The religious and philosophical heritage of priest Pavel Florensky. Anthropological aspect

Contents Introduction Chapter 1. The spiritual path of Fr. Pavel Florensky (general overview in the context of his teaching about man) The spiritual situation in Russia at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries. “Mystical” and “spiritual” experience “Early” and “later” heritage of Fr. Paul "Catharsis". Mathematics and “Platonism” “Matesis”. 1st half of "Matesis". Transition period "Matesis". 2nd half of “Praxis” Conclusions Chapter 2. Man in the world and before God Man and the Cosmos The unity of man and the world. “Mystical anatomy” Microcosm “Ideal foundations” of the world. Pre-existence in Eternity Symbolic ontology Conclusions Chapter 3. The structure, development and final goal of man The unity of human nature Two realities in man “Given” and “given” The Fall and salvation Conclusions Conclusion General conclusions Appendix. Anthropology of priest Pavel Florensky. Critical assessments and research Bibliography Works by Fr. P. Florensky Correspondence Works dedicated to the philosophy and theology of Fr. P. Florensky Patristic literature Theological literature Additional literature Dissertations for the degree of Candidate of Sciences Foreign literature Priest Pavel Florensky is one of the most remarkable Russian thinkers of the early 20th century. The diversity of his interests and the combination in one person of a mathematician, engineer, religious philosopher and theologian aroused (and arouses) in readers and researchers of his work, on the one hand, admiration and pride for domestic science and culture, capable of giving the world figures of such a scale, and on the other, surprise, which (as some examples show) can turn into distrust, suspicion and sharp derogatory criticism. Here we have, one might say, a completely unique case, when to the entire breadth and depth of intellectual knowledge (which allowed contemporaries to call Florensky “the new Leonardo da Vinci” 1) is also added the image of Florensky the mystic, who never hid his ability to contemplate “other worlds” beyond the visible, as well as the image of Florensky - a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church, a priest who strives not only to theorize about the paths along which world movement should take place, but also to perform sacred acts, bringing the world closer to God. Therefore, it is not surprising that the desire to reveal the full depth of Fr. Paul (abbot Andronik (Trubachev), to understand him as a philosopher-mathematician (S. Polovinkin), metaphysician (S. Khoruzhy), philosopher and phenomenologist of religion (K. Antonov), etc. are combined in modern literature with attempts to discover and explore the theosophical-occult subtext of his works (N. Bonetskaya), to question not only any theological significance of his developments, but also in general his sincerity in service of the Orthodox Church (N. Gavryushin, N. Bonetskaya). There are even more exotic directions in research into the heritage of Fr. P. Florensky, such as highlighting the anti-Semitic component in this legacy (M. Hagemeister) or exposing Florensky as an empty and essentially meaningless publicist, concerned only with exorbitantly inflating the scale of his own person (R. Galtsev). Along with all these features associated with the personality of Fr. Paul and the nature of his works, a special situation arose in relation to his creative heritage itself. Until recently (by and large, until the 1990s), Florensky was perceived mainly only as the author of “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” and the creator of one of the versions subjected to the 1930s. theological criticism of sophiology. A whole series of created about. Pavel in 1917–1922. lecture courses that formed what is now called his late legacy remained unknown not only to the general reader, but also to specialists. Those few fragments from this part of Florensky’s legacy that circulated in samizdat and were occasionally published after the rehabilitation of his name in 1959. (in publications of the University of Tartu, in the Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate, in Theological Works), could not serve as material for any full-fledged research. This situation became the reason that, one might say, the true Florensky in the full scope of his work began to be revealed only in the last two decades. And although almost all the later religious and philosophical works of Fr. Paul have been preserved, the very gradualness of their publication also partly determined the instability of the conclusions presented in modern research literature, since Florensky belongs to those thinkers whose position on certain issues is reliably clarified only in the process of analyzing the entire complex of their creative heritage. And it can be stated that only now, in the second decade of the 21st century, several years after the publication of the main part of the archive of Fr. Paul, the time has come for fairly thorough attempts not only to identify and study his views, but also to comprehend their significance for modern times. The main objective of this study is the philosophical and theological reconstruction of anthropology contained in the entire vast and diverse heritage of Fr. Pavel Florensky. Solving this problem would mean eliminating two significant gaps that exist in the modern research literature on Florensky’s work. Firstly, even with a very general acquaintance with this literature, it is not difficult to see that almost all of it is focused on the consideration of concepts about. Paul in their philosophical (partly aesthetic, art criticism) interpretation. Since its appearance in the first half of the 1980s. two dissertations 2 and related to the anniversary (centenary of the birth of Florensky, celebrated in 1982) two works of a review nature 3 serious interest in the theology of Fr. Paul practically did not appear, and the previously published theological criticism of Florensky’s sophiology was outdated, since its author, Archbishop Seraphim (Sobolev), was not aware of the later works of Fr. Pavel. 4 If we consider the legacy of Fr. Paul in its entirety, we can say that it has not yet been subjected to systematic theological study and many of the themes he develops have not been taken into account theologically, at least as a subject for polemics. This is a gap, since Florensky taught at the Moscow Academy of Sciences, had a master's degree in theology, edited a theological academic journal for several years (1911–1917), and in a number of cases wrote works and composed lectures of predominantly theological content. Secondly, until very recently, in the research literature only the very fact of the presence or absence of developed anthropology in the works of Fr. Pavel Florensky. Some authors limited themselves to only a few (though sometimes very important and significant) comments on this issue, but no systematic, targeted research was conducted in this direction. Only in 2010 A study of Florensky's philosophical anthropology was published, 5 conducted from the standpoint of a very subjective and, undoubtedly, unfair attitude towards the very personality of Fr. Pavel. Here (as in a number of other cases), the initial perception of Florensky as an occultist hostile to the Orthodox Church distorts the results of the research so much that they ultimately do not seem to acquire any significant scientific value. Thus, the study of the anthropological component in the heritage of Fr. Pavel Florensky is still only at its initial stage, 6 when it would be especially appropriate to consider Fr.’s ideas about man. Paul not only from a philosophical, but also from a theological point of view. It may be recalled that in theology, man is viewed in the light of Divine Revelation, the dogmatic and ascetic writings of the Fathers of the Church. But at the same time, theological anthropology does not exist as a dogmatic discipline. As the author of the first (and so far the only one in Russian) attempt at a systematic presentation of the teachings of St. Fathers about man, Archimandrite. Cyprian (Kern), “in the field of anthropology, patristic thought did not provide a clear synthesis and a more or less satisfactory apparatus of formulations and concepts. It is extremely difficult, not to say impossible, to translate the concepts of that time into modern scientific psychological language.” In addition, drawing up any “general scheme” of anthropology “essentially was not in the style of thought of the Holy Fathers.” 7 Therefore, from a theological perspective, the doctrine of man still needs to be disclosed, which became especially relevant in the twentieth century, mainly in connection with the tasks of Christian apologetics. Back in the early 1920s. O. Pavel Florensky wrote that “particularly tempting for unbelief is the non-disclosure of those views on the nature of man and all creation that are implicitly contained in faith in Christ. A worldview which says nothing on these fundamental questions naturally meets with distrust on the part of those who, for better or worse, sincerely devote all their attention and energy to these very subjects. Meanwhile, Christianity, of course, has something to say about them... (my italics - N.P.).” 9 In the early 1980s. prot. John Meyendorff said that in our time theology should become anthropology and the Orthodox theologian can and should accept dialogue on such a basis, 10 and Abbot Andronik (Trubachev) noted: “Clarification of the philosophical anthropology of Orthodoxy... is especially necessary in dialogue with heterodoxy, non-Christian religions and the secular world. Many dialogues can take place, in our opinion, only on the basis of philosophical anthropology as the only common one.” 11 Since then, attention to the question of man, his essence, nature, the meaning of life and the relationship with God has only intensified, and today “the anthropological turn of thought is becoming a reality in all areas,” and in broad strokes, philosophical and religious thought, drawing closer and exerting mutual influence on each other, are equally “moving in a general direction towards man.” 12 Significant disclosure and development of Orthodox anthropology in the twentieth century. happened in the works of Fr. Georgy Florovsky (1893–1979), V.N. Lossky (1903–1958), archimandrite. Cyprian (Kern) (1899–1960), prot. Joanna Meyendorff (1926–1992). Their research was largely caused by the controversy of the 1930s that unfolded around the work of Fr. S. Bulgakov, who in turn continued to develop themes first raised in the theology of Fr. Pavel Florensky. After 1917–1918 The work of Bulgakov and Florensky developed in different directions, and the anthropologically significant beliefs of both thinkers partly remained the same and partly differed. This circumstance makes it important to consider the concepts of o. Paul in the context of already conducted theological anthropological research. And since the most complete development of a particular field of knowledge always occurs in the process of discussing different points of view, Florensky’s anthropology, of course, should be of significant theological interest. In general, although the reconstruction of the doctrine of man by Fr. Pavel Florensky is in demand in itself, as another stage in the ongoing study and development of the newly discovered heritage of an outstanding Russian thinker; this study is focused not only on this main task. I would like to hope that attention to the topics outlined in this work, acceptance or criticism of the conclusions proposed here will contribute to further fruitful research in the field of Orthodox anthropology. Chapter 1. Spiritual path Fr. Pavel Florensky (general overview in the context of his teaching about man) It is rightly noted that our reconstruction of the anthropology of a particular thinker must include a description of the situation in which this thinker was, and bear in mind his experience of this situation, which in turn expresses his idea of ​​\u200b\u200bman. 13 Therefore, before moving directly to the subject of this study, it is advisable not only to consider some material related to the biography of Fr. Pavel Florensky, but also to take into account the situation against which his works appeared and were perceived by his contemporaries. In the case of Florensky, this is especially important, since both the very division of his work into “early” and “later” and the nature of his criticism, which arose in the 1920s and 30s in the circles of the Russian diaspora, are connected with the historical and spiritual situation that developed in Russia in the twentieth century. The spiritual situation in Russia at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century. Florensky entered Russian religious philosophy and Russian theology at the very beginning of the twentieth century, when in many ways the process of understanding the complex and contradictory period that Russia had experienced in the previous two centuries was already completed. On the one hand, during this period spiritual life did not stop in the Russian Church, great ascetics appeared, testifying to the possibility of spiritual experience in the Orthodox faith; on the other hand, the most gloomy assessments and forecasts were justified. “The matter of the Orthodox faith,” concluded St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, - can be recognized as approaching a decisive denouement... The building of the Church, which has been shaking for a long time, will shake terribly and quickly...” 14 Monasteries, this stronghold of Christianity, from the havens of salvation “turned into the abyss in which many souls are harmed and perish,” 15 “oblivion of the eternal” becomes universal, 16 a weak, dark, confused understanding of Christianity in its letter, killing spiritual life. And this is not only in the educated layer of secular society, but also in the highest pastors of the Church, and among the common people. 17 St. wrote with pain. Ignatius about the period of the 1830s–40s, when “unbelief and arrogant violence, calling themselves Orthodoxy, crushed our dilapidated church hierarchy, mocked and mocked everything sacred.” The results of these actions, he added, “are still very strongly felt” (letter dated June 1865) 18. All this spiritual and moral decline was accompanied by a gradual loss of orientation towards the patristic tradition and the assimilation of various influences of Western theology. 19 According to Prot. Georgiy Florovsky, Russian thought fell out of the patristic tradition already in the 16th century, and “theological science itself was brought to Russia from the West.” In spiritual experience, in this sense, there was no “break,” but “in theology, the paternal style and method were lost,” “the paternal creations turned into a dead historical document.” 20 “Russian writers were accustomed to discussing theological and religious issues in their Western formulation,” 21 many “studied not the subject itself, but the Western literature of the subject.” 22 Along with this, the general spirit of “protection” for a long time ensured the education in theologians and even in ascetics of the fear of any “mysticism” in general, as one of the St. Petersburg publishers wrote about this to the Optina elder Macarius (1847): “In academies and seminaries, all our holy fathers and ascetics are doomed to be false mystics and dreamers. And intelligent heartfelt prayer is destroyed and ridiculed, like an infection and destruction...” 23 The situation slowly began to improve around the middle of the 19th century. largely thanks to the publishing activities of the Optina Hermitage, the dissemination of the “Ascetic Experiences” of St. Ignatius, through the efforts of St. Theophan, who translated and tried to make forgotten and half-forgotten patristic texts accessible to the public. The idea of ​​the need to “return to the Fathers” was expressed more and more often; A gradual rethinking of Christianity and Orthodoxy began, which for many decades had been perceived at best only at the “everyday” level, as a religion of morning and evening prayers, fasting and statutory services. 24 Former Tolstoyan and future new martyr (canonized in 2000), M.A. Novoselov organizes a series of publications of his spiritual and educational “Religious and Philosophical Library”, the title of the first issue of which briefly but succinctly reflected the modern spiritual situation: “The Forgotten Path of Experienced Knowledge of God” (1902). Published a year later by S.A. Nilus memoirs of N.A. Motovilov about the conversation with Rev. Seraphim of Sarov, in fact, became the basis for the entire subsequent transformation of Russian theology. 25 These records confirmed the fact of simplification, or, better said, such profanation of Orthodoxy, when even “great spiritual persons” reduced the entire purpose of Christian life to visiting church, ordinary, “home” prayer and doing good deeds. The search for something “higher” aroused indignation and was regarded as “ungodly curiosity”, in support of which, of course, selections of patristic quotes about the dangers of pride and spiritual delusion were always ready. The confident testimony of the “poor Seraphim” - “But they did not speak as they should have” 26 - turned out to be confirmed by the obvious action of Divine grace, when, like the ancient Fathers, an ineffable Radiance emanated from the holy elder. The true goal of Christian life - “acquiring the Holy Spirit of God” - was preached to N. Motovilov, confirming the words of the sermon with direct experience: “You yourself are now in the fullness of the Spirit of God, otherwise you would not be able to see me like this.” 27 It turned out that “delusion” lies not in man’s very search for higher spiritual states (which always mean unity with God through the gift of Divine love), but in man’s harmful “assimilation of a lie that he has accepted as the truth.” And it is not the Tabor illumination itself that should be rejected and feared, but the visions received in a state of “passionate or biased deviation of the soul towards lies on the basis of pride.” 28 The recognition of such states is the main section of the “science of sciences” - Orthodox asceticism, so poorly understood by those who are accustomed to seeing in church Christianity only a set of abstract dogmatic truths. And even if among such “those who do not understand” are theologians and church hierarchs, this does not mean that true spiritual life should already be sought outside the church fence... N. Berdyaev stated the spiritual illness of the 18th–19th centuries when he wrote that “for theologians and hierarchs of the Church, the higher spiritual life was usually more suspicious than the sins of mental and physical life. There is some very disturbing problem here. The Church forgave the sins of the flesh, was infinitely lenient to the weaknesses of the spiritual man, but was merciless to the temptations of the spirit, to the claims of the spirit, to the upsurges of the spirit.” 29 It was significant that Berdyaev, by the very direction of his denunciations, reflected what was very obvious at the beginning of the 20th century. the tendency is to critically perceive the Russian Church as a structure that binds a person and interferes with his spiritual development. Florensky encountered this immediately, already in his university years (1900–1904), at the very “source” of his own appeal to religion and the Church. But this was not just contact, it was a rather long rotation in the environment of extra-church mystical quests, collaboration with this environment, which discerned and recognized in the young “mystic” a possible effective tool for the future replacement of the “historical” Church by the “mystical” Church. But Florensky, with his ability to feel “behind the obvious... infinitely more, hidden” 30 and to see, as he said, in our world “the internal play of depth,” 31 looked behind the “thick crust” of “thousands of shortcomings” and “exhausted,” as it seemed to him, church symbols. “For me,” he wrote, “life opened up, perhaps a little beating, but life; an undeniably sacred core was revealed. And then I realized that I would never leave the place where I saw all this... If I am guilty of perceiving life and holiness behind a thick crust of dirt (which for me, perhaps, seems much thicker than for others, because it hurts me), if it is a sin to love the sacred, then I am really guilty before everyone who disagrees with me. But I can only tell them: I can pretend... but I can’t stop feeling what I feel” (from a letter to A. Bely about his disagreement with the Merezhkovskys, after the 1st year of study at the MDA, July 1905.) 32 And from the very beginning of his path in theology and religious philosophy, Florensky outlines a program for the destruction of the “thick bark”: “The Church... is either completely absurd, or it must grow from a holy grain. I have found him and will now raise him, bring him to the mysteries, but will not abandon him to be devoured by socialists of all colors and shades.” 33 He positions himself as a decisive opponent (to say the least, a militant subverter) of a flat understanding of church Christianity, abstract “scholastic” theology and doctrinal schemes that have lost touch with living spiritual experience. He thinks about mystical ascents, carried out not outside, but inside the church fence. “Mystical development,” he writes, “can be compared to a path to the mountains. Higher and higher you rise to the sky, but more and more there is a danger of falling into the abyss. There is no rise on level ground, but there is no abyss, and true mystical dangers appear when there is an ascent to heights... Geographic maps and plans drawn up by people who have already climbed to these heights are absolutely necessary. This is the teaching of the Church, dogmas that guide the path” (entry on August 27, 1905, in Optina Monastery) 34 But, called to be “an abbreviated guide to eternal life” 35, church dogmatics turned out to be replaced in the Russian Church by “dogmatism”. This is the same absolutely necessary “system of concepts and schemes” in this case, 36 but abstracted “from everything living, from everything intimate, from what is close and infinitely sweet, what grabs the heart with aching longing for the distance.” 37 At a meeting of the MDA philosophical circle in January 1906. 2nd year student Florensky stated that “... the system of belief has suffered the highest damage that can be done to a spiritual value - it has been devalued for consciousness” so that “the only thing necessary seems superfluous and unnecessary to the modern majority.” 38 And the solution proposed then - “to saturate theological schemes with psychological content in order to connect them with what is directly experienced...” - became, in fact, the lifelong program of Fr. Paul, one of the foundations on which all his religious, philosophical and theological works are built. Dogmatics must be filled with “living concrete content” - personal experience expressed in a “universal” space: “in ascetic and mystical literature, in belles-lettres, in the visual arts and in music.” This must be “the path of synthesis, the path of gathering together the fullness of spiritual life,” controlled by the Holy Scriptures. A “complete revision of patristic literature” is stated here as a necessary component of this process, 39 and it was the same call to return “to the Fathers,” although without special reservations as to their special significance against the background of other “mystics.” Throughout his subsequent life, Florensky was a firm supporter of the idea that everything that comes from ancient times and bears the stamp of a “universal human” (“all-human” - in the terminology of the 1906 report) worldview is deeply authentic and cannot radically diverge from the patristic tradition. And the criterion of authenticity lies in the ability not to linger on the “thick crust”, the multi-layered “dirt” that covered God’s original Creation, but to penetrate inside, into the very mystical core of creation. The direct experience of this absolutely valuable core, according to Florensky, is the essence of a genuine mystical experience in which man and all creation meet God. The idea of ​​a “holy core” and an outer “mud” cover, distorting and even completely hiding the true radiant appearance of Creation, from the very beginning to the end was the leitmotif of all the works and speeches of Fr. Paul, in which he testified to his experience of the “mysteriousness” of Christianity. It is true that “we are all in sin,” he said in a student sermon (1907). “But we are like clay vessels full of sparkling gold. On top they are blackened and smeared, and on the inside they are dazzlingly radiant. This is what you all are, brothers." Every person is holy “in the secret places of his soul”; he is “sanctified because the Lord sanctifies him, unconquerable by outward filth.” 40 In 1907 on the pages of the Christian magazine published by the then rector of the MDA, Bishop Evdokim (Meshchersky), Florensky tried to organize the collection of evidence of how church sacraments were experienced. The goal was to show that “Christianity is not archeology, but a living life, eternally developing in the whole organism of humanity”; Christianity is a religion of “strength and spirit, which our theologians least like to talk about.” 41 At the same time, one of the evidence was the mysterious “split” of the participants in the sacrament of Confession: a person was really revealed as consisting of an “ordinary” person and his higher, “purified spiritual center.” 42 The concept of the “purified spiritual center”, or (in the terminology of the “Pillar”) the “true Self”, is one of the most important, fundamental points of Florensky’s anthropology. Since 1916 (but mainly in the 1920s) Fr. Paul writes “Memoirs”, in which he gives the opportunity to get closer to some of the secrets of his personality, get acquainted with the characteristic features of his (relatively speaking) “mystical” and spiritual experience and try to learn to read and perceive his works the way he himself would like to be read and perceived. Father Paul himself revealed the internal sources of his beliefs, spoke about the external influences he experienced, and outlined his initial intuitions, from which, among other things, his idea of ​​man was formed. As Abbot rightly remarked. Andronik (Trubachev), these memoirs go far beyond the scope of ordinary memoir prose and contain such important philosophical and theological material that without taking them into account, understanding the works and the very direction of Fr. Paul "will inevitably be defective." 43 When analyzing them, of course, you need to keep in mind the dates of the corresponding records, which Fr. Pavel always carefully labels, sometimes even indicating the time of day. Florensky describes his initial intuitions on the threshold or beyond the threshold of his 40th birthday, already possessing a fully formed worldview. There can be no doubt that memories of early childhood at this age have, to one degree or another, an “induced” character, conditioned by all subsequent life experiences. However, Fr. Paul insisted in this sense on the purity of the reconstruction of his childhood perceptions, and this is very important. “My later religious and philosophical convictions,” he wrote in 1923, “came not from philosophical books, which, with rare exceptions, I always read little and, moreover, very reluctantly, but from childhood observations.” 44 “The child has absolutely precise metaphysical formulas... For myself, at least, I can say that my entire subsequent life did not reveal anything new to me. Yet the knowledge of life was preformed in the earliest experience.” 45 Then, according to the conviction of Fr. Paul, the “primary intuitions” of his soul were formed, which could only be formalized by the corresponding religious or philosophical concepts, but were in no way discarded in the course of scientific and spiritual education. “Truly,” he says, “I didn’t learn anything new, but only “remembered” - yes, I remembered the foundation of my personality that had developed since childhood or, more correctly speaking, was the initial grain of all spiritual growths, starting with the first glimpses of consciousness.” 46 This position does not simply assert the need to orient the worldview according to the original childhood intuitions. This goes much further to demand that these intuitions be considered real breakthroughs into the actually existing mysteries of existence. 47 We are, of course, talking about “remembering” in the Platonic sense: according to Plato, learning is remembering (see, for example, Phaedo. 72e-76e; Phaedr. 249c; Phileb. 34c; Meno. 81c; Laws V, 732c); learning cannot be carried out except through the recollection of what was once learned. 48 Knowledge, Florensky quotes Plato, is “remembering the transcendental world.” 49 “We,” writes Albin, “in the order of recollection, think on the basis of tiny glimpses, by some individual signs we remember what we have known for a long time, but what we forgot after the incarnation.” 50 Drinking water from the “river of oblivion” does not have a radical effect, since otherwise a person could not understand the world and, most importantly, himself. In Florensky’s ontology, it is especially obvious that the mechanism of “remembering” should operate most intensively in a person in very early childhood, during the period when the degree of manifestation of the “spiritual essence” in the empiric world is even the smallest. In this sense, even the fact that a baby is born ahead of schedule is important. So, notes Fr. Paul, many brilliant people were born premature babies, “and when contemplating such, one always feels some kind of mystical ray of other worlds resting on the babies, as if around them the otherworldly radiance and the noumenal crown of eternity had not yet had time to go out (my italics - N.P.).” 51 In his “Memoirs”, by unconditionally elevating his entire worldview to the original childhood intuitions of Fr. Paul wants to most strongly affirm the basis of his anthropology: the presence of an eternal, already sanctified and deified “root” in all empirical creation. Therefore, this text from Florensky’s legacy is very important, first of all, from the anthropological point of view we need, although it also provides quite valuable biographical material that allows us to see the childhood and youth of Fr. Pavel, as they seemed to him at the age of 40. "Mystical" and "spiritual" experiences Within the framework of our topic, it is important first of all to pay attention to how Fr. Pavel reveals in “Memoirs” the main features of his attitude towards nature and man from a story about the family in which he was born and raised. The family in which he grew up, Fr. Paul calls it a “secluded island”, where there is a conscious isolation of oneself both from one’s past (from one’s ancestors) and from the present, from the surrounding social environment. Both father - Alexander Ivanovich Florensky (1850-1908), and mother - Olga (in Armenian-Gregorian baptism - Salomiya) Pavlovna Saparova (1859-1951) “fell out” of their families, broke all ties with their ancestors, wanting to live on the side and independently. “There was such a terrible period in Russian history,” writes Fr. Pavel (recorded in 1916) - and how many souls were crippled by it, how many pure hearts became unhappy and homeless.” 52 Speaking about the generation of the 1870s, he notes (entry from 1917): “They then did not want to know anything except themselves, that’s why they did not recognize the transcendent. They wanted to stick out of themselves, to expose God, and the shrine, and that’s it. Everyone wanted not to accept it as a gift from God, but to create it. They, the seventies, did not recognize their fathers. They themselves wanted to be fathers. But they did not know how and did not want to be sons.” 53 Alexander Ivanovich lost his mother in the year of his birth, and his father 16 years later. But even these years he was not able to live near the family hearth, since his initial studies took place far from his home - in the Tiflis classical gymnasium. Subsequently, he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Railway Engineers and built bridges and roads for newly designed railway lines in various parts of the country. Olga Pavlovna, also in her early youth, with the help of the socialists, secretly left home for St. Petersburg, where she met Alexander Ivanovich and married him in 1880. Florensky notes that the father and mother only formally belonged to their religions (Orthodox and Armenian-Gregorian, respectively) and led an exclusively secular lifestyle. At the same time, religion was absent from the house “not because of an oversight, but by the force of a deliberately erected wall...”. “Never,” writes Florensky, “we were told that there is no God or that religion is superstition... just as they did not say the opposite.” 54 Regarding the phrase “people believe in their own way,” which was often heard in the house, he notes: “I remember well this form of “believe” instead of believe, which is not at all accidental, because to believe means to spiritually know some objective reality, and to believe means to have some subjective state of confidence, which may be completely illusory.” 55 From early childhood, Florensky had, in his opinion, an “undoubtedly genuine” experience of sensing another world and in this sense had spiritual knowledge, which was recognized as impossible in the family. “The other world,” he writes, “in my deepest sense of self has always come into contact with me as a genuine reality that does not inspire the slightest doubt.” 56 The feeling of an invisible reality caused an alternation of childhood delights and “unknown horrors” originating from the “destructive spirits of nature.” 57 And he also “felt that there was a whole area of ​​life, significant, mysterious, that there were special actions that protected against fears.” Secretly, he was “attracted to her, but did not know her and did not dare to ask about her.” 58 This was little Paul’s perception of religion and the Church, where he was never taken until the age of seven and was not even taught how to read prayers and be baptized. At the same time, “everything was done unconsciously to evoke... precisely the feeling of modesty and indecentness of religion.” 59 “Detachment” and a kind of “non-church and non-religious asceticism” formed a way of life in the family that Fr. Paul is ready to characterize it as a “thin stream of spiritual charm”: “We didn’t particularly like people and tried to stay aloof.” 60 But this did not extend to intrafamily relationships, where an atmosphere of love and care for each other reigned. Father Paul writes, it seems, extremely sincerely, without a shadow of condemnation of anyone and simply states the facts, trying to reveal himself from his experiences. And he says that, despite all the love and care, he felt lonely in the family. Love in the family was somehow non-personal, not permeated with the warmth of deeply spiritual communication and understanding. Most of all, he felt filial affection not for his parents, but for Aunt Yulia - Yulia Ivanovna Florenskaya (d. 1894), his father’s sister. She worked most of all with little Pavel and gave him what he could not receive from his mother. Fr. himself Pavel assesses the difference in relations with his mother and Aunt Yulia in a very remarkable way, using the concepts of “non-personal” and “personal” love. Of the people, only Aunt Yulia was loved with special warmth by little Pavel, loved with a “personal” love. 61 It was with Aunt Yulia (in connection with his impending entry into the gymnasium) that Pavel learned his first prayers and it was with her that he came to an Orthodox church service in Batumi for the first time (at the age of 7) and received Holy Communion of Christ. But religion and the Church remained closed to him even after that, in accordance with the general spiritual situation in the family. Aunt Yulia could not fundamentally change anything and remained, although special and bright, but just a glimpse of a deeply personal relationship, which, as Pavel already knew, could exist between people, but which he was deprived of in the family. She died when Pavel was 12 years old, and did not have time to in any way influence his special perception of religion as a forbidden, mysterious area where only “special actions that protect against fears” take place. Speaking about his father’s religiosity, Florensky once again and especially notes the need to “take into account the terrible time of Russian history - the reign of Emperor Alexander II, in which he spent his entire youth, and the terrible environment that surrounded him in the days of his youth and throughout his subsequent life.” 62 The character of that time and that environment Fr. Paul knew, among other things, from the numerous letters he received from St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, 63 which presents a picture of the almost universal secularization of the so-called higher, educated strata of society: “... the general desire of everyone exclusively for one material thing, as if it were eternal - oblivion of the eternal, as if non-existent”, 64 “a widespread cooling towards religion, fanatical atheism.” 65 Directly about the time during which Alexander Ivanovich’s childhood and youth occurred (1860s), St. Ignatius wrote this: “Now temptations have multiplied to infinity, passion for them has become almost universal, and resistance is nowhere to be seen; for this reason, modern youth is less subject to condemnation and deserves more pity and leniency” 66. Alexander Ivanovich was not a crude materialist or an atheist, 67 but he considered all existing concrete forms of religion to be very primitive, designed only to maintain “humanity” in people. These “artificial supports,” in his opinion, were not needed by a developed and educated person, who can and should bear “humanity” in its immediate form. Recognizing a certain spiritual height for Christianity, Alexander Ivanovich at the same time shunned its “claims” to absoluteness and exclusivity. He singled out Islam and “Sinism” (i.e., obviously, the most widespread religion of Confucius in China) as more “sound” ones. In the latter case, he was impressed by the Chinese people’s satisfaction with the “small and present” and their reluctance to seek “absolute truth.” 68 Highlighting similar moments in the spiritual appearance of his father and attributing them to the general spirit of the time (1870s), Florensky, in the course of his memories, clearly traces and notes certain areas of worldview in which his father, voluntarily or unwittingly, influenced him. For example, the belief that “truth is inaccessible” was apparently acquired from his father. But in the later years of high school, a firm conviction of a different nature was added to this: “it is impossible to live without truth.” “These two are equivalent beliefs,” writes Fr. Pavel,” tore my soul apart and plunged me into mental agony. I was suffocating from the lack of truth... Truth and the meaning of life were for me. are identical." 69 Florensky dedicated his candidate’s dissertation, defended at the Moscow Academy of Sciences (1908), to the topic of searching for and finding the Absolute Truth, which then grew into a master’s thesis (1912) and then into “The Pillar and Statement of Truth” (1914). The Absolute Truth was revealed in Florensky's spiritual experience as the consubstantial essence of the Most Holy Trinity, and with this discovery his entire further firm position in the Orthodox Church was connected. However, despite all this, Fr.’s understanding of the role and place of Orthodoxy among other religions. Pavel, oddly enough, actually brings Alexander Ivanovich to his convictions. They were that “actually, there are no religions, but there is one Religion. Religion greatly changes its appearance in humanity, and the value of its various forms varies greatly. But the main forces that compose it are similar.” 70 In this position one can see, so to speak, the fundamental idea about the impossibility of the existence of false religions. 71 Among religions there are not false ones, but those in which the truth is not fully revealed; and if Alexander Ivanovich fundamentally refused to look for the most complete manifestation of the Absolute Truth in religions, considering all beliefs artificial and primitive, then Fr. Paul, having found this phenomenon in the Orthodox Church, further embarked on the path of collecting grains of truth from all other religions (and especially from the “mystical teachings” 72 associated with them) into a single common treasury. This may give the impression that Florensky’s accusations that for him St. The Fathers and some pagan mystics have equal authority. However, upon closer acquaintance, one can see that Fr. In his philosophical and theological works, Paul did not compare authorities, but assessed both from a certain “third” position. And he called this position “antiquity” or “the most ancient, universal worldview,” which, in his opinion, is closest to the knowledge of the Truth. Indirectly, the reason for Florensky’s idealization of deep antiquity, apparently, was also the influence of his father. For Florensky, ancient consciousness - “immediate, pre-reflective”, 73 characterized by the idea of ​​a living, real unity of phenomena - is the opposite of the modern “scientific” way of thinking. Now, he argued, they see only similarities where in ancient times they saw real connections of being; 74 the real elements of being are now replaced by concepts - philosophical or scientific. The ability to think “not with abstract diagrams, not with icons... not with abstract concepts” Fr. Paul saw Goethe and considered him the ideal of a researcher who penetrates reality and sees what is invisible to others. 75 “By erecting a monument to Goethe,” Florensky said in one of his lectures, “humanity thereby throws off the pedestal the abstract worldview of modern times.” 76 And one can think that it was Goethe, with his “completely concrete” thinking, who initially aroused in little Paul 77 a keen interest in what he considered the consciousness of ancient man. After all, the fact is that Alexander Ivanovich was carried away by Johann Goethe, for whom, in the bitterly ironic expression of Fr. Paul, Goethe's Faust replaced the Gospel. 78 It is obvious that the father’s passion was passed on to his son in this case and gave quite definite new fruits on new soil. The same can be said about another subject of veneration for Alexander Ivanovich - the book of the French historian Fustel de Coulange “The Ancient City” (1864; Russian translation - 1867 and 1895), which (as Florensky again notes with bitter irony) was a “nomocanon” for him. On this score Fr. Pavel already directly says that his father forced him to read “The Ancient City” during his years in the middle classes of the gymnasium. This book is about. Paul calls it beautiful because it proves that the ancient religion was all about the veneration of ancestors, and “people mattered in the eyes of antiquity only as priests of the ascending line of their family. The eyes of ancient man were entirely turned back to the past.” 79 And one can only guess why Alexander Ivanovich, himself entirely focused on the future and seeing the meaning of life only in family and children, especially singled out this historical work. In our case, it is important how Fr., under the involuntary influence of his father, perceived him. Paul, namely as a denunciation (and perhaps some hidden self-accusation on the part of Alexander Ivanovich) of all the “mystical” untruth of a person’s separation from his ancestors, “falling out” from his family and oblivion of his past. To understand the original anthropological intuitions of Fr. For Pavel Florensky, those moments that he considered necessary to note in his childhood perceptions of his mother are especially important. Olga Pavlovna, in his words, was “closed, proudly shy in expressing feelings” and was more involved with other, younger children than the eldest in the family, Pavel. 80 Over the years, Pavel’s mother greeted caresses and kisses with more and more coldness and embarrassment, which is why he felt that with such a manifestation of personal love he was violating some established boundaries. “In it,” writes Fr. Pavel, - I did not perceive faces; it completely surrounded our existence, was felt everywhere and was somehow invisible.” In front of the mother, one felt “sacred awe and silence, coolness and timidity,” not fear, but something that cannot be expressed in words. Florensky contrasts this non-personal attitude with his “deeply personal” love for Aunt Yulia, who “did not suppress with her detachment from the little things of life. I could live with her. The mother had to be worshiped,” 81 although she did not demand this at all. And after such instructions about his non-personal love for his mother, about the non-perception of her personality in her, about the absence of filial attachment to her, Florensky writes: “In my mother I loved Nature or in Nature - Mother, Spinoza’s Naturam naturantem,” i.e. “Creating nature” (as opposed to “created nature” – natura naturata). “I knew that my mother loved me very much; at the same time, I always had a feeling of her mysterious greatness. And it seemed to me that she could stand up to her full height and, without noticing me, crush me. I was not afraid of this and would not protest against it (my italics - N.P.).” 82 Father Paul directly makes it clear that his “mystical” feeling of Nature was the same: “The recognition of the law above myself determined my well-being from early childhood.” But this law was felt as coming not from the highest free will, but from the “highest inevitability.” This is the "Mind of the World", but "impersonal, tireless and not warm"; “submission to this pantheistic providence appeared to me as a duty.” This “inevitable” does not correspond to human desires and tastes, but at the same time “it is not only externally, but also internally necessary.” 83 Here, on the one hand, there is a noticeable indication of a certain incompleteness of the religious worldview, since Paul did not know God as a child. But, on the other hand, Florensky, for the reasons stated above, completely trusted his childhood impressions and feelings. This was the principled position that children's perceptions are the most authentic, 84 the most ontological, unmistakably mystical. 85 What, in the opinion of Fr. Paul, what he experienced in early childhood formed the basis of his finally formed worldview, and it can be said that it was not the experience of adult life that tested the guidelines set in childhood, but, on the contrary, the authenticity of later mystical experience was determined by the criteria obtained in childhood. Therefore, despite later amendments in the field of the relationship between “monotheism” and “pantheism,” Florensky retained, in his opinion, one of his deepest childhood intuitions, which determine his entire “mysticism” and, as can be seen, partly form his position in matters of anthropology: a person is in the power of a faceless and humanly “not warm” force, the presence of which he needs both externally and internally. This force does not take into account his tastes and desires, not because they are sinful and aimed only at satisfying passions, but because “human” is in principle alien to it. She “loves” a person, satisfies the needs of his existence, but in case of a need incomprehensible to him, she can “crush” him without even noticing. A person is more than just a toy in her hands, but less than the magnitude with which she could reckon. 86 And, apparently, talking about the initial (and most important) stage of the formation of his worldview, Fr. Paul purposefully notes that he has precisely such a predominant religious-mystical intuition, when instead of a personal relationship with God (or - later - along with such relationships), a person develops a mysterious, attractive, leading to “sacred awe”, but cold and, in fact, “gloomy” feeling of the highest basis of the universe. “Existence is fundamentally mysterious,” writes Fr. Paul - and does not want his secrets to be revealed in words. The roots of life, perhaps the most important thing, belong to underground darkness.” There is a desire to know it, but this must be done “not by blatantly examining it with a gaze,” but by carefully and reverently “peeping.” 87 Florensky calls all kinds of caves, dungeons, cellars and dark attics, pits, ditches, tunnels and long corridors “coveted” for himself in childhood. “Behind all of them I recognized the forces of the primary darkness (my italics - N.P.), in which everything that exists was born, and I wanted to penetrate there and settle there forever.” 88 The combination of “creative forces” and mystery, threat, even “poisonousness” that Florensky contemplates in the transparent and “rich green” sea water at the pier looks impressive. 89 “Creative nature,” as something impersonal and superhuman (if we mean empirical man), frightens a beginner who does not yet know how to navigate its dark dungeons; she threatens to destroy with her natural reaction anyone who dares to brazenly reveal her secrets. And only a select few are allowed to touch their innermost essence. “Nature, as I believed and felt,” writes Fr. Pavel, hides himself from people; but I am her favorite, and she wants to show herself to me in her true essence, however, so as not to become obvious to others.” There were signs, accessible only to Paul, “when the innermost essence lifted the veil of its secret and cast a sly glance from there... slyly and cheerfully, saying that we know with nature that others do not know and should not know.” The curtain was lifted only for a moment, since a person cannot withstand “this direct contemplation of the face of Nature for a long time.” But here even a moment is enough to feel absolute confidence in the authenticity of this meeting. This “look” of Nature also demonstrates its undoubted objectivity by its superhuman property: it, says Florensky, “knows me even more deeply and sees me even more clearly than I do, and most importantly, loves me completely.” 90 It is very significant that with the same “look” Fr. Pavel compares the sudden change in the eyes of his two-month-old son Vasily (1911; Father Pavel is 29 years old): “It was a super-conscious look, for it was not his small, unformed consciousness that looked at me with Vasya’s eyes, but some higher consciousness, greater than me, and himself, and all of us, from the unknown depths of existence. And then everything passed, and before me again were the eyes of a two-month-old baby (my italics - N.P.).” 91 Thus, according to this undoubtedly genuine for Fr. According to Paul’s experience, in the “unknown depths of existence” there is something, “some kind of higher consciousness,” which is at least an order of magnitude higher than man. And Florensky’s gaze, all his most important aspirations since childhood were directed not to man, but, as he was convinced, deeper, to the highest reality of “Creative Nature.” There is “underground darkness”, “another world full of mysterious horror”, but “attractive and exciting the mind.” 92 At the same time, only special chosen ones are able to feel that hidden in the “darkness”, but “discerned depth of being” is beautiful, “how beautiful everything that is genuine is.” 93 Nature loves, but not as the small and imperfect human consciousness would like, not with a warm and condescending love for each specific individual. Any researcher of the heritage of Fr. Pavel Florensky will easily notice how important the concept of antinomy was for him. Briefly about this we can say this: if in the process of any research we have not come to a contradiction, then it means that we are very far from the truth. In a certain sense, Fr. Paul himself represented a living antinomy, as his contemporaries and he himself testified. 94 In this case, he reveals a special “antinomy” of nature: facelessness and possession of “superconsciousness,” love and readiness for the sake of a higher goal to step over the interests of the beloved, without explaining anything to him. This is a creative force capable of destruction, 95 beauty that lives in dark dungeons. The most significant thing is that all this stands above man, ontologically more primary and more important than empirical man. In the empirical person himself, one can also find what is greater than this person, and these are the same “roots of being” that can be contemplated in all of nature. Moreover, in nature there is more openness, whereas in man the innermost essence is hidden behind a thick “bark” built by self-will. Here is an example of the feeling about. Paul, which can be understood in all its ontological depth if we remember that in Florensky’s early concepts the innermost essence of creation expresses itself with love (recorded in 1923): “People, both then and after, seemed to me independent and free, so that everyone loves or does not love at will. Flowers are a completely different matter. They love me because they cannot help but love, and they grow up for love (my italics - N.P.).” 96 Flowers, like other objects and phenomena in nature - the sea, air, wind, clouds, rocks, minerals, etc. - do not have the power to hide the ontological depth within themselves, to willfully protect it from mystical contemplation. In this respect, birds are the same, but animals and mammals are already too close to humans, already self-willed and quite independent. Father Pavel writes that, in contrast to his love for everything else in nature, he was indifferent to animals, and simply “did not love” people: “Let it seem like ugliness, let it be seen as a lack of moral feeling, but it was like this: without ill will, with all the strength of my being, I did not love man as such and was in love with nature (my italics - N.P.).” 97 Of course, it seems completely futile to try to really see Fr. Paul "ugliness" and "lack of moral sense." 98 We are talking here not about Christian love for one’s neighbor, but about the attitude towards man as a specific object of study in Nature. This object is for Fr. Paul turns out - intuitively, as it seems to him, from childhood - to be rather unattractive in the “mystical” field, since in man the manifestation of the “innermost essence” is especially weakened by the actions of his imperfect free will. “All my life. - he writes, - I was looking for that phenomenon. where the permeability of the flesh of the world is greatest, where the skin of things is thinner and where the spiritual nature shines through more clearly.” 99 And in man in this sense he finds much less “transparency” than in the sea, rocks, flowers. 100 But this, of course, least of all means for Florensky a renunciation of any interest in man. This only reveals one of his very important anthropological intuitions: free will and the associated self-consciousness of a person are accepted by him as a certain factor that obscures the appearance in this world of another, higher reality. Using images found in the works of Fr. Paul, we can say that a person in this world, due to his “independence,” is most of all “opaque” to the other world and, therefore, to become “transparent” is, by and large, all that is required of him. This should be the case based on the above premises of Fr.’s teaching about man. Paul, and this position, as we will see later, really plays a very important role in his anthropology. Like the sinful self-will of man, so everything “warm”, “personal”, “human” must not only be cleansed, but also recede into the background, giving way through oneself to the higher realities of Existence into this world. And sometimes it seems that somewhere “between the lines” in his “Memoirs” Fr. Paul feels a craving for “humanity,” but obeys his much more attractive and powerful interest in the realities revealed to him as superhuman (again, if we mean empirical man). He writes that in childhood, “in essence, perhaps, he did not love anyone, i.e. loved, but loved One. This only beloved was Nature (my italics - N.P.)" 101. And at the same time: “I... permeated with love and tender care for myself, find myself extremely lonely; only Aunt Yulia... gives me a thread to the Man (my italics - N.P.).” 102 Of the people, only she was loved with special warmth by little Pavel, loved with “personal” love; 103 but, admits Fr. Paul, and she not by herself, but “for her attitude towards nature.” 104 For obvious reasons, the memoirs (as they describe the period of childhood and early youth, which is still far from religion) do not give almost any idea of ​​the experience of Fr. Paul, which in this case, in contrast to what is conventionally designated as “mystical” (i.e., as the experience of the mysterious relationship between man and Nature), can be conventionally called “spiritual” (as the experience of the mysterious relationship between man and God). This side of the personality of Fr. Paul is revealed by other sources, mainly a few individual passages from his private correspondence, which were not intended for publication. Having just discovered religion, Florensky, just before graduating from the University, writes to his mother (March 1904): “I have never been so cheerful, cheerful, full of hopes and plans for the future as I am now. Now the immediate task - not mine, of course, but the task of time - is to create religious science and scientific Religion.” 105 In the first year of the Academy, he confesses that the most solid proof and the strongest confidence comes from “direct experience,” and in this regard he writes (January 1905): “I cannot help but think and do not want not to work on what is most certain - on the coming resurrection.” 106 The Easter sermon of Florensky the student, delivered in the MDA church during the liturgy of Bright Tuesday in 1905, breathes with a deep inner experience of the coming resurrection: “The Lord revealed himself and introduced the temporary to eternity, descending into our darkened physicality... In the stream of restless events, a focus was found, a fulcrum was opened: Christ is risen.” And he turns to the beauty of spring nature, proclaiming that by Christ’s resurrection this beauty has ceased to be in vain, “for the creation has been delivered from corruption.” Already “the great mystery of liberation is being accomplished. Behind the cover of the decaying husk the grain of life grows, the depths of creation are secretly renewed, the heart of the earth is purified.” 107 This is a living feeling of eternal renewal gradually taking place in visible nature, the source of which is Christ. From diary entries in the spring of 1905. It is partly clear how Florensky accepted Christ. Christ, he writes, did not commit violence against anyone, showing “full respect for the individual.” Christ always seemed to say: “You are completely free. You can stand your ground, and I will not stop loving you at all. Just remember: if you feel an acute attack of dissatisfaction, then. try to come to Me; remember that you always have a shoulder to lean on.” 108 And, responding to such “respect” for human freedom, a person, according to Florensky, must put God “in the foreground” in his life, 109 forget about his own interests and devote himself entirely to the implementation of the process that God carries out in the world. After the first years of church life, experiencing a period of temptations (“causeless melancholy”) and noticing in himself (from “doing science”) the development of vanity and pride, Florensky takes a dubious from an ascetic point of view, but very significant step: he allows himself to get drunk. A. Elchaninov records his words then (1909): “Of course, I could resist this, but I know that then it will be even worse; and then it’s obvious, otherwise you won’t be able to humble yourself.” 110 “There are unconditional sins,” he believes, “pride, anger, but drunkenness, etc. “There is still a big question about this.” “Why did Christ so love the company of harlots and publicans; after all, one must imagine that these were real harlots... and Christ still preferred them to the company of the Pharisees. Christ was with sinners not only because they were in greater need, but because he was more pleased with them, he loved them for their simplicity and humility.” And it was during this period that Florensky noticed the special “effectiveness” of his prayer. “It feels like,” he says, “as if God was coming to meet me halfway to see what I would finally get to; I sometimes have a strange feeling, absurd from a theological point of view, perhaps because I cannot express it properly: I sometimes feel sorry for God because you were born so bad to him.” 111 All this testifies, first of all, to an established personal relationship with God, despite the fact that precisely from this period (1909–1910; see below), in his philosophical and theological reflections, Florensky gradually overcomes his neophyte charm with Christian personalism, reconsiders the solution to the problem of the relationship between personality and race, and no longer pays special attention to the question of the Personality of God. The effectiveness of his prayer Fr. Paul also feels this later, after the period of spiritual trials ends. He feels the reality of Divine providence in his life, and this providence does not at all seem to him to be some kind of impersonal (or “superpersonal”) law that is unable (or does not consider it necessary) to condescend to each specific person. 112 In this regard, his childhood sensations of Nature, described in “Memoirs” of the 1920s. and confirmations of the previously experienced “mystical” experience of “Chaos”, given in letters from the Solovetsky camp, conflict with the spiritual experience that Fr. Pavel shared with V.A. Kozhevnikov in a letter dated March 15, 1912. “God is not an idea,” he writes here, “innate or transcendental or whatever, but the Living Spirit and our Father, and He guides us; even when we deviate “on our own paths,” even then He does not leave us and, having allowed us to go our own way, still guides us in a better direction. I know this from experience, I feel this with my whole being, for, no matter how bad I was, I never lost the feeling of the Presence of God, and this is ens realissimum (Latin “the most real essence”; italics mine. - N.P.).” 113 Openly and secretly with his prayer experience, Fr. Paul shares with his children in his “Testament,” written primarily between 1917 and 1921. The experience of his living spiritual communication with God, the Mother of God and the saints - St. Nicholas, St. Sergius and etc. Seraphim - manifests itself in his calls to children to pray and constantly remain before God. 114 “With this,” he writes, “I say everything I have to say. The rest is either details or secondary.” 115 And when he advises children (against the sin of envy) to obtain everything by their own labor and to ask God for everything that they especially want to have, by this, it seems, he indicates one of the paths he himself has traversed, along which religious faith can be made more alive and experienced. Recorded in April 1919 O. Paul also instructs the children to pray “to the friends and patrons of our home,” whose help and presence he felt in the most difficult time of social unrest. These are his spiritual mentors: Hieromonk Isidore (†1908), bishop. Antonin (†1908) and (almost unknown to modern researchers) Archimandrite. Pimen. 116 And about himself, in a 1917 entry, in the event of his death, he writes: “I will always be with you in spirit, and if the Lord allows, I will often come to you and look at you.” 117 Such records record this time not so much the contradiction of the spiritual experience of Fr. Paul to his “mystical” experience, as much as they complement each other: on the one hand, a certain faceless force of nature dominates a person; he is in the power of superhuman fate, the actions of which he fundamentally does not understand, but on the other hand, he stands before God, Who can direct the course of events according to the will of the person praying to Him. And also: on the one hand (as we saw above and will see further), the actual “human”, empirical personality, from Florensky’s point of view, should serve only as a “channel” through which higher realities of Existence penetrate into this world; and on the other hand, a purified empirical personality in itself can have meaning; it can somehow be involved in the higher planes of existence and from there exert its influence on the lower planes. But along with all this, attention is drawn to the fact that Fr. Paul in his Testament does not ask the children to pray for their father after his death. He commands them, if possible, to receive the Holy Mysteries on the very day of his funeral and to receive communion often in the following days. 118 It seems that the personal experience of Fr. Paul: the feeling of the effectiveness of the sacrament of Holy Communion, first of all, on the “mystical depths” of the human being, in which members of one kind are especially closely connected. This effectiveness is in no way linked to conscious prayer, and one might think that it does not even need it at all. As we will see later, this experience underlies some of the important statements made in the lectures of Fr. Paul according to the “Philosophy of Cult”, and this experience already quite clearly assigns the empirical consciousness of man a very low place in the hierarchy of Being. In further research, we will not deal with the complex task of identifying the “correlation” of the spiritual and “mystical” experience of Fr. Paul in one or another of his religious and philosophical works. But we can immediately note that the “mystical” experience was reflected in them much more, and therefore, it seems, those authors who criticized the works of Fr. There is no hurry to turn Paul into criticism of himself. So, for example, S. Khoruzhy acted cautiously in his early work, drawing the following conclusion: “Christianity in Florensky, we emphasize, not for Florensky, but precisely in Florensky’s work, in his texts, was and remains only “Christianity without Christ.” 119 One can argue with this conclusion, but the main thing here is the desire to avoid a mistake, unfortunately very common among those who, studying Florensky, sometimes see conscious “hereticism” in the very fact of the absence of “standard” topics in his heritage and the presence of “non-standard” topics for thought. “Early” and “later” heritage of Fr. Pavel At one of the most critical periods in his life, having “discovered” religion for himself and was preparing to take an extremely unusual step for that time - to move from the university to the theological academy, Florensky answered the puzzled and condemning questions of his parents in the following way (March 1904): “I am only putting into action the program outlined more than five years ago, although, of course, now I will improve and develop it.” 120 This is (chronologically) the very first evidence, which, along with others, partly already noted above, allows us today to have a very definite point of support in the perception of everything left by Fr. Paul's creative heritage. Despite all the apparent and actual variations, it must be unified and integral in its well-known basis, which Florensky reveals in his “Memoirs”. Less than ten months before his death, he summed up the research of his entire life in a very remarkable way (letter of February 21, 1937): “What have I been doing all my life? – He considered the world as a whole, as a single picture and reality, but at every given moment, or, more precisely, at every stage of his life, from a certain angle. I looked at world relationships across the world in a certain direction, on a certain plane, and tried to understand the structure of the world according to this feature that interested me at this stage. The planes of the cut changed, but one did not cancel the other, but only enriched it (my italics - N.P.).” 121 The deep internal unity of his works - both those already accomplished and those just planned - Fr. Pavel clearly outlined it back in 1912. in one of V.A.’s letters Kozhevnikov. According to the meaning of this instruction, Fr. Paul, we can say that works can be different not only in the subjects of consideration and points of view on the same subject. Written at different times, they naturally reflect the corresponding stages of the author’s spiritual and intellectual development, but at their core, one way or another, they come from the deepest recesses of his heart, or, in other words, all from the same original intuitions of early childhood. In 1912 O. Pavel feels himself to be in a certain transition period in his life and work and writes that many “sounds” have not yet sounded in him. “You can write about what you have experienced,” he says, wanting to emphasize the lack of spiritual and life experience. It is still impossible for those “sounds” that he expects from himself to sound, and, however, at the same time they are already sounding in the “secrets of the heart.” This approach to his work already reflects a very definite anthropological concept: the philosopher only unfolds in time what was given to him in Eternity, and the voice of Eternity sounds most of all in early childhood. The environment can negatively influence this process, and although each time has its own temptations, Fr. Pavel considered the spirit of positivism, which he had to face in his gymnasium years, to be especially harmful. Therefore, speaking (in a letter of 1912) about the stages of his development, he begins with “purification” (Greek “catharsis”; “cleansing my soul from modernity”). “Cleansing” is followed by “teaching” (Greek “matesis”), which develops into “action” (Greek “praxis”), or, in another expression by Fr. Paul, into "mystery". At the same time, the first stage corresponds to scientific (mainly mathematical) works, and the second - according to the plan of 1912. – two parts of “The Pillar and Ground of Truth”: theodicy and anthropodicy 122. Everything strives towards “praxis”, and, therefore, all research work is subordinated to one common task. Florensky attributed the original concept of the “Pillar” to 1902–1903. 123 In June 1904 he wrote to A. Bely that he was preparing a large work of a “mystical and theoretical-cognitive” nature “on the theory of knowledge built on the concept of symbol.” 124 The idea of ​​dividing this work into two parts - Theodicy and Anthropodice, apparently, arose around the same time. In any case, Florensky speaks about Theodicy and Anthropodyce as two moments that make up religion at a meeting of the MDA philosophical circle at the beginning of 1906. Here he puts anthropodicy in first place: the “justification” of a person is “primarily a sacrament, a mystery, i.e. the real descent of God to man, the self-abasement of God, or kenosis." It is this Divine self-abasement, according to Florensky the student, that justifies man in the face of God. Moreover, it is quite obvious (although not specifically stated) that we are talking here specifically about the kenosis of the Incarnation, as later, in the introductory speech before the defense of his master’s thesis (1914), Fr. Paul will say very briefly, but still, that the central question of anthropodicy is a Christological question. 125 Theodicy is placed in relation to the first moment (the “sacrament” of anthropodicy) as if in a service position: the “justification” of God is necessary so that humanity can accept God’s saving self-abasement. And if it is primarily a “sacrament,” then it is primarily a teaching, a “dogma”; if the first moment of religion expresses the descent of God to man, then the second moment is “the contemplative ascent of humanity to God.” 126 Both points are closely interrelated and cannot be isolated from one another. In 1914, explaining the terms “theodicy” and “anthropodicy”, essentially in the same way as in the student report of 1906, Fr. Paul especially focused on their inevitable combination in religious life. “Every movement in the field of religion,” he said, “antinomically combines the path of ascent with the path of descent. By being convinced of the truth of God, we thereby open our hearts for grace to descend into it. And vice versa, by opening our hearts to grace, we brighten our consciousness and see God’s truth more clearly. Just as the poles of a magnet cannot be separated, so the paths of religion cannot be separated.” 127 However, their “methodological” separation is possible, which, according to Fr. Paul, is also predetermined by the fact that both paths for their exploration require different spiritual preparation. Theodicy is chosen by Florensky as the first stage of “learning”, corresponding to the beginner’s spiritual feat, while the “more difficult” anthropodicy is left “until more mature years and more experienced experience.” 128 In all this, it is important for us, however, to see the unity of intent of both works - theodicy and anthropodicy - right down to the original intention of presenting them as two parts of one book - “The Pillar and Ground of Truth”. They both were supposed to be a single work, considering the concept of symbol, as Florensky wrote to Bely in 1904. and as he emphasized in his memoirs of 1916–1920: “All my life I thought about only one problem, the problem of the symbol.” 129 The study of the question of the “justification” of man should have come from the already conducted study of the question of the “justification” of God, should have been based on it, developing in accordance with the principle: “You can write [only] about what has been experienced.” Is it possible in this case to reject what was experienced earlier, at the “new beginning” stage, and accordingly, is it possible for a radical revision in anthropodicy of those concepts that were built at the first stage of “learning”? This is a question of the relationship between Florensky’s “early” and “late” creativity, when he, it seems, leaves the theme of Sophia developed in “The Pillar” and moves on (mainly at the turn of 1917–1918) to his “concrete metaphysics.” Characteristic for it is “the symbolic principle of the dual unity of the spiritual and the sensual,” as S.S. writes. Khoruzhy, “abolishes a whole series of sophiological concepts and structures, including the most important of them: love and Sophia herself.” If in the “Pillar”, i.e. in theodicy, love as an ontological category was the force by which unity is established and maintained, then in the symbolic reality of anthropodicy, “unity is a symbol that is established and maintained in perfect being by itself, and in the fallen - by the healing, sanctifying power of the cult, so that love is no longer needed in ontology; with it, the latter loses its personal character, and the spiritual world is no longer personified into a single perfect personality,” 130 i.e. Sofia. In general, we can agree with this, but with one clarification that is very important for the anthropological aspect of Florensky’s legacy: ontology in Fr. Pavel’s work only becomes “personal” to some extent for a certain, “early” period of creativity. But even in the doctrine of Sophia, as we will see later, Florensky’s “personalism” is far from unambiguous, even at the ideal ontological level; in “The Pillar” it is not Sophia, as the ideal Personality of the creature, who is the basis of the entire ontology. As such, in the “early” Florensky Love is the Divine Essence, 131 which unites both the Three Divine Hypostases and ideal created personalities, and it is also the condition for the life and unity of Sophia herself. The result of the search for the Absolute Truth carried out in the “Pillar” turned out to be not at all “personalistic”: Truth is the “Relationship of Three”, “relationship-substance”, which is Love. 132 Repeatedly emphasizing the absolute importance of the idea of ​​consubstantiality in ontology, the “early” Florensky actually replaces “God the Almighty” with the highest reality, so to speak, “Love the Almighty.” But in the “Pillar” system this is nothing surprising or strange, since here Fr. Paul insists that God is Love in His very Essence. The “watershed” between the “early” and “late” Florensky passes through his appeal to the category of energy. “This beginning,” writes S. Khoruzhy, “becomes for concrete metaphysics what Fr. Paul was Sophia: the lever for addressing key themes about God and the world." 133 With this appeal, Khoruzhy connects the transition to a new stage of the entire “Russian metaphysics of all-unity” and believes that the impetus for it was the “church conflict over the name-glorifying movement of 1911–1914.” 134 For Fr. Paul should indicate the period around the beginning of 1913, when, in the course of his acquaintance and correspondence with the head of the Athonite name-slavists - Hieromonk Anthony (Bulatovich) - he “discovers” the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas and the decisions of Church Councils of the 14th century. about the Divine Essence and Divine energies. 135 Condemnation of name-glorification by the Message of the Holy Synod of May 18, 1913. was regarded by him as an attack of “spiritual positivism” on the church worldview, and “name fighting” itself as “a blow and an attempt to destroy the concept of a symbol.” 136 Therefore, the very enrichment of the symbol with energy concepts, as well as the entire subsequent development of questions of anthropodicy by Fr. Paul, had a clearly expressed polemical orientation. Hegumen Andronik (Trubachev) also actually admits that a new stage in the work of Fr. Paul was influenced by the name-glorifying polemics of 1911–1914. However, he pays more attention to events in Florensky’s personal life. According to his instructions, “a turning point in the personal life and spiritual structure and a turn in the work of Fr. Paul introduced the sacraments of marriage (1910) and priesthood (1911).” The process of moving away from theodicy coincided with the “tormenting and spiritually unenlightened” years of 1908–1910, 137 after which marriage and the priesthood “were the seeds from which the work of Fr. Paul was able to grow in a new direction – the direction of anthropodicy.” Hegumen Andronik even uses the expression that Florensky “internally became alien to the spirit of the “Pillar”, the spirit of theodicy,” 138 and refers to the letter of Fr. Pavel V.A. Kozhevnikov dated March 2, 1912, which contains the following lines: “My “Pillar” disgusted me to such an extent that I often think to myself: isn’t releasing it into the world an act of impudence. And, perhaps, from a spiritual point of view, he will all turn out to be rotten.” 139 To this one could add the evidence of Florensky’s letter to S.N. Bulgakov dated December 14, 1912, which discusses some of the difficulties that arose during the preparation for the publication of “The Pillar” in its entirety. 140 “I spent books on technology,” writes Fr. Pavel, “and, mainly, so much effort and time was spent on notes that now this question has become painful for me.” But this is not out of resentment, “but simply fatigue and almost disgust towards my own book (my italics - N.P.).” 141 It seems certain that the “Pillar” and the theodicy at some point began to be understood by Fr. Pavel passed through a stage of life. But “passed” does not mean “crossed out.” Between letters to Kozhevnikov (March 1912) and Bulgakov (December 1912) with evidence of internal alienation from Fr. Paul from his “Pillar” there is also the already mentioned letter to Kozhevnikov, written in July 1912, where the “Pillar”, although recognized in some sense as imperfect, nevertheless turns out to be organically included in the stages of the spiritual development of its author. The imperfections noted here boil down primarily to incompleteness: “The Pillar” is “a theodicy (only!), and all other topics are deliberately excluded from it. That’s why the “lyrics” 142 of “The Pillar” are again not what you want - something fragile and intimately personal, solitary (my italics – N.P.).” This is a “pipe”, “the complaint of the abandoned” (“That is why,” writes Fr. Paul in parentheses, “the problem of Theodicy arises”), in contrast to the future “drama”, the second half of “matesis”, the second part of the “Pillar” (according to the original plan), i.e. anthropodicy. 143 “Alienation” from theodicy does not interfere with Florensky in 1912. discuss with Bulgakov one of the central themes of “The Pillar” - the theme of Sophia - and express the idea of ​​​​publishing “classical literature” on sophiology. 144 It was at this time, discussing the sophiology of Vl. Solovyov, Florensky sharply criticizes her “impersonalism,” 145 and, obviously, the remarkable note 701 to “The Pillar” dates back to the same time, in which Fr. Pavel writes that for Solovyov, “the beginning and foundation of everything” is “not a living Person... but substance,” which, in fact, makes his philosophy “subtle-rationalistic” and “thing-based” 146. We see, therefore, for 1912. Still characteristic features of the “early” period of Florensky’s work should be recognized as the decisive factor in the division between the “early” and “late” periods, not so much the marriage and consecration of Fr. Paul (1910–1911), how much exactly his acquaintance with the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas during the name-glorious controversy. Despite all the rudeness and tendentiousness of V.M.’s assessment of Florensky’s legacy. Lurie, one cannot help but recognize his remark as quite accurate: “Florensky was not too interested in the history of the disputes of the 14th century, but the doctrine of energies, which he now (that is, in my opinion, at the beginning of 1913 - N.P.) came to know more closely, turned out to be a godsend for him.” 147 Over the following years, Fr. Paul integrates it into his ontology in such a way that it inevitably loses its personalistic coloring, but turns out to most reflect those features of the “most ancient,” “universal human” worldview that Florensky wanted to emphasize in the face of the “name-fighting” (or “spiritual positivism”) that had, as it seemed to him, won in the Synod of the Russian Church. But, abandoning his “early” personalistic bias, Fr. Paul does not at all abandon the “Pillar” as such and does not revise what he wrote within the framework of the theodicy. This is especially important to note due to the fact that in the field of anthropology, “The Pillar” largely substantiates later work, and reliance on this substantiation should not be considered as an excessive link to what Fr. Paul had already left it behind. Here are just a few points indicating the deep organic connection between “The Pillar” and later works. In the “Pillar”, all created things in their ideal foundations participated in the Divine Essence and, thanks to this, were consubstantial with each other. The Divine Essence, defined as Love, 148 in the ontology of the “early” Florensky flowed from the ideal roots of the creature and “shone through” matter, accomplishing its restoration and deification. In his work “Name-Glory as a Philosophical Premise” (1922), Florensky gives “an ontological formula of a symbol as an entity that carries the energy of another entity fused with its energy, with which energy the essence itself is given, that second one (my italics - N.P.).” 149 Here, in essence, the same essence-energy of the upper world manifests itself in the lower world, dissolving with the energy of local entities. It is not called “Love”, its Divinity, eternity, and uncreatedness are not emphasized, but its metaphysical meaning remains the same. “The intelligent light,” or “the Light of Tabor,” it is said in the “Pillar,” is seen within the ascetic, contemplating the indescribable beauty of the essence of God. “Intelligent light is the light of the Trinitarian Deity Himself, the Divine essence... This is the “Light of Christ”.... “Mental Light”, the light of God’s love.” 150 And in the lecture “The Consecration of Reality” (1918) from the cycle “Philosophy of Cult”, light is also discussed in connection with the statement that in the holy ascetic the reality of another world is revealed. “The invisible,” says Fr. Paul on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Ephesians (Eph.5:13), is an object of faith, convicted by faith, i.e. gets guise. is Light, appears as Light...” This is the Heavenly Light, Unapproachable, Pre-Peaceful, Eternal, etc. “This is Svet Favorsky. Divine, Uncreated." There were disputes about him between supporters and opponents of St. Gregory Palamas, “and it was affirmed that truly this Light is the ontological foundation of the world and history.” 151 From this comparison it is clear that Light - Love - the Divine essence of the “Pillar” in later works simply received a different interpretation and began to be considered as Light - Divine energy, carrying with it the essence of the heavenly, Divine world. 152 The very concept of symbol - the core of future anthropodicy - appears several times in The Pillar. For example, in the letter “Gehenna” it is stated that “The Word... is not only what it is in itself, but also something more, since it is the visible body of some invisible soul, a “spark of the soul” or, in other words, a symbol.” 153 In 1920 in his work “The Magic of the Word,” Florensky will say that the word is a “living being,” 154 “a living organism that has its own structure and its own energies.” 155 “It contains a physical-chemical moment, corresponding to the body, a psychological moment, corresponding to the soul, and an odic or generally occult moment, corresponding to the astral body. In other words, the word, the product of our entire being in its integrity, is truly a reflection of man.” 156 This is a typical example showing how the transformation of the symbolism of the “Pillar” into the symbolism of later works occurs: the simple interpenetration of two levels of Being becomes saturated with various kinds of energies. In terms of anthropology, this means that a person, who is on two levels, as a “higher self” and as an “empirical” personality, is now also concretized into various energy shells - “bodies”. Details change and develop, but the basics remain the same. In a letter to N. Glubokovsky (as editor of the Theological Encyclopedia) in October 1917. O. Pavel does not report anything about the upcoming new cycle of his works, but suggests judging his methods and views by the “Pillar” of the 1914 edition. 157 But almost at the same time, he drew up the first outlines of the plan for the future work “At the Watersheds of Thought (features of concrete metaphysics)” - they are dated October and November 1917. 158 And then, at the end of 1917, Florensky is going to publish the complete collection of his works and - separately - re-release "The Pillar". 159 Further, on May 1–5, 1918, the first of the lectures on “Philosophy of Cult” was compiled, and at the same time, on May 1, 1918. O. Pavel enters into an agreement with the publishing house “Path” to print the first five volumes of his collected works, into which he now plans to include “Pillar” as the 4th volume. 160 Moreover, according to the terms of the agreement, the printing of the collected works was to begin simultaneously with the first (“At the Watersheds of Thought”) and fourth (“Pillar”) volumes, and Fr. In addition to the monetary fee, Pavel was to receive 50 copyright copies of “The Pillar” from each copy sold. 161 It seems that this is the most significant evidence of the true significance that Fr. Paul gave his "Pillar". It is interesting to note in this regard that the theme of Sophia itself is presented in the “Pillar,” so to speak, very locally: this very concept and the term “Sophia” itself are present only in one, the 10th letter, and only at the very end of the 9th letter (“Tvat”). The central idea of ​​the “Pillar” - the consubstantiality of all creation in its ideal foundations, rooted in the “bosom of the Holy Trinity” - although it is the basis of sophiology, it can do quite well without the very concept of Sophia as the “ideal Personality” of creation, the “Guardian Angel” of the world, etc. If we remove from the “Pillar” not the entire chapter (10th letter) about Sophia (where Florensky’s fundamental doctrine of the “eternal pre-existence” of the creature is especially discussed), but the very designation of Sophia and her “conditional”, “symbolic” 162 descriptions, then the essence of the concept proposed here will suffer practically no damage. And, moving on to the topic of anthropodicy, Fr. Paul does not make any radical changes to the previously developed ontology, but only instead of Love - the Divine Essence, he uses the category of Essence - the energy of the heavenly world and almost does not touch on the more personal aspect of Sophia. The “pillar” is not only not rejected, but remains the “pillar” on which concepts arise that are specially adapted to effectively combat what is perceived as the attack of “spiritual positivism” on the “most ancient” worldview. All this allows us to assert that the legacy of Fr. Pavel Florensky is extremely holistic and, inevitably reflecting in detail the stages of the author’s spiritual development, nevertheless, as a whole, it proceeds from a single foundation. This point of view allows us not to divide this study into two large sections concerning the anthropology of the “early” and “late” periods, but to immediately consider the general idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe person about. Pavel Florensky in various thematic areas. But the primary sources themselves are the works of Fr. Paul, in which the theme of anthropology is somehow present, it is useful to first consider the stages indicated by Florensky in his letter of 1912. "Catharsis". Mathematics and "Platonism" “My scientific articles,” wrote Fr. Pavel in 1912, - most of which are not printed or even slightly sketched, mathematical work and mathematical notes - this is everything, as I always mentally called it. cleansing my soul from modernity." 163 “Modernity” here can be considered as a very capacious concept, but first of all it is a “scientific attitude towards the world,” which, as Florensky writes in “Memoirs,” he developed around the sixth grade of the gymnasium (1898–1899). During this period, he “strove to understand the laws of nature, devoted all his time to exact knowledge - physics and mathematics, partly geology and astronomy.” 164 The “modernity” that is meant here is characteristic, according to Fr. Paul, “the disease of all new thought, the entire Renaissance”: on the one hand, “inhuman scientific thought,” on the other, “humanity is meaningless.” “Scientific thought dancing with the triumph of victorious death on the bones of the man it destroyed and the downtrodden human spirit hiding in the corners. All modern times have suffered precisely from this duality,” but Florensky himself is inclined to designate his internal conflict not as a separation of “scientificness” and “humanity,” but as a collision of two “elements” within himself - scientific thought and the experience of sensing another world. 165 During his gymnasium years, Florensky was all about nature, passionate about natural science and, however, there, in nature, together with his classmates - A. Elchaninov and V.F. Ern - studies Plato. “Together,” he recalls, “we wandered through forests and rocks, together we read Plato in mountain clearings and on stone ledges heated by the sun.” 166 Subsequently, Elchaninov, already a priest, in his very valuable spiritual “Records” suddenly - directly according to Plato - will notice that the birth of a child is “mystical - a messenger from another world comes to us,” and Ern, having placed Plato at the center of his philosophical work, will write (in 1915) that this thinker for him is “joy, nourishment and delight.” 167 Florensky will highlight Plato and appeal to him throughout the entire space of his philosophical and theological heritage. Plato, apparently, was the first to give him - in his senior high school years - confirmation of his experience of a different reality. It was thanks to Plato that, at the end of the “cathartic” period (1904) in the dedicated A. Elchaninov’s work “Empyrean and Empiric” 168 was able to write: “We do not align the entire diversity of reality to one plane of the sensory-perceptible. Behind this front plane of the empirical there are still other planes, other layers.” 169 In 1899 There is an internal crisis that about. Years later, Pavel characterizes it as a “collapse” or “explosion.” 170 “At some moment the magnificent edifice of scientific thinking crumbled into dust...” 171 This was still only the collapse of “scientific” values ​​in the mind, but not a turn to religion; therefore - although already without faith in the absoluteness of scientific knowledge, but at the insistence of his father - in 1900. Florensky enters the Faculty of Physics and Mathematics of Moscow University. For this period (1900–1904) he makes a remarkable entry: “The University: the discovery of man as the beginning of knowledge.” 172 One could spend a long time analyzing the circle of acquaintances and influences associated with Florensky’s studies in Moscow, 173 but one of them stands out as particularly important for our topic. This is a mathematics teacher at Moscow University N.V. Bugaev (1837–1903), with whom Florensky became close both out of love for mathematics and in connection with friendship with his son, A. Bely (B.N. Bugaev, 1880–1934). They pay attention to the testimony of N.N. Luzin, who studied with Florensky at the University and according to which “all his (i.e. Florensky - N.P.) works have no value in the field of mathematics. Hints, beautiful comparisons - something intoxicating and promising, alluring and fruitless. The abilities are visible here too, but there are no results yet.” 174 But for him, what was most important was, above all, “hints and beautiful comparisons,” and not “results” in scientific knowledge, the “magnificent edifice” of which, built in his early youth, had already collapsed. Florensky turned mathematics into a means of evidence of the reality of another world and a visual explanation of his philosophical and theological constructions. For example, he very successfully compared the need for dogma in theology with the need to introduce an “irrational number” that arose at a certain stage in the development of mathematics. Also, by analogy with mathematical functions, he tried to explain a certain law - the “type of growth”, which determines the spiritual development of a person (work “On Types of Growth”, 1906), and he assessed the “type of growth” itself as the most profound of all logical characteristics of the human personality; 175 he used the mathematical concepts of potential and actual infinity as an illustration of the presence of two “sides of being” of a person – the “conditional” and “unconditional” self. 176 In 1915. in his work “The Meaning of Idealism” he concerns the concept developed in mathematical analysis in the second half of the 19th century. theory of invariants and outlines the prospects for its use in philosophy, 177 and in 1922. (“Imaginaries in Geometry”) applies the theory of imaginary numbers to explain the picture of a dual symbolic reality. 178 Finally, among many other examples, one can note his testimony regarding the “Pillar”, expressed in 1921: “Here an attempt is made to apply a number of mathematical concepts and operations. to the problems of spiritual life, to use the very spirit of mathematics for philosophical purposes, if possible leaving the mathematical apparatus aside. (emphasis mine. – N.P.).” 179 “I am told by the native Fourier series,” he writes in “Memoirs” (1920), “and other expansions that represent every complex rhythm as a collection of simple ones, as an infinite collection of simple ones.” And oh. Paul does not agree with G. Leibniz, who believed that man does not perceive each individual rhythm of the universe. Our vague perceptions, according to Leibniz, are the result of impressions made on us by the entire universe. No, in the noise of the sea surf, and in the fall of drops of water oozing from cave vaults and walls, “we hear,” writes Fr. Paul, “and the fall of a drop, and the fall of parts of a drop, and so on ad infinitum, when we listen,” when we enter into the very heart, into the depths of our soul. “In the rhythms one can hear more rhythms, and also ad infinitum. They beat like countless pendulums, setting the time of all world life, different times and different pulses of countless living beings.” 180 Here is Florensky’s fundamental idea (which he relates to the most ancient, “universal” worldview) about the living, direct connection of man with the whole world. It was at the university, during the period of “catharsis”, that Florensky discovers man as a “cognitive principle”, and this is apparently connected primarily with the works of N. Bugaev, who not only put forward the idea of ​​​​restructuring the entire scientific and philosophical worldview on the idea of ​​discontinuity, but also proposed a new, so-called evolutionary monadology. If Leibniz’s monads “have no windows” and perceive the outside world from themselves, then Bugaev’s monads are able to overcome their egoistic self-identity and enter into mutual relationships of love, forming dyads, triads, etc. “Evolution” in this case means the process of improving monads, the ultimate goal of which is “on the one hand, to raise the mental content of a monad to the mental content of the whole world, on the other, to make the whole world a monad.” 181 The concept of the ability and necessity for the monad to go beyond its limits through bestowing, “exhausting” love is fundamental in the metaphysics of the “Pillar”. The “Pillar” defines the act of cognition as a real “coming out of oneself” and “entering” into another, which is thus given an ontological character. 182 Moreover, in addition to N. Lossky, Florensky refers to the work of S.N. Trubetskoy “Metaphysics of Ancient Greece” (1890), 183 i.e. again we observe in this very important moment of Florensky’s anthropology a connection with the university, “cathartic” period. The combination of mathematics and philosophy, the influence of N.V.’s research Bugaev and S.N. Trubetskoy was mainly shaped by those views with which, having “cleared” himself of “modernity,” Florensky came to the Moscow Theological Academy. In “The Pillar,” Florensky will not highlight the monadology of N. Bugaev, but will call the main discovery of Archim Serapion Mashkin the ontological process, when “instead of the empty, dead and formal self-identity A = A, by virtue of which A should self-affirmatively, egoistically exclude any non-A,” one obtains “a full of life, real self-identity of A, as an eternally denying himself and in his the selflessness of the eternally receiving one." 184 But, however, in the same 1908, when the above lines of “The Pillar” were written, he pays tribute to Plato in this regard: in the test lecture “Universal Human Roots of Idealism” he says that it was Plato who pointed out “how the impenetrable wall between subject and object collapses and falls, how the I goes beyond the limits of its egoistic isolation, how with an open, wide chest it inhales the mountain air knowledge and becomes one with the whole world.” 185 At the end of the period of “catharsis,” Florensky enters the world of religion through Plato and with Plato, believing that (as he would say in 1915) Platonism is “the natural philosophy of any religion,” “an exciting current in the religious thought of mankind.” 186 After graduating from the academy (1908), he focuses on the “amazing similarities” between the teachings of Plato “and the worldview of our even more ancient ancestors, lost in the fog of antiquity.” 187 Platonism, he claims, with its roots “attracts to itself the soil moisture of universal human beliefs,” and this is the reason for its “eternity.” “After all, Plato... is the flower of the people’s soul.” 188 In 1915 he will also say very affirmatively: “...In Platonism, entire bands, entire worlds of folk religion and universal human understanding of life became conscious.” 189 Plato is “the deepest of the pagans”, 190 “a deep and wise thinker” (“Cult and Philosophy”, 1918), 191 the concepts of “folk”, “Platonic” and “church” are identical (“Iconostasis”, 1922), 192 “In the temple we stand face to face before the Platonic world of ideas” (“Temple action as a synthesis of arts”, 1922). 193 In relation to anthropology, Florensky’s “Platonism” will affect the concept according to which a person in his cognitive value - the “face of a person” or the “face” of a person - is a Platonic idea 194 with all the ensuing consequences. We can say that the period of “catharsis” ends for Florensky with a philosophical (according to Plato) justification of his personal experience of feeling in Nature and (much less) in man a different, higher reality than it appears in empirics. At the same time, in important issues of evidence of this reality, he wants to put mathematics at the service of philosophy, believing that its potential is almost unlimited, up to the possibility of “closest contact” even with such a distant area as moral theology (he writes about this, however, already in the 2nd year of the MDA, at the end of 1905, in the work “On Types of Growth.” 195. In “Memoirs”, graduation from university (spring 1904) is designated by Father Paul as a new crisis, this time ending with an appeal to religion. In June 1904, he writes, on the model of Plato’s dialogue, “Conversation” (“Empyrea and Empiria”), in which, in addition to questions about the God-man, sacraments and other reality, he talks about the possibility of an “absolute worldview.” Such a worldview should reveal the meaning of life, give reality in its truth and truth, reveal the right to exist of what we have in reality. One of the interlocutors asks the other: does he already have such a worldview, has it been given to him or has he succeeded? “There is much that is not fully developed for me,” is the answer, “even more that is not clear in logical forms. But if not the worldview itself, then the beginnings, the foundations of it already exist (my italics - N.P.).” It was not “successful” and not “given,” but “given.” And this is church Christianity; “The absolute worldview is Catholic Christianity.” 196 Two points are important for us here, which should be noted immediately: 1. Florensky is already firmly convinced - in accordance with the original childhood intuitions - that everything he discovers and studies empirically is already “given” to him at a much deeper level of his being. 2. Florensky reveals in the depths of his being a worldview, which, in his conviction, best corresponds to church Christianity. This makes him a conscious Orthodox scientist and philosopher, who has no intention of either “Christianizing Platonism” or “Platonizing Christianity,” but is simply confident that Plato and Orthodoxy are, by and large, two non-contradictory manifestations of the “most ancient,” “universal human” worldview. “I’ll tell you about myself,” he wrote in November 1913. Rector of the MDA, Bishop Theodore (Pozdeevsky), in connection with attacks against him. – I had the opportunity to be a professor in the mathematics I loved; I also had another opportunity - to study theology abroad (my father almost demanded this and was offended by me for the Academy). If I abandoned all this and, having chosen the Academy, spent ten of the best years of my life and hard work on it, it means that I wanted Orthodoxy and precisely churchliness. I wanted and want to be a believing son of the Church.” 197 There is no reason to doubt the sincerity of these words, especially since it is attested to by the entire subsequent life of Fr. Pavel. Florensky entered the MDA immediately after graduating from university, against the will of his father and on the advice of the bishop. Antonia (Florensova). 198 His works, written during his studies at the academy (1904–1908), bear the stamp of the newly accomplished discovery of Christianity and churchliness and at the same time testify to the strength of the ideological foundations on which their author had already strengthened himself in previous years. Thus, in his analysis of A. Bely’s “Northern Symphony” (“Spiritism as Anti-Christianity,” 1904), Florensky asserted the presence in every person of his “ideal appearance,” which he can “receive” as something “final” and “complete.” 199 In published in the same 1904. The work “On the symbols of infinity (an essay on the ideas of G. Cantor)” discussed the problem of actual and potential infinity and concluded that “any potential infinity already presupposes the existence of actual infinity as its super-finite limit.” Goethe was also quoted there, according to which “closed infinity” is more suitable for man than the starry sky, “and the latter,” added Florensky, “of course, of course, precisely as a certain opportunity to rush further and further, never being able to produce a synthesis and settle down on the whole.” 200 In the student essay “On the Types of Growth” (1905; published in the “Theological Bulletin” in 1906), these themes are developed in relation to the human personality. In personality, it is said there, there are two moments, “two sides of being” - “ideal” and “real”. They relate to each other as unconditional and conditional value, as actual and potential infinity, as the Image and Likeness of God. “Personality is the Church of God, but it is also the One who lives in it, the finite and the infinite. a creature of dual life or an amphibian, as Plotinus called it." 201 Florensky clearly postulates the initial deification of the deep structure of a person, and the entire presentation is carried out using the category of personality: the process of “change for a conditional personality” is the gradual disclosure of an “unconditional personality.” 202 1906 His large work “The Concept of the Church in the Holy Scriptures” is also dated, which states that “the dual nature of the Church leads to the need to distinguish two elements in it, two sides: unconditional and relative.” 203 These are the same two “sides of being” that each “individual” personality has; in this case we are talking about the “total” personality of all creation, which, as it moves towards its existential center, is Sophia, the Church and the Blessed Virgin Mary. 204. Student Florensky in 1906–1907. makes a selection of literature according to which Christianity, having recognized the “absolute” personality, thereby actually renounced all blood ties and relationships as a pagan relic. Clan, family, family tree, which before Christianity were not just valued, but were mystically significant, have now ceased to have any meaning. 205 Very soon after this (already by 1909), experiencing another internal crisis, Florensky will begin to explore his ancestry and will gradually create a doctrine about the real mystical significance of the genus; the genus will eventually turn out to be for Fr. Paul ontologically more significant reality than personality (see “The Meaning of Idealism”, 1915; lectures “On Historical Knowledge”, 1916; especially in the monograph “Analysis of Spatiality and Time in Artistic and Visual Works”, 1924). In a report read at a meeting of the MDA philosophical circle on January 20, 1906, Florensky emphasizes the importance of personal religious experience and a person’s personal relationship with God. According to him, the ancient myth of Prometheus reflects the search for God as a loving Person in conditions when dominant paganism perceives the Object of its worship “slavishly, externally, unfreely.” It does not have the power to penetrate “into His inner essence – the Personality of God” and therefore arouses Prometheus’ “fight against God” as a reluctance to worship a Power that does not carry within itself its justification. Only Christianity raises human consciousness above the created world and puts it “face to face with the Most Transcendent Person of God.” And “only when standing face to face before God, with an enlightened consciousness does a person comprehend the truth of God in order to bless God for everything.” 206 But already in the candidate's dissertation of 1908 - the first edition of the future "Pillar" - the Personality of God seems to fade into the background and all attention is paid to the Personality of Sophia. In Sophia, each person with his “ideal personality” is rooted in God, and therefore the “exit” to God is made through his “true Self,” through Sophia as the Church and the ideal Personality of the creature. “Permeated with Trinity Love,” it is written in the handwritten part of the dissertation, 207 “Sophia, religiously—not rationally—almost merges with the Word and the Spirit and the Father,” 208 i.e. in fact, Sophia is “religiously” identified with God. At the same time, God remains God, and the creature remains a creature, but for the creature, in its empirical aspect, God, as it were, “disappears” for direct contact, “disappears” in Sophia. At the same time, personal communication between a person and God “disappears,” since everything ultimately comes down to the communion of the Divine Essence through Sophia. Man has an organ for perceiving the heavenly world - the heart. “Through the heart, the primordial root of personality is contemplated. and through this root a living connection is established with the Mother of the spiritual personality - with Sophia... In her, the personality is given the contemplation of God - Love,” and the creature receives Love itself “through Sophia from the Spirit (my italics throughout. - N.P.).” 209 We can say that a person’s direct personal contact with God, “face to face”, is brought into the ideal realm, into the realm of Plato’s ideas, while for the empirical person the path to God remains only through his “true Self” (or, what is the same, through Sophia). Moreover, in letter 8 of the “Pillar” (“Gehenna”), human self-consciousness is attributed specifically to the empirical personality, which must enter into the communion of the Divine Essence, but, in the case of extreme evil, can lose its “ideal root” and perish in its pure subjectivity. 210 Almost the same concept, but without the involvement of Sophia, is contained in “Iconostasis” (1922), where the empirical personality and “its essential core” (the Image of God) are presented as a phenomenon and noumenon and the possibility of their disastrous splitting is stated. 211 This is an extremely important point in Florensky’s anthropology, the manifestation of which we already see in student essays. 212 In general, by the end of the period of study at the MDA, the problem of theodicy, initially (in a report of 1906) stated as evidence of the Person of God, the direct experience of God in standing “face to face” before Him, 213 was reduced - in terms of anthropology - in fact to the problem of the relationship between the “real” (empirical) and “ideal” personality in man and was expressed in the development of the doctrine of Sophia as the ideal Personality of the creature, rooted in the “bosom of the Holy Trinity.” 214 After 1908 Florensky becomes “alien to the spirit of theodicy” (Heb. Andronik); successful defense of his candidate's dissertation and recognition as satisfactory for the reading of two test lectures ("Universal human roots of idealism" and "Cosmological antinomies of Immanuel Kant", September 17, 1908) make Florensky the acting assistant professor of the Moscow Academy of Sciences in the department of history of philosophy. In “Memoirs” relating to this period, Fr. Paul recorded: “Professorship: the crisis of Pharisaism: the discovery of the race.” "Matesis." Transition period Having data from the family tradition of the Florensky abbots. Andronik (Trubachev) does not in any way reveal the essence of this latest internal crisis, however, various sources (including those cited by Abbot Andronik) indicate that one of the reasons for it may be Florensky’s relationship with S. S. Troitsky (1881–1910), a friend to whom the “letters” of “Pillar” were addressed and who was called “the only one” in the dedication to the 1906 report. "Dogmatism and Dogmatics". In 1907, a year earlier than Florensky, he graduated from the academy, moved to Tiflis and in 1909. married his sister Olga. In his memoirs “From meetings with P.A. Florensky (1909–1910)” A. Elchaninov cites his words dating back to January 1910: “I want true love; I understand life only together; without “together” I don’t want salvation; I... simply have no taste for life or for saving my soul - while I’m alone” 215. He associates the main reason for his melancholy with the inability to find “real, complete communication” for himself: “all just pieces of paper, and never gold” 216. Florensky’s response letter to Maria Umanets 217 is dated October 1909, in which his words are quoted: “... sometimes despair sets in, what can you do alone, when the sea of ​​life, raised by a storm, boils and foams.” 218 And in October of the same year, A. Elchaninov writes down those “facts” that he reported about the Florensky bishop. Anthony (to Florensov): “...disappointment in science, causeless melancholy, drunkenness.” Florensky himself explained the latter circumstance for several reasons: the desire to experience what he would write and speak about in lectures (“...after all, all cognition is a coming out of oneself”; “historically, the epistemological question arose from the cult of intoxicating plants, since drunk people know best the phenomenon of going out of oneself, the identity of subject and object”), the intention to humble his pride and his vanity, and his craving for simplicity, so widely opposed Pharisaism widespread around. 219 The fact that there was no guile or far-fetchedness in these explanations is evidenced by other sources, for example, Florensky’s letter to his mother in December 1905, in which his disappointment in the spiritual academic environment was already evident. “Wherever you look,” he wrote, “there is no complete honesty, unselfishness and an objective attitude to issues and matters.” Even then, Florensky wanted to leave the academy “and go wandering or settle in the forest,” 220 and the same desire to leave the academy was noted by Elchaninov in his entry in October 1909. 221 It was during this period (“tormenting and spiritually unenlightened years,” in the words of Abbot Andronika) that Florensky turned to the study of his family and made the erroneous discovery that his great-grandfather Andrei was a priest. 222 He compares the destinies of his grandfather and father and shares the following impressions with V. Rozanov: “It’s like some kind of fate weighs down on the whole family. Sometimes it seems to me that this fate is God’s punishment and admonition for the fact that the race has retreated from sacred service, that this is God’s jealousy, and the “tragedy of fate” will not stop until there is redemption, until the race, in the person of at least someone, returns to ... its calling” (letter dated November 15, 1909). “In this abandonment of the family priesthood for the sake of science,” Florensky sees a “fundamental mistake” (a term from Aristotle’s logic) of the entire family, and “until we,” he writes, “return to the priesthood, God will persecute and dispel all the best attempts” (letter dated May 28, 1910) 223 It is in this way that Florensky comes to the idea of ​​​​the need to take holy orders. Having once recognized some event as a Divine sign, he did not wait for the indicated bishop. Anthony (Florensov) at the age of 30 (to resolve the issue of monasticism) and married the sister of his new friend Vasily Giatsintov, Anna. The sacrament of marriage took place on August 25, 1910, and 8 months after that, on April 23 and 24, 1911, bishop. Theodore (Pozdeevsky) ordained Pavel Florensky as a deacon and priest. “All this time,” he wrote on May 11, 1911. V. Rozanov, - I have... such a celebration, as if the 7th day had arrived, as if Eternal Easter had arrived. Some kind of inexpressible, intangible, incomprehensible inner world for me descended into the soul, into the heart, into the whole body. I returned to my ancestors... The whole psychology was turned upside down. (italics mine. - N.P.)" 224. In a similar way, Fr. Pavel shared his experiences with S.N. Bulgakov, describing to him the “sense of eternity or timelessness” associated with the accomplished sacrament of the Priesthood. 225 This correspondence, by the way, confirms the sudden nature of Florensky’s decision to become a priest, which was the result of his “discovery of the family,” and was not the result of some natural craving for the “priesthood,” understood on the model of the ancient cult. 226 At the same time, Fr. Paul was indeed inclined to limit the functions of the priesthood only to the performance of cult rituals, which also, I think, manifested his certain anthropological views. According to these views, the sacraments and the cult in general first of all affect the noumenal basis of human nature, and only then the sanctification from the “roots” is transmitted to the “branches” and “branches”, reaching the “peripheral consciousness”. Sacred rites are therefore a much more important activity of the priest than preaching and shepherding, which concern only such an “external”, empirical structure as consciousness. In a letter from Yalta (1922) Fr. Sergius Bulgakov recalled that before accepting the priesthood he spoke in a conversation with Fr. Pavel about his desire to be a “priest” and not a “pastor,” and Florensky agreed with him. 227 This, of course, does not mean that Florensky, in principle, refused to exercise pastoral leadership as a priest, but this was precisely the prevailing tendency. In subsequent years, Fr. Paul continued his research, spending a lot of time and effort on it. “I’m delving into my family,” this is from a letter to V. Rozanov in October 1915. “It costs a lot of effort, constant correspondence, leafing through dozens of volumes and folders, questions, trips even...” 228 He gives an extensive doctrine of the family in his work “The Meaning of Idealism” (1915) and in the lectures “On Historical Knowledge” (1916), where much attention is also paid to the issues of compiling a family tree. Even during the period of intensive work on various articles and lecture courses, he does not leave this area of ​​research. Addressing (in April 1919) one of the relatives with a request to tell something from the past, Fr. Paul writes: “It is not curiosity that speaks in me. when I want to capture every little detail of the past, so lost to me. No, it’s a sense of responsibility to the future, fulfillment of duty and respect for the past, fulfillment of the commandment to honor ancestors.” 229 The Sacraments of Marriage and Priesthood put an end to the internal crises, but soon a new test for Fr. Paul came “from outside”: just in 1911. The wave of the dispute that flared up on Athos around the Name of God reached Russia. By this time, Florensky already had significant developments in the field of the doctrine of the Name as an ontological reality (unpublished coursework from 1906–1907 and the work “Universal Human Roots of Idealism,” 1908) and, although he did not entirely agree with the name-slavists, he took their side. His participation in the controversy was not open, but he took the issue of the Synodal message of May 18, 1913, which condemned the teachings of the name-slavists, extremely painfully. “I am so tired of both business and squabbles over the Name,” he wrote in a draft a few days earlier, “that it seems that I am ready to agree to anything if only they would leave me alone,” i.e. to agree outwardly, which is probably all that is required. It pains me unbearably that the Name-Glorification - the ancient sacred secret of the Church - has been taken out into the marketplace and thrown into the hands of those who should not touch it.” 230 By this time Fr. Paul has already revealed the “most ancient” and “universal” idea that names express the very essence of things. In relation to a person, “the name is the very mystical personality of a person,” a certain special essence, by partaking of which a person becomes “a true person, animal religiosum.” 231 Rejection of such a highly ontological meaning of the name for him was tantamount to the destruction of the entire mystical depth of Christianity, “Protestantism” in the most terrible, destructive meaning of the word. “Christianity is and must be mysterious,” he wrote in a draft. “As for outsiders, let them be Protestants.” 232 In this case, those for whom names are only “conventional icons of things” automatically become “external.” This is what this “name fighting” is compared to: “At night,” writes Fr. Pavel, – Suppose you have experienced a mystical insight into the mystery of nature. But NN comes and says: have mercy, your garden is 1/4 of a tithe, and not at all infinity.” 233 All the tragedy for Fr. Paul's situation in 1913 can be understood if you look at the Synod’s rejection of imyaslaviya from his point of view: “subjectivism” and “psychologism,” which he struggled with in every possible way based on his internal experience, seemed to him to have won in the Russian Church at the highest level. And with all this, it was impossible for him to oppose himself to the church hierarchy and the hierarchy - again due to his firm convictions in the “mysterial” nature of the Church and Christianity. It seems that it is in this spirit that the already mentioned letter from Fr. Paul Bishop Theodore in October 1913, although “externally” it was written about the difficulties that arose with Florensky’s master’s thesis. “...There are strengths,” Fr. writes in it. Pavel, - with whom it is difficult and, perhaps, even impossible to fight. At least I’m tired after 10 years and I’m giving up fighting.” 234 To successfully defend his master's thesis in 1914. O. Paul excludes from the Pillar the most anthropologically important letters “Gehenna”, “Sophia”, “Friendship” and “Jealousy”, but in the same year he published the entire “Pillar” in the publishing house “Path”. His main occupation during this period was the study of the problem of gender, but in 1914. in the “Theological Bulletin” (of which Father Pavel was the editor from 1911 to 1917), he published a very important work, “The Limits of Epistemology,” compiled from lectures in the course “Introduction to the History of Ancient Philosophy,” given in 1908–1909. Among other things, it asserts the “thought-likeness” of a thing and the “thinglikeness” of thought, i.e. affirms a dual spiritual-sensory reality and gradually moves on to pointing out a multi-level reality. 235 Here, in fact, a path is being taken (or, if you like, a prototype of the path) along which, developing the theme of anthropodicy, Florensky will “enrich” the concept of symbol with “energy concepts” (S. Khoruzhy). Even in “The Universal Human Roots of Idealism” (a lecture given in 1908 and published in the “Theological Bulletin” in 1909), Florensky, not knowing about the name-glorifying controversy on Athos and not yet turning to the “theology of energies” of St. Gregory Palamas, made a real name-glorifying statement that in the Name of God “His divine energy is revealed to the caller.” 236 Now, at the suggestion of Fr. Anthony Bulatovich, he adopts the category of energy and rebuilds his entire ontology and, accordingly, anthropology according to it. This is a new and powerful weapon in the fight for “ontology,” but in the “transitional period” Fr. Paul, apparently, considered decisive and sharp polemics to be inappropriate. In May 1913 in one of his lectures on the history of philosophy, he calls “the revival of medieval disputes about the energy and essence of the Divine” (i.e., the name-glorifying polemic) one of the signs of “the onset of something new, completely new, which was already old.” 237 In fact, Fr. Paul expected and, as it seemed to him, foresaw the very rapid onset of the era of the establishment of “ontology” in the worldview, i.e. a return to the “most ancient”, “universal” worldview. Events of 1917 he perceived primarily from the point of view of these expectations, and it seems appropriate to attribute the beginning of the “late” period of his work - the development of the theme of anthropodicy with an obvious polemical context - to approximately this milestone. But first there was a spiritual discord with M. Novoselov and with the entire “circle”, with former like-minded people in supporting name-glorification. Florensky's “ontologism” is taken to many extreme limits; From the very beginning he disagreed with Father Anthony Bulatovich, who denied the presence of Divine energy and God Himself in the very sounds of the Name of God, 238 and after August 1914. actually refused further cooperation with him. 239 In 1916 he, knowing (and even specifically noting this) about the veneration of A.S. Khomyakova M. Novoselov, F.D. Samarin and others, first in the “Theological Bulletin”, and then in a separate publication, publishes the material “About Khomyakov”, in which, in places, in rather harsh terms, he accuses him of the same “Protestantism”, i.e. in a tendency towards the destruction of the mystical basis of the Church and Christianity. “The essence of Orthodoxy,” he writes, “is ontologism - the acceptance of reality from God as given, and not created by man,” while in Khomyakov he finds a struggle with the “ontological moment in religion,” a caricatured representation of many features of “ontology.” 240 Florensky makes a decisive conclusion: “Immanentism 241 is the flavor of Khomyakov’s theories,” 242 and, consequently, of all his admirers and successors of his ideas in theology and philosophy. This needs to be compared with what Florensky wrote (in a draft) to S. Bulgakov in August 1917. regarding his just published book “Non-Evening Light”: “I rejoiced at your book and found answers to my main request - a request about the transcendental. Now the immanent is rushing everywhere. Church government, the sacraments, the meaning of dogmas, God himself - everything is immanentized, deprived of an existence that does not exist in us, and becomes a mode of ourselves. Everyone is busy tearing down the peaks, clouding the firmaments of the earth, piercing into the Azure of heaven. Your book is the only exception to this general flow (my italics – N.P.).” 243 Father Paul made such conclusions at a time when the so-called neopatristic movement had already arisen in Russian theology, which (since the late 1890s) tried to return Orthodox theological thought to St. Fathers and free themselves from Catholic-Protestant influences. In connection with this trend are the names of Archbishops Mikhail (Gribanovsky), Anthony (Khrapovitsky), Sergius (Stragorodsky), Hilarion (Troitsky) and the rector of the MDA, Bishop. Theodore (Pozdeevsky), quite close to Fr. Pavel and to the Novoselovsky “circle”. Father Pavel admitted that “the names of Metropolitan Anthony of Petrograd and Archbishops Anthony and Sergius” became “slogans of vast currents of Russian theological thought,” and at the same time directly connected them, and, consequently, these movements themselves, with the ideas of Khomyakov, so sharply criticized by him. 244 Apparently, starting at the turn of 1916–1917. to the development of the long-planned theme of anthropodicy, Fr. Paul felt almost alone as a defender of “ontology” and the “mystical foundations” of Christianity, forced to act in conditions when “the immanent is rushing everywhere.” At the end of 1916 the Novoselovsky “circle” condemned him for his work “Around Khomyakov,” and he informed S. Bulgakov of his decision, while maintaining “recognition, respect and love” for the members of the “circle,” to “act and think completely independently,” without regard “to the intentions and actions of others.” 245 All the “later” works of Fr. Paul, I note once again, is taking place under the sign of a polemic that is much more global in the sense of worldview than the clash between the “name-slavers” and the “name-fighters” in 1911–1914. This is a struggle for the establishment of “ontology”, for a return (from the point of view of Father Paul) to the most ancient “universal” truths. In two very short notes on anthropology, he quite clearly outlined his guidelines in the area of ​​interest to us. “Understanding the purpose for which everything in man exists will be anthropology...”, he indicated at the end of 1916. (“Notes on Anthropology”). 246 But at the same time, “anthropology is not the self-sufficiency of solitary consciousness. The microcosm is a small image of the macrocosm, and not just something in itself.” In particular, human sense organs, such as vision, hearing, etc., are nothing more than the metaphysical axes of the world itself: “the metaphysical is expressed in the psychological, the psychological expresses metaphysics” (“Philosophical Anthropology”, 1918). 247 In the life and work of Fr. Paul since 1917 much will seem incomprehensible and strange if one does not take into account his conviction that the events in Russia were a harbinger of the general establishment of a “new” worldview, returned to its ancient universal human origins. In April 1917 he prepares a report “On the religious tasks facing the new Russia” in June 1917. Together with Bulgakov, he draws up a project for the establishment of the “Religious and Philosophical Academy” in Moscow. According to its creators, among other things, the academy was supposed to promote “in-depth understanding of Orthodoxy as universal in its religious scope” and awareness of Russia’s role in solving “tasks of universal human activity.” 248 “We knew,” S. Bulgakov recalled, “that the axis of Orthodoxy and world history now passes through us.” “What did we want? To reveal true Orthodox churchliness in all its beauty, depth and breadth, giving Orthodox answers to all the needs of our time and thus containing them all within its enclosure.” Everything had to be “assimilated,” “orthodoxized,” “churched”—philosophy, occultism, science, art. 249 For Fr. For Paul, this was already some anticipation of the era of “praxis”, for which he continued to prepare a theoretical basis. In September 1917, Fr. Pavel compiles (added in 1919) a special course “From the history of philosophical terminology”, where he examines very important anthropological issues, incl. “mystical anatomy” and man as a microcosm. “Physiology,” he says in one of his lectures, “in its foundations is certainly mystical physiology and the basis of a universal religion.” Here is the teaching of Fr. Paul about the ontological significance of the human body has been brought, it seems, to its highest limit: “Our body,” he asserts, “is not something by the way... but something of primary and exceptional importance,” it is “infinitely deeper” than it seems to crude materialism and abstract spiritualism. 250 In lectures on the “Philosophy of Cult” dating back to 1918–1919, a person is considered in the realities of “essence” and “hypostasis”, and it is said that the “essence” manifests itself as a body, and the “hypostasis” declares itself through speech. 251 This makes his works from the cycle “At the Watersheds of Thought” (1917–1922), related to the philosophy of language and words, significant for Florensky’s anthropology. In 1922 O. Paul completes the cycle of “Philosophy of Cult” with several lectures, where a person is considered from the point of view of the concepts of “face”, “face” and “mask” (“Iconostasis”) and as a set of “concentrations of personality layering”, each of which can be called a “body” (“Philosophy of Cult”). 252 He returns to this last theme in his final work, “Names” (1926). Here Florensky repeats many ideas about the ontological meaning of the name, noted in student reviews of 1906–1907, and presents the name as the first manifestation of the “spiritual essence”, a kind of subtle body, followed by coarser structures. He seems to specifically make it clear that their exact names are not important to him (unlike theosophy and occultism, where - in different versions - all bodies are spelled out), 253 but once, in passing, he points out their connection with the “material” of the environment - “mystical, occult, social, mental, physical.” 254 Florensky mentions the “astral” structure of man in his work “The Magic of the Word,” written in 1920; 255 speaks about “astral losing oneself” in “Memoirs” in an entry in January 1924. 256 Most definitely o. Paul affirms the name as the highest ontological reality in man, which “predetermines the personality and outlines the ideal boundaries of its life.” 257 “The name expresses the type of personality, its ontological form, which further determines its spiritual and mental structure.” 258 Without a name, the human Self, i.e. personality – “pure subjectivity”; “a name is ontologically first, and its bearer, even a saint, is second.” 259 Before his first arrest and three-month exile to Nizhny Novgorod (1928), Fr. Paul tried to contribute to the preservation of the cultural heritage of the Church, to save the Trinity-Sergius Lavra and Optina Hermitage from closure. Working in Soviet scientific institutions, he (until 1928) invariably appeared everywhere in a priestly cassock. In addition to purely scientific and technical work (on electrical engineering and materials science), 260 he began extensive work on the “Dictionary of Symbols” (Symbolarium), which he planned to carry out with the involvement of other specialists. The first issue of the Dictionary, dedicated to the dot symbol, was written jointly with Professor A.I. Larionov by 1923 and contained important points that cannot be ignored in the process of studying the philosophical and theological heritage of Fr. Pavel. It is necessary to highlight such works by Fr. Paul, as “Imaginaries in Geometry” (1922), “Reasoning in the Case of the Death of Father Alexei Mechev” (1923), which, among other things, includes something interesting for Fr. Paul the theme of the possibility for a person to “learn to die” during his lifetime, etc. In 1924 O. Paul prepared two articles for publication in The Pilgrim magazine, which were devoted to issues of Christian unification. One of them (A Note on Christian Culture) was indeed published in English and called upon all denominations, “instead of defensive apologetics,” to positively disclose and clarify the meaning of their hopes. Here Fr. Paul pointed to the need to reveal Christian views “on the nature of man and on all creation.” 261 Another article - “Note on Orthodoxy” - is interesting in that it clearly outlines the principled position of Fr. Paul: there are not and cannot be false religions. 262 After a short exile in 1928 O. Pavel was reinstated as head of the materials science department of the All-Union Electrotechnical Institute. 263 A new arrest occurred in February 1933. “We need to grow very, very much,” wrote Fr. Paul in 1912 - in order to surpass “matesis” “and suffer a lot in order to grow to the mysteries”, to “praxis”. 264 “Only deep suffering truly shapes our personality and leaves significant changes on it,” he testified in “Memoirs” addressed to children (1924), while “pleasure disappears without a trace from memory; joys are remembered, but as pale, bloodless shadows.” 265 The era of “praxis” has arrived for Fr. Paul not in the way he expected when describing the stages of his spiritual formation, although perhaps the main intuition was justified - the connection between “action” and suffering. In July 1933 O. Pavel was sentenced to 10 years, exiled to the so-called BAMLAG, where in the village of Skovorodino, at the “Experimental Permafrost Station”, he began research on permafrost. By the autumn of 1934 These works with his participation were suddenly interrupted due to his transfer to the camp on Solovki. There about. Pavel made a great contribution to the creation of iodine production and prepared projects for the integrated use of algae. All this work was also interrupted, and on December 8, 1937. O. Pavel was allegedly shot in an unknown location in the Leningrad region. The legacy of Fr. Paul, what remains from this period is his correspondence with his wife, mother and children, 266 as well as the very directions and results of his scientific research in the Far East and Solovki. In one of the letters from 1936. he confirms his teaching about the race: “I believe that knowing the past of one’s race is the duty of everyone and brings many benefits for self-knowledge and correction or prevention of possible mistakes.” 267 In a letter of February 23, 1937. the convictions expressed (in connection with the doctrine of gender) at the lecture “On Historical Knowledge” (1916) about the connection of time with Eternity are repeated. “I express this to you,” Florensky told the students, “as the most solid point of my inner life: nothing is lost”; 268 “I have long had a firm conviction,” the letter says, “that nothing is wasted in the world. 269 ​​For personal life, this conviction may not be comforting enough. But if you look at yourself as an element of world life, then with the conviction that nothing is lost, you can work calmly. (emphasis mine. – N.P.).” 270 “Everything passes, but everything remains” (letter April 6/7, 1935), “The past has not passed, but is preserved and abides forever” (letter May 27, 1935) 271 At the same time, Fr. Paul believes that within a clan, relatives can influence each other’s destinies. “During this time I took blows for you,” he writes in March 1934, “that’s what I wanted and that’s how I asked the Higher Will.” “All this time I suffered for you and wanted and asked that it be harder for me, if only you were spared from grief, so that the burden of life would fall on me instead of you.” 272 The letters repeat many important ideas from the Memoirs. For example, Fr. Pavel once writes that he extracted all his ideas not from books, but “from himself,” 273 notes that over the course of 50 years of his life he became convinced of the correctness of his initial childhood impressions, 274 advises paying attention to the child’s earliest childhood, “when the very framework of the personality is laid. Everything else, later, is just variations on the theme of early childhood.” 275 O. Pavel tells how he “felt” his children before they were born, 276 teaches his daughter Olga to “symbolically perceive reality,” i.e. be able to “find the highest in “here” and “now””; 277 also for Olga he develops a whole doctrine about the word, similar to that set out in the work “The Magic of the Word” in 1920. 278 and the doctrine of Chaos, which is ontologically higher than human individuality. 279 Exploring permafrost, Florensky finds in it a symbol of the human soul and repeats his teaching from “Philosophy of Cult” about the need for some kind of harmony between consciousness and subconsciousness in man 280. The phenomenon of permafrost, in his opinion, is generally of extreme importance “for the general understanding of the world.” 281 “In nature,” he writes, “the best education is,” 282 “nature is the best purifier,” “some hour in nature will make you understand something that you did not understand before” (letter to his daughter Olga in January 1935, a month before her 17th birthday). 283 “Mathematics is the most important of the sciences that forms the mind, deepens, and refines. tying the entire worldview into one knot; it educates and develops, gives a philosophical approach to nature.” 284 “Mathematics should be... a habit of thought: one must learn to see geometric relationships in all reality and discern formulas in all phenomena.” 285 Similar examples can be continued until Father Paul repeated them at the beginning of 1937. his conviction that a “turning point in the course of historical events” has arrived, when “a reorganization is taking place at the very roots” of all branches of life. 286 “I don’t know,” wrote Fr. Pavel at the beginning of 1935 - what the judgment will be, but I myself will say that I tried not to do bad and evil - and I did not consciously do it. Looking through my heart, I can say that I have no anger or malice towards anyone.” 287 A at the end of 1935 added on the same topic: “And if I were given the opportunity to start life anew, from childhood, I would probably follow the same path that has already been taken. I made mistakes. But basically my conscience is calm.” 288 Almost six months before his death (June 4, 1937), he formulated, so to speak, the last thesis of his “anthropology”: “And with all my being I feel the insignificance of man, his deeds, his efforts (my italics - N.P.).” 289 The era of “praxis” for Fr. Paul's life passed in conditions of massive and violent apostasy, and his expected return to Religion did not fit within the time allotted to him for earthly life. In a very deep life experience, not accessible to everyone, he felt the insignificance of a person who wants to protect himself from his Creator. An important feature of Fr. P. Florensky as a religious philosopher and Christian thinker is that he had personal experience of sensing another world, which he considered necessary to reveal in his “Memoirs”. In this case, it is advisable to call this experience “mystical” in order to distinguish it from the spiritual experience of prayerful communication with Fr. Paul with God and Christian saints. In the “mystical” experience of Fr. Paul is the basis of his ideas about man as a “part” of Nature and his belief in the presence of an eternal super-empirical reality in man and in Nature. This is the reality of the impersonal (or “superpersonal”) plane, “some kind of higher consciousness,” which in the hierarchy of existence significantly exceeds the specific human personality. In this regard, it can be said that the spiritual experience of Fr. Paul, testifying to God's condescension to the interests of each specific human person, comes into conflict with his “mystical” experience. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that in “mystical” experience we are not talking about God, but about some higher created reality, which in the religious and philosophical works of Fr. Paul is interpreted as “Creative Nature” or as the ideal foundations of everything that exists, created and abiding in Divine Eternity, on the same plane of existence with God. Despite some external differences in the form of the early and late ontology of Fr. Paul, its content remained the same; all external differences are about. Paul explained by the difference in approaches, considering the same realities from different points of view. The main and unchanging basis of Fr.’s worldview. Paul was the fundamental dual unity of the world and man, the unity of their unconditional (eternal and originally deified) and empirical (unfolded in time) nature. Florensky believed that this truth was comprehended by him in very early childhood; on the other hand, based on the same convictions, he accepted childhood impressions as the deepest and most undoubted comprehension of the truth (as accomplished in the process of Plato’s “remembering”). The line that formally separates the early and late works of Fr. Paul, with the greatest grounds can be considered the condemnation by the Synod of the Russian Church of name-glorification (May 1913). From that moment, having become acquainted with the theology of the energies of St. Gregory Palamas (early 1913), Fr. Paul turns his main efforts to the fight against “spiritual positivism,” which, as it seemed to him, was victorious in the Russian Church. But, based on his convictions in the unconditional sacredness of the church hierarchy and his position in it, he did not consider it possible to engage in open polemics until 1917–1918, when there was hope that the Church itself (at the Local Council) would recognize the worldview reflected in the Synodal Message of 1913 as erroneous. This explains such a late milestone (1917–1918), to which the beginning of a new stage in the religious and philosophical work of Father P. Florensky can be conventionally attributed. General overview of the life and works of Fr. Paul shows that, based on his convictions, he tried to reconstruct a “universal” worldview and was confident that the patristic tradition and church Christianity represent an organic link in this worldview. From such positions, he accepted the Holy Fathers, and Plato, and the developments of various mystical teachings, and the achievements of science, especially mathematics, and in the 1920s. – disciplines related to electrical power engineering. In prison - from the same position - he studied permafrost and the chemical composition of algae. Having been placed in very harsh conditions, he knew how to find a way to understand the highest reality in everything and, both in philosophy and in life, remained faithful to his symbolic worldview. Chapter 2. Man in the world and before God In the history of philosophy, there is a fairly sharp turn from the discussion of issues from the field of nature and cosmology in general to the topic of man. Although the sophists Protagoras (c.481–411 BC) and Gorgias (c.483–373 BC) were the first to implement it, Socrates (469–399 BC) who fought with the sophists all his life is recognized as the true founder of human philosophy. 290 The fight of Socrates (and after him Plato) against sophism as a preaching of the relativity of any knowledge, any values, laws and customs 291 could not but attract the attention of Florensky from the very first moment of his acquaintance with philosophy, 292 since “from a young age his main antipathy and fear was of subjective fiction and illusion, of everything imaginary and illusory” (S. Khoruzhy). 293 In “The Meaning of Idealism” Fr. Paul will especially note the “anthropocentricity” of the Hellenic worldview in the second period of the development of ancient philosophy and the fact that the “alpha and omega” of life understanding for Socrates is man. 294 Such an assessment is very indicative of a thinker who deliberately emphasizes his “Hellenism” and his special attitude towards antiquity. If the Sophists, having shifted the focus from nature to man, were still engaged in natural science (mathematics, physics, astronomy, etc.), then Socrates was inclined to reject in general all natural philosophy with its search for cause-and-effect relationships in visible nature. The purpose of everything in the world is man, and the most important thing for a man is to know himself. “Listen now. me,” this is a typical appeal of Socrates to his interlocutor, “and what is written in Delphi: know yourself...” (Alcibiades. I. 129a). 295 He believes that the cause of all troubles and mistakes in all areas of human activity is destructive conceit, when an ignoramus imagines himself to be an expert (Alcibiades. I. 117d-118c) 296. And first of all, it is in this regard - in self-knowledge, in a person’s knowledge of the entire depth of his being - that Socrates prefers to declare himself ignorant (“I know that I know nothing”), not “wise” (“sophist”), but only “a lover of wisdom” (“philosopher”). The mentioned Delphic inscription (on the church of Apollo in Delphi), not yet found by archaeologists, was adjacent to another, translated as “Thou art,” which, in the interpretation of Plutarch (De E Delphico), meant the presence of a deity both in the church and in the world. Such an indication of the double mystery - deity and man - represents the undoubted anthropological “maximum” of antiquity before the era of Socrates, but Socrates stands out not only because he made the Delphic inscription one of the main principles of his conversations. He showed that one can only begin to discover the mystery of man and that the most important guideline here is the understanding of one’s complete ignorance. This idea was already noticed by ancient commentators, one of whom wrote: “Knowing yourself in words is not of great importance, but in reality only God knows.” 297 Immediately after Socrates (after 400 BC), the knowledge that the human soul is immortal and has its home in heaven became widespread in the Greek world. 298 Plato speaks about this in his dialogues (“Phaedo”, “Timaeus”, “Laws”). The first systematic presentation of information about man is given by Aristotle (384–322 BC), who was also the first to use the term “anthropology,” but not at all in its own meaning, which is familiar to us. 299 The ancient Greeks did not know or use the very concept of anthropology as a study of man. In the treatise “On the Soul,” Aristotle distinguishes a person by indicating the presence in him of a soul of a rational level, which, in principle, is not connected with physicality and is eternal (although it does not retain any memory and consciousness after the death of the body - On the Soul. III, 5). 300 This achievement of ancient, pagan in its foundations, thought was noticed and reproduced by St. Gregory of Nyssa (On the structure of man. VIII, 145, 8-41; On the soul and resurrection), and then, compiling a collection of all the theology of the first centuries of Christianity established in the Church, St. John of Damascus again repeated Aristotle’s thoughts about the three levels of the soul (vegetative, sensory and rational souls) and that only the human soul is characterized by all levels at once (Accurate presentation of the Orthodox Faith. 2, 12). At the same time, the idea of ​​homo sapiens in antiquity existed along with the teachings about the living and thinking Cosmos, so that, for example, the Stoics Chrysippus and Posidonius (2nd-1st centuries BC) represented the human soul as a part (“particle”) of the cosmic soul (Diogenes Laertius. VII 142–143). Pythagoras presents the Cosmos as animate and “intelligent,” and in Plato’s dialogue “Halcyone,” Socrates says to Chaerephon: “It will probably seem convincing to many that the Cosmos, insofar as its size exceeds the size of Socrates or Chaerephon, is just as different from our state in its power of reason and ability to judge” (Halcyone. VI). 301 The perfection of the living and intelligent Cosmos is especially clearly presented in Plato in Timaeus (Timaeus. 32a-34a). The ancient concept of man as a microcosm, i.e., is quite well known. about such a “small world” in which the Cosmos with all its rationality and harmony must find its image and its likeness. Only two purely anthropological works appeared in Christian church literature, and both of them, of course, did not ignore this, one might say, the pinnacle of ancient thought about man. St. John of Damascus more often turns to the later of them - the treatise “On the Nature of Man” (in Western translations - “Anthropology”) by Nemesius, bishop of the city of Emes in Syria (V-VI centuries), including when he wants to show that “man has something in common with inanimate beings, and with dumb creatures, and with those gifted with reason.” “Therefore,” he notes, “man is a small world” (Exact presentation... 2, 12). Nemesius speaks about this at the very beginning of his treatise (On the Nature of Man. 1). The author of another work, “On the Structure of Man,” is St. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 332–383) also notes that man is “a certain small world containing the same elements with which the universe is filled” and “embraces every kind of life.” But “what is important,” he asks, “to honor man as the image and likeness of the world? After all, the earth passes away and the sky changes...” “They said: man is a microcosm. but, giving such praise to human nature with this loud name, they did not notice that they honored man with the properties of mosquitoes and mice.” 302 The true greatness and perfection of man lies not in the fact that he is likened to the totality of creation, but in the fact that he differs from the cosmos and is likened to the Creator. This is a completely new look at the relationship between man and the world, especially if we take into account the Christian teaching about the Creator, Who is both immanent and transcendental to the created Cosmos. And although the main call of Socrates to “know yourself” in Christianity, under the influence of ascetic practice, was expressed primarily in the desire to understand the sinful damage of human nature, 303 in patristic theology the idea was immediately established that the final depth of man is the path no longer to the secrets of the Cosmos, but to the knowledge of the Creator Himself. “Towards the knowledge of God,” writes St. in “Conversations on the Six Days.” Basil the Great, - it is not so much heaven and earth that guides, but rather our own structure, if one prudently examines himself, as the Prophet says: Thy understanding is astonished at me (Ps. 139:6), i.e. Having examined myself, I recognized the superiority of Your wisdom (my italics - N.P.).” 304 The same thought is repeated by St. John of Damascus, when he talks about the meaning of the commandment to eat from every tree, given in paradise to the first-created man. It meant a call: “Ascend from all creations to Me, the Creator, and from all of them gather one fruit - Me, true Life...” “But above all these thoughts and contemplations,” writes St. John, - thoughts about ourselves, i.e. about our composition, according to the word of the divine David: Thy understanding was amazed at me (Ps. 139:6), i.e. from my device." Unfallen man's knowledge of himself from human nature itself could reveal the greatness of the Creator. But for this, according to the thought of St. John of Damascus, Adam first had to be established in life according to the commandments, i.e. strengthen your free will to be with God. It was dangerous for someone not established in divine contemplation to try to reach the Creator through deep self-knowledge. In this, according to Rev. John, is the meaning of the paradise tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which is man’s knowledge of his own nature (Exact exposition. 2:11). 305 Thus, man is so deep, multifaceted and in a certain sense infinite that in his very structure God is known in a very special way, known in a way that cannot be known from the contemplation of the world. This is the fundamental difference between man and the world, his qualitatively different level in relation to his own microcosmic nature. This is the essence of the “separation” of man from the world that Christianity produced and which pre-Christian thinking did not know. Father Paul had his own special view of the difference between the Christian and ancient attitudes towards the world and man. This view is quite fully stated in the letter of the 9th “Pillar” - “Creation”, which states that the “basic position of paganism” - pagan pantheism - is both atheistic and acosmic. 306 Pagan gods are demons, but in Florensky’s specific interpretation of this concept. In this case, the “demon” is pure appearance, a phenomenon devoid of true reality. And therefore, when a pagan says that everything in the world is “full of gods,” he does not imagine or know anything real in the world; he is afraid to penetrate beyond the contours of the “skin of things,” where only chaos and horror are hidden for him. 307 Only Christianity helped people to see in creation “not a simple shell of demons, not some emanation of the Divine and not His ghostly appearance, but independent. and a self-responsible creation of God, beloved by God and capable of responding to His love.” 308 “There is objectivity; this is a God-created creature” 309 - such is the Christian revelation to the pagan, “demonic”, graceless consciousness. In paganism, the universal animation of the world turned out to be especially felt, and this, according to the conviction of Fr. Paul, found its natural response in the Christian Church. “Paganism,” he says in one of the final lectures of “Philosophy of Cult” (1922), “is partly a memory of the truth already discovered, partly the crest of the advanced waves of Truth coming into the world... And therefore, if in the Church of Christ the moment of paganism was simply absent, then this would prove the incompleteness, imperfection and, therefore, the untruth of the Church.” 310 The context of this phrase clearly indicates that by the “moment of paganism” in the Church we mean the personification in church poetry of natural objects and elements, which, at the insistence of Florensky, must be understood realistically, ontologically. Everything in nature is truly personified, the elements are actually animated and conscious 311. Man lives in a living world, with which he is connected at all levels of his being. In this matter, Fr. Paul sees complete correspondence between the ancient universal worldview, Platonism, and the “pagan moment” necessary in Christianity. “All nature is animated, all is alive, in general and in particular. Everything is connected by secret ties to each other, everything breathes together with each other, the energies of things flow into other things, and each lives in all, and everything in each” (“Universal Human Roots of Idealism”, 1908). 312 And man is no exception. Like all “things,” he, although being a “personality” different from “things,” lives with nature “one life, like a son and his mother.” 313 Formally, this is still a presentation of the folk, peasant worldview, which at the same time is naturally magical or, “if you want,” says Florensky, “a more modern word” - occult. 314 O. Pavel was never afraid to use such terminology, knowingly counting on an adequate perception of the essence of what he wanted to say. The cosmos is alive and closely interconnected with man at all levels of existence; no matter how anyone tries to pass off this truth as “their own,” this does not diminish the degree of its truth. In The Pillar, in fact, this concept is already taken as the “cosmic side of Christianity.” In the notes to "The Pillar" Fr. Paul noted the special role in the development of this “cosmic character” of Christianity by St. Maximus the Confessor, who “extended the idea of ​​the deification of man to all of nature. Through Christ, man is first deified, and through man all nature will be deified.” Of the newest thinkers, at the direction of Fr. Paul, this side of Christianity was especially felt by the archbishop. Innocent of Kherson, S. Glagolev, bishop. Porfiry Uspensky, Vladimir Solovyov, S. Bulgakov, Vyacheslav Ivanov, V. Ern and others 315 For comparison, it can be noted that the same “cosmic nature” of the teachings of St. Maxim V. Lossky considered it necessary to separate him from the conclusions of the philosophy of Russian cosmism. Citing the teaching of Maximus the Confessor about the five divisions in the created world and their overcoming in the New Adam - Christ, Lossky translates the problem of cosmic deification into the plane of the doctrine of the Church. The idea of ​​the Church as a medium in which unity with God takes place, he says, is included in the idea of ​​the cosmos, but this does not mean that the Cosmos is the Church, as the Christian philosophy of cosmism actually believes. Among Russian cosmists, the idea of ​​the Church, according to V. Lossky, is mixed with the idea of ​​the cosmos and, as a result, the idea of ​​the cosmos is de-Christianized. The deeper reason for this is that Christian cosmists regard as primordial fact that which belongs to vocation. The cosmos is called to union with God in the Church, but is not created in such a union 316. This is, in essence, a criticism of the idea of ​​primordial deification of the creature. The essence of what Lossky is talking about here is from Fr. Paul is presented in the “Pillar” and – in the most concentrated form – where the ascending (or, more precisely, condensing) chain of ontological reality of “Sophia par excellence” unfolds. It begins with the first, outermost link: “all creation” - and passes through Humanity, the Church, the Church of Saints, the Mother of God to the very central core - Virginity, the Beauty of the soul of the Most Holy Theotokos. All this as a whole is Sophia, in which “the whole creation,” “Humanity” and “Church” differ only “quantitatively,” in the degree of concentration of sophia. 317 This is precisely the same identification of the Church and the Cosmos that Lossky speaks of and the reason for which is the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe original deification of all creation. The concept of a living Cosmos (also presented in The Pillar) 318 helps Fr. Paul to establish his idea of ​​the “boundaries of the Church.” In 1922 in the lecture “Philosophy of Worship” he will say that since, in his opinion, in liturgical texts consciousness and animation are recognized and affirmed for the elements, then they “are recognized and affirmed to participate in the life of the entire Church, or, to put it another way, this indicates the boundaries of the Church not at all where school warfare tends to see them. Only those who have a secret cult-fight in their hearts have the taste to deny this. secret non-recognition that the spiritual can be in the natural, that the natural is not outside the spiritual, but in it, its subordinate moment, its instrument, the environment of its phenomena and therefore the very manifestation of the spiritual.” 319 For Florensky, the Cosmos is already initially deified in Eternity, and in the empiric it is already conscious and animated, and on its own, without the personal efforts of man; in the ideal foundations of the Cosmos and man there is one and the same adoring grace, present there from Eternity, regardless of the drama of the acceptance or rejection of Christ unfolding in the empirical world. This is where the special opinion of Fr. Paul about the “borders” of the Church, to which, in his opinion, the entire living Cosmos is not alien. For Florensky, the entire Cosmos (and “all creation”) is already the periphery of the Church, while V. Lossky speaks only about the task of the Cosmos finding its “personal, hypostatic meaning” in man 320 and begins to consider the periphery of the Church with man receiving adoption as sons to God in Christ. And since “adoption is not yet completion,” then within the Church there are even closer “circles” - those who enter into union with God and become “worthy of the adoring indwelling of the Holy Spirit” (St. Maximus the Confessor). 321 According to V. Lossky, man stands out from the rest of creation in that only he, “like God, is a personal being” and “the absolutely personal nature of man’s relationship with a personal God should give him the opportunity to “personalize” the world.” 322 Unity of man and world. "Mystical Anatomy" In the 1920s, while working in Soviet scientific institutions, Fr. Paul writes that science, with its desire to look for external connections and patterns in the world, is unable to see its deep internal unity with all its external diversity. Meanwhile, “plants, stones, birds, animals, atmospheric phenomena, colors, smells, tastes, heavenly bodies and events in the underworld are intertwined with diverse connections, forming a fabric of worldwide correspondence.” 323 These “secret bonds” 324 of the universe are revealed by a special “mystical” perception, accessible to a person in early childhood or in a special state of ecstasy (“admiration”), to which Florensky devotes an entire work (“Not the admiration of Nepshchev” (Phil. 2:6-8) (On the judgment of mysticism), 1916). 325 In the recording of memories in early January 1924. O. Paul characterizes mystical ecstasy as “an astral coming out of oneself” and writes about the easy, “lawful and joyful” achievement of it in the mountains. There, “consciousness is ecstatically expanded, and there is no longer a definite boundary between me and the outside.” In children's perception, the boundaries between externally fragmented objects are generally easily removed, “the soul merges with the perceived phenomena.” Florensky recalls how in early childhood he wanted to “embrace certain forms in nature. from within, to be imbued with them and become like them yourself.” He alternately experienced the sensations: “Oh, why am I not that form?” or “After all, that form is me.” 327 Using a purely everyday example, when one family lived in two apartments separated by a courtyard, little Pavel had the opportunity to hide internal unity behind the apparent spatial separation. This “mystical” perception formed the basis of Florensky’s doctrine of symbols: each reality is symbolized by a multitude of symbols that form “rows” and “bundles of such rows.” Moreover, any of the symbols can be externally disconnected, but internally connected with the symbolized reality. Another experience - a child's perception of a fountain of sparks flying from a grinding wheel - showed that the moment of deep merging of a human being with nature is delightful and at the same time terrible. 328 The whole world is permeated with life; the mysterious flicker of life can be caught in the most ordinary shell, in a stone sharpened by sea waves. And the sea itself is “a living and mysterious creature.” Here, a jellyfish pulled out of sea water on the shore melts and turns into colorless mucus. She is a product of the same sea. There is water in it, and “in me,” writes Florensky, “there is water.” “Different in appearance, but one in essence.” 329 But is it possible to somehow rationally explain what expresses the deep inner unity of a person with the whole world? Father Paul partly finds this possibility in the doctrine of the human body, or in what he called “mystical anatomy” in his drafts. “Our body,” he says in a course of lectures in 1917, “is not something by the way. but something of primary and exceptional importance. Our body is infinitely deeper than materialism and positivism, on the one hand, and abstract spiritualism, on the other, believed it to be. Physiology, in its fundamentals, is certainly mystical physiology and the basis of universal human The first outlines of “mystical anatomy” (or “mystical physiology”) were outlined in “The Pillar,” where it was emphasized that it is through the body that man is connected “with all the flesh of the world.” The body is “the common boundary of man and other creatures,” which, however, does not separate, but “connects them together.” 331 This is an “ontological surface”, a “shell” that separates two depths of being - the depth of the Self and the depth of the non-Self. But it is so thoroughly included in what we call “external nature” that we cannot grasp its clear outlines; we cannot even say whether “what is commonly called body” belongs to the Self or to the non-Self. 332 This idea about the unstable nature of the “body boundary” is explained in lectures of 1917. But first of all, here is a “subtle remark” by M.M. Speransky 333 regarding the very emergence of this ontological facet. It arises along with the fall of man, since before the fall the whole world was the body of man. The primordial Adam did not notice the nakedness of his body because it was impossible to localize a certain place in the world and say: “here is the nakedness of the body.” 334 But in the fall, unity with the world is broken, and now man can extend the power of his will only to a small area of ​​reality. And where this power ends, a “border” of the body is formed, which is not possible to clearly define. After all, on the one hand, a lot of what happens in the physiological processes of the body is not in the power of an ordinary person, but on the other hand, what is outside the body, a person can “with certain skills” make “subject to conscious effort.” One can learn to “shift the boundary of the body against its usual place,” 335 and this art is nothing more than magic. “A physical magician,” quotes Fr. Pavel Novalisa, “knows how to give life to nature and treat it arbitrarily, as if it were his own body.” 336 But “magic” is understood by Florensky not only in the narrow sense characteristic of occult practice. Generally speaking, all human activities aimed at changing the world can be defined as “magic.” And including the activity of making tools, which, according to Fr. Paul, only distinguishes a person, is the “criterion of humanity.” 337 Tools become a direct extension, strengthening and improvement of the organs of the human body. They lengthen and expand our perception of nature, they turn out to be a continuation of the body, as if “sprouting” of the human body into nature. 338 Tools are a “projection” of the body into the “external” world 339 and thus expand its border. And in this regard, Fr. Paul’s concept of “economy” as a set of tools also becomes “mystical”. “We do not live in the world at all, but precisely in that part of it that we have assimilated in one way or another, made our property, turned into our economy.” It is “permeated through and through with our spirit” and is itself “a set of symbols of our spirit.” “Man assimilates the flesh of the world as his extension, and, despite the fall, despite the self-decomposition of Man, the world is still a continuation of his body, or his economy.” All this, of course, does not mean that the realization of man as homo faber is an activity aimed at overcoming the consequences of the fall, in this case aimed at restoring the original identity of the world and the human body. This activity is necessary, but it should be remembered that “both in humiliation and in decay, Man, although pressed by the elements of his own body that rebelled against his king, continues to hold the scepter of his power in weakened hands and rule the barely restrained world.” 340 And in the fall, “our body is the world, and what is usually called the world is, according to the internal contemplation of the body, nothing more than a part of the body, its separation, its side.” 341 Addressing this topic in his unfinished Dogmatic Theology, V. Lossky, as well as Fr. Paul, noted: “The world follows man, because he is, as it were, the nature of man; it could be called the “anthroposphere.” But “this anthropocosmic connection is realized when the connection between the image of a person and his Prototype - God. We are responsible for the world. We are the word, the logos in which he speaks, and it depends only on us whether he blasphemes or prays. Only through us can the cosmos, as a continuation of our body, receive grace.” 342 Here the unconditionality of man’s separation from the world, the unconditionality of his power over the world, even in changed conditions, is emphasized. Man and the world are united, but in the same way that the higher being, which includes the lower, is united. The cosmos is the “anthroposphere” or, in a more precise way, the periphery of the human being, at the center of which stands the personality, as (according to V. Lossky) the image of God in man. “Man is a hypostasis of the entire cosmos, which is involved in his nature.” And the personality must “embrace” his entire nature, which will achieve “personalization” of the Cosmos, acquiring its “hypostatic” meaning. In other words, personality appears here as the highest ontological reality, distinguishing man from the rest of the Cosmos, with which man is in a certain sense one by nature. Lossky emphasizes that man is not only a microcosm, he, unlike the Cosmos, has the image of God. 343 And it can be noted that in the ontology of Fr. For Paul, just such an unconditional, ontological separation of man from the world is impossible. Although the human body seems small to the external, “Euclidean and Kantian” gaze, its “infinite spaces” are open to the internal gaze. 344 “Beyond” the body (as was said in “The Pillar”) lies the entire “mystical depth of our being.” 345 Man is as infinite as the world: “Both nature and man are infinite... Man is in the world; but man is as complex as the world. The world is in man; but the world is as complex as man.” This extremely clear formulation shows to what extent Florensky equates man with the world. The usual concept of “microcosm” represents a person as a “small world”, in contrast to the “big world”, the world itself, or the “macrocosm”. Father Paul insists that the opposite is also true: Man is a macrocosm, and Nature is a microcosm. “Man, as a part of nature, can be equal in power to his whole, and the same should be said about nature as a part of man... (my italics - N.P.).” 346 Man and Nature mutually reflect each other, are mutually similar down to the smallest detail: “part of part, side to side, cut to cut,” in short, everything to everything. The very senses of a person - sight, taste, smell, etc., according to Florensky, are the metaphysical axes of the universe, 347 in connection with which, by the way, Fr. Paul was ready to discuss even the presence (or development in the future) of an “electromagnetic sense” in humans. 348 “There is nothing in the Environment that Man did not have in an abbreviated form, at least in rudiment.” But the most important thing, it seems, in Florensky’s concept of “microcosm” is the requirement to recognize the reversibility of this thesis: “And in Man there is nothing that in increased, let’s say temporarily, sizes, but separately would not be found in the Environment.” 349 We will not find any special value in Man, nothing that could not be found in the rest of God’s Creation. Nature and Man are qualitatively equivalent - this is the most important thing, although Fr. Pavel is ready to go further - to challenge in principle the ideas about quantitative differences. Antiquity, since the time of Socrates, who first became interested in man, did not know the fundamental difference between man and the world because it did not know anything otherworldly. Christianity brought and established a different point of view. After all, if only it is said about a person that he is the image and likeness of the unearthly Creator, then it means that in some way (in the relations of “image” and “likeness”) man is also not entirely “from the world” or has some special “exit” into the transcendental, inaccessible to other created beings. The absence in pre-Christian (and even sometimes later, in non-Christian) consciousness of the concept of transcendence to the world was noted in the same way by such different authors as, for example, Fr. Georgy Florovsky, Fr. Sergius Bulgakov, Vl. Lossky. So, for example, V. Lossky, pointing out the very great similarity of the description of mystical ecstasy in the treatise “On Mystical Theology” of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and in the VI Ennead of Plotinus, at the same time, using their example, reveals “the demarcation line between Christian mysticism and the philosophical mysticism of the Neoplatonists: Plotinus’ ecstasy is aimed at eliminating the plurality of being, at its absolute simplification, while ecstasy Pseudo-Dionysius is a way out of created being as such.” 350 Located on the other side of the “dispute about Sofia” and in many ways (especially before 1918) of the same mind with Fr Florensky. Sergius Bulgakov emphasized that the idea of ​​the simultaneous immanence and transcendence of God is a criterion for the authenticity of religious experience. In this regard, he denied such authenticity to the occultism and “spiritual science” of R. Steiner, where, in his opinion, everything spiritual is ultimately interpreted as immanent. 351 In a draft letter to Bulgakov (in August 1917) Fr. Paul noted the dominance of “immanentism” in modern philosophy and theology, when “everyone is busy tearing down the peaks, clouding the firmaments of the earth, piercing into the Azure of heaven.” “I feel stuffy in Theosophy” 352 - these words of his must be considered in the same context, because theosophical “truth”, above which, according to E. Blavatsky’s thesis, there is no religion, 353 is also entirely immanent to the world. But Florensky sees the transcendental basis of the world not simply in Divine grace, which is included in the very act of creation. Both man and the whole world have, according to his teaching, the same, so to speak, “permanent”, conditioned by their very ontological structure, “exit” into the transcendent, into Divine Being itself. And when he talks about ecstasy (“astral exit”) in the mountains, erasing the boundaries between man and the rest of the world, this means not just Plotinus’s “simplifying” leaving oneself, but “communion with the Great Mind” (which, of course, is transcendental to the world), “and therefore - mastery of the universal fullness.” 354 In other words, in deep merging with the world, a person first of all finds a “way out” to the Creator and thereby truly realizes his micro- and macrocosmic meaning. Emphasizing the general significance of Platonism as a powerful stream of thought that influenced all philosophical and religious systems, Fr. Paul viewed this stream more broadly than, in essence, what was written by Plato himself. This approach opened up the possibility for him to “Christianize” Plato and attribute to him the concept of the transcendent. In the worldview of Fr. Paul, Plato’s ideal world turns out to be, in fact, transcendental, residing in the Divine plane of existence, of course, when understanding God in the Christian sense. In Florensky’s ontology, Platonic ideas are the peacemaking thoughts of God, which have become a real object in Divine Eternity and represent the ontological basis of everything that exists in the empirical world. In the sophiology of the “Pillar” they acquired a specifically “personal” character (as noted by N. Lossky, in whose opinion “Florensky’s teaching that Plato’s ideas are living concrete personalities, and not abstract concepts,” 355 is of great value). Later works by Fr. Paul considers Plato's ideas primarily as noumental foundations of created being. Prot. G. Florovsky, V. Lossky, and after them, Archpriest. John Meyendorff drew on quite serious patristic material to criticize this method of “Christianization” of Plato’s doctrine of ideas. Touching upon the “sophiological” systems (obviously, in this case, equally both Fr. S. Bulgakov and Fr. P. Florensky), 356 V. Lossky writes about the introduction of Plato’s “cosmos noethos” (“cognizable cosmos”) into the Divine Being, about giving the Divine Essence Itself “ideal” content, when “the created invades the innermost life of God, ontologically rooted in the Trinity Itself.” 357 For Plato in itself (i.e., not subjected to “Christian” processing), ideas represent a higher sphere of existence, higher than the one where the gods exist. When creating the sensory world, the “creator” (“demiurge”) himself copies it according to the model of the world of ideas (Timaeus). And the sensory world is real only to the extent of its involvement in ideas. Florensky accepts this ontology, translating Plato’s “dualism” of the ideal-sensual into the duality of the noumenal-phenomenal. The region of noumena in this case turns out to be created and absolutely dependent on the Creator, but at the same time it initially exists “next to” and, in fact, on a par with Him in Divine Eternity. With such an “amendment” Fr. Paul also accepts all the relationships between man and the cosmos characteristic of Platonism, of which Florensky’s interest in horoscopes seems to be a particularly striking example. If we look for some serious philosophical foundations of astrology, then, undoubtedly, the concept of man as a microcosm will be the most important here. Almost all significant astrological works from ancient times are illustrated with a human figure with a visual representation of the correspondence between various organs, parts of the body and the sun, moon, planets with zodiac signs. If man is a microcosm, then macrocosmic processes must be reflected in him, 358 and these influences should be considered the more significant and even decisive, the more confident we are in the qualitative equivalence of man and the cosmos. One can only argue with the methods of certain astrological systems, with the legitimacy of the statement about the influence of the very relative position of celestial objects on a person. But the very basis of the deep connection between events in man and in space should be considered indisputable. Father Paul attached undoubted ontological significance to the “myths” about the pre-existence of the human soul, set forth in Plato’s dialogues. In one of them, Socrates says that every soul crosses the whole sky, appearing sometimes in one form and sometimes in another. When she is perfect and full-winged, she rises up and rules the whole world; but the soul that has lost its wings flutters about until it receives the support of something “solid,” when it settles down, taking upon itself the earthly body. This is how a person arises, defined as a whole, composed of body and soul (“All together, that is, the union of soul and body, received the name mortal” - Ped. 246c). Thus, we can say that the unfallen soul rules the world, and the fallen soul (which has lost its “wings”) descends from heaven, takes part in the revolutions of various celestial spheres until it forms an earthly body (cf. Phaedr. 248a-e). 359 It seems to us that the thought of the Dutch mathematician and one of the leading historians of science of the 20th century is significant. B. Van der Waerden that it is in such “myths” of Plato that we touch the deepest roots of horoscope astrology, since it explains how a person’s character can be dependent on objects in the sky. The appearance of horoscopes in the 5th century. BC he associates it with the widespread belief in the heavenly origin of the soul, the great preacher of which was Plato. 360 In other words, the idea of ​​a horoscope is affirmed and justified along with the philosophical justification of the deep ontological connection of man with the cosmos. At the origins of all this is Plato, 361 and Fr. Paul, perceiving Plato in his own way, could not ignore this aspect of his heritage. He compiled horoscopes, as can be seen from his correspondence with Bulgakov, dating back to the summer of 1911, 362 and such activities, from the point of view of his worldview, cannot be “many vanity” (St. Basil the Great). 363 This is an attempt to understand man through the world, an attempt that is completely justified if the Cosmos and Man are recognized as mutually similar. "Ideal foundations" of the world. Pre-existence in Eternity The idea that not only man, but all creation in general has its own originally deified, rooted in God, ideal foundations is fundamental in the “Pillar” and is noted there repeatedly, in a variety of contexts, so that in the 10th letter (“Sophia”) it becomes the ontological foundation of sophiology. At the beginning of each letter in the "Pillar" Fr. Paul places “lyrical passages,” which, according to his plan, are prologues that prepare the reader for understanding further “dogmatic and philosophical constructions.” 364 And it is very remarkable that already in the very first “lyrical place”, from the first pages of “The Pillar”, Fr. Paul notes that in the people dear to him who died, “at times the reflection of Heaven sparkled for him.” 365 This expression can be understood at the beginning in a variety of meanings, but very soon as the presentation progresses it becomes clear that only one ontological meaning is meant: there is “the root by which the spiritual person goes to heaven.” 366 The discussion of the issue that interests us here in “The Pillar” actually begins with the introduction of Fr. Paul's concept of the “Fourth Hypostasis,” 367 which was later used by S. Bulgakov 368 and caused particular indignation in polemical literature. 369 Raising the question of the relationship of the “Fourth Hypostasis” to the Most Holy Trinity Fr. Paul prefaces by considering the ultimate ontological meaning of the Trinity. In order for A, he writes, to be equal to A not in dead and formal self-identity, but in real self-proof and self-substantiation, it must eternally deny itself, eternally be non-A, and in this self-denial it must eternally receive itself. This is achievable only in a system of ternary relations, which are sufficient for, as Florensky says, “the circle to close”: through self-sacrifice, non-A becomes B, non-B becomes B, and in non-B A finds itself as A. “Through You, the subjective I becomes objective. He and in the latter has his affirmation, his objectivity as I. Truth contemplates Itself through Itself in Itself. Truth is the contemplation of Oneself through the Other in the Third: Father, Son, Spirit.” In this about. Paul posits a “metaphysical definition” of the essence of the self-proving Subject: it is “The Infinite Act of Three in Unity,” 370 and this act turns out to be Divine Love. Complete self-giving, complete selflessness is accomplished in love: “Out of the Self, love makes the non-Self.” 371 Thus, the conclusion is drawn that for the absoluteness of the Subject of Truth, three, and only three, Hypostases are internally necessary. Any other hypostases are no longer internally necessary, they can only be accepted into the “bosom of the Trinity life,” and they are not even hypostases in the proper sense, they “are better designated by the name of deified personalities, etc.” 372 How does their appearance become possible in the “bowels” of the Trinity, Fr. Paul explains using the doctrine of the ontological connection between love and the knowledge of God, 373 with love being viewed ontologically as the Essence of the Divine. I cognize the Truth, and the Truth essentially enters into me, and I actually enter into the “bosom of the Divine Trinity.” I partake of “Love as a Divine Essence,” 374 and this knowledge of God in my love for my brother is a transition to him, the flow of Divine Love into him. “The metaphysical nature of love... is in losing oneself; and this happens when the power of God flows out onto another, through the influence (i.e., during the infusion - N.P.) into another, breaking the bonds of human finite selfhood.” 375 My love transfers my I into You and thereby gives him the power to love. The beloved himself becomes a lover, a duality arises - a dual being, which has the beginning of its unity in God and has love as its essence. In this form it is beautiful for others to contemplate; “in him beauty arouses love” and “the two become three.” The Third Self joins the consubstantiality in God and “itself is the beginning for a new trinity. Through the third Selves, all trinities grow together into a consubstantial whole. This chain of love, starting from the Absolute Trinity, which with its power, like a magnet holding a fringe of iron filings, holds back everything, extends further and further.” But this is actually not some endless process occurring in time and space. Here the Self rises above the boundaries of its nature, emerges from temporal-spatial limitations and enters Eternity, where the entire process of relationship between lovers is a single act. “This one, eternal and infinite act is the consubstantiality of the lovers in God, and the Self is one and the same with the other Self and, at the same time, different from it.” 376 Thus, in Eternity, along with the Absolute Trinity, in Its depths, there is a “many-single being,” a system of consubstantial “deified personalities,” which itself is a Hypostasis. This is the “Fourth Hypostasis,” so deliberately called by Florensky precisely in order to show its lack of independence. Further defining her as Sophia, he writes that she “participates in the life of the Trinitarian Divinity, enters the trinitarian depths and partakes of Divine Love. But, being the fourth, created and, therefore, not a consubstantial Person, she does not “form” the Divine Unity, she does not “is” Love, but only enters into the communion of Love, it is allowed to enter into this communion.” 377 It is easy to see that all the thoughts about the “many-one Being” residing in Divine Eternity, which at the beginning of the “Pillar” were carried out as if only in relation to human selves, in the letter “Sophia” already unambiguously extend to the entire creation, since Sophia - the “Fourth Hypostasis” - consists, as it were, of concentric spheres, between which there are no qualitative leaps and which only reveal “Sophia par excellence” in the following sequence: All Creation, Humanity, Church, Church of Saints, Mother of God. 378 Consubstantial elements of the Fourth Hypostasis, designated at the beginning of the “Pillar” as “deified personalities, etc. (my italics – N.P.)”, in the course of development of the concept they receive the definition of “love-idea-monad” 379, which, on the one hand, is evidenced (though without a corresponding reference) by Florensky’s reworking of N.V.’s “evolutionary monadology”. Bugaev, and on the other hand, indicates the identification of these elements with the ideas of Plato. These elements also have the meaning of “unconditional root”, “root of eternity”, which is equally given to man and all creation “through participation in the depths of Trinity Love”, 380 they have the meaning of the “ideal personality” of man, his “Guardian Angel”, “a glimpse of the eternal dignity of the individual”, “The Image of God in man”. This is the “heavenly dwelling,” “eternal house not made with hands” from 2 Cor. 5:1–2, “eternal mansions” from Luke 16:9, “many mansions” in the house of the Father from John 14:2, divine sparks in man, about which almost all “mystical teachings” speak. These are the roots with which the creature goes into the internal Trinity life and through which it receives eternal life for itself, and this is the “primordial nature of the creature.” 381 These elements are created, but coexist with God in Divine Eternity and in this sense “pre-exist” in relation to the empirical world. “To pre-exist,” according to the “Pillar,” means to have “a higher reality compared to the corruptible appearance of this world,” “a higher nature,” “above-worldliness.” The creature has a “pre-peaceful (emphasis added – N.P.), imperishable meaning”; the Church pre-existing in Eternity is “more fully existent” than the world, and the Image of God is “more fully existent” than the “empirical character”, etc. 382 These super-mundane realities at a certain chronological moment “empirically” appear in the world from Eternity in such a way that it is absurd to pose the question whether they “were” before this appearance. This question was posed in the doctrine of pre-existence in time developed by the Origenists, which, according to Florensky, was condemned by the Church precisely for the reduction of pre-existing realities “from Eternity to Time,” which implies their devaluation, recognition of their homogeneity to the world and subordination to the “laws of perishable existence.” 383 O. Paul believes that the Church conciliarly condemned Origen’s idea of ​​the pre-existence of the soul in time, “metempsychosis and metemsomatosis,” and not the doctrine of the “supratemporal nature of the human personality.” 384 In the 10th letter of the “Pillar” - “Sophia” - on several pages, using Holy Scripture, patristic and church texts, an attempt is made to show that the doctrine of pre-existence in Eternity is Orthodox. The controversial nature of Florensky’s interpretation of these sources is perfectly illustrated by the fact that, as noted above, the entire letter “Sophia” was excluded by Father Paul from his master’s thesis, and in his candidate’s thesis in 1908. it was included only in a handwritten version, i.e., in essence, as a non-binding attachment. But, in addition, in his statement about Origen’s inherent doctrine of pre-existence in time, Fr. Paul did not consult texts from Origen himself. Meanwhile, for example, in the book. III “On Beginnings” (V, 4) Origen writes: “I think that the end and completion of the saints will lie in their invisible and eternal state... In a similar state, one must think, the creatures were before. But if they had the same beginning as their end, then, without a doubt, from the beginning they were in an invisible and eternal state (my italics - N.P.)" 385. We are talking here, apparently, about eternal pre-existence, and not exactly. and to such a teaching should be attributed the 1st anathema from the anti-Origen rules of the V Ecumenical Council, 386 directed against those “who recognize the mythological pre-existence of the soul and the strange restoration that follows from it (apokatastasis)”? Isn’t it precisely the pre-existence in Eternity affirmed by Origen in the 13th canon of the V Ecumenical Council that is called “fabulous”, and in the 14th canon – “fabulous”? 387 Origen himself, in his “Commentary on the Gospel of John” (2, 31), noted that he took his idea of ​​​​the pre-existence of souls from Jewish apocalypticism. 388 It is interesting that Florensky also turns to the same source for additional explanations of the concept of eternal pre-existence. “Jewish theology,” he writes in a note to The Pillar, “speaks of the highest spiritual values ​​as pre-existing to the world or even as eternal.” According to one treatise, the creation of the world is preceded by six “things,” four of which pre-existed “in the mind of God,” and the “Torah” and the “Throne of Lordship” were “actually created” before time. 389 In common with Origen, Fr. Paul also turns out to have the theme of “creation in Eternity,” which is different from the “creation” of the empirical world. In his Discourses on the Book of Genesis (I, 2), Origen distinguishes the “heaven,” which was created in the “beginning,” from the “heaven” (or “firmament”) of the second day of creation. The first is the “spiritual mind,” “a spiritual man who sees and contemplates God,” and the second is “the bodily heaven—this is a man who sees with bodily eyes.” As V. Lossky believes, the “Beginning,” in which God created on the first day, in Origen represents the Word, the Logos, which is “outside” time. 390 Therefore the creation of the “spiritual minds” in the “beginning” is the pre-eternal creation in the Logos; time appears on the second day of creation, when there is a departure from unity and a descent to a lower level. 391 Here, according to Origen, the “cooling” of the Mind takes place, which passes from Eternity into Time and becomes the soul. 392 This transition is degradation, a falling away from perfection, and Origen notes that it is precisely this concept that is introduced in the texts of Matthew 24:21 (“for then there will be great tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the world...”), Mark 13:19 (“for in those days there will be such tribulation, such as has not been since the beginning of the creation that God created”), Eph. 1:4 (“He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world”). Here the words “beginning” and “creation” (in the Latin translation that Origen had - “constitutio” - “addition”) translate the Greek word “katabole”, which, according to Origen, “indicates the reduction of all beings in general from a higher state to a lower one” (On the beginnings. III, 5, 4). 393 O. Paul agrees with Origen 394 and goes further in the direction of his thought. “The fall of creation,” he writes, “consisted—ontologically—in the departure from the heavenly dwelling, in the discrepancy between the empirical revelation of the likeness of God and the heavenly image of God.” 395 This is not Origen’s doctrine of the fall of spirits pre-existing in eternity, since, according to Florensky, the fall somehow took place in the empiric world, and not in the ideal structure of creation, which is rooted in God. But the parallel with Origen is noteworthy when Florensky separates creation in Eternity and the emergence of the empirical world as a result of the “transition” of the creature from Eternity to Time. The empirical world turns out to be a lower ontological reality with less “existential” tension compared to the “fully existential” and unconditionally valuable level of Divine Eternity, where the ideal foundations of creation reside – as an objective reality in God. Actually, “creation” turns out to take place only in Eternity, and the empirical world is considered as the sphere of its manifestation, the area of ​​phenomena with eternal, noumental content. But this is not an “environment for the fallen,” as in Origen, not a sphere of existence where cooled “minds” that have become “souls” receive bodies as punishment. 396 Essentially, Origen’s doctrine of “pre-existence in Eternity” in Fr. Paul, of course, is not associated with Origen’s idea of ​​the eternal existence of pure incorporeal spirits. For Florensky, man is “symbolic” (in the sense that Fr. defines “symbol”). Paul) spiritual-physical unity, and not a soul burdened with a body, as Origen believed following Plato. 397 Also, of course, Florensky cannot share the Origen-Platonic doctrine of the “transmigration of souls.” 398 There is another important difference between “eternal pre-existence” according to Florensky and according to Origen. The V Ecumenical Council anathematizes, among other things, the idea of ​​Origenism about the primordial existence in unity with God the Word of incorporeal and immaterial minds, which “were without any number or name, so that they were all one in the identity of essence and strength and energy (italics mine. - N.P.).” 399 This is obviously the idea of ​​the complete identity of the created elements created in Eternity, which receive names only with the adoption of bodies, 400 i.e. already in the process of falling out into time, into the empirical world. Florensky, in one of his earliest works (in a course essay of 1906), points out with reference to the “common belief of all peoples” that “if God pronounces the name of a thing, then He thereby calls it out of non-existence, calls it into existence, creates it.” 401 The name of a thing expresses its “eternal mystical beginning”, 402 its idea, essence, ideal appearance, 403 i.e. this is the same reality pre-existing in Eternity, about which in 1908. Florensky will write in a handwritten letter (for now) “Pillar” - “Sofia”. Confirmation of this position can be found in the later works of Fr. Paul, right up to the very last - “Names” (1926), where the question of interest to us combines the concepts set out in “The Pillar” and in the course work of 1906: consolidating one’s place in history, one’s reality, writes Fr. Paul, has always been designated as “making a name for oneself,” the highest degree of which is “eternal remembrance” with God. “God’s remembrance of names means the eternal existence of these selves, and the final break with existence is tantamount to God’s forgetting of the name or its destruction in the Book of Life.” 404 The name “from eternity” is prepared for every person, even those who have not yet been conceived on earth, who have not yet appeared in the empirical world, and such an ontological order is so immutable that even God Himself who became man did not make an exception for Himself. 405 In "The Pillar" Fr. Paul states twice that “God thinks in things.” God has “creative thought,” 406 “Divine thought is perfect creativity, and His creativity is His memory. God, remembering, thinks and, thinking, creates.” 407 In this regard, Sophia, who is the “Guardian Angel of creation, the Ideal Personality of the world,” is designated by Florensky as the “psychic content” of God, “eternally created by the Father through the Son and completed in the Holy Spirit.” 408 Thus, the creation pre-existing in Eternity is the result of the manifestation of the Divine property, according to which Divine memory, Divine thought and Divine creativity are inextricably linked. What God thinks becomes an “eternally created” reality in Divine Eternity. In many nuances, this concept differs from Origen’s, but coincides in the main thing: God creates in Eternity a completely definite ontological reality, which “then,” one way or another, manifests itself in the empirical world. We assumed that, contrary to the statements of Fr. Paul in the “Pillar”, among other things, it was this main idea that was condemned at the V Ecumenical Council as pre-existence according to Origen. The complexity of the issue lies in the fact that to those patristic and simply church testimonies that are given in the “Pillar” to confirm the “eternal pre-existence”, many others can be added, even, it seems, more significant. They speak of our existence in the thought of God before our creation, but in order to see in this an indication of our eternal pre-existence, everything that “exists” in the thought of God must be understood as already having a real existence in Eternity, “next to” God. This is exactly how it is understood by Fr. Paul, and in support of this it seems that one can also cite patristic testimonies, which specifically say that the thought of God immediately becomes deed. 409 But despite all this, in these testimonies “between” the “thought” of God and the “deed”, i.e. The real creation (even in Eternity) is Divine will. In other words, God is not bound by such a necessity, as if independent of His will, that real creation would necessarily follow from His thoughts. This happens only when He desires it, about which St. Gregory of Nyssa writes especially clearly: “The very aspiration of the Divine will, when He desires, becomes a deed and the desire is carried out (comes into existence), immediately turning into nature according to the power of the Almighty, which only. does not wish, does not leave the will not put into effect (my italics - N.P.).” 410 “God contemplated all things before they existed,” writes St. John of Damascus (Exact exposition.1:9), - imagining in His mind from eternity; and each thing receives its existence at a certain time, in accordance with His eternal thought, combined with volition (my italics - N.P.), which is predestination, and image, and plan (paradigm).” "Paradigm" is the characteristic term that Plato uses to designate his concept of idea. This is a model according to which something in the sensory world is built, as, for example, there is a “paradigm” for the cosmos (Timaeus. 31av) or a model for the state (State. VIII 592c). In the code or “textbook” of Platonic philosophy, proposed by the 2nd century Platonist. from R.H. Albin, it is said that for the sensory cosmos the idea is a model, and for us it is “the first intelligible”; 411 “The First Mind” “eternally thinks of itself and its thoughts, and this action of its is an idea” (Ibid. X. 3). 412 As if focusing on a similar ontology, in his code of patristic theology of the first centuries of Christianity, St. John of Damascus identifies the concept of an idea-paradigm, thought by God, with the Divine “thought-will” (combined with “willing” or “willing” thought), i.e. introduces a new, “volitional” aspect into the doctrine of ideas. V. Lossky notes that the term used in the “Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith” can be even more adequately translated as “volitional thought,” which, in his opinion, “perfectly expresses the teaching of the Orthodox Church about Divine ideas.” According to this teaching, writes V. Lossky, Divine ideas are identified with the Divine will and reside not in the Divine Essence, but in Divine energies. They define the various ways in which a creature partakes of creative and adoring energy. 413 In other words, as in general in all his polemics with sophiology, V. Lossky here contrasts the predetermination of deification - according to the teaching that he finds in the Holy Fathers, its original givenness - in the concepts of Bulgakov and Florensky. In relation to Florensky, we can say that the ideas that pre-exist in Eternity - the ideal foundations of creation rooted in God - are static. This is the unchangeable noumental component of all created things, contained in the immutable Divine thought and which has become “along with” God a real object in Divine Eternity. This concept is contrasted with the idea of ​​dynamic ideas, not objectified into an ideal creation, but being only God’s creative plan for creation, His will, in accordance with which He wants to see the development of His Creation. And if in Florensky’s “Pillar” ideas are created, but reside in the Divine Essence, then here the ideas, which are both the causes and goals of created things, are themselves uncreated and reside in Divine energy. Opponents of sophiology found the same Orthodox teaching about ideas in St. Maximus the Confessor, who, following Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, calls ideas "logoi". 414 “Logos,” notes Archpriest John Meyendorff in the article “Creation in the History of Orthodox Theology” (1983), “is the intelligent essence of created things. They are Divine “thoughts” about the world, belonging to the Logos, the Word of God, and constitute the eternal Divine plan (“plan”, “paradigm”), which becomes a reality realized in time, thanks to the will of God. 415 This plan is not a necessary creation in Divine Eternity, but, according to St. Maxim, “The Creator from eternity realized the knowledge that pre-existed in Him about all things that exist and put it into action when He wanted (my italics - N.P.).” 416 Archpriest Georgy Florovsky draws attention to the fact that Rev. Maxim strictly distinguishes between God's will for the world and the very existence of the world. Will is eternal, but this does not mean the eternity of creation itself, even in its ideal origins. 417 While studying the theology of St. Gregory Palamas, Archpriest John Meyendorff noted his teaching about logoi as “essences” that existed in God before creation, and now, scattered in the Universe, bring natural reason to the Creator. These are uncreated and eternal energies, represented by St. Gregory as the thoughts of God. 418 God thinks the world before creation, but this thought of God “does not violate the simplicity of the personal Divine Being,” just as the ineffable difference between the Divine Essence and the Divine energies does not violate it. When God thinks, thought does not become an object for Him, does not form Plato’s “ideal world” or “Bulgakov’s Sophia.” 419 Thought becomes an object for God if God is identified with the Essence of God, as can be seen in the example of the “Pillar”. Then the need for creation in Eternity appears, because otherwise if God began to create in time, He would undergo a change in His Being. This motive for introducing the concept of creation in Divine Eternity, coming from Origen, loses its necessity if God is not completely identified with His Essence, but “emerges” from it in His energies to act outside Himself. 420 But oh. Half a century before the studies of V. Lossky and Father John Meyendorff, Paul did not see or did not recognize such a connection between the distinction of Essence and energies in God and the disappearance of the basis for the concept of “creation in Eternity.” In any case, his discovery in 1913. theology of energies of St. Gregory Palamas did not in any way affect the nature of his ontology as a whole. The doctrine of the “eternal pre-existence” of the creature, developed in “The Pillar” as the basis of sophiology, is one way or another present in the later works of Fr. Paul, in which the theme of Love and Sophia gave way to a versatile development of the philosophy of symbol. The “symbolic” dual reality of the created world is nothing more than the closest connection, “accretion” of two planes of existence - the Eternal and the temporal, the noumenal and the phenomenal, the Ideally-Divine and the empirical. Just as in the “Pillar,” a person in this reality is a being “coming” from Eternity to the empirical world, or rather, appearing or manifesting itself in this world. For Fr. For Paul, it is impossible to fully accept Platonism as he expressed it in the myth of the Pamphylian Er (Republic. 614c-621c; especially 617d, 619c). Man, especially in the late Florensky, cannot be divided into “soul” and “body” in such a way that the “soul” pre-exists separately - even in Eternity - and only “descending” into the empirical world would choose its new bodily organization. But, rejecting this side of Platonism (and Origenism) as truly “mythical”, Fr. Paul retains what, in our opinion, is the most important thing in the myth of the Pamphylian Er: into the world - according to Florensky, from Eternity - comes a subject possessing all its property, which can - and according to Florensky, should - be revealed in the empiric. 421 In Plato, the soul, having drunk from the river of oblivion, forgets all its accumulated experience acquired in wanderings through the sky, and possibly in past incarnations. In Florensky, a “particle” of Eternity appears in empirics, all the treasures of which are inaccessible to weak empirical consciousness. And central to the “symbolic” anthropology of Fr. Paul becomes the theme of a certain “exit” of consciousness to the eternal basis of man, the “enlightenment” of the entire empirical composition of man with the light coming from Eternity. With such important ontological adjustments, Fr. Paul accepts Plato's "remembering," but does so as if his doctrine were Platonism in the proper sense. And if we take into account how controversial the concept of “eternal pre-existence” is in Christianity, then it would be more correct to talk not so much about the “Christianization” of Plato, but about his original reading according to Florensky. In the records of the early 1920s, i.e. Having already reached the 40-year mark of his life, Fr. Paul shares his specific experience: “Truly, I did not learn anything new, but only “remembered” - yes, I remembered the foundation of my personality that had developed since childhood or, more correctly speaking, was the initial grain of all spiritual growths, starting with the first glimpses of consciousness.” 422 In his very first childhood years, he discovered “being, the noumenal world” - “in himself” and “beyond himself.” 423 The meeting with Eternity - “dear... mysterious and endless” - took place with little Pavel on the seashore. His “gifts” – sticks, stones, seaweed and other finds thrown ashore – “caused a reverent feeling. forebodings of deep, mysterious and dear... depths of existence.” They were perceived, writes Fr. Pavel, like “affectionate news... from my mother. twilight. I looked and remembered, I smelled and I also remembered, I licked and I remembered again (my italics - N.P.), I remembered something distant and eternally (italics - O. P.F.) close... which couldn’t be closer.” 424 In general, as Florensky notes in an entry from 1919, in early childhood, in the most ordinary phenomenon, he often “suddenly remembered something (my italics - N.P.)” and this phenomenon “revealed something else, noumenal, standing above this world or, more precisely, deeper than it.” So, some stone could become a “window to another world.” 425 “The whole subsequent life,” he writes, “did not reveal anything new to me. Nevertheless, the knowledge of life was preformed in the earliest experience and, when consciousness illuminated this experience, it found it... a bud, full of life and waiting only for favorable conditions to blossom” (entry April 1923). 426 This is one of the most fundamental points of Florensky’s anthropology, which he raises to the level of personal experience: a person in the process of life does not acquire anything “beyond” his eternal ideal being. Empirically, he already possesses everything, everything has already been given to him, but it is given in the same way that a bud contains everything for the future development of leaves and a flower. “All existence (my italics – N.P.) passes through us and is therefore given to us in the depths, which, however, do not reach consciousness” - this, Florensky writes, “was my feeling of well-being, and my feeling of well-being from birth.” 427 All your knowledge about. Paul considered the result of “remembering” 428, and religious and philosophical beliefs were formed not from books, but from childhood observations. 429 Describing his experience of “remembering,” he indicates that in the process of thinking about something, his thought “went on its own,” “almost” without the participation of consciousness. Consciousness at this time was occupied with something completely different, often the opposite of “what was being prepared at great depths.” When the result of this deep process appeared in consciousness, it seemed alien to consciousness and at the same time “native and well known.” 430 In descriptions of this kind, what primarily attracts attention is the belief of Fr. Paul is that a person does not experience any external spiritual influences. The process of “remembering” is presented as a series of sporadic “revelations” received by empirical consciousness from the ideal depths of the human being itself. Consciousness encounters them as alien, but cannot recognize them as external, since there is a feeling of something familiar and familiar. The error is excluded, at least nowhere in such descriptions of Fr. Paul does not even raise the question of the possibility of error or simply a later, Platonic interpretation of his childhood memories. An experience “sanctified” by the very period of early childhood, when a person is still too close to his “native” Eternity, in his opinion, cannot possibly be spiritually inferior. And just as in childhood, asking about the sea, Paul only wanted to receive confirmation of what he already “knew himself at his core” (i.e. that the sea is a “living and mysterious being”) 431, and in the case of the doctrine of “eternal pre-existence” - citing various patristic and other evidence in the “Pillar”, he only seeks confirmation of his absolutely unshakable conviction. Addressing the topic of “remembering,” Fr. Paul seems to reveal and explain his basic ontological concepts in the most convenient and understandable way. And in this regard, one can also see the deep relationship between ontology and anthropology in Florensky, as noted above. Man, by his bodily organization, includes the whole world, and in the innermost depth of his being he is a “part” of a consubstantial whole, on which, again as on his noumenal foundation, the whole world is “built”. “Remembering” by Fr. Paul only from the point of view of empirical consciousness seems to be a passive process of receiving “revelations”. At the “depth”, a creative process takes place, when the “spirit” puts into symbols the knowledge drawn from Eternity. “Envelops” - in the sense of “creates”, creates a symbol and translates it in some way into consciousness, from the position of which we can talk about the “discovery” of a symbol. This concept is quite clearly stated by Fr. Paul in the "Pillar", at the very end of the letter of the 7th "Sin". Here, first of all, attention is drawn to the mythical image from Plato: Memory is the mother of the Muses - “types of spiritual creativity.” In its ontological moment, writes Florensky, memory is the creativity of thought, “the creative reconstruction from ideas of what is revealed by mystical experience in Eternity, or, in other words, the creation in Time of symbols of Eternity (my italics - N.P.).” “Memory is symbolic creativity,” in the process of which “the supra-temporal subject of cognition, communicating with the supra-temporal object, unfolds this communication in Time.” 432 In the work “The Limits of Epistemology,” based on the material of Florensky’s first lectures at the Moscow Academy of Sciences (1908–1909) and published by Fr. Paul in the “Theological Bulletin” in 1913, “remembering” is revealed as “the discontinuous translation into consciousness of potentialities from the realm of the super-conscious, which, as a result of such discontinuity, acquire a timeless character.” 433 This is the “memory of the present,” when “created” symbols on the empirical plane relate to the present and are called imagination. Being related to the past, they are called memories (“memory of the past”), and those located in the future are considered foresight and foreknowledge (“memory of the future”). So, Fr. Paul explains, among other things, clairvoyance, prophetic dreams, anticipation of scientific ideas and discoveries. He cites the words of G. Hertz that sometimes mathematical formulas turn out to be much smarter than the one who compiled them, since they subsequently reveal their completely new content, not even suspected by their compiler. “This magical power of formulas,” says Florensky, “depends precisely on the fact that their compiler knew a lot that he did not recognize in himself (my italics - N.P.)” 434. So, from the point of view of consciousness, symbols are “opened” in the depths of the human being, and there they are “created” in the process of “communication” of two super-temporal realities, i.e. in the process of activity of the superconscious “spirit”, expressing Eternity in the language of Time. We can trace the reflection of these views of Fr. Paul throughout the entire space of his philosophical and theological heritage. Thus, already in Florensky’s early correspondence with A. Bely (1904 - the period of graduating from university and entering the MDA), one can find the statement that “symbols are not something conventional... Symbols are constructed by the spirit (my italics - N.P.) according to certain laws and with internal necessity. Symbols are eternal ways of revealing the inner, eternal in their form.” “We cannot compose symbols, they come on their own. When we are fulfilled with a different content. This different content, as if pouring out through our insufficiently capacious personality, crystallizes into. symbol, and we throw these bouquets of flowers and understand them... Is it really possible to say: “This is my bouquet”? There is no “mine” and “yours”... “Your” is not needed.” 435 S. Khoruzhy notes in this regard that, from Florensky’s point of view, symbols exist “completely independently of us.” 436 do not belong to us and they come to us. But this is true from the point of view of empirical consciousness; however, from the point of view of the human being as a whole, according to Florensky, symbols do not just belong to us - they are embedded in us at our very creation. In a lecture in 1917 O. Paul says this about this: “Symbolism is not invented by anyone, but is revealed by the spirit in the depths of our being (my italics - N.P.) - and from here it is produced, embodied in a series of successive, layered shells, in order to finally be born from a contemplator who has cognized and allowed it to be embodied. The basis of symbolism... the hidden nature of our being: the language of symbols... is inherent in us in the very creation of us, and moreover, not as innate, i.e. attached to us... but as inseparable from our very being, as one without whom we would not be possible at all.” “By getting used to a symbol, we find ourselves, and by trying to penetrate ourselves, we discover symbols here.” 437 Father Paul emphasizes that the basis of symbolism is reality itself, discovered, or, better said, “remembered” by the creative action of the spirit in the noumenal depths of existence. Therefore, the language of symbols is universal: the authors of the sacred books of “all nations,” sages, mystics and poets do not compose it, but discover it in themselves. 438 Even in such an act as initiation into the mysteries, where, it would seem, the adept receives a certain amount of “secret knowledge,” according to Florensky, the “language of symbols” is not introduced from the outside, but is only revealed in the internal content already existing in a person. 439 This is not the presentation of a “bouquet”, but the opening of it from the “bud” originally present in a person, according to figurative comparisons used by Florensky in different places of his works. Asking the question of how one can see the “symbolizing activity of the spirit” occurring superconsciously, 440 Florensky turns to those phenomena where the threshold of consciousness “shifts the most.” In lectures 1908–1909. he attributes these phenomena to “natural mysticism,” which differs from the “supernatural, grace-filled” mysticism. 441 This can be a variety of mystical experiences, including initiations into the mysteries or secret religious societies, where “temporary death” is ritually experienced. 442 But there is a similar state, especially accessible to every person - sleep. 443 “If it is possible to clearly demonstrate the symbolizing activity of life,” writes Fr. Paul, “then first of all one should look for this clarity in the dream-visionary or dream-creative activity of the spirit.” 444 Florensky studies dreams at the level of personal experience (he writes down his dreams), 445 touches on this topic with the most significant conclusions in “The Limits of Epistemology” (1908–1909), “Symbolism of Visions” (1917) and in “Iconostasis” (1922). Among the authors who studied dreams from the point of view of interest to him, he names K. Scherner and G. Schubert, whose views were repeated and discussed by the professor of the Kyiv Theological Academy, Archimandrite. Feofan Avsenev (1812–1851). Then these views were presented “more clearly and coherently” by J. Volkelt (1875) and W. Wundt (1881). And finally, he speaks about. Pavel, in modern times (1899–1908) these same views were renewed and reworked, but in a completely different direction - by S. Freud. 446 In lectures of 1917 Florensky discusses mainly the topic of “mystical physiology” and therefore touches on the issue of “dream symbols” that arise on the basis of various perceptions by the spirit of one or another bodily organ. “Our body is the world,” and therefore “to study the symbolic projection” of its organs “in a dream seems very necessary.” 447 But most of all he is interested in dreams that “symbolize” various layers or spheres of existence. Dreams arise at the border of these spheres and correspond to an instantaneous transition from one sphere to another. 448 In the most general case, we can say that dreams separate and at the same time connect two main areas: the visible world and the invisible world. 449 However, upon closer examination of Fr. Paul recognizes dreams (along with other experiences of “natural mysticism”) as making clear “the presence of many layers of reality.” 450 Thus, he believes that every person is familiar with dreams when you see yourself waking up in a dream, and then you actually wake up, moving into a waking state. Florensky (in lectures of 1908–1909) proposes to call these kinds of dreams double dreams and speaks about the possibility of triple, quadruple and, mathematically speaking, n-fold dreams. They are described by Wagner, Hoffmann, Gogol, Lermontov and others. The number n in this case denotes a certain “potency of consciousness” and the corresponding layer of reality into which immersion occurs. The self makes a transition “from one plane of the subconscious to another,” 451 and the transition to a deeper layer “is accompanied by a feeling of rising, ascending, floating... being carried out by some kind of stream.” The usual empirical (“waking”) consciousness here smoothly “fades away,” giving way to subconscious processes, the more intense the larger the number n, i.e. the deeper the given layer of existence. The reverse transition, on the contrary, is accompanied by “a feeling of increasing consciousness,” which can be compared to a blow, “with a feeling of being overthrown, falling (my italics - N.P.) ... being carried away by a whirlpool.” 452 Such, if one may say so, “experimental-mystical” interpretation can be given to the interpretation of “katabole”, i.e. understanding the “creation” of the world as an “overthrow”: the unfolding of empiricism occurs with a gradual “removal” from noumenal depths and a corresponding increase in what we call our ordinary consciousness. In lectures 1908–1909. Florensky cautiously suggests that Plato’s teaching “about the oblivion of the heavenly world, when the soul, falling into this world, hits matter,” represents a “mythologization” and “ontologization” of precisely such experiences, accompanied by a “blow” during the transition from the subconscious to a more conscious level. Florensky is ready to connect with them the various “planes of being” in the teachings of theosophists. 453 In a lecture in 1917 O. Paul draws a “coordinate axis” of the potentialities of consciousness, on which the zero mark “gives immediate reality,” positive values ​​correspond to distance from reality, and negative values ​​reduce “us into ourselves, giving realities of ever higher orders. than what we usually call our body,” in the gross material sense of the word. The higher realities that are being revealed correspond to layers that are thinner, more energetic, and more creative. 454 A in a lecture of 1922. these layers are spoken of as “concentrations of the stratification of the personality,” which can be called “bodies” or “clothing” from the message of St. Paul, when he expresses fear that “at the last fiery trial we might find ourselves “naked,” i.e. stripped of the clothing of everything created in life.” The same “clothes”, according to Fr. Paul refers to the parable of the wedding feast, and this is “the vital self-disclosure of the spiritual being.” 455 Thus, in mystical experience, most clearly manifested in dreams, a multi-layered reality with different energy levels is revealed. It takes place in man and in the entire structure of existence, since the microcosm and macrocosm are mutually identical and reflect each other. These are hierarchically folded layers of being of various noumenal transparency and discontinuously changing potencies of empirical consciousness, which “fades away” as it approaches the noumenal center. In the “Pillar”, where the condition of life, unity and being itself is the communion of Love as the Divine Essence, indications of the hierarchical multi-layered reality can be found in one of the final letters - in letter 11 “Friendship”. There, four Greek words are highlighted, denoting four degrees of love, 456 and also a hierarchy of knowledge determined by the degree of love is presented: “Near Christ,” as the abbot writes in his analysis of “The Pillar.” Andronicus, - several concentric layers (my italics - N.P.), knowing more and more deeply as they serve: crowds of people - secret disciples - seventy apostles - twelve apostles - three: Peter, James and John - and, finally, one, John, “whom the Lord loved.” 457 Here Fr. Paul considers hierarchical multi-layeredness (without directly indicating it) in combination with the uniformity of God's Love for all Creation as an antinomy. Here are some of its poles, manifested in the ministry of Christ: “Equal love for everyone and for each in their unity - love concentrated into one focus for some, even for one in its isolation from the general unity; transparency before everyone, openness with everyone - esotericism, the secret of some.” 458 In this regard, the rather vague things about Fr. Paul's question about the reasons for the multi-layered nature of existence: is this hierarchical heterogeneity the very natural structure of the empirical world or is it the result of its ontological damage in the Fall of man. S. Khoruzhy, believing that the experience of sinful damage to the world is the key moment introducing Florensky’s symbolism into the context of the Christian worldview, writes that the ontological basis of Florensky’s “stepped unity” is fallenness, thanks to which “the identity of the noumenal and phenomenal sides” in different shells is achieved to varying degrees, with varying completeness. The shells come from the central core, which is a perfect symbol. And the further to the periphery, the worse the spiritual is expressed in the sensual, the less noumenal saturation of phenomena.” 459 But is this “fundamental paradigm of concrete metaphysics” of Florensky (S. Khoruzhy) uniquely connected by Fr. Paul with the idea of ​​​​the “ontological corruption” of the world? It was noted above that Fr. Paul did not consider the very emergence of the empirical world to be the result of the Fall, and the “fall” of the creature into it from Eternity did not mean any punishment for sin. In later ontology Fr. Paul, “spiritual essence” manifests itself empirically and only in this way can it be objectively real in the proper sense of this concept. As it manifests itself, it acquires shells of different energetic intensities. 460 and nowhere does Florensky say that in the unfallen state in the empiric there should be only one shell, only one plane of empirical existence, in which the spiritual would be completely expressed in the sensual. In the early ontology, in the “Pillar,” the perfect expression, the “uniformity” of Divine Love for creation represents an antinomy with degrees of love, which, in particular, Christ manifests differently even among His closest disciples. But the antinomies in the “Pillar” system are not only the result of sinful damage to the human mind, it is a necessary consequence of the existence of the creature as such. Father Paul here separates the concepts of “Truth” and “truth” and defines “truth” in fact as the maximum possible ability in the empirical world for a creature to comprehend the Truth. It is this “truth” that is necessarily an antinomy, but not because of the fall of the creature, but because of the very existence of the creature as such. “If only a creature exists alongside God,” writes Fr. Paul, “then, along with Truth, truth necessarily exists... The presence of truth is equal to the presence of creation (my italics - N.P.).” 461 Consequently, this passage can be interpreted in such a way that antinomies are a property of created being itself, and therefore the order when, along with uniformity everywhere and in everything, Divine Love manifests itself “stepwise”, “layers” of different intensity, is actually the order of created being as such. And if the “stages” of Love in the later ontology of Fr. Paul become shells of different energetic intensity, spheres of different noumenal transparency, then they also should not be considered formed only as a result of ontological damage to the world in the Fall. Of course, damage, from the point of view of Fr. Paul, took place; the original symbolic structure of reality (as the proper correlation of the noumenal and phenomenal in each layer of being) is violated and phenomena in the fallen world imperfectly express meaning. Also, fallen man himself lost the ability to contemplate symbols. But the very presence of layers of existence, the very hierarchy of the universe, apparently, is considered about. Paul's normal, natural ontology of created existence. Symbol in ontology o. Paul is a reality in which there is a living connection between different energy levels of existence, making them “fused”, “dissolved” with each other. 462 In the preparatory material for the lectures “On Ontology” in August 1924. O. Paul writes that “universal symbolism” means “universal coherence.” "Everything in everything"; at the same time, “a symbol is what is symbolized.” 463 With this understanding, “a deepening of the world occurs. The world's roots are being exposed..." If we add to this “spiritual poverty” (“I know that I know nothing”) and the abandonment of all earthly care, then “awareness of oneself, one’s spiritual self” occurs. 464 By comprehending various symbols, it is possible to “transition” consciousness to different, increasingly deeper levels, right up to the most noumenal center of the human being. As noted above, at a depth, the “spirit” or “spiritual Self” is engaged in symbol-creative activity, “symbolizing” or “encrypting” a certain level of reality, and even translates Eternity itself into the “language of Time”. These symbols are sent from the depths and are “revealed” by the consciousness, which is then tasked with comprehending, or “deciphering,” the symbol. Of course, this process is ontological in its very essence, since cognition of a symbol means a transition to the level of that higher reality that this symbol carries. 465 It is important for us to note here that all levels of being, right up to the most noumenal center, are symbolically interconnected; a violation of this connection can occur with ontological damage to the symbol, and it is precisely this (partial or complete) impenetrability of one layer by another that Fr. Paul is a consequence of the Fall, and not the very fact of the presence of multi-layered existence. But when in an autobiographical article (1927) Fr. Paul conveys his idea of ​​“the multi-layered nature of reality and the inaccessibility of some layers to others (my italics. - N.P.) (conditional transcendence)”, 466 he, as follows from the context, no longer means the destruction of the symbol, but the “discreteness of reality”, when the transition from one level to another is discontinuous. 467 The layers are inaccessible to each other for some gradual, smooth movement. Although Fr. Paul uses the images of “swimming up”, “being carried out by some kind of stream” or “being carried away by a whirlpool” to explain the sensations when the intensity of consciousness changes in the process of “moving” through the layers, he immediately accompanies them with a stronger comparison: this is “jumping out” in the case of immersion into the depths and a sudden “overthrow”, “fall” when leaving the depths to a more peripheral layer. Upon returning to ordinary consciousness, “immediately, as if stunned by a blow (my italics - N.P.), the dreamer forgets what he saw.” 468 The layers of being with their clear boundaries in the ontology of Fr. Paul is reminded of layered stones and rock strata from childhood impressions. Then, in childhood, “the finest layered structure,” he writes, “disturbed the thought: I felt some kind of hidden meaning of nature here.” This hidden meaning was revealed in the feeling of the eternal reality of the past: the layers are “settled centuries, fossilized time”, which can be looked at “from the side”, as if from Eternity. 469 There was one more sensation that S. Khoruzhy drew attention to: the layers of soil were penetrated by roots. 470 And Florensky, asserting the “conditional transcendence” of the layers of being, looks for the possibility of transitions and communications between them. The symbol turns out to be the most important ontological evidence of the realization of such a connection, and the universal connection of all being. The layers differ from each other in the level of energy (or “existential”, as S. Khoruzhy says) intensity, i.e., despite the discontinuity of the transition between layers, their difference, so to speak, is quantitative. But there is a boundary at which a certain qualitative leap occurs so that a multi-layered and multi-unit reality, if you look at it as a whole, becomes two-layered and two-unit. This is the border between the worlds known since ancient times: the high and the low, the invisible and the visible, “heaven” and “earth”. 471 When Fr. Paul points out that in dreams “the lowest experiences of the heavenly world and the highest of the earthly world are symbolized,” 472 this indicates the presence, in his opinion, of a stepped hierarchy in both worlds. In other words, the heavenly world is just as heterogeneous as the empirical one; 473 layers of being go from the noumenal center along the “sky”, and somewhere in a certain “place” a qualitative transformation occurs: “sky” becomes “earth”. On this qualitative border about. Paul pays primary attention to the “Iconostasis” (1922) and gives it a mathematical interpretation also in his work of 1922. - “Imaginaries in geometry.” In both works, the multi-unit reality is viewed from the angle of its fundamental dual-unity, so that at times one even gets the impression of what happened by 1922. a strong simplification of Florensky's ontology. But in fact, these are just different points of view, just as in this sense Fr. Paul gives a definition of a symbol: as an entity whose energy is dissolved “with the energy of some other (my italics - N.P.), more valuable in this respect entity” (i.e., implying the presence of many energy levels), - in the work of 1922, 474 and as a connection “of two beings, two layers - the higher and the lower, but a connection in which the lower contains at the same time the higher, is permeable to the higher, impregnated with it (my italics - N.P.)" - in a lecture in 1921. 475 In general, we can say that multi-layering and double-layering are of interest to Fr. Paul to the same extent, but his two-layeredness is the most important and ideologically significant characteristic of being. The same is true in anthropology: the details about the various shells, or “bodies,” of a person are much less significant (Fr. Paul does not even care about the clarity in their names and sequences) than the fundamental concept that a person is “a being of a dual (italics mine. - N.P.) life”, in the interpretation of Fr. Paul, “the church of God, but also He who lives in it, the finite and the infinite, the animal and God,” “conditional value” and “unconditional value.” 476 The cult, which, as Florensky says, is a “condition of personality,” is a meeting place and unity of the transcendental with the immanent, the intelligent with the sensual, the earthly with the heavenly, the “here” with the “there,” the corruptible with the incorruptible, the temporal with the eternal. 477 Bliss is received by the one who has “built” himself in such a way in earthly life that he has made within himself “the greater symbol of what is above,” 478 i.e. restored the original symbolic unity of the two worlds, partially destroyed in the Fall. In Florensky’s teaching on dual unity, what is primarily important is the statement about the impossibility of the separate, autonomous existence of two worlds in true existence. For Fr. Paul imagines such extreme cases when an appearance (phenomenon) loses its noumenal meaning, the entire empirical, “earthly” structure of a person is “cut off” from its “heavenly,” ideal foundation, 479 but then their separate existence ceases to be real and objective. In the later ontology of Fr. Paul, the “pure” noumenon exists in a state of non-manifestation, which is actually tantamount to non-existence. So, in the work of 1926. O. Paul notes that “the unmanifest spiritual essence is everything and nothing, all about itself and nothing to the world.” 480 In relation to a person, the pure “spiritual being of the individual is inexpressible about itself,” “I am transcendental, hidden not only from others, but also from myself (my italics - N.P.) in my own depths.” 481 In the recording of memoirs of 1920. This explains the essence of symbolic ontology: the material cover does not hide, but, on the contrary, reveals the spiritual essence. Without this cover it is invisible - “not due to the weakness of human vision, but because there is nothing to see there (my italics - N.P.).” “Things in themselves,” writes Fr. Pavel, “have always been unknowable to me, but not because of a skeptical and pessimistic assessment of human cognitive ability, but because there is nothing to know there (my italics - N.P.).” “The spiritual world outside its manifestation was recognized by me as unmanifest,” and the disembodied soul, deprived of its material, symbolic cover, seemed not only impossible, but also unnecessary for contemplation. 482 On the other hand, a “pure” phenomenon, deprived of its noumenal basis, turns out to be “bare subjectivity”, not existing for anyone, including, according to the “Pillar”, for God Himself. This is a “ghost”, “pure imaginary”, or “shell”, as E. Blavatsky called the spirits that appear at spiritualistic séances. 483 “Two-one,” writes Fr. Paul, “the spiritual-material, the symbol, has always been dear to me... in its concreteness, with its flesh and with its soul.” 484 The concrete expression of the spiritual in the sensory, the heavenly in the earthly, the noumenon in the phenomenon is, first of all, symbolism according to Florensky. Being two ontologically different realities, these horizons of being for Fr. Paul turn out to be inseparably fused and forming an indissoluble - in true being - dual reality. When in the early 1920s. O. Paul began to describe it mathematically through “imaginaries”; he began to especially highlight his idea of ​​​​the mirror similarity of the two worlds. From works of 1922 - “Iconostasis” and “Imaginaries in Geometry” - it becomes clear that the qualitative transition between the earthly and the above is not a transition into something fundamentally different, or, in any case, into something so different that this new reality cannot be described with the words and concepts we are accustomed to (cf. 2 Cor. 12:4). The “Iconostasis” gives an example of contemplation of another world, when in a dream the contemplator sees himself in a cemetery and receives testimony from the dead: “... Behind the surface of the earth grows, but in the opposite direction, with roots up and leaves down, the same green and lush grass. and even much greener and juicier, the same trees, too. upside down, the same birds are singing, the same azure is spilled and the same sun is shining - all this is more radiant and more beautiful than ours from this world (my italics - N.P.)" 485. This is not at all presented as a weak attempt in distant similarities, by analogy with the local world, to convey the features of a transcendental reality. 486 As follows from the context, according to Fr. Paul, this contemplation should be taken as close as possible to its literal meaning: the world above is the reverse reflection of the world below, but with richer colors. The dual reality turns out to be a combination of mutually inverse worlds, which - in both directions - relate to each other as “real” and “imaginary”. This means that that world in relation to the physical appears to be “imaginary,” but when viewed from there, that reality is “real,” and ours is “imaginary.” 487 In mathematics, as is known, “imaginaryness” arises when it becomes necessary to calculate the radical (i.e., extract the square root) of a negative number. In the theory of relativity (the novelty of which was intensively discussed in scientific circles just in the 1920s), the “relativistic coefficient” was introduced, which is the square root of the difference between unity and the ratio of the square of the speed of an object to the square of the speed of light. In the scientific community of the first decades of the twentieth century. There was indignation at the fact that with the adoption of the theory of relativity, physical processes in science began to be considered as subordinate to this mathematical formula, but nevertheless the theory is considered to have received brilliant experimental confirmation and its conclusions are now declared generally accepted. One of the main consequences of the theory of relativity turns into an “imaginary” quantity the characteristics of any object (for example, its spatial extent, mass, time in which it is located) moving at a speed greater than the speed of light. That is why such a speed is considered impossible from the point of view of the theory of relativity. Everything changes if you look at the “imaginary” numbers and at the “imaginary” itself not as a mathematical abstraction, but as the properties of a completely real, but “reverse” existence in relation to us. Father Pavel asserts that the limiting value of the speed of light does not mean the impossibility of speeds equal to or greater than this value, but only the appearance, along with these speeds, of new conditions of life that are not yet visually imaginable for us. Then a life begins that is qualitatively different from ours, and the transition to it “can only be thought of as discontinuous.” 488 Florensky finds an indication of a “double qualitative leap” during this transition directly in the formula for the relativistic coefficient. The first jump occurs at the very “border of Heaven and Earth”, corresponding to a speed value equal to the speed of light. Then “the length of any body becomes equal to zero, the mass is infinite, and its time, observed from the outside, is infinite. In other words, the body loses its extension, passes into eternity and acquires absolute stability.” “Is this,” continues Fr. Paul, - not a retelling - in physical terms - of the signs of ideas according to Plato - incorporeal, unextended, unchangeable, eternal essences? Are these not Aristotelian pure forms? 489 The second jump is observed when superluminal speeds occur. Under such conditions, the body falls through each of its surfaces and “turns inside itself.” Space “breaks” and “qualitatively new conditions for the existence of space begin, characterized by imaginary parameters.” At the same time, time begins to flow “in the opposite sense, so that the effect precedes the cause...” 490 This is the “kingdom of goals”, evidence of which is Fr. Paul also finds in the “natural mysticism” of dreams. Now, in the early 1920s, focusing on the general theme of dual reality, Florensky determines that dreams “are those images that separate the visible world from the invisible world, separate and at the same time connect these worlds.” And he finds that the main characteristic of a dream - its time - is built inversely to the visible world: “...in a dream, time runs, and runs at an accelerated pace, towards the present, against the movement of the time of waking consciousness. It is inverted through itself, and, therefore, all its concrete images are inverted along with it. And this means that we have moved into the region of imaginary space.” 491 It is very significant that, despite the double qualitative leap, the double, so to speak, discontinuity of the transition from “earth” to “sky,” the 492 upper world turns out to be just the “reverse” of the lower one, its “ontological mirror image.” 493 Father Paul especially notes that that reality “is not something completely different in comparison with the reality of this, our world, for there is one blessed creation of God.” This is “on the other hand contemplated. the same being,” contemplated by those who have crossed over to the other side. There are “faces and spiritual images of things, visible to those who have shown in themselves their primordial face, the image of God, and in Greek, the idea.” There are “ideas of the heavenly world”, “ideas of existence”. 494 And all this turns out to be possible to contemplate from here, and moreover precisely in the specific images of mystical dreams. Moreover, Fr. Paul directly states that we can see the heavenly world with the simple sensory eye every night in a cloudless sky. This is due to his conclusions about the impossibility of contemporary science to verify experimentally the movement of the Earth in space. In this regard, he proposes to return to the geocentric system of the world of Ptolemy, in which, “with its crystal sky, the “firmament of heaven,” all phenomena should occur in the same way as in the Copernican system, but with the advantage of common sense and fidelity to the Earth, earthly, truly reliable experience...” 495 But in the system of the world with the real rotation of the “solid” firmament around the Earth, speeds immeasurably exceeding the speed of light are required, and about. Using a simple formula, Pavel finds the radius of the sphere beyond which the world of superluminal speeds begins. Inside the sphere of this radius is “the area of ​​terrestrial movements and terrestrial phenomena, while at this extreme distance and beyond it a qualitatively new world begins, the area of ​​celestial movements and celestial phenomena - simply the sky.” This radius (Florensky calls it the “demarcation equator,” “the division of heaven and earth”) turns out to be equal to twenty-seven and a half astronomical units, 496 i.e., according to Fr. Paul, the border of “heaven” and “earth” (let me remind you - in the sense of Fr. Paul’s interpretation of Genesis 1:1 - the border of the upper and lower world, Divine Eternity and empiricism) is located “between the orbits of Uranus and Neptune. exactly where it has been recognized since ancient times. The border of the world was beyond Uranus, about which information was already vague.” 497 This means that all the stars in the sky, as well as the one discovered in 1846. the planet Neptune (and everything beyond it, including Pluto discovered in 1930) are in “imaginary” space, with laws opposite to our world. It seems that we should not today, when spacecraft have already photographed Neptune, judge too harshly the level of astronomy of the 1920s. Also, taking into account all the stunning for the first decades of the 20th century. the novelty of A. Einstein’s theory of relativity, we should not be surprised by the attempts at that time to “spiritually” interpret the formula of the relativistic coefficient. 498 It is primarily the non-scientific aspects of this concept of Fr that attract attention. Paul, and his desire to see with sensual eyes the Divine, eternal world, as he himself repeatedly testifies to this, for example, when he says that in childhood in every vein of material flesh he “saw and wanted to see, sought to see, believed” that he could see “the soul, the single spiritual essence.” 499 The idea is quite clearly conveyed in “The Pillar” that such a vision, which gives deep knowledge of the secrets of nature, can be achieved through Christian asceticism. But in general, and especially in his later works, Fr. Paul actually insists that the heavenly world, given to us in symbols here and now, is always before our eyes; you only need to have or cultivate in yourself the mystical ability to notice what people who are busy with “earthly concerns” do not pay attention to at all. In a number of cases, especially regarding dreams, Fr. Paul notes the accessibility of mystical experience to every person, and - what is most important - the truly Divine world is revealed already in “natural mysticism”. Once, in “The Limits of Epistemology” (1908–1909), having distinguished “natural” mysticism from “supernatural, blessed” mysticism, Florensky attributed to the former the acquisition of knowledge about the presence of many layers of reality. 500 In such phenomena as initiation into the mysteries, hypnosis and in dreams accessible to all, the secrets of the structure of the world and - which is the same thing - the structure of man are revealed. When, in the 1920s. (and a little earlier), Fr. Paul again turns primarily to the problems of the fundamental two-unity of the world; he reserves for “natural” mysticism the right to give evidence about the very noumenal depths of being, residing in Divine Eternity. Now “natural” mysticism is recognized as capable of revealing the secrets of Divine existence. This was especially evident in Florensky’s works, which relate to the philosophy of art. “An artist,” writes Fr. Pavel at the turn of 1918–1919 does not create an image of himself, but only removes the veil from already. of the existing image: it does not apply paint to the canvas, but, as it were, clears away its extraneous deposits, the “records” of spiritual reality.” Here about. Paul emphasizes that art, according to the teaching of the VII Ecumenical Council, is “reminding,” and this term must be understood precisely in the Platonic sense. He, obviously, deliberately speaks not only about icon painting, but about art in general and points out that the artist undergoes a process of “remembering”, during which, through his creativity, the idea itself should appear in the sensory. 501 If we ask the question of what is required from the artist himself, we will no longer find any indication of Christian ascetic feat. In the “Iconostasis” Fr. Paul speaks in this regard about the natural-mystical processes of the transition of the “soul” from the lower world to the upper world and back. When ascending into the world, a mountain artist may experience creative inspiration, but the images that arise in his being (and transmitted in creativity) represent “discarded clothes” of the bustle of the earth, “scum of the soul,” “psychologism and raw materials.” The “images of descent” that arise during the reverse transition are a different matter. Filled with “the contemplation of the essence (my italics - N.P.) of the upper world,” satiated with the touch of the “eternal noumena of things” and burdened with knowledge, the soul descends into the lower world, “and here, on this way down, on the border of entering the lower world, its spiritual acquisition is clothed in symbolic images.” 502 It is the “images of descent” conveyed in artistic creativity that represent “the experience of mystical life crystallized at the border of the worlds”; such creativity is a “crystal of time in imaginary space,” truly symbolism, embodying “another experience in real images.” 503 “The image of the heavenly was revealed to the soul as a reminder and for the sake of introduction. an invisible gift into daytime consciousness. as the message and revelation of eternity." 504 We are always within the limits of “natural mysticism,” especially since Fr. Paul points to fundamentally the same “ascents” and “descends” in mystical practice itself and in dreams, which in their “condensation” are the essence of art. 505 Fr Paul does not discuss the conditions of action in such a mysticism of grace; conditions for the ascension of the soul “by the very highest forces” 506 for contemplation of a truly heavenly world. Although Fr. Paul notes that “the faces and spiritual images of things” are contemplated “by those who have revealed their original face in themselves,” 507 but from his consideration of dreams it is clear that heavenly contemplation, in principle, can always be accessible to everyone, even - in the language of patristic literature - to a spiritually unregenerate person. 508 In our opinion, there is no doubt that this is a direct consequence of the anthropological concept of Fr. Paul, in which empirical man is “spiritually reborn” from his own depths. Adoring grace does not come as something completely new, different for the whole person, but only spreads into empirical structures from the noumenal center, which is in the original, eternally deified state. In such a concept, “travels” made within a human being from the world below to the world above are always possible, and not only when God deigns to graciously open new spiritual horizons in a person. There seems to be no need for a beneficial influence here in principle, since the spiritual, “deified” horizon in a person is a property of his nature, and one can penetrate into it only through “natural” mysticism. Father Paul regrets that dreams have been viewed “as something empty, unworthy of analysis and thought.” 509 This view was characteristic of positivist science at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century, 510 but in general it was never accepted both in philosophy and in church patristic literature. The general – “ascetic” – division of dreams into three types (sleepy “dreams” or “delirium” of the soul made up of impressions of the day, dreams from God and dreams from fallen spiritual beings) 511 suggests that only some of them are unworthy of attention. And only in the case of the inability of the novice ascetic to distinguish between spiritual influences is it considered best not to attach significance to any dream at all. 512 “Dreams sent by God,” writes St. Ignatius Brianchaninov - carry within themselves an irresistible conviction. This conviction is understandable to the saints of God and incomprehensible to those who are still struggling with passions.” We can say that a certain ontological boundary is drawn here between the study of one’s dreams and the prohibition of any attention to them: “The nature renewed by the Holy Spirit is governed by completely different laws than the nature that is fallen and stagnant in its fall.” 513 It is impossible not to pay attention to the fact that in very important issues, when it comes to mystical experience in dreams, through which the ontology of the world and man is revealed, Fr. Paul does not address the issue of the spiritual quality of dreams at all. “A dream,” he writes without any additional explanation, “...is saturated with the meaning of another world, it is almost the pure meaning of another world.” 514 It seems that the question of trusting one’s inner mystical experience for Fr. Paul in the “Iconostasis” is, first of all, a question of the “spiritual perseverance” of consciousness passing through the border of two worlds, but ultimately, it is not only and not so much a question of its spiritual renewal. And the determining role in this confusion of emphasis seems to be played by the absence in anthropology of Fr. Paul the very concept of renewal in its own sense. A person here is not looking within himself for something that is a completely new gift for him, but “travels” to the “Heaven” that already exists from eternity in its depths. Therefore, the question of errors in internal mystical experience is much less acute here than if for a person the heavenly, truly Divine reality were supernatural, if in any of his seemingly superconscious depths he did not have any eternal experience of experiencing it. “We believe,” writes St. Maximus the Confessor (Occultism. 24), - that by keeping the commandments as much as possible, we move from the grace of faith to the grace of vision (2 Cor. 5:7), because Our God and Savior Jesus Christ unconditionally transforms us into conformity with Himself, destroying in us the signs of corruption and giving us the original mysteries (my italics - N.P.), revealed here through sensory symbols.” 515 Here comes an idea that generally denies the need for sensory symbols for a transformed person to understand the spiritual world. It comes from the most “metaphysical”, philosophically minded author of the church patristic tradition, 516 who has his own “symbolic ontology”, compare which with the “symbolic ontology” of Fr. Pavel Florensky means taking another step in studying the latter. This is, of course, mainly a matter for future research, but some important observations can already be made. Thus, having said in his “Mystery Science” (Mystagogy-2) that the entire created world is divided into the intelligible and the sensory (“here”), St. Maxim then almost immediately adds: “For all that, the world is one.” The general unity and indivisibility of the universe is higher than the natural characteristics of the intelligible and the sensory and abolishes their difference. “Their business is one and, as Ezekiel, the wondrous contemplator of the great, said, they are like a wheel within a wheel (Ezek. 1:16), speaking, I believe, about two worlds.” 517 Inseparable and unmerged connection of two worlds, St. Maxim explains with an example of the connection of soul and body in a person. Both worlds make up one world, just as one person is made up of soul and body. Prot. In this regard, Georgy Florovsky notes that, according to such ideas, the sensory world is immaterial in its foundations. He is a kind of mysterious “condensation” (or even “condensation”) of the spiritual world. 518 Everything in the world is spiritual in its depths. 519 This is the dual unity of St. Maxim, just like Fr. Paul, is affirmed not by purely philosophical reflections, but by references to the experience of those who have “spiritual speculation.” This experience testifies that the entire intelligible world is mysteriously imprinted on the entire sensory world “through symbolic logoi.” Usually we contemplate the invisible through the visible, but “for those who have succeeded in spiritual contemplation,” says St. Maxim, - it will be easier to comprehend the visible through the invisible. For the symbolic contemplation of the intelligible through the visible is at the same time spiritual vision and the contemplation of the visible through the invisible.” 520 This means that, ascending from the phenomena of being to its ideal foundations (i.e., to noumena; in St. Maximus in this case to “logoi”), we again return back to this being, but not in its phenomena, but in its semantic basis, thus closing the “circle of knowledge.” 521 In fact, a similar “circle of knowledge” is outlined by Fr. Paul, when he conveys mystical experience as the movement of “ascent” and “descent” between worlds and when, explaining his concept of “imaginaries,” he says that what we perceive here as “real”, from there, from the region of imaginary space, is itself seen as imaginary, i.e. “primarily flowing in teleological time, as a goal, as an object of aspiration.” 522 Developed island Pavel in the early 1920s. the concept of dual worlds built on the principle of mutual “mirror” reflection, of course, presupposes not only the symbolic contemplation of the noumenon in the phenomenon, but also the reverse contemplation from the noumenal world, in which all being acquires its true meaning, not always (due to damage to the symbols) discernible here. A remark made by Rev. Maxim at the very end of the second chapter of “Occultism” can be interpreted directly as an exact expression of dual unity in the sense of the “imaginaries” of Fr. Paul: “After all, beings that make each other visible must always have true and clear reflections of one another, and the connection between them must be uncloudedly pure.” 523 However, with all the parallels of “symbolism” of St. Maxim and Fr. Paul, they are separated by deep differences and, first of all, as noted above, in relation to the question of the fundamental necessity of sensory symbols for knowledge of the spiritual world. At St. Maximus (as later with St. Gregory Palamas) the symbol does not so much reveal as “cover” the reality it symbolizes, making only its partial comprehension possible. “And when,” he writes, “the manifestation of the perfect ceases to be partial, then all that is divinatory and dull passes away, the Truth appears face to face, and the one who is saved, having become perfect in God, will be above all the worlds, ages and places by which he has hitherto been brought up as a child (1 Cor. 13:10-13)” - (Chapters on Theology. I, 70). 524 St. will later speak about the same thing. Gregory Palamas in those places of his works where we are talking about symbols in the sense that Fr. put into them. Pavel, i.e. as conveying the spiritual through the sensory. But St. Gregory, this transfer is not so much a phenomenon of a higher reality through a lower one, but rather its “covering” (see, for example: Triads... 2, 3, 70). 525 “Now we see the eternal light by feeling, through existence and separate symbols,” writes St. Gregory, comparing the contemplation of the present and future centuries, - then, having become above this, we will see directly, without any intermediate veil, as the most divine initiate clearly taught us in such sacraments: “Now,” he says, “we see through a mirror and in hints, but then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12). He says this “now”, indicating a feasible and analogous contemplation, commensurate with our nature; having surpassed him himself, rising above the senses and the mind, he saw the invisible and heard the unheard (2 Cor. 12:2-4), having accepted into himself the guarantee of a future rebirth. Having risen above humanity in unity with God, the apostle saw through the invisible the invisible, which had not lost its supersensibility and had not become sensually visible (my italics - N.P.)” (Triads... 2, 3, 24). 526 In this text, which is very significant for the issue under consideration here, three main points stand out: 1. Symbols that, through the visible (sensory) convey the invisible (supersensible), are a part of the present age. They represent the “intermediate veil” that is removed in the future age, which opens up direct contemplation. 2. This direct contemplation, without sensory symbols, is already possible for the renewed human nature, which has accepted into itself (and not found in its noumenal center) the “guarantee of future rebirth.” 3. This direct contemplation takes place not only without the participation of the sensory, but also outside of everything created (since the apostle rose “above the senses and the mind” and “above humanity in unity with God”). Elsewhere in St. Gregory Palamas notes that when “angels and men equal to angels” (Luke 20:36) see God, then this vision is not sensation and is not thinking; they perceive the Divine light not through the senses (Triads... 1, 3, 18), 527 or, in other words, they do not use sensory symbols at all as “holes” for entering the Divine world. Without denying the hierarchy of the universe, St. Gregory says that God can “put the last over the first whenever He wishes (my italics - N.P.)” (Triads... 2, 3, 29). 528 “But he says,” writes Palamas regarding the teaching of Barlaam, “it is impossible for a person to meet God except through the mediation of an angel...” What are you doing, man? Do you impose necessity on the One who rules over necessity, who resolves it whenever he wants, and sometimes completely rearranges it?” (Triads... 3, 3, 5). 529. God does not need any means, including symbols, in order to reveal Himself to man; symbols are needed only at various stages of human imperfection as a curtain covering the dazzling light of the Divine world for those who cannot yet see it and remain alive. Symbolic ontology o. Pavel Florensky is fundamentally different, since in it, on the contrary, the symbol is first of all - not a covering, but a revelation of the invisible, incl. Divine reality, and such a revelation of it, without which it is not possible for it to appear and act on the lower planes of existence. And if we remember the peculiarity of the ontology of Fr. Paul, with her identification of the noumenal center of man rooted in God with his Guardian Angel, then, within its framework, we will be forced to say that it is indeed impossible for a person to meet God otherwise than through the mediation of an “angel.” Symbols, writes Fr. Pavel, in the conclusion of “Watersheds” (late 1922), “they are the organs of our communication with reality. By them and through them we come into contact with what was until then cut off from our consciousness. Symbols are holes punched into our subjectivity.” 530 In no other way can we approach the spiritual world and God Himself; discussing the existence of such (“other”) paths is pointless and unnecessary when around us there are symbols that not so much hide, but, on the contrary, reveal the spiritual reality itself, inviting us to communicate with it in communion with its energies present in the symbol. And it is very important to note that such a situation in the ontology of Fr. Paul - not “temporary”, not arising as a result of the Fall, not due to the imperfect state of man, but the most natural, taking place according to its very original dispensation. A symbol may be damaged, may imperfectly represent the highest reality, but it cannot be “cancelled” in the structure of the universe. Ultimately, this means that hierarchy in the universe cannot be abolished for anyone; in ontology o. Paul, one cannot in any way bypass the layers of existence lying along the way and, most importantly, the transitions between them, 531 - and stand before God in one’s noumenal center. The “path” can be long or very short, but always through all layers, through the “holes” given to us in each layer, i.e. – symbols. All these conclusions of “symbolic ontology” receive their important anthropological applications when man, as well as the world, is considered about. Paul from different positions - as a dual or multiple reality. One of the main ideas of Fr. P. Florensky - the mutual similarity of man and the world. It is revealed in the works of Fr. Paul at different levels, in different contexts and means: – affirmation of the presence in all visible Nature (as well as in man) of a spiritual plane of existence; – affirmation of the godlikeness of all creation, and not just man; - the conviction that there is nothing in Nature that does not exist in man, and vice versa - that there is nothing in man that does not exist in Nature. The unity of man and the world, according to Fr. Paul, is one of the most profound “mystical” comprehensions, and the idea that Nature is the human body and the human body is the World (“mystical physiology”) is the basis of the “universal religion.” Both man and the whole world, according to the conviction of Fr. Paul, have their originally deified ideal foundations. They are created, but they reside on the Divine plane of existence, in Divine Eternity, in the “bosom” of the Holy Trinity. This interpretation was given by Fr. Paul's teaching of St. Fathers about the “peacemaking thoughts” of the Divine Mind, in which the world already existed before its creation. Another interpretation proposed by V. Lossky (and supported by Archpriest I. Meyendorff) during the study of the works of St. Maximus the Confessor and St. Gregory Palamas, places the ideal foundations of creation in Divine energies and considers them not as a created reality “pre-existing” in Divine Eternity, but as the pre-eternal Divine plan for Creation. This plan in itself is not objectified into any creation in Eternity and is carried out not with necessity (as in fact in Fr. Paul - God “thinks with things”; God, thinking, creates), but in accordance with the Divine will (i.e., each thing receives its being not simply from the “thought” of God, but from “thought combined with will”). In other words, God can “think” and not create, and the creation of its ideal foundations in Eternity does not follow from the eternal Divine plan for the world. Symbolic ontology o. Paul is based on the data of “natural mysticism”, including, undoubtedly, on the data of his own “mystical” experience. It is a multi-layered hierarchical structure in which each outer layer is a “phenomenon” in relation to the deeper layer, which is a “noumenon” for it. This structure, due to the mutual similarity of man and the Cosmos, equally applies to cosmology and anthropology; one of its important properties is a decrease in the intensity of consciousness as one dives into deeper layers of existence. At a certain stage of immersion, the “potencies of consciousness” pass through the zero mark and become “negative”. This border in the symbolic ontology of Fr. Paul separates two ontologically different (but again mutually similar) worlds. Introduction about. Paul about these worlds, which he calls “high” and “down,” “heaven” and “earth” (in accordance with Gen. 1:1), differs from the usual idea of ​​the spiritual world and the material world. U o. Paul, spirit and matter are inextricably linked in every layer of existence, and spirit is necessarily present in the layers of the lower world, just as matter is necessarily present in the layers of the upper world. As one dives into deeper (i.e., more energetically and “existentially” intense) layers, the substance becomes thinner, and the spiritual component becomes more intense. At the border of two worlds, a qualitative transformation of the parameters of space and time occurs, but in general, the upper world is only a “mirror reflection” of the lower world. The noumenal center of the entire multi-layered structure of the Cosmos and man goes out to the Divine plane of existence, but it can also be said that the entire heavenly world resides in Divine Eternity - the world of eternal ideal foundations of everything that exists in the empirical, lower world. An important difference between the symbolic ontology of Fr. Paul from the teaching about symbols by St. Maximus the Confessor and St. Gregory Palamas is that Florensky’s symbol does not so much hide, but, on the contrary, reveals the invisible, including the Divine, reality. And if in the first case God does not need any means, including symbols, in order to reveal Himself to man, then in the ontology of Fr. Paul, the spiritual world and God can only be approached through spiritual-sensory symbols. Chapter 3. The structure, development and ultimate goal of man Otherwise, this section could be called “The Structure of Man,” as the abbot suggested. Andronik, 532 or, perhaps more precisely, “A man in himself,” as Fr. Paul raises the question of creation in the “Pillar” (“... how is the creation thought of in itself or by itself or about itself”). 533 The structure of man is the structure of the created Cosmos, and both are closed actual infinity, self-sufficient in the sense that in it, initially, on ideal foundations, an inextricable unity with God and all creation is realized. This is a monad that has ideal “windows” and is included in its noumenal center in the universal ontological unity, in which, however, the differences between created and uncreated nature are not erased. According to Fr. Paul, the creature has an enduring value, since as such it is conceived and realized by the Creator, and if it does not lose the noumenal-phenomenal unity given to it from the beginning, then it is not only permissible, but even necessary to consider the creature in itself, in the “own and independent existence” granted to it 534 next to God. All this, without any amendments, applies to man, and the idea of ​​the greatness of man in this sense is about. Paul also attributed this to his original childhood intuitions. “I did not deny God,” he writes in “Memoirs,” “but I am a man, also God, and I want to be on my own.” “God is reality and Light, He is great; but I, too, am reality, and also not darkness...” But here Fr. Pavel (as far as we could notice) for the first and only time allows himself to significantly correct his childhood impressions from adulthood. ". For,” he writes, “I have not yet felt the sting of sin and did not know death, and therefore, I did not recognize myself as a creature.” 535 This - let's call it this - sense of the created, despite all the temptations (and contrary to the opinion of superficial criticism), did not allow Fr. Paul to create a pantheistic system even in the “Pillar”, where he, without yet distinguishing between the Divine Essence and Divine energies, affirmed the communion of the creature with the Divine Essence. 536 Although it was not clear how this was possible (but to the human mind, according to the “Pillar”, truth must appear in the form of an antinomy!), Florensky insisted on preserving creatureliness in the state of the creature’s participation in the very Essence of the Divine, even introducing the creature into the very “bosom of the Holy Trinity”, even using the term “transubstantiation”, “receiving a new essence” in relation to the deification of creation that he affirmed. 537 Unlike V. Solovyov and Fr. S. Bulgakov, he did not divide Sophia into “created” and “uncreated” with the danger of mixing them so much in one common reality that Sophia would actually become “next to” the Most Holy Trinity as the Fourth, Divine Hypostasis. Even in his “meditation” on the symbolism of the colors of the sky before sunrise (“Heavenly Signs”, 1919), where Fr. Paul allows for a dual perception of Sophia (“she is as much God as she is not God, and as much a creature as she is not a creature. One can say neither “yes” nor “no” about her.... in the sense of its ultimate transition between one world and another"), he still calls it the “first creation” and notes the relationship that exists between it and the Divine, which is symbolized by the colors of the morning sky. 538 And since the “sophian” reality (no matter what you call it - Sophia, the ideal, noumenal or mountain world, etc.) among other things also includes a “glimpse of the eternal dignity” 539 of a person, it is necessary to decisively reject the possibility of giving a person any uncreated status in Florensky’s anthropology. What is contained in the depths of man is the originally deified ideal foundation on which the human being is built. Man, like the rest of creation, is placed “next to” God, in direct connection with Him, but at the same time remains ontologically distinct from Him, not having in its composition any actually uncreated element. And the deeper the ontological gap between uncreated and created nature, the less significant against this background are any differences in created nature itself. From this point of view, in matters of human structure, Fr. Paul places almost no emphasis on its traditional division between the immaterial soul and the material body, and does not engage in a discussion of “dichotomy” or “trichotomy.” He views man as consisting primarily of his deified ideal foundation and an empirical “superstructure”, in which, as in the entire Cosmos, individual layers can be distinguished, but compiling their detailed and accurate characteristics is not of great importance. With all that, the person in the concept of Fr. Paul, first of all, represents the living unity of all components of his nature. Unity of human nature If we want to draw up a “diagram” of the human structure based on the patristic texts, we will be amazed at the abundance of different and very often contradictory information. A variety of descriptions of the presence and correlation in a person of “soul”, “spirit”, “mind”, “heart”, “will”, “word” (“logos”, or “verbal power”), etc. so great that modern authors, trying to cover and somehow systematize all this material, come to different conclusions even regarding the degree of prevalence among St. Fathers of dichotomy or trichotomy 540. Obviously, the point here is not only in the difference in terminology, 541 but, above all, in the mystery and depth of man, which does not lend itself to any unambiguous schematization. It seems that Fr. Pavel felt this very well, but, as noted above, this feeling in his initial point was born from a mystical contact with Nature. Nature is actually infinite and inexhaustibly deep; so is man as a micro (or macro) cosmos. We could not find evidence of attention from Fr. Paul to the “anthropological” passages from the first two chapters of the book of Genesis (Gen. 1:26–27, 2:7), which (according to the unanimous opinion of the Holy Fathers this time) clearly distinguish man from the rest of creation. In the patristic literature it is noted that in the first chapter, after within five days all creation was created “by one word and command,” suddenly there is a “change in words”: God no longer says: “Let there be man,” but “Let us make man in Our image and likeness.” “Man,” writes St. on this occasion. John Chrysostom, is the most excellent of all visible animals; It was for him that all this was created: the sky, the earth, the sea, the sun, the moon, the stars, the mountains, the rocks, all the dumb animals” (Conversations on the book of Gen. 8:2). “Man is a great and wondrous living being and to God the most precious of all creation. There was advice - not, however, because God needs advice. but in order to show us by the very way of expression the dignity of what is being created...” (Eight words on the book of Gen. 2: 1–2). Regarding the text of Genesis 2:7, an equally typical patristic interpretation is given by St. Ignatius Brianchaninov (in “The Tale of Man,” the unfinished manuscript of which was kept by Father Paul and was first published from Florensky’s archive in 1989); 542 according to which also “this image of the creation of man shows in him the most excellent and closest creation to God...”. St. Macarius the Great, with all his heightened ascetic sense of sinful damage to human nature (up to the affirmation of the possibility of the simultaneous dwelling in the human heart of the devil and God), 543 sings to man a real hymn, to which, it seems, Fr. Paul: “God created different creatures. But the Lord does not rest in any of them. Every creature is in His power; however, He did not establish the throne in them, did not establish communication with them; He took good care of one person, entering into communication with him and resting in him. Do you see in this the affinity (my italics - N.P.) of God with man and man with God? (Conversation 45, 5). 544 The most significant thing is that this statement of the exclusive “kinship” of man with God in relation to all creation, coming from an ascetic writer, reflects a typical patristic view. “They are akin to the Divine,” says St. Gregory the Theologian, - intelligent natures and comprehended by the mind alone, are completely alien to creatures that are subject to feelings, and of these latter, creatures that are completely inanimate and motionless are even further removed from the Divine nature (my italics. - N.P.)” (Second word for Easter. 6-7). St. John of Damascus, who summarized the most authoritative judgments of the Church Fathers by the 7th century, found it possible to repeat this text almost word for word. Noting after St. Gregory’s creation of man from two natures, he writes: “And He (God. - N.P.) created the first nature very close to Himself, - for the rational nature, comprehended by one mind, is close to God; and the other, as subject to feelings, He created in all respects very far from Himself (my italics - N.P.)” (Exact exposition... 2, 12. About man). 545 In this case, the concepts of “closeness” and “kinship” of intelligible nature with God in no way mean the destruction or at least belittlement of the ontological gap between created and uncreated nature. The same Rev. Macarius, who spoke about the “kinship” of the human soul with God, also says that “He is God, and she is not God; He is the Lord, and she is the slave; He is the Creator, and she is the creature; He is the creator and she is the creature; there is nothing in common in His and her nature (emphasis added – N.P.).” Only out of His ineffable love does God deign to dwell in this His creation (Conversation 49:4), and, as it turns out, not only in the soul, but also in the body, so that the whole person becomes a beautiful abode of God. 546 It is not difficult to see how similar all this is to the concept of the “Pillar”, if only the “kinship” with God, which distinguishes man from the rest of the world, is replaced by the eternal deified pre-existence of man along with all creation on the same plane of existence with his Creator. Also, who affirms the special “closeness” of the created spiritual nature to God, St. John of Damascus notes that this closeness is very relative: God is “incomparably above everything” (Exact exposition. 4:13). “Everything (my italics - N.P.), in comparison with God, the only incomparable one, turns out to be both crude and material,” even the intelligent nature of angels (Exact exposition... 2, 3). In other words, on the one hand, before the ontological abyss separating the Creator and the creature, all differences in created nature disappear, and on the other hand, God, out of His love, somehow makes one of the created natures “closer” and “more akin” to Himself than the other. We must see that the duality of ontology is about. Paul includes the first side and completely ignores the second. In a letter to F.D. Samarina M.A. Novoselov (May 1913) Fr. Paul makes notes exposing the opposition between soul and body in man and the resulting opposition between “internal” and “external” prayer work. He writes that God comes to the whole person, and “internal” and “external” are distinguished only in school science. “Both the external and the internal are created and conditional; before God, both are nothing.” Of course, oh. Paul uses here established terminology, in which F. Samarin’s letter was written. But his own thought is expressed quite clearly: nothing individually in a person - soul or body - can be “further” or “closer” to God. Both “approach” or “move away” together, “fall and are accepted together,” since man is an integral being. 547 Based on this, from the point of view of Fr. Paul, it is completely unacceptable to believe that something can happen in a person only in the soul or only in the body, only in thoughts or only in feelings. 548 “Not only a thing is thought-shaped,” he believed (“Limits of Epistemology,” 1908–1909), “but also a thought is thing-shaped. Thought and thing form an unmerged and indivisible two-unity.” 549 And this is such an immutable fact, reflecting reality itself, that it also occurs with the Creator Himself (or rather, first of all with Him): “God thinks in things.” 550 As noted above, Fr. Paul, this position about the inseparability of Divine thought and Divine creativity underlies the concept of “eternal pre-existence”: God thinks only in such a way that His thought immediately becomes action, and if He has an eternal plan for creation, then this already means creation itself in Eternity. “Thought has things in itself in the form of its content. And therefore thought is a creative force in the sphere of things.” 551 At the human level, this duality means that the “soul”, as the mental sphere and creative principle, “in instinct is based subconsciously on the body with its organs” 552 and in such a dualistic person, no mental, “internal” activity can be completely autonomous, not affecting the “external form” in any way. In a letter from F. Samarin to Fr. Paul also adds a postscript to the effect that the “internal” in a person cannot be something independent, independent of the “external form.” 553 From such positions, developing his name-glorifying concept, Fr. Paul did not touch at all on the patristic teaching about the highest degrees of prayer, 554 when turning to God can be not only without external words, but even without words “uttered” in thought. He apparently did not express his opinion anywhere on the above “anthropological” passages from St. Gregory the Theologian and St. John of Damascus, speaking about the creation of man from two natures, but it is quite obvious that the words contained in them about nature, “contemplated by one mind,” from his point of view, should not be taken in their literal sense. When F. Samarin writes that in the Name of God, in addition to its verbal expression, something divine is presented to our mind, Fr. Paul puts the word “mind” in quotation marks and emphasizes it, obviously considering it unacceptable in the case of experienced prayer work to even conventionally talk about the mind alone. “Prayer,” he writes, “is impossible both without the internal and without the external... Not only the internal, but also the external is spiritualized, or nothing is spiritualized.” 555 And “why is that which is presented to the “mind” closer to God than that which is presented to the sensual gaze. Both are created.” 556 The distinction between the creature and the Creator in Fr. Paul here is an argument against any radical opposition in the created world itself; the idea of ​​any special “kinship” with God of one of the created natures would significantly weaken Florensky’s rigid symbolic dual unity, in which it is much more appropriate to talk about the “kinship” of the spiritual and material than about such a “kinship” and closeness of the created spirit with God, in which matter turns out to be very “far” from God and especially “alien” to Him. It is interesting to note in this regard very similar intuitions that emerged in the 19th century. at St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, and in those very two of his works that were well known to Fr. Pavel. 557 St. Ignatius was an ascetic preacher and, apparently, an experienced practitioner of inner, mental-heart prayer. Judging by his works, and especially by his letters, the idea of ​​​​a rigid, unconditional connection between the “internal” and the “external” in the ascetic feat, and, consequently, in man himself, was alien to him. But at the same time, amazed by the discoveries of contemporary chemistry, which proved the materiality of air and gases in general, and having studied numerous evidence from ascetic experience about the actions of spirits on matter, St. Ignatius drew a conclusion about the materiality of all created nature in general. The division of the created world into “material” and “spiritual”, “visible” and “invisible”, according to St. Ignatius, relatively, and arose only in fallen man, when his coarsened body became an obstacle that did not allow the soul to see angels and the souls of other people. In essence, the world is one and there are no qualitative, “natural” divisions in it; created spirits are also material, but they represent a special, “subtle” state of matter. 559 In this sense, St. Ignatius, on the one hand, speaks of a “kinship” between spirit and matter, and on the other hand, does not allow any “kinship” of created nature with God. God differs from all created things by infinite difference, just as mathematical infinity differs from all finite numbers. “All numbers,” he writes, “so different from each other, are together completely equal (my italics - N.P.) one with another in relation to the infinite” 560. “All numbers and measures, so different from each other, come into equality when they stand before an infinite magnitude and become equal to it.” 561 Denial of St. Ignatius is completely radical in nature: creation, both in its material and spiritual aspects, cannot have anything in common with the Creator, just as finite numbers have nothing in common with infinity. In the extreme, this thought reaches the denial of the true reality of creation, which is based on nothingness, a mathematical zero, acting on which the infinite gives rise to all numbers. “Every number is a phenomenon.” It is not constant, and “there is no number that could not change from addition to it or from exclusion from it; there is no number that cannot go to zero.” “The infinite alone remains unchangeable... it alone is, in the precise sense, a being.” 562 All these mathematical conclusions of St. Ignatius exactly transfers this to the relationship between the Creator and the creature. And here he repeats the often heard patristic thought - only God truly exists, only He exists in the true sense of the word. But then at St. Ignatius, something different appears: any number is a phenomenon, and - we have to add - only a phenomenon. Any number that arises from zero can also return to zero. Therefore, when St. Ignatius writes that “in the precise sense there are no beings in nature; there are only phenomena in it,” 563 this must mean that nothing created is endowed with genuine existence from the Creator; how a creature called into existence from non-existence can at any time return back to non-existence. If we consider these conclusions in the context of the entire legacy of St. Ignatius, then it must be said that creation is a pure phenomenon as such, by the very fact of its creation “out of nothing.” But everything changes when St. Ignatius speaks of the ultimate goal of man - deification in Christ, elevation to the dignity of “God”. 564 Here, if we speak in the language of the works of Fr. Paul, the creature receives its noumenal basis and becomes truly existing. There is no doubt that Fr. Paul was close in spirit to these mathematical “research” in theology, which was carried out by such a spiritual writer theoretically and practically initiated into the patristic tradition as St. Ignatius. But, as we remember, Florensky’s own initial intuitions were such that man and all creation before God were - initially - not a finite number, not a pure phenomenon, but already completed, actual infinity. And yet, from God - also Actual Infinity - creation is distinguished by infinite difference in such a way that - as in St. Ignatius - all created things are one in their very essence. Worlds mirroring each other in “Imaginaries” by Fr. Paul - this, of course, is not the relationship between the subtle ether and gross matter (according to St. Ignatius), but we are interested here in the very general tendency of these ontological concepts to smooth out the difference between created spirit and matter, to build dual unity not on a “miracle”, not on the mystery of combining in man (and only in man!) two opposite created worlds, but on certain patterns, be it energetic interactions in a symbol or the relationship of the same substance according to the degrees of its “subtlety” and “roughness”. And in this regard, some of the considerations expressed by St. Theophan the Recluse in his analysis of this teaching of St. Ignatius, which he made in 1891. 565 On the seemingly indisputable thesis of the “new teaching” that, being an all-perfect Being, transcending all definition, God has nothing in common with created beings, St. Theophanes objects: “Is it possible to cut off the creature from the Creator so sharply? The nature of God is lofty, but goodness is inquisitive (my italics - N.P.).” 566 He gives examples of the benefits given by God to created nature: the ability to create, knowledge, love, etc., which, undoubtedly, are “a part of the complete good that exists in God.” If this is so, then why “spirituality is such a good among other Divine goods that it is impossible to communicate to creatures?” 567 It seems that the strongest argument of St. Theophan is the one who turns to the communion of man with God restored in Christ, and this one about which it is said: “that they also may be one in Us,” “as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You” (John 17:21). “In order to enter into such communication,” writes St. Theophan, “you must have something in common with God in your nature.” But this is “general”, which, according to St. Theophana, and there is spirituality akin to God, is not the final gift of deification, but a gift that was given by God to the creature from the beginning. And although this is a gift from God, it is a gift that is given as property and cannot be taken away. Yes, St. Theophanes objects to the “mathematical zero” of St. Ignatius: “Let God be a being, but creatures also truly exist. And when they exist, their existence is not God’s existence in them, but their own, albeit given by God.” 568 We can see how outwardly similar, but, in essence, completely different from Fr. Pavel, the accents are placed here. Here it is also possible to talk about the unconditional value of a creature, about a creature “in itself,” and this is a consequence of the good initially bestowed upon it. But this good does not lie in the original deification of the ideal foundations of a creature ontologically separated from the Creator, but in the original creation by God of such a created nature, which, due to its ontological proximity to God, is capable of special communication with Him, as stated in John 17:21. In other words, the creature is initially created capable of being accepted into the “bosom of the Holy Trinity,” and is not accepted there by the fact of its creation in Divine Eternity. It is not yet a completed infinity (as with St. Paul), although not a mathematical zero (as with St. Ignatius). St. has all this. Theophan is true for created spiritual nature, to which he includes the Angels and the human soul, but this does not mean spiritualism, when matter, like nature, “very distant” from God, is considered incapable of being accepted into unity with God. In this regard, St. Theophan with reference to St. Basil the Great speaks of the dual unity of the soul itself: in addition to its “reasonable” component, set in motion by free will, it also has a natural, involuntary ability to animate the material body associated with it - “like the shining sun, it is impossible not to illuminate that on which it extends its rays.” It is precisely this natural ability of the human soul to act on the substance of St. Theophanes calls the source and special form of the “affinity of body and soul,” “the union of the soul with the body,” 569 in which, obviously, the body, although consisting of a nature “very distant” from God, nevertheless participates in all the benefits to which the soul becomes involved. In a rather unexpected way, St. Theophan goes even further and, noting, with reference to St. Gregory of Nyssa, the ability of the soul “to act on the elements, which it can attract to itself and tear away from itself when required,” 570 comes to a statement that we already met in Fr. Paul: 571 the soul instinctively creates the body. “Even the very formation of the body,” he writes, “is accomplished by this same side, in addition to the consciousness and independent activity of the soul.” 572 It seems that the “union” of two natures in man should thereby be recognized as extremely close, but this is in the constructions of St. Feofan - does not cancel their ontological opposition to each other, which allows, in contrast to the “symbolism” and “imaginaries” of Fr. Paul, to allow a certain degree of independence of the higher nature from the lower. St. Feofan notes that the explanation he proposes is not able to reveal the very secret of the union of two created opposites in man, but only eliminates the need to look for mediators of such a union or to bring the opposites themselves closer in ontological properties. More than once or twice in patristic texts we can encounter surprise at this mystery, realized only in man and thereby distinguishing him, distinguishing him from all created beings - spiritual Angels and sensual animals. In the already mentioned “anthropological” texts of St. Gregory the Theologian and St. John of Damascus says that man is “a mixture of mind and feeling,” “a combination of opposites,” “a living being in which ... invisible and visible nature are brought into unity,” a being created “by spirit and together by flesh.” According to St. Gregory of Nyssa (as V. Nesmelov highlights in his study of his dogmatic system), man reconciles “the opposition of the spiritual and the sensual, establishing the harmonious unity of all creation.” 573 In his “Divine Hymns” St. Symeon the New Theologian notes the “inexpressibility”, “inexplicability” of the union of two natures in man 574 and expresses surprise at this mystery, which, of course, would not deserve such special attention if it were not the mystery of the unity of ontological opposites. There are creatures, - the saint sings. Simeon, “the material ones are those whom you see, and the immaterial ones are the angels.” And among them only “you are a living person and double: among the sensual, immaterial, and among the immaterial, sensual.” 575 “How... through a mixture of opposites (my italics - N.P.) He made me a living (being)? How is the mind connected with the flesh, and how is the flesh dissolved with the immaterial mind without mixing and merging? 576 “Indeed, I marvel at how the soul, being entirely immaterial and having an intelligent eye of light, nevertheless uses a sensual image and bodily eyes and, looking through them, sees everything visible and, turning back, in an immaterial image contemplates the mental and immaterial.” 577 This means 578 that a person, placed “on the edge” of two worlds, is capable of contemplating both worlds: the sensory world through his senses and the spiritual world directly, turning his “smart eye” to it, which can be completely independent of sensory perceptions. The spiritual world can be contemplated by one “spiritual ability” of a person, without the mediation of any material symbolic images - this is a conclusion that is fundamentally impossible in the symbolic duality of Fr. Pavel. At St. Simeon cannot be rejected by the material, sensory symbol itself as a way of knowing the invisible through the visible, the higher through the lower (cf. Rom. 1:20–21); he rejects the absolute monopoly of the sensory symbol on such knowledge. It is precisely as consisting of two natures, one of which, let’s say, incomparably higher than the other, that man is able to contemplate the upper world not only without the mediation of matter from the lower world, but also without any connection with it at all. This ability, obviously, should be weakened as the tendency to smooth out the ontological differences between the two natures in man increases and is completely lost in the rigid symbolic duality that takes place in the ontology of Fr. Pavel. On the other hand, Rev. Simeon the New Theologian, with his surprise at the mystery of interaction and “mixing” only in man of an incomparably “high” and incomparably “lower” (in the sense of relation to God) nature, writes that “a reasonable person is better and higher than the whole world.” 579 “Each of us is brought by God into this world as a kind of second world, great in this small and visible, as the Theologian testifies with me.” 580 This is a unilateral recognition of nature as a “part” of man without the possibility of asserting the opposite. In visible nature we can contemplate the invisible and spiritual, but it is not at all the same ontological affiliation of all creation as it is in man. 581 In addition, chemistry “providentially” (St. Ignatius) discovered that the visible world has its own invisible dimension, but it can also be material. The invisible, but spiritual dimension (St. Theophan), which is no longer contained in the same way as in man, in sensory nature, cannot be identified with it. In the visible universe, the highest spiritual dimension belongs only to man, who, thus, represents a unique symbol, where not only the highest energies of the sensory world are manifested in the lower ones, but also the highest energies of the spirit can “shine through” matter. Two realities in man Of course, in general, the “symbolism” of Fr. Paul is multifaceted, reflecting different layers, or energy levels, of a multi-unit ontological reality. In symbols, energies of different levels 582 meet, “merge” and “dissolve”, and those, as noted above, about. Paul finds both in the “low” and in the “high” world 583. In “The Limits of Epistemology” (1908–1909), he examines the transitions between these layers using the example of n-fold dreams and presents this process as discontinuous movements of the “I from one plane of the subconscious to another.” 584 Here the question is not even raised about the existence somewhere among these layers of such a level n, when passing through which I crosses the “demarcation equator,” the “division of Heaven and Earth.” These remarkable terms appear in a 1922 work. “Imaginaries in Geometry”, 585 during the same period when Fr. Paul focused all his attention on the fundamental two-unity of the world and man. As already noted, another work from 1922. – “Iconostasis” – opens with an indication of the existence of two worlds – “invisible” and “visible”, “Heaven” and “Earth” from Genesis 1:1, and immediately raises the question of how to understand the boundary between them. 586 Now it turns out that dreams arise precisely on this border and in them “the lowest experiences of the heavenly world and the highest of the earthly world are symbolized.” 587 If we remember one of the lectures of Fr. Paul 1917 – “Symbolism of Visions”, which discusses “dream or sleep-creative” symbolizing the “activity of the spirit” in the human body (which includes the whole world), 588 then we will lose any guideline for determining the place in Florensky’s ontology of such generally accepted anthropological concepts as “soul” and “body”. It will finally become clear that neither the “soul” can be unambiguously classified as “Heaven”, nor the “body” - with “Earth”. The boundary between the earthly and the heavenly passes beyond these concepts, which, as it seems, Fr. Paul emphasizes not their unacceptability as such, but the inadmissibility of isolating in man a certain autonomous spiritual substance capable of being independent of matter. And in the body (microcosm) there are levels of the heavenly, and in the soul - the levels of the earthly; neither the soul in a person is something free from the temporary, empirical world, nor the body is deprived of the communion of Eternity. With all this, if the world is one and the higher is connected with the lower, unmerged and inseparable, then there is no reason to “schematize” a person according to all these realities. Everything is one in man: both above and below, both “soul” and “body”, but this is not that “inexpressible” unity of two created opposites, to which, in agreement with others, St. Fathers, the St. is surprised. Simeon the New Theologian. This is an energetic unity of successively “increasing” or existentially condensing levels, ascending along which we approach the noumenal center of man pre-existing in Eternity. ABOUT. Paul did not like “schemes” and “models,” but if in his anthropology one still tries to identify a “scheme” of the human structure, then it will, by and large, be a dual unity of the main noumenon (which is sometimes conventionally designated by Father Paul as “spirit”) and the general phenomenon (which corresponds to layers of varying degrees of rootedness in being). As we “move away” from the central noumenon, the rootedness in the existence of the corresponding layer decreases, and the materiality inherent in this layer becomes coarser, as noted by Fr. Paul is stated quite clearly in his meditation “Heavenly Signs” (1919). Taking the Sun, the “finest dust” and the vacuum of world space 589 as exact correspondences of God, Sophia (in this case as the “first creation”) and the “darkness of metaphysical non-existence”, 590 Florensky considers the “first creation” as “the first clot of being, relatively independent of God,” which, as it moves into the metaphysical void, becomes more and more materially compacted, until finally it turns out to be “roughly inert”, “lightproof” substance. This is “a rude earthly creature that grossly violates the spirituality of light.” 591 The Divine Ray no longer dissolves in it, which obviously means the most precarious being, a phenomenon with the least noumenal transparency. In this case, it is fundamentally important that the layers of existence represent a clear discontinuous hierarchical structure. “Take a closer look at the phenomenon,” writes Fr. Paul, and you will see that it is the husk of something else that lies deeper than itself. And that which lies deeper is a “noumenon” in relation to the first, as a “phenomenon.” 592 Everywhere we encounter dual unities of different levels, “nested” in each other relative to the main noumenal center, so that a higher reality and “noumenon” for the peripheral layer turns out to be a lower reality and “phenomenon” for the internal layer. Therefore, ultimately, approaching the center, we must recognize all other layers in the human being as one “general phenomenon” in relation to one main noumenon, which thus constitute the main dual unity of Florensky’s anthropology. To describe these two realities, Fr. Paul offers a large variety of terms, including those taken from Holy Scripture. But the essence of his concepts seems to be best explained by the following: “Ideal personality” and its “empirical character” - in the early ontology of the “Pillar”, and “Name” and “empirical personality” - in later works. At the same time, the difference in terminology does not mean any fundamental differences in the concepts of “early” and “late” Florensky, but only reflects the overcoming of Fr. Paul of his early “personalistic” bias in philosophy and theology. Both in the early “Pillar” and in the late “Iconostasis”, among other things, Fr. Paul in the same sense designates the highest structure in man as the “Image of God.” According to the Pillar, it is the “holy essence of man,” 593 “a glimpse of the eternal dignity of the individual,” about which almost all “mystical teachings” speak. 594 In the “Iconostasis” the “Image of God” represents the “being of man,” his spiritual basis, “hidden heritage,” “the core of the human being.” In both cases, this is the source from which Divine Light pours into the human being, an ontological structure which, unlike the “rest” of man, does not need transformation and deification, since it itself is an eternal light capable of transformative action. According to the “Iconostasis”, the entire empirical man in all his composition should be framed by this structure, 595 and in the “Pillar” it was explained that a person must put on this structure, the objectivity of which was emphasized by such names as “dwelling in heaven”, “house not made with hands” (from 2 Cor. 5: 1-2), “eternal mansions” (from Luke 16:9) or “many mansions” that make up the “house” Father" (from John 14:2). 596 “Separate monasteries,” says Fr. Paul in “The Pillar” - like honeycomb cells form the House of God, the Holy Church of the Lord. Great City, Heavenly Jerusalem... (Rev.21:2-10; Heb.12:22).” These are “ideal images of existence”, relating to an individual person as his “ideal personality”, 597 “true Self”. 598 The “key” to this originally deified structure in man is the “key of the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matt. 16:19), the “key of David,” 599 which the Speaker of the Apocalypse has (Rev. 3:7–9). Father Paul senses in himself and in all beings in Nature a deified reality, which he correlates (in a text written in 1913 and used as a prologue to the works of 1917–1922) with the “Morning Star” from Rev. 2:26–29 and 2 Pet. 1:19, and also again with the Speaker in the Apocalypse and the One Who Calls Himself “Root and lineage of David” and “Bright Star” (Rev. 22:16). 600 There is no doubt that we are talking about the same ontological reality - the “Image of God” given 601 to all creation, as is contemplated by Fr. Paul in Heavenly Signs. 602 And this is not some property or ability that somehow brings the creature closer and “related” to the Creator, but rather an object, an ontological structure that roots the creature in Divine Eternity. This is the objectified “world-creative thought of God,” which is the idea of ​​creation created in Eternity - an idea in the sense of Plato, but taking into account the ontology of Fr. Pavel. The “Pillar” repeatedly gives an important ontological definition of this object as a primordial, 603 unconditional, eternal root (or “root of eternity”), which is given to the creature “through participation in the depths of Trinity Love” 604 and with which “the spiritual personality goes to heaven.” 605 In a lecture of 1922. O. Paul also says that “...man himself, the creature itself, has its roots in things above,” 606 and in his 1918 lectures. indicates the presence in man of a “noumenal core” 607 and “a commissure where, in fact, our noumenal core comes into contact with the area of ​​phenomena” 608 and where it is possible to see Eternity from Time. This is also the terminology of the “Pillar”, used although very rarely, but with the same meaning, when noumena is understood as an eternal idea, the ideal root of what exists in Time as a phenomenon. 609 The “noumenal core” in a person, according to the lecture “Cult and Philosophy” (1918), is that “solid point” that does not allow the ontological disintegration of consciousness, which is always changeable and “blurring”. 610 In the final work “Names” (1926) Fr. Paul will say that this name is “the solid point of our fluidity,” in which “our Self finds an objective foundation and unchanging content. Without a name, it is the instantaneous center of existing states...”. Without a name “I am pure subjectivity (my italics - N.P.)”, or “shell” - “a phenomenon of personality”, split off “from its essential core” - according to “Iconostasis” 611 and self-consciousness, decomposed as a result of egoistic closure on oneself, which turned out to be only “a mental phenomenon without a noumenon” - according to “Pillar”. 612 It is quite obvious that in the works of different years Fr. Paul designates the highest anthropological (and generally created) reality as the “Image of God”, “true Self”, “Noumenal Core” or “Name”, each time meaning - in ontological terms - the same thing. Florensky always had a deep conviction that the name of a person or, in general, of any created thing is not simply some kind of conventional designation invented by people. The names are not invented, but are discovered in the unconscious depths, where the generalized pan-human experience is contained. 613 And even if any word is a reality taken from the treasury of the people's language, 614 which, as Fr. insists. Paul, “by everyone and always (my italics - N.P.) ... is recognized as a supra-individual, supra-conscious, supra-rational essence, objectively standing before the mind,” 615 if even any word contains “inexhaustible deposits of energies that have been deposited here for centuries and flowed out of millions of lips...”, 616 then all the more so all this is true for names, which, according to Florensky, are words of “special compactness" 617 and more other words are "concentrators of universal human meaning." 618 And just as a word (as long as it is a word, and not some inarticulate sound, a “convulsion of the tongue”) is an ontological reality, 619 newly created by man and at the same time extracted by him from the supraconscious universal treasury, 620 a name is not just a pronounced sound, possessing its own energetic potential, but a “metaphysical essence.” 621 Already in student course essays, Florensky made a number of conclusions that affirm the name in its highest ontological meaning. “The true name does not mean the essence, but is itself the essence, numen; Moreover, it itself is... a being.” 622 “The name is the mystical essence of a thing,” 623 “name and essence are not two interdependent phenomena, but one, name-essence, Logos.” 624 “There is,” Florensky also wrote in 1906, “... a metaphysical-mystical experience about names, when they are directly revealed in the form of independent units, monads of being (my italics - N.P.).” 625 Such a metaphysical object not only represents the spiritual or ideal essence of man, 626 in which man merges with the higher world (“taking root in the sky in his name”), 627 but is also a highly important parallel being to man, “which at once represents its bearer and influences him.” 628 Florensky repeated these conclusions, presented in his student work as a result of studying the materials of Western historians and ethnographers, in his first lecture “The universal human roots of idealism” (1908) as a statement of the characteristic features of the “universal human” worldview. And here, since we were talking about the relationship between “universal human” beliefs and the teachings of Plato, it was especially emphasized and emphasized that “... Plato’s idea is an exact correspondence to the name.” 629 The name of a thing is its idea, “idea-power-substance-word,” which establishes for a thing “the unity of essence in the diversity of its manifestations, restraining and shaping the very existence of the thing.” 630 In relation to a person, such an idea-name “is the very mystical personality of a person, his transcendental subject (my italics - N.P.).” 631 i.e. an obvious analogue of that reality, which in the “Pillar” is designated as “love-idea-monad” 632, “ideal personality” 633 or “Image of God” 634. But here the superhuman reality of the name is especially noted: “The name is a special being” of heavenly origin, so that “it is not the name that is with the person, but the person is with the name.” Only by joining the name does a person become a true person, 635 “truly a person,” 636 i.e. such a being that has “..exit” to the transcendental, 637 puts down its “roots in the sky.” 638 In student works and lectures of 1908. Florensky points out the great importance that the sacramental act of “imposing a name” had in ancient times. Man, he writes, “is born only as an animal being, consisting of body and soul,” and only with the “imposition of a name” (on the 7th–12th day after birth) becomes a “true man,” consisting “of three components: body, soul and name.” 639 This last remark reflects the early Florensky’s attempt to adapt the “most ancient” religious practice to the Christian one and, in particular, to bring the “imposition of a name” closer to the sacrament of confirmation, and therefore to equate the receipt of a name – a transcendental subject – with the Christian “gift of the Holy Spirit”. In the future, we do not observe Fr. Paul's significant development of this topic, but we see that he retains the main thought expressed here: “Before the name, a man is not yet a man, neither for himself nor for others”; he “is only the possibility of man, the promise of such, the embryo...”. 640 And more generally: “...humanity thinks of names as substantial forms, as essences that form their carriers-subjects, which in themselves are without quality (my italics - N.P.).” 641 This is no longer just a “function of coherence” 642, when a name protects a thing and a person from ontological decay, but a function of formation, creation, or at least re-creation by the name of its bearer. It has already been noted above what Fr. Paul casually states that the soul “in instinct subconsciously builds the body with its organs.” 643 But this was precisely a general remark, which in its concretization was given by Florensky already in connection with the concept of a name: “about itself,” the inexpressible spiritual essence, manifesting itself, “assimilates the material presented to it from the environment in which it lives - mystical, occult, social, mental, physical - and, taking it, transforms it into its body, passes through it, radiates through it, shapes it.” But we can express not her, but what she has shaped. The name is the closest approach to herself, the last layer of the body that envelops her (my italics - N.P.).” 644 From here, among other things, it is very clear to what extent Fr. Paul admitted the acceptability of the occult-theosophical anthropological doctrine, according to which, also, what can be called a “spiritual essence” emerges from an unmanifested state with a consistent set of “bodies” on different planes of existence: mental, astral, etheric and physical. Then, at the end of earthly life, all this is discarded as waste material and the “spiritual essence” until the next incarnation either again goes into a state of unmanifestation, or, while remaining in the “mental body”, evaluates its karma and selects the necessary conditions for the upcoming new round in the empirical element. 645 Of course, it is not at all accidental that Florensky pointed out in “The Limits of Epistemology” (1908–1909) the possible connection of the various “planes” of theosophists with the mystical experience of “transitions of the Self from one plane of the subconscious to another.” 646 Experience showing the multi-layered nature of the human being, from his point of view, accessible to everyone in n-fold dreams, is of a universal human nature and is refracted differently in various mystical teachings. Florensky knew about theosophical doctrine “first hand”, attending meetings of Russian Theosophists even before the official formation of the Theosophical Society in Russia in 1908. 647 It was natural for him to reject in Theosophy everything that was connected with its “refined positivism,” 648 just as it was natural for him to retain everything that corresponded, in his opinion, to the “most ancient,” “universal human” experience he studied. But such a clear (albeit partial) correspondence with theosophical anthropological views, as far as we know, in Fr. Paul until the 1920s. never met. 649 A certain totality of “material” assimilated by the “spiritual essence” from the environment. Paul calls “empirical personality” and agrees to talk about its various “bodies”: “Each concentration of the stratification of personality,” he says in “Philosophy of Cult” (1922), “or, if you like, of its “empirical” character, can be called a body, and therefore clothing. This empirical personality is meant by the ap. Paul, when he expresses fear that during the final fiery trial we might find ourselves “naked,” i.e. stripped of the clothing of everything created in life. And the Savior, speaking about wedding and non-wedding clothing, uses this image, signifying with it the vital revelation of the spiritual being.” 650 Here, in a concentrated form, everything common to the “Pillar” and the later works of Fr. Paul's "scheme" of the human structure. Man is the unity of an unconditionally valuable, eternal “core” and the structure it develops in empirics, which relates to it as a phenomenon to a noumenon. In later works, only the previously absent concept of “unmanifested spiritual essence” is introduced, which does not change anything in ontology: it really exists only in a state of manifestation and one can speak not about it itself, but only about the layer of existence closest to it. This layer is the “ideal personality”, the “true Self” of the “Pillar” and the “Name” - a reality that was always present in Florensky’s ontology, but not clearly indicated in the “Pillar”. “Name,” writes Fr. Paul in 1926, “the subtlest flesh through which the spiritual essence is declared”, 651 “in the name and name I first puts myself objectively in front of myself, and therefore, through this subtlest flesh I make myself accessible to others.” 652 “The name is the last expressibility in the word of the beginning of the personal... the most tender, and therefore the most adequate flesh of the personality.” 653 And if in the “Pillar” it was still possible to accept the “ideal personality”, the “true Self” as something purely spiritual, then the later symbolic ontology of Fr. Paul - without contradicting the “Pillar” - introduces the necessary clarifications: everything in man and in the world is “flesh” - from the ideal to the empirical; The spiritual and the sensual interact in everything. The ideal is the most “full of existence”, “the subtlest body”, “the subtlest flesh”, which envelops the spiritual essence “immediately” upon its manifestation. Next come “bodies” that are more compacted, up to the coarsest physical body, and those of them that are deployed in the empiricity constitute the “empirical personality” (in the “Pillar” - the “empirical character” of the “ideal personality”). The relationship between two realities in a person in “The Pillar” is shown in the extreme case when the “empirical character”, defined as a person’s self-awareness, the free creative will of the individual, his “system of actions”, turns out to be absolutely closed in on himself and, instead of a free feat of love (I = non-I), carries out a “cry of naked egoism.” 654 I = I, i.e. I! This is how an “evil self” is formed, which must be “cut off” from the unconditionally valuable inner core of the personality. “Cutting off” occurs at the last Court, determined by Fr. Paul as “The terrible day of the world operation,” when nothing less than the destruction of man occurs. It is very likely that Fr. Paul in the period of the "Pillar" (1908-1914) would not have recognized such a conclusion following from the letter of the 8th "Gehenna", since his goal was to show the salvation of the "holy essence of man." “What is given by Christ to man,” he wrote, “as a man cannot pass away. Otherwise, the image of God would perish.” In other words, the “Image of God” here is considered to belong to a person and he is saved regardless of what happens to his free creative personality in the empiric world. The latter, in the case of final self-closure, is “cut off” from the “holy essence” of man and turns out to be “bare subjectivity”, non-existent for anyone, including God, a face that has no substance, a nightmare without the one who sees this dream, a phenomenon without a noumenon. 656 But this is all the “work” that the “holy essence” of man, or – in “universal human” terminology – “autos” (“itself”), carried out in the empirical world, the entire structure that it created during earthly life. And here was the self-consciousness of man, which in this case should also leave objective existence. 657 And oh. Paul speaks about this quite clearly: “The entire content of consciousness will perish, since it is not from faith, hope and love. Will be saved - autos. naked God-consciousness without self-consciousness, for self-consciousness without concrete content, without consciousness of its own activity, is only pure possibility (my italics - N.P.).” 658 Man as a self-conscious subject disintegrated in the ultimate fragmentation of sin, again turned into only the possibility of man - a term that Fr. Pavel will use 1926 in his work. ("Names"), indicating a person without a name. And along with this, the “Pillar” states that salvation is also received by a person who, in his “holy essence,” possesses “God-consciousness.” But who is conscious here and who has this consciousness? Igum. Andronicus noted regarding the letter “Gehenna” that it did not clarify “what is man?”, “no clear distinction was made between man, the personality of man and the image of God” in man. “Self” going into Gehenna, in Fr. Paul is defined “only as a mental phenomenon without a noumenon, a frozen phenomenon without appearing,” 659 while “the Gospel says that the sinner will go to Gehenna, i.e. Human. Can a person’s self be considered a person?” 660 It appears that this question is about. Andronicus, which remains without a direct answer in the Pillar, is resolved by Florensky already in a work published in 1906. (“On Types of Growth”), where it is said that “Personality is the Church of God, but she is also the One who lives in it, the finite and the infinite...”. In a single personality, wrote Florensky, there are two inextricably linked sides of existence, two moments - “ideal” and “real”. 661 Practically the same thing. Paul also says in his lectures of 1918: “Man is himself a living unity of infinity and finitude, eternity and temporality, unconditionality and perishability, necessity and chance, the knot of the ideal world and the real world.” 662 “The condition of personality is the unity of the transcendental with the immanent, the mental and the sensory, the spiritual and the physical.” 663 In other words, neither of the two realities - ideal or empirical - separately represents a person; man is only their living inextricable unity. When this unity is nevertheless violated, a person is destroyed, as, obviously, quite definitely about. Paul wants to say this in Names. In a lecture of 1918, as if entering the context of the letter “Gehenna,” Florensky directly speaks not about the “salvation” of a person in any one of the realities, but about the ontological disintegration of the entire personality in the event of ultimate evil. When the “point of application” that determines the unity of self-consciousness and reason is lost, the mind “disintegrates, the Self is tragically torn away from the Self, from itself (my italics – N. P); in the extreme this would mean ontological madness, Gehenna, hell.” 664 Here it is no longer difficult to see that the unified Self is disintegrating, and the “point of application,” as an unconditionally valuable reality in a person, obviously has a transpersonal, superhuman (superempirical) meaning. When in “Iconostasis” (1922) Fr. Paul will already say that the ultimate disintegration of personality is possible even before the final judgment; he will describe this process as the separation of the phenomenon of personality from “its essential core” and will clearly separate the concepts of “personality” and “Image of God” from each other. The “essential core” of personality is not a personality, it is a noumenon, which only in its “external expression” becomes a true reality. “The essence of man,” writes Fr. Paul, “is the Image of God, and therefore sin, permeating with itself the entire self-created “church,” according to the Apostle, personality, 665 not only does not serve to express the personality’s being outside, but, on the contrary, closes this being.” 666 We can say that in this case those “covers of matter” that, according to Fr. Paul, they only reveal the spiritual essence, now they hide it, and yet it is precisely these “veils” that form those “bodies” of the empirical personality that the spiritual essence formed during its manifestation. In ontology o. Paul, the spiritual essence can no longer go into a completely unmanifested state (this would be tantamount to a transition from existence back to non-existence), since its “subtle flesh”, the first and most complete manifestation of existence, represents the originally deified reality of Eternity. This reality cannot be affected by “sin”, nothing in it can be “closed” or “eclipsed”, since it itself is the source of light and purity for everything that is unfolded in the empiricism. You can only “close” the Divine light coming from it into the empiric world, which is what happens in the case of extreme evil. And we shouldn't be surprised that Fr. Paul ultimately allows for the destruction of man in his ontology; here a much more terrible catastrophe is allowed for this ontology - the destruction and destruction of the symbol, the violation of the order of “universal coherence.” and therefore – universal symbolism,” when “everything is in everything.” In man, the empirical personality emerges from this order and, cut off from its idea, turns into pure subjectivity. A person is thereby destroyed, but this act eliminates the symbolic communication of worlds that was disrupted in his personality - and by his personality. The idea of ​​man, the Image of God, as an ontological object, does not suffer any harm and continues its manifestations in other individuals. In various works, this highest reality in man (or rather, the highest reality thanks to which man is possible) is presented by Florensky as an idea in the Platonic sense. This is especially clearly visible where Fr. Paul turns to the theme of the icon, which for him always means the theme of the “window” into the heavenly world. He gives the most radical answer to iconoclasm: “to destroy icons means to wall up the windows” and insists that a window is only truly a “window” when direct sunlight pours through it. “Either a window is light, or it is wood and glass, but it is never just a window. So are icons...” And if an icon really meets its purpose (and is not just a painted board), then it opens up the supersensible ideas themselves for direct, immediate contemplation, and makes visions of the ideal heavenly world “almost publicly accessible.” 667 Father Paul turns from Gehenna to another, opposite extreme case, when the “energy of the Image of God” shines through the entire empirical personality and the spiritual essence becomes manifest in man. Then in man the eternal meaning, or face, is contemplated, in Greek called an idea in the sense of the word in which Plato used it. 668 This face, as a “record” of another reality, is “cleared” by the icon painter on the canvas. 669 In the church in front of the icons, “we stand face to face before the Platonic world of ideas” 670 and these ideas became the saints themselves, who are not accidentally, not metaphorically, but (as Father Paul wants to show) in an ontological sense, called “angels in the flesh.” 671 Face is “the purest manifestation of spiritual form, freed from all layers and temporary shells.” 672 “But the face is, in essence, a name”, since “in its essence there is an icon. only the face,” and “the essence of the icon will be if the name of the saint is written on a piece of paper” (record of Father Paul, 1912). 673 On the other hand, the Image of God in man is his ideal personality and his Guardian Angel. And “Guardian Angel is the name.” 674 Thus (it must be noted and emphasized again), the Image of God, the name and the Guardian Angel are different names for the same reality - Plato’s idea of ​​man, in the Platonic sense of its supra-individual, superhuman (if we mean empirical man) character. Indeed, already in the student course work of 1907. Florensky cites the “universal” idea that a name is an “eternal mystical principle”, reflected in the individuals who wear it “like the sun in dewdrops.” Names do not belong to individuals, but “they belong to the name, for the name has a higher reality than the individuals who bear it.” 675 In the same year, in the publication of the Christian magazine published in Sergiev Posad by the then rector of the MDA 676, he brings together the concepts of the Guardian Angel and the “purified spiritual center” of a person, 677 and already being in the priesthood, congratulating V.A. in 1912. Kozhevnikova on “Angel Day”, congratulates him on the day of celebrating the “best part” of his personality. “...For I,” writes Fr. Paul, “according to his provincial superstition, is inclined to see in the “Angel” of this day not the Guardian Angel, the guardian of your soul, and not your patron saint, but your hypostatic, Platonic Name, your logos spermatikos, the mystical center of your personality (my italics - N.P.).” 678 About the same thing. Paul speaks in private conversations, offering the second (after the image of the sparkling sun in the dewdrops) 679 wonderful image of the connection between the name and its bearers: “The Day of the Angel is the Day of the Name. We celebrate the Name. All who bear the same name are the berries of one bunch of grapes (my italics - N.P.), and the saint we celebrate is only the best representative of this bunch.” 680 To the question: “How then does everyone have a separate angel?” - O. Paul answers: “No, not separate. But at the same time, separate. In general, the nature of spirits cannot be divided in the same way as we are, into separate and non-separate. They are both. Here we enter the world of Plato’s ideas (my italics – N.P.).” 681 But here we also - and first of all - enter into the ontology of the “Pillar”, where in Eternity there exists (pre-exists in relation to the empirical temporal world) a consubstantial plurality of “lovers in God, and the Self is one and the same with the other Self and, at the same time, different from it.” 682 These ideal selves, in connection with the “personalistic” terminology used in The Pillar, can sometimes seem like a kind of individual property of each personality unfolding in the empirics. 683 But in general this is the same “world of spirits”, meaning for Fr. Paul Plato's “world of ideas”, in which the question of individuality should not be raised. “Name,” writes Fr. Paul, - is assessed by the Church as a type, as a spiritual concrete norm of personal existence, as an idea, and the saint - as its best exponent, who has made his empirical existence transparent so that through him the noblest light of this name shines on us. And yet the name is ontologically first, and its bearer, even a saint, is second. The Lord himself, who had not yet been conceived on earth, was prepared from eternity with the name brought by the Angel. Moreover, people (my italics – N.P.).” 684 And if we look at Fr. Paul as a defender of name-glorification, then in the corresponding places of his works we will see confirmation that in relation to God Himself he is focused primarily on the Name. In this approach, the essence of prayer lies, first of all, not in the turning of “I” to “You,” and not even in that “mechanism” that Fr. Paul spoke in one of his lectures on “Philosophy of Worship” in 1922. There about. Paul, in strict accordance with the main name-glorifying intuition, points out that the prayerful “call is placing oneself face to face before the Called One, and therefore the Called One before oneself ... (emphasis mine - N.P.).” 685 This (as noted in the polemical literature of the early twentieth century) 686 is precisely a “mechanism” that makes God dependent on man and actually makes God a duty, a necessity, to be present and act in each of His invocations, made according to human free will. But in this “mechanism” the Invoked One Himself still comes first, before Whom the person praying stands “face to face.” In a purely name-glorifying lecture “On the Name of God” (1921), Fr. Paul says that “in prayer we give the body for the manifestation of the Name of God. We deign - let it be done according to Your word...” All that is required from a person is the “consent” to give himself into an instrument for the action of the Name of God, to become a favorable environment in which the Name of the Called One can act. 687 And although the central name-glorifying thesis - “The Name of God is God Himself”, of course, does not separate the Name of God from God (as a Person), but in this case the main attention is focused on the Name. All the immediacy of the appeal of the human “I” to the Divine “Thou” 688 is somehow suddenly lost, and instructions are given that prayer must be performed in a certain “environment”: either a person makes himself a favorable environment for the action of the Name, then the Name itself becomes the environment where human petitions are made. For example, correcting the translation of the Gospel text from John 14:13 and offering to read: “if ye ask Me in My Name,” Fr. Paul conveys the meaning of this verse this way: the petition must be “in My name, as in My midst”; one must enter “in the Name of Jesus Christ, into the sphere of the Name of Jesus Christ, into direct contact with it,” 689 i.e. with the Name. Thus, the Name, as a superhuman reality, is unambiguously primary even in relation to the historical personality of the God-man, and Fr. Paul, starting by pointing out the “lack of ontology in our worldview,” when “we ... constantly forget what is genuine and what is secondary in the appearance,” then, as the lecture progresses, he says: “Christianity is the preaching of the Name of Christ and the Gospel, a call to confess the Name of Christ. And we replace this confession of the Name with the confession of Christ Himself.” 690 If the Name of Christ (“Jesus”) is Christ Himself, then why does Father Paul need to compare the confession of the Name and the confession of Christ Himself? The answer follows from Florensky's ontology and anthropology: The name is primary in relation to its bearers. In his later works, most of which were originally prepared as lectures, Fr. Paul makes almost no references and thus does not make it possible to find out on what specific grounds he was convinced that his teaching about the name was not only “universal” but also ecclesiastical in nature. When we turn to the church patristic sources themselves on onomatology, we encounter first of all the polemical speeches of two brothers - St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory of Nyssa - against Eunomius. This polemic of the 4th century. (between 365 and 385) took place in the general context of the Arian disputes, 691 but at the same time it raised the question of the meaning and origin of names in general. And it is characteristic that nothing fundamentally new was said here regarding the already known positions recorded in Plato’s dialogue “Cratylus”. “Some power higher than human,” says Cratylus, “established the first names for things, so that they must certainly be correct” (Cratil. 438c), i.e. express the very essence of things. Another participant in the dialogue, Hermogenes, believes that all names are subjective and conditional, and Socrates takes a middle position: a name cannot adequately express a thing, it is an “imitation”, an interpretation of the ideal essence of a thing. A name is assigned to a thing by the legislator - “nomothet” - or the master of names - “demiurgos” - who creates names according to the model of eidos, the idea of ​​a name (Cratil. 388e-390a). But at the same time, the founder of names must learn from a dialectician who has knowledge (Cratil. 390sd) in order to create names not according to his own arbitrariness, but in accordance with the objective nature of a thing. 692 When in front of St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory of Nyssa was faced with the task of showing that not even a single created thing is completely incomprehensible in its essence (and even more so God); they actually reproduced precisely this Platonic concept (which Socrates came up with in Plato), pointing out that the name does not arise from the thing itself as something, according to Eunomius, objective, originally put into it by God. The name is “attached”, “invented” (St. Gregory of Nyssa) to things by man, but not as a result of some conditional agreements between people, but on the basis of some known real properties of these things. 693 Thus, the name reflects objective reality, but only to the extent that the human mind was able to penetrate into the “own of things.” In such a point of view, there is absolutely no “objectification” of the name and there is no need to pose the question itself regarding what is ontologically primary – a person or a name. And it should be noted that this point of view directly follows from the biblical story about the primordial Adam, who names all living beings (Gen. 2:19–20). God creates them “from the earth,” but He Himself does not give them names that, so to speak, would completely “rigidly” express their essence, but affirms those names that Man considered necessary to give them - to the extent of his knowledge of their essence and to the extent of his own necessity. Therefore St. John Chrysostom sees in this story of Holy Scripture not only an indication of the “wisdom” of the primordial Adam, who “gave appropriate names to everyone,” but also evidence that God gives everything that is named, let’s say, for the personal use of man, at his disposal, as created specifically for him. The fact that Adam gives names to living beings, according to the thought of St. John Chrysostom, a “symbol” (in Russian translation “sign”) of his power over them appears, just as in ancient times the slave owner changed the names of newly purchased slaves, thus placing a “symbol” of his power over them. At the very beginning of the course essay of 1906. Florensky reduces the three points of view on the name in the dialogue “Cratylus” to the confrontation of only two opposing opinions - the “Heraclitians” represented by Cratylus and the “sophists” represented by Hermogenes. At the same time, Adam is presented as a “legislator” in Cratylus’s interpretation: he only “composes”, “puts in sounds and syllables” the names that things have already received “from nature”. 694 In other words, he only reveals what is already objectively given, without introducing anything from himself. All of his creativity consists only in investing the open with an external form, i.e. This is the same “symbol creation” that Fr. Paul will speak in the 1917 lectures. (See first of all the lecture “Symbolism of Visions”). The middle position of Socrates, and consequently of Plato himself, 695 in the work of Florensky the student was ignored as special and was partially classified as even opposite to the position of Cratylus. The latter, in turn, is defined as a “folk worldview” and “primordial tradition”, 696 confirmed, as shown in the essay on a large amount of factual material, by all the experience of the most ancient magic of all peoples. Perhaps the strongest evidence of the highest ontological significance of names is found in such facts, for example: “... the greatest power over a person can be obtained through his name...”; 697 “...the more powerful, the greater the personality itself, the more powerful, independent (my italics - N.P.) and more important is its name and, therefore, the more power that the one who has taken possession of his name acquires over the personality, over the bearer of the name (and indirectly over all being)”; 698 name is used as a tool for summoning its bearer, including against his will (spell). In this case, “the name protrudes noticeably from its bearer, since it, being brought into activity by a third, has a decisive effect on its bearer. This is proof of the independent power of the name” 699, etc. In the lecture “Universal Human Roots of Idealism” (1908), Plato is already classified as a “Heraclitian” and placed in the general context of folk magic. 700 Florensky supplements his impressive description of the feeling of unity with nature, which is required for magical operations, with the following experimental data: “The impenetrability of a thing comes from the inability to look inside it, into its innermost core. The more deeply we comprehend a thing, the more we can do. For those who know the hidden names of things, nothing is impregnable. Nothing can stand before the one who knows the names...” And at the same time, “a person’s personal name is an almost necessary means of knowing him and working magic over him.” 701 Again, from magical experiments it turns out that the “common belief of all peoples” was compiled, according to which “the naming of a name = presence.” 702 For such an “experienced” worldview it is completely impossible to imagine any genuine, internal contact with a thing or with a being without knowing the name and without pronouncing the name. Only through a name can one gain access to the innermost depths of a thing or being, and the doctrine of the name as the highest ontological structure is based on this. The universality of magical ideas about the “power” of a name is easily confirmed by examples from the Old Testament, but it seems no coincidence that Chapter XII of Florensky’s course work “The Mystical Meaning of the “Name of God” in the New Testament and in Patristic Writing” remained unwritten. In history, according to the conclusions of Florensky the student, there were turns when the father instead of the mother became the bearer of the family name (i.e., the transition from “matriarchy” to “patriarchy”), but at the same time, as before, “there was in the true and unconditional sense only one name, the only one. As an eternal, unchanging, single Platonic idea, it shone in the “holy clarity of heaven” (Sophocles. Antigone, 879), reflected in individuals as in drops of dew.” Christianity, having turned the entire ancient consciousness upside down, elevated the individual above the clan, made the personal name a true name, 703, but such a change does not introduce anything new in relation to ontology. The eternal and unconditional reality of the name remains the same, and only in human history is it attributed either to the clan on the mother’s side, then to the clan on the father’s side, then, finally, to an individual human personality, when it is recognized as valuable in itself. In his subsequent works, especially those written in the context of the name-glorious polemics, Fr. Paul, speaking about a name as an ontological object and such an ontological reality in which the very essence of what is named is revealed and appears, also finds all the main and decisive arguments in favor of this point of view in the evidence of magical practice. “Names have always and everywhere,” he writes in 1920, “have constituted the most significant instrument of magic, and there are no magical techniques, except perhaps the most basic ones, that can do without personal names.” 704 There is no fundamental difference between spells and prayer in this – ontological – sense: in the intention to pronounce a spell or words of prayer, “contact of the word with the person is established. and the main thing is done: the rest will go by itself, due to the fact that the word itself is already a living organism, having its own structure and its own energies.” What the Christian ascetic tradition considers the most important thing in prayer is attention to words and “feeling” them, 705 here can only serve as an auxiliary factor for “clearing the clogged ducts” of the word and is not an absolute necessity. 706 In this kind of consequences of the teachings of Fr. Paul about the name and about the word in general, his disagreement with Christian ascetic practice becomes especially obvious. If names and words are the highest ontological realities, having a super-empirical character and a super-empirical meaning, then they - equally in a spell and in a prayer - should not necessarily need the work of human consciousness. Only by his free will does a person initiate activity in the world of the super-empirical reality of a word or name, and they act in accordance with their ontological structure, independent of the empirical person. It should be noted that the belief in this property of the Name of God became perhaps the weakest position of the name-glorists in the polemics of the early twentieth century, the position that allowed for the possibility of their most successful criticism. “Although unconsciously you call on the Name of the Lord Jesus,” wrote Fr. Anthony Bulatovich, “you will still have Him in Your Name and with all His Divine properties.” Moreover. One can even consciously call on the Savior “as a man,” i.e. in fact, without faith in the Divinity of Christ, the name “Jesus” will still contain “all God.” 707 It must be stated that in this matter Fr. Pavel completely agreed with Bulatovich, and could not disagree, since this is a direct consequence of his own teaching. “Whoever and with whatever intentions calls on the Name of God,” says his lecture in 1922, “he still directs his call in the right direction, to God, and not somewhere into the void.” At least “with just my lips,” says Fr. Paul, even in delirium, in a dream, the spoken Name of God is certainly teleological: “The Name of God, even in the mouth of a wicked person, is what it is – directed towards God.” 708 Father Paul was well aware of the polemical arguments that were ready to bring such a position to the brink of “blasphemy” and “magical superstition.” Even in the very first review of Schemamonk Hilarion’s book “On the Caucasus Mountains” (with which, in fact, the name-glorifying controversy began), Schemamonk Chrysanthus (1909) drew attention to the danger of attributing “mighty and miraculous power” to the very words of the prayer. In fact, he emphasized, this power comes from God, and the spoken words-names serve only “to attract the Lord Jesus Christ to us, to close unity with Him.” If the words in prayer are pronounced without any feeling or attention, then not only do they not produce a gracious effect, but also serve, in the opinion of Schemamonk Chrysanthus, as a reason for Divine anger “at such soulless prayer.” 709 In 1913, in a document compiled by the archbishop. Sergius (Stragorodsky) Synodal Epistle, condemning the name-glorifiers, among other things, said the same thing: if God is inseparably inherent in His Name, then He is somehow dependent on man, and even moreover, is directly at human disposal. “It only costs a person,” writes the archbishop. Sergius, on behalf of the Synod, - (even without faith, even unconsciously) pronounce the name of God - and God is, as it were, forced to be with His grace with this person and do what is characteristic of Him (my italics - N.P.).” 710 With all the theological costs of the Synodal Epistle (as well as the review of Schemamon. Chrysanthus) 711, it must be admitted that in this matter it quite adequately reflected the patristic prayer experience, which accepts only a conscious appeal to God. Much later, in 1938, in correspondence with Metropolitan. Veniamin (Fedchenkov), Metropolitan. Sergius (Stragorodsky) recognizes many of the shortcomings of the Synodal Message of 1913, but notes that it solved one of the main tasks facing the Church at that time - to show that “Bulatovich’s dogma can be understood extremely mechanically (as some people do), and it will then inevitably lead to a perversion of spiritual life.” 712 Removing consciousness from participation in prayer with the emphasis on repeating words and invoking the Name of God in the first place can be considered a danger to spiritual life only with a very specific ontology, when words and names are considered only as “tools” or means for a person’s ascent to God, which in themselves do not have any unconditional meaning. And on the contrary, if words and names are recognized as a higher ontological reality than man (with his empirical consciousness), then “name-fighting” fears themselves become extremely harmful for spiritual life, which is imagined in a completely different way. This is a conversation about the same subject on completely different planes, in completely different ontological and anthropological systems. Repeatedly in the patristic writings one can find instructions that are completely unacceptable in the system of Fr. Paul: oral prayer is given only to help the mind. At high degrees, not only is there no need to say the prayer orally, but it is also impossible. 713 The words of St. Rev. are often quoted. Isaac the Syrian: “Silence is the secret of the future age, and words are the tools of this world,” 714 and “silence” is also understood in the sense of the highest prayer work. So, for example, Rev. Neil of Sinai, confirming the fact known in ascetic experience, when “one utterance (my italics - N.P.) of the name of God puts demons to flight,” 715 at the same time considers even attentive, conscious, verbal prayer pronounced with faith to be a low degree of spiritual activity. “There is the highest prayer of the perfect,” he says, “a certain admiration of the mind. When. he approaches God, Who sees the disposition of the heart, open like a book covered in writing, and expressing its will in silent (emphasis added - N.P.) images...” 716. Here is a perfect and impassable “watershed” between prayer and incantation, not found in the ontology of Fr. Paul: you can pray without words, and even without mentally pronouncing the Name of God. “Don’t think,” writes St. Ephraim the Syrian, “as if without oral pronunciation you do not call on Him, but remember that He is a knower of the heart and looks at the heart, and call on Him in your heart.” But “even if you do not pronounce the name of God in your heart, but only remember God, then this is even more of an invocation (my italics - N.P.) - and it is enough to help you.” 717 Similar considerations about the patristic understanding of prayer were given in the process of the name-glorifying polemics, 718 but they did not receive their discussion in the works of Fr. Pavel, who also moved away from Bulatovich when he began to insist that in names and words the sound itself produced by a person has no ontological meaning. 719 Also, primarily based on the experiences of folk magic, and not patristic experience, Fr. Paul brings together such realities as a person’s name and his Guardian Angel. They come together because both of them in folk magic are of a superhuman nature. From a review of the magical practice of summoning superhuman beings Florensky in 1906. concluded that the name is “relatively independent of its bearer. a being parallel to man, which simultaneously represents its host and influences him.” 720 Almost the same idea is heard in the lecture of Fr. Paul in 1921: “...The name controls me, although this requires my permission,” 721 and in the work of 1926: “The name predetermines the personality and outlines the ideal boundaries of her life,” gives her certain limits, only within which she is free. This is also the protective function of the name: “The name really directs the life of the individual along a certain channel and does not allow the flow of life processes to take place anywhere.” 722 But a special philosophical and theological work substantiating the identification of the name, “personal idea” and the Guardian Angel of man, promised in 1906, by Fr. Pavel never showed up. 723 The connection of these superhuman (superempirical) realities with the Image of God, as well as the objectification of the “Image of God” itself, are direct consequences of the statement of Fr. Paul of the pre-existence of objectified ideas of creation in Divine Eternity. But the interpretation of the Image of God as an object, as the eternal root of all empirical creation, also, it seems, does not find justification in patristic literature, despite all the diversity of opinions that exist in it on the issue of understanding the Image of God in man. This diversity has the same property as the difference in judgments regarding the human structure, but at the same time one important circumstance attracts attention. Almost all definitions regarding the Image of God in man are given by St. The fathers compile a list of qualities that are inherent, of course, only to man and by which in man one can recognize a certain “kinship” with God, a special “closeness” to Him by his very nature. And first of all, such “closeness” is revealed by the spiritual nature of man itself, which, as shown above, is denied in various ways in the ontology of St. Ignatius Brianchaninov and Fr. Paul of Florensky and, quite convincingly, on the basis of St. Fathers, we were able to confirm St. Theophan the Recluse. Very often in patristic literature it is said that the image of God in a person is his soul (for example: St. Gregory the Theologian. Dogmatic chants. 7, 4; St. Macarius the Great. Homily 1, 12; 724 St. Maximus the Confessor. Theological chapters 1, 1 1; 725 St. Simeon the New Theologian. Divine hymns. 34) 726 or mind (eg: St. John of Damascus. Exact exposition... 3, 18). 727 The same Fathers sometimes specify, pointing to spiritual ones. qualities, manifestations of the soul or mind. Yes, Rev. Macarius the Great (Conversation 15, 21); 728 prp. Maximus the Confessor (Theological Chapters. 1:11); 729 prp. John of Damascus (Exact exposition. 2:12) and others see a characteristic feature of God-likeness in man in his free will; St. John Chrysostom (Conversations on the book of Genesis. 8, 3; 9, 3), the same St. John of Damascus (Exact exposition. 2:11), St. Simeon the New Theologian (Divine Hymns. 43), 730 St. Cyril of Jerusalem (Against Anthropomorphites) and others - in the dominant, dominionary position that man occupies over all earthly creatures. St. Cyril of Jerusalem, pointing to the soul as the image of the Creator, lists its properties that are inherent in it, obviously, precisely as the Divine Image: it is free, beautiful, immortal, reasonable and incorruptible. By the grace of the Creator, she has “the power to do whatever she wants” (Catechetical Word 4:18). 731 The same St. Fathers, these definitions are sometimes supplemented by others, and sometimes, due to the indissoluble connection in man of soul and body, the concepts of the Image of God extend to the human body itself 732. Moreover, when, for example, St. John Chrysostom (Conversations on the book of Genesis 8. 3–4) denies the creation of the human body in the Image of God, he seeks to suppress the possibility of an anthropomorphic understanding of God, and when, for example, St. Irenaeus of Lyon says that human flesh was created in the Image of God; he wants to show that the whole man is God-shaped, and not any individual component of him. “For by the hands of the Father,” he writes in the 5th book “Against Heresies”, “i.e. through the Son and the Spirit, man, and not a part of man, is created in the likeness of God. The soul and spirit can be parts of a person, but not a person: a perfect person is the union and union of the soul, which receives the Spirit of the Father, with the flesh, which is created in the image of God” (Against heresies. V 6, 1). 733 We find the same thought in St. Gregory Palamas, according to which “the name man is not applied separately to the soul or to the body, but to both together, for they were created together in the image of God.” Moreover, according to St. Gregory Palamas, precisely because in man the soul has the ability to animate the sensory body and control it, man is more created “in the image of God than the angels... This is the ability that angels, incorporeal spirits, do not have, although they are closer to God due to the simplicity of their spiritual nature” (PG. 150, 11451148, 1361c). 734 It is not difficult to see that the discussion about the image of God in man in patristic literature is in a completely different language than that of Fr. Paul; this reality is considered in a completely different ontology, in which man is not involved in the image of God as his highest structure, but rather man himself, in all his composition, is the image of God. “Immerse yourself in yourself,” writes St. Gregory of Nyssa, - look closely in your soul, as in some kind of mirror, understand its structure, and you will see yourself (my italics - N.P.) created in the image and likeness of God" 735. A certain common denominator for all patristic definitions of the image of God in man can also be found in St. Gregory of Nyssa, who says, firstly, that this concept includes the totality of all the benefits given by the Creator to man, and secondly, that, being a reflection of the unknowable Prototype, the image itself must also be completely unknowable and, therefore, cannot be given an exact definition. 736 But what we can say about this, according to St. Gregory of Nyssa, should also sound like this: “One of all [man] needs to be free and not subject to any natural power, but to decide autocratically as it seems to him” (On the structure of man. XVI). 737 "Given" and "givenness" Representing “the living unity of infinity and finitude, eternity and temporality, unconditionality and perishability, necessity and chance, the knot of the ideal world and the real world” 738 people in anthropology Fr. Pavel Florensky has both the “givenness” and the “givenness” of the ultimate goal to which he is called, i.e. goals of deification. But this is not an exclusive property of man, but a reflection of the very reality of the dual existence of all creation. In a lecture prepared at the very end of 1919, Fr. Paul, already pointing out the mutual mirror correspondence of the two worlds, 739 says how one can approach the comprehension of the antinomy “givenness - givenness”: “By faith we see this world not from here, but from there, we look at it with the eyes of eternity, or, if you like, we see not the world, more precisely, not ourselves together with the world, but it and our mirror reflection.” In matters of faith, according to Fr. Paul, it is first necessary to deny the reality of this world in order to then affirm the reality of the other world. But the most significant thing is that Fr. Paul notes here the presence of two points of view: by faith we look from another world and comprehend its givenness, which in turn, when viewed from this world, appears as given. 740 In other words, what is already given to us ideally, we must achieve in our “real,” empirical world. We go to ourselves, to where we already have (and have always had from Eternity) our connection with God. The paradox (or “antinomy”) of the anthropology of Fr. Paul is that in it, if a person does not come to himself, he will objectively disappear as a person. Arguing, against historical Platonism and in agreement with Christian anthropology, man as an integral being, consisting of soul and body, Fr. Paul nevertheless “tears” it on another plane – in the realities of Time and Eternity. All these and related features of Florensky’s anthropology suggest corresponding specific features in the interpretation of the Fall and the final restoration of man. A certain process occurs empirically and does not cover the whole person; Only his “variable” component “falls” and “restores” in a person, on which, however, the entire objective reality of man as such depends. In one of his earliest works (“On the Symbols of Infinity”, 1904), later transferred in his main ideas in addition to the “Pillar”, Florensky brings human reality closer to actual infinity, i.e. with the mathematical concept of a constant that is “greater than any finite constant, no matter how great we take it.” 741 There, with reference to Goethe, it is argued that “closed infinity” is more suitable for man than the starry sky: man is complete, while the starry sky gives the image of the possibility of “rushing further and further, never being able to produce a synthesis and calm down on the whole.” 742 This was Florensky’s initial intuition, which he reflected in “Memoirs.” But at the same time, in the same “Memoirs”, and with a much stronger emphasis, the feeling of human imperfection in comparison with Nature is presented. And already at the very beginning of his systematic theological education, Florensky expresses this “antinomy” in terms of the Image and Likeness of God in man. In his work, “On Types of Growth,” he wrote immediately after completing the first course of the MDA (summer 1905), he speaks of the need to recognize “for the individual, in addition to the actual infinity, also the potential infinity.” “Expressing in Theological terms,” writes Florensky, “let’s say: a person has not only the Image of God... but also the Likeness of God... the possibility of endless revelation in real discovery; not only the givenness of infinity, but also the infinity of the given.” The process of “change for a conditional personality” is defined as the gradual disclosure of an “unconditional personality,” and such “development” of a single human personality is called the process of “its deification, in the language of Christian asceticism.” 743 Subsequently, Fr. Paul will adhere to this theological interpretation given back in his student years of the “fixed” and “variable” components of man. “In the Bible,” he writes in 1922, “the Image of God differs from the Likeness of God, and church tradition has long explained that the former should mean something actual - the ontological gift of God, the spiritual basis of man as such, while the latter should mean potency, the ability of spiritual perfection, the power to shape the entire empirical personality, in all its composition, in the Image of God, i.e. the opportunity to embody the Image of God, our hidden heritage, in life, in personality.” 744 Thus, a person appears to be an actual infinity due to the presence in him of the Image of God (i.e., as was clarified above, a superempirical, ideal, originally deified, eternal root) and a potential infinity due to the assignment of the Divine likeness. But the predetermination of Godlikeness consists in the deification of the entire empirical composition of man, in the transformation and design of it by the Image of God, and therefore potential infinity in this case is not a “bad” infinity, deprived of any possibility of “producing a synthesis and settling on the whole.” The deification of the empirical personality - this “vital self-disclosure of a spiritual being” 745 - is its introduction to Eternity as to the “super-finite” limit of its improvement, since “every potential infinity already presupposes the existence of actual infinity as its super-finite limit, every infinite progress already presupposes the existence of an infinite goal of progress, every infinite improvement requires the recognition of infinite perfection.” 746 The most significant thing here is that the “infinite goal of progress” and “infinite perfection”, which make possible the potential infinity of the “growth” of the empirical personality, is not the “actual infinity” of God Himself, but the actual infinity of the Image of God - a deified created object residing in Divine Eternity. And the actual deification of the empirical personality, its introduction to Eternity is only the gradual revelation in it of this supra-empirical and transpersonal object. The attribution of the “Image of God” to the eternal human noumenon, and the “likeness of God” to the empirical phenomenon of man is a consequence of the dual ontology and anthropology of Fr. Pavel. Metaphysical processes occur here not with the whole person, but only with his empirical phenomenon, and this process is “circular”: the Fall must be replaced by restoration, which at the same time is the deification of the empirical personality, its achievement of the likeness of God. In this aspect of anthropology, Fr. Paul, it seems, its specific difference from both versions of the teaching about man, presented in the patristic heritage, becomes especially obvious. In the first of these options, man appears to have been originally created both in the image and likeness of God, as a result of which his restoration from the fall and his achievement of God-likeness is nothing more than a return to the original, obviously deified state. This option is an exception in the patristic heritage and is represented mainly by the teaching of St. Gregory of Nyssa (On virginity. 12; 747 On the structure of man. XVII). 748 There are cases of apparently contradictory judgments, such as, for example, those of Rev. Macarius Vel., when in some places he says that with the gift of the heavenly Spirit “... it is necessary for us ... to restore ourselves to primitive purity” (Homily 5, 5) 749 or “enter where we came from” (Conversation 34, 7), 750 and in others he states that “Christians are made higher than the first Adam” (Conversation 15, 37) 751 and that “By the power of the Spirit and as a result of spiritual rebirth, man comes to the measure of the first Adam, and becomes even higher than him, because he becomes deified (my italics - N.P.)” (Conversation 26, 2). 752 But mostly St. The Fathers agree on the second point of view, 753 according to which man, created in the Image of God, had yet to achieve God-likeness, but this process was interrupted by the Fall. Therefore, acquiring the likeness of God is an ascension to a degree higher than the primordial Adam, i.e. This is no longer a “circular” process, but a kind of “spiral” process. In fact, considering a person in two realities - “temporary” and “eternal”, the concept of Fr. Paul forms a kind of “intermediate” anthropology between these two options, when likeness to God is not considered an original gift, but the process of human restoration is “circular”, heading towards the originally deified state. And here, it seems, there is a need to note those circumstances that introduce the concept of o. Paul about the primordial deification of the ideal creature in a Christological context. In the patristic tradition, the becoming of a person “God by grace” is conceived as a completely new gift to human nature, which has its cause - speaking in terms of the ontology of Fr. Paul is not a metaphysical act in Divine Eternity, but the Incarnation of God accomplished in the empirical world. No matter how we try to comprehend the reason for the Incarnation itself - whether it occurred only because of the Fall of man or was “planned” by the Divine economy even if Adam had not fallen, 754 - we must first of all keep in mind the absolutely incredible fact of the birth, life, death and resurrection in our empirical world of the God-man. And so, St. Irenaeus of Lyons says: “... if the Word became a man, then so that people could become gods” (Against heresies. V, Introduction; PG 7, 1035). 755 St. writes about the same thing. Athanasius the Great: The Word “was made man, so that we might be deified” (Sermon on the Incarnation of God the Word and His Coming to Us in the Flesh, 54) 756 and also the deification of man depends on the Incarnation of God. Gregory the Theologian. “The Lord,” he writes, “was incarnate and the common man became God, in order to unite with God and become one with Him, but moreover, so that I could become God as much as He became a man (my italics - N.P.)” (Conversation 29, 19; PG 36, 100A). 757 According to St. Gregory of Nyssa, “God mixed with our nature, so that, thanks to this mixing with the Divine, our nature became deified” (Large Catechism, 25; PG. 44.65) and “God... mixed with corruptible nature, so that, thanks to communion with the Divine, humanity at the same time became deified” (Large Catechism, 37; PG. 44. 97B). 758 “God is the Word,” writes St. Maximus the Confessor, - ... the Son of God and the Father, for this purpose he became Man and the Son of Man, in order to make men gods and sons of God” (Chapters on Theology. 2:25); 759 “Let us surrender ourselves entirely to the Lord in order to receive Him entirely. Through Him we will become gods, for for this reason He became man, being by nature God and Master” (Sermon on the Ascetic Life, 43). 760 True Christians, according to St. Simeon the New Theologian, will become like Christ - “people by nature and gods by grace.” “We are Your sons by grace and we become like You - gods...” With the coming of Christ, earthly birth from Adam can be replaced by a heavenly birth - from the God-man. And since the parent is God, St. Simeon in one of his “Hymns”, then those who are born are gods by adoption. 761 Numerous patristic testimonies leave no doubt that the gift of deification, being a direct consequence of the historical work of Christ, is a completely new, supernatural state for the whole person. 762 Christ does not return the lost paradise to man, but lifts him higher, to where Adam has not yet been. 763 In this regard, the almost general idea of ​​the patristic tradition was perfectly conveyed by the Russian saints, with whose works Fr. Paul. “In Adam,” writes St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, “we were expelled from paradise, but through Christ’s suffering we will return to heaven, not earthly, but heavenly.” “You were expelled from paradise through your sin; Instead of heaven, He gives you heaven with His grace (my italics – N.P.).” 764 “In vain,” writes St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, - the plan and attempt of the forefathers were murderous (i.e. “to be like the gods.” - N.P.): God Himself teaches His Divinity to humanity, who desired Divinity, having become incarnate from the Virgin...” 765 Having become human, God is His image, i.e. man, “recovered from his fall, restored to his former glory; elevated him to a glory incomparably higher than that which was assigned to him at creation. magnified His image more than at creation (my italics. - N.P.)" 766 Speaking about the “living union with God” and the infusion of God into man as the final goal of human existence in this world, St. Theophan the Recluse also notes, undoubtedly from his spiritual experience: “What this good consists of is incomprehensible to man. He himself would not have even thought about such a height.” 767 It flares up in the depths of the heart of the deified, according to St. Macarius the Great, a certain inner, deepest and most intimate light. And in the Divine light, the spiritual person recognizes his “true Friend,” the sweetest “Bridegroom, Lord.” “Doors are opened for him, and he enters into many abodes, and as he enters, the doors to another hundred abodes are opened again, and he is enriched; and to the extent that he is enriched, new miracles are shown to him to the same extent. As a son and heir, he is entrusted with that which cannot be expressed by human nature, or pronounced with lips and tongue (my italics - N.P.)” (Conversation 8, 6). 768 The first experience of uncreated grace brings a person into extreme amazement, and this is the best evidence of the supernatural nature of the adoring gift: a person for the first time encounters a completely new reality for him. 769 It is impossible not to notice that if in such an experience there was only a meeting of empirical consciousness with a deified ideal structure in the depths of the human being itself, then something similar to what is described by Fr. Paul from his own feelings: revelation coming from “great depth” appears in consciousness as alien to him and at the same time as “cherished,” dear and well known. 770 But St. Simeon the New Theologian, in his description of man’s first experience of contemplating the Divine Light, draws the image of a prisoner born in a dark prison, having no idea about the light of the Sun, and suddenly seeing this light through a crack in the roof of the prison. “Soul,” writes St. Simeon, - everyone comes into admiration and stands amazed at the vision of this new and glorious miracle, which she had never seen before.” To those who have not experienced such a state, it will seem that the contemplator has “lost his temper” and is in a kind of unconscious state. But St. Simeon wants to correct this mistake: the contemplator is actually completely focused on himself and is amazed at his new “unthinkable experience.” But then, gradually succeeding in spiritual life, a person no longer knows admiration and amazement, but becomes accustomed to the constant experience of the Divine reality in which he lives (Homily 45:10). 771 This is the same conscious communication with God about which St. Simeon never tires of witnessing in all his creations; This is the development of a new “uncreated” life, and is by no means “remembering” according to Plato. Citing this evidence in his 1915 work. (“Not Nepshchev’s admiration”), Fr. Paul quite rightly characterizes it as one of the patristic variations written “on the theme of Plato’s myth of the cave,” 772 and at the same time, in his work “The Meaning of Idealism” (1915), he presents his interpretation of this myth (Republic VII, 514–520) as an indication of the presence of an “ideal” depth of our visible world, its “4-dimensional reality.” “Like shadows,” writes Fr. Paul, “flat diagrams and projections of things relate to bodies, and so here: the three-dimensional world - to the true one,” Plato pronounces the secret of cave contemplations. And she leads her succession from the Dictian Grotto in Crete - the refuge of the newborn Zeus. The secrets of the caves then unexpectedly underwent philosophical research, including Schelling and Goethe. But Ideas, the Mother of all things, live in the depths, i.e. in the direction that is the depth of our three-dimensional world." 773 One very characteristic feature of Florensky’s “mysticism” has already been noted above, 774 to which he himself drew attention in his “Memoirs”: he was attracted by all kinds of dark places (caves, dungeons, long corridors, tunnels, etc.), perceived as symbols of that “primary darkness in which everything that exists was born.” 775 In man, according to Fr. Paul, the same deep, mysterious and “dear” depths of existence are found. 776 As a prologue to understanding the entire cycle “At the Watersheds of Thought” Fr. Paul writes his letter V. Rozanov dated May 20, 1913, where his innermost experiences are revealed: “Get into yourself - and you will see vast vaults. Below, leave your fear, go down into the cave. The hearts of all beings pulsate in these depths. Here, from darkness and rays, all the things of the world are born. Here, in the womb of the earth, stellar currents are collected, congealing into precious stones. It is here, under the cave vaults of the heart, that the Morning Star shines.” 777 To the indications known in church literature about the depth of the human heart, here is added a vivid feeling that the Divine reality, revealed in the depths of being, is common to man and all other creatures in Nature. The “Morning Star” - an image taken from the Revelation of John the Theologian (Rev. 2:26-29) and the Epistle of the Apostle Peter (2 Peter 1:19), 778 is experienced, however, not as being given and having to shine, but as already shining, embedded in all hearts, and only for the time being hidden in the darkness of the cave. “A star... differs from a star in glory,” says Fr. Paul regarding 1 Cor. 15:41, - but they are also different - this, however, is all - One Star - the one who said about Himself: I am the root and lineage of David, and the Bright Star and Lucifer (Rev. 22:16)." 779 Father Paul emphasizes that it does not shine only on the “victor” (according to Rev. 2:26), but also flickers and radiates “in the weak and sinful heart.” Describing his pre-dawn walks, he conveys the following sensations: “The Morning Star hung like a drop on the horizon. 780 But the heart knew that this star was trembling not outside it, not in the vault of heaven, but in the inner spaces of the heart itself, expanded to the firmament.” Also in the evening, the Evening Star (the same planet Venus, but in its evening period of visibility) felt “so infinitely distant, shining from the transparent emerald abysses, and so close, entering the heart. And, as before, in the Morning Star, so now, in the Evening Star, the heart loved – Someone.” 781 Here we are witnessing a situation where Fr. Paul takes an extremely important, mysterious image from Holy Scripture and changes the givenness of the reality he designates, which is stated there, to its givenness - in accordance with his personal mystical experience. As in the general outlines of patristic experience, Fr. Paul is completely immersed in himself, but finds what he is looking for without crossing the threshold of the created. He finds the Divine in the very created foundations, which is the mystical “paradigm” of his two-plane, dual existence. One can agree with how Rev. John Meyendorff comments on the famous inspired words of St. Gregory Palamas on the Morning Star: 782 bringing his mind into his heart, the hesychast strives to find this Morning Star, which had already risen there after the arrival of Christ. 783 In Christ and with Christ, beginning with the sacrament of Baptism, man already has within himself an uncreated gift. “Daylight” from 2 Peter 1:18–19 is, according to St. Gregory Palamas, the light that shone on Tabor. And “isn’t it clear,” he exclaims, “that this light now shines in the hearts of the faithful and perfect?” (Triads... 2, 3, 18). 784 The Morning Star really shines in the human heart, but not as a primordial reality common to all beings, but as a gift given to a person renewed in Christ and accepted according to his free will. The fundamental two-dimensionality of the ontology of Fr. Paul, with her original identity of created ideal and Divine existence, does not allow us to reason in terms of gift, does not allow us to consider adoring grace as a reality external to man, which man in all his nature has the power to accept or reject. The meeting with God of the whole man is here replaced by the meeting of empirical man with the Divine reality in the ideal foundation of creation. Father Paul considered it a very serious error, even “the root of all errors,” to consider God as an object external to man. When he used expressions such as, for example, “it is not the soul that approaches God, but [God’s energy] [God] brings to Himself the soul in which it dwells,” 785 this, in the context of his entire ontology and anthropology, in no way meant the coming of God to man “from the outside.” This is the enlightenment of the empirical composition of the human soul with Divine energy flowing as a grace-filled stream from its noumenal center. In a letter to F.D. Samarin regarding the name-glorious problem (May 1913), sent to M. Novoselov and forwarded for response to Florensky, Fr. Paul made wonderful notes and notes, which, among other things, convey in a clear and precise form some of his important anthropological views. In Samarin’s sentence: “The feelings we experience during prayer - repentance, gratitude, tenderness, etc. are caused in us by God Himself and are a feeling of His action on us” Fr. Paul underlined the word “on” with three strokes and wrote on the side: “This “on” is the root of all errors. Not “on”, but “in.” 786 But only at first glance does this decisive “in” convey the general patristic spiritual experience of feeling Divine action precisely within a person and the experience of meeting God not somewhere outside, but in the human heart itself. In order not to multiply examples, we can turn to the conclusions of St. Theophan the Recluse, who studied a large number of patristic texts of ascetic content in the originals and had his own experience of Christian asceticism. 787 Explaining in different places and from different sides the spiritual practice of “mind-heart” prayer, he notes that the spiritual world is revealed only to those who remain “within themselves.” 788 “There is life in the heart, and one must live there. Don't think that this is a matter of perfection. No. This is the work of all who begin to seek the Lord.” “Are you looking for the Lord? - Search, but only in yourself... Find a place in your heart - and talk with the Lord there. This is the waiting room of the Lord's hall! Whoever meets the Lord meets Him there. And He did not appoint any other place for meetings with souls” 789. But from numerous indications of this kind it is impossible to grasp the motive of the constant, original presence of God in the depths of human nature or, which is closer to Fr. Paul, a “passage” into the Divine world that constantly exists in the depths of man. On the contrary, St. Theophan notes that God “enters” (“has the power to enter”) into the heart, gracefully descends “inside a person” in the sacrament of Baptism or Repentance. Before the sacrament of Baptism, “God is still outside of man and man is outside of God, they do not touch, they do not enter into each other.” 790 Another famous Fr. Paul, the author who based his master's thesis (“Orthodox teaching on salvation”) also on the study of a large amount of patristic material, Archimandrite (later archbishop, metropolitan and patriarch) Sergius (Stragorodsky), 791 noted that “man is preparing for the kingdom of God, but this kingdom is inside his soul,” it is only necessary to cleanse it of sin. “Because the Son of God is in you,” Archimandrite quotes. St. Sergius Ephraim the Syrian, then His kingdom is in you. This is the wealth of heaven - in you, if you want it... Enter into yourself, search harder and you will find it without difficulty... Enter into yourself, remain in your heart; for there is God." 792 However, in all these and similar expressions we are not talking about the primordial, and especially not about the fallen man of the pre-Christian era. “Inner death” can also be hidden in the human heart, 793 and Christ comes there in the sacrament of Baptism not according to any established universal law, but according to the free decision of a person who wants to be spiritually reborn, already living in an era when the “work” of the Savior has been realized. In other words, a person “allows” God into himself, 794 but even under this condition, the presence of God in a person was impossible before the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection and Ascension of the Savior. Even already during the earthly life of Christ, according to St. Gregory Palamas, the Divine Light on Tabor enlightened the apostles only from the outside, only through sensual eyes introducing enlightenment into their souls. And only when Christ mixed “Himself through the communion of His holy body with each of the believers,” became “one body with us” and made us “the church of the whole Divinity,” the Tabor Light, “mingling with us and living in us,” began to illuminate us from the inside (Triads... 1, 3, 38). 795 The apostles on Tabor “saw the very grace of the Spirit, which later (my italics - N.P.) took possession of them” (Triads... 3, 3, 9). 796 Before Christ, the Divine Light (and we are always talking about Divine adoring energies) was alien to human nature and its appearance in the Old Testament was terrible and unbearable for creation. Not yet having any “part” with Christ, Saul-Paul was blinded and thrown to the ground by the appearance of the Divine Light (St. Simeon the New Theologian. Homily 57, 1), but Mary Magdalene in the darkness of the night in the empty Holy Sepulcher is already transformed by this light: in it she sees angels and talks with them (St. Gregory Palamas. PG 151, 268AB). 797 St. Irenaeus of Lyons emphasizes the change, so to speak, of the “ontological status” of man in connection with the Incarnation. Man cannot exist without his participation in God. But there is a fullness of participation in eternal, perfect life, to which man became capable only after the Incarnation of the Word. “Having completely turned away from God,” writes St. Irenaeus, man could cease to exist if he had not been transferred by the Creator to the position that St. Irenaeus calls the “symbolic participation” of the perfect life (“Proof of the Apostolic Preaching”). 798 In this state the prophets could only see "the likeness of the splendor of the Lord"; This is how Moses saw God standing in a cleft of the rock (Exodus 33:19–23) and the same “symbolic” (or “prophetic”) vision was given to the prophet Elijah (1 Kings 19:11–13). Moses and Elijah were initiated into the secret of the future vision of God in His human coming, and God keeps His promise: on Tabor, Moses, in the presence of Elijah, was able to talk with God face to face (see: Against heresies. IV, 20, 9-10; PG 7. 1038). 799 The Incarnation, thus, significantly changes a person’s ability to communicate with God, and therefore significantly increases the degree of his participation in eternal, perfect life. This is what is in ontology about. Paul can be called an increase in existential tension, but the speech of St. Irenaeus of Lyons is about such an ontological change in the whole person; here the whole person (and not any empirical component of him) as a whole reaches a new, more existentially significant level, from which alone the transition to the fullness of the eternal life of the next century is possible. V. Lossky notes the distinction of St. Irenaeus has three stages of vision (and therefore of Communion with God): prophetic (or “symbolic”) - before the Incarnation, vision of adoption - in the incarnate Son, and vision of the Father in the Kingdom of Heaven. These three stages - three stages of human transformation (changes in his ontology) - are, as it were, contained one in the other, and only the Incarnation makes possible the transition from the first to the third. But after the Incarnation, people receive only the ability to achieve the fullness of eternal existence, that ability that they must realize primarily through the personal acceptance of Christ. 800 When Rev. Isaac the Syrian speaks about the initial stages of Divine contemplation, when the measure of nature is already “exceeded,” he sends the ascetic (who already understands what he is talking about) to the Ladder, which is hidden inside, in the soul: “Dive into yourself deeper than sin - and you will find there ascents along which you can ascend.” 801 “Whoever concentrates the vision of his mind within himself sees in himself the dawn of the Spirit... And if you are pure, then heaven is within you, and within you you will see the angels and their light, and with them and in them the Lord of the angels.” 802 These “smart revelations” are not shown to a person as something external (like “revelation in images”, to which St. Isaac refers to spiritual visions, insights of the prophets, etc.), but are felt and experienced by a person in himself, when he himself becomes a participant in the coming transformed world. “Words of asceticism” St. Isaac are addressed to a Christian who has accepted Christ and has already been renewed by the grace of Holy Baptism. There is no reason to extend them to all of humanity in general and to assert that in every descendant of the old Adam, regardless of his acceptance or rejection of Christ, the ladder of spiritual ascents that lies “deeper than sin” is preserved and everyone has the opportunity to see the angels and their Lord within themselves. But when Fr. Paul, including with reference to St. Isaac, wants to understand “angels” as noumenal roots with which humanity and all creation go into the Divinity, such an ontology should be recognized as immutable for all humanity and all creation by their very structure. This “eternal” ontology does not depend on the historical events of the Fall of Adam and the salvation accomplished by Christ, and therefore the division of humanity into those who accepted and those who did not (empirically!) the sacrament of Baptism in this ontology “does not reach” Eternity. Apparently, a special study is required in order to thoroughly demonstrate the unusual nature of such an ontology. Isaac the Syrian. But there are some striking signs that seem to allow us to immediately draw some definite conclusions. 803 Thus, practically repeating the author of the Areopagitik in the doctrine of the angelic hierarchy, St. Isaac does not recognize it as unconditional and unshakable, as should follow from the symbolic multi-unit ontology of Florensky, and this inviolability is “destroyed” precisely as a result of the historical act of Christ the Savior. In the Word of the 18th St. Isaac claims that before the coming of Christ, divine contemplation was not available to the angels, “but when the Word became incarnate, then the door was opened to them in Jesus.” 804 But even now the fullness of contemplation, which will be in the next century, is inaccessible to the Angels, “for for our sake and for them the entrance is forbidden” (Word 21), 805 and they await the restoration of man in the general resurrection. In the next century, according to St. Isaac, all hierarchy will be abolished in the sense that everyone, without any mediation, will receive revelation from the Master Himself (Word 18). 806 Then “everyone, according to the grace given to him, will rejoice inwardly in his own measure (italics mine - N.P.)” (Homily 58), 807 i.e. “measures” and distinctions are not abolished, but no one will see someone’s superior grace and their own deprivation. Among other differences, it is clear here that St. Isaac, in any case, means angels as beings ontologically different from humans and does not connect them with the “ideal roots” of man, which, according to Fr. The fullest contemplation of God must always, from eternity, be available to Paul. St. Maximus the Confessor speaks of the presence in man of “Divine treasures,” all the treasures of “wisdom and knowledge,” but he connects this, so to speak, “ontological situation” not with the structure of man as such, from eternity, but with man’s acceptance of Christ. “He who has true faith in Christ,” he writes, “has in himself in short all the gifts of God”; they reside in a Christian, but are revealed to him only in the process of his feat of active love for God. 808 In Christ all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden, quotes St. Maxim of the Apostle Paul (Col. 2.3), and all these treasures are in the heart of a person, if only “Christ lives in it by faith” (Eph. 3:17). Thus, at a very specific stage associated with the salvation of humanity in Christ, human nature becomes capable of perceiving adoring Divine energies. And only after this can we talk about God, who resides in the “depths” of man, who resides as a supernatural gift, given not only by the will of the Creator (who, according to Father Paul, creates the already deified ideal created nature in Eternity), but in synergy with the free will of each person who wished to accept this gift. According to St. Theophan, if a person has not yet accepted the sacrament of Baptism, God is still outside of man and man is outside of God, 809 although under the external action of grace such a person is capable of a certain communion with God, which St. Feofan calls it “mental.” “In the sacrament of baptism or repentance, the Lord, by His grace, enters inside a person, communicates vividly with him and gives him to taste all the sweetness of the Divine. but then again hides this manifestation of His communication, only renewing it from time to time... leaving a person in ignorance of Himself and His presence in him until a certain measure of age...” This is “real” communication with God, but “hidden, invisible to others and unknown to ourselves (my italics - N.P.)”, i.e. due to the weakness and sinful damage of a person, which takes place mainly in the unconscious depths of the human being, in that heartfelt depth that is spoken of in ascetic literature. And only at a certain stage of a person’s spiritual renewal, “real” communication with God becomes conscious to him and obvious to others, which is the goal of spiritual life. 810 “Communion with God,” writes St. Theophan, “must be an everlasting, continuous state of a person, so that as long as there is no communication with God, as long as it is not felt (my italics - N.P.), a person must admit that he is outside his goal and his purpose.” 811 In patristic literature there are known reflections on the topic of the ontological difference between the new human nature and the old, in which all the non-participants of the Body of Christ remain. St. Maximus the Confessor, arguing that “St. The Spirit is present in all people without exception as a guardian. and quickener,” speaks of His special presence “in those who have the law.” In Christians, the special image of the presence of the Holy Spirit makes them “sons of God,” but only in an even closer circle - “prudent”, i.e. holy Christians, - the “deifying indwelling of the Holy Spirit” takes place (PG 90, 1209a). 812 “With the baptized,” writes St. Theophan, - the grace of the Holy Spirit is combined. In appearance, he is the same person as the unbaptized one, but in reality, in his composition, they are different, and very different. So in St. At Baptism, a new element, the supernatural, is added to our natural composition, and remains hidden and secretly active in us (my italics - N.P.).” This grace is “renewed” in us by the communion of the Holy Mysteries of Christ. But the saved ones, i.e. Those who enter the Church of God are only those in whom grace is revealed, penetrates their entire being, “comes out and reveals its fiery power tangibly for everyone.” 813 In what remained unpublished during his lifetime, Fr. Paul in his early work of 1904. (“Empyrea and Empiria”), with clear Christological reflections, contains very close to St. Feofan the statement: “A person before baptism is identical for sensory experience with a person after baptism, and yet they are internally different: something has been introduced into a baptized person that cannot be... seen by any experience and which, however, is essentially new.” However, this new thing here does not mean grace that came into a person from the outside and “combined” with him. A person before and after Baptism is compared here to polished glass and ice that are identical in appearance. “In ice,” writes Florensky, “there is harmony and organization, in glass there is anarchy. Each particle of glass is only for itself and, at most, pushes against its neighbors; there is no whole. In ice it’s the other way around: here each particle occupies a certain, inherent place in the regular fabric of the whole, in the organization of the wonderful structure.” 814 The whole difference thus turns out to be reduced only to the order and disorder of the internal structure, or ultimately to the ability to be “a conscious conductor of the Divine powers, a living organ of the body of Christ.” 815 This is the same as the “transparency” of the empirical personality to the noumenal flow of Divine energy in the later works of Fr. Pavel. A slightly different, but essentially the same image of comparing a baptized and unbaptized person can be found in the draft note of Fr. Paul dated March 12, 1912 It says that people outwardly and a priori are no different from each other. But, writes Fr. Paul, if we take it a posteriori, there is always a difference (and this word is emphasized by Father Paul). “The personality structure of the baptized becomes different. This does not mean that he is “better”, but he is different. Satin fabric is not like cambric fabric. A worthless Christian is a stained, torn piece of satin; and a good pagan is a clean, neat piece of cambric. Which is better? They are incomparable. There is something stony in the most beautiful pagan in comparison with the most worthless Christian. The pagan is a marble statue, and the Christian is alive. I am not dogmatizing, but conveying my feeling. A Christian can be a scoundrel, and a pagan noble. Still, a Christian is a living scoundrel, and a pagan is a dead statue. The immediate feeling from a non-Christian is that something is missing (“there is no soul” in popular parlance).” 816 But this lack of “something” in the context of the entire anthropology of Fr. Paul means only a different structure of man in empirics. The revitalization of the Christian, which is discussed here, in the teaching of Fr. Paul means the possibility of penetration into the empiric world of higher energies, whereas, if we take the person as a whole, a baptized person differs from an unbaptized one only like two different types of fabric. Ice and glass, satin and cambric - the difference between them is not at all the same as can be seen, for example, from the patristic image of cold iron and iron imbued with fire. What is fundamentally important is the fact that fire enters iron from the outside, as a new reality for it, whereas in fabric (or a transparent mass of ice or glass) everything is already there; you just need to change their internal structure. In the “Pillar”, where Fr. Paul speaks of a mysterious “transubstantiation” that takes place “in the invisible depths. soul,” 817 this ideal process is generally removed from the Christological context and made dependent only on the “kenosis” of the Self, when it comes out of itself, gives itself to another Self and finds in it its “redemption” from the power of sinful self-affirmation, while “glorifying” in the third Self, establishing itself “in its incorruptible value.” The Christological terms used here only emphasize the place and role assigned to the God-man in the “Pillar”: “faith in the Son” is necessary mainly for the knowledge of God the Father, who makes it possible for the human Self to open itself to Divine Love. 818 Christ reveals God as the Most Holy Trinity, but this discovery is necessary only for empirical consciousness. Ideally, the feat of faith in the Holy Trinity has already been completed, the gift of Love has already been received; in empiricism, faith in the Son and the gift of the Holy One received through it. The Spirit only allows a person to understand what is taking place in Eternity, and to see in himself the “light of Tabor”, “the light of the Trinitarian Deity Himself.” 819 So in letter 4, “The Light of Truth.” In the letter “Gehenna” a new important Christological touch is made: Christ contains the Divine idea of ​​each person. Experience is needed in order “through personal communication, through constant gazing into the Face of Christ” to find in the Son of Man “our true self,” our true humanity. 820 And in retrospect, already being familiar with the later works of Fr. Paul, we are forced to say: the historical (empirical) Person of the God-man is “transparent” to His eternal Idea; It depends on our abilities of spiritual vision to discern our own eternal image in this Idea and build ourselves empirically according to it. Christ does nothing for us in Eternity, since everything there is deified from the beginning. He only reveals the Father to us, so that we know by whose power our ideal “redemption” from the sin of isolation and ideal deification is accomplished, and He reveals to us our own ideal, so that we do not alienate our empirical “building” from our “eternal root.” In other words, in the concept of eternal primordial deification in Fr. Paul’s Christology is entirely, so to speak, “empirical,” and to the extent that empiria in Florensky’s interpretation represents a lower reality than the Empyrean, the significance of the work of Christ is belittled here, since it relates only to empirical man. And no matter what direction different authors’ assessments of the place and role of Christology in the general heritage of Fr. Paul, 821 the key to the answer to this question seems to be found here - in these most important consequences of the concept of “eternal pre-existence” and the primordial deification of the ideal creature. Fr. Paul nowhere says that the empirical world is actually the result of the fall of the creature, as one would expect from his stated agreement (in the notes to the Pillar) with Origen regarding the interpretation of the “beginning” or “formation” of the world in the texts of Matthew 24:21; Mark 13:19 and Eph. 1:1 as “casting down.” 822 This question seems quite complicated, since the theme of the Fall is not specifically developed in any way in either the early or later works of Fr. Paul and on this matter one has to be content with only a number of his fragmentary instructions. As noted above, Florensky’s statement in “The Pillar” that “the fall of the creature consisted – in ontological terms – in the departure from the heavenly dwelling, in the discrepancy between the empirical revelation of the likeness of God and the heavenly image of God,” 823 suggests that the fall somehow takes place in the empirical, and this corresponds to the twofold ontology of Fr. Pavel. Here there can be no “overthrow” from Eternity into Time (i.e. into empiricism, as in Origen), since creation itself is a living unity of Eternity and Time. “Dropping out” from the “heavenly dwelling” takes place inside the creature and means a weakening (or, in the extreme, breaking) of the connection between the empirical shells and its “eternal root.” Called to be a perfect symbol of the highest and eternal reality, the empirical world in sin loses the ability to purely and uncloudedly reveal the image of God shining in Eternity, which is especially clear in Fr. Paul is said in the “Iconostasis”. 824 Obviously, the question of the first fall is central in Christian dogma, since (no matter what is said about the possibility of the Incarnation of God outside of original sin) the first promise of the Redeemer (Gen. 3:15) sounds precisely in connection with the crime of the first people and their refusal to return to God through repentance (Gen. 3:12–13). But this question becomes rather vague in the doctrine of the eternal pre-existence of the creature, as expressed in the "Pillar" ("Church, personality, etc." at a certain point appear in empirics from Eternity 825) or in the later works of Fr. Paul (“spiritual essence” manifests itself in empirics, acquiring “bodies” - shells of various energy levels), 826 The birth of a new human being, which is a living unity of the eternal superpersonal structure and empirical personality, occurs every time with the “manifestation” of the Eternal “image of God” in empirics, and Fr. Paul repeatedly emphasizes that the birth of a person is, in a certain sense, the “arrival” of super-empirical reality into the empiric world, the arrival of a “messenger” from another world to our world. 827 The instruction of Fr. has already been quoted above. Paul on the special “cultic and mystical attention” of ancient religions to premature babies. “...When contemplating such,” he explains, “one always feels some kind of mystical ray of other worlds resting on babies, as if around them the otherworldly radiance and the noumenal crown of eternity had not yet had time to go out (my italics. - N.P.)” 828. In such a concept, a person must be born sinless, and only then, embraced by the empiricism affected by sin (and sin, one may recall, for Fr. Paul is a distortion of the norm of being, a violation of the order, internal structure given to the creature from God, leading to ontological decay), 829 he ceases to purely manifest Eternity in himself; The “noumenal corolla of eternity” “extinguishes” around him. This is the basis for the unconditional trust of Fr. Paul to his initial childhood intuitions and, in general, his entire idea of ​​​​the highest metaphysical knowledge in a child. “A child aged 3–6 years,” he writes in “Memoirs” (recorded in April 1923), “is infinitely wiser than the wisest adult, understands through and through all the most complex relationships in life.” Only over the years do we all “get coarser, stupider and vulgar,” and become covered with “bark.” 830 The child feels his living connection with Eden; and in the context of thinking about this about. Paul sets the example of Adam and Eve, who, having lost this connection, “coarsened,” just as every person in the empiric world “coarsens” as he grows up. The child still has a “healthy body” that does not allow the forbidden to become tempting: “Dad smokes his bad cigars... I know too well,” recalls Fr. Paul, “that they are demonic things (I will say in today’s words), so as not to understand their destructiveness for me, not covered with the bark with which adults are covered.” 831 A mention of childhood sinfulness is contained in one of the notes to the “Pillar”, but there Fr. Paul, referring to the description of the blj. Augustine and the data of modern psychology, does not specify the age of children in whom the “corruption of human nature” is clearly manifested. The main purpose of the note is to show that “even the most innocent of the human race, children, are not alien to evil will. What can we say about adults after this?” Florensky writes that sinfulness grows in a person much faster than the process of his maturation, but at the same time he does not share the reality of personal, conscious sins and sinfulness as damage to human nature itself. 832 Father Paul is in no way concerned that his concept does not give the impression of the coming into the world of an absolutely sinless being, who only then becomes “tainted by empiricism.” 833 In accordance with the patristic asceticism of Fr. Paul in The Pillar, from the standpoint of philosophy and psychology, comes to the conclusion that the root of all sins is the affirmation of oneself without one’s relationship to God and to all creation. “All private sins... are only a manifestation of self-obstinacy.” 834 However, the “self” here is only an empirical phenomenon; it, like sin itself, including the “original sin,” does not affect the noumenal depths of man (as well as all creation). The development of sin in Florensky’s concept is represented only as the growth of a “bark” that covers the light coming from the depths. “Sin is that,” he writes, “that closes all reality from the Self,” and to see reality means to step out of oneself and transfer one’s Self into the Self of another (i.e., according to the “Pillar,” to love, and “true love is a way out of the empirical and a transition into a new reality”), 835 Hence, “sin is the mediastinum that the Self puts between myself and reality—the covering of the heart with a bark (my italics—N.P.).” Sin does not penetrate the heart; it is “alive, but behind its walls, and you can’t get to it. I myself only know theoretically that it exists, but I can’t even begin to approach it.” “Sins surround the heart, stand in a thick formation around it and do not allow me to reach it, blocking access to the refreshing breeze of grace (my italics - N.P.).” 836 Elsewhere Fr. Paul also points out that the “bark of defilement” corrupts only the “surface” of the heart and this “corruption” can be eliminated. 837 But Florensky’s “heart” itself is not identified with the highest reality in man. In the “Pillar” on the topic of “hearts” a number of instructions are made with reference to the work of P.D. Yurkevich “The Heart and its Significance in the Spiritual Life of Man according to the Teachings of the Word of God” (Proceedings of the Kyiv Theological Academy. Book 1. 1860) and his conclusions about the heart as “the focus of the entire physical and spiritual life of a person” were accepted. 838 From myself about. Paul identifies the concepts of “heart” and “spirit” and notes that “spiritualization means purification, improvement of the heart.” “Cleansing the heart gives communication with God”; “the human personality is primarily connected with the heart,” here “the center of human existence,” and from here grace and spirituality emanate. 839 The heart as “the depths of our soul” is mentioned by Fr. Pavel in "Memoirs". 840 a in article 1923 it is noted that “the heart in biblical language means the focus of all our spiritual powers and abilities, the knot that binds our personality.” 841 But in general, if we keep in mind the two-pronged anthropology of Fr. Paul, then all these fragmentary instructions seem quite vague until we pay attention to the main thing: the heart is an organ for perceiving the heavenly world. “Through the heart,” writes Fr. Paul in the “Pillar,” the primordial root of the personality, its Angel, is contemplated, and through this root a living connection is established with the Mother of the spiritual personality, with Sophia, understood as the Guardian Angel of all creation,” and “in her the contemplation of the God of Love is given to the personality.” 842 When “all the powers of the spirit” are gathered “near (my italics. – N.P.) the heart” - mind, will and feelings, then it becomes possible to enter the “inner church”, in which one can see the “heavenly church”. 843 Thus, the heart is assigned the role of a certain additional mediator shell around the mystical center of a person, onto which consciousness can emerge and be enlightened by the Divine Light. As a person grows up, the surface of this shell begins to become covered with the “bark of sin”; approaching it becomes impossible, and all this suggests that its place is somewhere on the verge of “contact” between the highest reality of a person and empiricism. That is why Fr. Paul there is a need to call it “internal church” and thus distinguish it from the “heavenly church” 844. And if, according to the “Iconostasis,” sin can “permeate” the entire “self-created” empirical personality, 845 then it is obvious that the “heart” in Florensky’s anthropology only on its “surface” comes into contact with the empirical personality and represents that very depth from where sinful damage to a person begins. On the question of what constitutes a person’s sinful damage, in the heritage of Fr. Paul, one significant point can be definitely noted. According to the early work of 1904, in the Fall it is not the law of empirical existence that is violated, but the “mystical order of being”; a “revolution in the mystical field” is accomplished, a change “in the inner attitude towards the Divine”, occurring at a deeper level than the level of human consciousness. This corresponds to the general ideas about. Paul about the place of consciousness in the hierarchical structure of man: it is on the periphery of the human being according to the original structure of man, and not as a result of his sinful damage. The concept of a “mystical revolution” allows Florensky in 1904. explain the reason for the incarnation of God, since, of course, it was not enough to appeal to the consciousness of sinful man, but it was necessary to act in humanity from the inside, “to act in the mystical field - to restore the mystical order.” 846 In theological terminology, this could mean the need to restore human nature (essence, “usia”) damaged by sin, but in his subsequent works Fr. Paul makes it clear that, in his opinion, we need to talk not about the sinful damage of the human “hypostasis,” but about its “sinful” disharmony with the human “hypostasis.” In the lectures on “Philosophy of Cult” (mainly in the lecture at the end of 1919 - “Deduction of the Seven Sacraments”) a detailed interpretation of “ousia” and “hypostasis” was given as the thesis and antithesis of the antinomy inherent in man as an individual. “Usiya” is the “elemental, generic basis of Man,” which is established in him as his individual beginning. She, being generic, affirms the individual as such in the race (and in the world). It is centripetal and establishes the individual in society as an independent center. On the contrary, “hypostasis”, as “a reasonable, personal idea of ​​a person, his spiritual appearance, his face,” is established in a person as a supra-individual principle. It can be called centrifugal; she, “being personal, affirms the race and the world in the individual,” she is the beginning of the individual’s self-denial, “a breakthrough in his solitude, a way out of his isolation.” 847 Based on these premises, Fr. Paul then gives a “scheme of personal balance”, which he ultimately needs in order to show why in the Christian cult there can and should be only seven sacraments - “no more and no less.” Thesis – usia is an individual who is established as such. “The point of application, the phenomenon of ousiya, is the human body, with which a person contrasts himself with other individuals. Antithesis - hypostasis is a race, society, world, affirmed by the individual. The individual declares himself through human speech, which contributes to the process of connecting society and the interpenetration of individuals. The individual is affirmed by the body, and society is affirmed by speech. As a result of the synthesis, firstly, a society appears “in which the individual does not lose himself, but affirms”, and secondly, an individual arises “in which the public is an essential condition of his existence.” 848 In other words, a personal society or individual gens is formed, which affirms the individual as a member of society and society as the condition of the individual. 849 The very opposition of “ousia” and “hypostasis” as thesis and antithesis brings about “a strong pulse of inner life,” and the connectedness of their synthesis gives “integrity and unity of this life.” 850 In another, earlier lecture (“Sacraments and Rites,” May 1918), Fr. Paul spoke of “the truth of this” as the “truth of being” and of the “righteousness of the hypostasis” as the “truth of meaning” and compared them, respectively, with the Image and Likeness of God in man. These, he emphasized, are precisely two truths. Their unity cannot be achieved through “mutual concessions.” These two principles of the human being, being endless in their aspiration, also require the infinity of their development, require their ultimate affirmation. Only in this ultimate state do they coincide, 851 but they coincide not in complete identity, but in harmonious interpenetration. 852 The sinful damage of a person does not consist in the dark chaos of his “usia” in itself, but in the fact that the “blind pressure” of this chaos is not always balanced by the “reasonable, personal idea of ​​​​a person.” But this “balance”, apparently, does not in any way mean awareness, does not imply, first of all, the conscious work of the human personality for the grace-filled transformation of the chaos hidden in the unconscious depths. On the contrary, the rise “to the top of consciousness” of that “which is appropriate to be in the twilight of the subconscious region” is also a sin, or “o-sin”, “mistake”, missing the goal, “past the norm of being that is given to us by the Truth.” 853 In other words, both ontological sin and its overcoming are committed in the deep “bowels” of the creature without the direct participation of consciousness, to which these higher-order realities are inaccessible. There is indeed a struggle going on in the depths of man, but this is not a clash of the metaphysical forces of Good and Evil, as, according to Fr. Paul, F. Dostoevsky reasoned “humanly,” 854 and the manifestation of Chaos as a “good” that lies “deeper than the contradiction between good and evil” and gives rise to this contradiction. So oh. Paul writes in his Solovetsky letters of early 1935, from which one can generally conclude that he himself has already taken the point of view of the “ancient Greeks” and considers Chaos to be the last highest basis of Being. However, in order to correctly understand the train of thought of Fr. Paul, who was forced in Soviet times (and even more so in letters from the camp) to limit himself in the use of traditional Christian terminology, we need to turn to his other works and, in this case, partly to his autobiographical article written for the “Granat” dictionary in 1927. It says that Florensky “considers the principle of thermodynamics - the law of entropy, universal equalization (Chaos)” as “the fundamental law of the world.” But at the same time, “the world is opposed by the law of ectropy (Logos),” and Culture (from the word “cult”) is “the fight against world leveling - death.” 855 At one of the lectures in 1921. O. Paul spoke about the Logos opposing entropy, still without regard to Soviet censorship, but already in the philosophical language of the de-churched intellectual consciousness: this Logos, according to the opinion he expressed here, represents “superphysical forces.” These are “the forces of our body, or the Higher Power, which leads the universe despite the tendency to die. We, remaining within the limits of the modern physical worldview, must recognize the Cosmic Logos (my italics - N.P.)" 856. Thus, Chaos is undoubtedly from the point of view of Fr. Paul, in itself is a “primary good.” It rages in the depths of all existence (including man) as a necessary, potentially creative manifestation of life itself. And only without meeting the proper form from the opposite, restraining principle, does it begin to sow real evil and destruction. A person must achieve in himself the same eternal harmony of the elemental chaotic “usia” and the rational “hypostasis” that exists in God, and this is achieved in a cult where a person turns to Christ - the Cosmic Logos, restoring order in empirical creation and - like the mystical Morning Star - shining in its noumenal depths. In the drafts Fr. Paul at the end of 1914 - beginning of 1915. one can find important preparatory materials that record a certain stage in his thinking through this topic. Here chaos, or “dark”, blind, elemental “usia” is designated as the “titanic” principle in man. “Titans,” says the entry on December 29, 1914, “are things that grew from the Earth... emanative and therefore faceless... The faceless represents everything as ousia and as emanation. It cannot even imagine anything else, because it itself is faceless. This is where his blindness lies. On the titanic lies a fatal blindness that allows destruction...” On the night of the same day, Fr. Paul writes: “The beginning is titanic, as long as it only wants to do something - noble, lofty, beautiful. But it is remarkable that as soon as it realizes itself to the end, it turns out to be vile. It, as being, is from God. Doesn’t it follow from here that titanism must remain a potential, tense - like the engine of something else, but its transition into something else, into reality, is unnatural for it...” In the entry made the next day (December 30, 1914), one can read that “the titanic principle is not a sin” and does not always “lead to sin,” “for good is realized on the basis of elemental power - on the titanic beginning. This is the beginning – the potency of all activity.” It is “pacified” and put “in its place” in the Incarnation, Christ and in Christ. In Christ, the Divinity becomes passive and the “affect of power” – “Wille zum Macht” 857 – finds its satisfaction: “Having torn Christ to pieces, humanity vented its anger at God, and therefore in Christ (Christ) it was reconciled with God.” Therefore, the Eucharist, as “the periodically returning deicide, the slaughter of God and the shedding of the Divine Blood, is a condition for the balance of the titanic principle in humanity: the rebellious anger is satisfied by God.” All these notes were rethought and rewritten by Fr. Paul during his service on a military hospital train (February 1915), when (note, in a very special environment of human grief and suffering) he wrote down new thoughts. In them, he, calling the Eucharist “the sacrament of sacraments” and “the heart of all (emphasized by Father Paul) church life,” concludes: “if the Eucharist is aimed precisely at softening the titanic principle in man (my italics - N.P.), then it means that all (emphasis by Father Paul) hierurgy has no other goal, even if this was not immediately visible with complete clarity.” Thus, all sacred acts (according to Father Paul - from the most ancient religious cults to the divine services of the Christian Church) are aimed at controlling the titanic principle in man - the raging elemental "usia" of humanity and all creation, 858 - and the Eucharist in this regard plays a leading role. “Only the Eucharist,” noted in the entry on February 8, 1915, “can bring into balance the opposing hypostasis and ousia in man.” 859 In lectures 1918–1919 according to the “Philosophy of the Cult” by Fr. Paul notes that the cult, which is called upon to preserve the “spiritual balance of man,” 860 “affirms the whole of human nature with all its affects” and, giving affect full recognition, affirms “affect in its truth ... transforms it.” 861 In other words, in a person, every sinful passion is only a distortion of natural affect, as, for example, according to ascetic literature, gluttony is a distortion of the inherent need for food in nature, or sinful anger at one’s neighbor is the incorrect use of the desire inherent in nature to decisively oppose everything that alienates a person from God. Father Paul, quite in line with the patristic tradition, speaks of the “cutting off” of a person’s sin, which is accomplished in the church sacraments, and this process, when “sin becomes separated from the sinner,” 862 he transfers to the sinful “self,” which, in his ontology, can also be “selected” from a person and destroyed, just as dirt is wiped off or scraped from any surface. In the limit, as we saw above, the entire empirical personality that has become “independent”, which is only the “surface” of the supra-empirical noumenal center, perishes in “bare subjectivity”. In all cases, the “self” of Fr. Paul is only a parasite in human nature, not possessing its own objective reality. It is subject to destruction (and not transformation, like natural affects) precisely because, from Florensky’s point of view, it is not a passion, not an affect that has its own energy. It is the result, so to speak, of incorrect “management” of Chaos, as a result of which the harmony in man is disrupted and man suffers ontological decay. Chaos “splits” a person, but only because an inactive parasite of the self has established itself in a person. For Fr. Paul could imagine a situation where sin finally “closes” the image of God, “and nothing, not a single ray of light from the image of God, reaches the revealed surface of the personality.” Then, according to the Apostle, “the conscience was seared” (1 Tim. 4:2), the face became a mask and we, says Fr. Pavel, in Kantian terms we can no longer find out anything about the noumenon. 863 A person in such a state can still live and move, and do great evil, as Fr. Pavel in the 1920s But despite all this, from the ontological point of view, Fr. Paul, such beings who have lost (literally lost!) the image of God must be recognized as a “shell” that has no metaphysical meaning. It was already noted above that Fr. Paul purposefully adopted this term from E. Blavatsky in order to draw an analogy between an extremely evil empirical person who has lost his objective reality and spirits appearing at spiritualistic seances, the unreality of which Blavatsky insisted. 864 And of course, such an interpretation of the ontology of sin and its primary source in the human race leaves its decisive imprint on the concept of the Fall and salvation of man, which can be identified in the works of Fr. Pavel. In the meditation “Heavenly Signs” Fr. Paul identifies three directions in which one can contemplate the “first creation”: from God, to God, and a certain “intermediate” state, when the creature “does not yet have a direct aspiration either to God or from God. but there is only movement around God.” The last aspect of the “first-creature” Fr. Paul calls it “paradise,” “in which there is as yet no knowledge of good and evil.” This is “free play in the presence of God. like the sea playing in the sun"; it is a creature outside of its “determination or self-determination towards God.” 865 And if you continue this meditation in the indicated Fr. Paul's key, then we can correlate the fall of the creature with its metaphysical movement “from” God into the emptiness of non-existence, as it is clothed with an increasingly coarse, inert and “opaque” substance. The salvation of the creature, obviously, lies in overcoming this “opacity to light”, so that the Divine ray again plays in it as the ray of the sun plays on the surface of the sea. The limit of perfection, the ultimate goal of human self-realization is to make one’s empirical personality transparent to the Divine Light coming from the noumenal depths of the human being. Having established the harmony of our being in the empiric world, we must let into ourselves what is given to us in Divine Eternity; not to encounter something completely beyond the bounds of creation and not to gain new horizons in oneself, but only with the maximum opportunity for a weak empirical consciousness to “remember” its Eternity. In the depths of man, from the point of view of Fr. Paul, contains the originally deified ideal foundation on which a human being is built. Man, like the rest of creation, is placed “next to” God, in direct connection with Him, “rooted” in Divine Eternity, but at the same time remains ontologically distinct from God, having no uncreated element in its composition. And the deeper the ontological gap between uncreated and created nature, the less significant against this background are any differences in created nature itself. From this point of view, Fr. Paul actually does not attach much importance to the traditional division of human nature into “spiritual” and “material.” “Spiritual” and “material” in ontology and anthropology Fr. Paul are inextricably linked in symbolic unity and one does not exist without the other. Anthropology o. Paul actually states the impossibility of isolating in a person some kind of autonomous spiritual substance capable of being independent of matter. And in the human body there are energy levels of the heavenly world, and in the soul there are energy levels of the earthly world. With all this, everything in a person is one - both above and below, both “soul” and “body”. The differences lie in the levels of energetic tension, or “rootedness in being,” which decreases as one moves away from the central noumenon to the “periphery” of the world and the human being. At levels close to the central noumenon, materiality is most subtle, while at the periphery, matter is coarsened to such an extent that it becomes “opaque” in the sense of an extremely small involvement of “spiritual” energy coming from the depths of being. All layers of existence and the human being form a clear hierarchical structure, in which each overlying layer is a phenomenon in relation to the deeper layer - the noumenon. From the point of view of the center itself, all other layers in the human being can be recognized as one general phenomenon in relation to one main noumenon. This model ultimately represents the main dual unity of Florensky’s anthropology. The two main realities that make up man, in various works by Fr. Paul have different names without changing the interpretation of their essence: the highest, unconditional reality is the “Ideal Personality”, “Guardian Angel”, “Name”, “eternal root”, “noumenal core”, etc.; the lower reality is the "empirical character" or "empirical personality." Of particular importance in anthropology is Fr. Paul also has an interpretation of the highest deified reality in man as the “Image of God.” The highest reality ultimately turns out to be the subtlest, most energetically saturated "body", the first discovery of the "spiritual essence" emerging from the unmanifested state. In later works, the non-personal (or super-personal) nature of this highest reality is especially noted. In Florensky’s anthropology, a situation of ontological disintegration of a person is imaginable, when an empirical personality loses its eternal “root” and becomes a “phenomenon without noumenon,” pure subjectivity, losing objective reality in being. The opposite extreme situation arises when the “energy of the Image of God” shines through the entire “empirical personality.” This is the deification of the entire empirical composition of man. The dual, or two-pronged, reality of man in anthropology Fr. Paul is determined by the fact that man here has both “givenness” and “givenness” of his ultimate goal - deification. Man is already deified in his ideal foundations in Eternity, but must achieve deification in the empiric. Therefore, in relation to the whole person, here, in essence, there is no need to talk about a gift and consider adoring grace as a reality external to a person, which a person has the power to accept or reject. It is fundamentally important that here man is already deified on ideal grounds, regardless of the historical work of Christ, and almost everything that the Fathers say about the whole man is in the anthropology of Fr. Paul is true only for his empirical, lower component. The Fall and salvation accomplished by Christ do not change the ontological status of a two-in-one (in the sense of the anthropology of St. Paul) man. In a narrow anthropological aspect, salvation is considered by Father Paul as the restoration of “balance” in man, bringing the human “usia” and “hypostasis” into the same mutual harmony that exists between these realities in God. As a means to save Fr. Paul considers a cult that is called upon to maintain the “spiritual balance of man,” affirming all human nature, with all its passions. Sinful passions must not be destroyed, but transformed; in this thesis (shared in patristic asceticism) the idea of ​​Fr. Paul about man as a closed, self-sufficient system into which nothing comes “from outside” - as a supernatural or unnatural quality. The fundamental point in anthropology is Fr. Paul is also an idea of ​​the peripheral position of human consciousness in the multi-level structure of the human being. Consciousness does not embrace the entire human being, not as a result of the Fall, but because of the very ontological structure of man. In a multi-layered reality, Fr. Paul's consciousness naturally fades as it moves towards internal, ontologically more significant layers. The most important processes in the mystical depths of man are fundamentally unconscious. Summing up the study of the anthropological aspect of the religious and philosophical heritage of Fr. P. Florensky, you should first of all once again pay attention to what Fr. Paul's approach to the problem of man. This is the collection of facts, “concrete thoughts,” “primary intuitions” for the formation of future philosophical anthropology. In contrast to “theodicy” (“the contemplative ascent of man to God”, “the ascent of grace in us to God”), “anthropodicy” (“the real descent of God to man”, “the descent of grace into our depths”) did not develop into a single, outwardly holistic work for Florensky, and, approaching it in new historical conditions (since 1917), Fr. Paul emphasized at least twice that this was his own plan. Back in 1914, presenting the “theodicy” (“Pillar”), Florensky recognized the development of the “justification of man” as a more difficult task and therefore postponed its implementation “until more mature years and more experienced experience.” 866 In 1918 he began the final compilation of two lecture courses and in the introduction to the first (“At the Watersheds of Thought”) he noted that he considered it “violence against the liveliness of the mind and philosophical insincerity to force a scheme where it did not appear by itself” either in his own understanding or in the understanding of his contemporaries. 867 In the introductory lecture of another course - “Philosophy of Cult” - he found it necessary to say that he does not have “final theories, and therefore no system.” “The system is a frozen thought... and hostile to living deepening. The question is unexplored. the system is absolutely unacceptable. Fragmentation and sketchiness should prevail here.” And, touching on the very direction, the very goal of his “Philosophy of Cult” - without a doubt, the most important part of “anthropodicy” - he argued that he “does not have a final thought - there are only strokes and approaches.” “My task is to stimulate thought... What I want to offer you is a collection of topics for thought.” 868 As already noted, in this study an attempt was made to preserve precisely this attitude towards the heritage of Fr. P. Florensky. Fr. Paul truly possessed a yet unappreciated charisma to awaken thought, which manifested itself, among other things, in Russian theology, where, in many ways, not without his direct or indirect influence from the beginning of the 20th century. there has been a steady tendency to overcome the detached from life, dry and abstract (“boring”, in the words of Florensky, an MDA student) schematicism. 869 Florensky actually again, from a theoretical perspective, raised the question of the meaning of the theological concepts of “essence” and “hypostasis,” and this topic was subsequently fruitfully taken up by Archpriest. G. Florovsky and V. Lossky. Florensky also actually discovered for Russian theology the significance of the legacy of St. Gregory Palamas and as a result (albeit, as in the first case, through “through polemics with the works of Archpriest S. Bulgakov”) we have, among other things, a developed theological teaching about “essence” and “energies,” and “Orthodox energeticism” (the expression of S. Khoruzhiego) although belatedly, but by the end of the 20th century. nevertheless entered into our textbooks of dogma, filling their essential gap. 870 Florensky was one of the first to speak in the language of academic theology about the church experience of the Light of Tabor, began to develop the theme of the deification of man as a communion of the uncreated Divine Light, and used for theological purposes relevant important passages from N. Motovilov’s conversation with St. Seraphim of Sarov. It is not at all difficult to see that precisely these themes developed as central ones in the theological works of V. Lossky, which have now become authoritative, who also indicated that the above-mentioned conversation “better than any theological treatises” reveals the teaching of the Church about the union of man with God “in the Light of Transfiguration.” 871 Florensky decisively introduced into theology the idea of ​​the consubstantiality of humanity (though in a broader form - as the consubstantiality of “all creation”) and considered ideal humanity as a single living organism consisting of many individuals, which in turn gave direction to many (including modern) reflections in the field of ecclesiology. One can point out examples of other areas where Florensky has already managed to “awaken thought” (for example, the theological understanding of the “cosmic” side of Christianity, manifested in the doctrine of the deification of all creation through man, etc.), and therefore one can hope that further study and understanding of his philosophical and theological heritage will be just as fruitful, especially in terms of anthropology, where “patristic thought did not provide a clear synthesis” and a well-defined “general scheme”, 872 as a result of which the Orthodox teaching about man still needs to be revealed. Quite a lot would be lost by those researchers who, under the pretext of the widespread (alas!) accusations of Florensky of unorthodoxy or “hereticism,” would discard all of his works as being of no value for Orthodox theology. At the same time, regarding Fr. P. Florensky also makes itself felt by an error of the opposite kind, when the undoubted confessional and martyrdom of a priest, who remained faithful to the Orthodox Church to the end, 873 can cause a temptation to “glorify” and canonize all or at least some of his works, including in the field of anthropology. And in this regard, it should be noted that Fr. Paul was not always able to maintain the methodological approach he declared - not to offer “ready-made” thoughts, or, rather, not to impose on the reader and listener a subjectively selected set of axioms on which the future science of man should be built. Of course, like any thinker who wants to remain within the confines of Orthodoxy, Fr. Paul could not do without “axioms” at all, which in one way or another would be called upon to reflect Orthodox dogma. But the question is how indisputable are these initial positions of Fr. Paul can be accepted in Orthodox theology. In this study, a certain systematization of the anthropology of Fr. P. Florensky, which is aimed at identifying not the external, but the internal unity of his teaching. Refusing the external unity (“logical unity of the scheme”) of his appeal to the themes of anthropodicy, Fr. At the same time, Paul wrote that he felt a unity “different... incomparably more coherent, vitally deeper” than the external plane. According to him, “that rhythm of thought” to which he strove is “diverse and complex in the multiplicity of its approaches, but one [emphasized by O. Paul!] breath breathes in all of them.” 874 This “breath” reflects the opening of Fr. Paul in his inner experience the ontological duality of man and the world: man (like the entire Creation of God) is a living combination of two realities - temporary and eternal, “conditional” and “unconditional”, developing, striving for deification in the empiric world and that which is already initially deified in Divine Eternity. In man there is a created deified component, the manifestation of which in the empirics represents the actual visible man. Absolutely the same thing, from the point of view of Fr. Paul, one can say about all creation. Then we can talk about the relationship between man and the world (in the concept of Fr. Paul “mystical physiology”), about many particulars in the concept of Fr. Paul about the process of human formation (“manifestation” of a spiritual essence with a set of “bodies” at different levels of existence), about human “essence” and “hypostasis” as antinomic poles between which harmony must be established, etc. These are special and very significant moments in Florensky’s anthropology, which, it seems, are to a greater extent the actual products of his thoughts, rather than axioms formulated in the initial confidence of their truth. Here about. Paul explores himself and—wittingly or unwittingly—calls for further investigation. Here he reveals himself as a collector of ideas for future anthropology, ready, it seems, to argue or even accept reasonable criticism. But a completely different attitude to the topic is observed in Fr. Paul, when it comes to the above-mentioned duality of man and the world (or the presence in all creation of the “Image of God” as the highest originally deified reality). O. Paul simply initially proceeds from this seemingly completely unconditional truth and shows that this truth for him is an immediate sensation, standing above all doubts and even reasons for reasoning. For example, he reveals his experience of “remembering” (in the Platonic sense) and insists that all his later views actually arose in very early childhood, and then only took shape in the corresponding philosophical and theological concepts. He draws attention to the look he suddenly noticed in the baby’s eyes, coming from a different, super-empirical reality, and reports how he “felt” his children before their birth. Only in one case (in the “Pillar”, in the chapter on Sophia) does he discuss this issue in order to show that the “pre-existence” of the creature in Divine Eternity is not the “pre-existence” condemned by the Church, according to Origen. But even here, he immediately actually points to the simple formality of the theological research carried out: “In essence, we want to say only what is in our experience (my italics - N.P.).” 875 And the deep internal unity of all anthropology (and more broadly, all anthropodicy) Fr. Paul is found precisely in this fundamental idea, according to which man and all creation, with their really existing, belonging to them, “roots” go into Divine Eternity, and thus, initially, by their very structure, reside on the Divine plane of existence. This is the single “breath” that “breathes” in all Florensky’s diverse and outwardly fragmented approaches to the problem of man. In this study, an attempt was made to systematize the anthropology of Fr. Paul precisely on the basis of this central idea - with the goal of seeing Florensky not only as a collector of ideas for a new, not yet formed field of knowledge, but also as a convinced supporter of a very specific position on the basis of which this field should be formed. It is in this latter capacity that, it seems, Florensky is most subject to critical reflection, which, however, should not interfere with attempts to extract from his heritage material that is significant for Orthodox anthropology. In this study, first of all, an attempt was made to show the deep internal unity of the worldview of Fr. Paul, which is revealed not only in his different approaches to the same topic (as he specifically stipulates this in relation to anthropodicy). 876 but also in all his work, outwardly quite clearly divided into “early” and “later”. It is precisely the same idea of ​​the primordial deification of all creation that deeply internally unites Florensky’s early sophiology and his later “concrete metaphysics,” which completely dispenses with Sophia. From this idea, as from a single root, all concepts of oh arise. Paul, right up to the interpretation of the icon as a window (namely a window in the literal sense, without “quotation marks”) into another world or, for example, his early attempts to apply mathematical apparatus to problems solved in moral theology. All human knowledge is a product of “remembering” and everything visible in Nature at its last depth reveals Divine Eternity; therefore, Florensky, with equally complete dedication, could study the Christian Holy Scripture and Kabbalah, explore folk ditties, take an interest in ancient mysteries or describe the properties of dielectrics, sketch the internal structure of algae, and conduct experiments on the formation of ice crystals on window glass. Such extraordinary integrity about. Pavel Florensky as a researcher, philosopher and theologian must be taken into account when analyzing any aspect of his creative heritage; otherwise, Florensky will not be adequately perceived and understood, and the analysis itself (as shown by a number of sad examples) can be reduced to superficial accusations of deliberate heresy, occultism, amateurism hiding behind an external “pose,” which stops any further objective research, etc. It is in view of such very unfortunate mistakes in relation to Florensky that in this study special attention is paid to his spiritual path and his desire to be correctly understood, which, in turn, was expressed in his desire to reveal the main features of his innermost inner experience. After such an “introduction” (Chapter 1), in this work the idea of. Paul about “eternal pre-existence” and the original deification of man and all creation is considered as the basis of ontology (chapter 2) and the actual anthropology of Florensky (chapter 3). But first, before this, it is shown that ontology and anthropology in the “symbolic worldview” of Fr. Paul are identical (chapter 2). In the 3rd and final chapter, in addition to the questions arising from the symbolic ontology of Florensky about the dual unity of man (man as the unity of spirit and matter, eternal and temporary realities, the higher and empirical self), the concepts of development and the ultimate goal of man, conditioned by this dual unity, are considered. The work draws special attention to the fact that, in fact, refusing to attach great importance to the division of human nature into spiritual and material components, Fr. Paul “tears” a person much more thoroughly - in the realities of time and Eternity. Representing a living and inextricable unity of these realities, a person in Florensky’s anthropology is actually destroyed in the event of their rupture; Anthropology itself Fr. Paul as a whole acquires a paradoxical (or “antinomic”) character in a certain sense. In it, for example, the following statements are equally true: man is already deified and must still achieve deification; a person is holy and at the same time possesses self-will and all other sinful directions of passions; The development of man is endless, takes place with the participation of his free will and is limited by the ideal eternally set only by the Divine will. Man is both actual and potential infinity, he is self-sufficient and nothing without God, the Creator and the source of his being. Such anthropology actually turns out to be focused on identifying a certain “share of truth” in such seemingly obviously incompatible ideas about man that exist in Christianity, Platonism and in a number of non-Christian or near-Christian mystical teachings. So, we can say that Platonism is certainly wrong in its contempt for the human body and matter in general, but the Platonic dualism of Eternity and time in man itself is a deep insight into the truth. Also, pantheistically colored mysticism can be combined with Christianity in the general idea of ​​​​the “birth” of God in man. Mystics are mistaken in considering man to be God by nature, in whose nature God exists in a hidden, or “enchanted” (R. Steiner) state. But those Christian sources who say that initially adoring grace comes to a person from the outside and only after such an “inhabitation” gradually passes from a state of hidden presence to a manifest one are also not entirely right. These sources look only from the point of view of “empirical man” and do not penetrate deeper into the originally deified human reality of the heavenly world. On the other hand, pantheistic mysticism, confronted with this reality, does not have Christian dogmatic guidance in order to recognize in the Divinity of this reality the gift of the transcendental God the Creator. But she accepts the Divine, so to speak, “after the fact” of meeting Him and in this sense also testifies to the truth from her own point of view, devoid of all-encompassing completeness. It is important to keep in mind that this unique “common denominator” of different teachings for Fr. Paul is not an artificially created scheme designed to conveniently connect the incompatible, but evidence of the manifestation of the same “universal” worldview, containing the centuries-old experience of all generations, which is refracted differently in different traditions. There is no doubt that, from the point of view of Fr. Paul, in Christianity the final “depth” of man has been discovered and Christian sources allow their own “mystical” reading. But not everyone has the ability to read this way, and this is where many relatively superficial perceptions and interpretations arise. For his part, Fr. Paul discovers the final depth of man in his originally prepared, already really existing eternal deified “abode”, thanks to which empirical man is generally possible and from which (and not from outside man) sanctification and deification come to empiria. But it may also seem that this is not the discovery of the final truth about man, but simply a different interpretation of man, a different anthropology, which reveals in man already ready what - in another anthropology - must still be received by him. Adoring grace, which requires “acquisition” through free spiritual exploits, is this a gift only to an empirical person or a completely new reality for the whole person? Is the whole man complete in eternity or does he still require his final perfection and completion? Is everything already in the whole person or does the Creator, as a person progresses, open more and more eternal “horizons” in him? One can give a number of other formulations of this same question, showing that we are talking about different anthropologies, or, perhaps, more precisely, about different initial premises of anthropology. Returning to the attitude with which Fr. Paul addresses the problem of man; it must be said that he really collects material for future anthropology (“the anthropology of our grandchildren”) and offers “topics for reflection,” but he does this based on a very specific position, which within Orthodox theology cannot be considered indisputable. With all the incompleteness (and even in a number of moments of undevelopedness) of Orthodox patristic anthropology, there are very significant provisions in it, or around it, which, it seems, Fr. Paul either ignored them or actually recognized them as more one-sided and superficial in comparison with what was revealed to him as a single “universal human” worldview. All these provisions, one way or another, ultimately come down to the fundamentals of a worldview that differs from the concept of “eternal pre-existence” and the mutual similarity of man and all creation. And if the idea of ​​“eternal pre-existence” itself is quite difficult to convince with theological criticism, 877 then the consequences flowing from it - precisely in anthropological terms - most clearly reveal its alienness in relation to the Christian patristic tradition. According to the plan of this study, first of all, this is precisely what should be reflected in the conclusions to which the study of the anthropological aspect of the religious, philosophical and theological heritage of Father P. Florensky leads. In general, the presentation of the material in the work was carried out not only in accordance with the desire to reveal and analyze as convincingly as possible what one might not agree with in the anthropology of Fr. Paul; Throughout the entire study, an attempt was made to explain the reason that led Fr. Paul to precisely this kind of anthropology. All this is also reflected in the conclusions, as well as the main position from which this study was conducted: disagreement with the main starting premise in the idea of ​​Fr. Paul's account of man does not mean denying the philosophical and theological significance of all the anthropological material he collected. 1. With his religious, philosophical and theological creativity, Fr. Pavel Florensky made a significant contribution to the development of Orthodox theology and Orthodox teaching about man in Russia. He helped draw attention to many important issues and themes that later became central to the work of theologians in the twentieth century. Among them, anthropologically significant are: the theology of St. Gregory Palamas (including the doctrine of the deification of man as a communion of the uncreated Divine Light), the doctrine of the consubstantiality (one nature) of all human persons in the image of the consubstantiality of the Persons of the Holy Trinity, the idea of ​​the deification of all creation through man (“bright cosmism” of Orthodoxy, in the words of V. Lossky), etc. 2. O.P. Florensky had a holistic worldview, which he derived from his personal inner experience and which, in its main features, remained unchanged with him both in the early and late periods of his work. The main unchanging basis of Fr.’s worldview. Paul was the idea of ​​the dual unity of the world and man, the unity of their “unconditional” (eternal and originally deified) and empirical (unfolded in time) components. 3. The idea of ​​man as a living unity of eternal deified and empirical realities at the philosophical and theological level by Fr. Paul is substantiated by the concept of the created ideal world realized in Divine Eternity, which is the ontological basis of everything that exists in empirics. This interpretation was given by Fr. Paul's teaching of St. Fathers about the “peacemaking thoughts” of the Divine Mind, in which the world already existed before its creation. A different interpretation, proposed by V. Lossky (and subsequently by Archpriest John Meyendorff) in the process of studying the works of St. Maximus the Confessor and St. Gregory Palamas, considers the ideal foundations of creation not as a created reality, “pre-existing” in Divine Eternity, but as the pre-eternal Divine plan for the World, not objectified into any ideal Creation in Eternity. It seems that the concept of the “eternal pre-existence” of the creature itself, within the framework of Orthodox theology, allows for further discussion, but a number of provisions of the anthropology of Fr. P. Florensky cannot be accepted in the Orthodox teaching about man. These provisions include: 1 .1. The very division of man into eternal and temporary components, which means that the eternal deified reality is already the property of man and man already has his eternal completion and the fullness of the gifts received from God. Orthodox anthropology is more characteristic of the idea of ​​the need for a person to achieve his rooting in God through the realization of the Divine plan for himself. And here we are talking about the whole person, whereas in anthropology Fr. For Paul, this is true only for man in his empirical component. 1 .2. A significant reduction in the importance of human free will and free efforts. From the man himself in anthropology, Fr. Paul depends only on the fate of his empirical personality; “eternal abodes” are established only by the Divine will, and their difference (likened in the patristic texts to the difference in the brilliance of the stars in the sky) turns out to be the original predestination of God, which man cannot influence through his spiritual deeds 878 . By his asceticism in synergy with God, man creates only his empirical component, makes it ready for Eternity, but does not “penetrate” into Eternity so that his very “eternal abode” depends on the “heavenly treasures” he has collected on earth. This is a rather serious moment in the anthropology of Fr. Paul, who does not raise a person to that level of final calling, which in patristic literature is designated as “God by grace.” 1 .3. Reducing only to the empirical level the entire saving work of Christ: By His incarnation, death, resurrection and ascension, Christ does nothing for man in Eternity, since everything was done there and given to man from the beginning. Man turns out to be “rooted” in God, regardless of the historical events of the Fall of Adam and the salvation accomplished by Christ; the mystical "Morning Star" initially shines in the depths of every person, regardless of his acceptance or rejection of Christ. Patristic evidence that the Incarnation significantly changes a person’s ability to communicate with God, makes him capable of the full communion of eternal life, opens to him - if he accepts Christ - eternal salvation and deification, in the anthropology of Fr. Paul turn out to be valid only for a “part” of a person, only for his empirical content. But this reading of St. The Fathers cannot be considered justified, since there is no evidence that they are not talking about the whole person and highlight in man such an eternal component that does not need salvation and deification. 1 .4. The actual recognition of the adoring Divine grace included in the nature of man and all creation. In accordance with this, the patristic testimonies about deification as a completely new, supernatural gift for man should also be considered as relating only to “empirical man.” For a person to meet God in such anthropology, a created medium is actually introduced - in the form of the highest ideal component of the person himself. This is natural for the symbolic ontology of Fr. Paul (where a hierarchy of layers, or spheres of being, is built), but cannot be convincingly substantiated in Orthodox theology. 2. Highlighting the highest reality in man, which does not need salvation and deification, Fr. Paul gives it a theological interpretation as the Image of God. This interpretation cannot be considered satisfactory, despite the wide variety of patristic opinions about what exactly makes a person the Image of God. Patristic reflections regarding the Image of God in man provide, first of all, a list of qualities that are inherent only in man and by which a certain “kinship” with God can be recognized in man. But the very idea of ​​“closeness” and “kinship” with God of any component in a person (by himself, without adoring grace) Fr. Pavel resolutely rejected it. 3. Recognizing the similarity between man and the world, Fr. Paul argues that the Image of God is given to man as much as to all creation. The theological substantiation of such a point of view encounters obviously insurmountable difficulties, but it inevitably follows from the dual ontology of Father P. Florensky and his interpretation of the Image of God as an eternal deified reality. 4. Another interpretation of Father Paul's ultimate reality in man is connected with his philosophy and theology of the Name. The name is recognized by him as the first (and energetically most powerful) manifestation of objective created being, as the closest layer in a multi-layered symbolic reality, enclosing the “spiritual essence” emerging from the unmanifested state. Manifesting further on different planes of existence, the “spiritual essence” gains corresponding shells – “bodies”; Thus, at levels inaccessible to empirical consciousness, the formation of a person occurs, in whose general structure the Name takes the place of the most “subtle” and existentially significant “body.” This anthropological concept is built by Father Paul exclusively on the data of “natural mysticism”, has its parallels in theosophical and occult anthropology and is unknown from Christian patristic sources. 5. Name in anthropology Fr. Paul is ontologically primary in relation to the human person; A name is the ontological “root” of the individuals who bear it, the source of their being. This issue reveals a special unity of the earliest and latest philosophical and theological works of Florensky: a person without a Name is not a person, is not a person. Explaining his beliefs in the primacy of the Name over the personality, Fr. Paul, without sufficient grounds, refers to the “general church” understanding of the meaning of the Name, but mainly refers to the evidence of experiments in ancient “folk” magic, to the practices of sorcery over the Name that were widespread in ancient times. Such references obviously cannot be convincing for Orthodox anthropology. 6. The identification of the Name with the Guardian Angel when interpreting them as the highest transpersonal reality in man represents one of the most obvious discrepancies between Fr. Paul with traditional Christian ideas. Father Paul does not create any special teaching about Angels, does not emphasize his idea of ​​the angelic world, but by Guardian Angel he resolutely refuses to understand a free, self-conscious and ontologically independent being from man. 7. The highest deified reality (“Image of God”, “Name”, “Guardian Angel”) in the anthropology of Fr. Paul is the ontological “root” and source of deification for the empirical personality of man, in which all human free will and human self-consciousness are concentrated. In the existential sense, the empirical personality is a reality of a lower order, which can only be admitted into Eternity on the terms of its symbolic “transparency” for the highest adoring energies coming from the noumenal depths of man. It is not eternal in itself and in case of loss of connection with its transpersonal “root” it undergoes ontological decay and is destroyed for objective existence. This concept is the sum total of the entire anthropology of Fr. Paul does not allow us to recognize this anthropology as personalistic. 8. Considering the duality of man in the realities designated by the theological terms “essence” and “hypostasis,” Fr. Paul interprets them as two antinomic poles in man, the confrontation between which is a necessary life process that determines empirical development and all creativity. According to this concept, sinful damage in a person reflects the established disharmony of “essence” and “hypostasis,” and salvation can be defined as the achievement between them of the same “balance” that exists in God. An important feature of this section of anthropology is Fr. Paul is an affirmation of the naturalness of such a situation, when the “essence” in a person itself is an unconscious, blind pressure of chaotically driven elemental forces that need reasonable control and direction. It seems that in resolving these issues Fr. Paul also only set a certain direction, which was developed much closer to the Holy Fathers in the works of V. Lossky. As noted above, non-acceptance of the initial positions of anthropology and even the entire worldview of Father P. Florensky cannot and should not lead to attempts to cross out his entire legacy as having no value for Orthodox theology and Orthodox teaching about man. Disagreement with Florensky requires research to seriously substantiate your point of view; agreement with Florensky again encourages further research, since his thought very often turns out to be in areas that are very new and non-traditional for Orthodox theology. Father Paul was compared to a bee, able to collect nectar from a variety of flowers; but even in a dispute as to how far the flight of this “bee” went and whether what she found were really “flowers” ​​and “nectar”, there is no doubt that what she collected can and should be fruitfully comprehended or rethought in ways other than those of Fr. Paul, positions. As prospects for further research in the field of Orthodox anthropology, carried out using the religious, philosophical and theological heritage of Fr. P. Florensky, the following can be distinguished: 1. First of all, this is, of course, the question of “eternal pre-existence”, which, despite the high authority of the works of V. Lossky, Archpriest. G. Florovsky, prot. I. Meyendorff, in Orthodox theology, appears to have not yet received its final and convincing resolution. This question needs to be posed anew, already outside the context of sophiological polemics and with extensive use of data from patristic asceticism, ascetic evidence of sinful damage and patristic experience of human deification. 2. It is necessary to give a thorough answer to the question about the limits of application in Orthodox anthropology of the data of “natural mysticism” on which the anthropology of Fr. P. Florensky. Man is obviously much more complex than the traditional general idea of ​​his dual spiritual-material nature (in the variants of dichotomy and trichotomy) suggests. But how valid are the various complicated “models” of man, developed on the model of the system of “bodies” known in theosophy and occultism, belonging to different levels of being? From this point of view, using the material of patristic asceticism, other concepts can be studied in parallel with Florensky - for example, B. Vysheslavtsev’s attempt to give a seven-level diagram of the human structure using the “analytical psychology” of K.G. Jung. 3. Special theological research requires the concept of a multi-level symbolic structure of the world and man from Fr. P. Florensky. 4. Father Paul actually gives his answer to the question that has not been fully resolved in patristic anthropology about the mystery of the birth of the integral spiritual-material being of man: does everything happen “by itself,” from the spiritual-material composition of the parents, or does Divine creativity somehow manifest itself in each new birth of a person. In the concept of Fr. Paul, the human spirit, manifesting itself on different planes of existence, instinctively, on an unconscious level, creates the corresponding “bodies,” including the most crudely material one - the physical body. It was noted above that something similar was admitted by St. Theophan the Recluse, when he was forced to object to the opinion of St. Ignatius Brianchaninov about the “subtle-bodied” nature of the soul. The theological clarification of this issue can already be carried out regardless of whether the “spirit” (or in general the highest reality) of man is considered to be “pre-existing” in eternity or this concept is rejected. 5. It seems that in the process of further development of Orthodox anthropology it is impossible to bypass the problem of “two selves” in a person, since it is posed in philosophy and solved in its own way in the “mystical teachings” to which Fr. Pavel, at Fr. Pavel Florensky, as well as, for example, from Fr. Vasily Zenkovsky. Also, in connection with the discussion of the theological doctrine of personality, the problem of “two selves” in a person becomes not only philosophical, but also theological. There is no doubt that from Christian asceticism one can identify evidence that there is a “genuine” person (as Tertullian wonderfully expressed it: “The soul is Christian by nature”) and there is a person with a “mask” put on him (including himself), which can be called “empirical”. There are relevant studies in psychology on this subject, the experience of attracting which for his time was perfectly demonstrated by Fr. Pavel and Fr. V. Zenkovsky. Attention should also be paid to V. Nesmelov’s interpretation of the “duality” of man, according to which there is an ideal nature of a person’s personality, which raises him above the world of things, and there are real conditions for the existence of a person that make a person, as it were, a “simple thing” of the physical world. It seems that the main question should be posed in understanding the problem of “two selves”: are two selves two ontological realities in man or one and the same reality, “fragmented” in man by the Fall? 6. Given by Fr. Paul, the data of “natural mysticism” coincide with the conclusions of psychoanalysis that human consciousness is located on the “periphery” of the human being and that the very foundations of this being are hidden in its unconscious depths. From the ontology of Fr. Paul concludes that this situation is natural: all processes in the energetically most intense layers (or, in other words, all the most “existentially” significant processes) occur without the participation of consciousness, which represents the reality of a lower level and only receives “revelations” coming from the depths, showing in some cases the necessary activity (for example: “The name controls me, but this requires my will,” i.e. a certain act of consciousness is necessary for the actions of a higher reality in the empiricity). It is necessary for research to pose the question, is such a situation really natural for a person, and did not arise in him as a result of the Fall? In his interpretation of the hierarchy of the human being, Fr. Paul draws primarily on “natural-mystical” experiences and (less frequently) evidence from psychoanalysis, which deal only with fallen man. There is reason to believe that a special study in this direction of patristic ascetic experience can give other results (as shown by V. Lossky using the example of the texts of St. Simeon the New Theologian). These studies may also be important for developing a serious theological assessment of the anthropological conclusions that follow from the psychoanalysis and analytical psychology of K.G. Jung. 879 7. The very problem of unconscious reality in man requires its thorough formulation in Orthodox theology. In this direction, for example, the study of the concepts of Fr. P. Florensky can be combined with an analysis of the theory of the “collective unconscious” by K.G. Jung and other psychoanalytic data and carried out from the point of view of the theological teaching about human nature damaged by sin (“ousia”). 8. Attempt o. Paul to refer in his concepts to the general church understanding of the meaning of the name given to a person in the sacrament of Baptism requires a thorough study of this issue. It seems that such a study should not be limited to continuing the discussion of the topics raised in the name-glorifying polemics of the early twentieth century, but should primarily touch upon the anthropological aspect of the philosophy and theology of the name. In general o. Pavel Florensky has not yet exhausted the possibilities of his influence in science, philosophy and theology. As before, the main thing in this influence remains the creative impulse, the discovery, figuratively speaking, of a new “depth” where only “flatness” is seen. “It’s the way things are,” he wrote in one of his Solovetsky letters (July 1936), “that I can’t help but move forward and, therefore, not create new questions.” 880 The whole power of these questions lies precisely in the fact that they can be “inconvenient” in their own way in the most different areas of human beliefs and hobbies, be it “seminarism” 881 of the early twentieth century, “scientific” atheism, occult “knowledge” or theology, which is losing the ability to speak with anyone who demands an account of the hope he has (1 Pet. 3:15). And for an Orthodox theologian it is important that Fr. Paul, with all his “antinomy,” strived all his life to move forward, without leaving the place where the unconditional holiness of the Church was once revealed to him for the first time. 882 “And if I,” he wrote two years before his death (December 1935), “were given the opportunity to start life anew, from childhood, I would probably follow the same path that has already been traveled. I made mistakes. But basically my conscience is calm.” 883 Application. Anthropology of priest Pavel Florensky. Critiques and studies Priest Pavel Florensky is, perhaps, one of the most original Russian religious philosophers of the early twentieth century. He is unique in his own way, not only for the broad themes of his works (philosophy, theology, science) and the depth of their content, but also for the nature of the reaction that these works evoked in the philosophical, theological and scientific communities. It is possible that even none of the thinkers at all evoked such an abundance of contradictory, diametrically opposed reviews of their works as he did, coming not only from dissenting philosophers or publicists, but also from persons equally authoritative in the Russian Orthodox Church and in Russian Orthodox theology. 884 Opposing assessments concern almost all aspects of the religious and philosophical heritage of Fr. P. Florensky, including the most famous ones, such as the philosophy of cult, the philosophy of name, and those that are able to attract the attention of mainly narrow specialists (for example, linguistics, mathematics, etc.). At the same time, there is a whole field, namely philosophical and theological anthropology, in which the opinions of critics of the first half of the twentieth century. and modern researchers radically disagree not in particulars, but in the very question of whether Florensky said something about a person that would deserve attention and discussion. Only exceptional cases of attention to any specific direction in the study of anthropology are known. Paul or discussions around any anthropological problem raised in his works. Until now, there has been no interest in a general study of the entire legacy of Fr. P. Florensky for the purpose of identifying and analyzing the doctrine of man contained in it. And this despite the fact that, as S.S. rightly notes. Khoruzhy, nowadays “the anthropological turn of thought is becoming a reality in all areas” and, in broad strokes, philosophical and religious thought, drawing closer and exerting mutual influence on each other, are equally “moving in a common direction towards man.” 885 Meanwhile, such an “anthropological turn” became a reality back in the 1920s, and Florensky’s thought moved in line with this “turn” and even, in part, ahead of it. But oh. Paul failed to complete much of what he set out to do. Thus, he placed the section “On Philosophical Anthropology” in the initial plan of his lecture courses back in 1917, but in fact he compiled only brief notes entitled “Notes on Anthropology” and “Philosophical Anthropology,” dated December 1916, respectively. and October 1917 Ever since his student years, Florensky was characterized by a direction of thought that was clearly identified only in an article in 1923, published in English in the magazine “The Pilgrim” (1924). “In particular,” he wrote here, “what is tempting for unbelief is the undisclosedness of those views on the nature of man and all creation that are implicitly contained in faith in Christ. A worldview which says nothing on these fundamental questions naturally meets with distrust on the part of those who, for better or worse, sincerely devote all their attention and energy to these very subjects. Meanwhile, Christianity, of course, has something to say about them... (my italics - N.P.).” 886 As a matter of fact, Florensky’s first attempt to “reveal” Christian views “on man and all creation” was the sophiology of the “Pillar”, where the development of the “question of Sophia” was supposed to show “how the creature is thought of in itself or by itself or about itself.”, 887 and man was defined as “the head of the creature.” Subsequently, the theme of man was presented in the lectures of Fr. Paul 1917–1922 and further, in his last work, “Names” (1926). One of the main goals of this review is to attract the attention of researchers to this topic, the degree of development of which clearly does not correspond to its significance not only for the study and development of the extensive heritage of Fr. P. Florensky, but also for all philosophical and theological anthropology as a whole. It seems that the main starting premise of the entire philosophical and theological anthropology of Fr. P. Florensky emerged already during his years of study at the Moscow Academy of Sciences, in his student essays and sermons. Subsequently, it was not revised and can be easily found throughout the entire creative heritage of Fr. Pavel. According to an essay written by Florensky during the summer holidays of 1905. (between the first and second years of study at the academy), the human personality is both actual and potential infinity, it is “the church of God, but she is also the One who lives in it, the finite and the infinite, the animal and the god, a being of dual life.” 888 Florensky spoke practically about the same thing in a student sermon in 1907. 889 These and other earliest works of Florensky, naturally, remained outside of any printed critical assessments, although the very fact of their rapid publication in publications associated with the MDA is indicative. The first significant review was given to the final candidate essay - “On Religious Truth” (1908), which was the initial version of the later famous “Pillar and Statement of Truth” (hereinafter simply “Pillar”, as Father Paul himself called this work). This is an essay by Prof. S.S. Glagolev rated it five plus, noting that it is “an extremely valuable contribution to Orthodox theological science,” although it still needs to be developed and substantiated many of its provisions (the review was published in the “Journals of meetings of the Council of the Imperial MDA for 1908.” S. Posad, 1909). 890 Prof. insisted on revising this work. A.I. Vvedensky 891, and it can be assumed that particularly significant questions arose regarding the anthropologically significant chapter “Gehenna,” which affirmed the possibility of a “gap” of two selves in a person, when one self, as unconditional and eternal, is saved, and the second, having lost its substantiality, becomes purely subjective and unreal and, as such, perishes eternally in Gehenna. In any case, in the version of the master's thesis, Fr. Paul - “On Spiritual Truth” (1912) - already contained all the chapters of the future “Pillar”, except for the chapter “Gehenna”. But even in this form, the dissertation was delayed in defense, and the situation changed only after the death of A.I. Vvedensky (1913) and appointment as the second reviewer of the work of the rector of the MDA, Bishop. Theodore (Pozdeevsky) at his request. “After repeated and careful reading” by Bishop. Theodore suggested that Florensky exclude from the dissertation the entire chapter on Sophia, which was essentially as anthropologically significant as the chapter “Gehenna”, since it, in addition to the external design of sophiology, contained a detailed doctrine of the “eternal pre-existence” of the creature. In response to Fr. Pavel removed all three last chapters from the text of the dissertation (“Sophia”, “Friendship”, “Jealousy”), and in this form his work was successfully defended in May 1914. 892 Two reviews of the dissertation “On Spiritual Truth” were published - Bishop. Feodora (“Theological Bulletin,” 1914. No. 5) and S. Glagoleva (“Journals of meetings of the Council of the Imperial MDA for 1914.” S. Posad, 1916). By that time, “The Pillar” had already been published in its entirety (M.: Put, 1914), and Bishop. Theodore, first of all, in his review considered it necessary to distinguish between these two versions of the same work, warned against their possible identification and emphasized that he was considering only the version consisting of seven chapters. 893 This gave him the opportunity not to initiate a theological discussion of sophiology and took him away from the need to directly express his opinion regarding the possibility of a patristic justification for the concept of the “eternal pre-existence” of the creature in general and the human “ideal personality” in particular. Nevertheless, he did not ignore the theme of memory, which Fr. Paul, in addition to the chapter on Sophia, is also touched upon at the end of the chapter “Sin” and serves to develop the idea of ​​​​the presence in Creation and in man of an eternal, ideal plan of being. Ep. Theodore noted that memory “is a phenomenon within the limits of temporality and is connected with this temporary existence” (for Florensky, memory is evidence of our transtemporal nature). He also drew attention to the ambiguity of what reason is for the author of “The Pillar” - fallen reason or the mind of the creature as such. In the “Pillar” the question is raised about absolute Truth from the point of view of finding it by the mind and, therefore, we should talk about “knowledge of the Truth”, i.e. about “truth” (Fr. Paul distinguishes in the “Pillar” “Truth” and “truth”); however, Fr. Paul speaks of the search for the Truth itself. 894 It seems that ep. Theodore met here with Florensky’s very important concept of empiricity (i.e., ultimately, about the same “bifurcation” of man into empirical and Eternal “components”) and remained perplexed. He would like to be in the system about. Paul talks about reason precisely as a property of fallen, and only fallen man; therefore, for example, he is surprised: “Where, in fact, did the author get the dynamic moment in his mind with a plan to infinity?” Reason, on the contrary, must certainly want to bring everything to finitude, and when it deals with the Absolute Truth, it “takes on an impossible task - to reduce infinity to finitude, to become higher than itself.” Therefore, from the point of view of Bishop. Theodora, reason is not antinomic in itself, but only in relation to the Absolute Truth. 895 If we recognize the antinomy of reason in itself, along with the split in the whole person, then this means considering reason to be an integral property of man in general as such. Ep. Theodore actually notices this circumstance in “The Pillar” when he says that the author wants to “explain and thereby establish (my italics - N.P.) reason.” 896 For Florensky, in fact, it cannot be otherwise, since in his symbolic ontology (on which the entire “Pillar” system was already built), the entire person in his present state, with all currently existing organs (mental and physical) is symbolic; In man, everything has its deep ontological meaning. One can only talk about a sinful change in the hierarchy of human powers and abilities, but not a single power of the soul and not a single organ of the body can themselves be considered any derivative of the human fall or in any way connected with the fall (for example, created in anticipation of the fall). Accordingly, in the coming renewal of creation, nothing from the composition of man can be superfluous, nothing is subject to destruction, but everything will find its new, worthy use. This is a completely different formulation of the question or, if you like, a completely different “language” than the one spoken by Bishop in his review. Theodore. “The standard of reason in relation to Christian truth,” he writes, for example, “is completely inapplicable, which is why Christianity requires a renewal of the mind and the abolition of reason is expected.” 897 But the very concept of “renewal of the mind” in the system of Fr. Paul must be interpreted differently, in accordance with his original ontology, and the concept of “abolition of reason” can only be taken as a metaphor, but in reality it is completely impossible. Unlike Ep. Theodora, book. Evg. Trubetskoy took for analysis the just released “Pillar” in its entirety and already in February 1914. made a report at a meeting of the Religious and Philosophical Society in Moscow - “The Light of Tabor and the Transfiguration of the Mind” (published in May 1914). Opinions were expressed that, while sharply criticizing the antinomy in “The Pillar,” E. Trubetskoy simply did not understand the direction of Fr. Paul (abbot Andronik, S. Khoruzhy), 898 i.e. actually did not take into account Florensky’s distinction between “Truth” and “truth”, as well as the fact that, from the point of view of Fr. Paul, all contradictions are removed “at the highest level of knowledge... in a state of enlightenment” 899. But E. Trubetskoy does not criticize antinomy in itself and does not declare the very structure of the “Pillar” contradictory (as Archpriest G. Florovsky actually erroneously does). 900 He rebels against the recognition of antinomies as the norm for reason, which should not strive to resolve them itself, but should wait for renewal from above. Thus, it seems that E. Trubetskoy finds in “The Pillar” one of the most important points in the ontology and anthropology of Fr. Paul and polemicizes against him. Indeed, Trubetskoy is ready to agree with the assertion of the antinomy of reason and with the demand for “refusal of reason” in the search for Truth, but only if reason is understood as a thought clinging to the realm of the temporal and unable to rise above this plane. But Florensky, Trubetskoy points out, uses the word “reason” in various meanings, including as a synonym for logical thinking in general. And then antinomianism turns out to be a norm for Florensky, which should not be fought and which, moreover, is absolutely necessary for spiritual life. Trubetskoy calls this position the raising of the sinful division of our mind to the norm. 901 It can be seen that Trubetskoy meets here with the hierarchical ontology of O. Paul, in which the inability of the mind to perceive the Truth as non-antinomic is caused not so much by its sinful damage, but - and mainly - by its position in the lower strata of existence. Trubetskoy does not reveal this ontology, but simply refuses to accept the conclusions that follow from it. And in fact, he refuses to recognize the distinction made by Florensky between “Truth” and “truth”: “No distinction between truth with a small letter and a capital one does not abolish for us the obligation to strive precisely for this goal - to seek the unity of truth: for the truth that bears the stamp of our sinful division is not truth at all, but error.” 902 In other words, the fact that a person’s mind is on the peripheral layers of existence is not the norm, but the result of sinful damage. The periphery is not a natural, but a subnatural place of the human mind, which should not remain in a passive position, enlightened from the depths of the “object” of human nature, but must strive for its own grace-filled transformation: “Just as the fatal necessity of sin in this life does not exclude our duty to fight sin and with God’s help to free ourselves from it, so the inevitability of antinomianism for us does not abolish the duty that lies upon us - to strive to rise above this sinful the darkness of our rational consciousness, to try to illuminate our thought with that unity of the ever-essential light in which all our earthly contradictions are abolished.” 903 Only at first glance it may seem that Florensky is talking about the same thing. In reality, the difference is enormous: he is not talking about transforming the mind itself so that it itself ceases to be peripheral in the composition of human nature. In Florensky's ontology, reason is sanctified, remaining on the periphery. That is why antinomies are the norm for him, and Florensky receives from Trubetskoy a reproach for not recognizing the actual grace-filled transformation of the mind already here on earth; spiritual transformation, according to Trubetskoy, should embrace the entire nature of man, “it should begin in the heart - the center of his spiritual life - and from there spread to the entire periphery.” 904 It seems that Trubetskoy understood the direction of Fr. Pavel is much better than it might seem. According to Fr. Andronicus, from the constructions of Fr. Paul should follow the conclusion: “..antinomy is a specific characteristic of the existence of the created world after the Fall (my italics - N.P.).” 905 But this is a very specific reading of Florensky, since Fr. Paul does not draw such a conclusion. Trubetskoy would agree with just such a conclusion, but the direction of thought of Fr. For Paul, it seems, it was completely different. MDA professor S. Glagolev in his review only stated, without any assessments, that Florensky connects the issues of eternity and memory and considers creation “both in its historical phenomenon and in its ideal.” It seems very important that Glagolev appreciated the work of Fr. Paul as a “turn to patristic and ascetic theology,” however, unlike Bishop. Theodora, Glagolev carefully testified to the “Orthodoxy” not of the work itself, but of its author. This work, according to Glagolev, should not be read, but studied (“it contains too many important and valuable statements”), but not in a hurry to add your “yes” to the author’s opinion. There are still significant shortcomings here, which, as Glagolev believed, the author will eliminate in subsequent reprints of his book. 906 Meanwhile, the full version of “The Pillar” was published before Fr. Paul (at the very beginning of 1914), and Florensky, judging by all available information, did not at all plan to make any changes to it during its possible republication in the same publishing house “Put” in 1918. 907 This once again speaks of the verified nature of his position and the firmness of his convictions, the essence of which he never hid, but for some reason in his contemporary MDA was for the most part perceived as the costs of not yet fully mature theological thought. In any case, serious and at the same time friendly criticism at the beginning of his path in theology, Fr. Paul, apparently, never met. In March 1914 (in Northern Notes) an article by B.V. was published. Yakovenko’s “Philosophy of Despair”, in which the author actually did not recognize the “Pillar” as having any serious significance. In its main theme - the doctrine of Truth - "The Pillar", according to B. Yakovenko, does not reveal anything new; everything that Florensky wrote was already known from the works of Fichte, Hegel and the American idealist J. Rice. Yakovenko also noticed from Fr. Paul's “inconsistencies” in relation to reason: Florensky weaves a “complex and tangled network” of rational evidence, directed mainly against reason. But this discovered inconsistency prompts Yakovenko not to a more in-depth study (as Bishop Theodore and Prince E. Trubetskoy did), but to a simple conclusion about the fragility of the faith of Fr. Pavel. This faith, as Yakovenko claims, is afraid of rational arguments, and therefore Florensky is forced to pay so much attention to reason. 908 Subsequently, in exile, B.V. Yakovenko significantly changed his attitude towards “Pillar” and towards Florensky himself. Thus, he saw in the philosophy of the “Pillar” the depth and originality of the plan, and called the structure built Fr. Paul's religious system is one of the most significant creations of religious thought of humanity in general. Florensky, in his opinion, created “a classic work worthy of standing next to the Confession of the Blessed. Augustine." Yakovenko titled the entire short essay about Florensky in his “History of Russian Philosophy” (1938) somewhat differently: instead of “Philosophy of Despair” (as was the case in the 1916 article), he wrote “Philosophy of Theoretical (italics mine - N.P.) Despair.” 909 The nature of the suspiciousness reaching the point of malice that sometimes surrounded Florensky can be seen in the extensive review of the full version of “The Pillar” by Archimandrite. Nikanora (Kudryavtseva). Archim. Nikanor constantly points out the scientific dishonesty of Florensky, who, from his point of view, quite consciously, under the cover of liturgical and patristic literature, “promotes ideas that either have too little or have nothing at all in common with the universal church consciousness.” 910 Then, on the same topic, more correctly, but with a purely spiritual “diagnosis”, Rev. G. Florovsky: “He presents the book of personal elections as a confession of the conciliar experience. There is a very clear touch of theological charm in all of Florensky’s constructions (my italics – N.P.).” 911 Thus, it is actually stated that Florensky is indeed “returning to the Fathers,” but he does this in a selective manner and out of personal arbitrariness, due to his conscious heresy or “theological charm” that he himself does not notice. Archim. Nikanor, as a rule, simply lists what seems to him incorrect in Florensky, and borrows arguments for theological criticism from already published reviews (Bishop Theodora, B. Yakovenko, Prince E. Trubetskoy); At the same time, Fr. N. Berdyaev’s very subjective and largely controversial criticism of Florensky. Nikanora simply corresponds without any attempts to comment on her in any way. At the same time, such a decisive desire to search for a subject for criticism in everything in Florensky allowed Archimandrite. Nikanor, along with a collection of clearly far-fetched remarks (such as, for example, the discovery of the Uniate “per Filium” in the “Pillar”), 912 drew attention to something important that had not been noticed by critics before him or was recognized as undeserving of mention. Thus, he isolated from Florensky’s concept the idea that not only man, but also “the whole of creation as a whole turns out to be created in the Image of God.” To Florensky’s statement - “the individual must be saved” (from the chapter “Gehenna”) - he objected that in this case the individual is “completely and in all respects unfree” and, therefore, is not a person; in the same connection, he noted the unfoundedness of Florensky’s ontological distinction between the “personality” and “character” of a person as a system of his actions. 913 In criticism N.A. Berdyaev (Stylized Orthodoxy // Russian Thought. 1914. No. 1) the most striking epithets seem to be “decadence”, “stylized archaism” and “primitivism”, hostility to “new religious life, the creative spirit”. From Berdyaev’s position, Florensky is not at all trying to break out of the “everyday” churchliness and begin a “spiritual ascent.” “Where is spiritual life for us, sinners, for us little ones? - this is how Berdyaev conveys the general, from his point of view, position of Florensky and the “old church”. “What is needed is humility, not an increase in spiritual life, not the discovery of other worlds... and not the creation of a new life.” At the same time, in “The Pillar” one cannot help but feel precisely the desire to overcome what Berdyaev calls the “spiritual democratization” of Christianity, its adaptation “to the human middle.” And Berdyaev, who himself would like to go “too far (my italics. - N.P.) spiritual voyages,” actually complains that Florensky in this “voyage” is trying to adhere to the boundaries defined by the “official brand of holiness.” In Florensky, Berdyaev reveals duality when “a spiritual aristocrat stylizes himself in a democratic way.” 914 In anthropological terms, Berdyaev, of course, proceeds from his ideas about “religious coming of age,” which for him means that a person’s perception of Divine Revelation is no longer from the outside, but from the inside, from the depths of the human spirit itself. According to Berdyaev, Christ is born in the human soul itself and deification is revealed from a person’s own inner mystical depth. And it is precisely this idea of ​​​​the Divine reality within man that Berdyaev finds equally alien to Florensky and all Orthodox theology, as well as to what he calls “Christian anthropology.” “For the priest. Florensky,” he writes, “Christianity is still not a divine-human religion, it still has a Monophysite bias characteristic of Orthodoxy”; in “The Pillar” there is too much “traditional Orthodox hostility towards people and the world”, and Florensky follows the “infant”, Old Testament state of religion when he believes the Triune Truth and the Triune God to be completely external to man, separated from man by a transcendental abyss. 915 All this testifies to Berdyaev’s rather superficial acquaintance with the “Pillar”, at least in that part of it where a real idea of ​​\u200b\u200bis revealed. Paul on the ontological “correlation” of God and man. Although Florensky’s Creation and Creator are indeed separated by an infinite difference, in “The Pillar” it is constantly emphasized that the creature has in God its eternal deified “root”, from which the Divine Light can and should flare up in empirical man. And if, according to Berdyaev, deification is the birth of God in the mystical depths of man, then, according to Florensky, the transcendental God is already present from eternity in an ideal person and the enlightenment of empirical man by the Divine Light can also, from an empiric point of view, be called the “birth of God,” and taking place in the same “mystical depths.” Apparently, Berdyaev did not discern in “The Pillar” this fundamental feature of Florensky’s anthropology, when a single person appears divided into an ideal person and an empirical person; otherwise it would be impossible not to notice that in relation to empirical man, Berdyaev’s “immanent” concept with Florensky’s ideas has almost complete similarity. The only thing that Berdyaev noted in Florensky on this important issue was the doctrine “of some kind of pre-existence of the soul,” which in “The Pillar” turned out (according to Berdyaev) to be undeveloped and not related to eschatology, although “this is the same question.” 916 Apparently, all other aspects of Florensky’s anthropology faded into the background for Berdyaev in front of one problem that does not allow for compromise and indeed in the most radical way separates “The Pillar” and Berdyaev’s philosophy of spiritual creative transformation. Berdyaev, with the conviction of a prophet, foretold and expected something that could not possibly be accommodated in Florensky’s ontology: the decomposition of the physical plane of being and “physical bodily life.” “In the global cosmic process of development,” according to Berdyaev, “man outgrows the relative stability of physical material life” and already now, in the “era of the cosmic vortex,” “a world turning point is mysteriously taking place towards the revelation of the Spirit in man, an appeal to spiritual flesh.” 917 Based on “The Pillar,” Berdyaev wrote that Florensky “closes his eyes” to this world cosmic process and “wants to retain the physical corporeality and materiality of religious life,” does not want and is afraid of revealing the “spiritual flesh” of the Church, its “eternal face” and “innermost essence.” In fact, Florensky, not only in his later works, but already in “The Pillar,” said quite a lot specifically about revealing the “eternal face” and “innermost essence” of the creature. But this process, from his point of view, is not accomplished by “throwing away” the lower planes of being for some reason. The ascent, if you like (in Berdyaev’s terminology), to “other worlds” occurs for him through the appearance of a higher plane of being in a lower one, and nothing else. After publication in 1914 N. Berdyaev criticized Florensky more than once, but, in fact, did not say anything new, except for increasing the harshness in his expressions. So, reacting to Fr. Pavla v. A.S. Khomyakov (in his work “About Khomyakov”, 1916), Berdyaev stated that Florensky lacked “the spirit of Christ, the intimate feeling of Christ”, as well as any “signs of a sense of human dignity as a master and not a slave” (in his work “Khomyakov and the priest Florensky” - Russian Thought. 1917. February). Florensky “is clearly taking the path of the Grand Inquisitor” 918 - this was said by Berdyaev, obviously, as a reinforcement of the previously brought charges - of a “Monophysite deviation” and of a lack of “God-humanity”. Many years later, in his “Self-Knowledge” (1939–1940), Berdyaev gave a laconic list of what he could not accept from Florensky: this is “his magic, the initial feeling of the enchantment of the world, causing not rebellion, but passive meditation, the absence of a theme about freedom, a weak sense of Christ, his stylization and decadence, which he introduced into Russian religious philosophy.” 919 Here, and then in “The Russian Idea” (1946), Berdyaev pointed out Florensky’s “cosmic seduction”, which turns into “depression” of a person, his relegation - along with Christ and the Gospel - from the center somewhere to the periphery of philosophizing. 920 Subsequently, these theses were mechanically repeated in some articles of the 1990–2000s, the authors of which did not take the trouble to understand the subjectivity of Berdyaev’s own approach to the philosophy of Fr. Pavel. All this does not mean that Berdyaev did not find anything positive from Florensky at all, from his point of view, 921 but the rejection concerned the most important ideological issues. In any case, we can say that in anthropological terms, Berdyaev’s criticism of “The Pillar” is not so much criticism in the proper sense as a clash of two concepts, two rather ambiguous and ultimately irreducible ideas about the world and man. As a result of the entire review of criticism voiced in publications before 1917, 922 it is clear that anthropology, as a well-defined and already sufficiently developed teaching about. P. Florensky, has not yet been noticed. N. Berdyaev’s extremely subjective approach did not allow him to understand the very essence of what was proposed by Fr. Pavel, and Bishop Theodore and Prince E. Trubetskoy accepted a number of provisions in Florensky’s concept more as shortcomings than as a completely definite point of view. Apparently, this is why their critical remarks contain much more simple bewilderment than reasoned polemics. As for other reviews, they basically simply reflected the general background of the attitude that was manifested towards Fr. Paul among his contemporaries. 923 As for N.A. Berdyaev, for the entire Russian emigration of the first half of the twentieth century. the entire philosophical and theological heritage of Fr. P. Florensky consisted mainly only in “The Pillar and Statement of Truth”, in the work “Around Khomyakov” (1916) and in the ideas expressed in the small brochure “Imaginaries in Geometry”, which managed to be published in Russia in 1922. But when in Berlin in 1929. a phototype reissue of “The Pillar” was published, Mr. Florovsky (not yet a priest) in his first critical assessment of the work of Fr. Pavel (Florovsky, V. Languishment of the Spirit // Path. 1930. No. 20) also remembered Florensky’s important student work “On Types of Growth” (1906). There, Florovsky noted, humanity is pre-peacefully (that is, even before the creation of the world) divided into many genera and types: these are the pre-peacefully determined paths of every person in the world. And “oh. Pavel Florensky places higher value on precisely this innate purity than on the holiness of heroism” 924. For “The Ways of Russian Theology” (Paris, 1937) Fr. Georgy Florovsky slightly shortened the original text from “Vargument of the Spirit”, removed this mention of “types”, but left other, no less important comments regarding anthropology. On one level, he writes here, in Florensky “the world has not yet been transformed, but on another, in its eternal root, it is divine.” And “Florensky’s hope is not that the Lord came and in Himself opened new paths of Eternal Life, but that from eternity and by its very nature “creation goes into intra-Trinity life.” Thus, Florovsky connects Florensky’s intuition of the “eternal pre-existence” of creation and man with the insensibility of the historical Christ-God-Man, Who in “The Pillar” “is lost in some vague shadow in the background” 925. Since the late 1920s. In the Russian emigration, controversy began to gradually flare up around the sophiology of Fr. S. Bulgakov, the culmination of which was the famous Decree of the Moscow Patriarchate of September 7, 1935, the response to it by Fr. S. Bulgakov and analysis of this answer by V. Lossky (V. Lossky. Dispute about Sofia. Paris, 1936). As part of this controversy, a large work by the archbishop was quickly written. Seraphim (Sobolev) “New Teaching about Sophia the Wisdom of God” (Sofia, 1935), in which the works of Bulgakov and Florensky were considered in one general context, and not always even with a distinction between the late and early Bulgakov. Archbishop Seraphim chose the method of highlighting the main provisions of sophiology and refuting them with quotations from Holy Scripture and St. Fathers; regarding the teachings of Fr. Paul, he applied this method to the thesis about Sophia as the “Great Root of the whole creation,” by which the creature goes into the “bosom” of the Most Holy Trinity and through which it receives eternal life. Archbishop Seraphim objected that the “root” on which the possibility of eternal life is based for us is Christ Himself, and the condition of eternal life is the sacrament of the Eucharist 926. In essence, this was a criticism of the very idea of ​​“eternal pre-existence” and the primordial deification of creation in its ideal foundations, which, however, was further discussed by the archbishop. Seraphim in relation to Florensky was not developed. Instead, ow. Seraphim focused on the accusation of Fr. Paul in “ditheism”, since, according to him, by admitting a basis for eternal life other than Christ, we recognize another “savior” - Sophia, “who appears in this case, according to the idea of ​​Fr. Florensky, with real attributes of the Divine” 927 Vl. Seraphim here completely lost sight of the fact that in the “Pillar” the condition for the eternal life of all creation is ultimately not Sophia, but the Divine Essence - Love, to which the creature participates through its “Sophia” roots. And in general, Florensky in “The Pillar” does not give any reason to accuse him of deifying Sophia; the whole subtlety of his sophiology is that Sophia is not God, but “religiously”, i.e. in living religious experience, “almost merges” with God. 928 Almost all other criticism of the archbishop. Seraphim Florensky's teaching is associated with an error: he attributes Fr. Paul's statements, which are given in the "Pillar" as a quotation from Vl. Solovyov, 929 and therefore it was Solovyov, and not Fr. Such accusations should be addressed to Pavel. Seraphim, as a deviation into “pantheism”, “man-theology”, etc. 930 N.O. Lossky in his “History of Russian Philosophy” (1951) names “The Pillar”, “The Meaning of Idealism” (1915) and the article “Around Khomyakov” (1916) as Florensky’s main works. He recognized Florensky’s main merit as the spread of the idea of ​​consubstantiality from Trinitarian theology to the entire “metaphysics of created existence.” It was Florensky, according to N. Lossky, who fruitfully introduced into scientific and philosophical circulation the doctrine of the consubstantiality of all creation and, at the same time, presented Plato’s ideas not as abstract concepts, but as “living concrete personalities” of a superhuman order. These are two interrelated aspects of N. Lossky’s own philosophy, in which he recognized the ideological primacy of Fr. Pavel. In general, N. Lossky speaks out significantly critically only on two issues - regarding Florensky’s speech against Khomyakov and regarding the concept set out in “The Pillar”, in the chapter “Gehenna”. “According to Florensky,” he writes, “the human personality consists of two selves that can be separated from each other: one self is doomed to eternal torment, and the other to eternal bliss. But this is completely impossible (my italics – N.P.).” Florensky, of course, does not have such a teaching explicitly, but N. Lossky shows the inevitable conclusion to which the anthropology contained in the “Pillar” leads. In fact, Florensky speaks about the ontological disintegration of a person’s empirical personality in the event of its defeat by ultimate evil. The temporary, “conditional Self” in a person in this case is cut off from the eternal, “true Self”, loses its substantiality and thereby ceases to be the Self. This is what N. Lossky considers impossible, since, in his opinion, “eternal suffering of torment... is already experience, therefore, experience is the property of some Self that is aware of it.” 931 Unlike N. Lossky, Rev. Vasily Zenkovsky in his “History of Russian Philosophy” (Paris, 1950) is much more critical of Florensky, since he looks for “ecclesiastical content” in him, but finds only “ecclesiastical form”, “ecclesiastical vestments”. Zenkovsky forms his impression of Florensky’s philosophy from “The Pillar” and two handwritten reprints - “The Universal Roots of Idealism” (1908) and “The Meaning of Idealism” (1915), with which he mainly reinforces his thesis about confusion in Fr. Paul's church experience with “popular” and even occult experience 932. Essentially, having recognized the philosophical “incompleteness” of the sophiology of the “Pillar,” Zenkovsky largely connected this shortcoming with the absence (as it seems to him) of Florensky of an answer to the question: “Where does dirt and suffering in space come from?” “It is characteristic,” he writes without comment, “that Florensky takes the whole problem of evil only in anthropological terms, as the problem of sin and salvation from it.” However, Zenkovsky does not find anthropology itself in “The Pillar”: the theme of man, he notes, in Florensky, having barely begun, “immediately expands into the general theme of created existence,” which is ultimately enlightened, according to Fr. Vasily, “that light of genuine and deep cosmism, which is especially imprinted in Orthodoxy.” 933 As is known, N. Berdyaev (in “Russian Idea”, 1946) noted this same moment as purely negative: Florensky’s man, he wrote, is “depressed,” and Florensky himself “lives under cosmic seduction.” 934 In modern critical literature there is a point of view on the relationship between man and space in Florensky, which disagrees with neither Zenkovsky nor Berdyaev: O.T. Ermishin believes that “the connection between man and the world is the basis on which Florensky’s philosophical anthropology is based, which incorporates metaphysics, epistemology, natural science, and theology.” Zenkovsky did not know Florensky’s philosophical anthropology and criticized only his metaphysics, 935 as a result of which the criticism, of course, turned out to be one-sided and is now largely of only historical interest. At first glance, it seems that to a certain extent the same can be said about the entire criticism of Florensky that was voiced until the last decades of the twentieth century. However, in fact this is true, so to speak, in a quantitative rather than a qualitative sense. The deep foundations of Fr.'s worldview. Paul did not change as he moved from the early to the late period of his work and, not knowing Florensky’s later works, critics could catch (and partly caught) the most important thing that is characteristic of his entire philosophy. Until the end of the 1960s. about Florensky could only be learned from the editions of “The History of Russian Philosophy” by N. Lossky (Translated from English. M., 1954) and “The History of Russian Philosophy” by Archpriest. V. Zenkovsky (T.2. M., 1956), which were intended only for historians. At the same time, “The Pillar” could be available in libraries, and some of the later works of Fr. Paul were known in samizdat. In the 1960s What can be called another manifestation of the paradox that is characteristic in general for Florensky and his legacy occurred. As you know, Rev. V. Zenkovsky wrote that all excursions about. Paul's ideas in the field of philology are amateurish and can only impress those who have not seriously studied this science. 936 Modern linguists also agree that Florensky does not have a single correct etymology of words and names. 937 However, during this period it was the linguist scientists - B.A. Uspensky and Yu.M. Lotman – became interested in the works of Fr. Pavel and his publications in the publications of the University of Tartu contributed to the fact that Florensky was “discovered” anew in Soviet Russia and aroused great interest among young researchers. 938 Apparently, the first to study the entirety of Florensky’s early and late works began in the early 1970s. priest Anatoly (later Archimandrite Innokenty) Prosvirnin and S.S. Horuzhy. The articles of the first author were mainly educational and apologetic in nature. As the “results” of the theology of Fr. Paul, he singled out the development of theodicy, the concept of the Name of God and the attempt to “create an integral Christian anthropology, resolved in anthropodicy.” Essentially, Archimandrite Innocent connected with the works of Florensky the revelation in Russian theology of the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas and attributed to him the formulation of the problem of man as an individual, with the study of the issues of the destruction of the individual by sin and the restoration of the individual in the cult. 939 S. Khoruzhy, writing at first at the request of Fr. Anatoly Prosvirnin’s “purely apologetic work” about Florensky, 940 very soon turned to criticism, but his new study, “The World Outlook of Florensky” (1974), remained unpublished until 1999. It made the first attempt to summarize the religious and philosophical heritage of Fr. Paul and identify his “central intuition” (the distinction between genuine and apparent being as “respectively containing and not containing a certain noumenal... content, meaning, idea”) 941 and the most general “ontological paradigm” (a picture of multi-layered symbolic reality, “a hierarchy of layers of being of different existential tension and noumenal transparency.”) 942 S. Khoruzhy found (and subsequently confirmed this conclusion), that the entire range of basic intuitions of the theology of St. Gregory Palamas remained alien to Florensky and incompatible with his metaphysics 943 and that in fact Florensky’s “Orthodox energyism” has a Neoplatonic interpretation. In anthropological terms, this, according to Khoruzhy, entails “a substitution, a shift from Christianity as the religion of the Personality into the pre-Christian sphere of natural, magical religiosity.” 944 S. Khoruzhy defends the point of view that Florensky is alien to the personalism organically inherent in Christianity; 945 later legacy of Fr. Paul, in his opinion, is replete with themes about man, but the discussion of these themes is based on the concepts of symbolism, which, “as a type of worldview, obviously cannot have a personalistic nature.” 946 From the very beginning of the 1980s. begins the scientific activity of abbot (since 1981 hierodeacon, since 1982 hieromonk) Andronik (Trubachev), who, after the death of his son Fr. P. Florensky - Kirill Pavlovich and Florensky (1915–1982) - materials from the heritage of Fr. Pavel. Articles about. Andronicus are much more historical than philosophical and theological in nature, but his opinion always sounds authoritative, since, in addition to relying directly on the full body of works and records of Fr. Paul, it is also based on family traditions. 947 Igum. Andronik consistently opposes a strictly theological approach to Florensky's works. In his opinion, Fr. Pavel is a “thinker and researcher” in a fairly broad sense of these concepts. 948 Past the “Pillar” researchers, says Fr. Andronik, went through the “essential symbolism” of Florensky’s speech, but this is so important that the “Pillar” is proposed to be perceived as a whole “as a symbolic myth about the knowledge of Truth, similar to the myth-making of Plato.” 949 Such a position should remove the severity of possible theological and philosophical criticism, as, for example, in the case of such definitions by Fr. Paul to Sophia, as “the whole nature of creation”, “monad”, “Fourth Hypostasis”, “ideal personality of the world”, “primordial nature of creation”, etc., or in connection with the term “transubstantiation”, which in the “Pillar” designates the deification of a person participating in the Divine Essence itself, and which, according to the instructions of Fr. Andronicus, Florensky used “not in a dogmatic sense.” 950 Nevertheless, Fr. Andronik, in his Ph.D. thesis (1984), was forced to note (as a “methodological and terminological flaw”) the failure to distinguish in the “Pillar” the “Unapproachable and Unknowable Essence of God” and Divine energies, and also make a number of critical comments to the chapters “Comforter” and “Gehenna”. In the latter case, when discussing Fr. Paul of the question about the reality of eternal torment, according to Fr. Andronicus, it remains unclear, “what is a person?” and no clear distinction was made between man, the person of man, and the image of God in him. Especially here Fr. Andronicus noted that it was not confirmed by “any testimony of St. Fathers” Florensky’s conviction that only that which is rooted in God exists objectively. 951 In fact, this is a criticism of one of the foundations of Fr.’s worldview. Paul, who put her stamp on all his works; but a thoroughly given, rather complex theological question from Fr. Andronika is not being studied. Regarding the later works of Fr. Pavel O. Andronicus, as a rule, limits himself only to their presentation and explanation. Conceived as an “anthropodycey,” they did not constitute a complete work, but still, in the opinion of Fr. Andronicus, are united by a common plan - “to deduce man,” i.e. show the meaning and internal necessity of its structure, consecration and activity. “Anthropological in method, anthropodicy is ontological and theological”; “the path of anthropodicy about. Paul” is “knowledge of the truth about man,” and anthropodicy, like theodicy (“Pillar”), is also emphasized by Fr. Andronicus, “the philosophy of consubstantiality, based on the dogma of the Trinity.” 952 We can say that the third most important of the modern researchers of creativity is Fr. P. Florensky is N.K. Bonetskaya, although, apparently, to study the heritage of Fr. She started working on Pavel much later than S. Khoruzhy and the abbot. Andronik. Immediately focusing her attention on the themes of occultism and theosophy, she for a long time denied the presence of any developed anthropology in Florensky’s works. 953 Like S. Khoruzhy, she paid special attention to the fact that “the secret of personality, its last value, remained hidden from the gaze of Florensky,” 954 and against Abbot Andronik she argued that she did not understand why the works of Fr. Paul 1920s should be called “anthropodicy”, since, in her opinion, this is primarily “spiritual science”, created in the style of R. Steiner, but on Orthodox soil. 955 However, in 2010 Bonetskaya made an attempt to fill the gap both in her own studies of Florensky’s works and in the general state of modern “Florensky studies.” She finally recognized that Florensky had a “coherent philosophical and anthropological concept,” 956 which she tried to reveal. Unfortunately, this attempt, it seems, should be considered unsuccessful for a number of reasons, the main one of which is the biased and, as before, undisguised, extremely negative attitude of the author of the study towards the very personality of Fr. Pavel. Article by N.K. Bonetskaya ““Homo faber” and “homo liturgus” (Philosophical anthropology of P. Florensky)”, which is discussed, certainly requires a separate detailed review. Within the framework of this review, the following main points can be noted. Bonetskaya accurately notices a number of trends in Florensky’s anthropology, but, due to her biased attitude, unreasonably gives these trends a finished form. Thus, Florensky’s thought is impoverished, artificially driven into a strictly defined system, the construction of which, especially in matters of philosophical anthropology, Fr. This is exactly what Pavel was trying to avoid. 957 For example, from the fact that Florensky “rather fragmentarily” problematizes the soul and spirit, for Bonetskaya it follows that Florensky in anthropology is only a “philosopher of the body.” 958 Where objectively Fr. Pavel should note the tendency to belittle the importance of human freedom; Bonetskaya clearly concludes that “man in Florensky’s anthropology lives under the sign of fate.” 959 Also, where a calm and balanced analysis of the influence of his unique personal experience on Florensky’s anthropology could give a lot, Bonetskaya with one stroke stops all possible research in this direction: in her opinion, Florensky simply “elevated to the rank of an anthropological law” his own experience of the spontaneous pressure of the “Dionysian” depths of his soul 960 and so on. With all this, a comparison of Florensky with N. Berdyaev runs through the entire article, and this is done in such a way that it becomes clear: Berdyaev’s views on man are the standard, the truth, which a researcher of Florensky’s philosophical anthropology should be guided by. Of course, there cannot be two opinions on this position: Florensky’s philosophical anthropology is extremely far from the truth. But the gross subjectivity of this study 961 is not its main drawback. Apparently, it is precisely the emphasized negative attitude towards Father Paul that makes possible for the author of the article a strange superficiality in the perception of the material being studied, which ultimately leads to a number of serious mistakes. Thus, Bonetskaya completely incorrectly reconstructs “the structure of Florensky’s philosophical anthropology as a whole,” mixing in the interpretation of Fr. Paul such concepts as “self” and “soul”, 962 “self” and “empirical character” and even “self” and “name”. 963 Thus, the material from “The Pillar” with the later works of Fr. Paul connects in a completely incredible and even, one might say, absurd way. 964 Separately, the following statement of the article should be noted: “The ultimate goal of the “liturgical person” is to transform himself into an icon, literally [emphasis added by Bonetskaya] into a thing, a painted board.” 965 This statement quite well illustrates the author’s general, rather dismissive approach to the material under study, since it has long been well known that for Fr. Paul's icon is not a “board” or a “thing”, but a living direct phenomenon of the noumenal world, the “world of ideas”, the ideal human “face”. One can argue with this, but it hardly makes any sense to replace Florensky’s idea with one’s own rough assessment. These and other similar factors seem to largely invalidate Bonetskaya's entire research. In general, we have to state that, having rightly recognized Florensky’s anthropology at the beginning of the article as a “dark” and still unexplored area of ​​his views, 966 Bonetskaya was actually unable to make a noticeable contribution to overcoming this situation. Other modern authors of articles about Florensky do not engage in a detailed analysis of his religious and philosophical heritage in terms of anthropology and, as a rule, limit themselves to only general comments on this topic. So, for example, O.T. Ermishin writes about Florensky’s philosophical anthropology as something completely realized. In fact, he proposes to recognize as such almost the entire course of lectures by Fr. Pavel “From the history of philosophical terminology” (1917), where the connection between man and the world is traced and “the maximum theoretical disclosure of human abilities and possibilities” is proposed. 967 The doctrine of man as the “central link of world space” is found in the works of A.E. Florensky. Gromov, but at the same time the thought of Fr. Paul, in her opinion, is that in order to realize oneself as such a center, a person must feel included in this world and first feel like a part of the world. 968 One can also note the point of view of V.S. Panin, according to which the problem of man runs through all of Florensky’s work and it was to this problem that “he gave his whole life and dedicated his works.” Panin proposes to analyze each work of Fr. Paul “from the position of the contribution that he makes to anthropological problems,” but even before such an analysis, for some reason he is sure that Florensky “fully accepted the philosophical anthropology of Christianity.” 969 A supporter of a different position is K.G. Iusupov - in this regard, first of all, argues that Florensky’s anthropodicy did not take place and the presence of such a term itself “does not yet mark the presence of a concept.” “The fearlessness of Florensky’s encyclopedic mind evaporates somewhere as soon as he approaches a person.” 970 It seems that Iusupov also makes a number of insufficiently substantiated statements and, in addition, reveals his dependence on the assessments of N. Berdyaev. For example, it is impossible to agree that the statement of Fr. Paul in the “Pillar” about the absence of the need for God to create the world (which is typically patristic) crosses out the Incarnation and the entire doctrine of salvation, turning the ideal of eternity for man into an “eschatological myth.” Also, from the fact that in “The Pillar” Florensky refused to define personality, it does not at all follow that he ignored issues related to the mystery of personal existence. 971 On the one hand, Iusupov notes the lack of attention to “the individual and personal destiny” in the “grandiose cosmic constructions” of the ideologists of “all-unity”, and on the other hand, he discovers (following Berdyaev) “a pan-Orthodox complex of distrust of a specific human person (contrary to the central thesis of Christianity about man as the main value of God’s world).” Florensky turns out to be related here simultaneously to both the philosophy of “all-unity” and the so-understood “Orthodoxy.” But is it possible to extend the certain “anthropological minimalism” known in the history of theology to all of Orthodoxy? And isn’t it noticeable in Florensky himself, especially in his early works, that he strives to emphasize the eternal value of personal existence? “In Florensky, anthropology is argued by the theory of sets,” writes Iusupov, 972 but doesn’t the way the early Florensky does this 973 testify to his search for means (in this case, mathematical) to illustrate the importance of preserving personality in the consubstantial unity of the entire created Cosmos? S. Polovinkin, on the contrary, emphasizes the special importance given by Florensky (in the theodicy of “The Pillar”) to God’s creation of a free created personality. But, it seems, from this we should also not draw a conclusion about the personalistic nature of the entire anthropology of Fr. Pavel. Already immediately after 1908. Florensky more thoroughly addresses the problems of the genus and gradually comes to the conviction that the genus is ontologically more significant than a specific person. In this sense, S.S. Neretina is right when she says that Berdyaev’s personalism is incompatible with Florensky’s “rodovism.” 974 This “rodovism” in anthropology is considered by A.K. based on the materials of his own research. Subetto. Following Florensky, A. Subetto actually recognizes the ontological significance for a person of all his ancestors, all previous generations in his family. 975 This is not so from the point of view of I.A. Zakharov, according to which the genus as a real genetic community has existed for only about 125 years. As the basis for this assessment, Zakharov takes modern data regarding the commonality of genes passed on from generation to generation, as well as the time during which material household items are preserved and family tradition is directly transmitted. All this is limited to five generations, and here, apparently, is the limit of the ontological significance of the genus for a particular individual. Florensky thought otherwise, but despite this, Zakharov believes that in his genealogical research and in the philosophy of the family, Fr. Paul approached precisely the modern concept of the “spiritual genotype.” 976 However, remarks about Florensky's anticipation of this or that modern science or modern direction of research occur quite often. And the same topic is about the degree of scientific value of Fr. Paul - is perhaps the basis for the most tendentious, sometimes even downright malicious modern criticism of Florensky. The pioneer of such criticism was R.A. Galtseva, who already in 1970. wrote an article about Florensky for the Philosophical Encyclopedia. This article, still quite objective (as far as it was possible to write objectively about religious philosophers in the Soviet period), pointed to the “encyclopedic nature of Florensky’s interests,” to his “discoveries in the most diverse fields of knowledge” and his plan to “build an integral picture of the world,” in which “through the perception of correspondences and mutual illumination of different layers of existence, each layer recognizes itself in the other...” About “The Pillar” Galtseva wrote then that in this book “the sharpness of primary intuition (my italics – N.P.) and the variety of philosophically mastered material are striking.” 977 After a certain time, in an article for the collection “The Image of a Man in the 20th Century.” (1988), the same author concluded that “when we try to present Florensky’s worldview as a whole, we find ourselves in a hopeless situation.” It turned out that the original intuition inherent in Florensky is completely impossible to find 978 and Florensky (these are the words spoken in 1995) has no purpose for his philosophizing, except to “constantly strike a pose” and “shock the imagination.” Therefore, it is not surprising that a serious analysis of the works of Fr. Paul is not observed with this approach; However, in a sense, there is still an “anthropological” moment in this criticism. Florensky, according to Galtseva, does not appeal to the minds of his readers, just as during his lectures he “did not care whether his words reached the minds of his listeners.” His task is not to convince, but to “bewitch”. 979 It seems that, despite all the injustice of such statements, not wanting to see Fr. Pavel nothing conceptually meaningful, 980 R. Galtseva nevertheless discovered something important in his anthropology, namely, the idea of ​​​​a low level of consciousness in the hierarchical structure of man. Apparently, Fr. Paul indeed, in a number of cases, tried to touch in a person something deeper than the sin-stricken consciousness; hence, it seems, such a “missionary” influence of the “Pillar”, which is so controversial from a theological point of view: it led and continues to bring many people not just anywhere, but to the Orthodox Church. 981 N.K. Gavryushin practically repeats all the main assessments of R. Galtseva, whose article about Florensky in the collection “The Image of a Man in the 20th Century.” he calls it “brilliant.” He also believes that Florensky’s strength lies in his ability to “lead the reader and listener to a state of some quasi-understanding, to an ‘amiable incomprehensibility’ that draws us into a mystical worldview.” Thanks to this, even numerous Russian thinkers and cultural figures (O.S. Bulgakov, A.F. Losev, V.A. Favorsky, M. Voloshin, N.O. Lossky, even I.A. Ilyin and the young G. Florovsky) found themselves “under the truly hypnotic influence of Florensky.” 982 In anthropological terms, Gavryushin criticizes the idea of. Paul about man as a “homeostatic system” and emphasizes that Christianity’s goal is not to achieve “equilibrium” (“homeostasis”), but to save the individual. 983 An indicator of the level of development of foreign research into the heritage of Fr. P. Florensky and the dynamics of this level over the past decades have become two international symposiums: “Paul Florensky and the culture of his era” (Bergamo, January 1988) and “Pavel Florensky: traditions and modernity” (Potsdam, April 2000). In 1988 interest was noted in Florensky’s concept of memory (T. Motoyarzi), in his art criticism works (J. Bolt and K. Misper), in the “Iconostasis” (J. Lindstay) and in his name-glorifying position (F. Hidash) 984. In 2000 the topics of the reports have expanded significantly, 985 however, the anthropological aspect in the heritage of Fr. Pavel was touched upon only in a small discussion between S. Khoruzhy and Fr. Robert Slesinsky (USA) and Fr. Mikhail Aksenov-Meyerson (USA), who dispute the “energetic” interpretation of Florensky’s “concrete metaphysics” and find personalistic themes even in the late work of Fr. Pavel. According to S. Khoruzhy, this discussion “drew attention to the rich anthropological developments in Florensky’s late work” and made it possible to once again emphasize the difference between personalism and “anthropologism.” The latter means that the doctrine of man can be developed in many directions, “where the cornerstone concepts of personality, self, individuality. are seen and constituted in profoundly different ways.” 986 Also, a fairly well-known researcher of Russian philosophy, R. Bird (USA), at the end of his report (“Geology of memory: the hermeneutic theology of Pavel Florensky”), proposed in further study “to shift the emphasis from Florensky’s mystical and theurgic concepts, which have so far received the lion’s share of attention, to his anthropology.” 987 But, apparently, this prospect has not yet been realized. The same situation persists among works presented as candidate dissertations; From their list over the past two decades it is clear that interest in the heritage of Fr. P. Florensky does not subside, but the anthropological topic is directly addressed only in exceptional cases. Only two such cases are known, but even they do not seem to reveal Florensky’s anthropological problems in all their complexity and depth. Thus, A. Andryushkov’s master’s thesis “Philosophical anthropology of Florensky: cult and culture in anthropodicy” (Moscow, 2007) ultimately turns out to be focused much more on the themes of cult and culture than on the topic of anthropology itself. In general, according to Andryushkov, “the result of Florensky’s philosophical and anthropological research can be considered homo liturg us, the concept of liturgical man." 988 In the candidate's dissertation N.V. Ponomarev “Religious and philosophical anthropology of Florensky in the context of the mystical-symbolic Orthodox tradition” Fr. Paul is presented primarily as a religious figure who tried to systematically “update” Orthodox teaching 989 and revive the “mystical experience of Christianity” (which, according to N. Ponomarev, “was inherently utopian”). 990 At the same time, the entire anthropological concept of Fr. Paul turns out to be a kind of synthesis of various influences, a list of which is given repeatedly, with varying degrees of detail. 991 Here the fundamental anthropological idea of ​​Fr. himself is completely ignored. Paul, which arose not under any influence, not in the process of studying various doctrines and philosophies, but became the result of his personal experience. This experience is described by Fr. P. Florensky in his “Memoirs” and in anthropological terms provides evidence that a visible person is a phenomenon (phenomenon) in the empirics of that higher reality (noumenon), which is ontologically greater than a person. She “comes” into the world (“manifests” in this world) and in living unity with her phenomenon forms, in fact, what we call “man.” And a consideration of the anthropology of Fr. P. Florensky, it seems, cannot ignore the discussion of this idea. This discussion will again touch upon the problem of the concept of the “eternal pre-existence” of the creature, which was discussed in the process of sophiological polemics in the twentieth century, but was never subjected to special philosophical and theological research. Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you: Letters to family from camps and prisons, 1933–1937. St. Petersburg, 2004. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. Genealogical research. From Solovetsky letters. Will. M., 1992. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage // Theological works. Sat. 17. M., Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. M., 1996. Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. M.: Church of St. Martyr Tatiana, 2006. Pavel Florensky, priest. Collected works: Philosophy of cult (The experience of Orthodox anthropodicy). M., 2004. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 vols. M., 1994–1999. Florensky P.A. Names. Kharkov; M., 2000. Florensky P.A. 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Key to Theosophy // Bulletin of the Society of Friends E.P. Blavatsky. Issue I-II. M., 1992 Blavatskaya E.P. Practical occultism // Bulletin of the Society of Friends E.P. Blavatsky. Issue I. M., 1992. Buber M. The problem of man // Buber M. Two images of faith. M., 1995. Buber M. Philosophy of Man. M., 1992. Bugaev N.V. Basic principles of evolutionary monadology // Questions of philosophy and psychology. 1893. Book. 17. Bulgakov S. N. Autobiographical notes. Diaries. Articles. Eagle, 1998. Bulgakov S.N. The light is not evening. M.: Republic, 1994. Bulgakov S.N. Quiet thoughts. M., 1996. Valentin Asmus, prot. Ecumenical Council V // Orthodox Encyclopedia. T.IX. M., Van der Waerden B.L. Awakening Science. II: The Birth of Astronomy / Trans. from English; Under. ed. A.A. Urshtein. M.: Nauka, 1991. Vasilenko L I. About magic and occultism in the heritage of Fr. Pavel Florensky // Bulletin of PSTGU 2004. No. 3. Vysheslavtsev B.P. Immortality, reincarnation and resurrection // Christianity and Hinduism: Sat. articles. M., 1992. Garayeva G.F. Sophia's idealism as a historical and philosophical phenomenon. M., 2000. Diogenes Laertius. About the life, teachings and sayings of famous philosophers. M.: Mysl, 1979. Zenkovsky V.V. Unity of personality and the problem of reincarnation // Christianity and Hinduism: Sat. articles. M., 1992. History of religion / Rep. ed. 1909. M.: Runik Center, 1991. History of philosophy in brief / Transl. from Czech I.I. Boguta. M., 1991. Cassirer E. Experience about man: Introduction to the philosophy of human culture // The problem of man in Western philosophy. M., 1988. Losev A.F. Vladimir Solovyov and his time. M.: Progress, 1990. Losev A.F. Essays on ancient symbolism and mythology. M., 1930. Losev A.F. The problem of symbol and realistic art. M., 1976. Losev A.F. Early dialogues of Plato and works of the Platonic school // Plato. Dialogues. M.: Mysl, 1986. Candid stories of a wanderer to his spiritual father. M.: Soviet Russia, 1992. Plato. Dialogues. M.: Mysl, 1986. Plato. Collected works: In 3 volumes. T.1. M., 1968–1972. Plato. Essays. T.2. M.: Mysl, 1970. Soloviev V.S. Russia and the Universal Church. M., 1911 / Rep. M.: TPO "Fabula", 1990. Soloviev V.S. Collected works: In 12 volumes. T.III. Brussels: Life with God, 1966. Strakhov P. Resurrection. The idea of ​​resurrection in pre-Christian religious and philosophical consciousness. Kiev, 2002. Takho-Godi A.A. Notes // Plato. Dialogues. M.: Mysl, 1986. Florensky P.V. Notes on the symposium in Bergamo // Questions of Philosophy. 1988. No. 10. Scheler M. The position of man in space // The problem of man in Western philosophy. M., 1988. Sheler M. Man and history // Man: image and essence. M., 1991. Shertok L. R. de Saussure. The Birth of a Psychoanalyst / Trans. from fr. N.S. Autonomous. M., 1991. Schönborn K. Icon of Christ. Theological foundations / Transl. with him. E. M. Vereshchagina. Milan - M.: Christian Russia, 1999. Steiner R. Christianity as a mystical fact and the mysteries of antiquity. M., 1917. Ern V.F. Letters about Christian Rome // Our heritage. 1991. No. 2. Dissertations for the degree of Candidate of Sciences Andryushkov A.A. Philosophical anthropology P.A. Florensky: cult and culture in anthropodicy. M., 2007. Zagarin I.A. The concept of cult - culture - art in the anthropodicy of P.A. Florensky. M., 1999. Zotkina O.Ya. Symbol in “Ontology of Creativity” by P.A. Florensky. M., 1991. Musaeva E.S. Philosophy of symbol in the works of P.A. Florensky. M., 1999. Nikitina N.I. Ontological unity of the world in the philosophy of Pavel Florensky. M., 1999. Ponomarev N.V. Religious and philosophical anthropology P.A. Florensky in the context of the mystical-symbolic Orthodox tradition. M., 2004. Fedorov B.V. The meaning of music: its analysis based on the aesthetics of P.A. Florensky and the Russian religious and philosophical tradition. M., 1999. Khairullov Zh.R. Analysis of spatiality in concrete metaphysics P.A. Florensky in art history of the 20s. M., 1997. Bird R. The Geology of Memory: Pavel Florenskii’s Hermeneutic // Pavel Florensky’s: tradition und modern. Frankfurt et al.: Peter Lang, 2001. Cassedy St. P. Florensky. The Pillar and Ground of the Truth // The Russian Review. 1999. Vol. 58. No. 2 3. P.492. Copleston F. C. Russian religious philosophy. Selected aspects. Notre Dame. University of Notre Dame Press, 1988. Flogaus R. Theosis bie Palamas und Luther. Berlin, 1977. Gut T. Brief an die Nachgeborenen: Zu Pawel Florenskis Erinnerungen “Mienen Kindern” // Neue Zurcher Zeitung. 1993. 30 July. Hagemeister M. Wiederverzauberung der Welt: Pavel Florensky s Neues Mittelalter // Pavel Florensky – Tradition und Moderne: Bietrage zum Jnternationalen Symposium an der Universitat Potsdam, 5 bis 9 April 2000. Frankfurt, 2001. Historisches Worterbuch der Philosophie. Herausgegeben von I.Ritter und Grunder. Bd. 6.Basel; Stuttgart, 1984. Kube H., Dukova U. Etymologie und Magie: Zur Sprachtheorie Pavel Florensky s // Slavische Sprachwissenschaft und Interdisziplinaritat. Munchen, 1995. Kunkel C. Totus Christus. Die Theologie Georges V. Florovsky. Gottingen, 1991. Lison J. L' Esprit repandu. La pneumatologie de Gregoire Palamas. Paris, 1994. Newsletter for Russian Thought. Vol. VII. No. 3. 2000. Sabaneeff L. Pavel Florensky – Priest, Scientist and Mystik // The Russian Review. 1964. No. 4. Sarkisyanx E. Russland und der Messianismus des Orients. Tubingen, 1955. Slesinsky R. A Metaphysics of Love. N.Y., 1984. Werner U.Pavel Florensky s “Ikonostas” im zeitgeschichtlichen Umkreis //Florensky P. Die Ikonostas. Stuttgart, 1988. See, for example: Lossky N.O. History of Russian philosophy. M., 1991. P.229. Sviridov I.A. Epistemology of priest Pavel Florensky. MDA, 1980 (published in “Theological Works”, in the anniversary collection dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the MDA (M., 1986); Andronik (Trubachev), hieromon.. Priest Pavel Florensky - personality, life and creativity. MDA, 1984 (published in a separate publication: Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. Theodicy and anthropodicy in works of priest Pavel Florensky. Tomsk, 1998). Anatoly Prosvirnin, priest. About the creative path of priest Pavel Florensky // Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate. 1982. No. 4; Sviridov I.A. Theological concept of priest Pavel Florensky // Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate. 1982. No. 5. See: Seraphim (Sobolev), Archbishop. New teaching about Sophia the Wisdom of God. Sofia, 1935. In addition, in this study, a serious mistake was made in relation to Florensky, which distorted all the conclusions of Bishop Seraphim regarding the sophiology of Father Paul. See the appendix to this work. Review of publications concerning the anthropological aspect in the heritage of Fr. P. Florensky, see appendix. Cyprian (Kern), archimandrite. Anthropology of St. Gregory Palamas. Kyiv, 2006. P.106, 389. All italics in quotations belong to the author of the quoted text, except for special notes. Pavel Florensky, priest. Note on Christian culture // Florensky P. Christianity and culture. M.: Folio, 2001. P.647. John Meyendorff, Rev. Orthodoxy in the modern world. New York, 1981. P.175. Andronik (Trubachev), hieromon. Theodicy and anthropodicy in the works of priest Pavel Florensky. Tomsk: Aquarius, 1998. P.8. Khoruzhy S.S. Orthodox-ascetic anthropology and the crisis of modern man // Orthodox teaching about man. Selected articles. M.; Klin, 2004. P.157. Antonov K.M. Philosophy I.V. Kireevsky: Anthropological aspect. M.: PSTGU, 2006. P.10. St. Ignatius. Letters. VII. M.: Rule of Faith, 1993. P.445–450. Collection of letters to St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, bishop. Caucasian and Black Sea. Comp. abbot. Mark (Lozinsky). M.; St. Petersburg, 1995. P. 117. Collection of letters to St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, bishop. Caucasian and Black Sea. Comp. abbot. Mark (Lozinsky). M.; St. Petersburg, 1995. P.407. See: Collection of letters to St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, bishop. Caucasian and Black Sea. Comp. abbot. Mark (Lozinsky). M.; St. Petersburg, 1995. P.663. Collection of letters to St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, bishop. Caucasian and Black Sea. Comp. abbot. Mark (Lozinsky). M.; St. Petersburg, 1995. P. 123. See a more complete and systematic description of the religious crisis in Russia in the 19th century. in work: Georgy Orekhanov, priest. L.N. Tolstoy and the Russian Church. M., 2010. Yu.F. was one of the first to write about this. Samarin (1819–1876) in his dissertation on Stefan Yavorsky and Feofan Prokopovich (1840s; published in the 5th volume of the 12-volume Collected Works of Yu.F. Samarin, 1877–1912) and in the “Preface” to the publication of the theological works of A.S. Khomyakova. Wed. from letters to St. Ignatius: “In general, we are not yet quite familiar with the tradition of our Church, and in an inconspicuous way we have assimilated certain opinions of the West that are alien to it” (May 1864) (St. Ignatius. Letters. VII. p. 309). Georgy Florovsky, prot. Paths of Russian theology. Vilnius, 1991. P.503, 506. Georgy Florovsky, prot. Paths of Russian theology. Vilnius, 1991. P.37. Georgy Florovsky, prot. Paths of Russian theology. Vilnius, 1991. P.364. Quote by: Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. Rev. Ambrose Optinsky. Life and creations. Ed. Spaso-Preobrazhensky Valaam Monastery, 1993. P.14. The “return to the Fathers” program was first proclaimed by I.V. Kireyevsky in the article “On the Necessity and Possibility of New Beginnings for Philosophy” (1856); in general, the Slavophiles and V. Solovyov made a significant contribution to this process. Wed. from V. Solovyov in the very first lecture of “Readings on God-Humanity” (1877–1881): “I say that those who reject religion at the present time are right, because the current state of religion itself causes denial, because religion in reality is not what it should be” (Soloviev V.S. Collected Works: In 10 volumes / Edited by S.M. Solovyov and E.L. Radlov. Ed. 2nd T.3. Fr. was perhaps the first to use these memories precisely in the theological context of the teaching about man’s possible communion with the uncreated Divine light. Pavel Florensky in his “Pillar” (Florensky P.A. <Works> T.1 (1): Pillar and Statement of Truth. M., 1990. P.102–105). Decades later, V. Lossky cited them in the same context, noting that “one passage from the conversation of Rev. Seraphim of Sarov with N.A. Motovilov reveals to us better than any theological treatise what this confidence consists of, this knowledge (gnosis) of unity with God.” “This story about one experience contains in its simplicity the entire teaching of the Eastern Fathers about gnosis - the knowledge of grace, which reaches its highest level in the vision of divine light” (Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. Dogmatic Theology. M., 1991. pp. 170–172). Nilus S.A. Great in small. 3rd ed. S. Posad, 1911 / Rep. Ed. St.-Tr. Sergius Lavra, 1992. P.179. Nilus S.A. Great in small. 3rd ed. S. Posad, 1911 / Rep. Ed. St.-Tr. Sergius Lavra, 1992. pp. 199–200. St. Ignatius Brianchaninov. Essays. T.1: Ascetic experiences. M.: Rule of Faith, 1993. P. 226. This is a place about delusion from the “Works” of St. Ignatius quotes Fr. Paul in the notes to the “Pillar” (Florensky P.A. T. 1 (2): Pillar and Statement of Truth. M., 1990. P.629). Berdyaev N.A. Free spirit philosophy. M., 1994. P.38. Right there. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. Genealogical research. From Solovetsky letters. Will. M.: Moscow worker, 1992. P. 60. Pavel Florensky and the Symbolists: Literary Experiments. Articles. Correspondence / Comp., prepared. texts and comments. E.V. Ivanova. M., 2004. P.470–471. Pavel Florensky and the Symbolists: Literary Experiments. Articles. Correspondence. M., 2004. P.470. Pavel Florensky and the Symbolists: Literary Experiments. Articles. Correspondence. M., 2004. P.411. Florensky P. Christianity and culture. M.: Folio, 2001. P.451. Florensky P. Christianity and culture. M.: Folio, 2001. P. 450. Florensky P. Christianity and culture. M.: Folio, 2001. pp. 453–454. Florensky P. Christianity and culture. pp.451–452. 2 Ibid. pp.459–460. Florensky P. Christianity and culture. M.: Folio, 2001. P.459–60. Florensky P A. Joy forever. Prayer of Simeon the New Theologian to the Holy Spirit. S. Posad: Typogr. St.-Tr. Sergius Lavra, 1907. P.5–6. This sermon, delivered during the liturgy in a rural church in the Kostroma province (Tolpygino village, January 7/20, 1907), was printed by the Lavra printing house and published the same year in Sergiev Posad. “This is his student sermon,” modern teachers note. “How much faith she has in people!” (Kuznetsov O.N., Kovaleva L.F. Pavel Florensky: man and era in the culture of the late XIX - early XX centuries. (Lesson - reflection in 11th grade) // Entelekhiya. 2000. No. 2. P. 122). Florensky P.A. Questions of religious self-knowledge // Florensky P. Christianity and culture. M.: Folio, 2001. P. 423. Florensky P.A. Questions of religious self-knowledge // Florensky P. Christianity and culture. M.: Folio, 2001. P.426. Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. Preface // Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.15. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.99. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.74. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.153. Wed. in lectures of 1921: “A child knows how to be surprised, to lose his temper. He is a philosopher. In childhood, we see things in which another world opens up” (Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.3 (2). M.: Mysl, 1999. P.413). Knowledge, Socrates claims, we acquired “before birth and came into the world with it. But if, when we are born, we lose what we possessed before birth, and then, with the help of our senses, we restore previous knowledge, then, in my opinion, “to know” means to restore knowledge that already belonged to you. And by calling this “remembering” (“anamnesis”), we would, perhaps, use the correct word” (Phaedo. 75e). Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.200. Albin. Textbook of Platonic philosophy // Plato. Dialogues. M.: Mysl, 1986. P.462. Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. M., 1996. P.263. Wed. in the “Records” of Fr. Alexandra Elchaninova: “Birth is mystical - a messenger comes to us from another world” (Elchaninov A. Notes. M., 1991. P.34). Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.26. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.323. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.117. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.126. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.217. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. pp. 151–152. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.145. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.25. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.38. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.128. A large number of letters to St. Ignatius was sent by M.A. Novoselova is the niece of Saint A.N. Kupreyanova. M. Novoselov talked to them about. Pavel Florensky for publication in the Theological Bulletin (1914). In addition, A. Kupreyanova entered into correspondence with Fr. Pavel. In 1995 The Center for the Study, Protection and Restoration of the Heritage of Priest P. Florensky published a collection of letters to St. Ignatius, stored in the archives of Fr. Pavel. Collection of letters to St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, bishop. Caucasian and Black Sea. P.407. Collection of letters to St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, bishop. Caucasian and Black Sea. P.680. Collection of letters to St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, bishop. Caucasian and Black Sea. P.105. According to Fr. Paul, Alexander Ivanovich’s crude materialism was not allowed to develop by his youthful observations of Helena Blavatsky, later known as the founder of the World Theosophical Society (New York, 1875). She was the sister of the director of the gymnasium where Alexander Ivanovich studied, and often demonstrated her “mystical” abilities to the gymnasium students. Alexander Ivanovich shared his youthful impressions of Blavatsky with children. (See: Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P. 304–305). Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.121. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. pp.243–244. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.119. Wed. V. Solovyov - “false religion” is a contradictio in adjecto - “a contradiction in definition” (V.S. Solovyov, Readings about God-manhood // Works: In 2 vols. T.2. M., 1989. P.37). In one of his latest works - “Dictionary of Symbols” - Fr. Paul wrote that “...the deepest ditches between religions cannot separate them so much that their fundamental unity completely disintegrates” (Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. Vol. 2. M.: Mysl, 1996. P. 537). Wed. remark about Paul in “The Pillar” regarding the “ideal personality of man”: “It is impossible to talk about this divine “spark” here, because this would require a review of almost all mystical teachings” (Florensky P.A. T.1 (1): Pillar and affirmation of Truth. P.329). Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. M.: Church of St. martyr Tatiany, 2006. P.77. Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. M.: Church of St. martyr Tatiany, 2006. P. 50. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.4: Letters from the Far East and Solovki. M., 1998. P.159. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage // Theological works. Sat. 17. M., 1977. P.199. Father Pavel notes that he had Goethe in his hands almost from the very moment he learned to read. Already studying at Moscow University, he wrote to his mother in Tiflis (February 1903): “I am rereading for the 3rd or 4th time “Goethe’s Conversations” collected by Eckermann, and every word of Goethe evokes admiration. I would like to almost copy the entire book into my notebook for future essays” (quoted from: Father Pavel Florensky on education / Compiled - ed. A.P. Fursov. M.: School Press, 2004. P.163). See: Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.323. Wed. in another place in the Memoirs: for my father, the “gospel” was Goethe’s “Faust”, and the “bible” was Shakespeare (Ibid. P. 69:117). Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. pp. 119–120. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.36. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. pp. 37–38. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.40. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. pp.74–75. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.87. Wed. – in a letter to his daughter Olga from the Solovetsky camp regarding the feeling of “World Chaos” by F. Tyutchev (February 1935): “And when Chaos does not take into account human concepts, it is not because it violates them “out of spite”, that it fights against them. but because he, so to speak, does not notice them” (Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. Vol. 4: Letters from the Far East and Solovki. P. 181–182). In this case, Fr. Pavel agreed with Tyutchev. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.66. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. pp.46–47. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.88. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.43. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.61. See, for example, Florensky’s opinion about his “antinomy” in a letter to V.V. Rozanov in 1909. (Ibid. pp. 276–278). Wed. in a letter from the Solovetsky camp (February 1935): “Humanity... is one, albeit the most important, child of chaos.” Chaos creates and destroys individual existence. For the individual, destruction is suffering and evil, but this cannot be understood as evil on the scale of nature. This is precisely “neither good nor evil, but good, for such is the law of life” (Paul Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. Volume 4: Letters from the Far East and Solovki. P. 181–182). Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.112. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. pp.70–71. There are such attempts. See N.K. Gavryushin (Gavryushin N.K. Russian theology: Essays and Portraits. N. Novgorod: Enlightenment Center “Glagol”, 2005. P. 254). “Special”: From the memoirs of P.A. Florensky. M.: Moscow worker, 1990. P.13. In "Memoirs" Fr. Paul writes: “I loved the flower kingdom as a whole to the point of self-forgetfulness...” (Paul Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P. 113). See also in the letter from the camp (November 1935): “Since childhood, I passionately loved plants, talked with them and lived as with my closest friends” (Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you: Letters to family from camps and prisons 1933–1937. St. Petersburg, 2004. P. 154). Wed. in the memoirs of the priest. A. Elchaninova “From meetings with Florensky (1909–1910)”: “Paul loved plants since childhood with some kind of enhanced tenderness, pity and understanding. He says that he loves them for their meekness, for their close proximity to the earth” (Alexander Elchaninov, priest. From meetings with P.A. Florensky // Florensky: Pro et contra. 2nd edition. St. Petersburg: RKhGI, 2001. P.41). Son o. Pavel - Kirill Pavlovich Florensky - testified about his father: “He loved flowers very much. Throughout his life he carried his love for flowers. Both in Zagorsk and in Posad, he worked with flowers, he planted them himself, but he did not like to pick flowers... He dug up flowers, planted them at home, and planted forest flowers in the garden. And throughout his life he treated every flower as a living being...” (Speech by K.P. Florensky at the Abramtsevo Museum at the evening dedicated to the 100th anniversary of P.A. Florensky, February 22, 1982 / Publication by Abbot Andronik (Trubachev)) // Entelechy. 2000. No. 2. P.110). Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.63. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.68. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. pp.62–63. Quote by: Bonetskaya N.K. Forum of Florence scholars // Questions of Philosophy. 2001. No. 7. pp. 155–156. Quote from: Father Pavel Florensky about education. pp. 170–171. Florensky P. The boss of life. The word spoken in the MDA church in 1905. at the liturgy of the second day of Bright Week. S. Posad: Printing house St.-Tr. Sergius Lavra, 1907. P.5–6. Quote by: Pavel Florensky and the Symbolists. P.356. Wed. letter to mother, January 1906 (Father Pavel Florensky about education. pp. 173–174). Alexander Elchaninov, priest. From meetings with P.A. Florensky. P.36. Alexander Elchaninov, priest. From meetings with P.A. Florensky S.39–40. Wed. general occult-theosophical “experience”, attested in the reaction of E.I. Roerich on the statement that “Christ suffered for us.” “You are mistaken,” she said, “Christ suffered not for you, but because of you,” meaning, according to a researcher of her life and work, “an unattractive type of sentimental fanatics who believe that Higher powers are ready to endlessly tinker with their little egoistic personality (my italics. - N.P.)” (Klyuchnikov S.Yu. Herald of the Age of Fire. Siberian branch of the publishing house "Children's Literature", 1991. P.133). Correspondence of P.A. Florensky and V.A. Kozhevnikova // Questions of Philosophy. 1991. No. 6. P.99. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.23, 26, 28. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P. 23. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. pp.26–27. Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. P.23. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. P.23. Khoruzhy S.S. Florensky's worldview. Tomsk: Aquarius, 1999. P.93. Quote from: Father Pavel Florensky about education. C 166. Quote by: Andronik (Trubachev), hieromon. Theodicy and anthropodicy in the works of priest Pavel Florensky. pp. 180–181. Correspondence of P.A. Florensky and V.A. Kozhevnikova. P.108. Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. From the history of the book “The Pillar and Statement of Truth” // Florensky P.A. T.1 (2): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.828. Quote by: Khoruzhy S.S. Florensky's worldview. P.28. Florensky P.A. T.1 (2): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.820. Florensky P. Christianity and culture. P.444. Florensky P.A. T.1 (2): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.819. Florensky P.A. T.1 (2): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.820. This was said in 1914; O. Pavel is 32 years old. “Special”: From the memoirs of P.A. Florensky. P.13. Khoruzhy S.S. Finding concreteness // Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. M.: Pravda, 1990, P.5. See: Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.74, 325–326. See: Pillar and Ground of Truth. P.49, 93. Khoruzhy S.S. Finding specificity. P.9. Khoruzhy S.S. Name-glorification and the culture of the Silver Age: The phenomenon of the Moscow school of Neoplatonism // S.N. Bulgakov: The religious and philosophical path. International scientific conference dedicated to the 130th anniversary of his birth, March 57, 2001. M.: Russian way, 2003. P. 195. For the first time about his discovery of the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas, Hieromonk Anthony (Bulatovich) wrote to Fr. Pavel from Athos in December 1912. He used this teaching in defense of name-glorification in his “Apology,” which was published in Moscow by M.A. Novoselov (March 1913); An anonymous preface to it (under the heading “From the Editor”) was written by Fr. P. Florensky (Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and Mikhail Alexandrovich Novoselov. Tomsk: Aquarius, 1998. P.81–82, 87–88). Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.324. See: Andronik (Trubachev), hieromon. Theodicy and anthropodicy in the works of priest Pavel Florensky. P.23, 57. Andronik (Trubachev), hieromon. Theodicy and anthropodicy in the works of priest Pavel Florensky. From 57. Correspondence of P.A. Florensky and V.A. Kozhevnikova. P.92. “The Pillar” in its full version was published by the Moscow publishing house “Put” (1914), where S.N. worked at that time. Bulgakov. Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and priest Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov. Archive of the priest. P.A. Florensky. Issue 4. Tomsk: Aquarius, 2001. P.65. “Lyrics”, or “lyrical passages”, placed at the beginning of each “letter” in the “Pillar”, according to the plan of Fr. Paul, this is not a decoration for the book, but methodological prologues that prepare the reader “to understand dogmatic and philosophical constructions” (see the letter of Father Paul to N. Glubokovsky in October 1917; Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. From the history of the book “The Pillar and Statement of Truth.” pp. 836–837. See: Correspondence of P.A. Florensky and V.A. Kozhevnikova. P.108. In 1912 in the “Theological Bulletin” (No. 2) Fr. Paul published the manuscript “Service of Sophia the Wisdom of God” with his preface. Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and priest Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov. P.54. Florensky P. A. T.1 (2): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.775. Lurie V.M. Comments. Afterword // John Meyendorff, prot. Life and works of St. Gregory Palamas. Introduction to learning. St. Petersburg, 1997. pp. 340–341. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.74, 325–326. Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.293. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.96, 97–105. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. pp. 150–152. At the same time, the concept of Divine energy was used by Fr. Paul already in the “Pillar”, but without any distinctions with the concept of the Divine Essence. Thus, in the chapter “The Light of Truth,” he notes that “to love the visible creation means to allow the received Divine energy to open, through the recipient, outward and around the recipient, just as it acts in the Trinitarian Godhead Himself. (my italics – N.P.).” (Florensky P.A. T.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.84). In note 127 to the Pillar, which provides a list of literature on St. Gregory Palamas and hesychast disputes, the “uncreated Tabor Light” is called “the energy of the Trinitarian Deity” (Florensky P.A. T.1 (2): Pillar and affirmation of Truth. P.660). However, this note most likely refers to 1913, i.e. to the period when Fr. Paul was already familiar with the theology of St. Gregory Palamas. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.225. Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.260. Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.273. Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.270. See: Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. From the history of the book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth.” P.837. See: Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. The anthropodicy of priest Pavel Florensky // Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. pp.355–357. See: Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and priest Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov. pp. 137–138. The publishing house was unable to implement its plans and this agreement with Fr. Pavel was dissolved in 1919. (Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and priest Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov. P. 146). See: Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and priest Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov. pp. 145–146. Igum. Andronik (Trubachev) draws attention to the fact that such designations of Sophia in the “Pillar” as “the whole nature of the creature”, “monad”, “Fourth Hypostasis”, “ideal personality of the world”, etc. Paul gave, in his own words, a meaning “conventional, or rather symbolic, the meaning of, as it were, colors that describe what is internally experienced” (Andronik (Trubachev), hieromonk. Theodicy and anthropodicy in the work of the priest Pavel Florensky. P. 39). See: Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.189. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.218. Florensky P.A. Works: In 4 volumes. T.2. P.346. Ern V.F. Letters about Christian Rome // Our heritage. 1991. No. 2. P.118. The work was written in June 1904, but was not published during Florensky’s lifetime. Florensky P. Christianity and culture. P.399. During this period, Florensky, like many of his young contemporaries, was influenced by L.N. Tolstoy. “Especially,” recalled Fr. Pavel at one of his lectures in 1921 - I was attracted by his “Confession”. If we exclude the end, which was tendentiously written at a later time, then this is the best work of an apologetic nature. It acts like an explosion of a heavy, huge projectile and immediately destroys a prosperous attitude towards life. A dilemma appears: either seek, find the Truth, or die of thirst for It, die not only physically, but also in a deeper sense, metaphysically...” (Paul Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.510). Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.510. P.242. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.510. P.246. This is communication with symbolist poets (V.Ya. Bryusov, K.D. Balmont, D.S. Merezhkovsky, Z.N. Gippius), scientists (N.E. Zhukovsky, L.K. Lakhtin). Florensky’s seminar on the history of philosophy was led by S.N. Trubetskoy, lectures on psychology were given by L.M. Lopatin. Quote by: Khoruzhy S.S. Florensky's worldview. P.42. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Works in 4 vols. T.1. M.: Mysl, 1994. P.301. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works in 4 vols. T.1. M.: Mysl, 1994. P.281–282. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. Volume 3 (2). P.122. See: Florensky P.A. Imaginaries in geometry. M., 1991. P.50–51. Quote by: Andronik (Trubachev), hieromon. Theodicy and anthropodicy in the works of priest Pavel Florensky. pp. 17–18. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. pp.51–52. Bugaev N.V. Basic principles of evolutionary monadology // Questions of philosophy and psychology. 1893. Book 17. P.44. See: Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.73. See: Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.73. P.644. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp.47–48. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.3(2). P.146. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.3(2). P.69. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.3(2). P.167. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.3(2). P.147. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. P.124. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.197. Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.92. Quote by: Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.492. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.3 (2). P.128. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.1. P. 283. Florensky P. Christianity and culture. P.379. Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. From the history of the book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth.” P.833. With Bishop, who is retired in Moscow. Florensky met Anthony (Florensov) (1847–1918) in February-March 1904. After graduating from the University, he and A. Bely came to Bishop. Anthony for a blessing to become a monk, but received instructions to enter the MDA and then wait until the age of 30 (see: Andronik (Trubachev), hieromonk. Theodicy and anthropodicy in the works of priest Pavel Florensky. P. 169). Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.1. P.130. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.1. pp.83–84. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.1. P.282. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.1. pp.282–283. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.1. P.332. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp.350–351; cf.: Ibid. P.385. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. pp. 179–180. Florensky P. Christianity and culture. pp.444–447. Florensky's candidate dissertation (1908) “On Religious Truth” consisted of the first 9 letters of the “Pillar”, excluding the 7th letter “Sin”. Letters 10 – “Sophia” and 11 – “Friendship” were included in the dissertation only in the form of a manuscript and were first published only in 1911 in the “Theological Bulletin” (see: Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. From the history of the book “The Pillar and Statement of Truth.” pp. 830–831). Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.331. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.352. See: Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp. 219–220, 233–234. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.90–94. Wed. in the work “On Types of Increase,” written in the summer of 1905. and published in the “Theological Bulletin” in 1906: “real”, i.e. the empirical side of personality - the “other self” - is connected with the “ideal” personality and “is also unconditional, but only in possibility, and not in reality...” (Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 vols. Vol. 1. P. 282). But here Florensky does not yet talk about the possibility of “breaking” this connection. See: Florensky P. Christianity and Culture. pp.446–447. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.332, 349. Alexander Elchaninov, priest. From meetings with P.A. Florensky (1909–1910). P.38. Alexander Elchaninov, priest. From meetings with P.A. Florensky (1909–1910). P.41. M.N. Umanets is N.N.’s sister. Neplyuev (1851–1908), founder of the Orthodox Labor Brotherhood in the Chernigov province, with whom Florensky had correspondence. Quote From: Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and priest Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov. P.21. See: Alexander Elchaninov, priest. From meetings with P.A. Florensky (1909–1910). P.35–41. Father Pavel Florensky about education. P.272. See: Alexander Elchaninov, priest. From meetings with P.A. Florensky (1909–1910). P.38. This error is about. Paul corrected it later. His great-grandfather Andrei was actually a sexton in the Kostroma province; grandfather Ivan - studied at the Kostroma Seminary, after graduating from which, instead of the academy, he entered the Medical Institute at Moscow University (see: Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P. 293). Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. pp.278–279. Quote by: Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. Life and destiny // Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.1. pp. 18–19. Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and priest Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov. P.44. One encounters a similar opinion in the literature about Fr. Pavel Florensky. S.N. refutes it. Bulgakov, who knew Fr. quite well. Paul in this regard. “Your dedication,” he wrote to him on April 28, 1911, “...unforeseen and unintentional...” (Correspondence between priest Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky and priest Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov. P.39). See: Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and priest Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov. P.169. In 1922 O. S. Bulgakov already adhered to a different point of view: “An Orthodox priest is not only a priest, but also a shepherd... In his “priesthood,” an Orthodox priest... tastes the unearthly bliss of the sacrament,” but this, according to Fr. Sergius, only one side of churchliness (see: Ibid. p. 169). Compare: “The priesthood is primarily a eucharistic ministry. In the Sacrament of Body and Blood, the sanctifying unity of the shepherd and his flock is accomplished... The Eucharist is the focus of pastoral service” (Handbook of a Clergyman. Vol. 8. M., 1988. P. 559). Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.282. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.11. Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and Mikhail Alexandrovich Novoselov. P.99. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.3(2). pp. 161–162. Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and Mikhail Alexandrovich Novoselov. P.100. Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. From the history of the book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth.” P.832. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.2. pp.48–49, 58–59. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes T.3 (2). P.164. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes Vol.2. P.92. See: Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and Mikhail Alexandrovich Novoselov. P.78, 99, 107. There was another reason for this refusal. “You run the risk of publishing a book,” wrote Fr. Pavel O. Anthony regarding his book “My Thought in Christ” (Pg., 1914), - each page of which contains sufficient material to accuse you of heresies, and not imaginary ones (name-glorification), but real ones” (Ibid. P.135). Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.2. pp. 294–295, 299. Here under this term Fr. Paul is referring to the tendency to present Truth as immanent in human reason, even if it is a conciliar one, as “composed” by the Church, and not revealed to it. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.2. P.296. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.2. P.296. Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and priest Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov. pp. 130–132. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.2. P.288. Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and priest Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov. P.117. Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.39. Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.34. Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and priest Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov. pp. 124–125. See: Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and priest Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov. pp. 175–176. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.3 (1). P.438. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. pp. 143–144. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. P.218. As a rule, their sequence as they become “refined” is as follows: physical, etheric, astral and mental. Florensky P.A. Names. Kharkov; M., 2000. P.52–53; cf.: Ibid. P.19. Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.271. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.229. Florensky P. A. Names. P.67. Florensky P. A. Names. P.52. Florensky P. A. Names. P.26. Electric and magnetic forces o. Paul attached special ontological significance (see, for example: Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 vols. T.3 (1). P.395–400), and therefore his scientific works during the years of Soviet power undoubtedly took place in a general philosophical context. In addition, naive or not, Florensky contrasted Lenin’s thesis “Communism is Soviet power plus electrification of the entire country” with his opinion: “Electrification as overcoming Marxism” (Ibid. Vol. 3 (2). P. 381. Florensky P. Christianity and culture. P.647. Florensky P. Christianity and culture. See: pp.627–628. Some details about the scientific and technical activities of Fr. Paul in Soviet times, see, for example: Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.4: Letters from the Far East and Solovki. P.127, 739. Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. From the history of the book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth.” P.829. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.238. Last letter from Fr. Pavel came to Zagorsk on July 19, 1937. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.4: Letters from the Far East and Solovki. P.415. Florensky P. Christianity and culture. P.30. That this is indeed a long-standing belief of Fr. Paul, as evidenced by his letter to his mother in January 1905: “For me, the old is not thrown away, not thrown out the window, but is forever preserved and utilized” (quoted from: Father Pavel Florensky about education. P. 170). Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.4: Letters from the Far East and Solovki. P.677. Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. P.95, 119. Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. P.60, 63. Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. P.374. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. pp.224–225. Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. P.422. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. P.118. Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. P.307. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.4: Letters from the Far East and Solovki. P.38, 249. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.4: Letters from the Far East and Solovki. pp. 181–182. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.4: Letters from the Far East and Solovki. P.734. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. P.43, 56, 164. Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. P.425. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.4: Letters from the Far East and Solovki. P.175. Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. From 217. Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. P.293. Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. P.222. Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. P.83. Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. P.246. See: Losev A.F. Early dialogues of Plato and works of the Platonic school // Plato. Dialogues. M., 1986. P.5. The famous saying of Protagoras “man is the measure of all things that exist, that they exist, and non-existent, that they do not exist”, in essence, is a statement of the defining significance of human subjectivity, although it points to man’s perception of the world as it is. Since the Sophists manipulated the different meanings of words and concepts, Socrates began to identify their common, most essential meaning. This is how Plato’s doctrine of ideas was born (see: Losev A.F. Plato’s early dialogues and works of the Platonic school // Plato. Dialogues. M., 1986. P.5), which was, to a first approximation, a doctrine of the objective, universal meaning of words, which a person has no right to change according to subjective arbitrariness. This teaching has become one of the most important components of Fr. Pavel Florensky. Khoruzhy S.S. Finding specificity. P.7. Plato. Dialogues. M., 1986. P.211. See: Plato. Dialogues. M., 1986. P.195–196. Takho-Godi A.A. Notes // Plato. Dialogues. pp.540–541. One should not think that such a belief was widespread in the ancient world. It is enough to mention the search for immortality in the “Epic of Gilgamesh” (ancient Mesopotamia), the teaching of Democritus and Epicurus about the decomposition of the human soul along with the body, or the similar teaching of the Stoics about the destruction of the soul, although not immediately after the death of the body (Diogenes Laertius. VII, 156–157). Epicurus owns a saying popular among atheists of modern times: “...when we exist, then death is not yet, and when death comes, then we are no longer” (Diogenes Laertius. X, 125). Wed. in the Old Testament: Ps.146:4; Eccl.9:2-6; 2 Samuel 14:14; Job's question: Job 14:14, etc. Discussing the qualities of a “great man,” Aristotle writes that he “does not discuss people (“anthropologos”), for he has no business either with praising himself or with condemning others” (Nicomachean Ethics. 125a5) (Aristotle. Works: In 4 vols. Vol. 4. M., 1984. P. 134). See: Aristotle. Works: In 4 volumes. T.1. P.383. Quote by: Georgy Florovsky, prot. Eastern Fathers of the 4th century. 2nd ed. M., 1992. P.157. See, for example, St. Tikhon of Zadonsk: “Know yourself: this is Christian wisdom! <…> The beginning of health is the knowledge of weakness. To know yourself is the beginning of salvation. Wherein lies all the strength in order to know oneself and one’s spiritual distress” - Works of St. Tikhon of Zadonsky. Spiritual treasure. M.: Russian Spiritual Center, 1994. P.94, 120, 311. Creations of St. Basil the Great, archbishop. Caesarea of ​​Cappadocia. Part 1: Conversations on the Six Days. M, 1845 / Rep. M., 1991. P.171. Of course, this does not mean that there is “evil” in created human nature itself. According to Rev. John of Damascus, deep self-knowledge by a person not yet confirmed in goodness could be turned by him into evil for himself, which is what happened to the first people in paradise. See: Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.275. See: Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp.276–277. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.288. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.263. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. P.242. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. pp. 199–200. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.3 (2). P.151. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.3 (2). P.149. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.3 (2). P.147. See: Florensky P.A. T.1 (2): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.733. See: Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. Dogmatic theology. M., 1991. P.86. See: Florensky P.A. Volume 1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp. 350–351. See: See: Florensky P.A. Volume 1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp. 279–280, 300–301. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. P.200. Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. P.241. Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. P.134. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.86. This is written about. Pavel in “Memoirs” in the early 1920s. and practically has the same meaning as the above-quoted fragment from the 1908 lecture. “The universal human roots of idealism”: “Everything is connected by secret ties to each other, everything breathes together with each other...” (Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. Vol. 3 (2). P. 151. See, for example: Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.2. pp. 147–149, 161. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.87, 89. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. pp. 32–33. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. pp.47–48, 56, 59. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.271. See: Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.265. When presenting this view of the body in “The Pillar,” Florensky refers, among others, to the work of N. Lossky “The Justification of Intuitionism” (St. Petersburg, 1908) and the Russian translation of “Theosophy” by R. Steiner (St. Petersburg, 1910). In the drafts of Fr. Paul has an entry dated August 28, 1910: “Anatomy and physiology are nothing more than metaphysical facets, surfaces that limit the mystical from the empirical. Our body itself is a film that separates the realm of phenomena from the realm of noumena” (Pavel Florensky, priest. Collected Works. Philosophy of Cult (The Experience of Orthodox Anthropodicey). M.: Mysl, 2004. P.428). MM. Speransky (1772–1839) - a famous statesman and lawyer of the era of Alexander I and Nicholas I, a mystical thinker. Interest in his spiritual heritage is characteristic of the era of the early twentieth century. “Authoritative” testimony of his “Orthodoxy” by Saint Theophan the Recluse in “Letters on Spiritual Life” by Fr. Paul thought it was “hasty” (Florensky P. A. T. 1 (1): Pillar and affirmation of the Truth. P. 331). He became acquainted with his works from “Materials for the study of mysticism by M.M. Speransky”, collected by A. Elchaninov, and isolated from them what seemed to him not to contradict the patristic interpretation of Holy Scripture (see: Ibid. pp. 331–332). Compare: “The primordial Adam would not have been the king of the world. if the world were not part of his body.” Adam reigned simultaneously over the world and over himself (Paul Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 vols. T.3 (1). P.436–437. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.3 (1). P.403. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.3 (1). P. 383. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.3 (1). P.378. The man writes about. Paul, there is a “being who builds tools” or, more precisely, “a cultivator of tools.” A person should be defined as homo faber, and not as homo sapiens (See: Ibid. P.383). See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. Volume 3 (1). P.384, 401. This process about. Pavel, following E. Kapp and Karl du Prel, proposes to call it “organoprojection” (Ibid. p. 402). Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.3 (1). P.407. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.3 (1). pp.436–437. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.3 (1). P.427. Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. pp.241–242. See: Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. P.87, 240–241. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T. 3 (1). P.427. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.265. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. Volume 3 (1). P.441. See: Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.34. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.3 (1). pp.395–400. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 volumes. T.3 (1). P.442. Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. pp.25–26; cf.: Georgy Florovsky, prot. Eastern Fathers of the 5th–8th centuries. 2nd ed. M., 1992. P.102–105. See: Bulgakov S.N. The light is not evening. M.: Republic, 1994. P.23. Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and priest Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov. pp. 131–132. “There is no religion higher than Truth” is the motto of the World Theosophical Society, to which R. Steiner initially joined. Lossky N.O. History of Russian philosophy / Trans. from English M.: Higher School, 1991. P.244. At the same time, N. Lossky stipulated that “by these individuals Florensky understood something higher than the human self” (see: Ibid.). In this aspect, the sophiology of Bulgakov and Florensky coincides. S. Bulgakov’s teaching about Sophia, as set out in “The Never-Evening Light” (1917), reveals undoubted features of the direct influence of Fr. Pavel. Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. P.74. Wed. draft entry about. Paul on October 10, 1910: “Mystical physiology... The body, like a bay or bay, reflects every wave of the great ocean, space. From all sides there are “influences” from parts of the world, and in our body we feel the entire cosmos. The cosmos is mystically experienced in our body. And there is some kind of “strange”, secret connection of correspondence between individual sides of the body and parts of the world (for example, planets correspond to fingers, etc.)” (Pavel Florensky, priest. Collected Works. Philosophy of Cult (The Experience of Orthodox Anthropodyce). P.428–429). Father Paul believed that the human soul forms the human body (see: Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: B 4 T. T. 3 (1). P. 402:426). Wed. instruction about. Paul on his feeling of the imminent birth of his son Vasily: “... our boy, who descended to us through the heavenly spheres, “coming into the world” ...” (Florensky P.A. T.2: At the Watersheds of Thought. P.21). About the feeling of his children before their birth. Paul also wrote in camp letters (see: Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. P. 118). See: Van der Waerden B.L. Awakening Science. II: The Birth of Astronomy / Trans. from English; Under. ed. A.A. Gurshtein. M.: Nauka, 1991. pp. 184–185, 190. Wed. remark of a modern author: “The Hellenistic astrological ideas are most clearly manifested in the final myth of Plato’s Republic, where Plato, in fact, lays the foundation for the subsequent development of astrological ideas” (Star Trek of Astrology: Collection of original texts with comments. M., 1993. P. 14–15). Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and priest Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov. pp.42–44. Creations of St. Basil the Great, Archbishop. Caesarea of ​​Cappadocia. Part 1: Conversations on the Six Days. P.6–7. Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. From the history of the book “The Pillar and Ground of Truth.” P.837. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.10. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.50, 349. See: Bulgakov S.N. The light is not evening. P.212. See: Seraphim (Sobolev), Archbishop. New teaching about Sophia the Wisdom of God. Sofia, 1935. P.30; especially: Lossky V.N. Dispute about Sofia. Articles from different years. M., 1996. P.24–25. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp.47–49. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.163. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.50. This teaching is clearly stated in the New Testament, especially in 1 John. and at ap. Paul (“Whoever loves God is known by Him” – 1 Cor. 8:3). One can point out many examples of its use in patristic literature. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.74. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.91. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp.92–94. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.349. Therefore, applicable to late sophiology, Fr. Sergius Bulgakov accused V. Lossky of denying the Christian teaching about the Holy Trinity in connection with the introduction of the concept of “Fourth Hypostasis” to Fr. Cannot be attributed to P. Florensky. Florensky P. A. T.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.350. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.323. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.318. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp. 326–330. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.329, 340–341, 348. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.340. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.757. Origen. About the beginnings. Samara, 1993. P.233. The first condemnation of Origen took place at the Local Council of Constantinople in 543, but the Fifth Ecumenical Council - contrary to previously widespread opinion - directly examined Origenism. (Valentin Asmus, Archpriest of the V Ecumenical Council // Orthodox Encyclopedia. T.IX. M., 2005. P.627). Valentin Asmus, prot. Ecumenical Council V... P.626–627. See: Andrey Kuraev, deacon. Early Christianity and the Transmigration of Souls. M.: Gnosis, 1996. P.70. Florensky P.A. T.1 (2): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.758. Wed. “On the Beginnings” II, 6, 2, where Origen says that everything visible and invisible was created in the Wisdom of God itself, which is “the very Word of the Father” (Origen. On the Beginnings. p. 122). (Cf.: Christ is Wisdom - Ibid. P.129). See: Lossky V.N. God-vision. M., 1995. P.39. This instruction by V. Lossky, it seems, if confirmed by special thorough research in this direction, may turn out to be one of the main arguments for theological criticism of the concept of the “eternal pre-existence” of the creature. Compare: “In the system of Origen. two levels of creation can be distinguished. The first, main act of creation occurs outside of time, in eternity. The second “creation” - the fall, which entailed diversity - occurs in time” (John Meyendorff, Archpriest Introduction to Patristic Theology. P. 101). Origen. About the beginnings. pp. 133–136. Origen. About the beginnings. P.233. Florensky P.A. T.1 (2): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.756. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.330. This is one of Origen’s provisions condemned at the Council of 543 (for more details, see: Kartashev A.V. Ecumenical Councils. M., 1994. pp. 353–355). Origen in this most important anthropological moment was rightly associated with Platonism already in the letter of Emperor Justinian to the V Ecumenical Council (553) (see: Acts of the Ecumenical Councils. Vol. 5. Kazan, 1889. P. 256). In Plato's early dialogue Alcibiades I, Socrates comes to the conclusion that man is not a body and is not a whole consisting of soul and body, but “man is a soul” (130e, cf. 131c). Also in the early dialogue Axiochus, Socrates says to a dying man: “We are the soul, an immortal being, locked in a prison subject to death” (365e). A similar teaching is preserved in later dialogues (for example, Timaeus 34c, Republic VII, 514–520 - the myth of the cave, etc.). Florensky already has it in his entry in September 1905. reflects his firm conviction: “Personality is a whole person. And not “soul”... Personality. with the unity of “soul” and “body”. The body, therefore, is not a glove on the soul that can be thrown off, not a coffin from which one can crawl out, but an organ of the personality, an essential part of it” (Pavel Florensky and the Symbolists. pp. 386–387). Plato actually speaks about the transmigration of souls in the Phaedrus (249c), Phaedo, and especially in the Republic (614c–621c), where the soul chooses a lot for its new life in a body, which can be not only human. The Timaeus (92c) says that all living beings “to this day are reborn into each other, changing their appearance as their intelligence or stupidity decreases or increases.” Regarding the similar teaching of Origen, see: Acts of the Ecumenical Councils. T.5. Kazan, 1889. P.256; Kartashev A.V. Ecumenical Councils. M., 1994. P.353–355. Also: Valentin Asmus, prot. V Ecumenical Council. P.624, 627. Recorded in 1905. Florensky calls metempsychosis a “hypothesis of bad scientific taste” and lists his objections to this “hypothesis.” The most remarkable of them are: “The body is individual. Therefore, the soul cannot be in another body. It would be a different personality..." Also: with metempsychosis, death becomes "a simple condition, rest, sleep. It turns flat, the tragedy disappears. The feat disappears, and everything real becomes unreal” (Pavel Florensky and the Symbolists. pp. 386–387). Valentin Asmus, prot. V Ecumenical Council. pp.626–627. See the text of the anathema: Valentin Asmus, prot. V Ecumenical Council. P.627. Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. P.140. Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. P.171. Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. See: P.66. Florensky P.A. Names. P.48. “The Lord Himself, who had not yet been conceived on earth, was prepared from eternity with a name brought by an Angel. Moreover, people” (Florensky P.A. Names. P.26). Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.197, 326. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.202. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.326. See, for example, Rev. John of Damascus: “God... creates with thought, and this thought... becomes deed” (quoted from: Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. P. 72). Quote by: Georgy Florovsky, prot. Eastern Fathers of the 4th century. P.153. Albin. Textbook of Platonic philosophy // Plato. Dialogues. P.447. Albin. Textbook of Platonic philosophy // Plato. Dialogues. P.449. Albin introduces a new motive of Neoplatonic philosophy in relation to Plato: “... God’s idea is his thinking” (Ibid. p. 447), while in Plato himself ideas do not constitute the thinking of God, but are themselves divine. Plato’s deity is identical to the “Idea of ​​Ideas”, i.e. extreme generalization of ideas. (see: Taho-Godi A.A. Notes // Plato. Dialogues. P.580). See: Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. pp.73–74. “We call paradigms those collectively pre-existing in God and realizing Logoi” (Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Divine Names. V, 8). St. Maxim the Confessor: “All existence is essentially ideal. It is nothing more than a collection of logoi that came from the Logos and are variously intertwined with each other” (Epifanovich S.L. St. Maximus the Confessor and Byzantine theology. Kiev, 1915. P.51). Quote by: Sidorov A.I. Comments // Creations of Rev. Maximus the Confessor. Book 1 / Transl. A.I. Sidorova. M.: Martis, 1993. P.285. Philokalia / Transl. and comp. Ep. Feofan. T 3. St. – Tr. Sergius Lavra, 1992. P.214. See: Georgy Florovsky, prot. Eastern Fathers of the 5th–8th centuries. P.206. See: John Meyendorff, prot. Life and works of St. Gregory Palamas. Introduction to learning. St. Petersburg, 1997. pp. 303–304. See: John Meyendorff, prot. Life and works of St. Gregory Palamas. Introduction to learning. St. Petersburg, 1997. P.307. Wed: in “The Non-Evening Light” Bulgakov draws conclusions that exactly correspond to the ontology of the “Pillar”: “According to the deepest meaning of Plato’s teaching, the world of ideas is nothing more than Sophia” (Bulgakov S.N. The Non-Evening Light. P. 219). Sophia is the “mountain world of intelligible eternal ideas”, that “feminine” secret of the world in which “the world... was already conceived before it was created” (Ibid. P. 215). See: John Meyendorff, prot. Life and works of St. Gregory Palamas. P.302. Wed. in Plato: the soul, losing its wings and falling to the ground, inhabits the “fruit” of a person, the merits of which correspond to the amount of what this soul has seen in heaven (Phaedrus 248c–e). In correspondence with V.A. Kozhevnikov (1912) Fr. Paul gives spiritual advice, directly referring to Plato, and reproduces Plato’s idea of ​​​​a “soul” coming into the world: “God knew what he was doing when he sent you into this world, and knew that you would have the glory not of the “sun” and not of the “moon,” but of a “star” of I don’t know what size (1 Cor. 15:41). Why don’t you want to humble yourself before Wisdom by will and seek what is not assigned to you - the glory of the sun? The most important thing is that the Lord, who sent us to earth and knew in advance everything that would happen to us, wanted good, not evil. (my italics – N.P.)” (Correspondence between P.A. Florensky and V.A. Kozhevnikov. P.99–100). Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.82. Obviously, thus Fr. Paul once again directly confirms his conviction in the possibility of the “discovery” of the Divine plan of existence both in man and in all other creations. Right there. pp.49–50. The same thoughts about the sea. Paul outlined in the poem “Oro”, begun in prison in the Far East and completed in the Solovetsky camp (1934–1937): the sea is “the father’s house, where the surf splashes against the rock, dear to you, forever yours” (Paul Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. P.469). Wed. The impressions of the sea noted by S. Bulgakov (though in adulthood, in the Crimea, in June 1916) are of a completely different nature: the sea reveals itself to him in two aspects (“luminosity” and instability, “powerless psychologism,” “bad infinity”) and gives reason to reflect on the shore about its charm (Correspondence between priest Pavel Aleksandrovich Florensky and priest Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov. S.112). Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.42. .Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.74. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.191. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.99. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.213. Florensky P. A. T.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp. 200–202. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 T.T.2. P.56. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: B 4 T.T.2S.56–57. Quote by: Khoruzhy S.S. Florensky's worldview. P.29, 139. Quote by: Khoruzhy S.S. Florensky's worldview. P.139. Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T.3 (1). pp.424–425. This idea is heard by Fr. Paul in lectures of 1917 And he wrote about the same thing to A. Bely in June 1906: “... it is possible to historically prove the parallelism of the symbolism of different peoples and different times” (quoted from: Khoruzhy S.S. Florensky’s World Outlook. P.29. Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T.3 (1). P.425. Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T.3 (1). P.427. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 T. T.2. P.58. Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T.3 (1). P.59. Father Paul attached great importance to experience of this kind and considered the “experience of death” acquired in the ancient mysteries and in Christian asceticism to be identical (see: Ibid. p. 167). Florensky calls sleep, as a rule, the lowest stage of “life in the invisible,” which, however, gives the experience of a different reality to every person, even without making any effort to “educate” sleep (see: Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.75). It should be noted in this regard that the topic of “education” of dreams is one of the most significant in modern literature close to the occult. See, for example: Bosnak R. In the world of dreams / Transl. from English M., 1991; also some passages from K. Castaneda (who positioned himself as an anthropologist - a researcher of the traditions and beliefs of the North American Indians): Castaneda K. Tales of Power. Second ring of power. Gift of the eagle. M.; Kiev, 2002. P.13–15, 55–68. See: Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and priest Sergius Nikolaevich Bulgakov. P.38. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T.3 (1). P.428. Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T.3 (1). pp.427–428. Father Pavel refers to his contemporary ideas that dreams arise only on the border between sleep and wakefulness, as well as to the works of Karl du Prel, according to which only in memories, in our ordinary, “daytime” consciousness, do dreams unfold into the time series familiar to us. In fact, from the point of view of our temporal reality, according to Karl du Prel, a dream is instantaneous (see: Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.76). Subsequent scientific studies of dreams, made possible with the discovery of brain biocurrents (1929), yielded different results. It was found that dreams occur in cycles, approximately three to four times a night (without the person waking up throughout the night), and the subjective duration of the dream corresponds to the objective duration of the period of so-called paradoxical sleep, when, according to experiments, dreams arise. (see Borbeli A. The Mystery of Sleep / Translated from German by V.M. Kovalson. M.: Znanie, 1989. P. 19–23, 45–46, etc.). See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.83. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 T.T.2. P.58. Such immersion into one or another “degree of the unconscious,” according to Florensky, is well known to many who have experienced the effects of hypnosis (Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: B 4 T.T.2. P.59). Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 T.T.2.S.58–59. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: B 4 T.T.2.See: P.59. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T 3 (1). P.438. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. P.218. Wed. traditional patristic interpretations: to be “naked” (2 Cor. 5:3), according to the thought of St. Macarius the Great means to be deprived of “communion and unity with the Holy Spirit” (Conversation 5.16). Also, according to Gal.3:27 (“All of you who were baptized in Christ have put on Christ”), by “garment” is meant Christ Himself (see: St. Gregory of Nyssa. Discourse XI on the Song of Songs (“But I call Jesus a garment” - quoted from: Sergius, Archimandrite. Orthodox teaching on salvation. 2nd edition. Kazan, 1898 / Rep. M.: Enlightener, 1991. pp. 189–190); Nikolai Kavasila. Seven words about life in Christ. 2, 16 (In the sacrament of Baptism, “Christ is written and imagined in Christians. Clothes them like clothing” - Nikolai Kavasila, Archbishop of Thessaloniki. Seven words about life in Christ / Translated from Greek M., 1874. P.26). Florensky P. A. T.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp.396–413. Andronik (Trubachev), hieromon. Theodicy and anthropodicy in the works of priest Pavel Florensky. pp.40–41. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.417. Khoruzhy S.S. Finding specificity. P.5–6. See: Florensky P.A. Names. pp.52–53. Florensky P. A. T.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.142. “A symbol is an entity whose energy, fused, or, more precisely, dissolved with the energy of another, more valuable in this respect, entity, carries within itself this latter” (Florensky P.A. T.2: At Watersheds of Thought. P.287). This is a statement about. Paul cites it repeatedly in his works and relates the comprehension of its truth to his earliest childhood (Paul Florensky, priest to my children: Memoirs of past days. P. 35). However, it should be remembered that Fr. Paul, from the fact that “a symbol is what is symbolized,” their complete identity does not follow. The “basic” definition of a symbol, according to Florensky, is “Being, which is greater than itself” (Florensky P.A. T.2: At the Watersheds of Thought. P.287). Compare: “Florensky does not identify symbol and reality, as some of his researchers believe, but he also does not make the problem of the difference between symbol and reality the subject of analysis, understanding that to talk specifically about this difference means to lose it” (Kazaryan A.T. Notes // Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: B 4 T.T.2. P.796). Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T.3 (2). P.379. Just as in the early ontology of the “Pillar” knowledge meant the communion of the Divine Essence - Love, in symbolic ontology the knowledge of a certain level of reality is the participation of the energy that this level carries. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 T.T.1. P.41. Wed. definition of “remembering” as a discontinuous translation “into consciousness of potentials from the realm of the superconscious” (Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: B 4 T.T.2. P.56. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 T.T.2. pp.58–59. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.46, 99. See: Khoruzhy S.S. Florensky's worldview. P.36. O. Abel accepts the interpretation of “heaven” and “earth” from Genesis 1:1 as an indication of these two worlds (see: Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.75). Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.83. Compare: in the process of worship, “a priest removed from the world becomes “transcendent to the people”... and in the transcendence itself many steps and degrees are possible” (see: Pavel Florensky, priest. Features of the phenomenology of the cult // Entelekhiya. 2002. No. 4. Kostroma, 2002. P.25). Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.287. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 T.T.1. pp.281–281. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. P.89, 127. At the same time, in “Philosophy of Cult” Fr. Paul considers not only the fundamental two-unity, but also the multi-layered reality. So, in one of the lectures in 1918. it is noted that “The Sacrament in its rite receives a shell-like, layered composition...”; the entire church service “is a system. foliations" in time and space. The system of “mystical isolations” that ensures worship ensures “ascension, promotion, rise along other coordinates of reality” both – in a special way – of the priest and the laity participating in the sacrament (Pavel Florensky, priest. Traits of the phenomenology of the cult // Entelekhiya. 2002. No. 4. Kostroma, 2002. P. 24–26.) Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.190. Such a case about. Paul examines “Gehenna” in the “Pillar” in his letter (see, for example: Florensky P.A. T.1 (1): The Pillar and Statement of Truth. P.217–219) and mentions its possibility in the “Iconostasis” (Paul Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.92–93). Florensky P.A. Names. P.19. Florensky P.A. Names. P.65. See: “Special”: From the memoirs of P.A. Florensky. pp. 14–15. See: Florensky P.A. Volume 1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.212, 219–220, 233–234, 256; cf.: Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.92. “Special”: From the memoirs of P.A. Florensky. P.14. Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. pp.82–83. Wed. instructions from St. Gregory Dvoeslov: the vision of a hellish fire is allowed not because wood burns in hell, but for the most convenient story to the living, “so that, hearing about what is known, they learn to fear what is still unknown to them” (Conversations. IV, 31). Also regarding the vision of golden dwellings in paradise: “Of course, no one with common sense will understand these words literally.” But “since generous alms are rewarded with eternal glory, it seems quite possible to build an eternal dwelling of gold” (Conversations. IV, 37) (St. Gregory Dvoeslov, Bishop of Rome. Conversations about the life of the Italian fathers and the immortality of the soul. Kazan, 1858. P. 314). Also: angel's warning Rev. Macarius of Alexandria before the story about the “aerial ordeals”: ​​“...take earthly things here as the weakest image of heavenly things” (quoted from: Macarius, Metropolitan of Moscow. Orthodox Dogmatic Theology. Vol. 2. St. Petersburg, 1883. P. 538). Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.82. Florensky P.A. Imaginaries in geometry. P.49. Florensky P.A. Imaginaries in geometry. P.50. Florensky P.A. Imaginaries in geometry. P.50–51. Wed. in “Imaginaries”: “... the transition from a real surface to an imaginary surface is possible only through a break in space and the inversion of a body through itself” (Florensky P.A. Imaginaries in geometry. P.51). Wed. in one of the lectures in the series “Philosophy of Cult” (end of 1919): “By faith we see this world not from here, but from there, we look at it with the eyes of eternity, or, if you like, we see not the world, more precisely, not ourselves together with the world, but it and our mirror reflection” (Paul Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. p. 147). Florensky P.A. Imaginaries in geometry. P.48. An “astronomical unit” in astronomy is considered to be the average distance from the Earth to the Sun, equal to about 150 million km. Florensky P.A. Imaginaries in geometry. P.50. In the history of science today it is generally accepted that the ancients knew only five planets up to and including Saturn (see: Van der Waerden B.L. Awakening Science. pp. 194–195). This is confirmed by quite ancient astrological systems that have survived to this day, which do not take into account the planet Uranus. It is very difficult to say what sources Fr. used. Paul, arguing that in ancient times Uranus was still known. Most likely, this statement is an obvious stretch. Uranus is difficult to see with the naked eye and was discovered only at the end of the 18th century. “The wisdom of language,” wrote V. Khlebnikov (1885–1922), “has long since revealed the light nature of the World... Man lives in the “white world” with its maximum speed of 300,000 km and dreams of the “other world” at a speed greater than the speed of light. The wisdom of language went ahead of the wisdom of science” (Velimir Khlebnikov. Creations. M.: Sov. writer, 1986. P.625). Compare: A.F. Losev wrote that the imaginary quantity obtained from the relativistic coefficient should be recognized as just as real as any other. It is more appropriate, according to A. Losev, to allow the possibility of a reverse flow of time than to impose a ban on the existence of superluminal speeds. (see: Losev A.F. Ancient space and modern science // Genesis - name - space. M.: Mysl, 1993. P. 283). (True, A.F. Losev was directly influenced by Father P. Florensky). See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 T.T.2. P.58. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.247. Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. pp.84–85. Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.85. In contrast to this, the “art of ascension” based on the rise of creative inspiration. Paul calls “naturalism” (Ibid.). Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.89. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. pp.84–85. Cases can be extracted from Holy Scripture and Tradition when heavenly contemplation was suddenly revealed to people who were extremely far from the ascetic life, and even to the so-called “inveterate sinners.” However, in these cases we are talking about a special, extraordinary and exclusive action of Divine Providence. Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.77. But already in the 1930s, starting with the opening in 1929. Hans Berger's study of brain biocurrents attracted the attention of scientific specialists to dreams. See Borbeli A. The Mystery of Sleep / Transl. with him. V.M. Kovalzona. M.: Znanie, 1989. pp. 14–16. The existence of dreams from God is attested in many places in Holy Scripture, for example: Gen. 37:5–10; Numbers 12:6 ; Job 33:14–18; Joel.2:28. In Genesis 41:32, the criterion for the truth of a dream is its repetition. On the other hand, “dreams have led many astray...” (Sir.34:5-7). “Whoever believes in dreams,” writes St. John Climacus, - he is like a man who runs after his shadow and tries to grab it" (Ladder. Homily 3; St. John. Ladder in Russian translation. 7th ed. S. Posad, 1908. P. 19; cf. Sir. 34: 2-3). “We need to know and know,” insists St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, “that in our state, which has not yet been renewed by grace, we are unable to see dreams other than those formed by the delirium of the soul and the slander of demons” (Ignatius Brianchaninov, bishop. Works. Vol. 5: Offering to modern monasticism. 3rd edition. St. Petersburg, 1905. P. 347). Wed: Having seen in us attention to dreams, demons, writes St. Ignatius Brianchaninov, “they try to make dreams entertaining, and to arouse in us greater attention to these nonsense. From attention to dreams, trust in them certainly creeps into the soul, and therefore attention itself is strictly forbidden” (Ignatius Brianchaninov, Bishop. Works. Vol. 5: Offering to modern monasticism. P. 347–349). (Ignatius Brianchaninov, bishop. Works. Vol. 5: Offering to modern monasticism. P. 350. Creations of Rev. Maximus the Confessor. Book 1 / Transl. A.I. Sidorova. M.: Martis, 1993. P.178. Compare: Epifanovich S.L. Rev. Maximus the Confessor and Byzantine theology. P.76. Also about St. Maximus the Confessor: “...theologically the least soteriological and compared with other saints. fathers, perhaps the most metaphysical” (Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. pp. 104–105); “Unlike most Christian theologians of the patristic period (with the exception of Origen and St. Gregory of Nyssa), he had a real, comprehensive philosophical vision” (John Meyendorff, Archpriest Introduction to Patristic Theology / Translated from English by L. Volokhonskaya. 2nd ed. Vilnius; M., 1992. P. 305); “Rev. Maximus the Confessor stands out for its completeness and universality: his thought is not limited to answers “to the topic of the day”... but covers all aspects of the relationship between God, man and the world” (Alexander Geronimus, Archpriest. Knowledge in the light of the anthropology of St. Maximus the Confessor // Orthodox teaching about man. Selected articles. M.; Klin, 2004. P.79). Creations of Rev. Maximus the Confessor. Book 1. pp. 159–160. Georgy Florovsky, prot. Eastern Fathers of the V-VIII centuries. pp.206–207. About a similar teaching of St. Gregory of Nyssa Fr. Georgy Florovsky notes: matter as such is immaterial in its basis and “comes from the intelligible and immaterial” (Georgy Florovsky, Archpriest of the Eastern Fathers of the 4th century. P. 153). “The nature of matter, according to the teachings of St. Gregory of Nyssa, adopted by St. Maximus the Confessor,” writes V. Lossky, “is the result of a combination of simple qualities, supersensible individually, but their totality, interaction, concrete manifestation produces the substrate of sensory things, produces their corporeality...” (Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. P.79). Creations of Rev. Maximus the Confessor. Book 1. P.160. Sidorov A.I. Comments // Creations of Rev. Maximus the Confessor. Book 1. P.302. Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. pp.82–84. Creations of Rev. Maximus the Confessor. Book 1. P.227. St. Gregory Palamas. Triads in defense of the sacredly silent / Trans. from Greek V.V. Bibikhina. St. Petersburg: Nauka, 2004. P.287. St. Gregory Palamas. Triads in defense of the sacredly silent. P.236. See: Gregory Palamas. Triads in defense of the sacredly silent. P.85. Gregory Palamas. Triads in defense of the sacredly silent. P.241. Gregory Palamas. Triads in defense of the sacredly silent. P.375. Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.344. Wed. from S. Khoruzhiy: “The Mysticism of Florensky. the whole thing represents, so to speak, the mysticism of border phenomena, transitions, communications between two worlds” (Khoruzhy S.S. Florensky’s World Outlook. P.39). See: Andronik (Trubachev), hieromon. Theodicy and anthropodicy in the works of priest Pavel Florensky. P.352. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.278, 289. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.146. The main text of “The Pillar” was written by Florensky in the period 1904–1908. After 1913, having become acquainted with the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas, Fr. Paul recognized the need to distinguish between the essence of God, inaccessible to creation, and the Divine energies with which creation participates (see, for example: Florensky P.A. T.2: At the Watersheds of Thought. pp. 302–303). Only decades later, thanks primarily to the works of V. Lossky, this distinction became established in Russian theology. Wed. from V. Lossky: “If at some specific moment we could find ourselves united with the very nature of God, at least to some extent participating in it, we would not be at that moment what we are, we would be God by nature. God would not then be God the Trinity, but God “with a thousand hypostases”... for He would have as many hypostases as there would be persons participating in His essence. It follows from this that God, by His essence, remains inaccessible to us” (Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. P.55). See: Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.85, 90. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. pp.282–283. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.329. For example, ep. Hilarion (Alfeev) believes that “a trichotomous description of the human composition... is found in the patristic tradition less often than a dichotomous one” (Hilarion (Alfeev), bishop. Anthropology of St. Simeon the New Theologian // Orthodox teaching about man. Selected articles. P. 124), and priest. Andrei Lorgus argues the opposite: “...the three-part teaching is most widespread in Orthodox anthropology. It is used by the largest number of fathers and teachers of the Church" (Andrey Lorgus, priest. Soul and spirit: nature and being // Orthodox teaching about man. Selected articles. P. 169: 185). This is what V. Lossky believes, according to which among the Greek fathers the difference between supporters of trichotomy and dichotomy comes down, in general, to terminology: “... dichotomists see in the “spirit” the highest ability of the rational soul, the ability through which a person enters into communication with God” (Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. P. 97). However, in part of the patristic tradition one encounters the idea of ​​the “spirit” of man as an uncreated grace in which human nature participates. For example, Rev. Anthony the Great teaches that the mind (spirit) of a person is a gift of God that saves the soul, and defines it as “unborn” and abiding “above the world” (Philokalia / Translated and compiled by Bishop Theophan T.1. Holy Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, 1992. pp. 81–82, 88). Priest Andrei Lorgus even proposes a general anthropological concept in which “the spirit does not belong to the ontological composition of man, but is an uncreated gift to man” (Andrei Lorgus, priest. Soul and spirit: nature and being // Orthodox teaching about man. Selected articles. P. 186: 188). Critical remarks about this concept (Malkov P.Yu. The Spirit of God and the Human Spirit (to one of the problems of Orthodox anthropology) // Annual Theological Conference of PSTBI. M., 2003. pp. 45–49). See: Theological works. Sat.29. Ed. Moscow Patr., 1989. P.284–320. See, for example: Rev. Macarius of Egypt. Spiritual conversations, messages and words / Transl. from Greek with MDA. Ed. 3e. M., 1880. P.451–452. St. Macarius of Egypt. Spiritual conversations, messages and words / Transl. from Greek with MDA. Ed. 3e. M., 1880. P.380. See also: St. speaks about the “affinity” of the soul with God. Basil the Great (On the Holy Spirit, 9 - St. Basil the Great. Creations. Part III. M., 1846 / Rep. M., 1993. P.265–266), St. Gregory of Nyssa (“In human nature it was necessary to dissolve something akin to the Divine, in order to covet what is characteristic of it in accordance with this” - quoted from: Cyprian (Kern), archimandrite. Anthropology of St. Gregory Palamas. Kyiv, 2006. P. 159), bl. Abba Thalasius († c.660) (“Intelligent natures are related to the Divine, comprehended by the mind alone; feelings and sensual things are created to serve the mind” (Philokalia / Translated and compiled by Bishop Theophan T.3. P.310). Compare: “Every thing in a nature akin to itself finds peace... Thus the human soul is in one God rests, and cannot find peace for himself anywhere except God alone” (St. Tikhon of Zadonsk. Spiritual Treasure. 5th edition. M., 1889 / Rep. M., 1994. P.333). See: Rev. Macarius of Egypt. Spiritual conversations, messages and words. pp.408–409. See: Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and Mikhail Alexandrovich Novoselov. P.111. Compare: Florensky “completely and consciously ignores the existence of an autonomous sphere of thinking with its own laws... Thought, taken by itself... in abstraction from its reproduction in the sensory, is directly equated with him to non-existence, pure nothingness” (Khoruzhy S.S. Florensky’s World Outlook. P. 31). Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T.3 (2). pp.48–49. Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T.3 (1). P.402. Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and Mikhail Alexandrovich Novoselov. P.107. See especially: Philokalia / Trans. and comp. Ep. Feofana T.2. St. Sergius Lavra, 1992. P.585; Philokalia / Transl. and comp. Ep. Feofana T.5. St. Sergius Lavra, 1992. pp. 219–220. Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and Mikhail Alexandrovich Novoselov. P.111. Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and Mikhail Alexandrovich Novoselov. pp. 107–108. One work - “The Word about Man” (unfinished) - was kept by Fr. Paul in the archives and was apparently received by him through M. Novoselov along with letters from St. Ignatius (see: Correspondence of priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky with Mikhail Alexandrovich Novoselov. P. 123:126). Another work - “The Word on Death” (with an “Addition”) - was included in the 3rd volume of the Works of St. Ignatius, to which Fr. Paul refers in “The Meaning of Idealism” (see: Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 T.T.3 (2). pp. 100–101). See: Works of Bishop. Ignatius Brianchaninov. T.3: Ascetic experiences. Ed. 3rd, rev. and replenishment St. Petersburg, 1905 / Rep.: Works of the bishop. Ignatius Brianchaninov. A word about death. M.: P.S., 1991. P.262. St. Ignatius calls the nature of spirits gaseous, but these gases are “lighter and subtler. gases which in common usage are called ether.” This, according to St. Ignatius, gases still unknown to us, lying outside the earth’s atmosphere and filling “the space that we call heaven.” “According to the current state of science, we recognize both gases and ether as substances; the ancients recognized them as spirits” (Ibid. P.236:260). Works of the bishop. Ignatius Brianchaninov. T.3: Ascetic experiences. Ed. 3rd, rev. and replenishment St. Petersburg, 1905 / Rep.: Works of the bishop. Ignatius Brianchaninov. A word about death. M.: P.S., 1991. P.122–123. Ignatius Brianchaninov, bishop. Essays. Vol.5: Offering to modern monasticism. P.449. Works of the bishop. Ignatius Brianchaninov. A word about death. P.123. See: Ignatius Brianchaninov, bishop. Essays. T.4: Ascetic preaching. Ed. 2nd. St. Petersburg, 1886. P.403. Theological criticism of St. Theophanes followed almost a quarter of a century after the death of St. Ignatius (1867) and was caused by the fact that the opinion of St. Ignatius on the materiality of created spirits began to be used in spiritualistic teachings (see: St. Theophan the Recluse. The soul and the angel are not the body, but the spirit. M.: Talan, 1997. P.4). “With sin, the Most Reverend Ignatius has only the “Word on Death” and the “Addition” to this word. In other articles, I did not notice anything similarly flawed,” wrote St. Theophan in one of the letters (St. Theophan the Recluse. Collection of letters. Issue 4. St. Petersburg, 1994. P.58). St. Theophan the Recluse. The soul and angel are not the body, but the spirit. P.158. St. Theophan the Recluse. The soul and the angel are not the body, but the spirit P.156. St. Theophan the Recluse. The soul and angel are not the body, but the spirit. P.159. St. Theophan the Recluse. The soul and angel are not the body, but the spirit. pp.49–50, 176–177. St. Theophan the Recluse. The soul and angel are not the body, but the spirit. P.51. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T.3 (1). P.402. St. Theophan the Recluse. The soul and angel are not the body, but the spirit. P.176. Nesmelov V.I. The dogmatic system of Gregory of Nyssa. St. Petersburg, 2000. P.357. See: Rev. Simeon the New Theologian. Divine hymns. S. Posad, 1917. P.45. Quote by: Hilarion (Alfeev), bishop. Anthropology Rev. Simeon the New Theologian. P.125. Rev. Simeon the New Theologian. Divine hymns. P.199. Rev. Simeon the New Theologian. Divine hymns. P.207. As Bishop repeatedly notes. Hilarion (Alfeev) in his study of the doctrine of man, St. Simeon the New Theologian, his views are “based on patristic anthropology” (Hilarion (Alfeev), bishop. Anthropology of St. Simeon the New Theologian. P. 127), close to the traditional view of the Eastern fathers, “correspond to the patristic Tradition” (St. Simeon the New Theologian. Divine hymns. P. 132:137). Philokalia / Transl. and comp. Ep. Feofana T.5. P.37. Quote by: Hilarion (Alfeev), bishop. Anthropology Rev. Simeon the New Theologian. pp. 125–126. This means St. Gregory the Theologian, according to which in the creation of man “God creates a certain second world - in a small one great” (Sermon 38. 11, 13-14) (Ibid. P. 126). Turning again to St. Maximus the Confessor, one can especially highlight his statements that are very close to the anthropological concepts of Fr. Pavel. For example, he says that under external appearance (i.e. phenomena) in the visible material world there is hidden intelligible being - noumena (PG 91. 1112B, 1129C, 1132C, 1372B, etc.); in sensory things one can contemplate ideas (“logoi”) of the mental world (PG 91. 669A, etc.) and the sensory world is a symbol of the spiritual (PG 91. 1400A, 1133C). But, speaking about the harmony between the mental world and the sensory world (PG 91. 1400C), St. Maxim calls man the best exponent of this harmony, since he unites these worlds in himself (PG 91. 1153); in it these worlds are brought into strict unity (PG 91. 1248АВ) and man received the great destiny to unite the whole world with God precisely because he is a very special image of the Divine Logos (PG 91. 1084А, 1087ВС, 1309Д, 1345Д, etc.). (see: Epifanovich S.L. St. Maximus the Confessor and Byzantine theology. M.: Martis, 1996. pp. 70–72, 74, 76). See: Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.287. Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.83. For the presence of hierarchical layers in the heavenly world, see also the lecture “Philosophy of Cult” (1922): incense incense rises “to one or another from heaven” (Paul Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. p. 213). See: Florensky P.A. Imaginaries in geometry. P.49. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.45. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T.3 (1). P.427. Based on contemporary ideas, Fr. Paul apparently believed that a vacuum was a completely empty space, completely devoid of matter. Data from astrophysics and space research in the twentieth century. showed the absence of such a complete vacuum in nature. Not only interplanetary space, but also “the space between stars,” notes one of the classic university textbooks, “contains matter in a dispersed state, in the form of gas and dust, the density of which can be very different, but always very low, orders of magnitude lower than in stars” (Martynov D.Ya. Course of General Astrophysics. 3rd ed. M.: Nauka, 1979. P.319). Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.283. Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. pp.281–282. “Special”: From the memoirs of P.A. Florensky. P.15. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.233. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.90, 92, 94; cf.: Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.212, 271. Wed. some patristic interpretations of the “heavenly dwelling,” “many” or “eternal abodes”: this is the “glory of the Divine light” that dwells in Christians “The Power of the Spirit” (St. Macarius Vel. Conversation. 34, 2; Conversation. 5, 16 - St. Macarius of Egypt. Spiritual conversations, messages and words. P. 72: 329); this is not a “difference of places,” but “degrees of talent” (St. Isaac the Syrian, St. Ephraim the Syrian - Sergius, Archimandrite. Orthodox teaching on salvation. pp. 135–136), “the quantity and quality of each person’s spiritual perfections,” “dispassionate and virtuous skill, and knowledge without any error” (St. Maxim the Confessor – Philokalia / Trans. and compiled by Bishop Theophanes T.3. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp.229–230. Florensky P.A. T.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth P.326. Florensky P.A. T.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth P.330. Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. pp. 19–20. Wed: The image of God is “the ontological gift of God” (Paul Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.90). Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.90P.282. See: Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.352. See: Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.318. See: Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.271; cf.: Ibid. P.348, etc. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. P.186. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. P.127. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. P.88. See: Florensky P.A. Volume 1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.240, 256. Florensky P.A. T.1(1): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp. 219–220, 214, 240. Cf. mention of the name as a “hidden essence” that gives unity to the personality (Ibid. pp. 183–184). See: Florensky P.A. Names. P.77. Compare: Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.262. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. P.192. Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.294. Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. pp.264–265. Wed. in “Names”: “A name is a word, even a condensed word; and therefore, like any word, but to a greater extent, it is the tireless playing energy of the spirit” (Florensky P.A. Names. P.68). See: Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.293. This, according to Florensky, is the “antinomic structure of the word”: “... what I received from the outside, taken by me from the treasury of the folk language, someone else’s creativity, in my use it is created anew by me” (Florensky P.A. T.2: At the Watersheds of Thought. P.262). Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. Compare: p.270. Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. P.95. Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. P.186. Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. P.146. Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. P.139. Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. See: P.244. Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. P.263. Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T.3 (2). P.166. Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T.3 (2). P.164. Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T.3 (2). P.162. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.340. Wed. a mention of the ancient idea “of a name as a real force - an idea that shapes things and mysteriously controls the depths of their deepest essence” (Ibid. P.347). Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T.3 (2). P.82. Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. P.244. Florensky P.A. Names. P.46. Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.266. See: Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.314; Florensky P.A. Names. P.46. Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T.3 (1). P.402. Wed. from lectures 1921 - “The body is built by the soul. The body is a symbol of the soul” (Paul Florensky, priest. Works: B 4 T.T.3 (2). P.431). Florensky P.A. Names. P.46, 52–53. This is the general schematic representation of occult-theosophical anthropology. In different sources and among different authors, individual nuances of this concept may vary. For example, in one of the lectures, E. Blavatsky’s successor as chairman of the World Theosophical Society, A. Besant, spoke only about three planes of existence and, accordingly, about three “bodies” of a person - physical, “body of desires” (astral body) and “body of mind” (mental body). But as, she said, as “the Spiritual Self descends into the manifest Universe, as it puts on shell after shell, its eyes... are gradually closed by successive veils... In our physical world... The spirit is completely blinded by matter and is no longer conscious in this physical world of either its high origin or its own essence. This blinded Self is in the manifested world in order to learn and accumulate experience” (Bezant A. About suffering // Bulletin of the Society of Friends of H. P. Blavatsky. Issue I. M., 1992. P. 29–30). Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 T.T.2. P.59. See: Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and Mikhail Alexandrovich Novoselov. pp.49–50. Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.276. Wed. some points from later letters from E.I. Roerich: by Guardian Angel “one should understand not... some separate being from the higher spheres, but our own spirit” (Letters of Helena Roerich. 1932–1955. Novosibirsk, 1993. P.29). Almost the same as for Fr. Paul, for example, in “The Pillar” (see: Florensky P.A. T 1 (1): Pillar and Statement of Truth. P. 329). “Christ,” writes E. Roerich, “is our purified and higher Self” (Letters of Helena Roerich. 1929–1935. Vol. 1. Minsk, 1992. P. 362). Almost the same (but, of course, without denying the historical reality of the Savior Himself) from Fr. Pavel, for example: Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.231; Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. pp. 19–20. Florensky P.A. Names. P.52. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp.212–213. See: Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp. 213, 233–234. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. See: P.240. Wed: “Autos” turned out to be naked. “He,” explains Fr. Paul, is naked in his consciousness” (Florensky P.A. T.1 (1): Pillar and affirmation of the Truth. P.235). Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp.240–241. Andronik (Trubachev), hieromon. Theodicy and anthropodicy in the works of priest Pavel Florensky. P.30. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 T.T.1. P.282. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. P.107. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage..103–104. So oh. Paul interprets 2 Peter 1:13–14 in the same way in both the Pillar and the Iconostasis. Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.99–102. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.90. Wed. in “The Meaning of Idealism” (1915): “... an idea is... a face”; “An idea is... a human face, but not in its empirical randomness, but in its cognitive value, i.e. the image or face of a person” (Paul Florensky, priest. Works: B 4 T.T.3 (2). P.126:128). Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. pp.247–248. Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.209. Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.97. Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.221. Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.189. Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.215. Until ep. Theodore (Pozdeevsky), in the first years of study, Fr. Pavel, the rector of the MDA was Archimandrite. Evdokim (Meshchersky), later (in the 1920s), “Metropolitan” in Renovationism. Florensky P.A. Questions of religious self-knowledge (reprints from the magazine “Christian” for 1907). S. Posad, 1907. P.10–11. Wed. in the course work of 1906: “The Guardian Angel is identified with the name, it turns out to be the hypostatic name of a person. But, on the other hand, the Guardian Angel is a person’s personal idea, his essence, his ideal appearance” (Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred Renaming. P.66). Correspondence of P.A. Florensky and V.A. Kozhevnikova. P.102. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. P.179. The conversations were recorded by N.Ya. Simonovich-Efimova, who notes that before answering the question about the Guardian Angel, Fr. Pavel said that he thought about this a lot. And he added: “I can’t answer the question directly, because it’s a confusing thing” (Florensky P.A. Names. P.215). Wed. in compiled by Fr. Pavel in the mid-1920s. The "Dictionary of Names" is also closely related - even to the point of identification - of the concept of "Angel", the name of a person and his ideal essence. Florensky P.A. Names. P.215. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.93. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. Compare: pp. 231–232. Florensky P.A. Names. P.26. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. P.182. See, first of all, Schimon’s review. Chrysanthus on the book of Schimon. Hilarion “On the Mountains of the Caucasus” (Tragedy of Athos. Author: Abbot Peter (Pigol). M., 2005. P.126); - in the Synodal Message of May 18, 1913. (Ibid. pp. 28–29). See: Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. pp.331–332. Wed. at St. Theophan: before performing the prayer, “...think about who is the One to whom you turn in prayer, and who are you who now have to begin this prayerful appeal to Him” (Theophan, bishop. Four words about prayer. 6th edition. M., 1911. P.6). Wed. also: “Reading prayers from memory or from a book, or listening to someone else reading them is not yet prayer, but only a tool or a way of discovering and arousing it. Prayer itself is the emergence in our hearts of one after another reverent feelings for God...” (Ibid., p.4). Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.333. See: Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.323, 330. Identifying the Divine Essence only with God the Father, Eunomius gave God his own name, which, in his opinion, expressed the Divine Essence - “Unborn.” From this it followed that the Son born by God in essence cannot be. Compare: in one of Plato’s early dialogues (Charmides. 175c) Socrates says: “Now we... are not able to understand to which of the existing things the founder of names (my italics - N.P.) gave this name - “prudence” (Plato. Dialogues. P. 325). Compare: “You can know a thing only from its contemplation, not from names. Aristotle only finished Plato and emphasized with even greater clarity that names are a human institution and there are no natural names. Gregory of Nyssa reproduces precisely this Platonic theory” (Georgy Florovsky, Archpriest of the Eastern Fathers of the 4th century. P. 142); Wed Lossky V.N. God-vision. pp.53–59. And in fact, it was precisely this theory that S. Troitsky brought against the name-slavists in his work “The Teaching of St. Gregory of Nyssa about the names of God and the name-worshippers" (Addition to the Church Gazette" for 1913, No. 37). Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. P.9–10. The fact that on the issue of names Plato’s opinion coincides with the position of Socrates in Cratylus is confirmed by Albin in the Textbook of Platonic Philosophy (II century). “Plato,” he writes, “investigates whether names are by nature or by institution. In his opinion, the correct names are established, but not haphazardly, but in accordance with the nature of the thing...” (Albin. Textbook of Platonic philosophy // Plato. Dialogues. P.444). Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. P.9–11. Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. P.64–65 Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. P.88. Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. P.135. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T.3 (2). P.147. Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T.3 (2). pp. 160–161. Pavel Florensky, priest. Sacred renaming. P.179. Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.265. See, for example: Feofan, bishop. Four words about prayer. Ed. 6th (Athos Panteleimon Monastery) M., 1911. P.4–5. Athos tragedy / Author-comp. abbot. Peter (Pigol). P.28. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. pp. 190–191. Quote from: Athos tragedy / Author-comp. abbot. Peter (Pigol). P.126. Quote from: Athos tragedy / Author-comp. abbot. Peter (Pigol). pp.28–29. In the review, Schimon. Chrysanthus, for example, the name “God” was actually allowed to be attributed only to the Divine Essence (see: Athos tragedy / Author-composer Abbot Peter (Pigol). P.125), and the Synodal Epistle separated the concepts of “God” and “Divinity,” referring the first to the Divine Essence, and the second to the Divine Energy (see: Ibid. P.30). Such judgments allowed for criticism from the standpoint of what was adopted at the Church Councils of the 14th century. teachings of St. Gregory Palamas, which Fr. took advantage of. Anthony Bulatovich. Cm:. Hilarion (Alfeev), bishop. The sacred secret of the Church. T.2. St. Petersburg, 2002. P.451, 561–563. Wed: St. Gregory of Sinai (Philokalia / Translated and compiled by Bishop Theophan T.5. P.217). He also says: prayer with spoken words are oars that are not needed when the wind inflates the sails (i.e. when the Holy Spirit is clearly at work in the ascetic). “And when the wind subsides and the ship stops, then it is necessary to set it in motion with oars” (Ibid. pp. 219–220). St. Gregory of Sinai (Philokalia / Translated and compiled by Bishop Theophan T.5. P.329. Philokalia / Transl. and comp. Ep. Feofana T.2. pp.271–272. Philokalia / Transl. and comp. Ep. Feofana T.2. P.229. Philokalia / Transl. and comp. Ep. Feofana T.2. P.585. They were also cited in the article by S.V. Troitsky “The Troubles of Athos”, with which Fr. Paul became familiar with it even before its publication (in “Additions to the Church Gazette”, 1913, May 18, No. 20). Fr. Pavel noted the conciliatory tone of the article, “lack of personal accounts” and “familiarity with the issue” (as opposed to the articles of Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky). However, in general, he recognized this material by S.V. Troitsky as “affectionate in appearance and with good intentions,” but “filled with subtle poison.” (Correspondence of priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky with Mikhail Alexandrovich Novoselov. P. 100). See letter from Fr. Anthony Bulatovich Fr. Pavel Florensky dated December 2, 1912 (Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and Mikhail Alexandrovich Novoselov. P.78). Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.331. Florensky P.A. Names. pp.66–67. Florensky also mentioned his intention to write a work on angelology in connection with the question of the relationship between the “ideal” and “real” personality in a person in the article “On Types of Growth” (written in the summer of 1905; published in 1906). See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 T.T.1. P.282. See: Rev. Macarius of Egypt. Spiritual conversations, messages and words. P.463. “There is no rational soul that is essentially more valuable than (another) rational soul. For God, being Good, creates every soul in the image of Himself...” (Works of St. Maximus the Confessor. Book... P.216). See: Rev. Simeon the New Theologian. Divine hymns. pp. 146–147. Wed. also: Evagrius from the “Philokalia” - “The mind is the image of God” (Philokalia / Translated and compiled by Bishop Theophan T.1. P.631). See: Rev. Macarius of Egypt. Spiritual conversations, messages and words. P.157. See: Creations of Rev. Maximus the Confessor. Book 1. pp. 216–217. See: Rev. Simeon the New Theologian. Divine hymns. P.201. See: St. Cyril of Jerusalem. Catechetical and secret teachings. M.: Synod. library, 1991. P.51. Father Paul noted this in the “Pillar” with reference to Tertullian and Blessed. Augustine (see: Florensky P.A. T.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.298), but only in the context of reflections on the ontological value of the human body; in connection with the general teaching of the “Pillar” about the image of God as a superhuman object in Divine Eternity, this indication of Fr. Pavel did not comment in any way. Quote by: John Meyendorff, prot. Introduction to Patristic Theology. P.33. Quote by: Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. P.88. Quote by: Cyprian (Kern), archimandrite. Anthropology of St. Gregory Palamas. P.158. Compare: Georgy Florovsky, prot. Eastern Fathers of the 4th century. P.159; Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. P.90. St. Gregory of Nyssa. About the structure of man. St. Petersburg, 1995. P.53–54. This topic is developed in more detail by Fr. Paul in lectures and works 1922 “Consecration of reality”, “Iconostasis”, “Imaginaries in geometry”. See above. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. See: P.147. Florensky P.A. T.1 (2): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.496. Of course, for Florensky this is just an image, since Nature in his ontology is as complete as man. During Goethe's time, there was a rapid development of astronomy, when new and increasingly powerful telescopes revealed the visible innumerability of stars in the sky, which, it seemed, could not be reduced to something whole and complete. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 T.T.1. pp.282–283. Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.90. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 T.T.1. P.84. God “together with the first birth immediately gives our nature His likeness” (quoted from: St. Gregory of Nyssa. What does the name Christian mean. M., 2000. P. 136). “The grace of the resurrection proclaims nothing else to us than the restoration to the original for the fallen. For the expected grace is the elevation to the first life, again introducing into paradise the one cast out from it” - St. Gregory of Nyssa. About the structure of man. P.57. (Cf. in the study of V. Nesmelov: “The future life is not something completely new, but only the restoration of a primitive state. Consequently, between the primitive state and the future state, not only a parallel, but also a complete identity is recognized. And St. Gregory of Nyssa always and in all points strictly maintains this identity” (Nesmelov V.I. The Dogmatic System of Gregory of Nyssa. P. 389). Rev. Macarius of Egypt. Spiritual conversations, messages and words. P.528. Rev. Macarius of Egypt. Spiritual conversations, messages and words. P.338. Rev. Macarius of Egypt. Spiritual conversations, messages and words. pp. 168–169. Rev. Macarius of Egypt. Spiritual conversations, messages and words. pp. 168–169. Wed: in one place St. Macarius says (Conversation 15, 33) that in the Christian ascetic feat, a person “becomes something greater than himself, because he is already adored and becomes a son of God, receiving the heavenly seal into his soul” (my italics - N.P.). (Ibid. P.166). Also archim. Cyprian (Kern) highlights the opinion of St. Irenaeus of Lyons that “Christ returns man to his original state” (Cyprian (Kern), archimandrite. Anthropology of St. Gregory Palamas. P. 102). But elsewhere Fr. Cyprian points out: St. Irenaeus of Lyon likes to talk about the “childish” state of Adam, that Adam was created as a “child” - obviously in terms of spiritual perfection - and he had to “grow up” (Ibid. p. 100). See: St. Basil the Great. On the Origin of Man I. 16–17; St. Irenaeus of Lyons. Against heresies. 5, 6, 1; Clement of Alexandria. Stromata. 2, 22; St. John Chrysostom. Discourses on the book of Genesis. IX, 3; Rev. Maxim the Confessor. Chapters about love. 3, 25; Creations of Rev. Maximus the Confessor. Book 1. P.124; Rev. Simeon the New Theologian. Divine hymns. P.147–148, etc. Due to different interpretations of patristic testimonies (primarily St. Maximus the Confessor and St. Gregory Palamas), different opinions have been expressed on this issue. “You can say,” says Fr. Sergius Bulgakov - that God created the world, having to be incarnated in it, for the sake of this incarnation" (Sergius Bulgakov, Archpriest Lamb of God. Paris, 1933. P. 192). “The world was not created for the sake of the Incarnation, as Fr. S. Bulgakov,” writes V. Lossky, “and the Incarnation took place for the sake of the world, for the sake of its liberation from sin” (V.N. Lossky. Dispute about Sophia. Articles from different years. P.54). According to V. Lurie, St. Gregory Palamas “unambiguously speaks out about the necessity and predestination of the Incarnation even if there had been no Fall.” V. Lurie believes that this teaching was developed by St. Maximus the Confessor (Lurie V.M. Notes // John Meyendorff, Archpriest. The Life and Works of St. Gregory Palamas. P.418–419), with which V. Lossky again (and quite reasonably) disagrees (see, for example: Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. P.104). Quoted from: Lossky V.N. God-vision. P.27. “These... words will be repeated in all centuries by St. Fathers and theologians” (Ibid. p.27). This “well-known patristic soteriological principle. is the basis of all Orthodox teaching about salvation” (Popov I.V. The idea of ​​deification in the ancient Eastern Church // Questions of philosophy and psychology. 1909. No. 97. P. 165). St. Athanasius the Great. Creations: In 4 T.T.1. M., 1994. P.260. Quote by: Lurie V.M. Notes // John Meyendorff, prot. Life and works of St. Gregory Palamas. P.421. The same text in a different translation, cited by Archimandrite. Cyprian (Kern), further emphasizes the dependence of the deification of man on the Incarnation of God, which occurred in the empiric world: in the Incarnation “the inferior man became God after he united with God and became one with Him; because the best prevailed, so that I too could become God, since He became man” (Cyprian (Kern), archimandrite. Anthropology of St. Gregory Palamas. P. 152). Quote by: Cyprian (Kern), archimandrite. Anthropology of St. Gregory Palamas. P.164. Wed. quotes from St. Gregory of Nyssa, which is cited by Archpriest. G. Florovsky: God the Word “entered into unity with our (nature), so that through union with the Divine it would become Divine... so that through merging with the Divine the human would be deified.” “And everything in general that is in our nature. having merged with the Divinity, it became what the Divinity is” (Georgy Florovsky, Archpriest of the Eastern Fathers of the 4th century. P.167:169). Creations of Rev. Maximus the Confessor. Book 1. P.238. Creations of Rev. Maximus the Confessor. Book 1. P.94. See: Hilarion (Alfeev), bishop. Anthropology Rev. Simeon the New Theologian. P. 131, 137. See also: “God accepted and became what we are, so that we could become what He is. The Word became flesh, so that the flesh became the Word” (St. Mark the Ascetic. Epistle to the monk Nicholas, 17); “What is fitting for God to become incarnate in body, so also for those who become gods according to the riches of His grace, because God was pleased to make people gods” (Blessed Diadochus of Photiki. PG. 65. 1146D) (Cyprian (Kern), archimandrite. Anthropology of St. Gregory Palamas. P. 225). Wed. very significant, within the framework of the issue discussed here, remark prot. Leonid Grijiles regarding the use in Holy Scripture of the Hebrew verb “bara”, meaning creation “out of nothing”, the creation of a fundamentally new, “super-natural”, i.e. something that did not exist in already created nature until then. This verb in the Sixth Day is used in three cases (Gen. 1:21, 27), and in the very verse of Gen. 1:27, which tells about the creation of man, three times (“Let us create man... and he created man... male and female he created them”). Prot. Leonid Grijiles, among other things, draws attention to the use of this same verb - “bara” - in the 50th Psalm (“Create a pure heart in me, O God”) (Leonid Grijiles, Archpriest. The Hebrew verb “bara”. Experience of theological interpretation // Alpha and Omega. No. 3 (47). M., 2006. pp. 21–22). This may directly indicate that the “purity” of the heart, which allows a person to “see” God (Matthew 5:8), is the result of some fundamentally new creation in human nature, the acquisition of a new, supernatural quality. Wed: St. Gregory the Theologian about primordial humanity in Adam: “...if we had remained what we were and kept the commandment, we would have become what we were not” (St. Gregory the Theologian. Creations. Part I. St. Petersburg, b/g. P.657). Also, Nicholas Kavasila (XIV century), comparing the “gates of heaven” with the “gates” with which Christ now introduces those baptized into the Kingdom, says: “These gates are much more honorable and convenient than the gates of heaven. These are open even when those are closed; Those can take them out, but they only bring them in, and don’t take anyone out. Those could have been closed and opened again, but in these the veil and mediastinum are forever destroyed and destroyed, and it is no longer possible to restore the barrier. and with a wall to separate the worlds from one another” (Seven words about life in Christ. 1, 72–74) (Nicholas Kavasila, Archbishop of Thessaloniki. Seven words about life in Christ. P.15). Creations of St. Tikhon of Zadonsky. Spiritual treasure. P.18, 23. Ignatius Brianchaninov, bishop. Essays. T.4: Ascetic preaching. P.403. Ignatius Brianchaninov, bishop. Essays. T.2: Ascetic experiences. Ed. 3rd, rev. and additional St. Petersburg, 1905. P. 133. It is interesting and in many ways important to note that here St. Ignatius, in contrast to his statements in the “Tale on Death,” says that our thought is immaterial: “Our thought, in order to communicate with people, is clothed in sounds: the immaterial is associated with matter” (Ibid.). Feofan, bishop The path to salvation. Ed. 8th. M., 1899. P.175–176. Rev. Macarius of Egypt. Spiritual conversations, messages and words. P.93–4. Wed. at St. Gregory Palamas: deification - “supernatural unity with the Most Illuminated Light” (Triads... I, 3, 15) - not only improves human nature, but also creates “above nature” (Triads... III, 1, 30) (St. Gregory Palamas. Triads in defense of the sacredly silent. P. 71: 330); “above nature” (John Meyendorff, Archpriest. The Life and Works of St. Gregory Palamas. Introduction to the Study. P. 220). See: Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.213. Rev. Simeon the New Theologian. Words / Transl. from modern Greek Ep. Feofan. Issue I. Ed. 2nd. M., 1892. P.413–418. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 T.T.2. P.157. Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T.3 (2). pp. 103–104. This is the expression of Father Paul himself; for example, he says that the “mysterious impressions of day and night” are not his “mysticism” - Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.18. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. Wed: p.49. Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.20. “And to him who overcomes and keeps my words to the end. I will give him the Morning Star” (Rev. 2:26–29); “...do good, until the day will brighten and Dennitsa (in Russian translation - “Morning Star”) will shine in your hearts” (2 Peter 1:19). Quotes in this form are given by Fr. Pavel (Ibid. p.19). This is what the planet Venus was called in ancient times; it was the brightest luminary in the earth’s sky after the Sun and Moon. Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.20, 21. It should be recalled that this was written in 1913, but was intended as a “lyrical introduction” to the cycle of works of 1918–1922, i.e., according to the plan of Fr. Paul (cf.: Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. From the history of the book “The Pillar and Statement of Truth.” pp. 836–837), as a preparation for the reader to understand their philosophical and theological constructions. This is another of the most striking evidence of the unity of the ontology of the “early” and “late” Florensky, despite the changes made after 1913. transition in his philosophy from the categories of “love” and “Sophia” to the doctrine of the energy symbol. “When the day dawns and the morning star shines in your hearts... (2 Peter 1:19), then... the true man will go out to his true work (Ps. 103:23); following the path of light, he ascends or is elevated to eternal heights; he starts - lo and behold! - to contemplate the supermundane, without separating and without being separated from matter. truly becoming an angel of God on earth and bringing with him to God every kind of creation” (St. Gregory Palamas. Homily to John and Theodore; quoted from: John Meyendorff, Archpriest. Life and Works of St. Gregory Palamas. P. 214). See: St. Gregory Palamas. Homily to John and Theodore% cit. by: John Meyendorff, prot. Life and works of St. Gregory Palamas. P.214. St. Gregory Palamas. Triads in defense of the sacredly silent. P.231. This is a note from Fr. Paul in the margins of a letter to F.D. Samarina to M.A. Novoselov dated May 26, 1913. (Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and Mikhail Alexandrovich Novoselov. P. 108). Correspondence between priest Pavel Alexandrovich Florensky and Mikhail Alexandrovich Novoselov. P.108). Works of St. Feofan enjoyed the attention and great respect of Fr. Paul, as evidenced by references to them in the “Pillar” (see, for example: Florensky P.A. T.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.316; Florensky P.A. T.1 (2): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.751, 754, 755 etc.). Feofan, bishop The path to salvation. P.221. Quote by: Smart Doing. About the Jesus Prayer: Collection of teachings of the Holy Fathers and experienced practitioners of it. Comp. abbot. Khariton. Ed. Holy Trinity-Sergius Lavra, 1992. pp. 109–110. Feofan, bishop The path to salvation. P.177. See two references in the “Pillar” to the “Orthodox teaching on salvation” by Archimandrite Sergius (Florensky P.A. T.1 (2): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.722:783). Sergius, archim. Orthodox teaching on salvation. pp. 134–135. Compare: Sergius, Archimandrite. Orthodox teaching on salvation. pp. 147–148. Wed. at the archim. Sergius (Stragorodsky): “It is impossible for a person to be reborn to a new life somehow involuntarily: a person can be reborn only thanks to his free decision not to sin, which makes it possible for him to accept grace” (Ibid. pp. 175–176). See: St. Gregory Palamas. Triads in defense of the sacredly silent. P.110. Wed: translated by Fr. John Meyendorff: “..now, having dissolved with us and abiding in us, It (i.e., the Divine Radiance. - N.P.) justly licks the soul from the inside” (John Meyendorff, Archpriest. Life and Works of St. Gregory Palamas. P. 212). St. Gregory Palamas. Triads in defense of the sacredly silent. P.380. See: Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. P.167. Wed. also at St. Gregory Palamas: The Body of Christ - “the source of gracious light” - shone on Tabor, but then it shone “outwardly on those who were worthy to approach. But today, having united with us and dwelling within us, it illuminates our soul from the inside” (Triads... I, 3, 38; quoted from: John Meyendorff, Archpriest. Introduction to Patristic Theology. P. 342). Archpriest John Meyendorff writes about this: “From the moment of the Incarnation, God should not be sought outside - He is within us. The apostles saw only the external light, for Christ had not yet died or risen from the dead, but after the Resurrection we all, without exception, are the most real, living members of His Body, the Church” (Ibid.). See: Lossky V.N. God-vision. P.25. See: Lossky V.N. God-vision. P.26. See: Lossky V.N. Vision of God. P.25–26. Georgy Florovsky, prot. Eastern Fathers of the 5th–8th centuries. P.188. Compare: “Try to enter your inner cage - and you will see the heavenly cage; because both are one and the same, and when you enter one, you see both. The ladder of this kingdom is within you, hidden in your soul...” (Venerable Isaac the Syrian, Homily 2) (John Meyendorff, Archpriest Introduction to Patristic Theology. P. 10). Georgy Florovsky, prot. Eastern Fathers of the 5th–8th centuries. pp. 191–192. Wed. also (as noted above) in St. Isaac the Syrian: “Dive deeper into sin within yourself (my italics - N.P.), and you will find there ascents along which you can climb” (Ibid. P. 188). In ontology o. Paul, “deeper than sin” in man is already the limit of all “ascents” in the empiric world – the originally deified “center” of the human being. At St. Isaac the Syrian there is only the beginning of the “ascent” to spiritual perfection. St. Isaac the Syrian. Ascetic words. M.: Rule of Faith, 1993. P.75. St. Isaac the Syrian. Ascetic words. M.: Rule of Faith, 1993. P.101. St. Isaac the Syrian. Ascetic words. M.: Rule of Faith, 1993. See: P.76. St. Isaac the Syrian. Ascetic words. P.311. See: Philokalia / Trans. and comp. Ep. Feofana T.3. P.223. Wed. at St. Simeon the New Theologian: “He who believes in the Son of God... repents... of his former sins and is cleansed of them in the Sacrament of Baptism. Then God the Word enters the baptized person, as into the womb of the Ever-Virgin, and abides in him as a seed (emphasis added - N.P.)" (Venerable Simeon the New Theologian. On the purpose of Christian life // Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate. 1980. No. 3. P. 67). “When we believe with all our hearts and repent, we conceive (my italics - N.P.) in our hearts God’s Word, like a Virgin” (quoted from: Vasily (Krivoshein), Archbishop St. Simeon the New Theologian. Brussels, 1980. P.88). See: Feofan, bishop. The path to salvation. P.177. Quote By: Sergius, Archimandrite. Orthodox teaching on salvation. pp.112–113. Wed. at St. Simeon the New Theologian: “If anyone begins to say that each of us believers has received and has the Spirit, although he does not know or feel it, he is blaspheming and representing Christ as a lie, who said: there will be in him a fountain of water flowing into eternal life (John 4:14). So, if a spring flows, then probably the river emanating from this source and flowing is visible to those who have eyes. But if this also acts in us, and we do not feel or recognize anything like that in ourselves, then it is obvious that we will not feel at all the eternal life that is a consequence of this...” (Homily 57, 4) (Venerable Simon the New Theologian. Words / Translated from modern Greek by Bishop Theophan. Issue II. M., 1890. P.47-48). Quote by: Lossky V. N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. pp. 133–134. What is spiritual life and how to tune in to it: Letters from Bishop. Feofan. Ed. 6th. L., 1991. P.92–95. Florensky P. Christianity and culture. P.384. Florensky P. Christianity and culture. P.387. Pavel Florensky, priest. Collected works. Philosophy of cult (The experience of Orthodox anthropodicy). M: Mysl, 2004. P.432. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.85. See: Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.84, 95. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.95–96. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. See: P.231. About one of the newest attempts to identify Christology in the works of Fr. Pavel see: Orlov D.V. The image of Christ in the works of Fr. Pavel Florensky // XVII Annual Theological Conference of PSTGU. T.2. M.: Publishing house. PSTGU, 2007. P.75–78. Florensky P.A. T.1 (2). The Pillar and Ground of Truth. P.756. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. pp.92–93. See: Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp.340–341. See above. Also in the draft entry dated November 9, 1915. O. Paul writes that “the child in the womb is as if the tomb, in another, transcendental world. The thick wall of the mother’s belly is metaphysically infinitely thick, because behind it there is a completely different type of existence than on this side of the womb. Being born, i.e. crossing this side of this border separating two worlds, the baby enters from the transcendental world into the immanent world, into a new world, into a world of other laws, other forms of perception, another... (my italics - N.P.).” Further in this entry there are reflections on the first cry of a newborn, which, in fact, marks the “death of uterine existence” and the birth of a person into this world. In the entry on Christmas night dated December 24/25, 1915. O. Paul notes that, judging by the ancient practice of naming and the fact that the umbilical cord falls off in a newborn, “the body first matures to independent life” on the 8th day after birth. (Pavel Florensky, priest. Collected works. Philosophy of cult (The experience of Orthodox anthropodicy). P.480–481). Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.264. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.75. See: Florensky P.A. T.1 (2): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp.718–719. Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.272. Wed. in the “Iconostasis”: morning dreams are predominantly “mystical”, since the soul at this time is “most cleansed and washed from everything empirical” (Ibid. p.84). Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp. 177–178. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.90. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.176, 178. See: Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.90. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.268. See: Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.266, 268–269, 271–273. Pavel Florensky, priest. To my children: Memories of past days. P.52. Florensky P. Christianity and culture. P.639. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.352. Wed: a person sees “inside his heart the “clever light” or “favorian light...”, which is the Divine Essence - Love (Florensky P.A. T.1 (1): Pillar and affirmation of Truth. P.96). Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.100. Wed. at St. Isaac the Syrian: “Try to enter your inner cage - and you will see the heavenly cage; because both are one and the same, and when you enter one, you see both” (Homily 2) (St. Isaac the Syrian. Ascetic Words. p. 10). See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.92. Florensky P. Christianity and culture. pp.379–380. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. P.143. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. pp. 144–145. Further about. Paul “decomposes” the body into thesis (the function of nutrition, corresponding to the sacrament of Holy Communion) and antithesis (the function of excretion, or purification, corresponding to the sacrament of Holy Baptism) and indicates their synthesis (the function of warming - the sacrament of Confirmation). In relation to speech, the scheme looks like this: thesis - the function of listening (the Sacrament of Anointing); antithesis - the function of speaking (the sacrament of Repentance); synthesis - the synthetic function of “balance in the area of ​​verbal life”, or “power” (the sacrament of the Priesthood). The general synthesis of everything is marriage (the sacrament of Marriage), when “the joining of two together and the emergence of each from himself to the other” takes place (Paul Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. pp. 144–145). This is how the need for precisely seven sacraments, corresponding to the “seven basic functions of the human being,” is deduced and justified. It seems that there is no need to discuss and analyze this scheme in detail. Here is one of the exceptional points where one can agree with N.K.’s critical remark. Gavryushin: “The amazing far-fetchedness of this scheme should strike the eye of even a reader inexperienced in theological subtleties” (Gavryushin N.K. Russian Theology. P. 257). See: Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. pp. 141–142. Wed. in the “Pillar”: the distinction between essence and hypostasis in God, along with the statement that “essence and hypostasis are one and the same” (Florensky P.A. T.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.53). The Pillar and Ground of Truth. P.179, 181. See letters from Fr. Paul to his daughter Olga (beginning of 1935) about the difference in the worldview of F. Dostoevsky and F. Tyutchev (Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: B 4 T.T.4. Letters from the Far East and Solovki. P. 164, 181–182). Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 T.T.1. P.39. Pavel Florensky, priest. Essays: B 4 T.T 3 (2). pp.403–404. O. Pavel uses this Nietzschean designation - “will to power”, emphasizing that the titanic is “precisely affect, for. crazy and faceless, and there is no way to explain to him.” When in “The Pillar” Fr. Paul speaks about the consubstantiality of all creation; he refers to the article by V.A. Troitsky (future martyr Hilarion) “The Trinity of Divinity and the unity of humanity” (1912), which deals with the consubstantiality of all humanity. The article points to Archbishop. Anthony (Khrapovitsky) as the first author in modern theology who (back at the end of the 19th century) expressed the idea of ​​the unity of human nature (see: Complete collection of works. T.2. 2nd edition. St. Petersburg, 1911. P. 17. 69–71). Archbishop Anthony considered it necessary to verify this idea of ​​his using the patristic works, which was then carried out by V.A. Trinity (See: Holy Martyr Hilarion. Without the Church there is no salvation. M., St. Petersburg, 2001. P. 416–427). How unobvious such patristic teaching was for Russian theology at the beginning of the 20th century. shows not only the uncertainty of Vladika Anthony in his “guess”. For example, V. Troitsky himself drew attention to V. Nesmelov, who argued (albeit in his early dissertation) that St. Gregory of Nyssa “invented” a human coexistence, which in fact does not exist. (Nesmelov V. The dogmatic system of St. Gregory of Nyssa. Kazan, 1887. P. 302:307). BUT. Lossky saw the great significance of Florensky’s “Pillar”, in particular, in the fact that in it Fr. Paul was the first to introduce into philosophical and theological circulation the doctrine of the consubstantiality of all creation (see: Lossky N.O. History of Russian Philosophy. P. 244). Both from The Pillar and from the later works of Fr. Paul makes his idea quite obvious that there is no completely special human “usia” and there is no need to discuss the consubstantial elements of human nature alone. All creation is consubstantial with each other, including man as its “leader.” Pavel Florensky, priest. Collected works: Philosophy of cult (The experience of Orthodox anthropodicy). pp.454–456. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. P.137. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. pp.219–220. See: Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. P.93. But E. Blavatsky, apparently, with such a term only wanted to humiliate the spiritualists of her time and show that, unlike her, they only play with empty ghosts and are incapable of communicating with real spirits. (See, for example: Soloviev Vs. S.. A modern priestess of Isis. M.: Respublika, 1994. P.283–285, 291–292. Also: K. Vonnegut. The mysterious Madame Blavatsky / Translated from English by V. Lanchikova // Soloviev Vs. S. A modern priestess of Isis. M.: Respublika, 1994. P.330). Pavel Florensky, priest. Selected works on art. pp.282–283. Pavel Florensky, priest. Opening speech before the defense of the book “On Spiritual Truth” for the master’s degree (Moscow, 1912), said on May 19, 1914. // Florensky P.A. T.1 (2): Pillar and statement of Truth. P.820. See: Florensky P.A. Volume 2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.29. Pavel Florensky, priest. From theological heritage. P.101. Wed. testimonies of contemporaries - S.I. Fudel: Florensky broke the traditions of school theology, “proved the possibility of ending seminary in thought.” He spoke of the Church “not as a museum of dogmas and traditions. and as an organism of holiness and love that is alive today” (Florensky: Pro et contra. 2nd edition. St. Petersburg: RKhGI, 2001. P. 54:59); N.M. Zernov: with Florensky’s “Pillar” a “new era in Russian theology” began, a “revolution was made not only in theological thinking, but also in the style and form of Russian theological science” (Ibid. P.448:450). The fact that there is disagreement with the interpretation of St. Gregory Palamas V. Lossky and Archpriest I. Meyendorff, only increases interest in further research. But it was Florensky who opened this topic for research, before whom, existing at the beginning of the 20th century. individual works about St. Gregory Palame received practically no theological significance, and in the official press one could find such expressions as “the sect of the Palamites” or “the sect of the hesychasts.” Lossky V.N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. pp. 170–171. 1st publication of this conversation by S. Nilus in 1903. did not in any way pretend to be noticed by academic theology. Rather, in the atmosphere of Russian theology of the late 19th - early 20th centuries. she had a chance of being suspected of her spiritual inferiority. Compare, for example, the statement from the biography of M. Speransky: in the “Philokalia” there is no... no indication about the Tabor light; in it, on the contrary, it is repeatedly advised to avoid any visions, including visions of light” (Katetov I. Count Mikhail Mikhailovich Speransky as a religious thinker. Kazan, 1889. P.221). Cyprian (Kern), archimandrite. Anthropology of St. Gregory Palamas. P.106, 389. As has already been partially shown in Chapter 1 of this study, the accusations of Fr. Paul's departure from the Church in Soviet times are deeply erroneous and indicate a superficial perception of his worldview. But a serious substantiation of this point of view is the topic of a separate work. Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. P.29–30. The criticism presented in this work of the idea of ​​​​the “eternal pre-existence” of the creature by Fr. G. Florovsky, V. Lossky, Fr. I. Meyendorff, as you can see, does not go beyond the polemics with the sophiology of Fr. S. Bulgakov. Prot. G. Florovsky, who studied St. Fathers, including with the intention of creating the necessary “anti-sophiological” theological basis, found, it seems, quite a bit of patristic evidence that could be directly used against the doctrine of “eternal pre-existence” according to Bulgakov and Florensky. On the other hand, such a researcher of patristic anthropology as Archimandrite. Cyprian (Kern), in this regard, was inclined to rather share the conviction of Fr. S. Bulgakov. Fr. Paul allows for the possibility of changing the ideal component of a person (a change in the “type of growth”, for example, in “sacred renaming”), but again this is only a discrete change from one eternal given to another, and not the result of the ascetic efforts of the person himself. An attempt to identify the problem of the “collective unconscious” as a theological one was made by the author of this work in the process of comparing some of the concepts of Fr. P. Florensky and K.G. Jung (see: Pavlyuchenkov N.N. Traits of analytical psychology in the works of the priest Pavel Florensky // XVIII Annual Theological Conference of PSTGU. Vol. 1. Materials. M.: PSTGU, 2008. pp. 217–223. Pavel Florensky, priest. All thoughts are about you. P.86. The term used by Fr. Pavel in "Memoirs". See letter to A. Bely in connection with the question of the attitude towards the “historical Church” (July 1905): “Life has opened up for me... the holy core has certainly opened up. And then I realized that I would never leave the place where I saw all this...” (Pavel Florensky and the Symbolists. P.471). Regarding critical materials affecting the anthropology of Fr. P. Florensky and published before 1917, the anthology is exhaustive (P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. St. Petersburg: RKhGI, 2001). Therefore, it is used as the main source for the first part of this review. But with regard to the polarization of opinions regarding the pre-revolutionary heritage of Fr. Paul in the Orthodox church environment, even this voluminous anthology does not provide a complete picture. So, for example, to the evidence of “Orthodoxy” presented there by Fr. Paul on the part of the rector of the MDA, Bishop. Theodore (Pozdeevsky) and prof. MDA S.S. Glagolev, we can add the accusation against Florensky of creating a new Gnostic-pantheistic heresy, coming from the archbishop. Seraphim (Sobolev) (see: Seraphim (Sobolev), Archbishop. New teaching about Sophia, the Wisdom of God. Sofia, 1935. pp. 212–213, 243, 252, etc.). Khoruzhy S.S. Orthodox-ascetic anthropology and the crisis of modern man // Orthodox teaching about man: Selected articles. M.; Klin, 2004. P.157. Florensky P. Christianity and culture. M.: Folio, 2001. P.647. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. M., 1990. P.318. Pavel Florensky, priest. Works: In 4 T.T.1. M.: Mysl, 1994. P.282–284. This essay was published in the academic journal “Theological Bulletin” in 1906 (Vol. 2. No. 7). See: Florensky P. Joy forever. S. Posad: Type. Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra, 1907. P.6–7. The idea that the highest reality in man, his “true Self,” is man’s Guardian Angel, will be further presented in “The Pillar and Ground of Truth” (1914). Also in various works by Fr. Paul (early and late), the deified (and not “divine”, as Florensky the student carelessly said in the sermon) “part” of man is presented as the Image of God and the Name. See: Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. From the history of the book “The Pillar and Statement of Truth” // Florensky P.A. T.1 (2). M., 1990. P.831. See: See: Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. From the history of the book “The Pillar and Statement of Truth” // Florensky P.A. T.1 (2). M., 1990. P.831. See: See: Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. From the history of the book “The Pillar and Statement of Truth” // Florensky P.A. T.1 (2). M., 1990.P.834. See: P.A Florensky: Pro et contra. P.209. See: P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. pp. 225–226, 231. See: P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. pp.229–230. P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. P.228. See: Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. Theodicy and anthropodicy in the works of priest Pavel Florensky. Tomsk: Aquarius, 1998. P.24–25; Khoruzhy S.S. Florensky's worldview. Tomsk: Aquarius, 1999. pp. 78–79. See: Florensky P.A. T.1 (2): Pillar and statement of Truth. M., 1990. P.505. See: Georgy Florovsky, prot. Paths of Russian theology. Vilnius, 1991, pp. 494–495. See: P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. pp. 294–295, 299–300. P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. P.301. P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. P.297. P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. P.292. Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. Theodicy and anthropodicy in the works of priest Pavel Florensky. P.25. See: P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. P.248. See: Correspondence between priest P.A. Florensky and priest S.N. Bulgakov. Tomsk: Aquarius, 2001. P. 137138, 145–146. See: P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. pp.261–262. Yakovenko B.V. History of Russian philosophy / Trans. from Czech M.: Republic, 2003. P.378. Yakovenko B.V. History of Russian philosophy. P.326. Georgy Florovsky, prot. Paths of Russian theology. P.494. Through the Son (latin, editor's note of the ABC of Faith). [1112] See: P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. pp.341–342. P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. pp.275–276. See: P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. P.266, 269, 274, 276, 282. P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. P.279. P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. P.278. P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. P.383, 387. Berdyaev N.A. Self-knowledge. M.: Eksmo, 2008. P.420. See: P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. P.241, 423. See: P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. pp.240–241. You can also point to other, rather brief publications: Rozanov V.V. Thick book // New time. 1914. February 12. S.5 and 22 February. P.14; Yakovlev A.O. About the book of priest P. Florensky “The Pillar and Statement of Truth” // Public education. 1914. MarchT.T.1. Book 3. pp. 317–322. I. Lapshin drew attention to one of the applications to the “Pillar” - “The Concept of Identity in Mathematical Logic” (Lapshin I. I. Logic of relations and syllogism // Journal of the Ministry of Public Education. 1916. T.66. P.247–249), and M. F. Taube, in addition to logic, showed interest in the section of the “Pillar” on the Trinity (see: Literary Collection of the Brotherhood of Legislators of the city. Odessa for the first year of its existence. Odessa, 1917. Issue 1. pp. 101–115). In this regard, it is interesting to note one of the letters of the Odessa high school student G. Florovsky, unpublished in those years, to P. Florensky in Sergiev Posad. Having read fragments of the future “Pillar” in 1911 in The Theological Bulletin, Florovsky wrote that he found in them “the depth of understanding of Christianity” and the manifestation of that “church consciousness”, which, in his opinion, is not found in V. Solovyov and “our... secular theologians” (Letters from G.V. Florovsky to P.A. Florensky (1911–1914) // Research on history of Russian thought. Yearbook. 2003 / Edited by M. A. Kolerov. No. 6. M., 2004. P. 54). Much later (in 1972) Fr. Georgy Florovsky will call his attitude towards Florensky “charm,” which “broke off” after his thorough study of Christian patristics (see: Polovinkin S. “Invective rather than criticism” // Ibid. p.42). P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. St. Petersburg: RKhGI, 2001. P. 106. Georgy Florovsky, prot. Paths of Russian theology. Vilnius, 1991, pp. 496–497. See: Seraphim (Sobolev), Archbishop. New teaching about Sophia the Wisdom of God. pp. 163–168. Seraphim (Sobolev), Archbishop. New teaching about Sophia the Wisdom of God. P.169. Florensky P.A. Vol.1 (1): Pillar and statement of Truth. See: P.390. See: Seraphim (Sobolev), Archbishop. New teaching about Sophia the Wisdom of God. pp.212–214. Lossky N.O. History of Russian philosophy. M., 1991. P.246. See: P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. P.425. P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. pp. 430, 436–437. Moreover, Florensky, according to Berdyaev, tried to hide the very fact of his “cosmic seduction” (P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. P. 390). The same is stated by one of the modern authors, who, unlike Berdyaev, already knows the later legacy of Fr. Paul: the more grandiose the hierarchy of the cosmos, writes K. Iusupov in connection with Florensky, the less room in it for “a personal person and personal destiny” (Ibid. pp. 20–21). See: Ermishin O.T. P.A. Florensky and V.V. Zenkovsky (On the issue of philosophical criticism) // Entelechy. 2004. No. 8 (59). P.53. See: P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. P.426. See: Florensky today: three points of view // Questions of Philosophy. 1997. No. 5. P.151. At that time, not everything that was planned was published. Articles were published: Florensky P.A. Reverse perspective // ​​Proceedings on sign systems. Sat. 3. Tartu, 1967; Florensky P.A. Symbolarium (dictionary of symbols) // Proceedings on sign systems. Sat. 8. Tartu, 1971. An article by B.A. was published in the same issue. Uspensky “On the semantics of the icon”, introducing the reader to the work of Fr. Paul "Iconostasis". In 1988 B.A. Uspensky participated in the first International Symposium dedicated to the legacy of Fr. Paul in Bergamo, where he developed Florensky’s thoughts about sleep as a “model” of another world, set out in the “Iconostasis”. See: P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. pp.517–518. Written in the early 1970s. for the publishing department of the Moscow Patriarchate, this work was published only 30 years later by S. Khoruzhiy himself as having only historical value (see: Khoruzhiy S.S. Priest Father Pavel Florensky: the basic principles of his Orthodox theology // Entelechy. 2002. No. 4. P. 55). Khoruzhy S.S. Florensky's worldview. Tomsk: Aquarius, 1999. P.8. Khoruzhy S.S. Florensky's worldview. Tomsk: Aquarius, 1999. P.35, 45. See: Khoruzhy S.S. Florensky's worldview. Tomsk: Aquarius, 1999. P.136. P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. P.540. See: P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. P.553. Khoruzhy S.S. Creativity of Fr. P. Florensky and our days // Questions of philosophy. 2001. No.7. P.171. Igum. Andronik is the son of Fr. Pavel Olga Pavlovna Florenskaya-Trubacheva, to whom the most “philosophical” letters of Fr. Pavel from places of detention in 1933–1937. As the author of the most serious and objective attempt to present Florensky's views in the early 1980s, Fr. Andronik noted I.A. Sviridova. I. Sviridov’s dissertation “Epistemology of the priest Pavel Florensky” (1980) was published in “Theological Works”, in a collection dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the MDA (M., 1986). See also: Sviridov I.A. Theological concept of priest Pavel Florensky // Journal of the Moscow Patriarchate. 1982. No. 5. See: Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. Theodicy and anthropodicy in the works of priest Pavel Florensky. Tomsk: Aquarius, 1998. P.180. Fr. Andronik confirmed in the mid-1990s. (Florensky today: three points of view. P. 127). Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. Theodicy and anthropodicy in the works of priest Pavel Florensky. P.45. Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. Theodicy and anthropodicy in the works of priest Pavel Florensky. P.19, 39. See: Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. Theodicy and anthropodicy in the works of priest Pavel Florensky. P.29–30. Andronik (Trubachev), abbot. The anthropodicy of priest Pavel Florensky // Florensky P.A. T.2: Watersheds have thoughts. M., 1990. P.352–354. See: P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. P.648. Florensky today: three points of view. pp. 154–155. See: Florensky today: three points of view. P.150. Bonetskaya N.K. “Homo faber” and “homo liturgus” (Philosophical anthropology of P. Florensky). // Questions of philosophy. 2010. No. 3. P.90. See: Florensky P. T.2: At the Watersheds of Thought. P.27–29. Bonetskaya N.K. “Homo faber” and “homo liturgus” (Philosophical anthropology of P. Florensky). P.94. Bonetskaya N.K. “Homo faber” and “homo liturgus” (Philosophical anthropology of P. Florensky). P.102. See: Bonetskaya N.K. “Homo faber” and “homo liturgus” (Philosophical anthropology of P. Florensky). P.103. Bonetskaya does not miss the opportunity to again point out Florensky’s previously invented struggle with the “traditional Church” (and the struggle under the sign of “occult quest” - Bonetskaya N.K. “Homo faber” and “homo liturgus” (Philosophical Anthropology of P. Florensky). P. 101); as before, it brings Florensky closer to Goethe’s Faust, who, on the advice of Mephistopheles, embarks on the “mystical initiatory path” (Ibid. P. 103; cf.: Bonetskaya N.K. P. Florensky: Russian Goetheanism // Questions of Philosophy. 2003. No. 3. P. 101) and so on. There are many examples that can be given, but the accusation against Florensky of “cosmic pride” seems quite surprising due to the fact that he, as a priest, standing in the altar before the Holy Gifts, felt himself “at the center of the universe” (Bonetskaya N.K. “Homo faber” and “homo liturgus” (Philosophical Anthropology of P. Florensky). P. 104). Bonetskaya N.K. “Homo faber” and “homo liturgus” (Philosophical anthropology of P. Florensky). P.99. As is known, the “self” in the “Pillar” is predominantly a negative reality; “empirical character” becomes an evil “self” in the case of rejection of the Holy Trinity and in this capacity is “cut off” from “Itself,” or the “Image of God” in man (see: Florensky P. T.I (1): Pillar and affirmation of Truth. pp. 212–214, 233–242). In terms of later works, “selfhood” is a phenomenon without a noumenon, pure subjectivity, appearance without a real basis (see Pavel Florensky, priest. Iconostasis // Selected works on art. M., 1996. pp. 92–93). On the contrary, the “name” is the most “existential”, noumenal basis in a person, which in Florensky’s anthropology one can try to compare with the concepts of “Heavenly Dwelling”, “Image of God”, “Guardian Angel”, but not “selfhood”. Bonetskaya N.K. “Homo faber” and “homo liturgus” (Philosophical anthropology of P. Florensky).” pp. 105–106. Bonetskaya N.K. “Homo faber” and “homo liturgus” (Philosophical anthropology of P. Florensky).” See: P.90. Ermishin O.T. “Lectures on ancient philosophy” by P.A. Florensky // Questions of Philosophy. 2003. No. 8. P.53. See: Gromova A.E. Ontology of the cult of P.A. Florensky in a typological context // Entelechy. 2004. No. 8 (59). P.101. Panin V.S. Philosophical anthropology of Pavel Florensky // Entelechy. 2000. No. 2. P.33, 35. P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. pp. 19–20. See: P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. pp. 22, 26. Compare: V. Lossky, who placed the “mystery of personal existence” at the center of all his theology, also refused to define personality; see, for example: Lossky V. . Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. Dogmatic theology. M., 1991. P.93. Iusupov K.G. Personality P.A. Florensky // Entelechy. 2002. No. 4. P.12. See about this in S. Polovinkin’s work “Logos against Chaos” (P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. pp. 631–637). See: Neretina S.S. Berdyaev and Florensky: on the meaning of the historical // Questions of Philosophy. 1991. No. 3. P.67. See: Subetto A.K. "Root Man" P.A. Florensky and the problem of the doctrine of education in Russia // Entelezhia. 2002. No. 4. pp. 103–106. Zakharov I.A. Genus – genetic and spiritual // Entelechy. 2002. No. 4. P.110. Philosophical Encyclopedia. T.5. M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1970. P.378. See: P.A. Florensky: Pro et contra. pp.559–560. Florensky today: three points of view. P.146. Wed: Florensky is not interested in “thinking correctly”, “he is not busy with thought, not busy with logic.” “You shouldn’t unravel the chicken’s trail, i.e. the trace of a person whose thoughts are not self-identical” (Florensky today: three points of view. P. 145: 147). It is unlikely that any of the generally recognized thinkers was honored with such conclusions about their thinking. N. O. Lossky considered it necessary to say that Florensky’s “Pillar” became one of the reasons for his gradual return to the Church in his “History of Russian Philosophy” (Lossky N. O. History of Russian Philosophy. P. 230); Other evidence includes a letter received in 1970. S. We're cultivating. “We personally knew people,” it said, “philosophically educated... who, under the influence of the “Pillar,” turned to the Church and became church people” (Khoruzhy S.S. World Outlook of Florensky. P. 146). Gavryushin N.K. Russian theology: Essays and portraits. N. Novgorod, 2005. P.272. Gavryushin N.K. Russian theology: Essays and portraits. N. Novgorod, 2005 See: p.256. See: Florensky P.V. Notes on the symposium in Bergamo // Questions of Philosophy. 1988. No. 10. pp. 171–172. For example, we can point to studies of Florensky’s developments in the logic of discreteness (W. Ullmann, Germany), Florensky’s concept of infinity (F. Honi, Germany), as well as a comparison of the views of Florensky and his contemporary followers of occultism in the West (L. Geller, Switzerland). About the symposium in Potsdam, see: Khoruzhy S.S. Florensky’s work and our days // Questions of Philosophy. 2001. No. 7; Bonetskaya N.K. Forum of Florence scholars // Ibid. Khoruzhy S.S. Creativity about. Pavel Florensky and our days. P.173. Bird R. The Geology of Memory: Pavel Florenskii’s Hermeneutic Theology // Pavel Florensky’s: tradition und modern. Frankfurt et al.: Peter Lang, 2001. R 88, 94. Andryushkov A.A. Philosophical anthropology P.A. Florensky: cult and culture in anthropodicy: Abstract of a dissertation for the degree of candidate of philosophical sciences. M., 2007. P.18. See: Ponomarev N.V. Religious and philosophical anthropology P.A. Florensky in the context of the mystical-symbolic Orthodox tradition: Dissertation for the degree of candidate of philosophical sciences (typescript). M., 2004. S.5. Ponomarev N.V. Religious and philosophical anthropology P.A. Florensky in the context of the mystical-symbolic Orthodox tradition: Dissertation for the degree of candidate of philosophical sciences (typescript). M., 2004. P.162. See: Ponomarev N.V. Religious and philosophical anthropology P.A. Florensky in the context of the mystical-symbolic Orthodox tradition: Dissertation for the degree of candidate of philosophical sciences (typescript). M., 2004. P.5–6, 14, 16, 162–164, etc.