Holy Scripture, Church and Science

Holy Scripture... but Christ didn’t write anything! It was only said once about Him in the Gospel of John that He wrote, but even this time He wrote with a finger (see: John 8:6) and wrote on the ground. The founders of various religions, the founders of philosophical schools, wrote a lot and wrote willingly, but Christ wrote nothing. This circumstance is very typical for a Christian. The whole essence of Christ’s work will become clear and understandable to us if we appreciate only the fact that Christ did not write anything. Christ did not write... This means that the Son of God did not come to earth to write and give people some kind of book. Is the incarnation of the Only Begotten Son of God necessary to write a book? The incarnation of the second Person of the Holy Trinity was necessary for the salvation of people. The book, no matter what it was, could not and cannot save humanity. Christ is not a teacher, but rather a Savior. It was necessary to renew human nature, corrupted by sin, and the beginning of this renewal was laid by the very incarnation of the Son of God. The greatest theologian of the 2nd century, Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, says: “If the following thought arises in you: what new did the Lord bring with His coming, then know that He brought everything new by the fact that He brought Himself and thereby renewed and revived man” (Against heresies. Book 4. Chapter 84, § 1). By his incarnation, the Son of God made people partakers of the Divine nature and therefore became the founder of a new humanity, in which the former unity of human nature, destroyed by sin, is restored. And Christ Himself called this new humanity the Church. In the 16th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, we read about how the Apostle Peter, on behalf of all the apostles, confessed Christ as the incarnate Only Begotten Son of God. And Christ answered Peter: On this rock (that is, on His incarnation) I will build My Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it (Matthew 16:16-18). And when parting and saying goodbye to His disciples, He promised to send them another Comforter - the Holy Spirit, Who will guide them in all truth and Who will remain with them forever (see: John 14:16-17; 15:26; 14:26; 16:13). It is this Holy Spirit that is constantly spoken of in the Holy Scriptures, that He revives the Church, which is called the Body of Christ. The Holy Spirit is the one Source of all spiritual gifts with which members of the Church are endowed (see: 1 Cor. 12:4–11). The Church lives, thinks and thrives in perfection, guided by the Holy Spirit. Only in the Church does an individual receive all the strength necessary for his moral rebirth. This is exactly how Holy Scripture makes us imagine the meaning and essence of the work of Christ. The work of Christ is the creation of the Church 1. Based on this basic idea, we must reason about the Holy Scriptures. Christ created the Church. The Church existed even when the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament did not yet exist. From the very beginning of the existence of the Church, Christians used the sacred books of the Old Testament for their edification. The books of the New Testament appeared over a period of more than half a century from the beginning of the historical existence of the Church. These books were written by the holy apostles for the instruction of members of the already existing Church; they were written for the Church. In the books of the Holy Scriptures, the apostles seemed to memorize their oral instructions. And if so, then it would not be insolence to say that a person is saved not by the Holy Scripture as a book, but by the grace of the Holy Spirit living in the Church. The gracious power of the Holy Spirit acts both through the Sacraments of the Church and through the statutes of church life; it acts as the inspired word of God and through the books of Holy Scripture. By the will of the Holy Spirit, this Scripture was written and given to the Church. It is a precious property, but it is church property. Therefore, the Holy Scripture cannot be separated from the Church. Outside the Church, Scripture is nothing, or better to say, outside the Church there is no Holy Scripture, and there cannot be. To become a follower of a particular philosophical school, you need to master the philosophical works of the founder of this school. But to become a true Christian, is it enough to know the New Testament for salvation? Of course not. You can know the entire New Testament by heart, you can know all the science of the New Testament and yet be very, very far from salvation. For salvation, it is necessary to be attached to the Church, as in the book of the Acts of the Apostles it is said that those who are being saved were added to the Church (see: Acts 2:47; Acts 5:13–14). Only in the one-saving Church of Christ do the Scriptures serve man for the benefit. The Scriptures are saving only for those who are in the Church. Thus, the Holy Scriptures have their meaning and significance only in the Church, with which they are inextricably linked and for the sake of which they received their existence. The idea of ​​the Church is therefore the main guiding principle for an Orthodox person in judging Scripture and in using it for the real benefit of his soul. And above all, the Church and its dogmatic teaching provide the key to the correct understanding of Holy Scripture. Now more and more often we are faced with such reasoning: in the Holy Scriptures we read this and that, but the Church teaches differently; This means that the Church is mistaken. This is how all sectarians usually reason, but one can often hear similar speeches from people who, although they have a negative attitude towards the Church, still consider themselves Christians. But all such reasoning is completely false at its very root. The Holy Spirit, through the holy apostles, wrote the Holy Scriptures for the Church, but the same Spirit guides the Church itself, according to the false promise of the Savior, into all truth. The Holy Spirit is one and indivisible, eternal and unchanging. How can He say one thing in the Holy Scriptures, but another in the teachings and life of the Church? To admit the possibility of a contradiction between the Church and the Holy Scriptures means to talk about the self-contradiction of the Holy Spirit, this means to truly blaspheme the Holy Spirit. Only the devil can instill the blasphemous thought of the Holy Spirit contradicting Himself, and we must agree with the strong and harsh, but wise and fair saying of St. Vincent of Lerins: “When we see that some cite apostolic or prophetic sayings to refute the universal faith, we must not doubt that the devil speaks through their mouths” 2. No explanation of Holy Scripture should contradict the teachings of the Church. After all, what is all church teaching? Are all church dogmas? But they are nothing more than indications of how the Holy Scriptures should be understood. At the Ecumenical Councils, before any truth of Christian doctrine was established, the sayings of the Holy Scriptures were studied in detail. Some sayings of Scripture seemed to heretics, for example, the Arians at the First Ecumenical Council, to contradict this truth. Then the fathers of the Councils pointed out how these sayings should be understood in accordance with church truth, and this truth was confirmed by the whole Council, that is, by the entire Church, by the Holy Spirit living in the Church and guiding it to all truth, which is why both the Council of the Apostles, described in the 15th chapter of the book of Acts, and subsequent Church Councils began their definitions with the words: It pleased the Holy Spirit and us ( Acts 15:28). Therefore, if anything in the Holy Scripture seems to us to be contrary to church teaching, then our business is only to try to understand the agreement between the Holy Scripture and church teaching, and not to deny church teaching. This is why we can and must, when interpreting the Holy Scriptures, be guided by the works of the patrists: their authors, when interpreting the Holy Scriptures, steadily and invariably remained faithful to church teaching; being, in the words of the Sixth Ecumenical Council, luminaries in the world, they were also the rule of faith. Thus, the Church is the leader in the interpretation of Holy Scripture. The need for this particular guidance will be revealed with particular clarity if we fully think through the greatest lie that Protestantism has inscribed on its banner, and behind it all kinds of sectarianism and, in general, human frivolity and freethinking. Protestantism rejected the need for church norms and principles to interpret Scripture. But then, obviously, when interpreting Scripture, everyone must be guided by their so-called common sense. I'm not even talking about the fact that the common sense of different people very often evaluates the same phenomena, the same facts differently, but I think - and this is undoubtedly true - that in such a matter as understanding the Holy Scriptures, our mind, left to its own devices, cannot be sound at all. After all, speaking frankly, how often in our lives we observe that our reason with its sophisms only justifies our [fallen] will. Usually we very easily agree with each other on issues that do not affect our lives, do not concern the directions of our will. That is why in matters of natural science, especially in mathematics, so many generally accepted and indisputable truths have been established. Indeed, why shouldn’t I admit that the sum of the angles of a triangle is always equal to two right angles, that the sum of squares built on the legs is equal to the square built on the hypotenuse, as the Pythagorean theorem states? Why don't I admit these mathematical truths? After all, recognizing them does not oblige me to anything. But I think we can and even should agree with the brilliant philosopher Leibniz, who said: “If geometry were armed against our passions and our vital interests as much as morality, we would dispute and violate it no less, despite all the evidence of Euclid and Archimedes, who would be treated as fictions and considered full of paralogisms, and Joseph Scaliger, Hobbes and others who wrote against Euclid and Archimedes, they would not have found so few followers as they do now” 3. Yes, when it comes to life itself, heated, sometimes passionate debates immediately break out, debates without end. That is why there is always so much controversy about philosophical truths, especially about religious truths. Theological sciences are the most vital sciences, and that is why their provisions cause so much controversy. But what does all this mean for our question? Namely, that if the interpretation of the Holy Scripture is left to each individual person, then there will be as many understandings of the word of God as there are people, that is, there will be no Holy Scripture at all. After all, the same thing was said back in the 5th century by the Monk Vincent of Lerins: “The Holy Scripture, by its very sublimity, is not understood by everyone in the same sense, but one interprets its sayings one way, another another; so that almost as many people, as many, apparently, can extract meaning from it. After all, Novatian explains it in his own way, Sabellius in his own, Donatus in his own, Arius, Eunomius, Macedonius in his own, Photinus, Apollinaris, Priscillian in his own, Jovinian, Pelagius, Celestius in his own, and finally Nestorius in his own. And therefore, due to such a multitude of twists and turns of extremely diverse errors, it is absolutely necessary that the thread of interpretation of the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures be directed according to the norm of the ancient and universal understanding” 4. Science, with all its methods, is powerless to establish any kind of unanimity. There are a lot of scientific interpretations. One can, perhaps, say that a bookcase has been written for every verse, and yet not only are doubts not resolved, differences of opinion are not smoothed out, but on the contrary, these doubts and differences of opinion are becoming more and more numerous. And an individual will constantly waver in his understanding of the Holy Scriptures if he is not guided by the authority of the Church. An excellent illustration is the scene from Faust, where Faust interprets the first verse of the Gospel of John: I'll take the original and open it, With true feeling I became hungry Translate for me into native speech (He opens the volume and gets ready.) It is written: “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1). So I became! How can I continue again? Can I give such honor to a word? If the outcome of heavy thoughts is correctly illuminated, It is written here: “In the beginning there was only the mind.” On the first line you need to strive, So that the pen doesn’t get lost! Is it the mind of the power that created everything by moving it? I will put: “In the beginning there was power.” But the moment my hand was about to write, I have a feeling that I won’t end up with this. Suddenly I see light! The spirit opened my eyes! And I write: “In the beginning there was a feat.” 5 But left to its own devices, reason can go further in the matter of violence against Scripture, justifying the wise words of Clement of Alexandria: “People given over to passions violate Scripture in accordance with their wishes” (Stromata. Book 7. Chapter 16). The books of Holy Scripture provide especially wide scope for the boundless arbitrariness of a self-confident mind. In fact, philosophers and founders of other religions left behind entire volumes of their writings and spoke out more or less fully and definitely, so there is no limitless arbitrariness to reinterpret their teachings. But Christ Himself did not write anything: others wrote about Christ, even those who were not eyewitnesses of His deeds and direct listeners of His teaching wrote. From the point of view of autonomous reason, the question is quite legitimate: did the writers of the New Testament books convey Christ’s teaching correctly and accurately tell about His life and deeds? Even if these books are genuine, does this mean that everything written in them corresponds to reality? The authenticity of a book does not guarantee its authenticity. An undeniably genuine report, even from an eyewitness, often turns out to be false: the author either saw the event poorly, or misunderstood it, or confused it in his memory if he wrote decades after the events. If you take this point of view, then the mind opens up an unlimited opportunity to assert whatever it wants, and a person will create “Christianity” according to his personal taste and according to his personal desires. I am not talking about merely an assumed possibility, but about actual historical facts. Even in the 2nd century, as Saint Irenaeus of Lyons says, there were people who boasted that they were the correctors of the apostles and that they were wiser not only than the bishops, but even the apostles (Against heresies. Book 3. Chapter 1, § 1. Chapter 2, § 2). A century ago, the rationalists Eichhorn and Pavlus, recognizing the entire New Testament as authentic, however, “corrected” it so much with their amazing and sometimes outrageous interpretations that there was not a single miracle left in the entire New Testament. The 2nd century heretic Marcion said that only one Apostle Paul correctly understood the teachings of Christ, while the other apostles distorted it with Jewish insertions, and Leo Tolstoy argued that the Apostle Paul, “not thoroughly understanding the teachings of Christ” (literal expression) 6, contributed greatly to its distortion. It is unknown who to listen to, but one thing seems certain: without the authority of the Church, man will soon place himself above even the apostles, above Christ Himself, and will begin to present bizarre examples of his idle imagination as Christ’s teaching. If, when interpreting the Holy Scriptures, a person remains with only his mind, then he will soon be left without Scripture. If there is no Church, there will be no Scripture! Even if the books of the Holy Scriptures, words and letters remain, everyone will put their own content into these forms. Not only that. Reason will not stop at destroying the books of Holy Scripture themselves. Questions about the authenticity and generally about the origin of sacred books constitute the subject of isagogy. Currently, isagogical science has grown so much that it seems like some kind of mysterious labyrinth, from which there is absolutely no way out. Every year more and more new questions are raised, old solutions to old questions are rejected, hypotheses are piled on top of each other. It sometimes seems that people are simply involved in the scientific sport, writing scientific books just to write anything at all. The growth of scientific literature on isagogical issues has been going on for more than a century. It is not surprising that mountains of books have been written, but one cannot help but be amazed that any solid and indisputable results are almost completely invisible. How many dedicated scientific feats are devoted to research into the origins of the New Testament! It would be high time, it seems, for learned people to agree on something! However, even now, along with the most orthodox works, masterfully negative books appear. Almost every day brings its “last word of science.” What is the reason for this phenomenon? The reason lies in the properties of science itself, namely that when solving the most important questions concerning our very life, it cannot be independent and free. It gives people only the answer they want. And again we come to the same conclusion: leave a person alone with his mind - and he will soon lose the Holy Scriptures, lose the books of the Holy Scriptures themselves, declaring them a forgery of the second century that does not deserve special attention. Only the Church can give a person sufficient grounds to recognize the authenticity and inspiration of the famous books of Holy Scripture. There are two types of knowledge: external knowledge, or scientific, and internal and immediate knowledge, or self-awareness. Science draws its knowledge either from the study of some facts, or - in historical matters - from their written monuments. She judges all phenomena by the material evidence, by the material traces left by the phenomenon. But does every phenomenon leave behind enough such material traces? After all, how many facts from our personal lives are noticeable only to us alone! And if someone set out to scientifically verify any event from our life, he would find himself in great difficulty: not having sufficient scientific data and interpreting the available data in his own way, he would very likely describe this event to us in such a way that we would not recognize it at all. However, all the most brilliant scientific reasoning would not force us to change our knowledge about the event of our life. There is a known fact in our consciousness, and we cannot imagine it otherwise than it is given in our immediate consciousness. Let’s take “miscarriage of justice” as an example. All the evidence is there, all the data from the preliminary investigation point to the guilt of the defendant. The brilliant speech of the prosecutor proved this guilt irrefutably. The defendant himself and his defense attorney could not say anything in defense. The jury returned a guilty verdict. The public disagrees with the idea that justice reigns in the courts and the guilty are adequately punished. But the defendant himself knows that he is innocent, and no one can prove him otherwise. Remember “The Brothers Karamazov”, this brilliant trial, so brilliantly depicted by our great Dostoevsky. Could the old prosecutor’s swan song, in which there was so much “double-edged psychology” and “psychology at full speed”, convince Karamazov himself that he killed his father? Or would the trial in “The Living Corpse” have convinced the Karenins of their guilt? Isn’t it obvious that our self-awareness is more reliable for us than any scientific knowledge? But it is precisely in the self-awareness of the Church that knowledge of the authenticity of the books of Holy Scripture is given. These books were written for the Church, they were handed over to the Church, she kept them, and at the Councils she expressed her knowledge of the books given to her as truly apostolic inspired Scriptures. In the definition of the Councils we hear the voice of the Church, which can be considered as one person, because it is animated by the one personal Spirit of God. Science brought a lawsuit against the Church and carried out a preliminary investigation. Reason delivered an impressive and convincing speech from the prosecutor. But the Church knows what it knows, and it cannot change its knowledge. The task of church theological science is the speech of the defender. After all, if the defendant, conscious of his innocence, refuses any defense, then he will be convicted. And if the Church refuses all defense, then the listeners will leave the scientific courtroom, condemning the Church. And this is a temptation that the Church must prevent. Theological science must review the entire investigative case against the Church, analyze all the documents and give them a proper interpretation. But the main solution to the issue should be guided precisely by the Church’s testimony about its self-awareness. The testimony of the Church is not only a completely sufficient basis for recognizing the authenticity of the sacred books, but also the only reliable basis for this recognition. St. Augustine expressed this truth perfectly when he said: “I would not believe the Gospel if the authority of the Church did not prompt me to do so.” 7 In fact, Protestants or sectarians who reject the Church apparently accept the Holy Scriptures. But this recognition hangs in the air for them. Let them try to fully think through the question: why do they consider these books, and not other books, to be the inspired Holy Scripture, truly apostolic works? It is impossible to refer to science, because there is still a hopeless debate about the authenticity of most of the sacred books. To refer to your personal opinion means to refuse a reasonable answer. To the question: why is this or that book truly apostolic Holy Scripture? To this question, all those who deny the Church remain and will always remain unanswered or will delve into various “words of deceit.” From all that has been said, we hope it clearly follows that only in the Church does Holy Scripture have a certain volume and certain content. Faith in the Church is the correct compass by which anyone who seeks in the Scriptures the enlightenment of the mind and knowledge of the truth, whether he be an illiterate simpleton or an enlightened man of science, can guide his boat without the danger of collapse and death. In the end, therefore, everything is determined by faith. And it is very important for us to establish a principled attitude towards all so-called negative science. First of all, it should be noted that the most misleading ideas prevail among us about the state of modern science of the Holy Scriptures. If, in general, scientific knowledge is not widespread among us, then this should be said with special emphasis about scientific knowledge of the Holy Scriptures. We often come across the following reasoning: modern science has “irrefutably proven” that the books of the New Testament were not written by the apostles and not in the 1st century. They say this in a self-confident tone that does not allow any objections, they speak on behalf of science. After all, it is common knowledge that people love to refer to science, and those who are least involved in science and who are furthest from science are especially inclined to humiliate and extol science. If the following question were to arise: which books on the Holy Scriptures in recent times can be called the most ignorant and anti-scientific, then a knowledgeable person would answer without hesitation: “Connection and translation of the four Gospels” and “A summary of the Gospels” by L. Tolstoy and “Revelation in a thunderstorm and storm” by N. Morozov. But these books caused a lot of noise and hid behind the name of science. In the preface to the Geneva edition of “A Brief Exposition of the Gospel,” Tolstoy wrote: “Only our Russian reader from educated people, thanks to Russian censorship, can ignore the century-old work of historical criticism and naively say that the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, as they are, were written by evangelists, each separately and completely. The reader must remember that to say this in 1880, ignoring everything that has been developed by science on this subject, is the same as talking about the sun revolving around the earth in the last century. The reader must remember that the Synoptic Gospels, as they have come down to us, are the fruit of a slow increase through copying, and ascription, and considerations of thousands of different human minds and hands, and in no way the work of the Holy Spirit who spoke to the evangelists. The reader must remember that attributing the Gospels in their present form to the apostles is a fable that not only does not stand up to criticism, but does not even have any basis other than the desire of pious people for it to be so... The reader must remember all this so as not to be confused by the view we are accustomed to that the Gospels, as they are understood now, precisely came to us from the Holy Spirit” (pp. 8, 9). Everything here is as it should be: nods to Russian censorship, and a reference to the century-old work of historical criticism. The author judges self-confidently, boldly and decisively, as befits a “great teacher.” As recently as last summer (1911), in the feuilletons of “New Time,” the famous Menshikov proclaimed with aplomb: “As is known (?), the sacred books of Christians and Buddhists were written centuries after the death of the founders of these religions.” But if you don’t believe these cheeky references to science (and in our country, unfortunately, they do!), and cope with the results of the “hundred-year work of historical criticism” yourself, then all speeches like those quoted from the preface to the “Summary of the Gospel” will need to be explained either by ignorance or by dishonesty, designed for the boundless gullibility of the “Russian reader from educated people.” We Russians have lagged behind the West in the science of the Holy Scriptures. In all our bookstores you will find new editions of Renan and Strauss (albeit in very poorly written translations!), but in the West they have not been published for a long time, and they have gone out of sale. For example, in the catalog of theological books available for sale from major German booksellers (Theologischer Handkatalog. 1910), I did not find Strauss’s “Life of Jesus” at all, but Renan’s “Life of Jesus” is available in the 1892 edition; For 20 years one edition has not sold out! The Renans and Strauss in the West have long been outdated, put into a dusty archive and no longer taken into account; their methods and points of view are already recognized as backward. The so-called Tübingen school, headed by Baur, once dominated the scientific circles of Germany. The scholars of this school, indeed, judged the New Testament books of the Holy Scriptures very decisively and quite negatively. Most of the books of the New Testament were declared to be later forgeries of the 2nd century. Of the entire New Testament, 4–5 epistles of the Apostle Paul were considered truly apostolic. But over the past 25–30 years, Protestant science, represented by its best representatives, has decisively renounced the ideas of the Tübingen school. Back in the eighties of the last century, the most learned works of Erlangen professor Theodor Zahn began to appear (“History of the New Testament canon.” 1888–1892. “Introduction to the New Testament,” 2nd ed. 1900). It is difficult to amaze the German scientific world in the field of science, but everyone stood in amazement at Zahn’s colossal works, consisting of more than one thousand pages. Critics recognized that these works were the most learned in the entire 19th century, and their author was the first expert on ancient Christian literature. So what? This first-class scientist spoke out for the authenticity of the entire New Testament, precisely for the fact that “the Gospels as they are, were written by the evangelists, each separately and completely,” and do not represent “the fruit of a slow increase through copying and attribution,” as Tolstoy would have liked. It is very characteristic that the 19th century, which in the history of science had acquired the name of being primarily critical, ended in the field of the science of Holy Scripture with the conservative works of Zahn. Currently, the brightest star in the firmament of German theological science is the Berlin professor Adolf Harnack, who ten years ago made such a sensation with his radical lectures on the “essence of Christianity.” In his latest works, this scientist deals with issues from the field of science about the Holy Scriptures. So what? This greatest of modern scholars, and a man of a very liberal way of thinking, speaks out for the authenticity of most of the New Testament books. In 1897, the first volume of his scientific research, “The Chronology of Ancient Christian Literature” (Die Chronologie der altchristlichen Literatur bis Eusebius), was published in Leipzig. It is very instructive to read the preface to this work. This preface can safely be called a memorial service for the people of Tübingen, and even such a memorial service, after which they forgot to sing “eternal memory.” I will give a few of the most expressive words. “There was a time—and the general public has not yet experienced it—when it was believed that the earliest Christian literature, including the New Testament, should be thought of as a series of forgeries and deceptions. That time has passed. For science, this was an era during which it learned a lot and after which it must forget a lot. But the results of further research in the “reactionary” direction go beyond the boundaries of what could, perhaps, be called the average state of modern criticism... I do not hesitate to use the word “reactionary”, because things must be called by their proper names, and in the criticism of the sources of ancient Christianity we, without a doubt, are in a reactionary movement towards tradition... The time will come - and it is already coming, when little will worry about solving literary-historical problems in the field of early Christianity, because what is here generally established, will become generally recognized - precisely the essential right of Tradition” (Vorrede. S. VIII. X-XI). In 1906, Harnack confirmed all this again in his essay on the Gospel of Luke and the book of the Acts of the Apostles 8. This is what “the last word of science” really is! True, there are still negative works; there are many of them, but they are becoming more and more skinny. [Years] 75–80 ago, the largest scientific works were negative; Now denial nests in secondary works, and most often in lightweight brochures, especially tendentious and propaganda brochures, the price of which, both literally and figuratively, is a penny, no more. But this denial should not confuse us. The Apostle Paul says that we all walk by faith and not by sight (2 Cor. 5:7); we live by faith, and not by knowledge, not by science. Science itself always follows the direction of faith. And there is nothing wrong with this statement. Even philosophy, analyzing the relationship between faith and knowledge, recognizes that mystical faith lies in the depths of all processes of cognition. This truth was revealed and substantiated in particular detail by our Russian philosophy in the person of V. S. Solovyov and S. N. Trubetskoy. But this fact can be constantly observed in the life around us. Before us is a man of deep faith. Even though the most learned books are against his faith, he still believes and does not hesitate. On the contrary, a non-believer does not pay any attention to the most conscientious scientific works written in defense of the faith, but reads with pleasure and agrees with the most frivolous and completely unscrupulous pamphlet, as long as it is directed against the faith. V. A. sharply but quite fairly characterized socialist literature about Christianity. Kozhevnikov: “Here you don’t know what to marvel at more: the psychological limitations of the authors or their ignorance of history, the backwardness of a fundamental point of view or dishonesty in juggling facts and distorting the meaning of texts? In no other area does the unscientific nature of socialism boasting of scientificity find such self-exposure as here, in its boyishly perky criticism of Christianity” 9 . And yet such works in socialist circles are considered quite scientific and convincing 9 . The ideological life of humanity must be represented as one continuous struggle. Unbelief fights with faith, or - better and more precisely - two faiths are waging an irreconcilable war among themselves: faith in Christ and faith in Antichrist, and each of these two faiths calls on science to help. A person believes in Christ, and science worships Christ with him. If a person believes in the Antichrist, he also places the Antichrist’s yoke on science. Scientists of the Antichrist school are very inclined to declare their own science “free” and “impartial,” and consider church science to be tendentious. In vain! Their science is in slavery and in shameful slavery, for it serves faith in the Antichrist, while we, according to the commandment of the Apostle Paul, take into captivity every thought into obedience to Christ (2 Cor. 10:5). If we consciously adopt this particular view of the relationship of faith to knowledge, then no scientific denial will be able to shake our faith in the Church. Each person, during scientific pursuits, can encounter many facts that apparently contradict faith in the Church. We must honestly stand in bewilderment before these facts, but in this bewilderment we must only find an incentive to become more closely acquainted with the matter when doubts are all resolved, but we must not immediately renounce the truth of the Church, otherwise we will be left without any solid and reliable ground under our feet in the position of the person about whom the poet speaks: And here his feet slide. As soon as a person loses faith in the Church, then, even if he turns to the Holy Scriptures, he is overcome by a sad confusion of searches, doubts, and he is restless in a whirlwind of self-will and conceit. On the contrary, holding firmly to the Church, every person feels that he is standing firmly on an unshakable stone rock, for it was not in vain that the Apostle Paul wrote about the Church to Timothy that it is the pillar and foundation of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15). Only standing on this cliff can you calmly and without fear look at the roiling sea of ​​modern scientific knowledge - in particular the science of the Holy Scriptures, watch how everything flows there, everything changes, everything runs somewhere, watch how a wave overtakes a wave, a wave breaks a wave. Yes, in modern extra-church science about the Holy Scriptures everything flows: today that which yesterday was worshiped as an undoubted truth is declared to be a lie and delusion; Today they put it in the archives, with mournful singing and sad chimes, the students of their teachers are buried, so that tomorrow they themselves can share their sad fate. On the tree of knowledge, with each new spring, new leaves turn green, but often, not yet fully blossomed, they wither, turn yellow, dry out and fall faster than the tree leaves fly off in the dull autumn season. And always, when these daring scientific leaves make a noise against their root, against faith, this latter can tell them the same thing as in Krylov’s fable (“Leaves and Roots”) the roots said to the leaves: Just remember the difference between us, That with the new spring a new leaf will be born, The tree will be gone, and neither will you. Published according to the publication: Holy Scripture, Church and Science. – Moscow Church Gazette. 1911. No. 50. Signed: Associate Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy Vladimir Troitsky. The article is based on a lecture given at women's theological courses created in 1910 with the blessing of the Hieromartyr Vladimir (Epiphany), who was then Metropolitan of Moscow and Kolomna. Lectures on the courses, held twice a week, were given by many professors and teachers of the Moscow Theological Academy. The lecture of the candidate of theology Vladimir Troitsky, who in 1911 was appointed to the position of associate professor of the Department of Holy Scripture of the New Testament, is imbued with that “whole “exiology”” (in the words of Prof. A. I. Sidorov), which subsequently determined the theological pathos of the saint’s work. The main theses of the lecture and the arguments supporting them were repeated and developed in the article “Holy Scripture and the Church” (1914). In 1912, a small article “Walking Misconceptions” was published in the Novgorod Diocesan Gazette (No. 24), which is a small part of this article. For more information, see my brochure “Christianity or Church?” 2nd ed. Sergiev Posad, 1912. Reminders. 1.26. Transl. priest, associate professor P. Ponomarev. Kazan, 1904. P. 48. Nouvoaux essaia. Ed. Erdmann. Bepll. 1.1840. P. 214. "Faust" by Goethe, trans. A. Feta. Part 1. M., 1882. P. 82. Summary of the Gospel. Geneve, 1890. P. 12. Contra epist, Manichaei. Cap. 5.6. P.L. T. 42. Col.176. Lukas der Arzt der Verfasser des dritten Evangeliums und der Apostelgeschichte. Leipzig, 1906. Vorwort. S.III-IV. The attitude of socialism to religion in general and to Christianity in particular. Ed. Religious and Philosophical Library. M., 1907. P. 39