Progress and transformation

A hundred years ago the fire of the European fire burned out, and then the Moscow Theological Academy began to exist. The glow of a new, even more terrible European fire illuminates its centenary. Who did our Russia fight against then, a hundred years ago? Against France, against “enlightened”, advanced France. Our enemy then was a country that had just experienced the Age of Enlightenment, Voltaire, a revolution, a country that had proclaimed the great principles of freedom, equality and fraternity - and had invented the guillotine to enforce these high principles. Now we are at war with Germany. But hasn’t Germany recently been at the head of European culture and progress? Undoubtedly she is. On the path of progress, she was undoubtedly far ahead of everyone else. A Russian person in Germany is involuntarily amazed at how much can be done for the convenience of earthly life. The thought involuntarily flashes through our minds: how far behind we are! I experienced this myself, driving through Germany from Thorn to Cologne and Aachen. “In everything related to the earthly structure, Germany occupies first place, plays the role of a school of civilization, it now owns cultural hegemony, for the entire modern factory-capitalist and scientific-idealistic culture, to a certain extent, made in Germany, bears the stamp of the German spirit” 1. What kind of fate is it for Russia to wage wars against the most advanced and most cultured human societies? What are we, Russians, destroyers or saviors of European culture? I think that our discord, our contradiction with Europe lies deeper than the observable surface of current events: the contradiction concerns the ideological foundations of the very understanding of life. The cultural successes that our enlightened opponents achieved, of course, are only possible if the greatest share of the people's attention is focused on achieving these successes. For cultural progress to flourish, it certainly requires complete slavery to it on the part of human society. Cultural progress is achieved rather by those for whom it has become a kind of idol. And then, of course, there is no doubt that for the European consciousness, progress has long become not only an ideal, but an idol. After all, the words “culture”, “progress” and the like are pronounced directly by modern Europeans and our Westerners with some kind of reverence; for them these words are sacred. They are ready to declare every word against the value of culture as blasphemy. A heretic who doubts the value of progress or does not recognize this value at all is threatened with beating with any blow. But it is not difficult to show that progress is both ideologically and practically inextricably linked with war, and with some kind of necessity, even the cruelties and atrocities of the Germans, about which we now read in the newspapers, flow from it. After all, the idea of ​​progress is an adaptation to human life of the general principle of evolution, and evolutionary theory is the legitimation of the struggle for existence. In the struggle for existence, the weakest perish and those best adapted to it survive. Transfer the struggle for existence into the mutual relations of entire nations - you will get war and understand the meaning of the iron German fist. War is an international struggle for existence, and an armed fist is the best adaptation to this struggle. But the last word of evolution was said by Nietzsche. He indicated the goal for further development. This goal is the superman. Over the corpses of the weak, the superman rises to his height. He is cruel and merciless. Christianity, with its meekness, humility, forgiveness and mercy, is disgusting for Nietzsche. The superman must break forever with Christian virtues; for him they are vice and destruction. In Gorky, Ignat Gordeev teaches his son Thomas, in the Nietzschean spirit, how to treat people: “Here... this is the case: let’s say, two boards fell into the mud, one was rotten, and the other was a good, healthy board. What are you supposed to do here? What's the use of a rotten board? Leave it alone, let it lie in the mud, you can walk on it without getting your feet dirty” (“Foma Gordeev”). Translate these words into politics, and you get German politics. After all, isn’t Germany looking for a people to trample into the mud, through which it would be possible to walk without getting its feet dirty? German politics can be said to be imbued with the spirit of Nietzscheanism. “Deutschland, Deutschland über alles!” 2 – this is the refrain of German patriotism. Weak nations are planks along which the great German people move forward along the path of progress without getting their feet dirty. The Germans are ready to look even at large nations, even at the Russian people, as manure to fertilize the soil on which German cultural progress should grow and flourish. Progress requires wealth - so give it to us! Go bankrupt yourself and even die of hunger, but long live our German progress! Look what a political friendship enlightened Germany already has with the undoubted barbaric Turks! The Mohammedans, who “restored true Christianity” to the Protestants, turn out to be incomparably nicer than the Orthodox Christians. Why? Yes, because they no longer protest against the robbery of the Germans and are obediently ready to become a people of dung. Last year we fought in the Balkans. What would it seem like the Germans care! But when did the Germans swing their swords especially hard? When the Serbs approached the Adriatic Sea. The small people were given the opportunity to conduct their trade and become economically independent from the Germans. The progressive German nation could not bear this. The German sword rattling in this case can be expressed in the words: “Don’t you dare! You must work, but only we can get rich, because this is necessary for the cultural prosperity of our truly enlightened country.” And now Europe is on fire, set on fire by the Germans! This reveals the inextricable and essential connection between progress and war and cruelty. Iron and sword pave the way forward for humanity. The chariot of progress rides over corpses and leaves a bloody trail behind it. War is the best indicator of the inner being of cultural progress, and in this inner being of progress a terrible tragedy is revealed. What actually progresses the fastest? The weapons of war, that is, the weapons of destruction of both human culture and human life itself, are progressing incomparably faster than the cultural conveniences of life. An armadillo ages much faster than a human: being twenty years old, an armadillo is already a worthless old man. The improvement of the instruments of death is progressing so quickly! Ten years ago we did not yet know the word “airplane,” but now we are already reading about war in the air. Life has not yet benefited from airplanes, and death cannot do without them on the bloody battlefields. It’s scary to imagine a modern war with its terrible guns and huge shells, with mines and landmines, with bombs and shrapnel, with wolf pits and barbed wire. After all, this is some kind of hell and madness! The wars of the recent century sometimes seem like child's play. This is progress! That’s why we can say that war is the self-curse of progress! But the Russian genius pronounces a harsh verdict on European civilization and progress from his own special point of view, from the point of view of his ideal, which is significantly different from the European ideal of progress. During the Turkish War, Dostoevsky wrote in his Diary: “Among the Slavic children brought to Moscow there is one child, a girl of eight or nine years old, who often faints and who is especially looked after. She faints from the memory: she herself, with her own eyes, saw this summer how the Circassians tore off her father’s skin and tore it all off. This memory is persistent with her and, most likely, will remain forever, perhaps over the years in a softened form, although, however, I don’t know whether there could be a softened form. O civilization! O Europe, which would suffer so much in its own interests if the Turks were seriously prohibited from flaying the fathers in the eyes of their children! These are the highest interests of European civilization, of course - trade, navigation, markets, factories - what could be higher in the eyes of Europe? These are interests that one cannot even touch, not only with a finger, but even with a thought, but... but “damn them, these interests of European civilization!” I consider it an honor to join in this exclamation; yes, damn these interests of civilization, and even civilization itself, if in order to preserve it it is necessary to flay people's skin. But this is a fact: to preserve it, people must be skinned!” 3. This is what the Russian conscience cannot come to terms with! The skin of a person, even a small and insignificant one, is more valuable to the Russian conscience than the most grandiose successes of progress. The Russian conscience sees that for the success of civilization it is necessary to tear off the skin of people - and cannot calm down with any speeches about culture and progress. This is because, of course, the Russian conscience has its own ideal, which is significantly different from the European idol of progress. Where and what is this ideal? Together with the old Slavophiles, we can assert that the spirit of the Slavs is determined by Orthodoxy. The life ideal of the Slavs is the religious ideal of Orthodoxy. But what is the religious ideal of Orthodoxy? The ideal of Orthodoxy is not progress, but transformation. The New Testament speaks about the transformation of human nature. Christ spoke to Nicodemus about the new birth. According to the words of the Apostle Paul, “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). People must “bear the image of Adam in heaven” (1 Cor. 15:49). “From glory to glory” they are transformed by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Cor. 3:18). There is putting on “the new man, created according to God in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:24). “There will be a new heaven and a new earth!” - the Lord spoke through the mouth of the ancient prophet (Is. 65:17). Christians expect a “new heaven and a new earth” according to the word of the Apostle Peter (2 Pet. 3:13). And the prophet of the New Testament says: “I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away... And I, John, saw the holy city Jerusalem, new, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from heaven, saying: Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them; they will be His people; and God Himself with them will be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death; there will be no more crying, no crying, no sickness; for the former things have passed away” (Apoc. 21:1–4). The process of transformation of human nature and earthly creation will develop invariably and steadily until He who sits on the throne says: “Behold, I am creating everything new... It is finished! I am Alpha and Omega” (Apoc. 21:5–6). One day everything will be subject to the Son, and then “the Son himself will be subject to him who put all things in subjection to him, so that God may be all in all” (1 Cor. 15:28). The New Testament does not know progress in the European sense of the word, in the sense of moving forward on the same plane. The New Testament speaks of the transformation of nature and the resulting movement not forward, but upward, towards heaven, towards God. In its summary, the New Testament says: “Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). Ancient Christianity lived by the ideal of transfiguration. Read the Christian writings of the first two centuries and you will see how permeated they are with this idea of ​​the new man. "We are a new people!" - Christians say boldly even in the face of the pagan world. A Christian is a new person, as if he had just been born 4. Christianity, according to St. Ignatius the God-Bearer, οιχονομια εις τον χαινον ανυρωπον 5. Christians are raised to heights by the instrument of Jesus Christ, which is the cross, using the rope - the Holy Spirit. Faith raises them, and love is the way they ascend. Therefore, all Christians are God-bearers and church-bearers, Christ-bearers, holy-bearers 6 . So everywhere this idea of ​​a new man, not progressive, but new; Everywhere the ideal is internal transformation, not external progress. During the heyday of theological church thought, the idea of ​​deification, which you will find in all the greatest theologians of the Church, starting from the 4th century, acquired significant significance in church theology. This idea again places transformation, rather than progress, as the goal of Christian consciousness. Finally, the idea of ​​deification and transfiguration was forever established in church worship. Our service is not the sugary-sentimental howling of a self-satisfied bourgeois Protestant in his church, not the fearful request of an unfortunate Catholic for mercy and mercy, our service is the hymn of man, from darkness and the shadow of death, from the deep abyss of sin, rushing towards holiness, towards purity, towards God and heaven, to the Mount of Transfiguration. The Orthodox Church sings: “Thou hast clothed Himself in all things with Adam, O Christ, having changed that which was blackened, Thou hast enlightened the ancient nature, and by changing Thy sight Thou hast made God.” 7 In the incarnation of the Son of God, the Church sees the basis and guarantee of the transformation of all human nature, and therefore invites its children: “Arise from the laziness, who have always sunk to the ground, rise up and rise to the height of the Divine ascent” 8 . So, the ideal of Orthodoxy is transformation, not progress. The Orthodox consciousness does not see its salvation in material, even the most brilliant, progress, but with the Areopagite it confesses that “salvation can only be achieved through the deification of those being saved. Deification is assimilation, to the extent possible, to God and unity with Him” 9. When they are put into practice, the ideals of progress and transformation, of course, turn out to be very different. Their differences and even sometimes complete opposites are revealed in the cult. In a cult, I say, because the evolutionary-positive worldview of European peoples sometimes tries to create its own cult. The European knelt before the goddess of reason, then before humanity, and wrote down the names of great people in his calendar. In Paris, a once Christian church was turned into the Pantheon, where even now the long-decayed ashes of Rousseau, Voltaire and various figures of the “great” French Revolution are kept in a rather unattractive and neglected dungeon. In all German cities, at almost every crossroads, figures of Friedrich, Wilhelm or Bismarck are either simply standing or sitting on a horse. All these are proud pharaohs of progress, glorious conquerors, creators of great cultural events. But look at the Orthodox church calendar. There you will also see the great and glorified. But who is depicted on those icons around which we perform incense, before which we sing magnification and which, having performed earthly worship, we reverently kiss? Mostly hermits and hermits are depicted here. Not only were they not leaders of progress, but they almost always rejected it in principle. But while living on earth, they were transformed, often shone with the light of Tabor and ascended from the earth into the air in prayer. The Church remains true to its ideal of transformation and, in the age of steam, electricity and aviation, canonizes humble and uncultured ascetics. Recently, various monuments have been imposed on our people. They are poorly understood by the people, because the Orthodox consciousness understands one monument - a church dedicated to the name of a saint, and not only a great one. I have already said that the ideal of Orthodoxy determines the spirit of the Slavs, in particular the spirit of the great Russian people. Brought up mainly by the Orthodox Church, the Russian people always carry in their consciousness the high ideal of transfiguration, and in the light of this ideal, the Western European ideal of progress seems something low, and sometimes even disgusting. That is why, with all their humility, the Russian people always look down on Europeans. Only the intelligentsia, divorced from the people, is ready to grovel servilely before the West. The Russian people always have a somewhat skeptical attitude towards Western European progress. It is clear and understandable to him that for the lentil stew of cultural life, the European irrevocably sold the rights of the Divine Birthright. The German sold his soul to the devil, but the Russian gave it away, and this is the undoubted superiority of the Russian, because he can also escape the devil, but the German has nothing to redeem himself with. All cultural and political activity seems to a Russian to be just a share, to which it is a sin to give one’s entire soul. The interests of transformation for him are incomparably higher than the interests of progress. Even Pushkin once composed the following poems: I don’t value loud rights dearly, Which makes more than one head spin. I don't complain that the gods refused My sweet fate is to challenge taxes Or prevent kings from fighting each other; And it’s not enough for me to worry if the press is free Fooling idiots, or sensitive censorship In magazine plans, the joker is embarrassed. All this, you see, is words, words, words. Other, better rights are dear to me; I need a different, better freedom: Depend on the authorities, depend on the people - Do we care?.. God bless them. To wander here and there at will, Marveling at the divine beauty of nature, And before the creations of art and inspiration Silently drown in the delights of tenderness - Quite the contrary, the European values ​​very highly all sorts of loud rights relating to earthly life. The delights of tenderness for him are an unnecessary luxury; He has little longing for the superstellar worlds. Hence the cheap peace of mind of the European and his amazing complacency. This complacency is disgusting to a Russian. It was not for nothing that even such a Westerner as Herzen called it philistinism, and our Byzantine Konstantin Leontyev could not talk about this philistinism without disgust. A Russian cannot become a European, limited and self-satisfied, because “a Russian,” according to Dostoevsky, “needs world happiness in order to calm down: he will not reconcile cheaper” 10. Having strayed from the people's faith and life - which began to happen after Peter's window into Europe - the Russian becomes a wanderer. This type of wanderer, according to Dostoevsky’s interpretation, was first indicated in literature by Pushkin, in whom Aleko runs to the gypsies. Russian literature is full of such seekers and wanderers until the last days. But even in Pushkin, a half-wild gypsy teaches a European: Leave us, proud man! You only want freedom for yourself... You are angry and brave - leave us Dostoevsky reveals this teaching of the gypsy in his Pushkin speech. “Humble yourselves, proud man, and above all, break your pride. Humble yourself, idle man, and first of all work in your native field. The truth is not outside of you, but within you, find yourself within yourself, subordinate yourself to yourself, master yourself and see the truth. This truth is not in things, not outside of you and not overseas somewhere, but, first of all, in your own work on yourself. You will conquer yourself, you will pacify yourself - and you will become free as you never imagined, and you will begin a great work, and you will make others free, and you will see happiness, for your life will be filled, and you will finally understand your people and their holy truth” 11. The farther we are from the people and Orthodoxy, the more wanderings and wanderings we have. There is much that is ugly in the search for God in recent years, but the search for God is still a sign that the Russian person is not at peace in his soul, that there is no European complacency. The people are looking for a righteous land and sharply protest against the fact that this land is not shown on the scientists’ map. Without hope for the possibility of transforming the sad and sinful reality, there is no meaning in life for a Russian. Gorky Luka (“At the Lower Depths,” Act Three) says: “There was approximately the following case: I knew one person who believed in a righteous land... There must, he said, be a righteous land in the world... in that, they say, land - special people inhabit... good people! They respect each other, they simply help each other... and everything is nice and good with them! And so the man kept getting ready to go... to look for this righteous land. He was poor, he lived poorly... and when it was so difficult for him that he could even lie down and die, he did not lose his spirit, and everything happened, he just grinned and said: nothing! I'll be patient! I’ll wait a few more, and then I’ll give up this whole life and go to the righteous land... He had only one joy - this land... And to this place - it was in Siberia - they sent an exile, a scientist... with books, with plans, he’s a scientist, and with all sorts of things... The man says to the scientist: “Show me, do me a favor, where the righteous land lies and how to get there?” Now this scientist opened his books, laid out his plans... he looked and looked - there was no righteous land anywhere! That’s right, all the lands are shown, but the righteous one is not! The man doesn’t believe... There must be, he says... look better! Otherwise, he says, your books and plans are of no use if there is no righteous land... The scientist is offended. My plans, he says, are the most correct, but there is no righteous land anywhere. Well, then the man got angry - how could that be? Lived, lived, endured, endured and believed everything - there is! But according to the plans, no! Robbery!.. And he says to the scientist: “Oh, you... such a bastard! You’re a scoundrel, not a scientist...” Yes, in his ear - once! Moreover!.. And after that he went home - and hanged himself!..” According to this idea, science should serve not progress, but transformation; it must show the way to the righteous land. And in fact, Russian philosophy is a religious philosophy. Europeans are involuntarily amazed that our literature invariably lives by religious interests. Our great artist of words begins with “Evenings on a farm near Dikanka” and ends with “Reflections on the Divine Liturgy.” At the same time, for our literature the highest value is the soul of a person, and not his external position in the whirlpool of cultural work. The Russian writer believes in the feasibility of the ideal of transformation, in the triumph of goodness and truth, which is why there are no dead for him, no rotten boards for him, which only exist so that they can walk on them through the mud without getting their feet dirty. And for a long time I will be so kind to the people, That I awakened good feelings with my lyre... And he called for mercy for the fallen This is what Pushkin wrote, and Dostoevsky took us to the “house of the dead” and made us cry with tenderness before the beauty of even a criminal soul, showed us “the humiliated and insulted,” and we saw the wealth of their souls; he has a murderer and a harlot reading about the resurrection of Lazarus; he shocks us with the images of Sonya Marmeladova in Crime and Punishment, Grushenka in The Brothers Karamazov, Nastasya Filippovna in The Idiot. For him, crime turns into “the history of the gradual renewal of man, the history of his gradual rebirth, his gradual transition from one world to another” (“Crime and Punishment”, end). Even an unbeliever, as a rationalist in the resurrection of Christ, as an artist, Tolstoy writes about the moral “resurrection” of man. Everywhere we see the desire for transformation and faith in its possibility. “General healing in general transformation - in various modifications we find this idea in our great artists, in Gogol, Dostoevsky, even though in a distorted, rationalized form - in Tolstoy, and among thinkers - in the Slavophiles, in Fedorov, in Solovyov and in many of the latter’s successors” 12 . Here in Moscow in 1914, a Russian prince and university professor reads in a crowded meeting about “the light of Tabor and the transformation of the mind.” In our country, the frivolous and far from sinless poet puts into wondrous verse the repentant prayer of St. Ephraim the Syrian and admits: Most often it comes to my lips - And the fallen one is refreshed by an unknown force. 13 Why is this so? Yes, because, of course, the goal of all Syrian and Egyptian ascetics is always clear to the Russian soul, close and dear; this goal is to “fly with your heart into the distant realm.” But on this path “in the field of correspondence” there lies a constant and difficult obstacle. In vain I run to the heights of Zion - Greedy sin is hot on my heels. Sin is the main enemy of transformation. Hence, the bearer of the ideal of transformation has a special religious sense of sin. The religious feeling of sin is mental anguish and suffering. This is the torment of spiritual duality that the Apostle Paul so vividly described in his letter to the Romans. The spiritual superiority of the Russian over the European is especially evident in the perception and experience of sin. The European, one might say, has lost the religious sense of sin; it seems to him an outdated medieval prejudice. That is why sin ceased to be horror and mental torment for him. Sin turned into a funny joke for the European. Describing sin, the European laughs, and sometimes sin itself dresses in such aesthetically beautiful clothes that sin begins to be attractive. Of course, in Russia, as in Europe, they sin quite a lot, but they repent in different ways. The West knows “cold disbelief.” A Russian, according to Herzen, having lost faith, will immediately believe in unbelief and become its selfless apostle. In Europe, Renan, Strauss and Drewe write blasphemies against Christ easily, freely and beautifully, and, as if nothing had happened, they live out their lives as calm bourgeois. There, during public debates on the stage, they decide the question of the historical existence of Christ, while they themselves eat sandwiches and drink beer 14. The European Judas, having betrayed Christ, calmly hides the pieces of silver in his pocket and then turns them into income rent. The Russian Judas, having betrayed Christ, throws away the pieces of silver and with a restless gaze looks for a tree to hang himself. For a Russian, disbelief is horror and mental anguish. In Dostoevsky, even the convicts shout to Raskolnikov: “You are an atheist! You don't believe in God! We must kill you." At the same time, “one convict rushed at him in a decisive frenzy” 15. And how our writers depict vice and crime! I find it difficult to name anyone among Russian writers who portrays vice in an attractive light. Vicious people, as depicted by our writers up to the very latest, up to and including Kuprin and Artsybashev, are unhappy, suffering people; they feel real hell in their soul. Sinful humanity, as depicted by our writers, suffers fiercely and rages in evil, and is plunged many times into fire and water. For our writers, sin is “darkness,” “abyss,” “pit,” and “at the last line,” according to them, suffering, horror and despair. For the Russian soul there is no happiness and joy in sin; she suffers from sin because she strives for transformation, and sin hinders not progress, but transformation. Merry songs of the earth, enthusiastic hymns to progress cannot replace the beautiful sounds of heaven for the Russian soul; she knows and understands that the heavenly song is not composed of the roar of machines and the crackling of guns, and that the notes of this song are not in the drawings and estimates of engineers. So, if the ideal of the West is progress, then the Russian people's ideal is transformation. The Russian people strive for a city, “whose builder and maker is God” (Heb. 11:10), and can say with the Apostle: “Jerusalem above is free, she is the mother of us all” (Gal. 4:26). The great struggle of nations unfolding before us is a struggle between two ideals: progress wants to destroy transformation, forgetting the word of Christ that “the gates of hell will not prevail against the truth” (Matthew 16:18). In the history of the Moscow Theological Academy we stand on the verge of two centuries, and it is very useful for us, at least under the pressure of grandiose events, to remind ourselves of the religious ideal of Orthodoxy and the life ideal of the Russian people. There is no particular need for us to count what our native spiritual school has done for material progress. It’s better to think about what she did for the spiritual transformation of our native Orthodox people. And as we enter the second century of our dear and dear Academy, we will each have our Russian ideal of transformation as a guiding light, so that when the time comes to work in the people’s field, we will not serve hard European stone to those who ask for real Russian bread. Introductory lecture-speech delivered in the academic auditorium on September 3, 1914. First published in the journal “Theological Bulletin”, 1914, vol. 3, no. 10–11. Signed "Archimandrite Hilarion". Prof. S. N. Bulgakov. Three ideas. - Russian; thought;. 1913, February;, p. 146. “Germany, Germany above all!” – Note. ed. Writer's Diary; for 1877 – Complete works of F. M. Dostoevsky. Ed. 4th. T. 11. St. Petersburg, 1891, p. 45–46. Epistle to Diognetus, ch. 2. Essays; St. Justin the philosopher and martyr. M., 1892, p. 372 (rep. M., 1995). “The dispensation of the new man,” Epistle to the Ephesians, chapter 20. - Writings of the apostolic men. St. Petersburg, 1895, p. 277 (rep. Riga, 1994). Epistle to the Ephesians, ch. 9. Ibid., p. 273. On the Transfiguration of the Lord, canon of Cosmas, song 3, trope. 1. About the heavenly Hierarchy 1, 3. – Scriptures of St. fathers and teachers of the church related to the interpretation of Orthodox worship. T. 1. Dionysius the Areopagite’s book “On the Heavenly Hierarchy.” St. Petersburg, 1855, p. 13. Pushkin's speech. – Diary of a writer for 1877 – Complete works, vol. 11, p. 436. Book E. N. Trubetskoy. Light of Favorsky and the transformation of the mind. Regarding the book of St. P. A. Florensky “The Pillar and Ground of Truth.” M., 1914. – Russian thought. 1914, May, p. 27. A.S. Pushkin. “The Desert Fathers and their wives are blameless” (inaccurate quote). – Note. ed. See: Priest. N. Sakharov. The Monist Union and the fight against it in Germany. – Theological Bulletin. 1911, vol. 3, December, p. 717. Complete works. T. 5. St. Petersburg, 1894, p. 541. You might be interested in: