Moreover, it is precisely the two most mature theologians of the New Testament, the Apostle John and the late Paul, who write more extensively about this "ascent" and "descent" than others.

"No one ascended into heaven except the Son of man who came down from heaven" (John 3:13).

"Does this offend you? What then, if you see the Son of man going up to where he was before?" (John 6:6162).

"And what does 'ascended' mean, if not that He also descended first into the lowest places of the earth? He who descended, He is also He who ascended above all heavens, that He might fill all things" (Ephesians 4:9-10).

They could use this language without any embarrassment – it did not yet cause them difficulties. Everyone understood what was meant when they spoke of a God who was "in heaven," even if people were simpler and perceived these expressions more vulgarly than the wise men. Of course, the phrase "caught up to the third heaven" (2 Cor. 12:2) was a metaphor for Paul, as it is for us, although it probably seemed to him a more accurate metaphor. But at any rate he could use it to appeal to a spiritually sophisticated Corinthian audience, and he did not feel the need to make it more acceptable by demythologization.

For the New Testament writers, the idea of God "in heaven" did not cause unnecessary difficulties – it had not yet become a problem. In our country, it does not cause any particular difficulties either – for most of our contemporaries, it has already ceased to be a problem. We have already ceased to notice that we still usually express a special degree of quality in terms of height, although, as Edwin Bevan has remarked, "the idea that moral and spiritual values increase or diminish in proportion to the distance from the earth's surface would certainly seem very strange if expressed in such a naked form." But there is no need to make excuses, to explain what we mean, for a long time. However, there is still a need to explain to our children that "heaven" is not really what is above our heads, and God does not literally sit "above the azure firmament". And most of us still have an image of a "heavenly elder" somewhere in the depths of our souls, even if our conscious ideas were completely different. And yet, today, the traditional symbolism of the three-storey universe is a serious obstacle for few people. It does not disturb our intellect and does not become a temptation to faith, because we have long since made a wonderful substitution, which, however, we are hardly conscious of. In fact, the crudely spatial nature of biblical terminology does not bother us simply because we have ceased to perceive it as spatial. This is similar to transposition in music: if a part needs to be transferred to a different key, then an experienced musician instantly and without mental effort makes a mental substitution by looking at the text of the printed score. In the spirit of this analogy, it can be said that although there are some difficult passages in the biblical score that require conscious effort from us (for example, the story of the Ascension), on the whole we have no difficulty transposing it "from the sheet".

For the place of the literally or physically "Most High" God in our consciousness has been taken by God, spiritually or metaphysically "beyond". For some, of course, He is "otherworldly" almost literally. Even if they recognized the Copernican revolution in science, they could still think until very recently that God was somewhere outside the space around us. Indeed, the number of people who unconsciously believed that it was impossible to believe in God in the cosmic age shows how grossly physical this notion of God's "otherworldliness" was for many. As long as there were still depths of the cosmos inaccessible to investigation, it was possible to place God in a kind of terra incognita8; but now that it is possible to look there, if not from a rocket, then at least with the help of a radio telescope, there seems to be no room left for God, not only in the hotel9 but in the entire universe. Of course, our new knowledge of the universe doesn't really change anything. After all, "space" has not become less limited than before, only now this limitation is associated with the speed of light. Beyond a certain distance, which we have almost reached, everything fades beyond the horizon of visibility. And no one will prevent us, if we really want to, from placing God beyond this horizon. There, in a field forever closed to scientific research, our God will be completely safe. Yet such a vulgar "projection" of God far away has become unthinkable with the advent of the space age—and we should welcome it. For if we speak of the "transcendence" of God, it is certainly not in the literal sense!

However, the idea of a spiritually or metaphysically "otherworldly" God is much more stable. Most people would be seriously concerned about the idea of having to give up on this idea. For their God is just like that, and they have nothing to replace him. And now let's replace the words "they" and "them" with "we" and "our", it will be more honest. For what is under threat is the God of our childhood, the God of whom we have been told and of whom we have told others, the God of our fathers and of our religion. Each of us has a certain mental image of the "otherworldly" God, Who "exists" above the world created by Him, somewhere outside the Universe. It is the God to whom we "turn" when we pray, to whom we "go" when we die. In traditional Christian theology, the doctrine of the Trinity testifies to the self-sufficiency of the divine Being outside of us and independently of us. The doctrine of creation asserts that this God once called into existence the "world" that exists before Him. The biblical accounts tell how He begins to reach out to those He has created, how He makes a "covenant" with them, how He "sends" His prophets to them, and how, when the fullness of times has come, He "visits" them in the person of His Son, who must one day "come" again to gather His faithful.

It is this image of an "otherworldly" God who visits the earth "from there" that is behind all the popular narratives of the Christian drama of salvation, both in sermons and in books. It can even be noted that those who have coped with this task with the greatest success in our days - Dorothy Sayers, C.S. Lewis, J.B. Phillips10 were the least embarrassed by the frank anthropomorphism of such statements. Of course, they did not take these expressions literally, just as the New Testament writers did not take God "in heaven" literally, but they clearly did not see any obstacle to the preaching of the Gospel here. This alone testifies to the existence of a ready-made circle of readers and listeners for whom this manner of expression does not yet cause any difficulties. Therefore, before expelling it or questioning it, one should think carefully – the very success of these preachers suggests such an idea.

In fact, the last thing I want to do is to pose like a person who criticizes them from above. I, too, would like to think that it is possible to use these mythological expressions about an "otherworldly" God and make the same natural and unconscious substitution that, as I have already pointed out, we do with expressions about the "supreme" and "heavenly" God. For if we do not learn this substitution, if we do not begin to "read" this theological notation, so to speak, without much effort, we will cease to understand the classical expressions of the Christian faith, just as we would not be able to read the Bible if we continued to be seduced by the biblical concepts of God. I think, however, that all this will be possible only after a transition period of at least a century, and only then will the old language cease to be a temptation to the faith of many. One can wholeheartedly wish to do without this transitional period: who wants to live in such a difficult time! But everything rather suggests that we are approaching a crisis point, when the whole concept of the "otherworldly" God, which has served us faithfully since the idea of a three-storey universe crumbled, is itself more of a hindrance than a help.

In the preceding epoch, too, there was a moment when the idea of a three-storey universe, even as an element of consciousness, began to cause difficulties. But then quite a long time passed between the moment when this idea was no longer taken literally, as a model of the universe, and the moment when it ceased to be a suitable metaphor. The doctrine of hell can serve as an illustration. In Shakespeare's time, no one thought that hell was literally on earth, but in Hamlet this metaphor still looks vividly convincing. But the localized hell gradually lost more and more control over the imagination, and all the attempts of the new zealots to fan its flames never restored its power. The trouble in this case is that for the devil and his demons, for hell and the "lake of fire"11 there was no translation as successful as for God. And as a result, this hellish element began to fall out of popular Christianity altogether – to the detriment of the depth of the Gospel.

But here I want to emphasize that overcoming the old scheme was gradual. Scientifically, it had already been discredited, but theologically it still remained an acceptable manner of expression. The image of God "in heaven" ceased to be perceived as a literal description of reality, but even after that it retained its value for centuries. However, today, it seems to me, we are facing a double crisis. Modern science and technology have dealt a definitive psychological, if not logical, blow to the idea of a literal "otherworldly" existence of God, and this has coincided with the realization that the mental image of such a God hinders rather than helps faith in the gospel. Under a double blow, the entire structure collapses, and with it any faith in God in general.

The point, of course, is not just in the speed of adaptation. The rejection of the "otherworldly" God means a much more radical leap than the transition to this concept from God "in heaven." After all, the permutation that took place earlier was largely reduced to a new verbal expression, to the replacement of one spatial metaphor with another. This was important because it made Christianity independent of outdated ideas about a flat earth. But when it is said that it is necessary to abandon the idea of an "otherworldly" Being altogether, this seems to be a complete negation of God. For many people think that to believe in God is to acknowledge the existence of such a supreme and special Being. "Theists" believe that such a Being exists, and "atheists" deny it.

But what if such an "otherworldly" superBeing is really just a refined version of the heavenly Elder? What if belief in God does not mean, and cannot even mean, the belief in the "existence" of some entity, even a higher entity, that is either out there or is not, like life on Mars? What if the atheists are right, but in fact this does not mean the end of Christianity or the rejection of Christianity, just as it did not mean a departure from the idea of a God "above" (although at one time he must have seemed a break with the entire teaching of the Bible)? What if such "atheism" merely destroys an idol, if we can and must do without an "otherworldly" God at all? Have we seriously thought that the rejection of this idol may in the future be the only way to preserve the significance of Christianity not only for a few retrogrades? For if we had previously grasped upon the fact that God is necessarily "in heaven," in the modern world no one except primitive peoples would be able to believe in the Gospel. Could it be that the Freudians are right after all, and that such a God, the God of traditional folk theology, is really a projection?12 Are we now called to part with such a projection?