Confessor. Yes.

Unknown. I will try to consider it conscientiously. Until now, I have seen nothing in the teaching about God, except a fantastic fairy tale, in which, moreover, no one believes for a long time. When I met educated people who, by the way, lived in exactly the same way as all non-believers, and spoke about their faith, I involuntarily thought: are they really not pretending? Is it really possible to seriously believe in all these fables?

Confessor. Recognition of each other's unconditional sincerity is a necessary condition for our conversation.

Unknown. Yes, yes, of course. I have mentioned this thought only to illustrate how difficult it is for me to admit the possibility of faith. So, where to start? I will start with the secondary. You are an Orthodox priest and you are convinced that you know the truth. According to your truth, God is threefold in persons and one in essence. You believe in this God and consider any other faith to be a delusion. If I were to go from you to the mullah, he would speak to me about his one Allah and would also claim that he knows the truth and would consider your Trinitarian God to be a lie, completely inconsistent with the teaching of Mohammed. Then I would go to a Buddhist. He would tell me legends about the Buddha. And he would assert that he alone knows the truth. I'd come to a heathen. He would have named a few dozen of his gods to me, and would have asserted that he alone knew the truth. This multitude of all kinds of religions, often excluding each other and always asserting that only they have the truth, first of all makes us doubt that in any of them there is truth. Logic is powerless in matters of faith, and subjective certainty is obviously insufficient. After all, all the representatives of these different religions have the same subjective certainty, and yet they consider only their own truth to be true. In other words, it is only in their subjective states that they recognize objective significance.

Confessor. Your opinion is like if someone doubts the truth of scientific knowledge just because dozens of scientists express different views on each scientific issue. It is clear that one person is right. And for you, the scientific truth will be what corresponds to your understanding of this truth. Take, for example, the question of the origin of species. Has complete unanimity been achieved here? To this day, many people completely refute Darwin's theory. Many return to Lamarck. There are also neo-Lamarckians and neo-Darwinists. To this day, there are disputes in science about this basic question of biology. But you don't say, "Biology doesn't know the truth because different scientists think it's true."

Unknown. Yes, but there are issues in science that have been solved in the same way by everyone.

Confessor. They are also found in religion. All religions recognize the existence of God. Everyone recognizes God as the first cause of all things. Everyone recognizes the real connection of the divine power with man. Everyone recognizes that God demands the fulfillment of the moral law, everyone recognizes the invisible world besides the visible, everyone recognizes life after death. Therefore, one religion excludes the other not unconditionally. There is a grain of truth in every religion. But its fullness really lies in one, in the Christian one, inasmuch as it is revealed and preserved in the Orthodox Church.

Unknown. You see, there is a new division again: since it has been revealed and preserved in the Orthodox Church.

What to do? Which of you should we believe?

Confessor. No matter how many disagreements there are, the truth does not cease to be the truth. You understand this in relation to science. Understand also in relation to religion. For various reasons, many people recognize partial truth as the complete truth, but the full truth exists, and when you see it, you will immediately know.

Unknown. Why doesn't everyone find out?

Confessor. In the vast majority of cases, through ignorance, because they do not know the teaching of the Orthodox Church. And if it is known and yet they do not see the truth, then the reason is rooted in the moral sphere. Religion is not a science. The moral state of a person is a necessary condition for the cognition of religious truths.

Unknown. So, in your opinion, they do not see the fullness of truth in Orthodoxy because of their sin?

Confessor. Yes. Pride, selfishness, passions make a person so unreceptive to the feeling of the truth that even when they see it, they do not recognize it. Such are, mainly, the founders of errors and their first adherents. And then the delusion continues to act from generation to generation, because in this delusion people are brought up and grow up, and they do not even try to find out the real truth.