Protopresbyter I. L. Yanyshev as a moralist

Protopresbyter I. L. Yanyshev, who died in June of this year, who left a major mark on the administrative history of the Russian Church, is also known in science, mainly as a former professor of moral theology and the author of the works: Orthodox Christian Doctrine of Morality, 2nd ed. 1906 (and the Essence of Christianity from a Moral Point of View). We, professors and teachers of this science, were proud to have this brilliant speaker and talented writer in our midst. I. L. Yanyshev was for us what V. V. Bolotov was for church historians. Fr. himself I. L. Yanyshev considered this particular matter especially close to his heart, he poured his soul into it. “Having taken upon himself in 1869 the responsibility of a professor at the St. Petersburg Academy in the department of Moral Theology, which at that time was far from receiving the attention of students,” Fr. I. L. Yanyshev courageously took on the development of this science, in which he had to understand for the first time many basic concepts. He “for the first time in our literature made an attempt to explain the concept of morality in general, to all the elements included in this universal concept, to give a more or less clear and precise definition, to outline their psychological or logical connection and, in this way, having clarified the moral dignity and purpose of human nature, to determine the supreme good of man, as it is realized by salvation precisely in Christ.” His lectures quickly attracted the interest of students and were eagerly attended even by outside listeners. Brilliant in appearance and oratorical pronunciation, his readings were strictly scientific in nature. He based them on strictly defined principles, expressed by him with rare logical clarity and carried out through the entire course with considerable consistency and consistency. The whole system received a philosophical character from this, and in it each subsequent part was predetermined by the content of the previous one and the plan of the whole. Everything here was “own”, “peculiar”, and the whole system revealed a special, Yanyshevsky, worldview, Yanyshevsky understanding of Christianity. This was a whole revolution in science, where there had never been a place for creativity, where template headings were filled with traditional content, random excerpts from other people's speeches. Only a bold, original mind, based on a heartfelt interest in the subject and broad European education, could have decided on this revolution. When was “made by Fr. I. L. Yanyshev’s experience of explaining and defining the basic concepts of science was, in the form of a dissertation, submitted to the council of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy for the degree of Doctor of Theology,” then “neither the council of the Academy recognized it as possible without the permission of the Holy Synod, nor did the Holy Synod allow it to be published: his feasible explanations of the most important concepts in the teaching of morality seemed so extraordinary at that time.” And it goes without saying that the originality of Janyshev’s worldview did not in the least affect the dogmatic foundations of Christianity, as was soon recognized by the Synod itself: it fell on that area of ​​moral and personal attitude towards Christianity, which is inevitably subjective, unless a believer or theologian treats it completely indifferently. And after leaving the Academy, after having already published his system, Fr. Until the last minutes of his long life, I. L. Yanyshev tirelessly followed the literature of his favorite subject, “looking in it for justification or correction of those features that he allowed himself in his lectures and which did not coincide with the usual techniques and views of the then theological and non-theological literature on this subject.” The numerous notes he collected in this way were included, as footnotes, in the second edition of his Orthodox Christian teaching on morality. This is truly a scholarly curriculum vitae. The moral and theological system of Protopresbyter I. L. Yanyshev has not only formal, purely scientific merits, but is also filled with valuable content of general cultural significance. Our newspaper publicists, sworn admirers of the idea of ​​culture, usually judge in slavish dependence on the tastes of the crowd and on other people's authorities. At home, they recognize the cultural value only of such names that have already become idols of the public - and in burning incense in front of such idols they do not even know the limits of decency. In relation to foreign events, their judgments are more objective: depending on Western critics, who pay enough attention to all aspects of their lives, pay tribute to all figures, no matter how modest the sphere of their actions, and our publicists read about foreign church figures, theological movements, the names of spiritual writers. But they are extremely inattentive to their parallel phenomena, even more valuable than their foreign counterparts, thereby testifying to their intellectual groundlessness. G.g. The philosophers openly declare that they stand with their backs to the entire ecclesiastical theological field. “We don’t care and we don’t want to know what your ideals are, what you worry about, what you strive for.” Only spiritually groundless people who have not matured to the idea of ​​national fullness of life can speak this way. In the cultural history of a people there cannot be quantité negligeable books read by thousands of priests preaching to millions of citizens. Through these channels, a valuable thought from a book flows into the very heart of the people. What did the late Fr. sow in this field? I. L. Yanyshev, what he contributed to the cultural treasury of the Russian people. The intimacy of religious life, freedom and the value of the individual - these were the first beloved ideas of the late Fr. protopresbyter, revealed by him talentedly, ardently and persistently. “The essence of a normal moral life - we read in the book of Fr. I. L. Yanysheva, - her relative perfection and bliss on earth - in any case, not in external manifestations, but in the internal spiritual structure that animates them. The dignity of external forms, no matter what they concern, whether church life or forms of individual life, social and state structure, is always and everywhere conditional. The science of moral theology has as its direct subject not frozen external forms, but a living inner life, since morality is a personal, subjective matter for everyone. There is no way out of this subjectivity for us, but there is no need for one. Christian truth is as broad, deep and unsearchable as the depths of the mind of God, the author of this truth, are unsearchable. Each of us assimilates this truth to the extent that he receives from God the gift of the Holy Spirit, which in turn is consistent with the individual characteristics of each. To assimilate this truth more and more with feeling and will, and to understand it with reason is the task of every Christian, unlearned or learned, and of the whole church, as a society of believers. The Universal Church, although always possessing all the truth, cannot, however, say that it has already managed to understand and define it for the consciousness of believers comprehensively and forever. Study the scriptures - this is the task of each individual and all those called together to faith in Christ, which can be completely resolved only with the resolution of the entire task of the existence of Christianity on earth. Subjectivism, and Christian subjectivism at that, is not only inevitable, but also obligatory for the science of Moral Theology.” This is the explanation for the fact that many were suspicious of Fr.’s dissertation. I. L. Yanyshev, rector of the Academy. Moral theology, by the way, has to deal with the realm of the purely subjective, living, mobile, eternally creative. This is an area of ​​personal experiences, restless searching, reverent questioning, intimate experience in the field of Christianity. In Christianity there is life, not the life of natural needs, or aesthetic experiences, or popular interests, or cosmic feelings, but the intimate life of the soul, the life of the “innermost and silent spirit.” To an outside observer, this core of Christianity may remain invisible, and all of Christianity will appear to him as a harmonious system of frozen formulas. But in the eyes of God this inner life of the hidden spirit is precious. The subjectivity of personal creativity, inevitable in the field of “Moral Theology,” is directed into the depths of the historical channel, as absolutely possible and necessary in every place where a living person is placed; it does not even have a tendency to spill over the banks of the historical channel of church life, being completely content with the historical language of Christianity, without even looking around. But there is a different kind of individualism, intellectualistic, gnostic, like the desire to change the most dogmatic formula of Christianity according to personal arbitrariness, to go away from the historical mainstream, to separate from it sectarianly, to invent one’s own language - heretical individualism. There is a huge difference between one and the other subjectivity, psychologically and essentially. Subjectivity of the second kind is given by the movement of the spirit along a horizontal plane, a superficial movement, for which the growth of the spirit in depth remains incomprehensible. On the contrary, subjectivity of the first kind is created by the movement of the spirit in a vertical direction; for her there is no need to cross horizontal boundaries, for her the very aspiration of the spirit in this direction is disgusting, just as fleeing abroad or adopting foreign customs is disgusting for a patriot, she deepens her place like an eagle that rises to the same height from each point. However, by the nature of personal initiative and individual energy, these two types of spiritual activity are in contact, and to recognize them requires the gift of “discernment of spirits.” And so the fear of encountering sectarian subjectivity in the subjectivity of Christian thought, with a lack of the gift of discerning spirits in one or another keeper of historical seals, creates the temptation to suppress any subjective depth of Christian life. The ideal of administrative tranquility, in connection with the sinful and cowardly quos ego, paints a picture of a complete equation in which no flutter of life is visible. Protopresbyter I. L. Yanyshev energetically weakens all sorts of sophisms that try to suppress Christian subjectivity in the name of external legality. He does not argue against the fact that on the last basis there is no doubt about the objective existence of good and the dependence of moral feeling on it. After all, if there is no unconditional basis for things, there is no objective moral law, no pre-established order of life for the purposes of good, then the moral feeling is nothing more than just a fleeting phenomenon in the life of individual souls, just a curious fact of mental or even physical anthropology. He agrees that moral theology must confirm the reliability of every fact of self-awareness and self-observation or every philosophical moral truth with an objective authority given to us by the Church, namely: the evidence of positive revelation contained both in the sacred Scriptures of both testaments and in sacred tradition. O.I.L. Yanyshev fully accepts both the metaphysical and church-historical objectivity of the moral law; nevertheless, the moral law has a subjective side, which constitutes its most characteristic moment. Despite the metaphysical and church-historical objectivity of the moral law, we must also recognize as undeniable that in ourselves the moral feeling is recognized as our own, and not of God or another person living in us, that is, it is recognized as our subjective-individual feeling, although at the same time independent of our arbitrariness. It is recognized only by individuals and introduces into consciousness such facts that are understandable only to them, which cannot be given by any training, by any extraneous suggestion, and without which no external prescriptions of the moral law are understandable, whether it be a law given in divine revelation or in human legislation. A feeling is experienced by everyone only in himself and for himself, as his own feeling; if it reproaches, condemns, frightens with responsibility, then only the one in whom it is aroused, without asking whether others experience the same in themselves during certain actions, and does not change if others do not have it. If it changes, instead of painful, becoming approving, calming, then this change is experienced in himself only by the one in whom it is, and who, for his part, has done something for this change. Thus, moral feeling is not only direct and involuntary evidence of the dignity of an action, but also subjective and individual. Everyone, however, has to talk with others about their inner moral states, teach goodness and learn, and at the same time more or less mutually understand each other; but even with this mutual exchange of thoughts, each person has something in his heart that he cannot fully express to another and which no one else can fully assimilate for himself, in a word: there is a limit beyond which at the end of the exchange of thoughts each, like St. Paul (2 Cor. 1:12; Rom. 9:1), is forced to refer to the evidence of his feelings as the final proof of the reliability of his words. External influences on children and adults through example and teaching usually prevent the first beginnings of conscious moral self-development and do not allow us to trace the transition of consciousness from the first excitement of moral feeling to the understanding of the difference between good and evil, to concepts about them and further to the establishment of an objective moral norm, common and mutually understandable for many people, which then, changing, passes from one generation to another. But we cannot help but realize that the condition for this transition, in any case, is again the same subjective-individual discovery of moral feeling. For in the matter of morality there are not and cannot be such examples, suggestions, laws and traditions that could influence us only as something external, without having for themselves the evidence of our feelings and our own inner experience, without finding confirmation for themselves in it; only these own experiences and feelings form the basis of sympathy with our word and example of others and allow them to influence our actions. It is clear to us that people can act in such a way that their actions evoke our complete approval, even if they do not have written laws; but we can never understand that any law or custom could force us to such actions that do not have any evidence of truth for themselves in our own feelings, since without such evidence the law is a dead letter, or it acts by external compulsion, like a physical force, and in both cases completely loses its moral character. It is easy to understand how important consequences follow from this moral subjectivism for humanitarian pedagogy and for human management. Obviously, the human person should always and under all conditions be treated with the greatest respect and attention, for the human person is an absolute for others, and precisely a moral absolute, against which all violence must be broken. The human personality is original and in no case can it be turned into an automaton or a means for third-party purposes. What gives human life and activity value is a moral assessment, and a moral assessment is the most intimate belonging of a person: only he himself can feel morally, therefore he is the only creator of objective values. Pedagogy is education, and not training, only if the student himself, with his own good will, inspires example and instruction. Social law only becomes human law when it is sanctioned by the moral sense of the person himself, who obeys the laws. Without the moral assistance of man, no management, no education can create God's order. But not only these results are firmly substantiated by the ethical system of Fr. Yanyshev, he goes further than that. And the moral law can be fulfilled by each person individually, in his own way, not in a stereotyped way, not according to a general scheme. What is morally common to everyone and universally obligatory, everyone, according to Fr. I. L. Yanysheva, understands and implements only to the extent of those talents that are given to him in his individual spiritual and physical characteristics and in his position in the world and among other people. These features give everyone the right to realize that good, which is obligatory for everyone, in their own way, to combine and group in their own way those many different components that are included, so to speak, in the general composition of good. Whoever uses this right primarily in individual moral tasks of his life, which he understands and carries out in his own way, and at the same time knows why he acts differently from how other people act in similar cases, that is, why he considers such an action morally obligatory for himself that other morally good people do not follow, a rule arises in him, his personal law is not obligatory for anyone else, but in his conscience it agrees with this generally obligatory law. Someone may, for example, make it a rule not to give alms to begging children, because he knows what moral damage these children experience through this; and the other follows for himself a completely opposite rule, remembering the commandment: “Give to him who asks of you,” and wanting to be better deceived by ten beggars than to refuse one who is truly in need. Neither of these two persons has the right to impose his rule on the other, although each of them follows a different, but in any case his best, conviction. What can only constitute a mandatory rule for me in relation to individual moral tasks of life, can constitute my distinctive moral character in relation to the entire structure of my desires and actions. The highest moral perfection of humanity does not consist in the fact that moral differences between individuals are destroyed, so that they become completely similar to each other, so that moral society through this becomes an indifferent mass, the individual person only a unit necessary for the sum of all humanity, but, on the contrary, that the gift with which the Creator bestowed on each person reaches its highest development and through this, true society becomes possible, that is, real mutual communication, mutual complementing each other with the characteristics that each possesses. The best proof of this is marriage. The happiness of this union is essentially determined by the polar opposite of the sexes, which determines the difference in their moral characters. On the other hand, in each of these individual formations, good, as a whole, must constitute their content. The whole good is not contained only in the totality of individuals, not only in a moral society, so that, for example, if I possess only one virtue, then I can calmly rely on the fact that others possess other qualities that I lack. And in a drop of dew, and on the wide surface of the ocean, and on the entire immense disk of some planet, not just any single ray of the sun is reflected, but the whole sun; Likewise, the moral character of each individual, no matter how large or small individual talents she may possess, contains all the good, presenting it only in a unique way, in relation to the peculiarities of the spiritual-physical organization of a certain individual and her position among external nature and other people. The point of view from which Fr. I. L. Yanyshev looked at the moral law, which gave him the opportunity to finally expel from the moral and theological system the scholasticism that reigned here before him. This is revealed in his solution to the questions of evangelical councils, collision officiorum and ἀδιἀϕορα. In Orthodox Christian moral teaching, according to the thoughts of Fr. I. L. Yanyshev, there is no concept of such moral perfection, which, not being obligatory for anyone, is only supposedly advised by some, nor of any supererogatory deeds or merits acquired by those who take on feats that are supposedly not obligatory for everyone. If in the Word of God there really are commandments addressed to individuals or advice to Christian society, caused by the special circumstances of this society, commandments and advice requiring from these particular individuals or from this society the highest perfection for them, then these commandments and advice cannot at all be considered either optional for these particular individuals and society, nor exceeding the moral perfection generally obligatory for all. The young man, whom Christ commanded to sell his property without fulfilling His commandments, found himself outside the kingdom of God, to which all Christians are called. He who can accommodate, that is, take upon himself a certain feat, is obliged to take it upon himself for the kingdom of God. By not accepting it, he sins and is deprived of the kingdom of God, just as by accepting it he does not go beyond the limits of the highest moral perfection obligatory for everyone. In particular, monastic vows of renunciation of one’s will, poverty and celibacy, acceptable to the Orthodox Church from its members, are justified solely by penitential motives and are taken not in the proud views of achieving moral superiority over other Christians, but as the most suitable for certain individuals and adapted to their individual characteristics, a form of the same godly life, the same highest moral perfection, which are obligatory for every Christian in every place and at all times of his earthly wanderings. So oh. I. L. Yanyshev solves the issue of evangelical councils. He gives an equally clear solution to the question of collision officiorum. The same requirement of the moral law is recognized and implemented by the same person at different ages, positions and occasions of life, and even more so by different persons in the form of infinitely varied duties. If so, then, judging fundamentally and strictly, there are no conditions for the duties to collide with each other, that is, for one of them to ever interfere with the fulfillment of another, or for it to be impossible to fulfill any duty without simultaneously violating the other. Equally consistently and decisively, Fr. I. L. Yanyshev, and on the third question, declares that there is nothing in life that, although not prohibited by law, was nevertheless permitted to everyone and under all circumstances of life... This was the first idea introduced by Fr. I. L. Yanyshev into the treasury of Russian culture. Another idea to which he attached equally important importance was the idea of ​​​​the vitality of Christian morality. He was our first theologian who ascribed to Christian morality significance primarily for life, for this life, and not just for salvation beyond the grave, who understood Christianity as a living force that sanctifies the fullness of life, and not as a system of abstract rules inapplicable to life. The entire content of the moral law. I. L. Yanyshev boils it down to two rules. Rule, as rationally free power, over the bodily needs of your nature, and through the body over external nature, that is, possess and use them, and through this constantly improve your spiritual powers - this is the first requirement of the moral law. The fulfillment of this rule is accompanied, on the one hand, by certain subjective benefits, or virtues, and on the other hand, by constant changes in the body, and through the body in the external world, meeting both the mental and organic and spiritual needs of human nature - in other words, external earthly goods. Subjective goods, or virtues, corresponding to this requirement of the moral law, are ascetic goods and virtues. What is asceticism? This is power over the material and over all mental formations that arise from stimulation from the outside, regardless of human freedom, asserting itself on the constant self-awareness and self-determination of the spirit, on its development and manifestation in matter. O.I. L. Yanyshev does not dwell on this definition of asceticism. He further gives qualifying explanations. Since the life of the body, he writes, is a necessary instrument of spiritual life; since this life of the body, its health and duration depends on knowledge and observance of the laws of organic life, since, finally, these laws of organic life are inextricably linked with the laws of planetary life in general and knowledge and observance of the former is together knowledge and observance of the latter; then from the satisfaction of the moral requirement to own and use the body, and through the body and external nature, the following virtues, or subjective benefits of the human spirit, are freely created, firstly: wisdom, understood as the wealth of knowledge of one’s own mental and external nature and the aesthetic education inseparable from it, combined with the ability and willingness to apply this knowledge and education to the development of one’s spiritual and organic life and to the possession and use of external nature; secondly, a real constant desire both to acquire knowledge and aesthetic education, and to apply them to activity, or hard work; thirdly, necessary according to the laws of organic nature for the activity of the spirit and for the life of the body, the readiness to restrain the blind instincts of the latter in relation to the requirements of both plant and animal organisms, or abstinence; and finally, the always readiness to prefer the very work of life and the health of the body and all material interests to spiritual interests or the requirements of the moral law, since the latter are incompatible with the former, or: courage, understood sometimes in a positive sense, as bravery, sometimes in a negative sense, as patience or enduring all kinds of hardships. Yet these ascetic virtues, taken together, are concentrated in one, which, in contrast to pride or selfishness, which constitutes a mood contrary to the second fundamental requirement of the moral law, can be called self-respect. That's what it's about. I.L. Yanyshev understands asceticism. The concept of this asceticism does not include the deliberate reduction of life, narrowing its limits, discoloring it, sacrificing it. On the contrary, it is asceticism, which is required by the laws of life itself, constitutes a necessary condition for its prosperity, and represents one of the links in the general improvement of man. This is not a specifically ascetic worldview, but we find the same asceticism in both the ancient pagan and the newest philosophical-naturalistic worldview. Accordingly, Fr. understands this. I. L. Yanyshev and objective or external goods arising from the first moral requirement. Depending on the power of the spirit over nature and on all ascetic virtues, as a necessary condition and at the same time the result of their development, there are all those movements, changes and states in the human body and external nature that are produced by the free will of a person to satisfy his spiritual and psycho-physical needs and which therefore constitute his external or objective good. Impressing the moral mood of the individual and satisfying his needs, objective goods, although they constitute the external, material world for him, nevertheless serve as an expression and at the same time a condition for his free activity and therefore can be called objective, external or earthly moral goods. These are: 1) the normal development of the physical organism or body, health and life expectancy, 2) a certain calling in a person’s life on earth and among other people, or what is the same. That sphere of activity in which the human spirit is called upon to develop its powers and acquire its subjective benefits; 3) property or property in all its forms, as a necessary condition for the spiritual-organic life of a person and as a result of the work to which he is called in life; 4) all earthly joys or pleasures associated with the acquisition and possession of external goods and constituting something external or additional to that spiritual joy in which the satisfaction of one’s own moral sense is recognized; finally 5) the whole world, to what extent it is assimilated by man, to what extent man himself influences him, and to what extent in both cases it serves as an instrument of spiritual development and a source of man’s various joys. All these benefits, adds Fr. I. L Yanyshev, are not only external, but also moral, since, on the one hand, they constitute necessary conditions, on the other, they are the natural result of ascetic virtues. Where there are these goods, there will certainly be virtues corresponding to them 2. Thought about. I. L. Yanysheva is quite transparent: piety is useful for everything and prepares for a person the benefits not only of the future life, but also earthly blessings. He considered the latter both a necessary condition and a necessary result of moral activity, to which they give flesh and blood. The disclosure of the second requirement of the moral law expresses this idea even more clearly. The second requirement of the moral law. I. L. Yanyshev formulates this way: “combine your forces together and share with each other the labors and joys of comprehensive spiritual development through the possession and use of nature in such legal forms of community life that correspond to both the identity of your spiritual-physical nature and the individual characteristics of each of you; in short: love one another, and in your love be fair to one another.” The author persistently expresses the idea that morality is and should be clothed in legal forms. Between positive law and moral law. I. L. Yanyshev is ready to put a sign of almost complete equality. Only a moral need can explain the existence and development of positive law in historical peoples who lived and are living outside of overt legislation, for any positive law is nothing more than a person’s conscious and applied moral need to the given conditions of life in his relationship to other people. Just as in the physical human body the nervous system is an organic connection that connects all its parts with each other and with the whole and serves as a mediator of their interaction, so in the practical life of individuals and the whole society, law performs a similar organic-moral function. And further - if positive law can be compared with the nervous system of the social organism, then the moral need for law and justice should be compared with the force acting in these nerves. To the extent that this force is developed and has penetrated into the nerves, that is, to the extent that the moral sense, its consciousness, or law, and the power to implement it in the legislative branch are developed, to that extent positive law develops and is implemented in society. That is why, from a moral point of view, the position of legal science is beyond doubt that everything that is prescribed and prohibited by law is at the same time required and prohibited by morality. If, at the same time, another position of legal science is undeniable, that not everything that is prescribed or prohibited by morality is prescribed or prohibited by law, then this does not mean that the law allows something that is not moral, but only that the development of positive legislation does not correspond to the moral development of society, or that immoral things are tolerated but are tolerated by positive law due to the moral rudeness of members of society. But beyond this exception, in the final analysis, positive legislation is an expression of the moral law in a person’s relationship to other people; to separate right from the latter means to separate the letter from its meaning, life from its power. Hence, a person’s moral activity is placed in an inextricable connection with the public, which embodies legal consciousness, and a person, as a moral figure, is included in public unions, family, national, state, etc. d True, as long as a person’s moral consciousness is not developed and as long as he does not consciously define himself in one way or another in relation to other individuals, these unions cannot have moral significance for him and therefore constitute a natural good for him, but not a moral one. Nevertheless, the development of moral feeling, and with it moral law and freedom, is possible for him only in these unions. Developing under the influence of these unions, the moral nature of an individual person finds its satisfaction or dissatisfaction in them, and as it develops in one way or another, in turn influences these unions, their morals and positive legislation, and strives to find its complete satisfaction in them. Thus, social unions, in any case, constitute objective moral goods, rising in dignity as the needs of moral human nature are satisfied. So, morality, according to Fr. I. L. Yanysheva, hiding from the formal side in the subjective-individual area, embraces in her content the entire fullness of life - the body, nature and society. Every phenomenon of objective life, family, economic, political issues, everything is illuminated by conscience, everything is within its purview. Moral progress is based on all the diversity of objective culture and is completely inconceivable outside of relation to it. Morality is not a spiritual-ascetic sphere detached from life, it is all of life, built according to known standards. In the real relations of life, forms are formed into which moral activity is poured out and without which it turns out to be an empty shadow, a ghost, a bare concept. Life understanding about. I. L. Yanysheva was, to use James’s terminology, a life understanding of “mental health”, a naive-optimistic worldview of “once born”. For him, the moral was completely realized in specific formations of objective culture, physical, family, scientific, artistic, social and political life. For him there was no break in the transition from the most intimate movements of conscience to the demands of daily life, from the internal burning of love to external relationships. For him there was no division between the legal and moral areas: he recognizes both family life and state life “not only as legal forms, but also as moral ones.” Not only the relations of husband to wife, parents to children, masters to servants and vice versa, but also the relations of members of the state to each other and to the state power itself were considered by him not only as legal, but also as purely moral. O. I. L. Yanyshev stood on the point of view for which a certain morality gives special forms of marriage and state life - this is how we can talk about the Christian form of marriage, about the Christian form of government. And we cannot help but regret that the plan of his system was not fulfilled: he did not write the third part, in which it was supposed to give a teaching on how the Christian mood is expressed in the forms of external Christian life. In the preface to the second edition, he stated for himself the apology that the dignity of external forms is always and everywhere conditional 3 . But this review of external forms of life is not in harmony with the second idea of ​​his moral and theological system. And in any case, it would be extremely interesting to see how sharp and enlightened the mind of Fr. I. L. Yanysheva would solve the question of the forms of external Christian life, a question that is extremely difficult and even, frankly speaking, insoluble, like the question of squaring a circle. This undecidability is already indicated by the difference between the two main ideas of the o. I. L. Yanysheva – ideas of the subjective nature of morality and the idea of ​​​​its vitality. For it is not self-evident that the coincidence of that series of thoughts is that the meaning of external forms is conditional, that moral dignity is hidden in the mood, that the moral law is fulfilled by everyone in their own, individual way, and another series of thoughts, that objective goods must correspond to the moral mood, that morality is based on external forms of life and is embodied in them, that the Christian mood is expressed in the forms of external Christian life. If the author had begun to write the third part of the plan he had outlined, this antagonism between the two main ideas of his work would have been revealed to him and would have led him to deep reflection, perhaps to a revision of the entire system. And who knows if he made attempts to do this? He writes: “the teachings on how this mood is expressed in the forms of external Christian life, which was supposed to form the content of the third part, - the change in my service and other circumstances did not allow me to finish.” Is it plausible, if by “other circumstances” we do not mean the one we assume, is this explanation plausible? Is it easy to agree that a talented author who loved his subject did not have the opportune time to write 50–100 pages for so many decades? Pointing out the major advantages of the moral and theological system of Fr. I. L. Yanysheva, we would have sinned against our feeling of deepest respect for his memory if, along with this, we had not noted those tasks that the late moralist bequeathed to us, leaving them unsolved. That his moral-theological system ends with a question that subsequent workers in this area must answer is indisputable, even without meaning by this the absence of the third part of the outlined plan. In its main content, his system dispenses with some links, and this is easy to notice when looking at the entire plan of this system. We have two parts in the “Orthodox Christian Teaching on Morality”: part one – about morality in general and part two – about Christian morality. The two main ideas of the system we have indicated. I. L. Yanysheva, i.e. the main characteristics of the moral law and its content, are placed by him in the first part. This means that in its content Christian morality does not differ from pagan morality; it is the same universal morality, which has its basis in human nature and in the living conditions of human society. This idea is recognized with complete clarity by the author. In the first part, “we are not talking about Christian (in particular) morality.” He does not forget that in the form of the first rule of the moral law, the “Orthodox Christian Teaching on Morality” introduces “four pagan virtues: wisdom, justice, courage and self-control, which not only found a place in the book of the wisdom of Solomon, in the writings of many ancient fathers and ascetics, both Eastern and Western, but also as the main moral Christian virtues are placed after religious duties and in the Christian spirit explained in the Orthodox Confession of the Eastern Church." We see the same thing in the second rule of the moral law. “In addition to the ascetic virtues, derived from the relationship of the soul to the body and the planetary world, Philo also finds only two main virtues,” according to whom “the duty to God is fulfilled in holiness and piety, and the duty to man is in philanthropy and justice, of which each virtue has its own subdivisions.” “This is the whole essence and together the plan of the system of moral Theology,” adds Fr. I. L. Yanyshev. How strange: the whole essence of Christian moral teaching is delineated by Philo, who united Jewish theology with pagan philosophy, as if the gospel were superfluous! And further: “the moral law of Moses, as divine, is a perfect law - the word of God recognizes the existence of moral precepts that are identical with the precepts of the Mosaic law and therefore also more or less perfect among the pagans.” And one more thing: “not to mention the eastern non-Christian and western pre-Christian moral teachings long known in our literature, one can point to the wonderful ethics of the pagan Japanese, characterized in the feuilleton of the New Time. It is difficult to imagine a higher ideal of a morally perfect person... This note, adds Fr. I. L. Yanyshev, refers not to the formal, but to the material side of morality and its content.” “The moral law, fulfilled by the life of the Savior of the world, is the same law that was given by God through Moses and which was written in the heart of man.” In general, “religious relations are nothing more than a type of moral relationship; it is precisely the type of relationship of the human spirit to other individuals that differs from other types of the same relationships not by the essence of its internal content, for truth and love constitute the content of religious relations, but by the properties of the being to whom love and truth are directed.” The author, however, tries to give an idea of ​​Christian morality. “It is precisely in proportion to the height of the moral properties of a person with whom a person is in a relationship of love and truth that, by virtue of this love and truth, she becomes for him more and more a model, an ideal, by the features of which he measures his moral consciousness and dignity, and at the same time an authority, whose words and actions become for him not only the subject of his involuntary trust and imitation, but also a freely accepted rule of thought and life. Since such an ideal and authority, according to the special influence of Divine grace on a person, is the divine person - God himself, the Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier of man and the world, as He appeared in the Old Testament Revelation, especially in the person of Christ the Savior, then the appearances and revelations of such a person in the broad sense of this word, i.e. as manifestations in the creation of the world and the providence about it and as words and deeds in prophecies and miracles, throughout the earthly life of the Savior and the destinies of His Church, become an unconditional norm for a person both in understanding his own nature and the entire external world, and in all of life. Understanding morality on the basis of the evidence not only of one’s own moral consciousness, but also of divine Revelation, or more precisely: although on the basis of one’s own moral consciousness, but enlightened by divine Revelation, a person no longer understands it from a natural, actually human point of view, but from a revealed, religious, divine and, if the content of this revelation has received the character of dogmatic truths, from a dogmatic one. Only from such a point of view, from the point of view of Revelation, influencing our moral self-awareness and understood, moreover, according to the leadership of the Orthodox Church, can we talk about Christian morality.” This point in the moral and theological system of Fr. I. L. Yanyshev cannot but be considered extremely weak - and his weakness is already exposed by the suspicious vagueness of expressions and the heaviness of thought. What does the author want to say? Moral concepts in Christianity are the same as in paganism, but there they are developed by the human mind, and here they are offered to man with external authority and in dogmatic form. Do these circumstances constitute an advantage of Christian morality that is also obvious to pagans? Isn't it the other way around? After all, it has already been stated that the pagans had “such a high ideal of moral perfection, beyond which it is impossible to imagine what kind of need for a model of morality that Christians have in the person of Christ? O. I. L. Yanyshev wants to eliminate this difficulty. “Some knowledge by a person (that is, outside of Christianity) of the requirements of the moral law and external actions in accordance with it do not yet indicate a completely good moral mood or virtue, which alone is true moral good. And demons know to a certain extent the will of God, sometimes they cannot help but obey His commands; nevertheless, they serve as representatives of an extreme degree of moral perversion.” But wasn’t this analogy of demonism too hastily floated out, which would have been decent only in the mouth of one for whom all pagan virtue was a deception, a “gilded vice”? A small degree of moral perfection is, in any case, not the same as demonic faith. And then: how can we talk about “some knowledge” if “it is difficult to imagine a higher ideal of moral perfection” in comparison with the pagan ideal? True, we encounter a characteristic insertion. We read: “it is difficult to imagine a higher ideal of a morally (but not religiously moral) perfect person.” However, what kind of exemption is this if religion itself, according to Fr. I. L. Yanysheva, is there only a “type of moral”? And here is the last effort to defend the Christian teaching on morality. “The concept of morality in general, which we set out in the first part, is, however, essentially a Christian concept, confirmed by the teaching of the word of God and the church, but this coincidence of our concept of morality with the religious and dogmatic teaching about it was, so to speak, external, accidental; it only shows that the evidence of our own moral self-consciousness, developing in the depths of Christianity, is fully consistent with the revealed teaching that true revelation and the highest needs of human nature mutually explain, confirm and fulfill themselves; but does not say anything about the religious basis and religious side of human morality, does not explain its Christian character. Now, applying the Christian predicate to the concept of morality, we focus our attention on those moments of inner human life in which human natural moral need is first influenced by another, independent of man and his highest moral force, called in theology saving grace; entering that point of systematic theology in which moral teaching coincides with religious teaching, we undertake to strictly limit our view of the subject to the limits indicated by the Christian-Orthodox dogmatic teaching about the moral nature of man, his fall and redemption. Where there is no action of saving divine grace on a person and the influence of the will of the person himself on it, there is no salvation, no Savior, no true Christian morality; where this action and influence and salvation are not understood in an Orthodox way, there cannot be Orthodox moral teaching. The relationship between God and man is the subject of theology in general; the restoration of this relationship, violated by the free will of man, called his salvation in Christ, is the subject of Christian theology proper; a unique understanding of the matter of this salvation, since it depends not only on God, but also on man himself, constitutes the essence of the difference between the Orthodox not only in doctrine, but also in moral doctrine from heterodox ones. Therefore, the essential task of the second part of moral theology is to explain the concepts of human salvation on the basis of the word of God and the teachings of the church in connection with the above-mentioned concept of morality in general. The solution to this problem explains both the nature of Christian morality and the conditions for the emergence and growth of Christian moral life.” According to this plan, the second part of the “Orthodox Christian Teaching on Morality” was written. This point of view indicates an important difference between Christianity and paganism: with the same moral concepts, the difference between a pagan and a Christian is that the first, due to the power of sin, lost the opportunity to be truly moral without divine help, and the second, through the merits of Christ, was restored to the possibility of a virtuous and blissful life. Of course, this difference between a pagan and a Christian is the subject of dogmatic theology and Fr. I. L. Yanyshev recognizes the coincidence in this point of moral teaching with religious teaching; however, this is only a formal shortcoming of his moral and theological system, which can be completely neglected. However, nothing can justify that method of moral-theological teaching in which moral theology not only borrows from dogmatic theology, but also limits its entire content to only this borrowing from dogmatic theology. And this is exactly what happened with the moral and theological system of Fr. I. L. Yanysheva. And look what happened. While in the first section, universal morality is not only discussed as a concept, but also analyzed as a fact that has its own content, here not only the author speaks about it, but it itself speaks to the reader with its content, here not only is the doctrine of morality given, but also the moral teaching is expounded; in the second section, Christian morality is only discussed, and not expounded; here we hear everywhere the voice of the author, sophisticatedly arguing about Christian grace, but we do not hear the voice of Christian morality itself, the voice of Christianity itself and, above all, the evangelical voice. With the transition from the first section to the second, a living judgment about the fact of living life, close to the hearts of the author and reader, is sharply replaced by long-tired scholasticism. Here we see a series of abstract concepts about the moral state of fallen humanity, about the objective salvation of man, about the types of grace - about what happened and happens to a Christian not according to his will, and we get the impression that Christian life has no internal content. But this is not true. Christian morality has its own, specific content, which abundantly fills the consciousness of a Christian. This is divine love, faith, righteousness, eternal life, free and blessed. Christian absolute love is not the same love that pagan morality knew; the Christian filial faith has specific features, Christian righteousness is unique, Christian freedom, Christian bliss are unique 4. But none of this, not one iota, was included in the Moral Theology of Fr. I.L. Yanyshev, which in this respect shares the fate of all our other moral and theological systems. What fate weighs on this science! One of all theological sciences, it has as its direct subject Christian life from its inner side, as it reveals itself to Christian self-consciousness, and is experienced by the Christian heart. So what? The Christian content of spiritual life is as alien to systems of moral theology as it is, for example, alien to all Old Believer literature. Our moralists seem to be carrying in their hands a sealed envelope that they cannot look into. They talk about something as if it were necessary - “the testimony of the Word of God about the dominion of evil in the spiritual human nature after the fall,” “two kinds of bewilderment aroused by the dogmatic teaching about grace as a saving power,” etc. But where is the word with which Christ burned the hearts of people, where is the gospel, the good news? At least one word of the Gospel! There is none. O.I.L. Yanyshev decisively declares that the moral law does not have Christian content, that there is no Christian moral teaching. You can talk scholastically about Christianity, but Christianity says nothing to the human heart. The tragedy of theological science: Christian literacy has been lost for it! The third subsection of the second part of his moral and theological system, Fr. I. L. Yanyshev devotes himself to the question of the process or growth of Christian life. That a discussion of this issue cannot give Christian content to Moral Theology, I have already said about this elsewhere, 5 and in discussing this issue the author must inevitably look at Christian life from the outside, and not from the inside. There would be no reason for us to enter into a close examination of this subsection if not for one accidental circumstance: this subsection of Fr. I. L. Yanyshev expounds on the well-known books of Bishop. Theophan the Recluse and, in this way, introduces specific ascetic judgments into his moral and theological system. We have already seen how he discusses asceticism in the first part. And in the second part, the author makes the following footnote, which is characteristic of him. “On that truly holy and blessed state, full of light, ineffable love and spiritual pleasure, in which the justified and sanctified is found at the moment of mysterious (in Baptism and Confirmation) direct communion with the Divine, ascetics-mystics usually dwell as the goal of all their deeds... If we look at monastic asceticism as deeds of repentance, then this is the goal of asceticism is very clear and agrees with the Word of God; but even then it remains unclear: is it possible and why should the above-described blissful state on earth continue, since it, in itself, constitutes the entire essence of bliss and the eternal afterlife, and on earth has no response either in relation to the material world or in relation to neighbors. Everything earthly is in this blissful state, according to the consciousness of St. Macarius of Egypt is not only undesirable, but even hostile to this state.” Meanwhile, following Bishop. Feofan, in the third subsection of the second part of Fr. AND. L Yanyshev writes: “The beginning of Christian religious life in man is at the same time the actual beginning of earthly salvation, his. But this beginning of life or salvation, like any beginning, embryo or seed, requires its continuation, development and improvement among the given conditions of earthly life. Such development and improvement of oneself constitutes for the regenerate the main task of his entire earthly life, for: 1) the embryo or seed of a new life in the regenerate is an embryo that arose in the old spiritual body of a person, there is a seed sown among thorns, there is a spark that is still covered with ashes from everywhere; this is only a renewal of a person’s self, the restored energy of his self-determination, the luminous center of his personality, while all the instrumental forces of this personality, that is, mental and physical forces, which have long been accustomed and therefore inclined to evil activity, are not yet accustomed to good activity, and the entire external environment surrounding them can every minute arouse in them these old, evil habits, can confuse a Christian. 2) And the most grace-filled actions in a person, which the one who is justified and sanctified clearly and truly experiences, as the purity of his moral feeling, as living energy in following Christ, as the bliss of communion with God, although, according to the teaching of the great ascetics of the Christian Church, they never leave a Christian, but by no means remain as tangible and obvious for him as they were at the moment of his rebirth. On the contrary, having allowed the regenerate to taste all the sweetness of life in God, grace hides its presence in him from him, leaving him to act as if alone, amidst labors, perplexities and even falls, and only after a more or less long period of testing does it infuse him clearly, effectively, tangibly. Having once received the opportunity or power to defeat the evil living within himself and create morally good qualities in himself, a Christian is called to his own exploits, to asceticism, understood not in the sense of power over himself and his body in general, as we saw in the first part of moral theology, but in the sense of the exploits of his Christian self-improvement or self-education in all aspects of religious and moral life, he is called to independently create in himself and therefore do inalienable from himself is the kingdom of God, which he experienced in himself during the rebirth and which now again seemed to be hidden from him.” And again: “The whole life of a regenerate person is an unceasing fasting: he is not only in a state of self-collected vision of the new world, in the feelings and dispositions of repentant faith, but is also diligent in reading and hearing the Word of God, public and home worship, observes all the rules of the church and with all this every venial sin, i.e. involuntary movements of evil thoughts and desires that arise in him contrary to the initiative of his own self, he confesses both to God every day in the midst of prayer, and at the first opportunity to his spiritual leader or another like-minded Christian; in short: the regenerate person arranges his whole life in such a way that it becomes an incessant fasting.” Etc. So, oh. I. L. Yanyshev introduces the asceticism of bishop into his moral and theological system. Theophan and adopts that asceticism in the spirit of St. Macarius of Egypt, against which he directly speaks out and which, in any case, is not in harmony with the first part of the system. The result is two asceticisms. For the author, an important task arose to reconcile them with each other - as part of this would include the reconciliation of the two main ideas of the first part of his system. But he avoided this task. Having added specific asceticism to his system, albeit mechanically - through the presentation of the asceticism of Bishop. Feofan, the author leaves the reader extremely bewildered. If we extend the line of asceticism as the main task of the entire life of the reborn, as unceasing fasting, then will this line coincide with the line of pagan asceticism as the possession and use of the body and nature? Of course not. This task - the task of reconciling life with Christianity, in other words, a vital understanding of Christianity - Fr. I. L. Yanyshev bequeathed it to younger generations 6. This is the task - to understand Christianity in such a way that it makes room for the fullness of life, and to understand the ethics of life in such a way that Christianity fits in its very depths; This is the task - to create a system of worldview that would embrace the unreduced fullness of life and the undiminished heights of Christianity, in which it would not be necessary to sacrifice Christian content in the name of the vitality of the moral law, limiting it to pagan rules, or to sacrifice life for the sake of Christianity, ascetically suppressing “everything earthly.” I took upon myself such a task, with a living consciousness of all its complexity and its immeasurable importance, in my Fundamentals of Christianity. Since my system, satisfying all the demands of natural-historical life and the entire height of evangelical Christianity, is directed against the one-sidedness of both the humanitarian and lifeless interpretation of Christianity, it naturally provokes the defenders of these old concepts against itself 7 . O.I.L. Yanyshev, who only mechanically glued Feofan’s asceticism to his system, “for which everything earthly is undesirable and even hostile,” attached himself with all his soul to the humanitarian content of the moral law. And, of course, he could only look at my system from this one side. Putting everything alien to his concept under the same banner of lifeless asceticism, which “has no response either in relation to the material world or in relation to neighbors,” he brought my worldview under the same rubric, focusing all his attention on the “gospel height” maintained in it. With the one-sidedness of his judgment, he came quite close to the supporters of the opposite worldview, who “consider everything earthly to be hostile to Christianity” and who recognized my worldview as worldly, focusing all their attention on the fullness of natural life contained in it 8 ; but how was this judgment expressed by Fr. I. L. Yanysheva about my system, this revealed his high character. Contrary to newspaper reports that criticize Fr. I.L. Yanysheva from the unsympathetic inquisitorial side, review about. I. L. Yanysheva about my theology is nothing more than a learned review, and not a series of anathemas. Calling “the books of Professor Tareev - the fruit of his great labors and remarkable talent - a serious contribution to our theological literature” 9, Fr. I. L. Yanyshev “nevertheless” recognizes that “requiring revision and change or correction is the entire worldview of Professor Tareev and his entire teaching about the divine, spiritual life of a Christian.” 10 Like a true scientist, he takes my main idea, on which he dwells, with the exception of some private comments. To understand the main meaning of the review about. I. L. Yanyshev, you must first become familiar with his own moral and theological system: all his main comments are predetermined by the features of his worldview. I may regret that these remarks did not reach me in a general literary form, which would have left room for fruitful polemics, which are no longer appropriate. However, I consider myself especially fortunate to be able to declare that all the wishes and demands of Fr. I. L. Yanyshev are quite acceptable for me and, in essence, have already been implemented in my system itself. By revealing this in the following lines, I hope to fulfill my last duty to the memory of the late Fr. protopresbyter. §1. Do I, on page 368 of the first volume of the Fundamentals of Christianity, call the Holy Spirit or the Spirit of God “spontaneous” and, moreover, reborn into the free “Spirit of Christ”, so that, as if, we can talk about the materiality of the Spirit and the changeability of the Unchangeable God? No. On this page I am talking only about the elemental gifts of the Spirit, and the elemental spirit, reborn into the free spirit of Christ, is not called the Spirit of God (the third Person of the Holy Trinity), but the spirit of God (the action of the Spirit in man). My terminology finds justification in 1 Cor. 12–14 ; Gal. 4; Col. 2 and Heb. 5:12. §2. Do I reject, on page 132 of the third volume, the action of the Spirit of God in the prophets, saying that “the gracious action of the Holy Spirit became possible as a result of the moral feat of Christ, after His glorification - the resurrection from the dead and the departure to the Father, and is carried out through the church, which is the body of Christ” - contrary, supposedly, to the fact that the “Spirit of Christ,” according to the words of the Apostle (1 Peter I, II), was inherent Old Testament prophets? I do not reject the actions of the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament prophets. I speak about the importance of Old Testament prophecy in Volume II, page 81 next, where you can read that “prophecy expresses the very essence of the religion of Jehovah, as a theistic religion - not spontaneously pagan, but rationally human, divine-human.” But I believe there is a difference between the gracious-church action of the Holy Spirit, on the one hand, and the action of the Holy Spirit in the creation of the world and in the providence of it, His action in the prophets and even His action in the earthly life of Christ - John. 7:39; 16:7. In particular, I write about the difference between prophetic and New Testament revelation on page 158 of volume I: “prophetic revelation was addressed exclusively to the human mind, while in Christ His very human life was a revelation of God.” By adding here the indisputable dogmatic truth that “grace is bestowed upon us for the sake of the merits of Jesus Christ” (Metropolitan Macarius), I gain the right to say that “the gracious action of the Holy Spirit became possible as a result of the moral feat of Christ.” And what is most remarkable is the indicated place from the 1st last. ap. Peter confirms my words, since “the prophets foretold the grace appointed for us” and “the Spirit of Christ who was in them” revealed to them that “it was not for themselves, but for us, that which has now been preached to us” (1 Peter 1:10-12). Wed. also vol. II, pp. 322–323. §3. With the words: “the idea of ​​sacrificial atonement for sin has no place in the gospel system” (vol. II, p. 320) - do I reject the church teaching about the atoning sacrifice of Christ? No. On the same pages of Volume II I write: “That Christ sacrificed His life for the salvation of man, that He, having endured humiliation and death at the hands of sinners, took upon Himself the infirmities and illnesses of sinners, and bore their sins... all this is suggested by every line of the Gospel (II, 315 cf. I, 340). And the phrase on page 320 does not contradict all this, since here the entire emphasis falls on the word idea, and the phrase has the meaning that in the Gospel teaching about the atoning sacrifice of Christ there is no place for the contractual-legal idea of ​​sacrificial atonement. This is precisely what is revealed on those lines of page 320 that precede this phrase. Similarly, in the same volume, below (p. 333 next), the idea is revealed that in the Gospel teaching about the kingdom of God there is no place for the idea of the kingdom of God, that is, for the theocratic idea, for the idea of ​​the people's chosenness of God, - that the gospel teaching about the kingdom of God is filled with all the gospel content, and “it would be a clear mistake to think that from the concept of the kingdom God can deductively extract any content of the Gospel.” In general, in such cases we are talking about the subtleties of terminology, which do not in any way affect the essential content of Christian dogma. §4. Am I saying on page 351 of Vol. II that the church is not given the power to excommunicate anyone? No. On pp. 138–139 of Volume III, I recognize the excommunication of the unworthy not only as a right, but even as a duty of the church. “The Church must strictly ensure that all its members are born of God, and expel from its midst anyone who, while calling himself a brother, lives as a pagan.” I do not contradict this at all on page 351 of volume II, where I only set out the Gospel parable of the tares. And to this presentation, on the same page, I add the following note, which eliminates any possible confusion: “Another thing is suggested by the task of the church to be salt and light for the world, to glorify the Heavenly Father in its eyes with good deeds. In view of this task, the church must monitor its reputation, protect its certain appearance, cut off from itself everything extraneous, everything that covers it, erases its boundary lines, depersonalizes it in the eyes of outsiders. And obviously, in the name of this task, she must eject from her midst all hypocrisy, all those pestering her for some selfish motives, covering up the achievement of earthly interests with her name. But this is not at all the same as pulling out the chaff." §5. Do I hold a dualistic view of the relationship between the divine and the human, the spiritual and the carnal? In particular - a) do I assert that the spiritual in itself is divine (I identify everything spiritual with the divine) and that, on the contrary, everything earthly in itself is insignificant, base, even evil (vol. III, p. 68)? b) do I deprive the nature of man, precisely as a man, of its own spiritual essence - the image of God once forever imprinted in it, since I do not dare to attribute “exclusively divine origin” to the natural moral law, in view of its utilitarian side, earthly nature? c) am I forgetting that a Christian can enjoy the joys and benefits of earthly life, no matter how legal and sacred they are, while remaining at the same time a true Christian? Not at all! a) To say that the spiritual in itself is divine, to identify everything spiritual with the divine is contrary to my system. The method of my thought, explained on the pages of the Fundamentals of Christianity with almost annoying insistence (see esp. vol. I, 344 seq. vol. II, 46 seq. vol. IV, 95 seq. 44 seq.), is that I do not begin with the psychological-spiritual, that is, with the spiritual in the sense of the ethereal, the spiritual in contrast to the sensory, reducing the divine to it, identifying with it divine, but I start with the divine, calling it spiritual. “The Jews did not know spirituality in the sense of ethereality. They called spirituality living force, life and strength, vigor, strength. Therefore, God, living, strong, omnipotent, is opposed to the world as the spirit of the flesh” (II, 46). I do not even conceptually separate the divine and the spiritual so that they can be identified - both are one for me from the very beginning, and it is not I who fill the concept of the divine with the content of the spiritual, but the concept of the spiritual with the content of the divine. I affirm that “everything spiritual is essentially divine” since (I immediately add) only the divine can be spiritual. I could not say that “the spiritual as a predicate of the divine constitutes its opposite to the human,” I could only say that “the spiritual as a predicate of the divine expresses most of all its opposition to the “human” - the base, the humiliated” (I, 344). Therefore, it is impossible to say about me that “for me everything spiritual is identified with the divine and at the same time is opposed to the human.” I keep talking not about psychological spirituality, but about religious, divine, absolute spirituality - I identify the concepts of spirituality and absoluteness. And when in any respect divine spirituality coincides with psychological spirituality, I directly note this. Eg. II, 255: “in this respect, the divinity of spiritual life also turns out to be psychological spirituality” ... Without identifying the divine with the spiritual, I also do not imagine the earthly as evil in itself. I don’t and can’t have such an expression on page 68 of Vol. III or in other places. I say that the world’s own nature is nothingness, that man in himself is nothingness, but in fact the world is the manifestation of divine life in nothingness (III, 60), and man is actually the bearer of life in nothingness (III, 63). “Getting glory to God in nothingness is the goal of world and human life. This goal is inevitably achieved in this reality. In all phenomena of world life, God’s glory is revealed” (ib.), etc. Hence, “the first thing that is instilled in a person with the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthe glory of God is the duty of life. Man was created for life on this earth, and therefore he must live in all the fullness of his nature, created by God” (65, etc.). I could not call natural life evil, because I tirelessly explain that “in itself, considered objectively, in its forms, the flesh is not assessed from a Christian point of view - and is not condemned, and has no positive religious significance. The flesh is a kingdom of nature, indifferent in a religious sense, just as physiology and technology are indifferent in an ethical sense” (IV, 129), etc. “In a natural sense, physical and worldly life constitute the domain of the will of God, as this latter is manifested in the laws of nature. From this side, it is good, but this is an external, spiritual good, which enters the heart from the outside and has no moral properties, and is not subject to moral assessment. There is nothing unclean here, but there is nothing holy either” (II, 259), etc. Natural life receives an ethical form only from the moment it enters into relation to eternal life, to spiritual good. Therefore, the gospel looks at worldly life in two ways - from a natural point of view and in relation to eternal life. The God of the Gospel has two aspects, being both the God of natural gifts, natural providence, and the God of love, which requires self-denial, but the gospel does not know dualism (258 seq.), etc. b) Without identifying the spiritual with the divine, without filling the concept of the divine with the content of the spiritual, I do not deprive a person of his own moral essence, relating it to the soul (and not to the spirit). And this is so certain that I even talk about the moral autonomy of man (IV, 66 seq.). “Carnal life, in all the fullness of its development, has ethical foundations” (IV, 124). If at the same time I do not dare to attribute to the natural moral law “exclusively divine origin” (ib.), then this is precisely what I confirm the fact of moral autonomy. By assimilating the utilitarian side of natural morality, I thereby do not condemn it, but only characterize it. I am so far from condemning natural morality as one of the aspects of natural life that, even attributing natural evil to people (according to Matthew 7:11; Luke. 11:13), by this natural anger I mean the state of natural morality, utilitarian society, and I say that this natural state does not give a person the benefits of religious life, does not lead him to praise and gratitude, but at the same time it is not imputed to a person as guilt” (II, 282. 283). I do not deny that natural morality is from God, I do not say that “as if in the sphere of nature one can be without religion, without God” (IV, 420), - “in a natural sense, physical and worldly life constitutes the realm of the will of God, as this latter is manifested in the laws of nature” (II, 258–9): I only distinguish the revelation of God in nature and history, in spiritual morality, from His New Testament revelation in the Son - in absolutely spiritual, Christian life. From the latter’s point of view, only the spiritual-absolute can be called religious. When discussing all subjects within my horizons from a Christian point of view, I use the concept of religion precisely in this sense of spiritual absoluteness, and the possibility of a broader understanding of religion, the possibility of a double point of view, is always assumed. “The God of the Gospel has two aspects”... I do not break the connection between these two areas, since I insistently assert that “the gradual acts of creation of the world and man were successive stages of the revelation of divine life in nothingness, and each lower stage of creation served as a condition for the highest revelation of divine life in a new form. But the creation of man did not end the gradual revelation of divine life in the world: the highest form of revelation of divine life in the world, in which the Divine is what It is in Itself (John 4:24; 1 John 4:8), is spiritual life. Spiritual life is a new creation of God, but not unconditional; this is a new form of revelation of divine life in the same insignificance, conditioned by the last act of primitive creation, i.e. man... She could appear only when man became prepared for her” (III, 67. 68). By this condition of spiritual life I mean the entirety of natural development, the entirety of culture (IV, 94–95; 128, etc.). However, at the moment of man’s transition from natural-cultural life to spiritual perfection, I place man’s self-denial, his awareness of his natural insignificance, renunciation of his natural dignity, obedience to God and trust in Him (III, 68; 78 next). And this thesis in my system is a simple conclusion from the view of Christianity as a new revelation, a new creation (II, 185). One can fundamentally (and not due to misunderstanding) object to this thesis only from the angle of a naturalistic-evolutionary view of Christianity as a natural product of worldly culture. But this will not happen! And that for me this thesis does not break the connection between spiritual and natural life, this is clear from the fact that I again talk about the realization of spiritual life in “a world that is created from nothingness... Hence the connection between spiritual life and suffering; hence the main character of Christianity is the combination of spiritual perfection with external humiliation and spiritual bliss with external suffering” (III, 68, etc.). To support my views on these issues, I could present extensive biblical and patristic evidence. But I find myself in such a happy position that I can limit myself to a simple extract from the textbook of dogmatic theology - (Metropolitan Macarius), where we read: “When we say that a person who has turned to Christianity cannot do good deeds on his own without the help of the grace of God, we mean spiritual good, which is commanded by the law of the Gospel, makes a person spiritual and serves his eternal salvation - we mean works of the Christian faith worthy of faith in Christ. But we do not deny that a person, both before conversion and after conversion to the law of the Gospel, can himself, to some extent, fulfill the requirements of the natural law, which has not been erased from his conscience, and so on. do natural good (Rom. 2:14, 15), using the remnant of our mental and moral strength, damaged by the fall, but not destroyed, to do good, which, no matter how weak and insignificant it is, in no case should be called evil, and so on, although it is not able to serve for our salvation, it cannot serve for our condemnation. These thoughts are set out in detail by the High Hierarchs of the East in the 14th chapter of their epistle on the Orthodox faith." c) It already follows from what has been said that a Christian can enjoy the blessings of life. I devote an entire section to the disclosure of this thought in Volume II, where I write: “according to the Gospel teaching, everything natural and humanitarian is permitted to man, all natural blessings are permitted to him, everything is permitted to him, as the apostle says, because all blessings are bestowed by one Heavenly Father, so that there is no natural limit to the enjoyment of them” (II, 260 next), etc. I dedicate the entire IV volume, where I reveal the doctrine of Christian freedom. §6. Saying that “the absoluteness of form and love as content is the only Christianity,” that it is in “absolute divine love” (II, 182), am I not attributing to the Christian such absoluteness, that is, unlimitedness, which the Orthodox Church does not assimilate either to the disembodied forces or to the glorified saints of God? No. The main idea of ​​my work, revealed specifically in Volume III, is that religious good is inexpressible in terms of natural perfection, that natural absolute perfection is inaccessible to man, and the very desire for personal possession of infinite perfection is evil. Christian absoluteness is, firstly, spiritual absoluteness, and not natural (cf. IV, 95 seq.), secondly, it is a gift of God, and not the fruit of natural perfection, thirdly, it is combined with natural limitations. “The God-given gift of spiritual perfection and bliss and the combination of spiritual perfection with visible humiliation and bliss with external suffering - this is what is most characteristic of Christianity from the outside, that is, in addition to the content of spiritual life itself” (III, 58), etc. Spiritual life is not human nature; no, spiritual life is divine life in man” (III, 88). It is not I who live, but Christ who lives in me. Of course, for such an absoluteness instilled in a person, which fits into his natural limitations, there must be a way out, just as there is a valve for steam. Such a way out is given in free death, in self-denial. “The good of eternal life, or the absoluteness of divine love, has a predetermined entanglement with death, which it inevitably wins... Substitute the irreducible duration of existence, the obligatory bypass of death to any side of the Gospel principle, add to some Gospel requirement the clause “not until death,” and for you all the Gospel words will sound false and hypocrisy. In the system of Gospel teaching, only one point deals with the idea of ​​death, but it is presupposed by all the other points. A disciple of Christ can only once “lay down his life” for people, but readiness for a mortal sacrifice is a necessary prerequisite for the entire Christian life. Love and eternal life are, in the language of the gospel, the same as love and death: gospel love is love to death and eternal life in victory over death” (II, 275. 276). §7. “If the human “I” turns out to be so passive in the process of the divine spiritual life of a Christian, and on the other hand, if everything corruptible, earthly, and transient matters for him only in the sense that it serves as an object of denial, suffering, self-sacrifice, while the movement of the entire natural-historical life of the world (by me) is everywhere left to its own natural laws, then in what way is the creativity of absolute freedom and boundless love of an individual Christian for humanity manifested? and by what kind of creativity does he achieve the goal of life?” To this I give a definite and clear answer in my books. Christianity consists of: 1) in the intimate experience by a person of divine-spiritual life, which is as passive as it is active, as free as it is involuntary, as passive and at the same time active, free and involuntary is all inspired creativity (see Vol. II passim). 2) in the action on nature and the world by grace, although this action of grace is invisible, it will affect only at the end of times (II, 189. 355; III, 128 f. 284 f. V, 230). 3) in personal asceticism, for in the fight against personally conscious immorality, Christianity is an irreplaceable educational force, although personal asceticism does not affect natural-social life in its essence (II, 210; III, 93–107; IV, 175; V, 231). 4) in the freedom of natural life, in the fullness of cultural development (IV passim, V, 231 seq.). and 5) in churchliness (V, 234). Everything that can be said thoroughly about the content of Christian life and has actually been said at some time by anyone fits into these formulas. My system perceives the content of churchliness, which necessarily grows on a Christian root, although I call it a secondary and derivative form of Christian life (II, 347–8; V, 234 ff.). The entire fullness of culture is reconciled in my system with the absoluteness of personal Christian life and is sanctified by the latter, although I say that Christianity is not in the flesh, not in its boundaries, not in its forms (IV, 130, etc.). All the moral force of Christianity fits into my system, although I say that Christianity in its essence is deeper than morality. In my system there is enough scope for the entire metaphysics of grace, but I still do not see the deepest essence of Christianity in this side of Christianity. The essence of Christianity is in the intimate experience by a person of divine-spiritual life. This is Christian mysticism, the secret of a Christian’s personal life. With complete clarity and certainty and with full motivation, I declare that this intimacy of the Christian life is inexpressible, that everyone knows the essence of this matter only from their own experience (V, 215 seq.). Just as biology, while studying the phenomena of life, cannot answer the question of what life is; Likewise, religious philosophy, studying the dialectics of spiritual life and its relationships, finds its limit in the personal intimacy of spiritual life. The task of theological science is not to exhaust this mystery, but to substantiate the very idea of ​​Christian mysticism, the intimacy and freedom of personal Christianity (see esp. vol. II, p. 165 next), and also to indicate ways of combining personal Christianity with forms of natural-historical life 11. More than anyone else, I can rely here on Fr. I. L. Yanyshev, on his famous thesis that the moral law is fulfilled by everyone in their own way. But Fr. I.L. For Yanyshev, this thesis remained a simple postulate, since the necessary subjectivity of the moral law cannot be realized if the content of the moral law conditionally embraces social life. The subjectivity of the religious-moral, and specifically Christian, principle is first realized (systematically carried out) only in my system, thanks to the doctrine of the heterogeneity of the personal-religious and natural-social spheres. As a result, the convention of the natural-social sphere is not a burden for the individual, being determined by its own laws; but at the same time this is not only negative personal freedom, since the forms of social life are determined by natural-historical laws alone, and a Christian man always and in everything remains a Christian man, with complete freedom of personal behavior and in a positive attitude towards real life. §8. Standing in the entire structure of my thoughts about divine spiritual life primarily from the point of view of the Four Gospels, do I not come to some disagreement with the teachings and modern practice of the Orthodox Church, in particular, on issues of the oath, war, nationality, and the union of church and state? When I say that external cleanliness, clothing and food are not valued religiously in Christianity (II, 225-227), this does not mean that a Christian should not wash, dress and eat: it only means that there is no Christian washing, Christian clothing and food, and that a Christian washes, dresses and eats like a person, and not like a specifically Christian, - according to the requirements of hygiene, climate and physiology. So, in the same way, understanding the Gospel commandments absolutely and at the same time not recognizing their socially binding meaning, I say with absolute certainty that “the forms of social life must be normalized conditionally and commensurate with earthly interests, but the believer in all his relations acts according to the divine, that is, absolutely, the religious action of the individual must be absolute” (II, 212-213). In particular, I am only saying that religious war, religious patriotism (the idea of ​​the people's chosenness of God), is absurd from a Christian point of view, although the gospel is not against patriotism as a natural good (ib. 217). I am only saying that the forms of natural-social life cannot be derived from the essence of Christianity, although they follow from natural-historical necessity. Restoring pure, evangelical Christianity as neutral in the natural-social relation, I do not forget that in Christianity, along with this primary essence, there appears a derivative, secondary form of church life and that in this latter form Christianity becomes a natural-historical force. “Only the church, and not personal-spiritual Christianity, sanctifies nature and the world, is a socio-historical force, connects Christianity with nature and history and restores a significant gap in the system of the religious meaning of life” (III, 131 and generally 130-131). I fully recognize the historical significance of the state and legal position of the church. A true understanding of the essence of Christianity in this case is an indication of the path in which the relationship of the church to the state should develop. “The legal relationship of the church to the state, aiming above temporal interests, should be a symbol of the relationship of the divine to the human, the eternal to the temporary, the internal to the external” (III, 138)... Man is not given double vision; having invested all his attention in his own business, he can no longer take a different point of view. It is quite natural that Fr. I. L. Yanyshev remained alien to the step that social philosophy has taken in recent decades. But it is easier to look back than to look forward, and we already have a certain responsibility - to evaluate the contribution that the late Fr. Protopresbyter. He will forever retain the honor of the first persistent preacher of two ideas - the freedom of personal religious principles and the vitality of Christianity. They were not brought into the proper system in the Orthodox Christian teaching on morality; they remained isolated elements, but an elementary disclosure of these ideas was made by Fr. I. L. Yanyshev masterfully. For us, these elements are already implied by themselves, they are our hereditary heritage, but we must not forget that the disclosure of these ideas in those times when Fr. I. L. Yanyshev was a professor of Moral Theology, which was a scientific feat on his part. The late Fr. Protopresbyter John Leontyevich Yanyshev was a major scientific force! Protopresbyter I. L. Yanyshev was not our only representative of the idea of ​​the intimate incomprehensibility of Christian life. The same idea was clearly expressed by the archbishop. Innocent of Kherson and Bishop. Theophanes (See Fundamentals of Christianity, vol. V. pp. 215–225). However, all these are exceptions to the “general rule” of our theologians, who do not comprehend this idea at all and fanatically persecute its supporters. And today we still live among the hypnotics of medieval intolerance, a vivid example of which was given in the very last days by Prot. P. Ya. Svetlov in his review of my theology. (Christian doctrine in an apologetic presentation, vol. 1, Kyiv 1910, p. 330–335) Here we read about “the horror of religious creativity of that kind, a warning example of which” is indicated in my theology, about the impossibility of “the existence of Christian science without Christian faith” and the consequent impossibility of “considering the Tareevs as representatives of Christian scientific and theological knowledge” and “to mix theological science simply with Tareevism.” Here the idea is very subtly expressed that if the highest church authority destroyed me, this would not be an act of strengthening the censorship of theological literature, for Tareevism is decadence, Nietzscheanism, in general - the fruit of unbelief, and not theology. What causes such unbridled anger of the formidable teacher of the law. The principle of “religious creativity” I applied in Christian knowledge. But it is curious that two or three pages above Fr. Svetlov writes: “by the (Catholic) transfer of the property of immutability and immobility from the objective element of knowledge to the subjective or theological mind, theology, like a spider, is crossed out: in Christian knowledge, this denies the place for individual creativity and freedom of thought in the field of religious knowledge, and to the detriment of the mobility, vitality and diversity of knowledge, unity in the sense of dead monotony comes to the fore... Under such conditions, the existence of those branches of theological knowledge is especially difficult, where, by the very essence of the matter, the individual must inevitably to appear in a prominent place (the area of systematic theology, which has as its goal the development and clarification of the positive content of the Christian religion, the development of an integral Christian worldview, the clarification and disclosure of the Christian ideal of life and calling).” Okay, but why is my actual implementation of the principle of religious creativity in the constructed “system of religious thought” declared Nietzscheanism and why should Svetlov’s theological creativity be ensured freedom from spiritual censorship, and the intervention of the Third Section should be applied to me? To justify such a monstrous change of front, such double-entry bookkeeping, Fr. Svetlov qualifies the principle of “religious creativity” I put forward as absolute individualism, and presents the method of my theology as “an expression of various inner experiences,” so that “in such theology there is no place left for the objective divine element.” This is the interpretation of Fr. Svetlov of my theological method is an unscrupulous game, and the falsification he made is not difficult to expose. In my printed system, with all the clarity and decisiveness required by the essence of the matter, I declare that both elements are necessary for theology - the religious-subjective and the objective-historical, that the religious-subjective element in theology has the only meaning of internal comprehension of historically given material, that all religious experiences have psychological or religious-philosophical significance, but only those religious experiences that take place in a specific historical period have a theological significance riverbed I contrast the method of personal creativity with only one-sided historicism. “Systematic distancing from the subject of research into the distance of history is appropriate only for an externally scientific discussion of the subject, for understanding its historical growth and historical relationships, but it will never give an understanding of a historical phenomenon; it is not appropriate when asking about the inner essence of the phenomena of spiritual life, spiritual creativity. Many years of scientific study will not give this understanding if there is no internal support for it... The grain of understanding is always given in the experience of one’s own spiritual life. The enormous significance of historical science is that, in the variety of phenomena of modern spiritual experience, it allows us to distinguish phenomena that are valuable in historical and epistemological terms, corresponding to the historical course, typical, true believers, and phenomena that are not valuable in this regard, not typical, subjective, sectarian; but for all that, it is internal experience, even if placed in a certain direction in this way, that only one’s own experience gives internal comprehension of a historical phenomenon, a historical teaching. For theology, pure historical-critical science is valuable, without any tendency, creating only the external frame of the teaching, establishing its words, and the religious and creative construction of its internal meaning, while scholastic theology comes down to repeating and defending a certain formula of words, a certain system of facts. If it is objected to us that in this way, in the last result, only the external side of religious teaching is accessible to objective historical knowledge, while in the question of its internal meaning there always remains the possibility of subjective limitation, in which it is impossible to separate the historically objective from the subjectively creative, we will answer that so far no means are known to eliminate this limitation (cf. the words of Fr. I. L. Yanyshev cited in the text), we can only wish that this subjectivity would not was a mechanical introduction of a later meaning into old words, so that it did not violate the historical perspective of the external side of religious teaching and the requirements of critical science, so that it was applied only to the internal essence of the teaching, so that it did not protrude beyond the boundaries of the historical framework. – Here we enter the sphere of the question of the relationship between tradition and personal experience, personal creativity. Religion is essentially conservative. Religion is not invented and in this respect is completely opposite to philosophy; every true religion begins with words; You have heard what the ancients said, it begins with the worship of the God of the fathers. This is priestly conservatism, the sacred element of religion. No one himself accepts the honor of being sacred to God; this is deeper, it comes from dedication, from tradition. But true religion is not only priestly-conservative, but also prophetically-progressive, not only has a static element, but also a dynamic one, not only spontaneous-popular, but also personal-spiritual. The sacred folk element constitutes the historical basis from which religion goes deep into the individual. The depth of religion is given only in personal creativity” (Fundamentals of Christianity, II, 18–20). Isn't this clear? It is also stated by Fr. Svetlov, that I have rigorism or false spiritualism, naturally combined with contempt for worldly conventions, and this contempt is reflected in the provision of complete freedom for social life. Strange look about. Svetlova to grant freedom as an expression of contempt! I thank God that he saved me from this kind of absurdity. Assurances about Svetlova that I “persistently call for proud self-indulgence in personal absoluteness, with contempt for worldly conventions”, that in my opinion “the teaching of Christ is in itself, and life is in itself” (cf. Bell No. 855), that I “mystically prophesy” about the future “fusion of flesh and spirit” - all these are delusional fabrications of the sick head of the Kyiv apologist. And what techniques does Fr. Svetlov, in order to discredit my theology - this is what, truly, one can be horrified by! He writes about “the theology of a certain M. Tareev, a former professor at the Theological Academy.” Satisfy your burning hatred with at least such a fiction; what psychosis! And further, Fr. Svetlov writes that my theology, which he definitely qualified, is not needed by anyone “due to the unknown nature of the author,” although “the Tareevs are considered representatives of Christian scientific and theological knowledge,” which is what Svetlov is so indignant about. And finally, the last argument is used by the Kyiv apologist: all the evil of Tareevism comes from the Germans. “Idle talk, rented from a German,” as Fr. Svetlova was told by an authoritative (“former student”) employee of the authoritative “Life of Volyn”. (The German shits everything, as our peasant says at every social phenomenon that exceeds his understanding). And this is repeated after the German himself authoritatively recognized my Foundations of Christianity as an independent Russian work. I mean the review that N. Bonwetsch gave about my work in Theolog Literaturzeitung (1909 No. 3). (Durchweg tritt zutage, wie Tarejew bestrebt ist, das eigentliche Wesen des Christentums in seiner Tiefe zu erfassen und es in seibständiger Weise als ein einheitliches Gänze vorzuführen Dies geschieht in fesselnder Sprache und oft glänzender Darstellung Seine Schrift ist ein Beweis, wie nicht nur auf evegetischem und historischem Gebiet, sondern auch systematischem die russische Theologie darnach ringt, hinter der Theologie der andern Kirchen nicht zurückzubleiben) And even the Catholic magazine Slavorum litterae theologicae (1910 No. 1), giving (with a conscientious indication of the reasons for the verdict on my books - that their author contra ecclesiam catholicam veliementer inflammatur, ejus doctrinam atheam appellat etc) in general, a harsh review of my system (modernismi Russici clarum praebet exemplum), reproaching me that in it ubique ultima “criticae” inventa proferuntur, but does not deny its originality (Licet non rara neque pauca systemata philosophiae christianae nostris temporibus lucem aspexerint, tamen hoc prof. Tareev opus, vel potius haec opera, aliquil certe novi in hac re videntur exhibere) and, in obvious contradiction with my review, flatters myself with the hope that my ardent religious quest coincide with the essence of Catholic Christianity (nobis autem videtur scriptor, si doctrinam catholicam melius neque ex fontibus turbidis, cognoscere velit, fortasse id, quod tam ardenter quaesivit, in ea inventurus esse, illam nempe caritatem vivam atque concentum vitae alienum ab ascetismo solivago et jejuno). For all my obvious hostility to Catholicism, a Catholic reviewer would not want to take away from Christianity what I seek. How far all this is from the burning hatred and barbaric intolerance of the Russian teacher of the law! O. I. L. Yanyshev limits his last thought: “It cannot be said the other way around, that is, it cannot be said that where there are ascetic virtues, there certainly are external goods corresponding to them.” And this is because all these benefits are the result of the activities not of individuals, but of entire societies and, moreover, are at the highest disposal of Providence. This reservation does not change the essence of the matter at all. Elsewhere at Fr. I. L. Yanyshev comes across a completely opposite remark: “Happiness can be as much a necessary consequence and reward of virtue as it is an anti-moral motive for a person’s free actions. This remark contradicts the thesis “where there are external goods, there are certainly virtues corresponding to them” and the author did not think about it. This thesis is organically close to his system. And on one of the last pages he writes: “It is not difficult to establish a program for measuring success in any technical arts and sciences that convey accurate, positive knowledge. Such a program is impossible to measure the growth of moral life in general and moral and religious life in particular. Whatever the level of his moral development a person is at, he is morally perfect whenever he does everything that he can do while at this level; goodness is all morally good moods; wherever and in whatever it is expressed, it is everywhere, the whole thing, the whole spirit of a person, and is open only to himself, to this spirit and to the Knower of the Heart - God. External actions, so visible to other people, in themselves can never serve as a measure of goodness; for the external is incommensurate with the internal.” See Fundamentals of Christianity. esp. Vol. II. Foundations of Christianity, vol. V. O. I. L. Yanyshev wrote in his book: “In the article by Mr. M. M. Tareev, the Purpose and Meaning of Life says: “A Christian cannot be in the world other than an ascetic and holy fool.” Without asceticism, spiritual life, of course, is impossible: the life of the spirit on earth, in the body, is the constant use and possession of it, but what is the point of foolishness here; Meanwhile, on the next page, in passing, the same author clearly expresses such a completely sensible thought: “the calling of a Christian is to manifest the spiritual divine life in the fullness of natural life.” The demand for the fullness of natural life is not expressed by me by chance, but this is one of the fundamental stones of my system. And foolishness (=eccentricity, inevitable in religious natures, according to James’s terminology) is understood by me (equally fasting and prayer) in such a way that it does not interfere in the least, but even contributes to the fullness of natural life, and if, on the other hand, they object to me that in a treatise on these subjects I do not express the entire patristic teaching, then it is true that I avoid the extreme expression of asceticism, and take from it only what harmonizes with the fullness of natural life. O. I. L. Yanyshev, in vain objecting to my “foolishness,” however, himself adopts Feofanov’s ascetic asceticism, which is not reconciled with the fullness of natural life. This is how I am always bombarded with opposite, mutually exclusive, accusations - from some of extreme asceticism and from others of anti-asceticism. At least my critics thought about this blatant self-contradiction, at least they agreed among themselves, if they do not want to think through my system in its own principles and its own method! In the recently published book of Bp. Stefan. On the issue of systems of Orthodox Christian moral teaching, I am again and again mentioned and extremely humiliated as an opponent of asceticism. “Not only representatives of materialism, especially socialism, positivism and indifferentism (read indifferentism), but even idealism and, finally, some of our representatives of Orthodox theology (Prof. M. Tareev) were hostile to asceticism" (p. 157, also 221). Bishop humiliates me. Stefan, firstly, by the fact that, reviewing all systems of moral theology and even “scientific works, which, although they do not give us direct data for resolving the issue of building a system of Orthodox moral teaching, can nevertheless provide quite a bit of valuable material for the construction and maintenance of essential departments of such a system,” does not even mention my works, although another bishop testified (in. malam partem) in the Bell (No. 866) that “Prof. M. M. Tareev reads the subject that is mainly treated in his famous four volumes - namely, moral theology,” and although volume 5 contains an extensive article “Churchfulness as a subject of moral theology” on a special issue dealt with by Bishop. Stephen. But for that (and this is secondly) Bishop. Stefan carefully dwells on my polemic with Mr. Zarivo, whom, it goes without saying, the Right Reverend author takes under his protection. Thus, ep. Stefan notifies readers that “Prof. Tareev is noted by Mr. Zarin as an opponent of traditional asceticism and as expressing Orthodox teaching in some cases, in particular in thoughts about asceticism and other subjects closely related to it, not precisely and not quite definitely. Prof. Tareev (in his answer) first of all tries to expose Mr. Zarin in an unscrupulous attitude towards benefits both in general and in particular from him, prof. Tareeva. G. Zarin, accusing the latter of unorthodoxy on the issue of asceticism, at the same time allegedly (!?) borrows from him, without showing the sources, precise and definite Orthodox ideas about asceticism... In a lengthy response to such mercilessly cruel criticism, Prof. Tareeva Mr. Zarin makes every effort to justify himself from the accusations brought against him and tries to prove that the criticism of prof. Tareeva, as caused by personal irritation and anger in view of the unfavorable review of him in the study under consideration, does not have the character of an impartial and objective character, and that prof. Tareev himself justified the verdict he gave about our theological criticism as petty and picky” (221-222). So ep. Stefan presents the case to the reader. I will allow myself to point out to the eminent author his deviation from the actual truth. My accusation against Mr. Zarin is expressed categorically. "G. Zarin, claiming that I do not have a definite and precise, even general, idea about asceticism and other closely related subjects, that I do not have an exact expression of Orthodox teaching and that I am dependent on the little that I have that is good, in fact acquires from me precise and definite, Orthodox ideas about asceticism, which he uses in the form and extent of widespread plagiarism.” This is my accusation. There is hardly a single conscientious person in the world who would recognize this accusation as petty. No, this is one of those accusations, under the weight of which they “avoid leaving the house or meeting friends.” Mr. Zarin will not argue against this. Is this accusation picky? Let Mr. Zarin himself answer this, first of all. So, about my Orthodoxy. Calling me non-Orthodox on the issue of asceticism, Mr. Zarin, later, in response to my criticism, writes: (in the writings of Prof. M. M. Tareev) “a definite and correct, although only general, concept of the meaning and basic accessories of Christian asceticism is indeed given - and I can only regret that the presentation (of them) was not included in my review” (Chronicles Reading 1908. Dec. p. 1697). And this is not clearly stated? Isn't this the end of the matter? Ep. Stefan still finds it possible to talk, referring to Mr. Zarin, about my non-Orthodoxy on the issue of asceticism?! Yes, this means seeing without seeing, hearing without hearing! Now about Mr. Zarin’s plagiarist attitude towards my writings. I have proven the fact of plagiarism with mathematical clarity; It’s even unnecessary to ask about Mr. Zarin’s later opinion here. However, what does Mr. Zarin say in his answer? He admits the fact of plagiarism: “this is a similarity or borrowing from the above-mentioned works of Prof. M. M. Tareev, indeed, should have been marked with me” Chr. Thurs. 1909, February p. 300). Clear! And yet ep. Stefan finds it possible to talk about alleged borrowings. The factual truth is the minimum requirement of decency! "G. Zarin is justifying himself in every possible way.” Unfortunately, this is true. He did not have the courage to limit himself to these basic confessions, which decide our entire dispute. He succumbed to cowardice and resorted to all sorts of excuses. How pathetic are these excuses! He, you see, did not quote his borrowings from the work The Temptation of the God-Man, because “he was embarrassed by the inconvenience of the very title of the work”! If, Mr. Reader, you don’t like your neighbor’s wallet, then feel free to borrow its contents: such is Mr. Zarin’s conscience. He has other arguments. He generally puts his fame in the abundance of quotes, trace. the failure to include quotations from my writings could only be accidental. But, Mr. Zarin, silence about any one author while there is a deliberate abundance of other indications is a fairly common phenomenon: thus O. Comte persistently remains silent about S. Simon, only about S. Simon, so Nietzsche remains silent about Stirner, only about Stirner! It's all so clear. G. Zarin in his answer attaches special importance to the fact that he did not know my essay The Purpose and Meaning of Life. He “met an indication of it in the second edition of the Lectures by Fr. Protopresbyter I. L. Yanyshev, which he definitely stated on page 386 in Addenda et corrigenda to the 1st book, but, unfortunately, this edition itself by Fr. (he) acquired the protopresbyter and had the opportunity to read it when (his) work was already being published simultaneously in two printing houses.” But Mr. Zarin with these assurances only fools the public and reveals extreme dishonesty. The work The Purpose and Meaning of Life is mentioned at least three times in the Philosophy of Evangelical History, where excerpts are made from it on the very pages that Mr. Zarin examines in his review. And Mr. Zarin assures that he is “not pretending”! Further, he acts out bewilderment in front of the readers in view of my offense at the fact that he quoted the Temptations of Christ in the 2nd edition and at the same time did not name the first edition. Clearly picky on my part! And The Temptations of Christ in 2nd ed. could have been given to Mr. Zarin, without his acquaintance with the op. The purpose and meaning of life are just individual thoughts. For a long time he has been familiar with only one opus. Temptations of the God-Man in 1st ed. (about which I argued that Mr. Zarin learned most from him), which, again, due to his unfamiliarity with the treatise The Purpose and Meaning of Life, could not have influenced his system. But Mr. Zarin hides from the readers of his answer the mutual relationship of my writings. My first work, The Temptation of the God-Man, already represents the entire system of my Christian philosophy, and one can equate this work with the Fundamentals of Christianity. All my subsequent writings, included in the Fundamentals of Christianity, represent only a further development of the theses already given in it. The Humiliation of Christ is the disclosure and substantiation of the thoughts of the third chapter of the Temptation of the God-Man. The philosophy of the gospel story is outlined in the second half of the fourth chapter. Especially and most closely, the content of the Temptations of the God-Man is divided between two later works (combined in volume 3): The purpose and meaning of life and the Temptations of Christ (2nd and 3rd ed.), so that the latter reproduces only an insignificant (2nd ed. 198 pp.) and the most special part of the Temptations of the God-Man (4–56 pp. 1) - without the content that went into the works The Humiliation of Christ, The Philosophy of Gospel History and (what is really especially important) The Purpose and Meaning of Life. But with the thoughts of the last work, even if we assume (incredibly) that Mr. Zarin did not have it at hand, he could get acquainted with the same not named by him (my most extensive work) Temptation of the God-Man. So no matter how you turn things around, Mr. Zarin has “similar thoughts” with Op. The purpose and meaning of life, as he himself admits, are explained “quite naturally.” The Temptations of the God-Man, with which Mr. Zarin is now forced to admit his long-standing acquaintance and about which I said that “Mr. Zarin borrows more from The Temptation of the God-Man than from my other books,” could have influenced him systematically, so that each of my subsequent books lay on already prepared soil. In vain Mr. Zarin raises the question of whether it was possible to plagiarize the Temptations of the God-Man before the publication of my subsequent works. The answer to this question has already been given in the Soviet protocols of M.D. A for 1899, p. 131. And Mr. Zarin also makes excuses. In each incriminated excerpt, one can distinguish between content and wording, word expression. Mr. Zarin could have come to the content of the borrowed passages himself, but one and the same idea can be expressed in many ways, so what can one interpret? The very fact of borrowing is empty. Yes, besides, Mr. Zarin continues, if you don’t pay attention to the long excerpts, then, after all, small excerpts of 3-4 lines remain: there is something to talk about! No, Mr. Zarin, neither psychology, nor sophistry, nor even mathematics will help you eliminate the terrible fact (and God grant that this is the only case in the history of our theology), a fact that remains in all its menacing nakedness with the minimum of the evidence I have cited and recognized by Mr. Zarin himself: Mr. Zarin, accusing me of lacking an Orthodox view of asceticism by mastering articles not related to the issue, at the same time used my other writings, which give a definite and correct concept of asceticism, so that now it turns out that we both “expound the same teaching” (Chronicles Thu. 1908, Dec. p. 1697)! For the existence of this most shameful fact, it is completely indifferent whether the incriminated excerpt is four or five lines long. Ep. Stefan emphasizes Mr. Sarin's statement that all my criticism of his books is the fruit of personal irritation. This is what I completely agree with and what I don’t hide in any way: if Mr. The Sarins made no attacks on my reputation or my literary property; I would never remember their name. My polemic with Mr. Zarin, Basov, Lavrsky, etc., which I deal with in almost every book. B. West., is always only self-defense, an apology. And if in my response to Mr. Zarin I gave my self-defense a broad formulation and from defense I move on to attack, to an examination of the entire work of Mr. plagiarist-Zarin, then the very nature of his crime forced me to do this. After all, I don’t act like that towards Fr. Svetlov, whose attack against me is only an episode, is an insert in his book. How objective and evidentiary my accusations are is another matter, but my feelings towards Mr. Zarin are the feelings of an offended or offended person towards the offender. G. Zarin writes: “a person who is interested, offended or insulted by someone, anywhere - according to sound legal norms, cannot be a judge, cannot pronounce a final verdict on a person who is or is considered an offender.” But how can these functions be divided in relation to such a crime as Mr. Zarin’s ugly act? After all, I am expressing a judgment only about Mr. Zarin’s offense against me, and not about his moral life in general. In conclusion, Mr. Zarin assimilates (from one magazine article) the following plaintive lament: “people are much more cruel than animals, and usually the more civilized a person is, the more refined his cruelty. True, we do not have lashes and whips, but the wounds from lashes and whips will heal. And in cultural countries of both hemispheres, torture consisting of personal disgrace is widely practiced. Your religious, political, scientific opponent or just an enemy will not set fire to your house, or lie in wait around the corner with a knife in his hands. No, he will try to disgrace you in print. He will claim about you that you are a stupid, unscrupulous person and will make more or less clear hints that you have committed a number of crimes.” Strongly said. But how did Mr. Zarin manage to forget this in such a short time, since our business began with an attempt by Mr. Zarin on my name and my literary property. After all, it was he who made more or less clear hints about my non-Orthodoxy (and at such a critical time for me), he tried to disgrace me! Now he gets only what he deserves. He himself is to blame for his shame. G. Zarin writes (Chronicle Thur. 1909 Jan. 99–100): “It must be said that initially my entire paragraph of the review of the theological views of Prof. M. M. Tareev was limited to this note only. Then, having become acquainted with his articles: “Spirit and Flesh,” I presented a feasible analysis of them. The matter proceeded historically and naturally. But Prof. M. M. Tareev wants to present everything in a wrong way: he sees everywhere a cunningly conceived and deftly executed maneuver.” If I personally had no reason, no motivation, no desire to “nod” to some “spheres” about the “suspiciousness” of Orthodoxy by Prof. M. M. Tareev, then objectively my judgments, I’m sure, no one has used, will not use and could not use... Only something else can a frightened imagination paint such phantasmagoric pictures... But I, you must agree, have nothing to do with it... I just turned up at such an hour.” When Mr. Zarin wrote these lines, he wrote a lie - and he knew that he was writing a lie. I have documentary evidence that Mr. Zarin personally treated me “enthusiastically,” but he “could not or did not manage to overcome objective circumstances and influences”—“he was given the duty” to scold me—and Mr. Zarin wrote “the very answer to (my) criticism” at an outside “demand.” I will publish these documents at the first request of Mr. Zarina. Compare this generous review of. I. L. Yanysheva with the stencil melodies of all these Svetlovs, Zarins, Davydovs, Skvortsovs, their name is legion, in order to appreciate the entire moral height on which the late Fr. stood, among the atmosphere surrounding him. Protopresbyter. This review by the late Fr. protopresbyter is not the least surprising to me. I myself, in a recent response to Mr. Zarin, asserting the impossibility of my thoughts coinciding with the concepts of Fr. I. L. Yanysheva, wrote: “in general, my system does not coincide in any significant way with the system of Fr. Protopresbyter Yanyshev" (God. West. 1908, June 315). Now the same thing is evidenced. I. L. Yanyshev. However, I must testify to my long-standing acquaintance with the work of I. L. Yanyshev. G. Zarin, who has the rare ability to distort everything he touches, which is inevitable given his amazing graphomania, reinterprets my words: “Oh. Protopresbyter Yanyshev, whose book I have now, at the direction of Mr. Zarin, carefully read, dedicates to me,” etc. (ib. p. 333) in the sense that I was not familiar with the work of Fr. Protopresbyter I. L. Yanyshev. "Prof. M. M. Tareev, says Mr. Zarin, had never even read the works of Fr. I. L Yanyshev, as he testifies in this bibliographic essay” (Chronicles Reading, February 1909, 294). “The professor claims, and Mr. Zarin also repeats (p. 295–296), that he has never even read a book by Fr. I. L. Yanysheva.” "Prof. M. M. Tareev admits that he read a book by Fr. protopresbyter only now, and even then on my instructions,” repeats Mr. Zarin again (Chronicle Thurs. 1908 Nov. 1538). But I could not say what Mr. Zarin attributes to me, since the book about. I.L. Yanyshev in 1st ed. quoted in my essay The Temptation of Christ (2nd ed.) on pages 9 and 148. I will also add that at the academy we prepared for the exam in Moral Theology using the book of Fr. I. L. Yanysheva. I didn’t even say that I “never read before,” “never read” his book, that “I only read it now.” To carefully read a book, especially in the 2nd edition, especially according to some instructions, for some specific purpose, this does not mean that the book was not read in the 1st edition, in general - earlier. After all, Mr. Zarin himself, when he says, “having read carefully – and more than once – the collected works of the professor, I can firmly state” (Chronicles of Reading 1909, Feb. 303), does he mean to say that he had not read these works before, in the first editions? Using all means to reveal my idea, without missing an opportunity to refer to explanatory analogies, I am pleased to point out here the article by the famous P. Novgorodtsev, “The Social Ideal in the Light of Temporal Quests” in the last (103) book of Questions of Philosophy and Psychology. In the question of the social ideal - in this most important problem of morality - in recent days “the dawn of a new day is dawning.” “The old constructions no longer satisfy us; we are looking for and waiting for new solutions and words. But what happened? How has social philosophy changed its views? Where does the infinity of prospects come from? Why the amazing complexity of social problems? To immediately name the reason that I consider the main and fundamental one, I will say that we are seeing the collapse of one very old faith - faith in the possibility of an earthly paradise. In this idea, the old social philosophy saw its highest limit; on this it asserted the power of its predictions and the firmness of its hopes. And now this idea is taken away from her: the clear goal of her quest is taken away, the close, accessible shore is lost from sight.” In the second half of the 19th century, the political enthusiasm associated with the political movements of France at the end of the 18th century, the 30th and 48th years of the XIX century was eliminated: they stopped believing in the miraculous power of political changes, in their ability to bring with them the heavenly kingdom of truth and goodness. The political ideal was replaced by a social ideal - in socialism and anarchism, to which religious and social enthusiasm moved. But this enthusiasm also passes, and along with this the idea of ​​an earthly paradise generally falls, which essentially stands in contradiction with all the new data of both scientific theory and moral philosophy. First of all, the idea of ​​a sustainable heavenly bliss that people here on earth must achieve is fundamentally contrary to the evolutionary worldview of our day. Isn’t it really strange to assume that the movement that has been continuously taking place until now will suddenly stop at the gates of earthly paradise, which for some reason will fall to the lot of one of the generations following us? Isn’t it strange to think that the struggle of forces and passions will cease and subside, hatred and enmity will fall silent to give way to eternal peace? But there are other reasons why we should abandon the old belief in an earthly paradise. When we analyze the utopia of an earthly paradise, we see that it began with the idea of ​​​​giving man unconditional and complete satisfaction. What is expected from an ideal social organization here is not only to pacify people, but also to organize their spiritual life, to save them from self-contradictions and internal discord, from the temptations and sins of the world. The task is posed in such a way as to find a form of arrangement in which a person would feel in complete harmony with the social environment, in an unconditional and blessed merger with it. But the very formulation of this task presupposes that complete harmony can be established between the individual and society, that unconditional coincidence and unity are possible between them. This idea of ​​the harmony of the individual with the environment was an inseparable companion of the utopia of the earthly paradise, and it is here that the searches of our days abruptly break off the old tradition. The individual emerged from the storms and anxieties of the 19th century with a new perspective on his calling and his being. The 18th century gave her a declaration of inalienable rights, and the 19th century gave her something more - the consciousness of an irreplaceable, non-repeating, unique individuality. The individual emerged from this century with a sense of his unsatisfied longing, with a thirst for a higher ideal, with the thought of his contradiction with society. Yes, this must be admitted: it is not harmony, but the antinomy of personal and social principles that is revealed to us by the searches of our days. From different sides and in different expressions the position is put forward that there is not and cannot be a complete coincidence between the individual and society, but on the contrary, there is a certain discrepancy that cannot be smoothed out or eliminated. And therefore, no matter what perfect forms future generations come up with, they will never find a way to fully satisfy the individual, much less save him from the consciousness of his imperfection. And it is clear that the individual ceases to believe in the absolute significance of politics, in the saving effect of social forms. She begins to realize that these forms can give only part of what she needs, and no matter how they dazzle her with the ease and convenience of life, the wealth and luxury of institutions, the wonders and effects of technology, they are not able to satisfy the inner hunger of the soul seeking the city. - What about the social ideal? Has it not dimmed, has it not suffered in the light of new revelations of individualism? Is there a renunciation of all actions and hopes in the public world? Is there a message of personal self-gratification here? We can answer this with the most definite and categorical denial. After all, even those who strangely contrast the tasks of spiritual life with external forms of community life do not exclude social creation. It can be forgotten even less by those who are familiar with the simple truth, so persistently put forward by modern science, that the external forms of community life, in a certain sense, constitute a part of our spiritual life, its result and symbol. The movement of our days does not lead to the oblivion of politics for the sake of morality, but only to the demand for their necessary distinction. Social institutions do not constitute an absolute goal for a person, but they are, however, a necessary and indispensable means for moving forward along the path of moral progress. Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's - this eternal covenant remains in force even today. This is recognition of the independence of both spiritual and political affairs; Each area has its own paths and tasks, and each must retain its significance for man. Developing this position, it would not be difficult to show that political realism fully coexists with the highest moral idealism. You might be interested in: