The world lies in evil, which means. The whole world lies in evil

The world lying in evil Looking around at the situation around us, it is not difficult for an Orthodox Christian to see that the modern world literally lies in evil and that humanity in its lawlessness not only “caught up and overtook” Sodom and Gomorrah, but also that antediluvian humanity that was betrayed by the Lord destruction by flood. And if today's humanity is not yet given over, as it was predicted, to destruction by fire, then this is only because it still contains the number of righteous people that the forefather Abraham tried to bargain with God to save Sodom and Gomorrah (and could not), and therefore, that the Lord is merciful to the end of the human race and gives the opportunity to be saved to everyone who can still be saved. It is difficult for an Orthodox Christian to live in a world where the sins of Sodom are a hundred times greater than their original. The souls of not only the righteous, but also of ordinary believers, languish and suffocate in this hellish fumes... However, by its very nature, an Orthodox Christian should not despair, but rely on the Providence of God in everything, continue to live and work for the salvation of his soul. At the same time, it can be very useful to understand the situation in which we find ourselves deeper. To this end, we bring to your attention a number of articles interpreting this issue. Conversation about the Meaning of Evil The thought of world evil lies like a heavy burden of doubt in the hearts of many believers. It seems incomprehensible why God allows evil. After all, God in His omnipotence could easily eliminate evil... How can an infinitely merciful God endure that the evil deeds of one scoundrel doom thousands, sometimes millions, maybe even half of humanity, to need, grief, disaster? What is the meaning of evil? After all, God has nothing meaningless. To answer these questions, it is necessary to recall what evil is. By evil we must understand not suffering, want, and deprivation, but sins and moral guilt. God does not want evil. Almighty God cannot approve of evil. Moreover, God forbids evil. God punishes evil. Evil or sin is a contradiction, an objection to the will of God. The beginning of evil, as you know, was laid by the highest angel created by God, who boldly went out of obedience to the all-good will of God and became the devil. The devil is the cause of evil, and he inspires or influences the origin of sin in man. It is not the human body, as many people think, that is the source of sin, no, but it becomes an instrument of sin or goodness, not in itself, but from the will of man. The true faith of Christ points to the following two reasons for the existence of evil in the world: (1) the first reason lies in the free will of man; (2) The second reason for the existence of evil is that although it is inevitable under free will, God also directs this evil to good. Our free will is the imprint of God's likeness. This gift of God raises a person above all the creatures of the world... In the free choice of good and deviation from evil, a person glorifies God and improves himself. The book of Jesus Sirach says: “He (God) created man from the beginning and left him in the hands of will”, i.e. God created man in the beginning and left him free choice. Thus, God gives people with good will the opportunity to earn heaven for themselves, and people with evil will - hell. But both the one and the other are obtained only through the free will of the human will. St. Cyril of Jerusalem says: “If by nature, and not by freedom, you did good, then why did God prepare inexplicable crowns? A meek sheep, but she will never be crowned for her meekness, because her meekness comes not from freedom, but from nature. St. Basil the Great says: “Why is sinlessness not given to us in the device itself, incl. it would be impossible to sin, even though they wanted to? For the same reason, why do you not recognize ministers as serviceable when you keep them bound, but when you see that duties are voluntarily performed before you. Therefore, God is also pleased with what is not forced, but done voluntarily - virtue comes from the will, and not from necessity, and the will depends on what is in us; and what is free in us. Therefore, whoever reproaches the Creator for not making us sinless does nothing else but prefers nature, unreasonable, immovable and having no aspirations, to nature endowed with volition and independence. In other words, he prefers a car (robot) to an intelligent creature. God does not want evil under any circumstances. But since evil entered the world through the fault of creation, God in His world plan also forces evil to serve good. Here is an example: the sons of Jacob sold their brother Joseph into slavery. They did an evil deed. But God turned evil into good. Joseph was exalted in Egypt and had the opportunity to save his family from hunger, from which the Messiah was to come. When, a few years later, Joseph saw his brothers, he told them: "You planned evil against me, but God turned him to good." In the days of the apostles, the Jews persecuted the Christians in Palestine. And Christians had to flee from Judea, sanctified by the life and blood of the Savior. But everywhere they went, they sowed the gospel word. The sins of the persecutors were directed by the Divine hand to the spread of Christianity. The pagan emperors of Rome persecuted the young Christian Church. Tens of thousands of martyrs then shed their blood for Christ. And the blood of the martyrs became the seed for millions of new Christians. The fury of the persecutors, the sin of hatred and murder were directed by God here to build the Church. They thought and did evil, but God turned all their deeds to good. The whole history of mankind, up to the events of our days, shows the truth of these words. The greatest catastrophes of nations were at the same time the greatest triumphs of religion, the conversion of people to God. We must only have patience and wait, "for with God one day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like one day." But even this weaving of evil into the plan of world governance was not some kind of belated superstructure or amendment to what had been created. It is an act of the eternal will of God. Archpriest Seraphim Slobodskoy

Vl.S.Soloviev

SPIRITUAL BASES OF LIFE

PART TWO

CHAPTER 1
ABOUT CHRISTIANITY

I. The whole world lies in evil(1 John 5:19).

Christianity appeared as the good news of salvation to the whole world. For the whole world lies in evil. The way of salvation from this world-holding evil was opened by Christ by His feat and His teaching. Mankind has embarked on this path, but few have traversed it, and to this day the world's salvation remains only good. news. And until now the world lies in evil. And the vital meaning of Christianity was first turned by the leaders of mankind into an abstract teaching, and then almost completely disappeared from the consciousness of advanced people and hid in the dark depths of the people's soul. The meaning of Christianity cannot be clear to those who feel good in this world. For such people, the preaching of Christ was a mute word, because they did not see the evil from which Christ came to save the world. But they did not see it and do not see it because they themselves are from the world and are completely possessed by the evil of the world. Those who feel the burden of this evil and seek salvation, thereby show that they are not of this world, but of God.

Truly, the whole world lies in evil. Evil is a universal fact, for all life in nature begins with struggle and malice, continues in suffering and slavery, and ends in death and corruption.

We consider a universal fact to be a law. The first law of nature is the struggle for existence. The whole life of nature passes in the continuous hostility of beings and forces, in their malicious violations and seizures of another's being. Every being in our world, from the smallest speck of dust to man, with all his natural life says one thing: I am and everything else is only for me, and, colliding with another, it says to him: if I exist, then you can no longer exist, you do not exist. places with me. And everyone says this, everyone encroaches on everyone and wants to destroy everyone, and he himself is destroyed by everyone.

The life of nature, insofar as it is based on selfishness, is evil life and its law is the law sin . According to the same law, sin inevitably leads its retribution, causing one evil to another. For if every being has a hostile effect on others and displaces them with itself, then the others are just as hostile to it, they press it in the same way, and it must involuntarily experience this hostile effect. There is such a test suffering- the second type of world evil. Just as everything in nature sins one against the other, so inevitably one suffers from the other.

By virtue of its egoism, which separates it from all others, every being appears in an environment alien to him, which crowds and crushes him from everywhere, intrudes hostilely into his being and subjects him to many sufferings. The whole life of a natural being is in this struggle with an alien and hostile environment, in defending oneself from it; but it cannot defend itself against the onslaught of foreign forces: it is one, but there are many of them, and they must overcome. Opposition between each and all is inevitably resolved death everyone - the hostile environment finally dissolves his being and forces him out of life - the struggle ends death and decay.

And this is fair. The being itself admitted in its egoism that it could not live together with others, it itself excluded itself from everything and posed a hellish dilemma: either I or others. By opposing itself to everything, it will itself call upon itself the strength of all, which in the end crushes it.

The whole life of a being engulfed by alien forces was only delayed decomposition. Death only awake reveals the secret of life - shows that the life of nature is hidden corruption.

Here is that fiery wheel of being, of which the apostle speaks; such is the universal evil, one in its essence, tripartite in its forms. Such is the tree of life in decayed nature: its root sin, his growth disease, its fruit death.

II. The meaning of the world(John 1:1-3).

The essence of world evil lies in the alienation and discord of all beings, in their mutual contradiction and incompatibility. Hο in the same is senseless(irrational) being of the world. We call meaningless everything that does not fit in with anything and does not go well, that contradicts everything and is incompatible with anything. So, evil and senseless are essentially one and the same. That same thing, precisely the egoism of each and the discord of all, which is evil from within (for the will), that same thing from the outside (for the mind and in the imagination) is nonsense. Hence our practical task - to make the external environment permeable to our will or obedient to us - and our theoretical task - to make the same environment transparent to our mind, clear or understandable to us - both constitute one and the same task. And in order to fulfill it, first of all, we ourselves must become bright and permeable to everything. Otherwise, only external and violent, evil and senseless submission will be possible. And if the evil discord of all makes senselessness in the world, then meaning peace will be the opposite, i.e., general reconciliation and fret. This is so also by the meaning of the word, for m iRor peace(cosmos) means precisely harmony and harmony. In the sense of the word "m i p" shows us the meaning of the world itself. And this meaning is not our arbitrary demand for a subjective ideal, but is revealed to us, although not completely, by reality itself. Although the basis of world life is discord and discord of all - chaos, although all beings and forces in an evil and senseless aspiration are at enmity and clash with each other, crowd and drive each other, but still, against their will, contrary to the general division and contradiction, - the world exists and lives as something united and consistent. On the dark basis of discord and chaos, an invisible force brings out the bright threads of universal life and harmonizes the disparate features of the universe into harmonious images. M i p is not an empty word; is in m i re sense, and it peeps everywhere and breaks through the senselessness that possesses it. Contrary to its egoism, no being can stand in its separateness: it is drawn by an irresistible force and gravitates to another and only in connection with "everything" finds its meaning and its truth. This universal meaning, which is what truly is, is manifested primarily in the law universal gravitation, forming the material solidarity of the world. How much the actual being of each contradicts everything else and is; nonsense, so its meaning is like pursuit or attraction to another, and this attraction, despite the universal discord, inherent in everyone, binds everyone into one and shows that the meaning of the world is unity. Beings depart from this sense, affirming themselves in their separateness; but they cannot get away from it completely, for this is the essential meaning of their existence: they can only intensify establish yourself separately from others; in this effort they become active forces, and the unity that constitutes their meaning is revealed in them as another force, as an external necessity, or a general law.

So, on the one hand, egoism as an effort to isolate itself and take possession of life exclusively for itself, whence the intense discord of all, universal evil, darkness, chaos and meaninglessness, on the other hand, the involuntary attraction of a unifying force through which each relates to everything and in this relation(λόγος, ratio ) finds its meaning and reason (λόγος, ratio).

This meaning, as the essential truth of everything, counteracts the world's nonsense. Laid as a hidden force in the general chaos, he strives for discovery, wants to break out of material darkness, fights against the hostile source of discord and gradually overcomes him. Delivering the suffering nature of the world (the world soul) from the evil power of discord, this unifying meaning takes possession of it and is born from it in various images. Behind the force of gravity, indifferently attracting everyone to each other and forming from the universe one great body, physical forces of heat, light and electricity follow, in which the parts of the world body become in varying degrees accessible and permeable to each other; then follows the force of chemical affinity, introducing the elements of the world body into certain combinations with each other; then a plastic force appears, reducing the most heterogeneous substances to the unity of a living organism, and, finally, in these organisms themselves, the power of the generic instinct is found, overcoming the individuality of individuals. Everywhere the active truth of unity overtakes and binds the false strivings of discord, and even in the manifestations of extreme egoism it shows a meaning contrary to egoism. This meaning is visible even in the mutual extermination of beings, when each being wants to devour others and really absorbs - feeds on them. Without it, it cannot live. It means that it cannot stand in its separateness: in order to be this, it must be fed others and this constant dependence on the other fills his whole real existence: it lives for others.

The scattered, meaningless existence of beings is only their false position ghostly and transient; they have true being only in unity with everything. The primacy of being does not belong to separate parts, but to the whole. The unconditional beginning and source of all being is absolute integrity of all things, that is, God. This wholeness of everything, which by itself is in the unchanging peace of eternity, is revealed and manifested in the all-uniting sense of the world, so that this sense is a direct expression or Word(λόγος ) Deities, the manifest and active God.

It determines all real being; from the smallest particle of matter, gravitating to other particles, and to complex animal species that absorb other organisms in nutrition or unite with those similar to themselves in the birth act - everywhere the eternal meaning of being, the original Word of the beginningless God, manifests and acts. This Word forbids any separate incoherent existence, by inseparable ties it connects one to the other and each to all and from a chaotic multitude forms a single world. IN in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was to God, and God was the Word. This be from time immemorial to God. All that was, and without Him there was nothing, a hedgehog.

III. In that belly be, and the belly be the light of a man (John 1:4).

The Word of God, which forms the meaning of the world, is not an abstract idea, but a real and substantial force that embraces and determines the whole life of nature. For particular beings of nature, this definition of common life is like a fatal force, like an involuntary and unconscious law. The most complex and perfect beings of nature - animals, know nothing about the world sense that governs their lives; this meaning is not their own purpose. It manifests itself from their senseless actions, in addition to their will or even contrary to it; it is revealed through them, but not for them. The law of world meaning, which requires from each being solidarity with all others, this law, which, both through the instinct of nutrition and through the instinct of reproduction, says to the organic individual: you must renounce your separateness and isolation, you must seek yourself in everything - this law directly contradicts the egoistic the desire of the individual. This contradiction is actually resolved in nature by the death of the individual - the resolution is truly unsatisfactory.

If the evil and senselessness of world life consists in the fact that each being posits and affirms itself against everything, then the meaning and goodness cannot consist in affirming everything against everyone, in sacrificing the special in favor of the generic; because this is only the reverse side of the same evil and the same darkness - only another point of view on the general discord. Everyone wants to eliminate everything - this is evil and nonsense, but it is itself eliminated by everyone - this last fact is just as evil and just as contrary to world meaning as the first. An individual is at enmity against “everything” and therefore perishes from everything - in this seeming justice there is no good, there is no truth in it; because if each perishes, then in "everything" there will be nothing remaining; if each is only a current phenomenon and a disappearing ghost, then everything consisting of these same disappearing ghosts will be the same ghost.

If the world nonsense consists in the discord of all, and the meaning is in the unity of all, then this requires preservation of all, i.e., the preservation of each, for otherwise there would be no thing that should be united. And if, in spite of this, every being is not preserved in nature, this means that the universal meaning, although it acts in natural life, is not realized in it, does not completely overcome, but only limits the darkness underlying the world. Meaning struggles with it in natural life, but it does not yet triumph in its victory here. In nature special involuntarily and only outwardly unites with everything, but does not reconcile with it inwardly; for this all, with which he is connected and drawn by the fatal force of life, there is something unknown and alien to him. The natural being does not know everything, and consequently cannot of itself desire union with it. His only feeling for everything is fear and enmity, precisely because it is unknown to him, alien. Animally, the animal tears apart its prey; in meaning it unites with it, but it does not know this meaning, it knows only its own hunger. And uniting with the common life in the ancestral instinct, the individual involuntarily and blindly sacrifices himself for the genus, loses himself in it.

In sexual intercourse meaning the individual renounces himself in favor of the genus, affirms a common genus existence, but even here it does not know the meaning of its action: it knows only a blind attraction to another individual, and this attraction for him is so close to enmity. Such an involuntary reunification of an individual with a genus is its negation, death. In order not to perish in the other, the being must unite with it from itself, and for this it must know both about itself and about the other. But knowledge does not exist in nature. Although the whole life of nature is determined by a universal meaning, for nature itself this meaning is obscure. In the world be and the world is the same and the world does not know it. This dark meaning, which constitutes the life of nature, but is not known by it, becomes the light of knowledge in man - and belly be light man.

“Everything” that acts on animal nature as an external force, for a person receives internal reality as idea. Man himself, being really only "this", embraces "everything" in the idea. The meaning of the world becomes man's own meaning.

Man himself has meaning, because he understands everything in unity, that is, he understands the meaning of everything, and in this human understanding the world meaning receives possibility its full realization; because each person with his personal consciousness can assimilate itself a world meaning and, therefore, can Push(voluntarily) unite with it, and such an internal and free reunion of each with everything is the true realization of world meaning. But as long as this is only a possibility, as long as the unity of everything remains only an idea for a person, as long as the contradiction of world life is not eliminated, but only takes on a new, deeper form, from the external it becomes internal.

IV. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not embrace it (John 1:5).

The natural duality of meaningless chaotic being and the external law of unity becomes in man an internal bifurcation between his own meaning and his meaningless nature. In man, his meaning, by which he cognizes everything in unity (the idea), is in contradiction with his dark life, in which he, like other creatures of nature, stands up for his private, random existence, colliding and enmity with another in animal struggle for its sake. for existence. The same selfishness, the same senseless and evil life of nature, remains the life basis of natural man and mankind. The light of consciousness, the idea of ​​world unity shines in this dark life, but only exposes its darkness, and does not penetrate into it and is not accepted by it. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not embrace it. The light of the divine Logos shone in the darkness of primitive paganism, when the power of God appeared to human feeling in fire and stars, in the beneficent action of the visible sun and in the law of tribal life. The divine mind shone clearer mind human in the religious views of the historical cultural peoples of antiquity, mainly the Hindus, Greeks and Jews.

In India, the human soul is for the first time freed from the power of cosmic external forces, as if intoxicated with its freedom, the consciousness of its unity and unconditionality; her inner activity is not bound by anything, she dreams freely, and in these dreams all the ideal creations of mankind are already in embryo, all religious and philosophical teachings, poetry and science, but all this in an indifferent uncertainty and confusion, as if in a dream, everything merges and gets confused, everything is one and the same, and therefore everything is nothing. Buddhism has said the last word to Indian consciousness; everything that exists and non-existent alike is only an illusion and a dream. This is the self-consciousness of the soul in itself, because in itself, as a pure potential apart from the active divine principle, which gives it content and reality, the soul, of course, is nothing.

But freed from the material content of life and at the same time conscious of itself as nothing in itself, the soul must either renounce existence, or else seek a new non-material content. In principle, the Indian and Eastern consciousness in general stopped at the first decision, the classical humanity went the second way. In the Greco-Roman world, the human soul is no longer free not only from external cosmic forces, but also from itself, from its internal, purely subjective self-contemplation, in which it is immersed among the Hindus. Now it again perceives the action of the divine Logos, but no longer as an external cosmic force or dimiurgical force, but as a purely ideal, internal force; here the human soul strives to find its true content, i.e., the one and the common, not in the empty indifference of its potential existence, but in objective creatures that realize beauty and reason - in pure art, in scientific philosophy and in the rule of law.

The creation of this ideal sphere, this "world without blood and tears" is the great triumph of the supreme Mind, the real beginning of the true unification of humanity and the universe. But this unification is only in the idea, this is the revelation of the idea as truth over actual being, and not its realization in this latter. The divine idea appears here to the soul as its object and highest standard, but does not penetrate into the very essence of the soul, does not take possession of its concrete reality. In knowledge, in art, in pure law, the soul contemplates the ideal cosmos, and in this contemplation egoism and struggle disappear, the power of the material chaotic principle over the human soul disappears. But after all, the soul cannot remain in contemplation forever, it lives in actual reality, and this life of it remains outside the ideal sphere, is not captured by it, the idea exists for the soul, but does not penetrate into its reality. With the revelation of the ideal world for a person, there are two orders of being - material, actual existence (ή γένεσις ) improper or bad, the root of which is an evil personal will - and the impersonal world of pure ideas (τό όντως όν ) realm of the true and the perfect. But these two spheres in the classical worldview remain opposed to each other, do not find their reconciliation here. The world of ideas, the ideal cosmos, which constitutes the truth of this worldview in its highest expression - Platonism, represents being absolutely unchanged, it abides in the imperturbable peace of eternity, high above the world of material phenomena, reflecting in this world, like the sun in a muddy stream, but leaving it unchanged, without purifying or enlightening it. And from a person such a worldview requires only that he gone from this world, emerged from this muddy stream into the light of the ideal sun, so that he would be freed from the shackles of bodily existence as from a dungeon or a coffin. Thus, the duality and opposition of the ideal and material world, truth and fact, remains unresolved here, there is no reconciliation. If the truly existing is revealed only to the contemplative mind as a world of ideas, then, consequently, the personal life of a person, the area of ​​his will and activity remains outside the truth, in the world of false material existence; but in this case, a person cannot really and completely leave this false world, because this would mean leaving himself, from his own soul, which lives and suffers in this world. An ideal sphere, with all its richness, can only as an object of contemplation to distract man from his evil and suffering will, and not to extinguish it. This evil and suffering will is a fundamental fact which cannot be abolished either by the Indian consciousness that this fact is an illusion (because here, too, it is an illusion only for consciousness, but remains a fact for all life), nor by the fact that a person will for a time move away from this fact into the realm of ideal contemplation, because he will still have to return from this bright realm to an evil life.

The divine principle can be tested in three ways by the human principle separated from it and established in an evil will: it can be felt as overwhelming it, but it can only suppress manifestations evil will, and not this will itself, which, as an internal, subjective force, cannot be destroyed by any external action. That is why the external perception of the divine Logos by man, which we find in natural religion, is insufficient, inconsistent with the goal of the internal reunification of humanity with the Divine. The cult of natural religion limits the self-affirmation of the human principle, makes it involuntarily submit to the higher forces operating in nature, forces it to make sacrifices to these forces, but the root of its life, its evil will, the material principle that has risen in it remains untouched, as alien and inaccessible to these external natural gods. .

Closer to the goal, but also insufficient, we must recognize the second kind of interaction between the divine principle and man, namely the ideal or enlightening. The possibility of this action is due to the fact that the human soul is something greater than its given actual state. If in this latter it is an irrational principle, like a blind force of self-affirmation, then in potential it is a reasonable principle, a striving for inner unity with everything. And if in the image of suppressive action (in natural religion) the divine Logos relates to the irrational principle of the soul as force to force, then, arousing the rational potency of man, he can act in it as reason or the inner word; namely, he can distract the soul from its actual reality, make this latter an object and show the soul the illusory nature of its material existence, the evil of its natural will, revealing to it the truth of another existence corresponding to the mind. Such is the ideal action of the divine Logos, which we find predominantly among the civilized peoples of the ancient world in the highest epoch of their development. But even this action, although internal, is incomplete, one-sided. To recognize the insignificance of one's actual reality as an object in contemplation does not mean to make it insignificant in being, does not mean in fact to eliminate it. As long as the personal will and life, immersed in untruth, are opposed to truth only as an idea, life remains essentially unchanged; an abstract idea cannot overcome it, because the personal vital will, however evil, is still a real force, while an idea not embodied in living personal forces appears only as a bright shadow.

So, in order for the divine principle to really overcome the evil will and life of a person, it is necessary that it itself appear to the soul as a living personal force that can penetrate the soul and take possession of it; it is necessary that the divine Logos not only influence the soul from without, but be born in the soul itself, not only limiting and not enlightening, but regenerating her. And since the soul in the natural man is real only in the multiplicity of individual souls, then the actual union of the divine principle with the soul must also have an individual, personal form, i.e., the divine Logos is born as a real individual person. As in the physical world, the divine principle of unity manifests itself first in the force of gravity, which binds bodies with a blind attraction, then in the force of light, which reveals their mutual properties, and, finally, in that force of organic life, in which the forming principle penetrates matter and, after a long series of formations, gives birth to the perfect physical organism of man, so precisely in the historical process following this, the divine principle first, by the force of spiritual gravity, binds individual human beings into a tribal unity, then enlightens them with the ideal light of reason, and, finally, penetrating into the soul itself and organically, concretely with united by it, is born as a new spiritual man. And just as in the physical world the appearance of a perfect human organism was preceded by a long series of imperfect, but still organic living forms, so in history the birth of a perfect spiritual person was preceded by a series of incomplete, but still living personal revelations of the divine principle to the human soul. These living revelations of the living God are written in the holy books of the Jewish people.

Any manifestation of the divine principle, any theophany, is determined by the property of the environment that perceives this phenomenon, in history, first of all, by the property of the national character, the peculiarity of the people in which this phenomenon of the Divine takes place. If the divine principle was revealed to the Indian spirit as nirvana, to the Hellenes as an idea and an ideal cosmos, then as a personality, as a living subject, as “I”, it should have appeared in the Jews, because their national character consists precisely in the predominance of the personal subjective principle. . This character is manifested in the entire historical life of the Jews, in everything that has been created and is being created through this people. So from the side of the poetic form, we see that the Jews gave something of their own only in the kind that represents precisely the subjective, personal element of poetry: they gave the sublime lyrics of the psalms, the luxurious idyll of the Song of Songs; neither real epic nor drama, such as we find among the Hindus and Greeks, they could create, not only during their independent historical existence, but also in later times. It is also remarkable that the Jews excel in music, i.e., in that art which primarily expresses the inner subjective movements of the soul, and produced almost nothing significant in the plastic arts. In the philosophical field, the Jews in their flourishing era did not go further than moral didactics, that is, such a field in which the practical interest of the moral personality prevailed over the objective contemplation and thinking of the mind. Accordingly, in religion, the Jews for the first time fully cognized God as a person, as a subject, as an existing "I"; they could not stop at the presentation of the Deity as an impersonal force and as an impersonal idea.

This character - the affirmation of the subjective element in everything - can be the bearer of both the greatest evil and the greatest good. Because if the power of the personality, self-asserting itself in its separateness, is evil and the root of evil, then the same power, subjugated to the highest principle, the same fire, imbued with divine light, becomes the power of universal universal love: without the power of a self-affirming personality, without the power egoism, the best in man is powerless and cold, it appears only as an abstract idea. Every active moral character presupposes a subordinate force of evil, i.e., egoism. As in the physical world, a certain force, in order to really manifest itself, to become energy, must consume or transform into its form an appropriate amount of energy that was previously (in a different form) (for example, light is transformed from heat, heat from mechanical motion, etc. .), similarly, in the moral world of a person who has fallen under the natural order, the potentiality of good contained in his soul can really be revealed only by consuming or turning into himself the already existing energy of the soul, which in natural man is the energy of self-affirming will, the energy of evil, which and must be translated into a potential state in order for the new force of good to pass, on the contrary, from potency into act. The essence of goodness is given by the action of God, but the energy of its manifestation in man can only be a transformation of the force of self-affirming personal will, which has been mastered and has passed into a potential state. Thus, in a holy man, actual good presupposes potential evil: he is so great in his holiness because he could be great in evil; he overcame the power of evil, subjugated it to a higher principle, and it became the foundation and bearer of good. That is why the people of the Jews, showing the worst aspects of human nature, “a hard-headed people” and with a stone heart, this same people is the people of saints and prophets of God, the people in which a new spiritual person was to be born.

The entire Old Testament presents the history of personal relations of the manifest God (Logos or Jehovah) with representatives of the Jewish people - its patriarchs, leaders and prophets. In these personal relationships, which constitute the religion of the Old Testament, there is a succession of three degrees. The first mediators between the Jewish people and their God, the ancient patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, believe in a personal God and personally live by this faith; the representatives of Judaism following them: God-seer Moses, David, "a man after Jehovah's own heart", and Solomon, the creator of the great temple, receiving tangible revelations of a personal God, try to bring the meaning of these revelations into the public life and religious cult of their people; in their person Jehovah makes an outward covenant or covenant with Israel, like a person with a face. The last line of representatives of Judaism, the prophets, realizing the insufficiency of this external union, foresee and proclaim another internal union of the Divinity with the human soul in the person of the Messiah, the son of David and the Son of God, and they foresee and proclaim this Messiah not as the highest representative of Judaism, but also as " the banner of tongues," as the representative and head of all reborn humanity.

If in this way the environment for the incarnation of the divine principle was determined by the national character of the Jews, then its time should also depend on the general course of history. When the ideal revelation of the Word in the Hellenic-Roman world was exhausted and turned out to be insufficient for a living soul, when man, in spite of the huge hitherto unseen riches of culture, found himself alone in an empty and meager world, when doubt about the truth and disgust for life appeared everywhere, and the best people passed from despair to suicide when, on the other hand, precisely because the ideal principles that prevailed turned out to be radically untenable, the consciousness arose that the idea was generally not enough to fight the evil of life, the demand arose that truth be embodied in living personal power. , and when the external truth, human, state truth, really concentrated in one living person, in the face of a deified person, the Roman Caesar, then the truth of God, prepared by the Old Testament revelations to the patriarchs, leaders and prophets of Israel, appeared in the living person of the incarnated God Jesus Christ .

V. Revelation of universal meaning (Logos) in Christ (John 1:14; 1 John 4).

The meaning of the world, in which is the truth of God, is the inner unity of each with everything. In the form of a living personal force, this unity is love. Just as by the power of an external law, the universal meaning suppresses and binds the dark life in a person, just as with the light of its truth it reveals and condemns the darkness of this life, enlightening the human consciousness, so by the infinite power of love the same meaning penetrates into this darkness, takes possession of the very essence of man, regenerates his nature and is truly embodied in him. AND The Word became flesh and dwelt in us.

When on earth, after many millennia of elemental and cosmic struggle, in which world meaning was revealed only as a fatal force of external law, the first rational being appeared, this was a new revelation - a revelation of world meaning, as ideas- in consciousness. When, after many millennia of human history, the first spiritual man appeared, in whom the natural life of the flesh was not only illuminated by the divine meaning of world life, but also sanctified by him as the spirit of love , - it was a new revelation of the same meaning as a living, personal force that could attract to itself and assimilate the living force of matter. If the first, natural man was the image and likeness of God, then the new spiritual man is the true God, because in him the being of God, which constitutes the true meaning of everything that exists, for the first time appeared in the world by itself, showed itself to the world for what it is undoubtedly. For in itself God is neither a fatal law weighing on the natural life of matter, nor reason only illuminating the darkness of this life and in its light showing its untruth and evil: God is greater than this and can do more than this, and Christ showed this greater on in fact, showed that God is love, or absolute personality.

The incarnation of the divine Logos in the person of Jesus Christ is the appearance of a new spiritual man, the second Adam. Just as the first Adam, the natural one, is understood not only as a separate person along with other persons, but as a universal personality, containing all natural humanity, so the second Adam is not only this individual being, but at the same time and universal, embracing the whole reborn spiritual humanity. In the realm of eternal, divine being, Christ is the eternal spiritual center of the universal organism. But since this organism, or universal humanity, falling into the stream of phenomena, is subject to the law of external being and must, through labor and suffering in time, restore what it has left in eternity, i.e., its inner unity with God and with nature, then and Christ, as the active principle of this unity, for its real restoration, had to descend into the same stream of phenomena, had to undergo the same law of external being and from the center of eternity become the center of history, appearing at a certain moment - in the fullness of time. The evil spirit of discord and enmity, eternally powerless against God and at the beginning of time having mastered man, must in the middle of time be overcome by the Son of God and the Son of Man, as the firstborn of all creation, in order to be expelled from all creation at the end of time - this is the essential meaning incarnation.

Before speaking about the cause of Christ, for which the incarnation took place, it is inevitable to answer two questions: 1) about the possibility of the incarnation itself, i.e., a real union of the Divinity with humanity, and 2) about the method of such a union.

As for the first question, then of course the incarnation impossible, if you look at God only as a separate being, residing somewhere outside the world and man. With such a view (of deism), the incarnation of the Deity would be a direct violation of the logical law of identity, i.e., a completely unthinkable thing. But in the same way, incarnation is also impossible from that point of view (pantheism), according to which God exists only; the universal substance of world phenomena, the universal “everything”, and man is only one of such phenomena. With this view, incarnation would contradict the axiom that the whole (everything) cannot be equal to one of its parts: God cannot become a man here, just as the water of the whole ocean cannot, remaining all water, be at the same time one of the drops of this ocean. But is there a need to understand God or as soon as a single being, or as the common substance of world phenomena? On the contrary, the very concept of God, as a whole or perfect (absolute), eliminates both one-sided definitions and opens the way to a different view, according to which the world, as a set of limitations, being outside of God (within its own boundaries), as a material, is at the same time essentially connected with God with your inner life or soul. This connection is that each being, asserting itself in its own boundary, as ego, out God, at the same time, is not satisfied with this boundary, strives to be and everyone i.e. strives for inner unity with God; Accordingly, in our view, God, being by myself transcendent (being outside the world), at the same time in relation to to the world is how an active creative force, willing to communicate to the world soul what it seeks and strives for, that is, the fullness of being in the form of unity, willing to unite with the soul and give birth to a living image of the Divine from it. This already determines the cosmic process in material nature, ending with the birth of the natural man, and the historical process following it, preparing the birth of the spiritual man. Thus, this last, i.e., incarnation of the Deity, is not something alien general order of being, but, on the contrary, is essentially connected with the entire history of the world and mankind, is something prepared and logically following from this history. It is not the transcendent side of the Godhead that is embodied in Jesus, not the absolute in itself closed fullness of being (which would be impossible), but God the Word is embodied, that is, the beginning manifesting itself outside, acting on the circumference of being, and its personal the incarnation in the individual man is only the last link in a long series of other physical and historical realizations - this manifestation of God in human flesh is only a more complete, perfect theophany in a series of other incomplete, preparatory and representative theophany. From this point of view, the appearance of the spiritual man, the birth of the second Adam, is no more incomprehensible than the appearance of the natural man on earth, the birth of the first Adam. Both were new, unprecedented facts in the life of the world, and both seem miraculous in this sense, but this new and unprecedented was prepared by everything that had previously been, constituted what it wanted, what the whole of the former life: all nature aspired and gravitated towards man, the whole history of mankind was directed towards the God-man. In any case, when one speaks of the possibility or impossibility of the incarnation of the Divine, the main thing is how both the Divine and humanity are understood; and with that concept of Divinity and humanity, which we have indicated, the incarnation of Divinity is not only possible, but also essentially enters into the general plan of the universe. But if the fact of the incarnation, i.e., the personal union of God with man, has its basis in the general sense of the universal process and in the order of divine action, then this does not yet solve the question of the method of this connection, i.e., of the relationship and interaction of the divine and natural human principle in the divine-human personality, or that there is a spiritual man, the second Adam.

In general, in man there is some combination of the Divine c material nature, which presupposes in it three constituent elements: divine, material and connecting both - actually human; the combination of these three elements constitutes the real man, and the proper human principle is reason ( ratio ), that is, the relationship of the other two.: If this relationship consists in the direct and immediate subordination of the natural principle to the divine, then we have primitive man(the first Adam) - the prototype of humanity, a prisoner, not yet separated from the eternal unity of divine life; here the natural human principle is contained as a germ, potentia , the reality of divine being. This possibility is at the same time the possibility sin: involuntarily subordinate to the Divine, primitive man can freely withdraw from this submission. Then he becomes natural or an external man, in whom reality belongs to his material principle, he finds himself as a fact or phenomenon of nature, and the divine principle in himself only as the potentiality of another being. The third possible relationship is when both Divinity and nature alike have reality in man, and his own human life consists in the active reconciliation of the natural principle with the divine, or in the free subordination of the former to the latter. This attitude constitutes a spiritual man. From this general concept of the spiritual man it follows: firstly, in order for the reconciliation of the divine principle with the natural to be a reality in man himself, it is necessary that it take place in a single person, otherwise there would be only a real or ideal interaction between God and natural man, and there would be no spiritual man; in order for there to be a real union of the Deity with nature, it is necessary face, in which this connection would occur. Second, for this connection to be a valid connection two began, the real presence of both of these principles is necessary, it is necessary that this person be a real God and a real natural man - both natures are necessary. Thirdly, in order for the very agreement in the divine-human personality of both natures to be a free spiritual action, and not an external fact, it is necessary that a human will participate in it, different from the divine and, through the rejection of a possible contradiction with the divine will, freely submitting to it and introducing human nature into complete inner harmony with the Divine. Thus, the concept of a spiritual man implies one divine-human personality, combining two natures and possessing two wills.

The primitive direct unity of the two principles in man - the unity represented by the first Adam in the paradisiacal state of his innocence and broken in the fall, could no longer be simply restored. The new unity can no longer be immediate, innocence: it must be achieved it can only be the result of a free deed, a feat, and a double feat - divine and human self-denial; for the true union or reconciliation of the two principles requires the free participation and action of both. The interaction of the divine and natural principles determines the entire life of the world and humanity, and the whole course of this life consists in the gradual convergence and mutual penetration of these two principles, at first distant and external to each other, then converge closer, deeper and deeper penetrating each other, until in Nature does not appear to Christ as a human soul, ready for total self-sacrifice, but God as the spirit of love and mercy, imparting to this soul the fullness of divine life, not in binding power, not only in illuminating reason, but in life-giving goodness. Here we have a real divine-human personality capable of accomplishing the double feat of divine-human self-denial. To a certain extent, such self-denial is already represented by the entire cosmic and historical process: for here, on the one hand, the Logos of God, by a free action of his divine will or love, renounces the manifestation of his divine dignity (the glory of God), leaves the rest of eternity, enters into a struggle with evil the beginning and undergoes all the anxiety of the world process, being in the shackles of external being, within the boundaries of space and time; then it appears to natural humanity, acting on it in various finite forms of world life, more covering than revealing the true essence of God; on the other hand, worldly and human nature, in its constant yearning and striving for ever newer and newer perceptions of divine images, constantly rejects itself in its given, real forms. But here (i.e., in the cosmic and historical process), this self-denial on both sides is not perfect, for for the Deity the boundaries of cosmic and historical theophany are external boundaries, determining its manifestations for the other (for nature and humanity), but in no way touching his inner self ; on the other hand, both nature and natural humanity, in their unceasing progress, reject themselves, not by a free act, but only by instinctive inclination. In the personality of the God-human, however, the divine principle, precisely because it relates to the other not through external action, which places limits on the other, without changing itself, but through internal self-limitation, giving the other a place in itself - such an internal union with the other is real self-denial. divine principle; here it really descends, humiliates itself, assumes the guise of a slave. The divine principle here is not closed only by the boundaries of human consciousness for a person, as it was in the previous incomplete theophany, but itself perceives these boundaries; not that it completely enters into these boundaries of natural consciousness, which is impossible, but it feels these boundaries are relevant theirs at the moment and this self-limitation of the Divinity in Christ frees His humanity, allowing its natural will to freely renounce itself in favor of the divine principle, not as an external force (which self-denial would not be free), but as an internal good, and thereby really acquire this good. Christ, as God, freely renounces the glory of God, and thereby, as a man, gets the opportunity reach this glory of God. On the way to this achievement, human nature and the will of the Savior inevitably meet with temptation evil. The divine-human personality represents a dual consciousness: consciousness of the limits of natural existence and consciousness of its divine essence and power. And so, experiencing truly the limitations of natural existence, the God-man can be subjected to external temptation to make his divine power a means to the ends that flow from this limitation.

Firstly, for a being subject to the conditions of material existence, there is a temptation to make material good the goal, and his divine power as a means to achieve it: Divine”, and the discovery of this nature - the word (“rtsy”) should serve as a means to satisfy material needs. In response to this temptation, Christ affirms that the word of God is not an instrument of material life, but is itself the source of true life for man: “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.” Having overcome this temptation of the flesh, the Son of Man gains power over all flesh.

Secondly, the God-Man, free from material motives, is presented with a new temptation - to make His divine power an instrument of self-affirmation of his human personality, to fall into the sin of the mind - self-conceit: and they will take you in their hands, but not when you strike your foot on a stone. This action (leaping from below) would be a self-confident challenge of a person to God, a temptation of God by a person, and Christ answers: “It is written again: do not tempt the Lord your God” . Having conquered the sin of the mind, the Son of Man gains power over minds.

But here comes the third, last and most powerful temptation. The slavery of the flesh and the self-importance of the mind have been eliminated: the human will is on a high moral level, it recognizes itself above the rest of creation; in the name of his moral height, a person may want dominion over the world in order to lead the world to perfection; but the world lies in evil and will not voluntarily submit to moral superiority - so, you need to force it into submission, you need to use your divine power as violence to subjugate the world. But such a use of lawless violence for the purposes of good would be an admission that good in itself has no power, that evil is stronger than it, that would be worship, to that the beginning of evil who rules over the world: “And show him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory, and say to him: I will give all this to you, if you bow down to me.” Here the fatal question is directly posed for the human will: what does it believe in and what does it want to serve - whether it is the invisible power of God or the power of evil that clearly reigns in the world. And the human will of Christ, having overcome the temptation of plausible lust for power, freely submitted itself to the true good or good, rejecting any agreement with the evil reigning in the world: united serve." Having overcome the sin of the spirit, the Son of Man received supreme power in the realm of the spirit; refusing to submit to earthly power and from the goal of dominion over the earth, He acquired for himself the service of the forces of heaven: “And behold, the angels came and served him.”

Thus, having overcome the temptations of the evil principle, which inclined his human will to self-affirmation, Christ shows the inner agreement of this human will with the will of God, deifying his humanity following the incarnation of his divinity. But this does not end the work of Christ. Being fully human, Christ has in Himself not only a purely human element (reasonable will), but also a natural material element: He not only incarnated, but also incarnated -σάρξ έγένετο . The spiritual feat - the internal overcoming of temptation, must be completed by the feat of the flesh, that is, the sensual soul, the endure of suffering and death, which is why in the Gospel, after the story of the temptation in the wilderness, it is said that the devil departed from Christ before time. The evil principle, internally defeated by the self-denial of the will, not allowed into the center of the human being, still retained its power over its circumference - over sensual nature, and this latter could also be delivered from it only through the process of self-denial - suffering and death; and after the human will of Christ freely submitted to His Divinity, through this she subdued His sensual nature and, despite the weakness of this latter (prayer for the cup), forced her to realize the divine will in herself to the end - in the physical process of suffering and death . This restores the normal relationship of all three principles in the second Adam, which was violated by the first Adam. The human principle, placing itself in the proper relationship of voluntary submission or agreement with the divine principle, as an internal good, thereby again receives the meaning of a mediating, unifying principle between God and nature, which, being cleansed by death on the cross, loses its material separateness and heaviness, becomes direct expression and instrument of the divine spirit, the true spiritual body resurrected God-man. By His life, death and resurrection, Christ revealed that God incarnate in Him is above the law and above reason, and that He can do more than suppress evil with His power or expose it with His light, that He, as an infinite spirit of life and love, regenerates and saves perishing nature, turning its lies into truth, its malice into goodness, and in this work of all-conquering love finds His glory. And I saw His glory, the glory of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth.

That the natural carnal life, not only in the crude form of animality, but also bound by the forms of human cohabitation, is an evil and false life - this was known before Christ. The Indian sages knew this - the Brahmins and Buddhists, the Greek philosophers - Plato and his followers also knew this. But it is not enough to know and condemn this bad life, it is not enough even to think about another true and good life, which the Platonic philosophers indicated in the ideal world of self-existing truth, beauty and goodness, one must deed show that this life eat, it is necessary to introduce it into man and nature, revealing in them what is subject to this true life. And if it is true life, then it cannot be powerless and inactive: it must overcome the false and evil life and subject its evil law to its grace.

The foundation of carnal life is malice, and its end is death and corruption. The beginning of true life - love conquers malice, and its end - resurrection conquers death. If death and corruption are invincible, then it means that the law of carnal life, the law of sin and slavery, is the only law in the world, then it means that carnal life is real true and there is no other in reality, but only in the imagination and thoughts of people: then there really is only a stream of matter, and everything else is empty dreams, and if so, then we will live in the present moment, we will drink, eat and be merry today: yesterday everything has died and will not return, and tomorrow we will die.

And if another spiritual life is not only a dream, then it must open up in reality not only in feelings and desires, not only in thoughts and words, but in deeds, in the real victory of the spirit over material nature. And such a victory of spiritual force over matter must have a completely different character than the victory of one material force over another in the natural struggle for existence, where the vanquished is sacrificed, absorbed and exterminated. The spiritual principle, precisely in its victory over hostile nature, must show its superiority, not destroying or absorbing this defeated nature, but restoring it in a new, better way of being. Resurrection is the inner reconciliation of matter and spirit, with which it here becomes one, as its real expression, as spiritual body. The ultimate and distinctive truth of Christianity is the spiritualization and deification of the flesh. Nothing is so contrary to this truth as one-sided spiritualism. The incarnation and resurrection of the divine Logos in Jesus Christ is a triple triumph: here the three principles of being - divine, material and human - reveal their unconditional significance. God is glorified in the world, because he is revealed as a real all-powerful and infinite being, who not only limits the alien power of matter and not only distinguishes its untruth from himself, but also penetrates into its deepest essence as into his own, internally subordinating and likening it to himself and to realizing it. This same thing is the fulfillment and triumph of material nature. For before the appearance of the spiritual man, the natural force in every being, his special vital will, striving for infinite being, is suppressed by the generic law, under the yoke of which every individual perishes; and although natural man can already penetrate into the realm of eternal existence, but only in contemplation, his personal life remains subject to the same law of material existence, the work of death and decay, like the life of other creatures. Only in the incarnation and resurrection of the God-man does a natural being in the form of a human organism first satisfy its infinite claim, obtaining for itself the fullness and wholeness of divine life. Not the death of a natural individual is the resolution of the world contradiction between the particular and the general, but its resurrection and eternal life. And thirdly, this permission is obtained through a reasonable and free action of the human will. The resurrection condition is feat, that act of the divine-human personality by which Christ renounced the law of sin and submitted to the absolute will of God, making His human principle a conductor of divine action on material nature. When the root of the world's evil was undermined in this way, then its fruit, death, was abolished by the resurrection, in which, therefore, together with God and matter, the human principle that united them also triumphs.

The perfect incarnation of the divine meaning in Christ frees the human principle for new activity. If ancient humanity only was looking for God and therefore could not live no -God's, then for the new humanity, to whom the true God has already been revealed in Christ, it becomes an obligation to live according to God, that is, to actively assimilate and return the seed of divine life that has been revealed in it. It no longer has anything to look for truth - the truth is given: it must implement it in reality; and since this truth is absolute, infinite, it must be realized in all reality, in the fullness of human and natural existence, which should no longer present any boundaries for this truth, so that God is all in all. It was enough for the ancient world to contemplate the Deity as an idea; the new world, which has already seen the Divine as a real phenomenon, cannot confine itself to contemplation, it must live and act by virtue of the divine principle revealed in it, recreating itself in the image and likeness of the living God. Mankind is obliged not to contemplate the deity, but to become divine itself. According to this, a new religion cannot be only passive worship of God (θεοσέβεια ), or worship (θεολατρεία ), but should become active worship(θεουργία ), i.e., the joint action of the Deity and humanity for the re-creation of this latter from the carnal or natural into the spiritual and divine. It is not a creation from nothing, and the transformation or the transubstantiation of matter into spirit, of carnal life into divine.

“No one, having lit a candle, covers it with a vessel, or puts it under the bed, but puts it on a candlestick so that those who come in can see the light ...” OK. 8, 16

Andrei Desnitsky - about why the truth that there is too much evil in the world is not a reason to lie on the stove. Especially when it comes to Christians.

“The world lies in evil, didn’t you know? People suffer, get sick, die. Also, they make a lot of mistakes. So you are probably a sinner yourself, and you are also trying to convince someone of something ... "

Every now and then I hear such words from Christians on a variety of occasions. Actually, the reason is about the same: some obvious evil is happening next to us, and someone suggests thinking about it and, if possible, correcting it. For example, terminally ill people cannot get pain relief, or innocent people are sent to prison, while real bandits live without sorrow ...

“So what, the world lies in evil, so I’ll lie down on the stove. So far, it hasn't touched me personally." Yes, with just such an addition, because everyone who has experienced terrible pain or injustice screams about it and waits for help and sympathy, and first of all from those who, it would seem, are called to help and sympathize. From Christians.

But… “The world lies in evil. But we have the opportunity to start the sacraments, to pray, to grow spiritually.” That's what the Orthodox say. But the Protestants quite agree with them: “The main thing is to accept Jesus as your personal Savior and confess this faith before the rest! Brother, have you repented? Hallelujah!"

The forms are different, but the essence is the same: engage in your own spiritual life and do not pay attention to this evil. You are a Christian, what do you care? In general, it is correct, but only on one condition: if you are an ascetic and a hermit who has retired from this world to fast and pray in the desert. And if you use all the benefits of this world, if you please, notice the evil, as you notice the weather outside the window and the exchange rate before the holidays.

The world lies in evil, but what about us? If Christ reasoned like that, he would have remained on the Mount of Transfiguration with the chosen disciples, Moses and Elijah. What would be better than talking with them in pleasant solitude, far from suffering and sins?

Yes, however, what was the use of Him then to be born in this world full of suffering and evil? And having been born - what was the point of “taunting the geese”, arguing with scribes and Pharisees, and denouncing hypocrites? After all, the world lies in evil, and besides, there are many excuses: look, for example, at these pagan Romans who do all sorts of outrages, worship idols and, moreover, want to conquer the whole world with the power of their legions. Isn't some, let's say, roughness in the behavior of respected Israelis against this background excusable?

Yes, and John the Baptist did not begin with denunciations? He could baptize and preach, preach and baptize freely... The king himself treated him with full respect - no, John began to denounce him for his lawless marriage. That he heard for the first time that there is fornication in the world, that even kings are not free from it? Couldn't at least denounce someone less important?

Could not. What some dark peasants did in a dark corner concerned only themselves, and royal fornication was demonstrated with all due splendor at the national level, with the confluence of the whole people. So was the rebuke.

But I'm not even talking about that now. Christianity, if you look at its history, spread rapidly throughout the Roman Empire and, moreover, in a completely peaceful way: in the middle of the 1st century it was a small group of people in the backyards of the empire, and in the middle of the 4th century it was a state church with churches and thousands of communities in each of the cities.

Apparently, Christianity offered the most diverse people of antiquity such an example, which seemed to them much more attractive than all the others. But these people had no shortage of complex philosophical constructions, or complex mysteries, or folk customs, or anything else that usually belongs to the field of religion, which helps a person to strive for high ideals and grow spiritually.

This is how the book of Acts (4:32-34) describes the Jerusalem community immediately after Pentecost: “The multitude of those who believed had one heart and one soul; and none of his possessions called his own, but they had everything in common. The apostles, with great power, bore witness to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ; and great grace was upon them all. There was no one in need among them."

Of course, this is an ideal, but where is the place for personal piety, which turns a blind eye to all the evil done in the neighborhood and passes by human suffering? And the previous, 3rd chapter of Acts, gives us another example: Peter and John go to the temple to pray. What seems to be more important? Why be distracted by the beggars, who have always been and always, apparently, will be? Let this one suffer a little, but for now we will go and pray. To each his own.

No, Peter and John heal him, as Jesus healed the suffering before. He did not abolish sickness and death in this world, He did not cure everyone who needed it. But He never passed by the sufferers with their eyes wide shut. And if we pass, we are not His disciples. And if the apostles had done so then, Christianity would hardly have outgrown the boundaries of their narrow circle.

This problem has another facet. Today, more and more people talk about "de-churching", and again, both Orthodox and Protestants. Once a man became a Christian, he was gradually drawn into the rhythm of church life - he became churched ... And then he suddenly got tired of it. From year to year, the same thing, he goes in circles, but he does not see any special results. He still believes in God, sometimes even looks into the church, but does not see much sense in what once formed the basis of his life.

Isn't it connected, at least sometimes, precisely with such an indifferent approach: well, yes, the world lies in evil, and I will lie on the stove, work out my own self-improvement? Perfection will not be achieved anyway, but so ... Well, yes, everyone is sinful, and I am a sinner, well, I confess sometimes, well, I live like everyone else. The world lies in evil, and I lie in evil. And nothing, okay. Cozy even.

I am well aware that all kinds of forms of "activism" can just as well lead to disappointment, burnout and all that, and that it is not in human power to remake the world around us. But it seems to me very characteristic that “Christianity”, which does not want to be the salt of the earth and the light of the world, which says to this world: you are in evil, well, okay, well, we are also somewhere next to all sorts of values, traditions , rituals and needs, if you please respect them - such "Christianity" will soon cease to be interesting not only to the world, but also to those who adhere to it. And maybe even God.

Yes, the world lies in evil, but “arise, sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you” (Ephesians 5:14). And do something about this already - and for starters, stop justifying your inaction, thoughtlessness, insensitivity.

In addition to this kind of evil, another kind of evil surrounds us everywhere - this is moral evil that comes from morally responsible individuals. Such, according to the Holy Scriptures, are Satan and the spirits of evil subordinate to him. Therefore, the children of God are called to fight against these forces of evil in order to persevere in following the Lord. “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might,” Paul writes, “put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil” (Eph. 6:10-11). In addition to them, morally responsible individuals are people. People of the last days, writes ap. Paul, will be especially angry (2 Tim. 3:13). He met with such and even names the name of one person who did him much harm: "Alexander the coppersmith did me much harm. May the Lord reward him according to His deeds!" (2 Tim. 4:14). Thus, we who live on earth are everywhere surrounded by evil of every kind. It rises up on us when we are sailing in a boat on the lake, when we are driving a car, when, relaxing, we are sitting on a mountainside covered with a mountain forest, and admiring its beauty when we are doing ordinary things. Even if our feet set foot on another planet, and there we will be met by evil. It also rises within us as morally responsible individuals. It meets us when we deal with people, when we fall under the influence of a source of evil. This is why John writes to believers in the Lord Jesus Christ: "We know that we are from God, and that the whole world lies in evil" (1 John 5:19). For the reason that the whole world lies in evil, God will perform a fiery judgment in due time to destroy all evil. "But the present heavens and earth," writes the Apostle Peter, "are contained by the same Word, saved up for fire for the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men" (2 Pet. 3:7). After that there will be a new heaven and a new earth, where there will be no evil of any kind - "for the former things are past" (Rev. 21:1-4). Of course, in today's world we are afraid to live. Our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, sees this. Therefore He prayed for us, saying to the Heavenly Father, "I do not pray that You take them out of the world, but that You keep them from evil" (John 17:15). God really keeps us from all evil, but at the same time He allows the influence of evil on us, as the Lord allowed the apostles to cross the Sea of ​​Galilee at His command. By the example of the Lord's disciples caught in a great storm, we can learn how to behave when the Lord allows evil to work on us. The first thing they did when they saw how the waves hit the boat and it was filled with water, they began to imploringly wake the sleeping Lord Jesus Christ, saying: “Master! Do You really not need that we are perishing! ”They began to pray to the Lord in these difficult circumstances. Indeed, it is so! When God allows evil to work on us, we want, firstly, to pray. When King David is tired of being persecuted by evil persecutors, he begged the Lord to wake up and protect Him (Ps. 7:7). in the case of the apostles of Christ, the Lord, having woken up, forbade the wind and the sea: “And there was a great silence.” Until that moment there was a great storm, and now a great silence has come in which the disciples heard the voice of the Lord: “What are you so fearful? How do you not have faith?" If we talk about their fearfulness, then, indeed, they had fear of a great storm. If we talk about their faith, then they had faith, because they were followers of the Lord. If there was no faith, they would have forsaken the Lord, as some did. But in these circumstances their faith did not have enough trust in the Lord. To trust means to rely completely on God in all circumstances of life. The rebuke of the Lord to the apostles teaches us the second step after prayer. If God allows evil to work on us - we must learn to trust Him. An example of absolute trust in God is the Son of God Jesus Christ. When He, in terrible agony, inflicted on Him by the forces of evil, died for us on the cross, then, in deep trust in the Heavenly Father, he loudly proclaimed: "Father! Into your hands I commit my spirit. And having said this, he breathed his last" (Luke 23:46). Consoling the afflicted, the author of one Christian hymn draws attention to the voice of heaven: "Behold, the voice of heaven sounds from on high:" Trust me, trust me! in a storm, in temptation, in the struggle I will be your helper. When there was a great silence at the command of the Lord, great fear seized the disciples. It was the fear of the One Who has power over the elements. During the great storm they trembled before her, and now they were visited by a special fear of the Lord. This teaches us the third step. When the Lord allows the action of evil on us, those who believe in him grow in the fear of God, and the fear of the Lord leads us away from evil. In this world lying in evil of every kind, we do not need to be afraid of what people who do not know God are afraid of, but we need to grow in fear of the Lord, we need to pray a lot, trust Him more and more in all circumstances, and constantly grow in fear. God's. And then we will definitely reach the goal. One poem says this:

Another mountain
Another valley
Another steep pass over the abyss,
A few more tears and wormwood bitterness,
And there - and there the Savior promised eternity!

- (lies) in a lie Cf. The world lies in evil and in temptations. If you describe the world as it is, you will describe many lies, and there will be no truth in your words. In order for there to be truth in what you describe, you must write not what is, but what should be ... Michelson's Big Explanatory Phraseological Dictionary

The world lies in evil (in lies). The world is in turmoil, man is in sins. See MAN... IN AND. Dal. Proverbs of the Russian people

EVIL- [Greek. ἡ κακία, τὸ κακόν, πονηρός, τὸ αἰσχρόν, τὸ φαῦλον; lat. malum], characteristic of the fallen world, associated with the ability of rational beings, gifted with free will, to evade God; ontological and moral category, opposite ... ... Orthodox Encyclopedia

Nikolai Alexandrovich (1874 1948) - philosopher, writer, publicist, society, figure. One of the "rulers of thoughts" of the 20th century, an existential thinker, passionately responding to deep shifts in human. spirit; Christ. humanist, heir to Vl. ... ... Encyclopedia of cultural studies

- (Schopenha uer) famous German philosopher; genus. February 22, 1788, died September 21, 1860. His father was a fairly wealthy Danzig merchant. Wanting to give his son a good education and introduce him to life, but at the same time by no means dreaming ... ...

- (Schopenhauer) famous German philosopher; genus. February 22, 1788, died September 21, 1860. His father was a fairly wealthy Danzig merchant. Wanting to give his son a good education and introduce him to life, but at the same time by no means dreaming ... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron

Check neutrality. The talk page should have details... Wikipedia

Miracle is the objective meaning of the concept of miracle, is determined by the general philosophical worldview, mainly by the theory of causality. All kinds of extraordinary and inexplicable phenomena in themselves do not represent miracles and receive the character of the miraculous only ... ... Wikipedia

The objective meaning of the concept of Ch. is determined by the general philosophical outlook, primarily by the theory of causality. All sorts of extraordinary and inexplicable phenomena in themselves do not represent miracles and acquire the character of the miraculous only when ... ... Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron

- (from lat. pessimum the worst) one of the two main types of perception of the world, expressing a negative, suspicious, distrustful attitude towards it; opposed to optimism. In the ordinary sense, a depressed mood, a tendency to see and emphasize ... Philosophical Encyclopedia

Books

• Carrier, Anatoly Fedorovich Batov. Unlike most utopias, in which beautiful-hearted authors portray humanity as a planetary, consolidated on good principles, almost flawless society, anti-utopians, whose peak ...