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.

Unknown. This, in any case, is witty. If your truth does not convince me, you can always say: it is your own fault - you would have sinned less.

Confessor. Yes, absolutely, and I can say so, and I will say so. Because I am absolutely convinced that it is possible to truly know the teaching of the Orthodox Church and not feel its truth only in some kind of moral obscuration.

Unknown. So be it. After all, what matters to me is not how you evaluate my moral state, but how you justify your faith. Listen to me further. All my doubts about the invisible soul concern the invisible God to an even greater degree. And it is understandable. After all, when it came to the soul, we still had before us some indubitable existence - a "human personality", and the question was only about its composition. Here we are talking about something absolutely fantastic. About some non-existent "person" that our own imagination has created, and we pretend that we are talking about something that really exists. And what is most remarkable of all is that this God invented by us, as if on purpose, is endowed by us with the most absurd properties. This is probably so that it would not be so easy to detect its fantasy. After all, if everything in God were clear, it would be immediately clear that He does not exist. What is it, according to your teaching? God? Apparently, this is some kind of personality. In any case, believers reward their God with all the qualities of the human person. He has reason, will, feelings, is angry, loves, etc., but at the same time this personality also possesses such properties that are directly opposite to the concept of personality. God is not only omnipotent and omniscient. It has no boundaries, it has always been and is present everywhere. How, one might ask, reconcile the concept of personality with the concepts of "omnipresent" and "limitless"? By the word personality we always think of something that has a limit, that which "separates" that which does not constitute personality from that which constitutes it. How can a person be everywhere? Then, then, everything is this personality, and there is obviously nothing outside this personality. True, seeing the obvious absurdity of all these definitions, believers hasten to add that He is also incomprehensible. But such an amendment does not save the situation. It is really impossible to say a bunch of absurdities and then justify them by the incomprehensibility of the person about whom they are spoken. If God is incomprehensible, then would it not be better to say directly: God exists, but I do not know why I believe in Him, since it is impossible to comprehend Him. Maybe we will stop here for now? Or go on?

Confessor. Yes, I think it's better to stop there. First of all, let us always bear in mind the relativity of all human concepts as applied to questions of faith. You say: "personality". And can you, having separated the concept of "personality" from the concept of "body", speak with sufficient reason about its "boundaries"? Here again you impose "spatiality", so necessary for your perception of the material world and completely alien to spiritual existence. Those properties of which you have spoken, mind, will, feeling, they themselves do not occupy any space, and therefore when you speak of the irreconcilable contradictions of the divine properties with the definition of Him as a person, you see here an imaginary contradiction because you see before you a material "person" and apply to it the concept of a non-material order. But if you were to admit a personality without a material basis, leaving behind only reason, will, and feeling, you would immediately pass into a completely different, "non-spatial plane" and cease to be confused by these seeming contradictions. You would have to admit that God and the soul are equally spaceless, and that the difference between the person of God and the person of man is not that man occupies "little" space and God is present "everywhere," that is, he occupies "much space," but that the unknown being of the one is relative and the other absolute. In enumerating these absolute properties in earthly concepts, we at the same time think that they relate to what these earthly concepts will correspond to there, in completely different conditions of existence. But something corresponds to our space there as well. This "something" appears to God in absolute fullness, but to the human soul only relatively and therefore limited. That is why we affirm, bearing in mind the absoluteness of this property, which corresponds to spatiality, that God is omnipresent.

Unknown. I am satisfied to a certain extent with your explanations. But I do not understand why you speak of the incomprehensibility of the Godhead.

Confessor.