Archpriest Kirill. Archpriest Kirill Kopeikin

Are we living in a material world? Of course, what else! The existence of matter seems self-evident and does not need proof, but let's try to figure out what, in fact, matter is?

First of all, it should be noted that in different eras absolutely different, sometimes diametrically opposite meanings were put into the term “matter”. The founder of philosophy Plato opposed two principles to each other: one (it is existing) and another (it is not-being); the second he also called "matter." From the union of the one with the other, all the diversity of the changeable world arises, the other, or matter, is the principle of infinite variability. Platonic matter is a substratum devoid of qualities, from which all bodies are formed. Matter is called the recipient (ή υ̉ποδοχή - "receptacle", "storehouse") and nurse (τιθήνη), sometimes - the mother (μητέρα) of everything that arises in the sensible world. The association of matter with mother, played by Plato, is rooted in the mythological tradition and finds confirmation in the language - it is enough to recall the closeness of lat. material - "matter" and mater - "mother". It is the infinite quality of matter that provides it with the opportunity to become a good mother (s) for the embodiment of ideal prototypes. Thus, for Plato and the thinkers who inherited his tradition of reasoning, matter appeared, in fact, as the beginning of nothingness.

Polemising with Platonism and seeking, in accordance with his general concept, the “underlying” third underlying, which would be a mediator between opposites, Aristotle splits the Platonic other into two concepts: deprivation (στέρεσις) and matter (ύ̉λη). Deprivation is the opposite of being, and matter is the middle between being and non-being. Unlike deprivation, matter is characterized by him as "possibility" - δύναμις - something intermediate between being and non-being.

The patristic tradition inherited the ancient distinction between matter and idea-essences. Reconsideration of the concept of matter begins in the 17th century, in the era of the so-called scientific revolution. Unlike the ancient and medieval concepts of matter, "scientific" matter itself acquires the qualities of ideality.

Galileo is the founder of the objective method of cognition adopted by modern science. Man and nature, he argued, speak different languages, and therefore we must describe nature not in the language of human speculative categories, but "in its own language," which is the language of mathematics. “Philosophy is written in a magnificent book (I mean the Universe), which is constantly open to our eyes, but it can only be understood by those who first learn to comprehend its language and interpret the signs with which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its signs are triangles, circles and other geometric figures, without which a person could not understand a single word in it; without them, he would have been doomed to wander in the dark through the labyrinth, ”wrote Galileo.

Discussing the Galilean problem of idealization as a prerequisite for the transformation of natural science into a mathematical science, Kant showed that, starting from the modern era, the metaphysics of nature turns into a metaphysics of matter, and a special kind of matter - absolutely self-identical, all-pervasive, “ideal” matter in general: mathematicians to the doctrine of bodies, only thanks to it capable of becoming a science of nature, should be preceded by the principles of constructing concepts related to the possibility of matter in general; in other words, an exhaustive dismemberment of the concept of matter in general should be taken as the basis. This is a matter of pure philosophy, which for this purpose does not resort to any special data of experience, but uses only what it finds in the most abstract (although essentially empirical) concept, correlated with pure contemplation in space and time (according to the laws , essentially connected with the concept of nature in general), which is why it is a true metaphysics of bodily nature. "

It is important to emphasize that matter "by itself", matter in general, we do not see, we see only concrete things. Matter implied by modern science is a speculative construct substantiating the possibility of using a mathematical language to describe nature. The “object (willow)” method of studying the Book of Nature proposed by Galileo and adopted by modern European science, which implies the existence of a “material substrate”, turned out to be extremely effective; he made it possible to discover the fundamental structures of the universe, called the "laws of nature." The revolution in natural science that took place at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, associated with the emergence of the theory of relativity and quantum mechanics, led to a radical revision of our ideas about the Universe - and, in particular, the ideas about "matter". As a result, the picture of the world created by modern science is closer to the biblical image of the universe than the one that was drawn by classical physics, the emergence of which is associated with the name of Galileo.

The picture of the universe that opens before our eyes today is amazing. First of all, it turns out that what we call "matter" is almost nothing: most of the atoms that make up "matter" are "occupied" by emptiness. If the hydrogen atom, the most abundant element in space, was enlarged so that the size of its nucleus became on the order of the size of a soccer ball, then the electrons would revolve around it at a distance of about a kilometer and would be the size of a bearing ball.

However, this comparison is not adequate to reality. The fact is that electrons, protons and neutrons, "of which" an atom is composed, not only do not look like little soccer balls or balls - they are not "particles" at all in the usual sense of the word. We by inertia think that protons, neutrons, electrons and other elementary particles are the same "objects" as, say, grains of sand, only very small. They appear to us as objects in the sense that they have a position in space, characteristics of motion, mass, electric charge, existing "objectively" - objectively in the sense that they "are" regardless of whether we observe them or not. Meanwhile, it turns out that some of the properties of micro-objects that are objectively measured with the help of instruments (of which all macro-objects, that is, the objects of the world around us) are not at all "object (s)" in the ordinary sense of the word - existing independently from the observer and from whether the measurement is made - but they represent an "effect" due to a certain experimental situation. Quantum mechanics predicts that a number of properties attributed to micro-objects - such as position in space (coordinate) or parameters of motion (impulse) - “arise” at the very moment of observation and do not exist outside it, “by themselves”; a number of parameters, such as mass and electric charge, exist objectively.

This surprising fact was initially challenged in a speculative experiment formulated in 1935 called the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox. The essence of this paradox boils down to the fact that if quantum mechanics is fair, then the world cannot be decomposed into the simplest "elements of reality" that exist independently of each other. In 1964, the Irish theoretical physicist John Stuart Bell formulated inequalities that make it possible to experimentally check whether the measured parameters actually exist "objectively" before measurement, or whether they arise as a result of a measurement procedure. A series of recent experiments have revealed that Bell's inequalities are violated. This means that ordinary ideas about "objective reality" that exist independently of observations (the particles that make up all "matter" have some "objective" properties, and measurements only eliminate our subjective ignorance of what values ​​these properties had) does not correspond to reality: some of the particle parameters found as a result of experiments may not exist at all prior to measurement.

According to Abner Shimoni, “the philosophical significance of Bell's inequalities lies in the fact that they allow for an almost direct verification of other pictures of the world that differ from the picture of the world that quantum mechanics gives. Bell's work provides some direct results in experimental meta-physics. " The 2009 Templeton Prize laureate Bernard d'Espanya, who saw the experiments to test Bell's inequalities as "the first step towards the emergence of experimental meta-physics", agrees with Shimoni's opinion. And this metaphysics testifies to the fact that at the fundamental level the world in which we live is not the world of “things” that do not depend on our presence or absence - on the contrary, rather, the universe is a logistic fabric of being interacting with the human logos. This is surprisingly reminiscent of the biblical story of creation: God creates the world with His Word, and then gives the command to the created man in the image and likeness of God to call the names of the creature. The eminent American physicist John Archibald Wheeler believed that the nonlocality of the (micro) world, demonstrated by the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox, coupled with the a priori absence of "object (s) but" existing parameters of micro-objects, suggest that the observer is a co-creator of the continuing creation of the Universe: at a certain limited stage of its existence of observers-participants, does the Universe, in turn, acquire through their observations the tangibility that we called reality? Isn't this a mechanism of existence? " He asked. According to Wheeler, perceiving the world, "the observer here and now participates in the formation of the early universe, although this is a reversal of the usual course of time."

But a person does not just affect the fabric of being by the very fact of his presence. Quantum mechanics testifies in favor of the fact that elementary micro-objects that make up everything that exists have a kind of "internal" dimension - this is how one can interpret the spontaneous activity of micro-objects, which is, as one might assume, the manifestation of some "secret", "living" dimensions of being; since it is impossible to penetrate this inner dimension by external “object (s)” methods, we find ourselves forced to describe the external manifestations of the “inner life” of micro-objects, using for this a probabilistic language. It is noteworthy that back in 1919, Charles Galton Darwin, who was one of the first to begin the search for a logically consistent foundations of quantum mechanics, in his (remaining unpublished and now stored in the Library of the American Philosophical Society) article "Criticism of the Foundations of Physics" wrote: "I have long believed that that the fundamentals of physics are in a terrible state.<…>It may happen that it will be necessary to fundamentally change our understanding of time and space,<…>or even as a last resort to ascribe free will to the electron. " Around the same time, the German philosopher Alois Wenzel wrote in his work "Metaphysics of Modern Physics" that the "material world<…>cannot be called dead. This world - if we talk about its essence - is rather the world of elementary spirits [perhaps, it would be better to say, elementary logoi]; the relationship between them is determined by certain rules [and λόγος is not only a word, but also a relationship and a rule], taken from the realm of spirits. These rules can be formulated mathematically. Or, in other words, the material world is the world of lower spirits, the relationship between which can be expressed in mathematical form. We do not know what the meaning of this form is, but we do know the form. Only the form itself, or God, can know what it means in itself. "

The randomness inherent in the world discovered by quantum mechanics opens a kind of "natural gap" for the action of divine providence. The fact is that from the point of view of voluntary theology, which played a huge role among the spiritual prerequisites for the scientific revolution, the supreme cause of any existence is the omnipotent, undetermined will of the Creator. As A. V. Goman'kov notes, “chance is just another name for the Divine Will, for omnipotence essentially means indeterminacy. Later, however, this idea was defended mainly by atheist philosophers of the 19th century, who relied on the concept of Laplace's absolute determinism<…>Their logic was something like this. God is synonymous with randomness. The world is arranged naturally, there is nothing accidental in it. Therefore, there is no God. The main criticism of this syllogism from Christian theologians of the 19th and 20th centuries. was directed against his first premise (see, for example, in Fr. Alexander Yelchaninov: “There is nothing accidental in the world, the one who believes in chance does not believe in God”), while in fact the second is incorrect ”. And it is significant that after the Fifth Solvay Congress in 1927, at which quantum mechanics received its final formulation, the outstanding British astrophysicist Sir Arthur Eddington said: "From now on, religion has become possible for physicists" creators, Nobel Prize laureate Erwin Schrödinger linked the emergence of atomism as a prelude to quantum theory with the first attempts to solve, as Schrödinger calls it, “oppressive antinomy”: “how to combine free will, required by moral responsibility, with strict laws of nature?”).

It is noteworthy that even atoms (of which all substances are composed) also do not look like dead systems, but rather resemble living “organisms” created from quantum “living” micro “objects”. Arguing about the amazing stability of atoms from the point of view of classical physics, one of the greatest physicists of the 20th century, Nobel Prize laureate Niels Bohr, noted that “from the point of view of classical mechanics, this is incomprehensible, especially if we consider that the atom is really similar to a planetary system.<…>There is a tendency in nature to form certain forms<…>and to the reproduction of these forms anew even when they are disturbed or destroyed. In this regard, one can even think of biology; after all, the stability of living organisms, the preservation of the most complex forms, which, moreover, are certainly capable of existing only as a whole, is a phenomenon of the same kind.<…>The existence of homogeneous substances, the presence of solids - all this is based on the stability of atoms<…>The miracle of the stability of matter would have been ignored for a long time if over the past decades<…>developments<…>put us before a question, in our time already inevitable, namely the question of how to make ends meet here.<…>[This is] a task of a very different kind from ordinary scientific tasks. "

No matter how paradoxical the idea of ​​the presence of an inner secret life in matter, for the Christian consciousness it is, in essence, quite natural. “Too often we, out of habit, by inertia, by the laziness of the mind, not only unbelievers, but also believers, think of matter as if it were inert, dead. Indeed, from the point of view of our subjective experience, this is mostly true. But from the point of view of the philosophy of matter, from the point of view of its relationship with the Creator, Who by the sovereign word called it from nonexistence to being, this is not so: everything created by God has life, - insists Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, - not the consciousness with which we we possess, but otherwise: in a sense, everything created by God can participate joyfully and exultantly in the harmony of creation. Otherwise, if matter were simply inert and dead, then any God's influence on it would be magical, it would be violence; matter would not obey Him, those miracles that are described in the Old Testament or in the New Testament would not be miracles, that is, a matter of obedience and restoration of lost harmony. These would be the imperious actions of God, against which the matter created by God could not do anything. And it’s not like that. Everything created lives, at every level of created life, with its own special creatureness. And if in our very often cold, heavy, darkened world we could grasp that state of matter that is no longer available to us, because we see it not with God's eyes and not from within spiritual experience, we would see that God and everything He created is connected live communication ". Referring to S. L. Frank, Vladyka Anthony emphasizes that “the only genuine materialism is Christianity, because we believe in matter, that is, we believe that it has an absolute and final reality, we believe in the resurrection, we believe in the new heaven and a new earth, not in the sense that everything of the present will be simply destroyed to the end, but that everything will become new, while the atheist does not believe in the fate of matter, it is a transitory phenomenon. Not in the sense that a Buddhist or a Hindu views it as Maya, as a cover that will disperse [closer to such an understanding, rather, Platonic matter], but as an abiding reality that, as it were, devours its forms: I will live, then I will disperse into elements; the elements continue to be, I am not; but fate in a sense, movement somewhere is not visible for matter, there is no outcome. On the other hand, we have not developed or very little developed the theology of matter. This is a theology that would comprehend matter to the end, and not just history. Teaching about the Incarnation, for example:<…>we say very little, it seems to me, that the Word became flesh and that at some point in history God Himself united with the matter of this world in the form of a living human body - which, in essence, tells us that the matter of this the world is capable not only of being spirit-bearing, but also God-bearing. On this point we have almost no conclusions, and this goes very far and, it seems to me, is destructive in the field of sacramental theology. Because in the theology of the sacraments, we affirm the realism of the event (this is the Body of Christ, this is the Blood of Christ); but the matter that participates we regard as something dead. We forget that the Incarnation of Christ proved to us: the matter of this world is all capable of uniting with God, and what is happening now with this bread and wine [in the sacrament of the Eucharist] is an eschatological event, that is, belonging to the future age. It is not a magical violence against matter that transforms it; it is the elevation of matter into the state to which cosmic matter is called. "

The assertion of the fact that matter is permeated with life does not at all mean primitive pagan hylozoism; on the contrary, it is a natural consequence of the creation of the world, its non-identity, its rootedness in the existence of the Creator. The creation of the universe means that all creation is alive to the extent of its participation in the Life of the Creator. Precisely because the world is connected with God, with Life itself, it is revived, alive - not by itself, but by virtue of the presence of this connection, without which nothing created simply cannot exist.

Of course, one can ask: isn't the hardness of the substance around us the best proof of its "dead materiality"? But let's try to figure out how we are convinced of the "materiality" of the world? Through the senses. All sensory impressions we receive from the outside world - tactile, olfactory, auditory, gustatory and, of course, visual - have an electromagnetic - that is, light - nature. It is the light that is what the body is revealed by precisely as the body. When the Apostle Paul in the Epistle to the Ephesians writes that “everything that is made manifest is light” (Eph 5:13), this also has a literal meaning. Is light a body or not a body? It is curious that medieval theologians, as a result of long disputes about the nature of light, came to the conclusion that “out of everything created, only light is capable of combining in its nature inconsistent corporeality and spirituality outside of its origins.<…>Light simultaneously belongs to both worlds (material and ideal), and therefore the only one is capable of playing the role of tertium quid, the link that holds the soul and body together in a person. " The special theory of relativity indirectly testifies in favor of this thesis: the statement that the speed of light is the maximum possible speed of the movement of bodies can be interpreted as the fact that light, in fact, represents the border of "corporeality" - beyond the limits of speeds lower than the speed of light, bodies cease be bodies.

But even this “solid matter” investigated by science is only the tip of a colossal iceberg - no more than 1/20 of the total mass of the Universe, all the rest is “unknown what”, conventionally called “dark matter” and “dark energy”. Hypothetical dark matter is called "dark" not because it absorbs light, but on the contrary, because it does not interact with light, is absolutely transparent to it, but still it is "matter" because it is "heavy" - heavy in that the sense of the word, which creates a gravitational field, through which it interacts with "ordinary" matter; "Dark" energy is responsible for the accelerated expansion of the Universe. According to the latest data obtained by the Planck space telescope, the mass of ordinary (baryonic) matter is only about 4.9% of the mass of the Universe, dark matter is about 26.8%, and dark energy is 68.3%.

Comprehension of the picture of the world created by modern science should radically change our ideas about the universe and about the place and role of man in the Universe. The fact is that among the many scientific disciplines that study proportionality, meaning, history, causes, rational foundations of the world - everything that is actually designated by the term logos - theoretical physics, which studies the fundamental structure of the universe, occupies a special place. Physics gives a person a theoretical vision of the world, which means, in a certain sense, it allows one to see the universe “through the eyes of the Creator”: initially the very word θεω-ρία - theory - was read as Θεό (ς) -ρία - God-vision; etymologically this is incorrect (Greek θεωρία comes from θέα - spectacle, sight, appearance, and οράω - to see, look, observe), but the theory in a certain sense makes it possible to stand on the "point of view of God." This, in particular, was reflected in lat. contempler - to contemplate - means to admire the majestic temple (templum) of the world, erected by the Creator. New European science has arisen as a kind of new - natural - theology of God - θεο-λογία - the Book of Nature, replenishing the old - supernatural - theology, the theology of Revelation. And it is characteristic that Einstein, who today is perceived as one of the brightest exponents of the spirit of science, said: “I want to know how God created the world. I am not interested here in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to comprehend His thoughts, everything else is details. "

It is precisely to describe the world "from an absolute point of view" that theoretical physics claims. Hilary Putnam called this privileged position the "Divine Vision" of the Universe. " In Newtonian physics, this is the absolute space-time - sensorium Dei - in which we “live and move and exist” (Diary 17:28) not metaphorically or metaphysically, as St. Paul meant, but in the very proper and direct sense of these words ", in quantum mechanics - that Absolute, which, according to one of the founders of quantum mechanics, Nobel Prize laureate Erwin Schrödinger, sees" through "the individual. Thus, a theorizing science that claims to be able to describe the world from an “absolute point of view” - not from the point of view of the Absolute Person, but from the point of view of the Absolute Subject - inevitably comes into contact with theology, which claims that it knows the personal view of the Creator. given in His Revelation.

A theorizing view of the world does not imply a description of the objects that exist in the world, but the very laws governing these objects. Each separate existence is an empirical fact, and the unification of individual facts into a general law is a creative act postulating the existence of a law that embraces, encompasses and harmonizes all the diversity of individual facts. Belief in the existence of laws is akin to religious belief; Einstein called it "cosmic religion" or "cosmic religious feeling", noting that "he cannot find a better expression than" religion "to denote belief in the rational nature of reality, at least that part of it that is accessible to human consciousness. Where this feeling is absent, science degenerates into sterile empiricism. " In all likelihood, the ability to comprehend the laws of nature is a manifestation of the fact that the world created by the Word of God and the man created in the image and likeness of God, endowed with the gift of speech, have the same poetic structure (Greek ποιητής - the creator comes from the verb ποιέω - to do, to make).

From the point of view of the theorizing approach, it is the law that is primary and has an ontological reality, yet concrete facts are only particular manifestations of the general law. This approach allows us to explore the fundamental foundations of being (it is characteristic that the Latin word fundus - foundation, foundation - goes back to the Indo-European root * budh- (* bheudh-) - abyss). One of the manifestations of this is the opportunity to pose the problem of the beginning of the world. If earlier in science there was an implicit prohibition on addressing the problem of the beginning, then cosmology came across an initial singularity referring to the idea of ​​creation. Moreover, the closer we come to the original singularity, the more significant the metaphysical - and, in the extreme, theological - basis of cosmological models becomes. True, many cosmologists try to avoid religious connotations, but nevertheless a number of physicists admit that the Big Bang is, in fact, a creation out of nothing.

However, despite the enormous strength of the theorizing approach, it is not free from some shortcomings. First of all, the ontological status of the laws of nature remains unclear. If the laws of nature are immanent to nature itself, then how can they "control" the world? If they are only a human way of ordering natural phenomena, then where does the amazing accuracy with which these laws are carried out, and are often carried out far beyond the area of ​​their initial detection, arises. It would seem that the existence of a law must imply the presence of a legislator. But the objectifying method of research used in modern natural science excludes the possibility of discovering the will that posits the law. Methodologically, science cannot yet include a person in the scientific picture of the world - not only God, but even a person. Moreover, objectification brings out of the scientific picture of the world not only personality, consciousness, but everything mental in general. “Explaining consciousness is the most difficult task for materialistic philosophy,” admits the famous Russian philosopher DI Dubrovsky, who has been dealing with the problem of consciousness for many years. - “It is the quality of subjective reality (which cannot be attributed to physical characteristics) that creates<…>the main theoretical difficulties for the materialistic explanation of consciousness and, above all, in attempts to consistently fit it into the physical picture of the world. " “Self-awareness is what makes the mind-body problem virtually insoluble,” states the prominent American philosopher Thomas Nagel. Another well-known modern philosopher David Chalmers formulates this problem as follows: “Why do information processes not“ go in the dark ”?” In other words, how and why does the subjective dimension arise in the objective world? ... It turns out that the most important thing - psyche, personality, not to mention God - is not included in the modern picture of the world. But we experience ourselves, first of all, as a living person with a psyche, will; the other for us is also a person with whom we can enter into a dialogue. Believers feel that prayer and sacraments, despite the fact that they do not "fit" into the scientific picture of the world, affect the soul of a person, change his way of being. Finally, objectifying science fundamentally refuses to pose the most important question - the question of the meaning and purpose of the existence of the world and man; Of course, this is due, first of all, to methodological reasons - after all, she studies only structures, but not meanings. There is no doubt that the scientific picture of the world needs to be expanded and deepened, which would make it possible to add a semantic, personal, existential dimension of being - a dimension that has an ontological status. And if the world is really a Book, then in addition to its structure it has a certain meaning that we still have to comprehend.

The already mentioned David Chalmers, who is called “the living classic of the philosophy of mind”, states: “The physical theory characterizes its basic entities only relatively, in terms of their causal and other relationships to other entities.<…>The resulting picture of the physical world is a picture of an enormous causal stream, but it says nothing about what is related to this causality.<…>Intuitively, it seems more reasonable to assume that the basic essences, correlated by all this causation, have some kind of their own internal nature, some internal properties, so that the world is not devoid of substance.<…>There is only one class of internal, non-relational properties with which we are directly familiar, and that is the class of phenomenal properties [as Chalmers calls the directly experienced mental properties]. It is natural to assume that the indeterminate internal properties of physical entities and the internal properties of experience known to us can somehow be correlated or even overlap. " Despite the shocking surprise of this suggestion, Chalmers argues that “this idea seems wild at first glance, but only at first glance. After all, we have no idea about the intrinsic properties of the physical. Their place is vacant, and the phenomenal properties look no less worthy for their role than any others. Here, of course, the danger of panpsychism arises. I'm not sure if that prospect is that bad, Chalmers adds. If phenomenal [psychic] properties are fundamental, then it's natural to assume they could be widespread. "

Thus, the whole body of data of modern science brings us to the understanding that the reality that we are used to calling the physical, material reality is, rather, a psychic reality. But if the reality of the Universe is psychic reality, then whose is it, to whom does this psychic belong?

Let us ask ourselves: if the world is a book of the Creator, then what is the ontological reality of the text created by Him? What conclusion can we draw when trying to comprehend the data of modern science in the semantic context in which it arose - in the context of biblical Revelation? The Book of Genesis, which opens the Bible, tells about the creation of the world by God out of nothing by His Word; in the Nicene-Constantinople Creed, God is called the Creator - literally, the Poet of the Universe (Greek ποιητής - creator, poet, goes back to the Hebrew root * k (u) ei- - to layer, build, fold in a certain order; to that the same root goes back to the Slavic chin, repair, whence the Russian co-founder, to create, that is, to order according to the rank). One of the greatest Byzantine theologians, the Monk Maximus the Confessor, perceived the world as a chiton woven from above (see: John 19:23) of the Logos; St. Gregory Palamas, whose theology is revered as the highest achievement of the Orthodox tradition, calls the universe "the writing of the Self-Hypostatic Word." If we logically continue everything that, on the one hand, we know today thanks to the study of "elements" (lat. El-em-en-tum - letter, element (στοιχεί̃ον) of the poem (ποίημα) of the Creator (Ποιητής)) fabric (lat. textus - plexus, structure, connection, fabric and, finally, a coherent text) of reality, on the other hand - to recall that broad - including theological - context in which the formation of modern science took place, one should come to an unambiguous - and at the same time it is enough insane in order to be true - the conclusion: "The world is the mental of the Creator" - mental in the sense that, firstly, the world is not dead "matter", but a living logistic fabric of being, and, secondly, God is not no "organ" is needed in order to touch the world - He has direct access to it in the same way as we have direct access to our psychic.

Despite the seemingly shocking strangeness of this thesis, even completely orthodox physicists - albeit in their own language - are thinking about something similar. Thus, one of the founders of inflationary cosmology, Stanford University professor Andrei Linde, believes that the problem of consciousness can be closely related to the problem of the birth, life and death of the Universe: “Could it be that consciousness, like space-time, has its own degrees freedom, without which the description of the universe will be fundamentally incomplete? With the further development of science, will it not turn out that the study of the Universe and the study of consciousness are inextricably linked with each other and that final progress in one area is impossible without progress in another? After creating a unified geometric description of weak, strong, electromagnetic and gravitational interactions, won't the next most important stage in the development of a unified approach to our entire world, including the inner world of man?<…>The problem of consciousness, as well as the problem of human life and death associated with it, is not only not solved, but at the fundamental level is almost completely unexplored. It seems very tempting to look for some connections and analogies, even if at first superficial and shallow, while studying another great problem - the problem of the birth, life and death of the Universe. Perhaps in the future it will become clear that these two problems are not as far apart as it might seem. " Professor at the University of Chicago, director of the Center for Astrophysics of Particles at the Fermi Laboratory, Craig Hogan, believes that the universe is a hologram, something like a computer simulation. He hopes to test whether this is the case with what he calls the Holometer. MIT professor Seth Lloyd, head of the Electronics Research Laboratory, writes that the idea that the world is alive, or that the universe thinks, is a metaphor; The Universe is a giant quantum computer, its “thoughts” are the process of processing the information of the Universe, which calculates “itself, its own behavior” (note that it is precisely with the creation of quantum computers that researchers associate their hope of finding a key to solving some of the most complex problems of computer science , first of all - to the creation of artificial intelligence). The theoretical physicist at the University of Bonn, Silas Bean, thinks that it is quite possible that we live in a modeled by a more highly developed civilization of the Universe. Nick Bostrom, professor of philosophy at Oxford University, is also thinking about this. Despite the difference of views, they all admit the possibility of the existence of a certain higher reality, which gave rise to what we call the Universe.

It should be noted that the idea of ​​spontaneous generation of intelligent life, which is popular in the scientific community, essentially refutes the phenomenon of “silence of the Universe”. The so-called "Copernicus principle" states that there are no allocated places in the Universe, which means that the Earth is not unique and there should be many star systems and planets in space with conditions similar to those on Earth (which is confirmed by the latest discoveries of many exoplanets), and therefore nothing should prevent the birth and development of life and mind according to the earthly scenario in other places of the Universe. Professor of the Department of Astrophysics and Stellar Astronomy of the Physics Faculty of Moscow State University VM Lipunov proposes to estimate the probability of the existence of highly developed civilizations as follows. The universe has existed for about 10 billion years. Let's accept the fact that our civilization has been developing at an exponential rate over the past century. Then the dimensionless number characterizing the probability of the appearance of a technological civilization during the existence of the Universe will be of the order of e 10,000,000,000100 (e is the base of natural logarithms, equal to about 2.718) or 10 42,000,000. This is a colossal number. For comparison, the number of all elementary particles in the Universe is only about 10 80. Thus, the probability of the emergence of civilizations immeasurably superior to ours is practically equal to one - they must be! And yet, for some reason, we do not observe them. The absence of visible traces of the activities of extraterrestrial civilizations, which should have settled throughout the Universe for billions of years of their development, is called the "Fermi paradox". What is the reason for this ?! Does this mean that we are alone in the universe? "The Great Silence of the Universe, the Fermi paradox is not just a crisis of a separate physical theory (such as general relativity or the theory of grand unification), but a crisis of civilization" - a civilization that created a science that allowed exponential development over the past century, - says Lipunov.

It is noteworthy that one of the brightest Russian astrophysicists VF Shvartsman emphasized that “the most important and most difficult stage in detecting interstellar transmission is the understanding that we are really dealing with transmission, i.e. signal, the content and form of which are subordinate to the goal. That is why the problem of identifying extraterrestrial intelligence seems to me to be the problem of the entire earthly culture. " It is significant that when answering the questionnaire about the directions in which research on the problem of the search for extraterrestrial civilizations should be developed, Shvartsman wrote: “First of all, in the humanitarian, musical and theological. In addition, in terms of improving a person, his brain, and not electronic computers. " According to the memoirs of Academician Yu. N. Pariisky, “Shvartsman was convinced that cognition of the external [material] world is an immeasurably simpler task than cognition of the inner [mental] world of a person, the spiritual and ethical world; the technological age will soon end, humanity will understand that it has lost its way, and, finally, it will completely occupy itself with the soul in the broad sense of the word. "
// Report of Archpriest Kirill Kopeikin, Associate Professor of the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, onconferences "Christianity and Science" held on January 28, 2014 at the Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov in the framework of the XXII International Educational Christmas Readings

Galileo G. Assay master / Per. Yu. A. Danilova. Moscow: Nauka, 1987, p. 41.

Kant I. Metaphysical principles of natural science // Kant I. Works: In 6 volumes. Vol. 6 / Ed. T.I. Oizerman. M .: Mysl, 1966.S. ​​60-61.

See for example: URL: noviyegrani.com/archives/title/156

See: A. Einstein, B Podolskiy, N. Rosen. Is it possible to consider the quantum-mechanical description of physical reality complete // A. Einstein Collected scientific works: In 4 volumes / Ed. I.E. Tamm, Ya.A. Smorodinsky, B.G. Kuznetsova. Vol. III: Works on kinetic theory, radiation theory and fundamentals of quantum mechanics 1901 - 1955. M .: Nauka, 1966. pp. 604-611.

Academician A.D. Aleksandrov figuratively illustrates quantum-mechanical holism: “We can pour two glasses of water into a teapot [note the characteristic biblical image of water - a symbol of primordial primordial matter] and then pour out one glass, but which of the poured glasses is poured out at the same time - there is a question related to childish jokes, like an invitation from one boy to another to eat first his half of the bowl of soup, which he marked by running a spoon over the soup. There are no two electrons in the helium atom, but there is — I don’t know who was the first to use this apt expression — a two-electron, which is composed of two electrons and from which one or two electrons can be separated, but which does not consist of two electrons ”(Aleksandrov A D. Connection and causality in the quantum field // Modern determinism. Laws of nature. M .: Mysl, 1973. P. 337).

Bell J. S. On The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox // Physics, 1964. Vol. 1. No. 3. P. 195-200.

Cm.:. Freedman S. J., Clauser J. F. Experimental test of local hidden-variable theories // Physical Review Letters, 1972, vol. 28, pp. 938-941; Aspect A., Grangier P., Roger G. Experimental tests of realistic local theories via Bell's theorem // Physical Review Letters, 1981, vol. 47, pp. 460-463; Aspect A., Dalibard I., Roger G. Experimental tests of Bell's inequalities using time-varying analyzers // Physical Review Letters, 1982, vol. 49, pp. 1804-1807; Weihs G., et al. Violation of Bell's inequality under strict Einstein locality conditions // Physical Review Letters, 1998, vol. 81, pp. 5039-5043; Scheidl et al., Violation of local realism with freedom of choice // Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, November 16, 2010, vol. 107, pp. 19708-19713.

Shimoni A. Contextual hidden variables theories and Bell's inequalities // The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 1984. Vol. 35. No. 1. P. 35.

URL: templetonprize.org/previouswinners/espagnat.html

D'Espagnat B. Toward a Separable "Empirical Reality"? // Foundations of Physics, 1990, vol. 20, no. 10, p. 1172.

Wheeler J. Quantum and the Universe // Astrophysics, quanta and the theory of relativity / Per. with ital. Ed. F.I. Fedorova. M .: Mir, 1982.S. 555-556.

Cit. Quoted from: Jemmer M. Evolution of concepts of quantum mechanics / Per. from English M .: Science. Ch. ed. phys.-mat. Literature, 1985. S. 173. See also: PeresA. Quantum inseparability and free will // Vastakohtien todellisuus. Juhlakirja professori K. V Laurikaisen 80-vuotispäivänä. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press, 1996. P. 117-121.

Aloys Wenzel "Metaphysics of Contemporary Physics"; cit. by: FrankF. Philosophy of Science. The connection between science and philosophy / Per. from English M .: Publishing house foreign. literature, 1960.S. 360.

See, for example: P.P. Gaidenko, Voluntative metaphysics and modern European culture // Three approaches to the study of culture / Ed. Viach. Sun. Ivanov. M., 1997.S. 5-74; Katasonov V.N. Intellectualism and voluntarism: the religious and philosophical horizon of modern science // Philosophical and religious sources of science / Ed. P.P. Gaidenko. M .: Martis, 1997.S. 142-177.

Goman'kov A. The idea of ​​evolution in paleontology and Holy Scripture // Science and Faith: Materials of scientific seminars. Issue 6 / Comp. N.A. Pecherskaya, ed. A. A. Volkov. SPb .: Publishing house of the Institute "Higher religious and philosophical school", 2003. S. 44-45.

Schrödinger E. 2400 years of quantum theory // Heisenberg V. New ways in physics: Articles and speeches / Ed. L. S. Freiman, comp. W. I. Frankfort. Moscow: Nauka, 1971, p. 114.

Heisenberg V. Part and whole // Heisenberg V. Selected philosophical works: Steps beyond the horizon. Part and whole (Conversations around atomic physics) / Per. A. V. Akhutin, V. V. Bibikhina. Saint Petersburg: Nauka, 2006.S. 316-317.

Anthony, Met. Surozhsky. Orthodox philosophy of matter // Anthony, Met. Surozhsky. Proceedings. M .: Practice, 2002.S. 102.

Frank S. L. Religion and Science. Brussels: Living With God, 1953.

See: Sheinman-Topstein S. Ya. Plato and Vedic philosophy. Moscow: Nauka, 1978.

Anthony, Met. Surozhsky. Dialogue about atheism and the last judgment // Anthony, Met. Surozhsky. Man before God / Comp. E. L. Maidanovich. M .: Palomnik, 2001.S. 46.

Shishkov A. M. The question of the union of the soul with the body in late antique and medieval thought // Theological conference of the Russian Orthodox Church "The Church's doctrine of man." Moscow, November 5–8, 2001. Materials. M .: Synodal Theological Commission, 2002.S. 205-206

Father Kirill, you have had a long and difficult path to Orthodoxy. And now you not only serve in the church, but also teach in theological schools, and have a Ph.D. in physics and mathematics. Please tell us a little about yourself and what you are doing now.

As a child, I was raised in a family ... one might say, agnostics. But I was baptized in infancy, my grandmother was a believer, she took me to church in early childhood. And then I never went to church.

And I was brought up in the conviction that the most important thing is to know the Truth. And since I grew up in a materialistic environment, for me "to know the Truth" meant to know how everything works. Therefore, I decided that it was necessary to study physics, that I would learn this Truth through physics.

After the eighth grade, I went to a physics and mathematics school, and after graduating from it, I entered the physics department of St. Petersburg University. Then he entered graduate school, defended his dissertation. But even while studying at the faculty, it became clear to me that there are questions that physics is not capable of giving answers to.

First of all, this is the question of the soul and the question of why the soul hurts and why we cannot find happiness and peace in this world. And in search of an answer to this question, I came to faith.

Moreover, I had the feeling that I was returning to the lost paradise, remembering childhood impressions that were deeply, deeply stored, but were outside of my consciousness. They somehow surfaced again ... The smell of the temple, the crackling of candles ... And I entered the seminary, graduated from it, became a priest.

Currently, I am an associate professor at the St. Petersburg Theological Academy, rector of the Church of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul and the Holy Martyr Tatiana at St. Petersburg State University and director of the scientific and theological center for interdisciplinary research at St. Petersburg University.

Today, the problem that worried me throughout my life - the problem of the relationship between science and religion - stands before us. And the Church is aware of it as one of the significant problems.

When he was elected to the Patriarchate, at the same Council at which he was elected, a new church body was created - the Inter-Council Presence.

The task of the Inter-Council Presence is to prepare decisions concerning the most important issues of the internal life and external activities of the Church, discuss current problems related to the field of theology, as well as preliminary study of the topics considered by the Local and Bishops' Councils, and prepare draft decisions.

This body is divided into several commissions, I am a member of the commission on theological issues. A number of topical issues were raised before this commission back in 2009, and it is noteworthy that half of them are related to the problem of the relationship between science and religion. One of the questions is the relationship between scientific and religious, theological knowledge; the other is a theological understanding of the origin of the world and man.

These issues are now being deeply discussed by the Church and are of concern to modern society. In particular, these issues are studied at the Scientific Theological Center for Interdisciplinary Research, where there is a permanent seminar and conferences.

Christianity is the basis of science

- Doesn't the knowledge that Christianity carries in itself contradict modern scientific views?

Well, how can it contradict if science actually grew out of Christianity ?! The fact is that modern science arose in a very specific theological cultural environment.

It was believed that God gives Revelation to man in two forms: the first and the highest Revelation is the biblical Revelation, and the second Revelation is nature itself. Nature itself is the Book of the Creator, which is addressed to man.

And science grew out of the desire to read this Book of Nature. This concept existed only in the context of the Christian tradition. And therefore, no other civilization has given birth to science. And science, as we well know, was born in Europe in the seventeenth century.

Of course, the question may arise: Christianity arose two millennia ago, and science - only three or four centuries ago - why did science appear so late? In order to understand this, you need to remember the following.

The fact is that if we believe that the world is a book that is addressed to a person, then the same research methods can be applied to the world that are applicable to the study of the biblical text.

In semiotics (the science that studies sign systems) there are three levels of text research. Any text consists of signs. And the most elementary study consists in the fact that we study the relationship of some signs to others, that is, we study what is called syntax.

And you can investigate the relationship of a sign to what it means, that is, explore its semantics. And, finally, one can study the relation of the text as a whole to the one to whom it is addressed and to the one by whom it was created (this is called the pragmatics of the text).

Simplifying a little, one could say that during about the first millennium, Christian theological thought was engaged in the study of the pragmatics of the book of nature, that is, it investigated the relation of the world to man and investigated the relation of the world to the Creator. It was realized that the world is God's message to man.

One of the greatest Byzantine theologians - the Monk Maximus the Confessor - says that this world is a "solid-woven tunic of the Logos." Saint Gregory Palamas, in which Orthodox Byzantine theology reaches its peak, calls this world the Scripture of the Self-Hypostatic Word.

That is, this world is a text addressed to a person. This is a very non-trivial thought! It could only arise in the context of the Christian tradition. Why? Because we, being a part of this world, at the same time have a claim that we are able to read it.

Imagine if someone told you that Don Quixote and Sancho Panza are discussing the concept of Cervantes' novel Don Quixote and the structure of the work itself. It would at least surprise us, because they are the characters of this text.

In the same way, we, being inside the world, suddenly have a claim that we are able to comprehend this world and are able to comprehend the Creator of this world (maybe not in all its fullness, but at least partially). This is possible because not only the world is facing us, but we are also created in the image and likeness of the Creator of the universe, which means that we can comprehend this universe.

In the XI century, the first universities appear, and we can conditionally say that the era from the eleventh century to the seventeenth, which is conventionally called the “century of the scientific revolution,” is the time when university medieval theology was studying the semantics of the universe.

It was believed that each element of the world has a certain meaning, semantic meaning. This is also a very non-trivial idea. The thought that it is not we who attribute the symbolic meaning to these elements of the world, but this is the meaning that is put into them by God himself.

And again, since we are created in the image and likeness of God, we can read this creation. Finally, the era of the scientific revolution, the 17th century, is the time when the thought, occupied with the study of the Creator's Book, moves from the study of pragmatics and semantics of the universe to the study of syntax, that is, to the study of the relationship between the elements of the text.

What, in fact, is the pathos of objective knowledge of the world? We are exploring the world not in relation to man, which would inevitably introduce an element of subjectivity. We study the relationship of one element of the world to another element and describe the form of this relationship in the formal language of mathematics.

This method of description turns out to be extremely effective, and, most importantly, this method of description allows us to construct theoretical knowledge about the world. And what does it mean? This means that when we create a theory, we are describing not just a collection of some facts, but we are describing the laws that govern these facts.

That is, we do not describe separately the fall of an apple to the earth, the movement of the moon around the earth, the movement of the earth around the sun ... No! We say that there is one law of universal gravitation, within which various motions are possible. That is, when we describe the theoretical world, we seem to take the point of view of the Legislator.

And it is noteworthy that in antiquity the word "theory" was derived from the word "Θεόζ" - God. Etymologically this is wrong. In fact, this word comes from "θεa" - "look". But nevertheless, a theoretical view of the world allows us, in a certain sense of the word, to take the position of, if not the Creator, then the Demiurge.

This gives tremendous power to a person in the sense of the word that, understanding the laws of the universe, we can change this world, transform it. We are approaching what God called us to: we must transform this world in order for it to return to union with God again. That, as the apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians, God would become “all things in all” (1 Cor 15:28).

When today sometimes, as it seems to us, some kind of contradiction arises between science and religion, it is connected with the fact that, on the one hand, science claims that, looking at the world from a theoretical point of view, it is in some sense of the word takes the position of the Creator, and, on the other hand, theology, which is trying to assimilate the gaze of Revelation, also claims to achieve an absolute position (at least in its ultimate form, theology seeks to comprehend the Creator's view of the world).

And these two views sometimes come into conflict with each other, but this contradiction is connected not with the fact that science is opposed to religion, and not with the fact that theology is fighting against science, no! ... but with the fact that we have not yet a holistic view of the world was formed.

The point is that we interpret both scientific data and the Bible, and this is primarily a matter of interpretation. So far, a holistic interpretation, unfortunately, has not yet emerged, but, say, Francis Bacon, who owns this metaphor of two books - the Book of Nature and the Book of the Creator, believed that comprehension of Nature as the book of God would allow us to more deeply understand the Bible as the Revelation of God. I hope this happens eventually.

Comprehension of God in Physics

It turns out that this idea of ​​comprehending the world as a book of God echoes your personal path. Can you call your physics studies from school as part of your spiritual path?

Of course. The fact is that it gives us a lot, since it gives us the opportunity to take a theoretical position in relation to the world and break away from the ordinary view of it.

It is curious: when a few years ago the University Church of Peter and Paul celebrated its 170th anniversary, I tried to gather the graduates of the University who became clergy. There were also Orthodox Christians, one Protestant pastor and a rabbi. But most of all turned out to be Orthodox.

Of course, I could not collect everyone, but it is curious that of those whom I could collect, most were physicists. There were mathematicians, biologists, philologists, but most of all there were physicists. I think that this is due to the fact that the original desire to comprehend God through the study of the universe in a latent form in physics has been preserved.

Could you remember the moment when you yourself turned to God, began to go to church ... what is this “pain in the soul”, about the desire to explain which you spoke?

The fact is that physics ... well, in general, science, which studies the universe, tells us a lot about the structures of this world, but says nothing about the meaning of the universe. And if I do physics, then I always have a question about the meaning ...

Let's say I make some great discovery, get a Nobel Prize. It's fine. So what?! All the time there was a question: why is this necessary? That is, inside me there was a desire for knowledge, but the answer to the question "why is this necessary?" I didn’t have it inside me.

I understood that there was some sense in this, but I could not find it in any way. This question was further sharpened by the experience of the finiteness of life. It is clear that we will all die. And why do something and strive for something if life is so short-lived?

In fact, the life of a scientist is very difficult, because you live in constant search - and, therefore, in constant dissatisfaction with yourself. Real insights come very rarely; perhaps they never come to someone.

The question arises: why live in such constant tension and in a state of constant internal discomfort, if it will all end anyway? In search of an answer to this question, I came to the Church.

Memory of death

But you have chosen not just the path of a Christian, but the path of a priest. You didn’t want to remain a regular parishioner. Why was it so important for you?

It's very personal, but I can tell. It seems to me that today life is arranged in such a way that we strive not to think about death. That is, we understand that we will die, but each of us lives as if he were immortal. And modern culture always puts death somewhere outside the brackets.

Meanwhile, in the Christian tradition it is considered as something very important. Actually, death is the third birth. Because our first birthday is the day we are born, the second birthday is the day of our baptism, the day of our spiritual birth, and the third birthday, strange as it may seem, is the day of our death, when we are from temporary of life we ​​are born into eternal life. And it is characteristic that the days of remembrance of the saints are the days of their death, the days when they passed into this eternal life.

And for me, in fact, the main impetus for becoming a priest was close contact with death. When my father died, and he died relatively young, that is, he was a little older than I am now, I remember that literally a day after his death, I woke up ... and now, you know, they say that "the thought came" ... I had a feeling that the thought, indeed, seemed to come from somewhere, I heard it.

This thought was that you need to live so that what you live for does not disappear with death. And then immediately came the second thought, which, it would seem, did not follow directly from the first, nevertheless I perceived them as inseparable: that means you need to be a priest. And after that I applied to the seminary.

Physics is an idealistic science

Does your education help you in pastoral and missionary work? And what is the peculiarity of the ministry in the university temple?

I think that if specially education helps in some way in pastorship, then, perhaps, only by the ability to look at the situation somewhat detachedly.

Probably, the biggest question that arises in a modern person is the following: if the world is material, then what does God and prayer have to do with it, how is this generally combined? If I pray, can it really affect something in the material world?

In fact, physics leads us to a paradoxical conclusion. At the fundamental level that physics explores (well, say, quantum mechanics), the world is not material in the naive school sense of the word.

The objects that make up the universe - electrons, protons, neutrons - are more like some kind of psychic entity than material objects in the ordinary sense of the word.

Suffice it to say that the elementary particles of which everything is composed, some properties, indeed, exist independently of us, and in this sense of the word is objective. Mass, electric charge ... But such properties as position in space or, for example, speed - they do not exist if they are not measured. Moreover, this has now been experimentally proven.

That is, one should not think that an electron or a proton is a particle like a grain of sand, only very small - no! - this is something fundamentally different. And it turns out that these particles act on one another, even in some situations instantly, not mediated by space and time. The fabric of the universe is very tightly intertwined.

Having thought to the end, what modern physics gives us, studying such a deep nature, and what Revelation tells us, namely that the world was created by the Word of God, that God is called in the Symbol of Faith the Creator, literally the "Poet" of the universe (i.e. That is, the world is, as St. Gregory Palamas says, “The Scripture of the Self-Hypostatic Word”), we would have to come to the conclusion that the world is the psychic of God.

What we call the material world is the psychic. It's just that it's not our psychic, and we perceive it as some kind of harsh reality. But this is the psychic of God. Likewise, when we create, for example, a poem or a novel, where does it exist? In the same sense, there is a world created by the Word of God.

Now there is a rather popular image, which is being discussed by various physicists, that in fact the world is a computer simulation, and we just live inside this simulation, created by some kind of higher civilization.

- That is, physics turns out to be not so much materialistic as idealistic?

Oh sure. One of the outstanding physicists of the 20th century, Werner Heisenberg, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, a Nobel Prize winner, said that physics informs us not about fundamental particles, but about fundamental structures, and in our striving to penetrate the essence of life, we are convinced that it is the essence of immaterial nature.

A scientific and biblical view of the world as a forward and backward perspective

- Are modern scientific theories about the origin of the world and man, the theory of evolution correlated with the Book of Genesis?

Relative, but very difficult. The complexity of this correlation is due to the fact that the image of the world that is drawn by modern science, which is familiar to us, is very different from the perception of the biblical.

Look: for us the world is the Cosmos. The word "space" comes from the verb "cosmeo" - "to decorate", to put in order (hence the "cosmetics" that women adorn themselves with). The perception of the world as the Cosmos by historical standards appeared relatively recently, in ancient Greece, in the era that Karl Jaspers called "axial time", that is, it is about the 6th-5th centuries. before the birth of Christ.

In order to see the world as a Cosmos, one needs to move away from it, look at it from the outside, look at the harmony of the correlated parts of the Cosmos. But for this you need to stand outside the world. This is how we look at the world now. For us, the perception of the world as the Cosmos seems generally the only possible one.

But for the biblical consciousness, the world is not “space”, but “olam”. This is a Hebrew word translated into Slavic and Russian as "peace", it comes from the root "lm" - to be hidden, to hide.

Man is hidden inside the world, he is immersed in the flow of the universe, like a drop of water is part of the flow of a river. And just as a drop cannot go beyond the river and look at it from the side, in the same way, a person cannot leave the world and look at it from the outside to see the world as the Cosmos.

The biblical account of the Creation of the World is the account of the Creation of Olam, while cosmology draws precisely the origin of the Cosmos. So I would say that the two views are in some way complementary.

If we compare them, I would say the following: it is no coincidence that when we talk about the scientific picture of the world, we are talking about the "picture", because the picture implies that I am removed from it, and the space of the picture is behind the plane of the image. And the direct perspective of the painting creates the illusion of space behind the plane of the image.

And the opposite of the direct perspective of the painting will be the reverse perspective of the icon, which, as it were, comes out to meet the prayer. And the praying person himself, who stands before the icon, is drawn into the space of the icon.

And if we compare the view of the world, which is characteristic of science, and the view of the world, which is characteristic of the Bible, I would compare them with the look at the picture and the look at the icon, with the direct and reverse perspective.

As far as evolution is concerned, it is naive to deny the fact of evolution. We may not know everything about the causes of the evolutionary process, but a fact is a fact, and it is as naive to deny it as to deny, on the basis of the Biblical Revelation, the fact of the Earth's rotation around the Sun.

But it seems to me that the main problem is that the Bible is a very complex theological text that also needs to be understood. And very often, when we read the Bible not in the language in which it was created, but in Russian, we involuntarily put in meanings that are familiar to us and that we borrow from the Russian language.

For example, when the first chapter of the Book of Genesis talks about the origin of man, then we read this story in a series of stories about the creation of all other living beings. Grass, trees are created first, then reptiles, birds, fish, animals, reptiles, animals, and then man is created.

And when we read in Russian, one feature escapes us, which is visible only in the Hebrew text. The fact is that all the words "grass", "trees," "animals", "fish" - they are all used in the singular, just like man. This is not evident in the Russian translation.

Obviously, when God creates grass, trees, fish, and so on, he creates more than one blade of grass, not one tree, not one fish. He creates a kind of grass, a kind of trees, a kind of fish, that is, a certain law that governs these creatures.

Carefully looking at the context of the narrative, we can say that the first chapter of the Book of Genesis speaks precisely about the creation of the human race. And the personal name "Adam" appears only in the second chapter, where, if we look at the Hebrew text, God begins to be called by that name - Yahweh - with which he revealed himself to Moses in the Burning Bush.

That is, the personal name appears in the second chapter. And it already says that a personal relationship between Adam and God begins. There only appears what, strictly speaking, is called a person, that is, the personality of a person.

Therefore, we must remember that the biblical text as the text of Revelation is very complex, and we must treat it with respect and not project our naive idea onto it, but still look for what God tells us, and not what we want to hear. ...

A place for a miracle in the scientific picture of the world

And how to relate, for example, the miracles of the Gospel and modern scientific views? Is there a place for miracles in the modern scientific picture of the world?

The biggest miracle, in fact, is human consciousness. We usually think that our consciousness is a product of the work of brain cells. But the biggest problem is that consciousness has an amazing quality of inner reality, what we call "inner world."

How an internal dimension of being arises from the objective processes of changing potentials between the cells of the brain - no one knows. Nobody knows where this dimension of being is.

The famous modern Australian philosopher David Chalmers says that it is completely incomprehensible why subjective reality is needed in the world: if the brain's task is simply to react to some external signals, transmit them to the body so that we can navigate in this world, then this is everything can be done absolutely without producing this subjective reality.

This problem of consciousness is one of the most urgent for science today. I think that it cannot be solved without referring to the theological tradition. Because it was in the context of the theological tradition, the tradition of the Old Testament Revelation, that the idea of ​​the person's personality and his inner reality appeared.

The outstanding connoisseur of antiquity, Alexei Fedorovich Losev, emphasized that the ancient world not only did not know the person, he did not even know the word that would denote it. In the Greek language of the classical era, there is no word that can be translated as "personality", because a person was part of society, he was, so to speak, turned out all over. He had no inner being.

This idea of ​​the inner being and the absolute value of each person appears first in the Old Testament times, when God reveals himself as a Person, and then - when the Son of God is incarnate and, as it were, descends on the same level with a person, meets him face to face. It was then that the concept of personality emerges in history. And this is the greatest miracle, it seems to me.

As for the miracles of the Gospel, he said great about this, said that what seems to us as dead matter, it seems to us as such simply because of the scarcity of our perception.

Metropolitan Anthony says that God in fact, being Life with a capital L, does not create anything dead. All matter is filled with life, and a miracle is simply the discovery of that hidden life, which is crushed by sin, which distorted the nature of the universe.

Vladyka Anthony says that if this were not so, then miracles would be simply magical violence against matter. And what happens in the Sacrament of the Eucharist, the miracle of the Body and Blood of Christ, which is performed at each liturgy, would be impossible.

In there is a discovery of what is hidden in matter, a discovery that all matter is capable of connecting with God. And this is exactly what this world is ultimately destined for, when, according to the apostle Paul, God will be “all things in all” (1 Cor 15:28).

Life is a dialogue with God

And what does it mean, in your opinion, to truly “be a Christian” for a person who lives in the modern world and whose consciousness is inherent not so much modern scientific ideas as superficial pseudoscientific materialistic stereotypes? What, in your opinion, is the main difficulty of this situation?

Well, firstly, it is generally useful to get rid of stereotypes, including materialistic ones. I understand that it is very difficult, because we are brought up in this from childhood. But it’s just physics, like any real science, that helps us get rid of these stereotypes and leads us to an understanding of how wisely the world works.

It seems to me that the most important thing for a person is to feel that all life is a dialogue with God. And this dialogue is not carried out through the fact that God opens the heavens and speaks to me from there. No! It's just that when I take a step in my life, make a choice, then God answers me with how my life situation changes.

And now my whole life, if I try to look at it in a Christian way, as a believer, it really is a dialogue with God. God answers me in response to my actions.

And it is very important to understand that there is nothing accidental in life in the sense of the word, that if I faced a certain situation, it is because I came to this situation with my choices, choosing just such a life path, and in fact this situation is it is God's answer to the way I lived before.

If some kind of illness, some kind of grief, some kind of trouble at work or with loved ones came to me, then this is God's answer to the way of my life: it means that I am in something wrong. Or maybe this is some lesson that I must learn in order to become different.

Repenting is not just about regretting that I was wrong about something. Repentance literally means “to change,” to become different, to follow a different path, to make other choices in life. This is fundamentally important.

And then life for me turns not into a series of some annoying accidents that I stumble upon, but becomes meaningful, turns into a lesson that is given to me by God, which I learn. And this lesson is given to me precisely in order for me to mature and grow, in order to enter into a genuine personal relationship with God, to meet Him face to face.

Union of Science and Religion

Father Kirill, you teach apologetics - the subject of the defense of faith. What, in your opinion, is the most important in defending the faith in modern society? And how to talk about God where the ideas of postmodernism dominate with its relativity, lack of core, hierarchy?

Well, firstly, I teach natural science apologetics, that is, I am talking mainly about the relationship between the picture of the world that is drawn by modern science with the picture of the world that is given to us by Revelation.

At first glance, these pictures contradict each other, but this contradiction is due to some of our misunderstanding, perhaps a wrong interpretation, but rather they are complementary.

Why? The scientific picture of the world, as we have already said, describes only the structure, the syntax of the book of nature. Science does not know the answer to the question of where the laws of nature are (well, ontologically - where?).

We understand that if there is a law that governs something, it must be at some higher ontological level in relation to what it governs ... but science does not know this. Where is the soul? How is living things different from non-living things? Objectifying science has no answers to these questions.

And this is not just my personal point of view. Our outstanding compatriot, Academician Vitaly Lazarevich Ginzburg, Nobel Prize laureate, in his Nobel Prize speech listed, as he put it, three great problems of physics.

The first problem is the problem of the arrow of time, that is, the problem of understanding how irreversible laws of being follow from the reversible laws of nature. All the laws of physics are reversible: you can direct time in the opposite direction - and everything is the same in the equations. At the same time, we see that there are no or almost no reversible processes in the world. The world is moving in one direction. Why this happens is not clear.

The second problem that Academician Ginzburg called is the problem of interpreting quantum mechanics. That is, the problem of understanding what is the meaning behind the mathematical structures that we discover. It seems to me that this meaning can only be understood from the semantic context of science, that is, from the context of Biblical Revelation.

Well, and the third problem is the problem of whether it is possible to reduce the laws of life and consciousness to the laws of physics. Academician Ginzburg himself hoped that it was possible, but, in general, it fails.

In fact, all three problems listed by Ginzburg are problems of the incompleteness of the modern picture of the world, which, it seems to me, can be filled precisely through an appeal to the biblical tradition of Revelation.

I read natural-scientific apologetics at the seminary, and at the Academy I also read two courses: "Theology of Creation" and "Christian Anthropology" - that is, this is the question of the origin of the world and the question of the origin of man, about how man differs from all other living beings.

As for postmodernism, I would not speak of postmodernism as something absolutely negative. Do you know why? The fact is that it was precisely the point of view of modernity that ruled out the possibility of faith and religion altogether. From the point of view of the modern tradition, there is a rational explanation, and that's it. The one and only such rational metanarrative that explains everything.

Postmodernity was a reaction to modernity, but at least it made room for faith, which is "madness for the Hellenes." This place simply did not exist in Art Nouveau.

Yes, now a holistic view of the world has not been formed, the picture of the world appears to us as a mosaic, assembled from pieces that often contradict each other, there is no single metanarrative, but at least there is space for faith, space for a miracle, which in the era there was simply no modernity at all.

- That is, in your opinion, the union of science and religion is now quite possible?

At least, this problem is recognized as urgent by many researchers. And, for example, in America there is the Sir John Templeton Foundation, which finances research devoted precisely to the convergence of scientific and theological traditions.

It costs a lot of money, and suffice it to say that the Templeton Prize, awarded annually for research on the relationship between science and religion, is larger than the Nobel Prize.

Interviewed by Elena Chach

Everyone wants to be happy. Of course, everyone understands happiness in their own way, but absolutely everyone strives for it. An amazing paradox arises: despite this aspiration, there are practically no happy people. Any person has something that prevents him from feeling the fullness of being. When we ask ourselves a question why When we think about the reasons for our adversity, we blame them mostly on external circumstances: someone thinks that he has little money, someone thinks that he lives in a country where there is bad government and imperfect laws. However, people who are incomparably richer than us, and people living in countries where, from our point of view, rivers of milk flow in the banks of the jelly, are also unhappy. Realizing this, we begin to understand that the reason for our failures lies not so much in external circumstances (although in them too), but, first of all, in ourselves. What makes us unhappy is called in the language of the Church sin.

What is “sin?” More often than not, by sin we mean some bad deed, impure thoughts. For example, he took someone else's - he sinned, he lied - he sinned, he got angry - he sinned. Why do we do things that we know we shouldn't do? So, we know that any lie ultimately comes out, and, therefore, there is no reason to lie - but sometimes we cannot refrain from lying. We know that we should not condemn other people, be annoyed with them; undoubtedly, it is better to live in acceptance of the world than in conflict with it - but how often do we annoy others, and those we love, more than others. As if something pushes us to wrong actions, to bad thoughts. The power that distorts even the best aspirations of our soul is sin.

Today, the common sense of the word "sin" differs significantly from its original meaning. Christianity arose and spread in an environment where Greek was the language of international communication and played about the same role that English plays today. The Greek word translated into Slavic as "sin" literally means "Flaw, oversight, mistake, missed target"... I want my life to be good and happy - and ill and failure haunt me; I want family relations to be good - and instead of this, quarrels and quarrels often arise; I want my children to grow up smart, healthy and obedient - but they do not live up to expectations. The mistake lies in the fact that sometimes we set ourselves false goals and spend a lot of time and effort to achieve them, and even, having set true goals, often, for various reasons, “do not fall into” them. All this is called a sin - the failure of our aspirations, including the best ones. The Apostle Paul says this about sin: “I don’t understand what I’m doing: because I don’t do what I want, but what I hate, I do. If I do what I do not want, then I agree with the law that it is good, and therefore it is no longer I who do that, but sin living in me. ... I do not do the good that I want, but the evil that I do not want I do. But if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do that, but the sin that dwells in me ”(Rom 7: 15-23).

Sin is a disease with which we are born and which, like our other traits - eye color, hair color - we inherit from our parents. Everyone is sick with the disease of sin - both adults and children. It would seem, what sins does a baby have, because he does not yet commit acts that require a choice? But the state of flaw, the mistake with which he was born, leads to the fact that, growing up and making a choice, the child begins to make mistakes, do evil for himself and his neighbors, often not wanting to. This is what is meant when we speak of original sin - the inherited damaged state of human nature. In biblical symbolic language, the idea of ​​inheriting a tendency to sin is embodied in the images of the ancestors Adam and Eve, who passed on human nature damaged by sin to their offspring (note that Adam is the name of all human nature, man in general, and Eve literally means “giving life”).

It is noteworthy that the opposite of sin is bliss, which, in fact, a person must achieve. In the biblical sense, the meaning of this word is different from what we usually put in it. The expressions "bliss", "to be at the top of bliss" presuppose a certain soaring above adversity and difficulties. Meanwhile, in the Bible, bliss is associated with the experience of the correctness of the chosen path, with the feeling of harmony in life, allowing to overcome inevitable adversities and difficulties, with the experience of the meaningfulness of the past, present and future, confidence in the implementation of their goals, and most importantly, with the feeling of the ability to follow the chosen path. ...

If sin is comparable to a disease of human nature, then the Church can be likened to a hospital, a divine asylum that helps to resist the disease of sin and gives us healing bliss. Naturally, seeking help from the Church is a voluntary matter. Just as we go to a doctor when we feel sick, so we come to Church when we begin to see our mistakes and realize that we cannot cope with them on our own. However, it happens that a person begins to go to Church, trying to fill the void in his soul, and only then his own sins are revealed to him. It is the Church that gives us "medicine" to help us overcome the flaw in human nature. This medicine is the sacrament of the Sacrament.

Secret Vecherya.

According to the gospel narrative, on the eve of the Old Testament feast of Easter, Jesus Christ entered Jerusalem, where he served with His disciples an Easter meal - the Last Supper. Evening- in Slavic "supper", and it is called the Mystery not only because it was performed in secret from the Jewish Sanhedrin, but also because the main sacrament of the Christian Church was established on it - the sacrament of the Sacrament.

The biblical Book of Exodus tells how the prophet Moses brought out the slave Jewish people from the land of Egypt. Pharaoh did not want to release the enslaved Jews, despite the calamities (“ executions") That hit the country. Only after the tenth execution, when all the first-borns died in Egypt, except for the Jews, whom the Angel of the Lord spared, seeing on the doors of their houses the agreed sign inscribed with the blood of the lamb, did Pharaoh allow the Jews to leave the land of Egypt. Later, on Mount Sinai, God made His Covenant with the people of Israel. In honor of deliverance from Egyptian slavery, the Old Testament Passover feast was established, during which the Jews sacrificed a lamb, for the Jewish first-borns were redeemed with his blood. The lamb ate with bitter herbs, symbolizing the bitterness of Egyptian slavery, and with unleavened bread, reminiscent of hasty gatherings when there was no time to take leaven for the dough.

At the end of the Last Supper, Christ, having made a prayer over the bread, said to His disciples: "Take, eat: this is my body"(Mt 26:26; cf .: Mk 14:22; Luke 20:19; 1 Cor. 11: 23-24); then, having lifted up a prayer over a cup of wine, He gave it to the apostles with the words: “Drink everything from it; for this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins "(Mt 26: 27-28; compare: Mk 14: 23-24; Lu 22:20; 1 Cor 11:25). Why does Christ call bread His Body and wine His Blood? The fact is that in the gospel context these words have a different meaning from what we are accustomed to today. For us, the body is flesh, but in Greek (and the Gospel was originally written in Greek) the word “body” means all the fullness of both God and man. Both in Greek and in Slavic we can say that God is corporeal, for He is whole. Christ speaks to his disciples, of course, not in these languages, but in Aramaic, but here the word “body” also replaced the personal pronoun “I”. When, pointing to the bread, Christ said: “This is My Body,” the apostles understood that He does not mean His flesh, but all His fullness, the integrity of His Divinity, which is present in this bread: “It is I myself, with my fullness, with my integrity, I am present here. "

“Blood” in the context of the biblical Old Testament tradition is a synonym for the word “soul”, “life”. In ancient times, it was believed that the soul of a living creature is contained in its blood, because when blood flows out, life leaves, the soul leaves. According to the Old Testament law, eating blood was equated with encroaching on the soul. The meat of animals could be eaten, but first it was necessary to pour out the blood, that is, to release the soul, and only after that to eat the already purified, “deadened” food. When Christ to His disciples, brought up in the Old Testament Jewish law, pointing to the cup of wine, said: “This is My blood,” it was clear to them that this was the fault of His soul, His life. Commanding to partake of His Body and Blood, the Lord commands the disciples to maintain unity with Him.

Sacrament of the Sacrament.

Beginning with the Last Supper, the eating of the Body and Blood of Christ is performed at each service, which is called the Liturgy. The Liturgy is a repetition, or rather, a continuation of the Last Supper. Its meaning is that the priest, on behalf of all believers, puts bread and wine in the altar on the throne, and all together pray that the Lord would unite with this bread and wine, making bread to be His body, and wine to His blood. The barrier of space and time, separating us from the Zion upper room, where the Last Supper was celebrated, is thinned, on the one hand, by the grace of God, on the other, by our faith, our prayerful aspiration to God. Every time we partake the same meals of Jesus Christ with the disciples, we eat the very Bread of Incorruption, which is prepared for the faithful at the end of time - in world of the next century, where "There will be no more time"(Rev 10: 6) When we eat Bread and Wine, and they become our body (as any food becomes our body), then we unite with God, and through this - with the Church. Thus, God, incarnated in the Man Jesus, in a sense continues His incarnation in the bodies of the members of the Church. It is this action of God in people and through people that is called the Church. The church is not just a temple; during the first three centuries, in the era of persecution of Christianity, there were practically no churches, but the Church was, and it is no coincidence that the proverb “The temple is not in the logs, but in the ribs” exists. The Church is not just a gathering of people united by a common faith; otherwise it would not differ fundamentally from a political party. The Church is that action of God in us, with which we become partakers in the sacrament of the Sacrament.

The Body of Christ, taught to believers in the sacrament of the Sacrament, combines the divisibility inherent in the nature of bread - created nature, and the property of indivisibility inherent in the Divine. Therefore, dividing, the Body of Christ remains indivisible, so that in every smallest particle it is all entirely. The sacrament makes us part the body of the Church, unites us into one whole, into one body Through the sacrament, we, according to the Apostle Paul, become “co-corporeal” with Christ - the Son of God, who became co-corporeal in incarnation, that is, co-bodied, co-whole people (Eph 3: 6). As the holy fathers used to say, the Church is "an unceasingly continuing and expanding incarnation of the Lord."

According to the interpretation of the Monk Maximus the Confessor, one of the greatest Byzantine theologians, the Church, created from the souls of her children, is the image of God himself. Just as God unites everything that exists, uniting it with Himself, so the members of the Church, uniting with Christ, constitute His Body; their souls and hearts merge into one soul and one heart, disagreements are overcome by brotherly love.

A person who belongs to the body of the Church becomes a "guide" through which God sends down His grace into this world. This is why the sacrament is called welcome what makes us part Churches. And, as mentioned above, it is the Sacrament that is the medicine that helps us to resist the disease of sin.

Repentance and Confession.

However, the sacrament is a special kind of medicine. Medical drugs act on our body almost independently of our will, of the state of our heart. But what the sacrament of the Sacrament will be for us depends, first of all, on ourselves. From the Bible, we know that at the Last Supper with other apostles, Judas also received communion. But, as stated in the Gospel of John, "After this piece Satan entered into him"(John 13:27). Why, then, what was good for the rest of the apostles turned out to be evil for Judas? The fact is that Judas received communion, having already conceived evil - intending to betray Christ. He was filled with the darkness of sin, and therefore for him the union with God, who is the Light that destroys the darkness, became destructive. So that the Sacrament does not turn out to be as destructive for us as for Judas, we, before Communion, must try to change our state - to repent.

Now it is generally believed that repentance is a story of what has been done, contrition over one's sins. But can just words change something in a person? Sometimes we hear: "We need to sin - and repent, sin - and repent." In fact, repentance means not just regretting what was created, but changing enough to become unable to return to the past. Only such a profound, essential change is repentance in the true sense of the word.

Such a change is extremely difficult to achieve. Those who tried to start a new life know how quickly it gets back on track. The point is the original sin that dwells in us and distorts our aspirations. The sacrament of confession helps to find true repentance, true change.

The meaning of confession lies in the fact that in the church, in the face of God, a person tries to realize more deeply the sins that he is able to notice in himself and which he cannot cope with on his own. He asks the Lord to help him. But, unfortunately, we tend to deceive ourselves and often, thinking that we are turning to God, in fact we turn to an image convenient for us, which we ourselves create - to the one who seems to be telling us: “Well, don't be upset, others do worse; in the end, these are ordinary human weaknesses, that's okay, then somehow everything will be settled. " In order to warn a person against a false image of God, the practice of confessing in the presence of a witness - a priest, who attests the sincerity and depth of our repentance - has taken root in the church tradition. After confession, the priest reads a prayer of absolution over the penitent, which frees the person from his sin. But it liberates not in the sense that the former does not make the former, but in the fact that it “interrupts” the connection between the person and the force that distorted the path of his life. In the sacrament, however, we are given a new power that can help change our path in life. But how we dispose of this gift depends on ourselves. We can turn it to our own good - if we try to resist sin, fight against it, but we can also turn it to evil, if, like Judas, we do not change.

Fast.

In order to properly accept the gift entrusted to us in the sacrament of the Sacrament, and to properly dispose of it, we must prepare ourselves. What helps us in this is what in the language of the church is called fasting.

Today, fasting is often perceived as giving up certain foods, meat and dairy, but this is just a diet. Fasting is the protection of the soul from everything that alienates us from God: from empty talk and unnecessary fuss, from irritation and condemnation, from unnecessary and heavy food that burdens the body and the soul connected to the body, - from everything that is unworthy of the title of man, created in the image and the likeness of God.

Thus, if we want the Communion to be for our good, we must definitely prepare for it - by fasting, confession, prayer. And just as a medicine must be taken regularly for it to work, so must Communion regularly. This is not necessary for God, not for the priests, but, first of all, for ourselves, for who, if not ourselves, are interested in correcting their path in life, in eliminating sin and blunder. The Sacrament is not only medicine for us, but also spiritual food that gives strength to our soul so that it can grow, as the Apostle Paul wrote, "According to the full age of Christ"(Eph 4:13).

Ladder to the sky.

It is the meeting with God, carried out in the sacrament of the Sacrament, that allows a person to truly take place as a person, to become personality in the true sense of the word, a person of absolute value. The meaning of the Divine Liturgy and the Sacrament of the Sacrament is that God comes into the world in order to meet a person face to face, to meet so that each person can feel the closeness of God. For the pre-Christian, pagan world, such a meeting seemed incredible. “The only thing that a perceptive and critical-minded Greek like Herodotus could say about the divine power governing the course of history is that "She enjoys upsetting and upsetting the order of things"[verbatim: the deity is envious and sows confusion], - notes the British historian R. J. Collingwood. “He repeated only what every Greek knew: the power of Zeus is manifested in lightning, Poseidon in earthquakes, Apollo in pestilence, and Aphrodite in a passion that destroys both Phaedra’s pride and Hippolytus’s innocence.” Aristotle argued that "friendship ... takes place where reciprocal love is possible, and friendship with God does not allow either reciprocal love or any kind of love whatsoever." New Testament evangelism is radically different from anything that was said by ancient thinkers. Christ says to His disciples: “I no longer call you slaves, for a slave does not know what his master is doing; but I called you friends, because I told you everything that I heard from My Father "(John 15:15). God, the Creator of the entire universe, Himself comes into this world, becoming a man, turns to man and thereby raises a man to Himself, gives him absolute significance. It is from the moment of the Incarnation that a person, in fact, becomes a person - a person who has value in the eyes of God. And all modern culture, built on respect for the human person, is rooted in the Christian tradition.

The values ​​that are today called “universal” are in fact specifically Christian values. Only when a person has the opportunity of personal communication with God, personal standing with Him face to face, the human personality reaches its absolute significance.

The meeting with God, which takes place in the sacrament of the Sacrament, allows a person to feel and expand that peace which, according to the word of Scripture, was inserted by the Creator in his heart(Eccl 3:11). According to biblical tradition, it was through internal man opens the way to heaven, - after all, man was born as an intermediary between two worlds: created "From the dust of the earth", he is revived by the divine "Breath of life"(Genesis 2: 7). The Apostle Paul also testifies to this: “Pay attention to yourself and to the teaching, do this constantly; for by doing this, you will save yourself, and those who listen to you "(1 Tim 4:16). “If you are pure, heaven will be within you, and within yourself you will see the angels and their light, and with them and in them the Lord of the angels,” exhorts the Monk Isaac the Syrian. Much later this thought was repeated by Novalis: “We dream of wandering in the Universe; isn't the universe in us? We do not know the depths of our spirit. Our mysterious path leads inside us. In us or nowhere is eternity with its worlds, past and future. " The Church is that which helps each person to find his own path - the path to himself, inside his own heart, and up to God.

Actually, the Church is ladder elevating to heaven. In Old Testament times, its prototype was revealed in a dream to the patriarch Jacob (Gen. 28: 12-16). In New Testament times such ladder became the Most Holy Theotokos, who gave the disembodied God His Most Pure Flesh in the mystery of the Incarnation. Becoming in the sacrament of the Eucharist, according to the word of the Apostle Paul, co-corpses with Christ (Eph. 3: 6), the Son of God, the Son of Mary, we become children of the Mother of God, who is truly the mother of all Christians. That is why, in the akathist to the Most Holy Theotokos, we praise Her with the following words: “Rejoice, heavenly ladder, God is even from below; Rejoice, bridge, lead beings from earth to Heaven. " Saint Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyons (II century), calls the Mother of God "the womb of mankind", for through Her the rebirth of all creation is carried out.

The Greek verb "αμαρτάνω", translated into the Slavic language as "to sin", etymologically means "to sin, miss, miss the target." characteristics of the relationship both between man and man, and between God and man. To be sinful means to be guilty not before the law, but, first of all, before another person; to sin is to distort interpersonal relationships. The Slavic "sin" is associated with the word "warm" with the original meaning "burning" (conscience).

The Hebrew word "escher" has a slightly different meaning than the Russian "bliss". The difference lies not so much in the experience of bliss itself as in the reason or basis for this experience. Bliss in the biblical understanding is not associated either with the onset of joyful events, or with receiving pleasure, or with the experience of calm, happy well-being. The content of bliss is made up of true striving and the ability to direct the path of life. It occurs not as a result of external circumstances, when a person only passively accepts bliss, but as a result of the active direction of movement along the chosen path of life.

The very word "Passover" comes from Heb. "Pesach" - "passing by, mercy."

The Greek word "σώμα" - "body", comes from "σάος" - "whole", just like the Slavic "body" comes from "whole". For the word "flesh" in the Greek language another term is used - "σάρξ".

The Greek word λειτουργία means co-action: initially - social duty, co-action of co-workers, then co-action with God.

The Greek word "μετάνοια", translated into the Slavic language as "repentance", literally means "renewal of the mind, irreversible change"; comes from "μετα-νοέω" - "change your mind, change your mind." The Russian word "repentance" comes from the Slavic "kayati" - "to blame", hence the "accursed" - "worthy of condemnation."

The Russian word "post" comes from o.-s. * postъ, in all likelihood borrowed from Old German. "Fasto", in turn associated with OE. "Festi" - "strong, firm."

Prot. Kirill Kopeikin, candidate of physical and mathematical sciences, candidate of theology, associate professor.

Archpriest Kirill Kopeikin on the connection between physics and theology, the relationship between science and religion, the driving forces of near-religious polemics and his own path to faith.

Physics as natural theology

Many priests came to the Church from physics. I believe that this is not an accident, but a pattern. The fact is that initially physics arose as a natural theology, as a way to know God through the doctrine of creation.

The medieval analogue of modern physics is natural ethology, that is, seeing the traces of the Creator in creatures. It seems to me that in a latent form it still exists in physics today. And I know that for many, the study of physics becomes the beginning of the path to God.

For me personally, physics itself did not become what made me believe in God. Although, I must say that the discoveries of physics in the XX century refuted naive materialistic ideas about the structure of the universe.

We saw that a person turned out to be included in the picture of the world, and the world is largely dependent on a person. That is, in the world there is no such, relatively speaking, heavy materiality, the idea of ​​which arises from the school physics course. And my faith is primarily associated with personal existential experience.

The Boy Who Hurts

I was brought up in an ordinary Soviet environment, and outwardly life was very successful. I was a good boy, an excellent student, I studied at a special physics and mathematics school. Then I entered the Physics and Mathematics Department, got into the Department of Theory of Elementary Particle Physics, which was difficult to get into. But at the same time, inside me all the time there was a feeling of some kind of mental pain, which was incomprehensibly connected with what.

I tried to drown it out, but no matter what I did, the pain would not go away. I tried to apply different methods, for example, doing yoga, then tourism. It was distracting for a while, but the pain didn't really go away.

In search of ways to get rid of this pain, I began to enter the Church. And suddenly, completely unexpected for me, it became easier for me there. So gradually I began to go to Church, although it was not easy, because the Church seemed to be something too simple, rather close to grandmothers. That is, the experience of communion with God through the Church, which nourishes my soul and relieves pain, led me to faith.

The only thing worth living for

The decision to become a priest came about as a result of contact with death. There are such wonderful words that phenomena that have no alternative for us, as it were, do not exist. If I only live, and I have no experience of death, then I do not understand what life is. When we breathe, we do not notice the sweetness of the breath until we hold our breath.

And through the experience of dealing with the death of my father, who died early enough, I realized that the only thing worth living for is what remains with us outside this world. It was then that the realization came that one had to be a priest. And a few months after my father's death, I applied to enter the seminary.

Atmosphere of freedom

When I was at university, no one persecuted me for my faith. The physics department had such a free atmosphere that everyone could believe in anything and have absolutely any views on the world. This did not surprise anyone at all. A freer world than I was among physicists, I just don't know.

Maybe there could have been some kind of repression on the part of the administration. There was a case when students and teachers were kicked out of us, having learned that they go to Church. They were accused of creating a religious and mystical sect. But in my environment, I did not face such problems.

Now we have a holiday at St. Petersburg University - the day of the physicist. Until now, people even come to it from other faculties, if they manage to get on it, because it is not easy. And everyone says that this is the best university holiday, since there is no such atmosphere of freedom and trust anywhere else.

Dark forces in controversy

Sometimes situations arise when a priest, illuminating from a theological point of view, one or another aspect of life, touches on any scientific issues, and this causes rejection among specialists in this field. It is believed that such a reaction is directly provoked by dark forces.

I would not talk about dark forces. There are quite understandable and natural reasons here, which are as follows. Indeed, on the one hand, the forerunner of modern physics is natural medieval ethology. On the other hand, the new European science emerged as a "theology of the book of nature," as opposed to a theology of revelation.

In the Christian tradition, there was a concept of two books that were given by God to man. On the one hand, this is the Bible, which tells about the plan of the Creator. On the other hand, it is a “book of nature” that speaks about the customs of the Creator.

And if in the Middle Ages the emphasis was on the first book - on revelation, and it was on the basis of the Bible that nature was understood, then the pathos of the new European science was precisely to put the Creator's book - nature in the first place, read it and solve those two the main tasks that, from the point of view of science, the Church could not solve.

The first task is to overcome such a consequence of the Fall as the need to get your bread by the sweat of your brow. And the second task is to overcome the diversity of languages, an attempt to find a single common language, that Adam's language, which he possessed in paradise, which he named the creature. To a large extent, science has managed to solve these two problems, therefore, in fact, it exists in opposition to the Church. Science claims to have the truth.

Science Needs Faith

The biggest problem of science is that it is not possible to include personality in the scientific picture of the world, because personality is not captured by objective methods of cognition.

That the other has personality, I can only believe. I feel my personality, but how do I know that the other person is also a person? This is just an act of my faith. And it seems to me that faith is necessary for science in order for a person to be included in the picture of the universe.

PROTOPER KIRILL KOPEYKIN. WHAT IS THE WORLD OF? Father Kirill Kopeikin, a priest, physicist, teacher of the Theological Academy, spoke about faith, science, the world and what the Poem of God is.

Why do we need knowledge - Father Kirill, you are a physicist by training? - Yes, I graduated from the physics department of St. Petersburg State University, then graduate school, defended my dissertation, then worked in the special design bureau "Integral" at the university. - Why do many physicists become priests? It seems to be a distant sphere ... - In fact, not so distant. Francis Bacon, who can be called the founder of modern science, argued that God gave us Revelation in two forms. The first is the Bible, and the second is the world itself, which is the Creator's book. At the same time, Bacon believed that reading the book of nature gives us the keys to a deeper understanding of the Bible. Probably, it is, because, as we can see, this idea of ​​cognition of the Creator through creation is still latently present in physics. This is on the one hand. On the other hand, it must be said that it was physics that allowed us to develop a theoretical view of the world. And the essence of the theoretical vision is as follows. In physics, the world is drawn not as a collection of certain facts, objects, in it we describe the laws governing these bodies. The laws discovered by physics have a primary ontological (existential) reality. That is, when we are engaged in physics, we, as it were, take the position of the Lawgiver, the Creator. It seems to me that this is what leads many physicists to the fact that they begin to perceive their occupation in physics as a kind of sacred action, and then become priests. - People come to the Church in different ways, and this leaves an imprint on people. What imprint does physics leave? - I think, first of all, the habit of disciplined thinking. And yet - freedom of judgment, lack of fear of novelty, courage that allows one to overcome common stereotypes. - But there is schematism in the consistency, which can narrow the living experience of faith. Some believe that a believer does not even need theology, they say, why think, learn something, when it is enough to be with God. - Yes, the Apostle Paul said that in the world of the age to come, knowledge will be abolished, only Love will remain. When we see Him face to face. But until that happens, we need theology, physics, and much more. The Monk Maximus the Confessor, one of the greatest Byzantine theologians, believed that the knowledge of the fluid, created nature is a kind of game that ultimately leads us to the knowledge of God. And just as a child leaves toys, parting with childhood, so a person in the future will move to some higher level of knowledge. Everything has its time. In the meantime, you just need to go through your period of development.

On rationalism - In one of your articles you write: "Only by making science its ally, the Church will be able to attract the intelligentsia, which could bear testimony of faith to all educated people." But how to do that? After all, the Church will then have to adjust to the rationality of science. - Is the church environment irrational? - But faith is against rationality. - Who told you that? Look at the Scriptures. The Apostle Paul says that our ministry is a rational ministry (Rom. 12: 1). In the original Greek, the words λоγικη λατρια (pronounced "logic") were used, and in Latin it was translated as "ration". Our service to God is intelligent service. Reason is a gift from God, a sin to refuse it. Another thing is that everything is not reduced to only one mind. “Meanwhile, our atheist intellectuals call themselves rationalists and are kind of proud of it. - Well, they just think to themselves. In fact, the nature of their atheism is irrational. Because this is the result of the dominance of 70 years of so-called scientific atheism, about which Berdyaev wrote well: there is no rationality behind this, behind this is the struggle for power over souls and the desire of the totalitarian state to completely subjugate everything and everyone. You see, this is a disaster that needs to be overcome. And this is gradually happening. Now science itself inevitably comes to overcoming atheistic materialism. The remarkable Russian physicist David Nikolaevich Klyshko, who was engaged in quantum optics and quantum informatics, wrote in one of the last works published in the most authoritative journal Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk, that we still do not have a materialistic interpretation of the state vector, which is a mathematical representative of elementary micro-objects ... Do you understand? We cannot describe the particles that make up matter in a materialistic way. Nothing new in terms of their description has yet been invented, but it is already clear that this will not be materialism in the usual sense of the word. And many scientists are talking about this. The late Academician Ginzburg, in his Nobel lecture, named the interpretation of quantum mechanics among the three great problems of physics. Until now, no one can understand what reality is behind the mathematical constructions with which we describe the world - and this is important in order to move further in the study of elementary particle physics. - Ginzburg is the co-author of the well-known anticlerical "Letter of 10 Academicians" ... - Nevertheless, he understood that the world was on the verge of the emergence of some kind of new physics. Once I showed him my work on Jung and Pauli. Wolfgang Pauli was an outstanding physicist, Nobel laureate, one of the founders of quantum mechanics. And Carl Gustav Jung was an outstanding psychologist, the creator of analytical psychology. And they jointly tried to understand how the physical and mental interact in this world. Vitaly Lazarevich was initially surprised that "some priest" was writing a work on this topic. But then he showed it to his colleagues, they found no mistakes, and Ginzburg, being an honest person and seeing the scientific conscientiousness of the work, posted it on the podium of the site of the journal Uspekhi Fizicheskikh Nauk. - And what kind of psyche can there be in the physical world? Atoms are inanimate ... - This is the mystery. In fact, the quantum world often behaves as if it were alive.

Living world - Do you mean by “living” the so-called observer effect? This is when the very fact of observing quantum particles by a scientist changes their physical parameters. That is, the particles, it turns out, react to what a person measures them. - Yes, including this. The most unexpected thing we encounter when in our exploration of the world we reach a fundamental level, to quantum mechanical objects, is that objects are more like something mental than physical, in the ordinary sense of the word. We are used to thinking that an object exists by itself. And then suddenly it was discovered that quantum objects interact with us and, as it were, answer our questions. This is so surprising that the English physicist Charles Galton Darwin wrote an article in 1919 in which he argued that quanta are very similar to living organisms. And I even thought that perhaps the electron would have to be attributed with free will. - He is not related to another Charles Darwin, the founder of soulless mechanical evolutionism? - This is his grandson. And, unlike his grandfather, he was already in another world of scientific ideas - he was a direct witness to the birth of the quantum theory of the structure of the atom, he himself left a noticeable mark in experimental physics. For example, scientists know the Darwin-Fowler method. At one time, his book "The Modern Concept of Matter" was very popular. And the German philosopher Alois Wenzel, who wrote the book "Metaphysics of Modern Physics", went even further. He argued that the world of elementary objects is similar to the world of elemental spirits. Although I would call it "elementary logoi". You see, in a sense, the whole reality that we face in the Kantian world is alive. And we interact with this reality. - Isn't there a temptation to pantheism in this view of physical reality? Like, the whole world is the living God? - There will always be dangers if you fantasize thoughtlessly. It is clear, however, that from the very fact of "living matter" it does not follow in any way that this is God. It's just that the Creator created such materiality. And this does not contradict Orthodox teaching. Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh, in my opinion, one of the greatest theologians of the twentieth century, said that the only true materialism is Christianity. What did he mean? That we believe in matter not as something inert, dead, but as something called by God to be transformed. And Vladyka Anthony notes very accurately: this is what happens in the Church. When we celebrate the Liturgy, a miracle of transformation takes place - God unites with bread and wine. Vladyka Anthony explains that this is not magical violence against matter, but, on the contrary, it is the raising of matter to the level to which it was called by God, to the state about which the Apostle Paul writes: “God will be all things in all” (1 Cor. 15, 28). The whole world must be deified, brought into union with God. And the Vladyka says wonderfully: God does not create anything dead, since He Himself is life. - But we, ordinary people, still live in the world of dead, inert matter. Only scientists see the quantum world. - Why only scientists? It is in the miracles that sometimes happen that this innermost life of matter is revealed. - It turns out such a picture. What we observe in our macrocosm is a consequence of the Fall, our fallen world. But if we try to see what the fallen, inert matter consists of, then at the elementary level we see signs of some other, “living” state? Or, as it were, borderline with the "living"? At the elementary level, particles have quantum uncertainty - they are simultaneously localized and not localized in space. There is an effect of entanglement, when the state of one particle can be instantly transferred to another, even if they are at a great distance from each other. That is, there are signs of the existence of a world with different laws. Perhaps further, beyond this level, there is a subtle world? - In my opinion, it is wrong to oppose the "thin" and "not thin" worlds. This is done by those who have an old Newtonian picture of the world in their heads: they say, there is space and time as a receptacle for events, and material bodies are in them. In fact, the universe is completely different. Space and time in it arise as a result of a very complex system of relations between elements, which themselves possess a certain, I would say, internal dimension of being. And the fabric of reality is very tightly intertwined, it is alive, and the world consists of elementary particles, which are more like logos, like monads, like something living. And we interact very closely with this. This is our reality, not some "subtle" world. - It is difficult to imagine such an interaction. We are big, we are in the macrocosm, and there are the smallest particles ... - What do you mean “we are big”? All this happens in ourselves, including at the genetic level. Back in 1943, one of the founders of quantum mechanics, Erwin Schrödinger, developed ideas about the connection between genetics and quantum mechanics. And our compatriot, the outstanding geneticist Timofeev-Resovsky, said that the discreteness (separation, discontinuity) of our bodies is a manifestation of the quantum nature of the world. It can be assumed that genes are like amplifiers that transfer “life” from the quantum microscopic level to the macroscopic level. And at the same time, the property of discreteness is transmitted. That is, we have separate bodies precisely as a result of the quantum nature of the world. And if the world at a fundamental level was arranged differently, then life could look, for example, like a continuous ocean. - How in the film "Solaris"? - Like that. There would be not a discrete world, not separate beings, but one community. - The fact that matter at the elementary level behaves like "living", does not confirm the evolutionist theory, according to which life and mind arose by themselves? Previously, atheists argued that living things arose from inert, inorganic matter, and this was easily refuted. But what if matter is originally "living"? - Just like that, without creative Reason, one cannot be transformed into another. In addition, the idea of ​​spontaneous emergence of intelligent life refutes the phenomenon of "silence of the universe." You probably know: in the 60s and 70s, scientists were actively looking for extraterrestrial life. And this program still works. At the same time, mind you, recently astrophysicists have begun to detect a lot of exoplanets in space. As of December 2013, the existence of 1,056 planets has been reliably confirmed. In the Milky Way galaxy alone, according to new data, there should be more than 100 billion planets, of which 5 to 20 billion are possibly "Earth-like". Also, according to some estimates, about 34 percent of sun-like stars have planets close to them, comparable to the Earth. Here are all the conditions for the "spontaneous emergence of life" and the development of civilizations. But they somehow do not make themselves felt. - And should they? - The likelihood of this can be estimated. Professor of the Department of Astrophysics and Stellar Astronomy of the Physics Faculty of Moscow State University Vladimir Mikhailovich Lipunov proposes to do this as follows. We agree with astrophysicists that the universe has existed for about 10 billion years. Let's accept the fact that over the past century our civilization has been developing exponentially, with acceleration. Then the number characterizing the growth of a technological civilization during the existence of the universe will be of the order of exp (10,000,000 / 100), that is, 1,042,000,000. This is a colossal number. For comparison: the number of all elementary particles in the universe is only 1080. That is, the likelihood of the emergence of civilizations like ours is as great as the existence of matter itself is obvious. They should be, period. And astrophysicists should see traces of the activities of these civilizations in space. Once the great physicists who participated in the Manhattan Project started talking about whether extraterrestrial civilizations exist. Enrico Fermi said: "They definitely don't exist." He was asked: "Why?" He replied: "If this kind of civilization existed, then our entire sky would be in flying saucers." This is now called the "Fermi paradox". How can this paradox be explained? One of the brightest Russian astrophysicists, Viktoriy Favlovich Shvartsman, believed that perhaps there are signals from another civilization, but we do not understand their meaning. This is akin to the most important thing in art - the understanding that we are really a work of art. And here everything rests on the person himself. The astrophysicist was convinced that the knowledge of the external world is a more primitive task than the knowledge and construction of the inner world of man, the spiritual and ethical world; the technological age will soon end, humanity will understand that it has lost its way, and, finally, it will completely occupy itself with the soul in the broad sense of the word.

The poem of God is Father Cyril, and yet it is not clear how in matter, albeit in "living", mind can be enclosed. These are different things, aren't they? - What do you mean concluded? And what is matter in general? Look: the world as we know it consists mainly of emptiness. What is an atom? If the nucleus of the hydrogen atom, the most abundant element in space, is enlarged to the size of a soccer ball, then the electrons around it will revolve at a distance of about a kilometer. Can you imagine? And if the distance between electrons and nuclei in the human body is removed, then the person will turn into the smallest speck of dust. The world, which, as it seems to us, is filled with solid matter, is in fact almost nothing. The effect of hardness in it is due to the electromagnetic interaction that keeps the particles at a certain distance. What is electromagnetic interaction? Its manifestation is a stream of photons, that is, light. And when the Apostle Paul says that everything that appears is light (Eph. 5:13), then this can be understood in the literal sense. That is, the material world is actually very ephemeral, on the verge of reality. This is the first thing. Now the second. If we remember that the world was created by the Word of God, then the question arises: what is the reality of the word? If we are created in the image and likeness of God, when we create a poetic work, then where does this reality exist? The Monk Maximus the Confessor calls the material world "the logos' solid-woven tunic." Saint Gregory Palamas, in which Orthodox theology probably reaches its peak, calls this world "the writing of the self-hypostatic Word." In the Creed, we confess God as the "Creator of the universe", and in Greek there is literally "poetis". If the world is a poem of God, then where does it exist? When a person creates a poem, where does he create it? - In some kind of information field. - What other field? Here I am sitting, making up a poem. In what information field does it exist? “Eh… well, in consciousness, I guess. - In your mind, in your psyche, right? So where does the world exist? - In the mind of God? - This conclusion can be made based on the data of modern science. Realizing that this so-called material world consists of almost nothing materially, we see that the world is the psychic of the Creator. Thought is born out of nothing, so our world was created out of nothing. - So, we are all thoughts of God? At any moment, God can think differently and ... we will disappear? - No. Here is a poet, he created a poem out of nothing with the forces of his soul. And she, the poem, lives her own life. Although it contains the author's piece of the soul. - That is, our mind is like a part of God? - No, I speak figuratively. To put your soul into a work is to create from yourself, in your own image and likeness. And this we received from the Lord. The proof of this is that we can be aware of both ourselves and His presence. There is such a famous physicist, Aleksey Burov, who is now working in the USA, at Fermilab, at the Enrico Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. In one of his works, he writes that today 45 orders of the universe are open before us - from the size of 10-19 meters (this is the order studied at the Large Hadron Collider) to 1026 meters (this is the distance at which the galaxies visible through the Hubble telescope are located) ... Can you imagine what it is? 10 with 45 zeros meters - this is what the scale of the universe is open to us. And he asks: the ability to see the universe on such a scale does not mean that our mind is similar to the mind of the Creator?

Belief is usually considered to be something subjective, in the realm of illusion. But now, says physicist Burov, the most concrete proof of our faith is science, the ability of man to encompass the universe with his mind and penetrate into its essence. He writes: “It is customary to regard religious experience as strictly subjective, as opposed to scientific. The words “religious experience” give rise to an association of unique, indescribable personal experiences, visions and revelations. Isn't there a delusion here, isn't there an unjustified narrowing of religious experience? .. In the history of mankind there is no experience of faith, more majestic and at the same time completely objective, like the experience of fundamental science, like the experience of the cosmic growth of man himself ... Science itself with cosmic power testifies to divine sonship, as a real relationship between man and God. " - That is, the very fact that we, being inside a closed system, are able to mentally go beyond its limits, speaks of the transcendence of our mind? - Yes, this is an absolutely amazing fact, although we take it for granted, without hesitation. But imagine this picture: Pierre Bezukhov and Andrei Bolkonsky are discussing the structure of the novel War and Peace and the idea of ​​Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy. But we are in the same position - being a part of this world, we are making a claim to understand its laws and even the meaning of its existence, that is, the Creator's plan. Einstein said so bluntly: “I want to know how God created the world. I am not interested here in this or that phenomenon, in the spectrum of this or that element. I want to comprehend His thoughts, everything else is details. " In the last years of Einstein's life, his collaborator was the famous American physicist John Archibald Wheeler. And, reflecting on what place a person occupies in the universe, he came to the following conclusion: “He who thinks of himself simply as an observer turns out to be a participant. In some strange sense, this is participation in the creation of the universe. This is the central conclusion for the problem “quantum and the Universe” ”. Wheeler saw that the nonlocality of quantum physics, coupled with the influence of the observer on the observed system, directly indicates that we are co-creators of the Creator and participate in the ongoing creation of the universe. - The Bible says that Adam was God's co-worker in paradise because he was assigned to tend God's garden. But this cooperation ended after the Fall and expulsion from paradise? We are punished, as it were, "put in a corner." - Not certainly in that way. We have been given the opportunity to correct. And the possibility of co-creation with God is still present in us. Not to the same extent, of course, as it was in paradise - and thank God, because, being in our current depraved state, we could destroy a lot. Actually, this is what we do often. Nevertheless, this gift of God remained and imposes a great responsibility on us. Looking to the future - you said that the world is on the verge of a new physics. What is changing in science now, what trends are being traced? - Now the question of what consciousness is, is emerging, programs for the study of a person and his psyche are emerging. A lot of money is spent on this. In Europe, for example, the Human Brain Project has been launched, in which more than 130 European research institutions are involved. He has funding of 1 billion 2 million euros. The media report that it has already managed to obtain the most detailed computer image, or, as they say, the most detailed map of the human brain. Scientists are trying to figure out how the structure of the brain affects the behavior and abilities of a person, how individual differences in the structure of the brain are associated with differences in personal abilities. And in the United States launched a grandiose project BRAIN, which stands for "Studying the brain through the development of innovative neurotechnologies." Its funding - $ 3 billion - is enormous, especially in the context of the financial crisis and the curtailment of many scientific programs. - And what can it give? - I believe that the question of the nature of consciousness cannot be resolved outside the theological context. Because the very concept of personality, consciousness - it only arises in the context of the biblical Revelation. And research projects launched today will inevitably lead to an understanding of this. - And one more question, in conclusion. And in the people themselves, something is changing? I mean the atheistic mood among the intelligentsia. You are the rector of the church at St. Petersburg University and you constantly communicate with students, future scientists. - Among the students there are a lot of believers, and even more seekers. Studentship is, after all, a time of active search for the meaning of life, for its own way of life. - Do they go to church? - The services are mainly attended by teachers and graduates. And for students, the university is the place where they study, and then there's the temple, on Sundays they go to the university again. - Scrap, as young people say. - Yes, but at the same time I have never encountered their negative reaction. - On the social network, I saw the parish group, led by Mikhail and Oleg. - These guys organized themselves and hold meetings at the Church of St. Tatiana. We have two temples at the university. The first, the apostle Peter and Paul, is located in the building of the Twelve Colleges. We started serving there back in 1996. At first, there is a prayer service once a month, then - once a week. Now the service is every Sunday and on holidays - usually about a hundred people come, but on Easter it is simply not possible to enter the church, everything does not fit. And the Church of St. Tatiana is in the building of the former Larinsky gymnasium on the 6th line of Vasilyevsky Island, which now belongs to the Faculty of Philology and the Faculty of Arts. - You probably read lectures in the community? - Yes, lectures are held constantly, I read, and I invite someone. - As soon as you have time ... - With difficulty and with the help of God! - Let me wish you God's help in the coming year, and thank you for the interesting conversation. Interviewed by Mikhail Sizov