The Question of Personal Salvation

Your Reverence and Mm. years! To your enlightened attention I offer my best attempt to reveal, on the basis of Holy Scripture and the works of the Holy Fathers, the Orthodox teaching about personal salvation, that is, in what sense and in what way a person, each given person, receives the communion of true, eternal life. It is not difficult to determine the motives that forced me to dwell on this particular department of doctrine. The question about life, about the purpose of existence - about how a person can live in order to live a true life - is truly the alpha and omega of every philosophy and every religious system. No matter how abstract, vague, sometimes strange and even absurd the logical constructions of this or that thinker may be, but since he is really a thinker, and not an industrialist of thought, since he wants truth, wants the word coming from the mouth of God, and not bread, the final end and at the same time the point of departure of his philosophical work will still be himself, his own position in the world and this or that definition of his life task. Philosophy without conclusions for life is not philosophy, but an empty game of philosophical words. It's the same in religion. Knowledge about God will only make sense for a person when God is for him the “Only Holy One,” the bearer of his ideals, the legislator of his life. “And demons believe,” says St. Apostle James, “but they only tremble.” For them it would be better not to know about God at all, and they, of course, would prefer a state of ignorance to their present state. A person who lives only for the moment, who considers only his own as the law of his existence. will, his own desire - such a person, of course, will never argue much about what faith he professes. For him, all faiths are equally abstract and meaningless, and, therefore, equally indifferent. The truths of faith can only interest him as a subject of dispute in which he can discover his knowledge, his wit - they will interest him, perhaps, as his natural, national property - in a word, they can be interesting for their external side and by chance. reasons. But such a person cannot understand and recognize the truth, the objectivity and, therefore, the obligatory nature of this creed. He sees only philosophical positions and conclusions, sees only dogma and does not notice the way of life, which in fact, in reality, constitutes the content of all these abstract and incomprehensible subtleties of dogma for him. “Whoever says that he loves God, but hates his brother, is a liar and there is no truth in him” (1 John 4:20). Knowledge of God is valid when it is accompanied by an appropriate life - when a person arranges himself according to this knowledge. But life is a judge of man not only in this general sense, i.e. not only whether he believes or does not believe in what he preaches. Life serves as the best means for determining and clarifying the true worldview of a person or one or another philosophical system, as well as for evaluating this worldview. In the question of God, the world and the general relations between them, one can sometimes limit oneself to one form, only the external relationships of concepts, without asking the question of what this form or this shell contains, without bringing abstract conclusions to tangible, vital clarity. These questions, abstract by their very essence, may sometimes not require (at least, it may seem that they do not require) such a correspondence in present reality - this correspondence is assumed somewhere above, far from this life and from the surrounding environment. But as soon as a person descends from the height of abstraction down to the ground to real life, as soon as he leaves being with its whole and concerns himself in particular with his own personality, tries from a general basis to deduce his personal relationships to this whole and to other similar personalities, then all possibility of limiting himself to one form, one abstraction is immediately taken away from him. No matter how harmonious his system is, no matter how well his various definitions and conclusions are adjusted to each other, neither he himself nor anyone else in the matter of life will be satisfied with this harmony. It will be necessary to show what actually corresponds to these harmonious concepts and conclusions. This is where the illusory, fictitious nature of many theories and systems can be revealed. All the carefully and effectively finished construction of some thinker can crumble into dust from this one contact with life, precisely from the mere impossibility of confirming one’s speculations with reference to experience. If the worldview is true, then, when compared with life, abstract and obscure formulas and terms become clear, understandable, almost tangible - then real life will no longer seem like a strange denial of philosophy, not a crude mockery of its idealism, but, on the contrary, its explanation, commentary, direct conclusion from it. The question of personal salvation represents precisely this point in the system of our religious doctrine, at which the latter comes face to face with reality, with real being, and wants to show in life, in practice, what exactly is the truth that it preaches. At this point, each religion can find an impartial assessment. Since here a definition of a person’s life goal is assumed, completely in accordance with the arguments of reason and the requirements of moral consciousness - since all abstract formulas and terms find full correspondence in the data of experience, leaving nothing dark, nothing unexplained - since the remaining parts of the system, the abstract parts are directly assumed and in turn explained by this definition of life and do not contradict it in any way - this means that this religion is not a set of human inventions, but a direct snapshot of the real existence, that it does not distort the fact of life, but truly reproduces it - that, therefore, it is the truth. And, on the other hand, once facts are found in real life that correspond to the provisions and conclusions - once, therefore, the opportunity has presented itself to experimentally comprehend what life is like according to Christianity, then the entire system of Christian doctrine is freed from obscurity, abstraction, formality. "Whoever loves his brother has known God and seen Him," says the Apostle (1 John 4:7-8). He who has actually experienced the essence of Christian life will understand what the life of God consists of, because the latter is not only a metaphysical foundation, but also a direct prototype and source of human life. In that (the Word of God) there was life and life was the light of men (John 1:4), presented to human consciousness and as an ideal. Consequently, anyone who wants to know the true essence of Catholicism, Protestantism or Orthodoxy must turn not to their theoretical teaching, but to their concept of life, to their teaching specifically about personal salvation, in which (the teaching) this concept is most clearly expressed - he must question each of the faiths, in what it believes the meaning of a person’s life, his highest good. The dogma of the filioque undoubtedly concerns the cornerstone of our faith - but did it express this dogma of all Catholicism and is it possible to think that with its elimination Western Christianity will make reconciliation with us? Only one of the many points of disagreement will be eliminated, only one of the many reasons for bickering will be less, and the division will not weaken at all. After all, Catholicism is not from filioque, but vice versa. The dogma of the papacy, of course, constitutes the main spring, so to speak, the soul of Catholicism, but again, it was not from the papacy that the perverted Catholic understanding of life came, but from this latter - the papacy, otherwise it is impossible to explain why and how the pope found and is finding in the Western world so many obedient, fanatically devoted servants and so many silent followers - only with forgeries and tricks, only with the Jesuitism and love of power of Rome of this phenomenon cannot be explained. In the same way, not as a result of the rejection of the sacraments and church tradition and not as a result of an exaggerated concept of the fallen nature of man, Protestants came to their illusory, fictitious salvation, but, on the contrary, having distorted the very concept of life, they had to consistently distort the entire church structure and teaching. Suppose that all the errors in doctrine and structure are corrected - the distorted concept of life will prove that these corrections are only in words - after a while Protestants will have to create new distortions, new errors in place of the eliminated ones. In the same way, Orthodoxy is not recognized from its theoretical teaching. Abstract statements and formulas, by their very abstractness, are equally incomprehensible and inconceivable for a person, whether they are Catholic or Orthodox. Would direct logical absurdity reveal the inconsistency of the heterodox system? As an expression of precisely this objectively given truth, Orthodoxy is cognized most and more deeply where it most directly comes into contact with this objective truth, with the realm of real existence: in its description of the actual life of man, in its definition of the goal of life and based on this latter teaching about personal salvation. Only by finally having assimilated the Orthodox teaching about life can one be fully (not just by logic) convinced of the immutable, unconditional truth of Orthodoxy - one can understand, visually comprehend this truth. After this, you will receive your deep, full-life meaning and all those theoretical positions, all those dogmas that previously seemed only indifferent metaphysical subtleties. All this will be one and the same, united in spirit and idea, a teaching about true life - only this time life is considered not for a person, but in its objective reality, in itself. I had to be convinced of these elementary truths in practice when writing my essay. At first I approached the question of personal salvation with purely theoretical interest. I wanted to clarify this question for myself simply, as a dark, confusing point of doctrine, difficult to define. How can we more accurately express our doctrine of salvation? That an Orthodox cannot speak as Catholics speak is known; that he is even less allowed to speak as Protestants speak; this is also beyond all doubt; but how he should speak, we were not given an exact definition of this. I was interested in the question: does Orthodoxy really have to be content with, so to speak, scraps from Western confessions, does it really not have its own positive content, peculiar to it alone? If the vagueness and confusion are due to heterodoxy, it is not difficult to explain it to oneself. Heteroslavism is a distortion. As soon as it is compared with this truth, with real existence (and this comparison is made in the doctrine of personal salvation), some discrepancy will be revealed, some ambiguity will result. Even if heterodoxy is harmonious and consistent in its system, this still does not prove anything, or it only proves that the abstract teaching of heterodoxy is rebuilt according to a distorted concept of life and, therefore, also incorrectly conveys the objective truth, is also distorted. But how to understand uncertainty in Orthodoxy? If it has preserved, without any embellishment or subtraction, the very teaching of Jesus Christ - it, therefore, conveys such knowledge of God and the world as only the Only Begotten Son Himself, Who exists in the bosom of the Father, possessed - it gives such a definition of life as only the Source and Bearer of life could give. Why, with all its definiteness and clarity in abstract teaching, should Orthodoxy be hidden behind a fog, as it were, when it has to reveal its teaching in practice (precisely in the matter of personal salvation)? If Orthodoxy is the truth, it must directly and clearly reflect objective existence, real life, and there should be no ambiguities. The question arose naturally: is our understanding of the teachings of the Orthodox Church correct? Are we not mixing something extraneous into the pure teaching, which obscures it? We all know that the rubrics that now exist in dogmatics did not originate with us, not in the Orthodox Church and not in Orthodox science - that they, on the contrary, were invented in the West in the age of scholasticism, invented, of course, for heterodox dogma and, therefore, adapted specifically to it, to the Western worldview and way of thinking. Do we have the right to transfer these alien rubrics into our science and develop Orthodox teaching based on them? To give myself an idea of ​​this, I began to read the works of St. Fathers of the Church. I read them not only because I remembered their, so to speak, canonical authority, not only as a church tradition obligatory for every Christian. My thought was somewhat different: I was looking for in the works of St. fathers of the description and explanation of life according to Christ, or the true, proper life, i.e. precisely that phenomenon in the objective world that they want to deductively deduce and define by the abstract formulas of dogmatics. I wanted to understand the views of the fathers on human life, so that from this objective basis I could then test the theoretical teaching and give it a more appropriate explanation. This method of research is necessary in Orthodoxy. We know that Jesus Christ brought us more than one teaching, and that the work of the apostles and the church was not only to listen to the conversations of Jesus Christ and then pass them on literally from generation to generation: for such a purpose, the best means is not oral tradition, but some kind of tablets. We know that Jesus Christ brought us first and most importantly new life and taught it to the apostles, and that the task of church tradition is not just to pass on teaching, but to pass on from generation to generation precisely this life conceived with Christ, to convey precisely that which is not transmitted by any word, by any writing, but only by direct communication between individuals. Theoretical teaching only generalizes and elevates this teaching about life into a system. Therefore, the apostles chose as their successors and deputies people who were the most successful, who most consciously and firmly assimilated the life of Christ proclaimed to them. Therefore, the fathers of the church are not recognized as those of the church writers who were the most learned, the most well-read in church literature, but the holy writers are recognized as the fathers of the church, that is, those who embodied the life of Christ, which the church received as its inheritance to preserve and disseminate. If so, then you can form a correct concept of Orthodoxy not by analyzing its fundamental, abstract teaching, but by observing this real life according to Christ, which is preserved in the Orthodox Church. And since the recognized bearers, embodiments of this life, this vital tradition were St. Fathers, who in their writings interpret this life in detail, it is natural to turn to them for observations. I did just that. The more I read St. fathers, it became clearer and clearer to me that I was moving in a completely special world, in a circle of concepts that were far from similar to ours. I began to understand that the difference between Orthodoxy and heterodoxy lies not in some particular omissions and inaccuracies, but right at the very root, in principle, that Orthodoxy and heterodoxy are opposite to each other, just as self-love, life according to the elements of the world, the old man and self-sacrificing love, life according to Christ, a renewed man, are opposite. Before me stood two completely different worldviews, irreducible to one another: legal and moral, Christian. I called the first legal, because the best expression of this worldview is the Western legal system, in which the individual and his moral dignity disappear and only individual legal units and the relationships between them remain. God is understood mainly as the first cause and Ruler of the world, closed in his absoluteness - His relationship with man is similar to the relationship of a king with a subordinate and is not at all like a moral union. In the same way, a person is represented in his individuality, he lives for himself and only with one external side of his being comes into contact with the life of the common, he only uses this common; Even God, from a human point of view, is only a means to achieving well-being. Consequently, self-love is recognized as the beginning of life, and the general sign of existence is the mutual alienation of all living things. Meanwhile, according to St. fathers, being and life in the proper sense belong only to God, who bears the name “This One,” - but everything else, everything created exists and lives exclusively by its participation in this true life of God, this desired Beauty, according to St. Basil the Great. God, therefore, is connected with his creation by more than one absolute “let there be”, God literally serves as the focus of life, without which the creature is as unthinkable in its present existence as it is inexplicable in its origin. Translating this metaphysical position into the language of moral life, we get the rule: no one can and should not live for himself, - the meaning of life of every private being is in God, which practically means in the fulfillment of His will. “I came not to do My will, but the will of the Father who sent Me.” Thus, the main principle of everyone’s life is no longer recognized as self-love, but “the love of truth" (2 Thessalonians 2:10). Faithful to this law, man in his relations with God, the world and people is no longer guided by a selfish thirst for existence (the conclusion from here would be the struggle for existence), but by selfless hunger and thirst for truth, as the highest law, to which he sacrifices his being. In legal terms in life understanding they were looking for happiness, here they are looking for truth. There, moral goodness, holiness, was considered a means to achieving bliss; here, true existence is attributed only to moral goodness, embodied in God - and human bliss, therefore, is considered identical with holiness. After this, it is clear what will happen if we apply the framework of the legal understanding of life to the moral, Christian one. Of course, it will be possible to find a lot of literal coincidences - it will be possible to fit, squeeze in this or that Orthodox position under each legal heading. But we must remember that the legal framework is much more formal, external than the moral one, that they cannot express the full depth and vitality of the moral understanding of life. A huge variety of concepts will turn out to be completely ungeneralized, left without attention - many things that must necessarily be presented as one will be divided, and, on the contrary, things that require strict distinctions will be brought together under one heading. Orthodox teaching will therefore be presented, in any case, one-sidedly, not to say incorrectly. This determined the content and nature of my work: I had to start with a critique of the legal understanding of life, so that later in the chapters: on eternal life, on retribution, on salvation and on faith, I would reveal the positive Orthodox teaching. My general conclusion is this: a person’s true life is in communication with God. It is possible to be a partaker of this eternal life only through assimilation to God (hence the need for good deeds, that is, spiritual and moral growth), but this assimilation is possible only when God comes to man, and man recognizes and accepts God. Therefore, the grace-filled help of God and faith in Christ and God are necessary, which makes salvation possible. "Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears My voice and opens the door, I will come in to him, and I will dine with him and he with Me. To him who overcomes I will give to sit with Me on My throne, just as I also overcame and sat with My Father on His throne (Apoc. 3:20-21). All the providence of God is directed towards this, the whole economy of our salvation, this is the goal and the meaning and ministry of Jesus Christ. The basis of my research, as one of my venerable reviewers put it, is the idea of ​​​​the identity of beatitude and virtue, moral perfection and salvation. How successfully and consistently I applied this idea to that department of the doctrine that I wanted to reveal is not for me to judge, but I console myself with the thought that in the theological work I recalled this idea, or more precisely, I recalled the need to keep it in mind during the dogmatic study of Orthodox teaching. Speech before the defense of a master's thesis on the topic: “Orthodox teaching on salvation.” You might be interested in: