and church writing, both ancient and modern; all the varied contents of Christian literature are distributed according to one scheme, organized under the same headings, and brought under the same formulas. Because of this, we can say that, with the widespread development of the sciences of church history, we have absolutely no scientific theology, no scientific exposition of the Christian idea. Our theology is divided, in the ancient way, into dogmatic and moral, and is exhausted by this division. These two parts of theology cannot contain in themselves the spirit of the New Testament Word of God, the New Testament truth, because the latter in them is torn into two halves, while in the Word of God they are united into one organic whole. In particular, dogmatic theology has as its subject the Gnostic side of the Christian religion, i.e. sets itself the goal of a Christian solution to epistemological questions about the other world, and moral theology has as its goal a Christian solution to questions of practical life. From a church-historical point of view, this division of Christian faith and life is fully justified, since the church, on the one hand, posed and resolved religious-gnostic issues and, on the other hand, sanctified the fullness of life, brought all aspects of natural life - family, state, etc. under the Christian banner. Meanwhile, the Gospel, first of all, does not teach faith and life separately, does not have a religious gnostic task, does not give us theoretical knowledge of the other world; it comes from the experience of divine experience, it teaches about divine life as it is revealed in human experience, it teaches us to live the divine life, to create the truth πο I εῖν τὴνάλή θε I αν. Non eloquimar magna, sed vivimus. Of course, the Gospel speaks not only about the facts of gospel history, but also contains the teachings of Christ, since the divine life of man is primarily a conscious, rational life; however, this teaching was exclusively the reason of the spiritual life that Christ revealed to people. While fully confirming the truth of church dogmas, the Gospel does not provide the basis for what can be called dogmatism - for theoretical religious knowledge and for the independent value of abstract faith. Dogmatics can only be scientific as a church-historical discipline. But moral theology also does not have an evangelical basis. The Gospel is the gospel of divine spiritual life, which has the character of uttermostness, i.e. it completely captures the human soul, gives human life an irrevocable direction; but the Gospel is not a system of rules for natural and practical life, social improvement. On the basis of the Gospel, it is impossible to resolve issues of family, state, and economic life. The solution of these issues, from the moral side, should be the subject of ethical science. In its usual form, our theology, both dogmatic and moral, is a mixture of religious revelation and philosophy, so beloved in seminary textbooks that do not shy away from “proofs from reason.” It is easy to understand that this philosophy is anciila theologiae - imaginary philosophizing, apologetic self-deception; but Christian Science suffers no less from such confusion. We don’t know the Gospel in its unique essence and don’t want to know; our theology relates to the fact of the Christian religion transcendentally, does not itself enter into the same religiously creative sphere, approaches religion from the outside, from the side of evidence - it is not religious thinking, but it discusses religion as an external fact, always proves, defends, adapts to some mental and historical level; Because of this, “scholastic” or speculative theology is a systematic substitution of Christian truth with human teaching, and this substitution is considered scientific in seminary circles and is especially valued if carried out under the banner of philosophy, of course, common sense. They don’t want to understand that peculiar religious thinking is just as much higher than rational-theological cleverness, i.e. Gnostic solution to questions about otherworldly existence and casuistic solution to issues of practical life, to what extent artistic creativity and artistic criticism are superior to an outwardly scientific discussion of facts and issues of aesthetics.... Biblical science is, first of all, a call to the divine source of living water from those “students” that rational scholastic science has dug up. The principles of biblical scholarship might be useful in an entirely different way. In addition to school theology, we have recently acquired many lovers of religious thinking from among representatives of secular literature. Here we often encounter what school theology lacks - free religious thought, free religious experience. But it is noteworthy that these free religious thinkers have a drawback that makes them similar to representatives of theological scholasticism - they have the same and even greater disdain for the historical meaning of the Gospel, in interpreting the biblical text they adhere to a method that can be called ventriloquist, they, with unbridled arbitrariness, introduce their own meaning into sacred sayings, up to and including the results of Nietzschean philosophy and decadent thought. This dressing of the latest philosophical thought in sacred vestments is especially characteristic of the modern trend of Russian literature. It can be considered quite timely for us to apply the principles of biblical theology; one can place great hopes on them in reconciling different religious views and theological movements, pacifying the modern spirit, restless in search of solid ground for faith and self-evident religious truth. It has become impossible to fence ourselves off like a Chinese wall from the conclusions of critical theology; It has become especially desirable that there should be free space for faith to measure its strength against these conclusions, that there should be a free choice between outright unbelief and firm faith. On questions regarding Christian primary sources, biblical theology provides invaluable services... However, one cannot help but see the fact that Western biblical theology, despite its relatively young age, has already come to a blank wall, is already confused in its own conclusions. We do not mean the constant change of critical trends in Western theology, nor the inconsistency of critical results that different schools arrive at, because generally accepted critical conclusions are still obtained, no matter how few they may be. But we understand the amazing sterility of critical theology in positive results, in the construction of the early Christian idea. Historical-critical conclusions are very valuable and necessary for the scientific understanding of the Gospel teaching - the historical perspective of Christian primary sources is excellently constructed, the historical basis, the historical background of Christian teaching is clearly developed; but scientific theology cannot reproduce the teaching itself, recreate the Christian idea on its own. In particular, scientific-critical theology cannot, in the historical stream of religious Jewish-Christian-church thought, single out the gospel teaching as a value of eternal value and exceptional significance for the subjective conviction of the believer; then it cannot consolidate the actual teachings of Christ in the diversity of the Gospels and the apostolic testimonies in general; finally, it cannot distinguish in the early Christian teaching what is original from what is borrowed, the unique spirit of the teaching from its historical basis. For scientific theology, the teaching of Christ falls apart into a variety of apostolic reproductions, colored by personal-historical conditions, and disappears, like one link, in the indifferent stream of historical movement; For him, the sedimentation of historical evolution is important in Christian biblical primary sources, they are important as evidence of historical development, they are valued as monuments of a historical era. In this case, scientific critical theology is characterized by the general features of evolutionary science with its inattention to individual value, to individual freedom, to the aesthetic-teleological point of view. Scientific-critical theology is not of a religious character, but of a critical-literary one; it looks at Christian monuments not under the lens of religious creativity, but only as literary monuments: this is not immanent criticism, but externally literary, verbal. The individual is not neglected here; on the contrary, in the so-called Lehrbegriffe’ax it is enslaved in inextricable isolation, but this is only the individuality of a literary monument, a historical moment, as one of many, in indifferent value. That is why here the most valuable thing is indicated not in the highest moment, for there is no such thing, but in the general outlines of historical teaching, which turn out to be colorless to the extent of their generality and coincide with the historical basis of the literary monument, and not with what is individually valuable in it. Thus, in its positive conclusions, scientific theology denies its own critical principles, which it cannot sustain in positive constructions. Starting with a reproach to dogmatic theology for the fact that it attaches dogmatic value to the fact that in Christian primary sources there is only historical language, it itself in positive constructions comes only to generalizations, to what is called the religion of the New Testament, and, thus, is lost in the broad horizons of church-historical science, does not retain its fundamental value, truly “loses its reward.” Scientific-critical theology is unable to establish an inextricable connection between the Gospel and the soul of a modern Christian; it values ​​biblical monuments on an equal basis with any church monuments; from a church-historical point of view, it even values ​​the writings of Peter and Paul above the Gospel teaching, the former for it are with a church-historical future, and the latter is only the result of past history. Biblical-critical theology is unable to use its own principles, is powerless in the face of the tasks that it itself has posed in such a brilliant form, and has no actual religious value. Kritikund eine rein äusseriicheBeschäftigung mit der Schrift schaffen keine Frucht für das religiöse Leben: this is said by one of the later representatives of Western critical theology. And this impotence of critical theology is not accidental, but, in essence, its tasks are beyond its own strength. It is precisely what is individually valuable, original, both in the aesthetic and in the religious field, that cannot be established in a purely scientific way, by external discussion of the monument: this value is internal and can only be grasped immanently, through kinship in creativity itself - religious (or artistic). External historical criticism can determine the external fate of a monument, its historical basis, and bring it to the threshold of its internal content, but this is the limit for it. To construct its own content, for its internal assessment, a new principle must be added to the principles of biblical theology - the principle of related creativity, internal comprehension. This would be a fruitful combination of scientific criticism with subjective creativity, which would fill the critical form with internal content and provide a scientific justification for religious value. The principles of scientific criticism, lacking in our theology, form a necessary condition for rational religious belief, and the merits of critical theology cannot be exaggerated or belittled; but the meaning of this criticism is only negative. Beyond its external sphere lies the region of internal value, to which its influence no longer extends: only the revelation of this value, which is lacking in Western theology, complements the scope and power of theological science. Judging by the direction of Russian literature, by the nature of Russian religiosity, the last task seems to create Russian theology 1. The application of this new, religious principle in theology is the only way for the final solution of critical difficulties and to the highest level of subjective conviction. In this way, the unified teaching of Christ is comprehended in the diversity of the apostolic transmissions and in its exceptional religious value. The fact is that the gospel teaching, as already said, is not a logical system of thought, a teaching of theoretical faith: it is the reason of a historical and psychological fact - divine experience, the experience of spiritual life. It allows for experimental verification. “Whoever wants to do the will of Him who sent Me will know about this teaching, whether it is from God, or whether I speak from Myself.” The Gospel is not a logical invention, but a fact of religious creativity, to which a living, experiential relationship is possible, establishing an internal affinity between it and the researcher, similar to that which exists between an artist-critic or commentator and an artist-author. At the same time, the exceptional feature of the Gospel teaching in the history of religion is that the Gospel is based on the self-evident truth of religious divine creativity. The “Son of Man” in the religious field is the “lord” of every external phenomenon - the Sabbath, the law, the word. There is no external mediation between Him and God, His teaching is not confirmed by any external evidence, it is neither a conclusion from circumstances nor a logical construction, it is the innermost revelation. And in us the Gospel brings to life the same self-consciousness of God, eternal and autonomous, awakens in us the same absoluteness. This self-consciousness is the final criterion of religious conviction, beyond which nothing can be imagined; and since this self-consciousness is akin to the Gospel, in this affinity is the highest criterion of gospel knowledge, in which the coincidence of an objective idea with a subjective conviction is given, i.e. knowledge of the Gospel becomes a subjective conviction, and one’s own intuition takes on the character of objective knowledge. This feature raises the Gospel of Christ to the height of exceptional religious significance, which patristic writing does not have, which makes a distinction between the apostolic transmission of Christ’s teaching and the personal apostolic speech, relating the latter to the area of ​​church history, which, finally, allows us to highlight the unified teaching of Christ in the diversity of the Gospels, especially the synoptic and fourth. This general and similar, smaller questions of evangelical criticism are resolved with sufficient convincing. The last sign of reliable knowledge in this case will be the internal harmony of the idea, the harmony of the system, the integrity of the worldview, which cannot accept alien elements for internal reasons. That in all the Gospels, not excluding the fourth, a generally unified idea is revealed, this turns out to be beyond all doubt. Science must take into account the very fact of such a construction of the Gospel idea. If it were possible to create a beautiful picture from archaeological debris, is it possible to raise the objection against the value of such a painting that, apparently, not all the debris included in it belong to the same era, that the name of the artist cannot be strictly restored? And is it really impossible to compose a painting or statue in this way, in addition to the archaeological testing of each fragment, to be guided by the idea of ​​​​an artistic creation, having caught it at least by one feature? If the idea is composed falsely, then this will immediately be exposed either by the failure or the caricature of the work. But in success, in the harmony of reproduction, in its beauty is the justification of the idea. Of course, the idea should embrace as many historical dates as possible, attributed by science or legend to a given historical phenomenon, but no particulars in this case can stop the creative work. It is equally desirable that the conclusions of critical science about each date, about each text, coincide with the results of creative work, do not contradict it, but the whole question is in the method of work: we give critical science a verification value, and internal religious value - a creative-gnoseological value. This method is especially applicable to the Gospel idea in view of the fact that it is extremely simple in its basic essence, although infinitely deep, that it is equal to itself at all points of the system, that here the primary importance is not the synthesis of dates, but analysis. To comprehend as much as possible the depth of one saying, to reveal one point in the gospel system - this is enough to comprehend the gospel idea. It is fully given in each of its points, in each Gospel text. Synthesis therefore is only a complement to analysis and all particulars, if the idea is true to itself, lose meaning. The highest reward of gospel exposition is to come to the experience of the believer in simplicity. Theological science in its final conclusion sets itself no other goal than to understand the reason of simple faith, living spiritual experience. Every time we deal with spiritual creativity, with spiritual life, and not with a fictitious system, we have the right to immanent comprehension, according to the law of internal affinity. Spiritual creativity, spiritual life, like organic life, like physical and biological phenomena, develops systematically, follows its own laws, and allows the researcher to appeal to inner harmony, to aesthetic roundness. A systematic distance from the subject of research into the distance of history is appropriate only for an externally scientific discussion of the subject, when understanding its historical growth and historical relationships, but it never gives an understanding of a historical phenomenon, it is not appropriate when asking about the inner essence of the phenomena of spiritual life, spiritual creativity. Many years of scientific study will not give this understanding if there is no internal support for it. Just as in the aesthetic field one understands music, another understands painting, so in the history of spiritual life one understands certain phenomena, for example. one religion, another - other phenomena, one understands one stage of historical development as central, the other another. The grain of understanding is always given in the experience of one’s own spiritual life. The enormous significance of historical science is that, in the variety of phenomena of modern spiritual experience, it allows us to distinguish phenomena that are valuable in historical and epistemological terms, corresponding to the historical course, typical, true believers, and phenomena that are not valuable in this regard, not typical, subjective, sectarian; but for all that, it is internal experience, even if placed in a certain direction in this way, that only one’s own experience gives internal comprehension of a historical phenomenon, a historical teaching. For theology, pure historical-critical science is valuable, without any tendency, creating only the external frame of the teaching, establishing its words, and the religious and creative construction of its internal meaning, while scholastic theology comes down to repeating and defending a certain formula of words, a certain system of facts. If it is objected to us that in this way, in the latter result, only the external side of religious teaching is accessible to objective-historical knowledge, while in the question of its internal meaning there always remains the possibility of subjective limitation, in which it is impossible to separate the historically objective from the subjectively creative, we will answer that the means to eliminate this limitation are not yet known, we can only wish that this subjectivity is not a mechanical introduction of a later meaning into old words, so that it does not violate the historical perspective of the external aspects of religious teaching and the demands of critical science that it be applied only to the internal essence of the teaching, so that it does not go beyond the boundaries of the historical framework. Here we enter the sphere of the question of the relationship between tradition and personal experience, personal creativity. What apologetics usually says in defense of church tradition turns out to be too small for our time, its arguments are too weak. In the modern state of science, with the modern teaching about heredity and the importance of the social environment for individual development, to defend church tradition in general means to speak truisms. Even modern Protestant theologians do not completely deny the significance of tradition. Having at hand the apostolic writings, jealously preserved by the church and explained by the history of church teaching, using the historical experience of Christian life, connected by a thousand threads with the modern church, every Christian receives too many benefits from church tradition not to recognize its actual significance. But this is not the essence of the issue. The question is whether tradition, by its meaning, eliminates the power of personal religious experience and creativity, whether it justifies canonical power over the individual, exceeding the actual meaning of tradition. This question, of course, must be answered in the negative. Tradition is a fact, and not a principle, by virtue of which everything betrayed, already by its origin, should be considered valuable and obligatory for the believer. The last power of religious conviction grows stronger on a subjective basis, which no sophistry can shake. Incomparably more than in any other religion, in Christianity the individual is called to inner freedom. The importance of religious tradition significantly exceeds the conditions of heredity and social boundaries of the individual. The roots of religion are as deep as the unconscious basis of individual life. Religion is not limited to those individual characteristics of conscious life in which heredity and social influence are manifested; it embraces this very unconscious, universal basis of life both in the aesthetic sense of the cosmos and in the religious representation of the all-encompassing divine providence. Unbelief, not as a logical conclusion, not as a struggle with God, but as a simple lack of foundations for faith in the feeling, should be called primarily frivolity. Religion is, first of all, a serious attitude towards life, a deep sense of life, consciousness of the universal basis of existence, looking at individual life from an eternal and universal point of view. To be religious means to consciously immerse yourself in the bosom of the world, to partake of its elements, to descend with your heart into the heart of the earth and ascend to heaven, to sanctify in your consciousness the family and national beginning of life, to relate yourself to your ancestors, to your fathers and - through them - to the one Father of all life. Religion is essentially conservative. Religion is not invented and in this respect is completely opposite to philosophy. Every true religion begins with the words: “you have heard what was said by the ancients,” begins with the worship of the God of the fathers. This is priestly conservatism, the sacred element of religion. No one himself accepts the honor of being sacred to God; this is deeper, it comes from dedication, from tradition. But true religion is not only priestly-conservative, but also prophetically-progressive, not only has a static element, but also a dynamic one, not only spontaneous-popular, but also personal-spiritual. The sacred-folk element constitutes the historical basis from which religion goes deep into the individual. The depth of religion is given only in personal creativity. No limits can be placed on this religious creativity of the individual in the area of ​​subjective life; only an external limit can be placed on it, limiting its social manifestation; Moreover, only here, in the personal sphere, does religion achieve its highest power, its absolute content. This is what the Christian religion is. If in general religion has a spontaneously conservative basis, then, in particular, Christianity, in its characteristics, in its individual value, is the most deeply personal and spiritual religion. Thus, the religious principle of theology corresponds in general to the essence of religion and especially to the essence of the Christian religion in its relation to the Old Testament basis. Christianity is connected with its historical basis, the Old Testament religion, according to the law of development. A religious idea, like all living ideas, develops. Ideas of reason, unlike scientific truths, develop in a dialectical way. Scientific truth requires only a general preparation of the mind, a general cultural uplift - and under this condition it appears, like Minerva from the head of Jupiter, in complete completeness, in objective certainty, in mathematical outlines. Give the savage some education, reveal to him the technology of the telephone, and he will master this technology, perceive the idea of ​​the telephone in the same way as it is given to a person in a civilized society. In scientific perception there is no difference between nations and between centuries. The discovery made in France and Germany is now finding application in Japan or Russia. If the power of steam had been known in ancient times, then, of course, the steamships and locomotives of that time would have been quite the same as they are now. Otherwise, the ideas of the mind are discovered and comprehended. The words “God”, “good”, “salvation” evoke various feelings and ideas in different people - at different stages of spiritual evolution, so that one cannot understand the other, spiritually spiritual. Here - if two people say the same thing, then it is not the same thing. The seeds of living ideas depend on the soil on which they fall, and in different soils they bear different fruits. Spiritual ideas are discovered (exist) only to the extent that they are assimilated; here there cannot be an idea known, as if objectively given, but not subjectively assimilated: ideas of reason are discovered and assimilated only when they find a fulcrum in the subject - this is what is so often forgotten, imagining the objective history of an idea, as if secretly discovered before assimilation, bringing religious monuments of any age under the same headings, mechanically transferring them into old words later thoughts. Given without subjective receptivity, a spiritual idea is an empty sound, an empty abstraction, a logical game of the mind. This subjective receptivity, this revelation of the idea, is determined by the law of dialectical development, the law of the thesis, antithesis and synthesis. This form of development forms the necessary frame in which the idea exists for us, which sells it flesh and blood, creates a tactile reality for it, and gives it historical and psychological force. Here are some illustrative examples. Human behavior can be considered and is indeed considered by scientists of a certain direction from the points of view of physical, biological, psychological and sociological. The development of life, or the development of behavior, from a physical point of view is the development of the coherence of the sequential and simultaneous actions of the individual, the certainty in the coordination of his movements. The most developed behavior will be the best possible behavior for each individual case, i.e. will consist of the most numerous and varied actions. From a biological point of view, more developed behavior is the behavior of a person in whom all of his (numerous and varied) functions are performed, each to the proper extent, in strict adaptation to the conditions of his existence, etc. They outline for us a ladder of the development of behavior in the animal and human world, starting with the chaotic movements of the ciliate, with its least extensive and intense life, and ending with the most diverse, most adapted actions of a cultural society, in which members not only do not interfere with each other in the development of life, but even mutually assist. The most developed behavior, we are told, is moral behavior. And undoubtedly, moral activity is subject to the condition of a certain development of life - physical, biological, etc. In a society in which lies reign, obligations are not fulfilled, legal relations are not regulated, in which parents do not extend their concerns to raising children and ensuring their well-being, the individual and society are mutually hostile, relations between different classes of society are not established on the basis of common interests, in which the desire of everyone for happiness is an obstacle to the same desire of others - in such a society moral principles cannot have proper application. However, physical, biological, and sociological development do not exhaust the moral life of a person. We can easily imagine a highly cultured society in which business and legal relations dominate, and there is no soul, in which everything is frozen by this efficiency, prudence, adaptability, and there is no room for the scope of individual creativity, for the internal tension of spiritual existence. Morality itself, as a spiritual value, and not as a utilitarian tool - as spiritual life, begins on the ladder of cultural development only from the moment when a living soul is invested in the forms of cultural progress (regardless of its specific stage), when a person rises above these forms, becomes above them in the name of inner dignity, in the name of love and self-denial. The idea of ​​self-denial, the idea of ​​spiritual personal life, finds its proper soil and fulcrum in the antithesis of cultural efficiency and well-being, so that the moment of this very antithesis is the flowering and strength of spiritual life. One of the necessary conditions for spiritual life is community. A person can be moral only in a society of people like himself, and the conditions of community life form the necessary basis for spiritual life. Whoever does not have shame, who does not know a sense of honor, do not expect even the beginnings of spiritual development from him. They rightly say: if one could imagine a person who grew up on some uninhabited island, without any communication with people, then he would have no idea about the propriety or impropriety of his actions and his feelings, about the merits or demerits of his thoughts, as well as about the beauty or ugliness of his face. And with all this, it would be extremely unreasonable to reduce morality to sympathy, to exhaust it with feelings of shame and honor. When the assessment of actions and mood is reduced entirely to the conditions of community life, it - at a certain stage of individual freedom - necessarily becomes hypocritical: everyone finds a thousand ways to wear a mask of decency and be unworthy in the soul, to cover up internal ugliness with external gloss, to calm public opinion with conditional actions and loud words, while remaining a low person in the soul. The actual rational consciousness of a person awakens and strengthens only from the moment he ceases to be satisfied with external decency, ostentatious dignity, but demands from himself genuine love for goodness itself, and becomes autonomous. But again, the extreme development of individualism, personal arbitrariness, also does not give rise to complete spiritual good, which is given to the individual only in conscious communication with the whole society. These examples show that the spiritual ideal is not given to us in an unconditional form, equal and equally understandable for all times, for all nations and for all individuals, but it is discovered and assimilated by people according to the degree of subjective preparedness, according to the law of dialectical development, according to the law of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. This law explains why each new stage of revelation of spiritual life is accompanied by a violent rebellion against old idols, the rejection of previous ideals, and why, at the same time, in new ideals we recognize old eternal images, so that spiritual development is the discovery of what has been hidden in the soul for centuries. Therefore, every scribe who has been taught the kingdom of heaven is like a master who brings out from his treasury new and old. When we comprehend the idea of ​​spiritual life, we seem to recognize something old, long-familiar, dear, eternal. Here the object of knowledge is, as it were, given to us once and for all at a certain point at which we direct our gaze - and with each new strain of vision, the spiritual truth appears before us clearer and clearer, the fog dissipates, and we catch what was previously blurred in vague contours. For everyone looking at this point, at this clearing of eternity, the truth appears from different sides; for everyone at a new stage of development it becomes clearer and closer - the path of spiritual development is the path from external to internal, from old to eternal, from general to personal and universal. So the idea of ​​Christianity was revealed to the world as an antithesis to the pre-Christian – Jewish worldview. If we want to understand the historical power of Christianity with which it appeared to the world and conquered the world, to understand it as a living force and not as an abstract logical system, we must delve into its historical basis. Here is the starting point of the scientific understanding of Christianity, the scientific presentation of the Gospel teaching. Others in the Gospel look for answers to practical questions of life - about marriage, power, property; They believe that the Gospel teaching consists of separate points corresponding to different aspects of our life. To look at the Gospel this way means to decompose it into elementary truths and lose its highest meaning. Such a view of the gospel of Christ does not correspond either to the meaning of the Gospel as the basis of life, or to the historical form in which the Christian idea was revealed to the world. The Gospel, as the basis of life, gives a person the highest freedom in solving private issues of life; the truth of the Gospel makes him free, revives in him a creative personality who establishes all relationships from himself. And historically, the gospel idea was revealed to the world like lightning flashing from end to end in a certain direction from east to west, and not like countless lamps placed everywhere and throwing light in all directions - the gospel truth was revealed to the world as a definite historical antithesis, and not as a catechetical answer to elementary questions. “You have heard what was said to the ancients, but I speak to you”: this is the historical form of the gospel teaching. Thus, the gospel revelation is completely conditioned by the law, which determines the entire historical development of the idea of ​​spiritual life, every stage of its historical growth, every facet of its assimilation. The Christian idea is conditioned in all respects by this law. In its historical revelation, first of all, it is given its adversarial nature to what is known under the name of Judaism. But adversity does not exhaust the relationship of the gospel idea to its historical basis: adversative in relation to Judaism, the Christian idea was a revival of that eternal truth that lies in the depths of the Old Testament religion, anticipated by its prophetic spirit. Therefore, declaring: “You have heard what was said by the ancients, but I speak to you,” the New Testament Teacher did not at the same time come to destroy the law or the prophets, but to fulfill, for not one jot or one tittle will pass from the old religion until everything is fulfilled. And at the same time, this old, this eternal thing appeared truly new in His mouth and His life. To reveal the eternal old in the Gospel letter and to show that truly new meaning that the eternal truth received in the Gospel, this constitutes the highest task of the scientific presentation of the Gospel teaching. Negative criticism, pointing to the old in the Gospel teaching, does not recognize its originality: Christianity, they say, is nothing more than the ancient Jewish religion, purified from the later distortions of Judaism. On the other hand, traditional dogmatics sees the historical basis of Christianity in the fact that the Gospel retains part of the Old Testament teaching, namely the moral teaching of the Old Testament, supplemented in the Gospel with some new rules of life and, most importantly, new dogmatic teaching. Both there and here, both in rationalism and in traditional dogmatics, there is one and the same rough view of the new in the historical revelation of spiritual life. “It has already been said,” some say; “That was not said,” others say. This is a crude view, because each new step in the historical revelation of spiritual life is evidenced not so much by new words as by a new upsurge of the human spirit. New things are put into old words. You need to look not at individual words, but at the whole worldview and understanding of life - this is where you need to look for something new. If we have been given a truly new step in the historical revelation of the idea, then we will not find here part of the old and part of the new: this is impossible, because no one puts a patch of unbleached fabric on old clothes, otherwise the newly sewn one will be torn away from the old, and the hole will be even worse. With the actual development of a religious idea, the old is retained not in part, but in its eternal essence, which appears in a new light, in a new phase of development and in complete originality. In the history of the spiritual idea we see the same as in cosmological and biological evolution: the unity of force and the gradually changing kingdoms in which it manifests itself, such as the mineral, vegetable, animal, and rational kingdoms. Likewise, the historical antithesis represented by the revelation of Christianity is one of the stages in the development of the spiritual idea. This, however, does not prevent this stage of spiritual evolution from having a completely exceptional character. Just as in the ladder of biological development the kingdom of intelligent beings appears with a character of exclusivity in relation to all previous kingdoms; Likewise, the antithesis represented by Christianity has exceptional significance in a number of all stages of the historical development of the spiritual idea. Christianity in the history of religions is the same as reason in nature: the Christian antithesis of Judaism is the antithesis of the infinite to the finite, the absolute conditional, the free elemental, the creative and eternal to the temporary and limited. This is the most instructive antithesis, the highest stage of religious development, this is a revelation with a truly divine character. In the Gospel, the historical, spontaneously popular basis of religion was combined with the absolute creativity of a religious personality, from the breadth and distance of history it passed into the endless depth of inner personal life. The historical basis of Christianity is given to us in the fullness of the Old Testament Jewish understanding of life. The better we understand the eternal truth of Jewish prophecy, and the more vividly we imagine the system of Judaism, which in Christianity has its antithesis, the more accurately we will understand the historical appearance of the Christian idea and its deepest essence. We, first of all, need to outline the essential meaning of the Old Testament religion and indicate that eternally valuable truth that was given to the world by the Jewish religious genius, accepted by Christianity and raised by it to the highest level of understanding; secondly, we need to reveal the content of that Judaistic worldview and understanding of life, in contrast to which Christ revealed the new Gospel understanding of life; finally, we must depict those theological ideas and religious images of the Jewish people that serve as the language of the Gospel teaching, without entering into its content. Will we not have to face the difficulties of Old Testament chronology, with questions about the origin of Deuteronomy, about the relationship of the law and the prophets, and similar questions as raised in later critical theology? This would mean getting entangled in such a jungle where much of critical value has been developed, but where generally accepted results are not yet in sight... But we do not need to lift this historical-critical weight. Our task is different. We need to understand not the Old Testament chronology, but the logic of the Old Testament religion, the logic of its development. We need to place the facts or moments of the Jewish religion in the order of their evolutionary gradualism, or internal sequence, in an order that is determined by the own character of each fact, its relationship to the nearest, preceding and subsequent facts. We do not start from the well-known formula: “what is reasonable is valid,” but we consider from a given historical reality only that essential sequence that is justified by the consciousness of the people or its representatives; we do not mean the outwardly factual history of religion, but the history of the conscious or reasonable assimilation of it by people. If we read in Gen. IV, 26: “To Seth a son was born, and he named him Enos; then they began to call on the name of Jehovah,” and so Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob called on God, and in Ex. VI it is said that only to Moses did God first reveal himself with the name Jehovah; then, without embarrassment, we can accept the latter as the starting point in the presentation of the Jewish religion, since the event of the revelation of Jehovah, narrated in Ex. VI, answers for itself, no matter whether the Jews in Egypt forgot the name of Jehovah or some other historical fact is hidden here: for us it is extremely important that in the minds of the Jews the name of Jehovah was initially associated with the idea of ​​deliverance from Egypt and the covenant with God, and the preliminary history of religion does not interest us at all. Likewise, if it is narrated that God, already at the creation of the world, “blessed the seventh day and sanctified it” (Gen. II, 3 cf. Ex. II, 11; XXXI, 17), but Jehovah commanded the Jews to observe the Sabbath in remembrance of deliverance from Egyptian slavery (Deut. V, 15), then, obviously, in the minds of the Jews the relationship of the Sabbath holiday to the idea of deliverance from Egypt was original a fact, and its relation to the creation of the world is later: if, on the contrary, the Jews had already celebrated the Sabbath, then they could not have been told: “Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and Jehovah your God brought you out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm, therefore Jehovah your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day” (Deut. V, 15). Of the two religious ideas - the idea of ​​​​Jehovah-God of Sinai (Ex. III; XIX, 3. 4) or the God of Palestine (Judg. XI, 21; I Sam. XXVI, 19) and the idea of ​​Jehovah the Creator of the whole world - the first must be placed as the previous one in the system of religion, and we do not even pose or decide in either direction the historical question of whether this limited idea appeared contrary to the previously discovered truth of universal monotheism, or whether the latter idea gradually developed from the first. How this historical issue should be resolved is easy to understand even without our reasoning. Another example. If during the time of the judges they were guided by custom, if we know about the statutes of judges and kings (Judgment XIX, 30; and Kings XIII, 12; J. Nav. XXIV, 25; and Kings XXX, 25); if, according to the prophets, Jehovah did not give the Jews the commandment about burnt offerings when they left Egypt (Jer. VII, 22), then, of course, at that time the written law did not yet dominate life, if only because it was forgotten, and when Hilkiah the high priest “found the book of the law,” it means that only from that time the law came into force - for our purposes we do not need to solve the purely historical question of the time of writing of Moses law. One has only to delve into the actual content of prophetic preaching and remember that scribes and legalism acquired dominance after the prophets, and we will understand that the question of the relationship of legalism to prophecy is not a purely historical question, but is also a religious question: the question of the replacement of the prophetic spirit by a legalistic spirit in the life of the Jewish people remains in full force even if the Law of Moses was written long before the people received zeal for the fulfillment of the law. It is necessary to distinguish between a scientific-historical task and a religious-teleological one; it is necessary to distinguish between the history of religious teaching, religious concepts, and the logic of religious experiences, the logic of the development of religious consciousness. We cannot ignore history, we will take into account the conclusions of historical criticism, we will check the logic of religion with the chronology of religion, but we are concerned only with the most important periods of history, and not with historical details and particulars. It is important to us how the prophets and the law looked at the cult, but the archeology of the victims and the church is not important; It is important for us that all the prophets announced the coming day of the Lord, but it does not matter what historical events each of them timed the time of the day of the Lord. In the history of religion, we are concerned only with what is essential, only with the main channel of religion, its main current, and not with the historically accidental, not with tributaries and ramifications. Many questions, especially those that arouse the attention of the historian of religion, turn out to be indifferent to us; many texts, especially valuable in literary and exegetical terms, are insignificant for us. What interests us most often lies in what is most obvious and simple, and our task mainly comes down to deepening superficial facts, penetrating their subsoil, not so much describing their historical appearance as penetrating their internal connection and consistency. In general, we study the Old Testament only from the side from which it is addressed to the Gospel; we establish the logic that led to Christianity, we cast a retrospective glance from the height of the Gospel at the historical distance of past centuries. It is rightly said: just as you cannot understand Christianity without knowing the Old Testament religion, so you cannot understand the Old Testament religion without knowing the Gospel. This transition from the old to the new at the point where they collide and are mutually illuminated, this historical birth of a new grain from rotting soil is the subject of our study. Biblical theology has two established types: it gives either the history of biblical religion, or biblical dogma, the biblical system. Our work does not strictly adhere to either type. We do not give a literary chronological history of the Jewish-Christian religion, since we follow the logical connection of the facts of this religion; but at the same time it cannot be said that we distribute the contents of the Bible in a dogmatic or logical system, since it is we who do not consider the Bible or the Gospel to be a logical system. We want to understand the historical power of the Gospel, the historical form in which it was revealed to the world, but to understand it not objectively historically, but subjectively; we want to subjectively relive the historical fact of the Christian religion, the historical Gospel. There is no need to see in this our excessive skepticism in relation to the historical knowledge of a religious idea, excessive distrust in the historical-scientific justification of religious belief, for we still recognize the importance of historical science in correcting subjective opinion; However, we choose this method of presentation not only because of the conditions in which theological science is placed in our country and which are more favorable to revealing the essential meaning of the historical-religious process than to clarifying its historical and literary circumstances - we are decisively convinced that in historical form a subjective view can be fully presented, which, in addition to scientific value, also has subjective and aesthetic value and indisputability. Not only is it more scientific under our conditions to simply rely on science than to pretend to be scientific; We also want our research, while not having scientific self-sufficiency, because it refers to critical science for support, to have subjective-aesthetic self-sufficiency. We dare to hope that our research in the general, main direction will satisfy scientific criticism - we would only like to meet scientific criticism, we would only like God to free us from judges who are guided by any interests other than scientific ones; but for all that, our Christian concept requires attention even if we assume that it does not correspond to the scientific-objective understanding of the Gospel, that we present the historical Gospel in a modern-subjective light. Biological evolution is repeated in embryological development; religious-historical evolution is repeated in personal-religious development. The two religious evolutions, historical and personal, are mutually illuminated. Because of this, religious research acquires personal religious value, and subjective experience and religious creativity, in contrast to scholastic theology, acquire epistemological significance... I believe there is a sharp difference in the methods of literary-critical and historical-philological examination of religious monuments, on the one hand, and the religious reproduction of their content, their ideas, on the other hand; I strongly oppose mixing these two areas. The philological translation of the Holy Scriptures, the historical and archaeological explanation of its sayings do not belong to the field of religious and theological. The grammar of the New Testament language is not a theological work. And this work is accomplished the more successfully the less it is hampered by theological trends. As a literary monument, Holy Scripture is a subject of general historical and philological science. One should refrain from any theological conclusions in these works. This is a different area that requires different talents. On the other hand, this second work, religious and theological, fundamentally excludes independent excursions into historical and philological spheres. I want to say that the historical and philological substantiation of ideological conclusions always has the character of a scientific simulation. An example is the second volume of Ritschl’s monograph. One cannot help but be suspicious if, for an orthodox theologian, historical and philological science invariably tends to justify confessional truths, and vice versa - if for a negative thinker it always says otherwise. Not only do predetermined theological conclusions deprive historical-philological exercises of any value; but even if such exercises persistently accompany a harmoniously unfolding system of ideas, the work no longer gives the impression of nobility. It is better, more noble, if scientific supports are not independently sought, but are indicated in the given results of science. Of course, we are not talking about random excursions, about random corrections in scientific research; We consider it possible that a religious thinker can be a brilliant philologist and can, in his ideological work, along the way, make significant amendments to historical and philological science. So be it; but in principle one cannot help but wish that ideological construction does not require deviations from the stable results of critical science. If the results are unstable, then they cannot serve as a basis in either direction, and in this case, a minimum of scientific decency requires that the harmony of the disclosure of the idea not be masked by pseudo-scientific considerations. What is desirable is not a confusion of these two areas, but their free combination: for the scientific significance of ideological and theological work, it is enough that it is adjacent to undoubted critical conclusions, that it uses the obtained results of historical and philological science. This nature of religious and theological work does not guarantee it from private scientific mistakes and errors, which can provide a wide field for the use of the critical tool of reviewers; but the whole point is that this use of a critical tool must always be specific, must consist of certain instructions, and not in any way a fundamental demand for an independent revision of the supports, in no way a fundamental denial of the original significance of religious and theological creativity. It is equally difficult to encounter both the impudence of ventriloquists, who do not want to know any historical perspective, and the pitiful helplessness of learned theologians, who, fully armed with philology and archeology, with an exquisite understanding of details, individual words and texts, are completely powerless to connect the texts with one coherent idea, to grasp the spirit and meaning of the teaching, and are forced, every time it comes to the idea of ​​the teaching, to repeat in childish babble traditional formulas and other people’s words. Just as sectarian subjectivity is disgusting, so is proud verbal scholarship, naively flaunting quotes and names, but powerless to understand and harmoniously reproduce Christian teaching. It is time to loudly declare the legitimacy of religious thinking, the religious construction of the Gospel teaching, the legitimacy and original value of ideological and theological works that are based on critical science, testifying to this not with quotes and scientific simulation, but the actual use of scientific results, and have their own direct (peculiar) task of internally harmonious and immanently convincing reproduction of the historical gospel of Christ. You might be interested in: