The Chalcedonian Problem in the Understanding of Russian Thinkers

But the search for it has irresistibly begun and will continue, perhaps, for centuries, if some acute drama in the life of the Church does not induce it to give another conciliar teaching directive for the solution of this question.

The absence of a theoretical current answer to this problem does not mean, of course, that the Church cannot give it. Always, at all times, the Church gives answers to her faithful sons, who theologize in her bosom with their minds and hearts, practical answers, answers by the very life of the Church, her spirit, her piety.

It is the task of theological thinkers to extract from the conciliar consciousness and even the subconscious of the Church guidance in theological creativity to the extent of the urgent needs of the Church itself. And this enormous, often intense and inspired work of theologians of all Christian confessions, especially in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, is growing continuously. Without drowning in this sea of literature on the relationship between Christianity and civilization, we want to confine ourselves here to a simple indication (and not elaboration) of the special and peculiar interest of theological thought on this problem in our Russian Orthodoxy.

The history of Russian philosophical and theological work on this Chalcedonian theme can be a grateful subject of extensive special study.

What brilliant Russian people, what great names, what bright and original personalities of Russian culture stand as landmarks on the path to the development of the great mystery of God-manhood, Christology in its latest understanding and experience! How many daring attacks on the Chalcedonian dogma in its modernist interpretations! And what an obvious powerlessness of the questioners to give their own satisfactory answer to their own question!

Gogol, passionately, religiously and prophetically captured by the service of God through art, was overwhelmed by this excess of attachment to "this world". I tried to design with childish naivety in "Correspondence with friends"

Horrified by the depth of his immersion in the pathos of artistic creation, he repentantly rejected everything carnal and starved himself to death in the feat of spiritualism. From his youth, recklessly following the ultra-Nestorian path of serving the call of human nature, he, coming to his senses, became exhausted at the Orthodox crossroads, at the attempt to connect the human and the divine, and, having lost his balance, slipped into spiritualism, i.e. into the Monophysite heresy.

Archimandrite Theodore (Bukharev), professor of the Moscow Theological Academy and inspector of the Kazan Theological Academy, responded to Gogol's torments.

In other words, he sang a hymn to the Chalcedonian dogma. He did not convince either Gogol, with whom he corresponded, or the official censorship, which banned the publication of his works. Ardent and rebellious, he resigned his dignity and continued his preaching until his death. The rehabilitation of Theodore Bukharev's Orthodoxy and the objective criticism of his constructions await a benevolent researcher who will probably calmly prove that Fr. Bukharev, while justifying the bright sides of cultural construction in Christ, was alien to the Nestorian deviation, i.e. the worship of culture as an intrinsic value, but subordinated and subjugated it to Christ in an irrational synthesis. The Chalcedonian yardstick justified Fr. Bukharev in the main and in the main, and not the official censorship, which rejected such theology in the name of Monophysite disregard for human truth. Dostoevsky also theologizes with his artistic images. Having completely given his heart and will to the obedience of the Orthodox Church, he, however, from the depths of his conscience protests against the Church's Monophysite indifference to earthly truth, even "most respectfully returns to it a ticket to enter the Kingdom of Heaven," secretly thinks that the Most Holy Mother of God includes "Mother-damp-Earth" and sanctifies her, and in the elder Zosima he pours out the dreams of his heart about the revelation in Orthodoxy of an optimistic life-loving path of salvation. All this does not go beyond the framework of the scheme of the Chalcedonian dogma, but within its boundaries it strongly emphasizes the correctness of the nature of the cosmos and man. Konstantin Leontiev would soon call it "pink Christianity" and oppose it with genuine Athonite Orthodoxy, harsh to the verge of practical Monophysitism.

In the 70s, the gigantic figure of Vladimir Sergeevich Solovyov rises for this issue. A philosopher by vocation, a brilliant publicist, a preacher of the Christian-ecclesiastical worldview, for three decades he persistently and emphatically called upon the theological thought of the Russian Church to reveal concretely, in its application to our historical epoch, the directive of the Chalcedonian Creed on the unification of the two natures in the process of the creative work of Christian humanity in the spirit and power of theocracy. Solovyov rushed impatiently and searched for ready-made forms of this theocracy. He made an instructive experiment of accepting the theocracy of the Roman Church. For this purpose, boldly, single-handedly in his heart, he united the churches. But not in these extremes, which he himself has lived out for — alas! — his very short life, his merit and enormous influence on the entire generation of Russian religious philosophers up to the present day and, probably, for a long time to come. Solovyov's talent and merit, after a quick victory over his youthful worship of the idol of materialism, fashionable in the 1960s, consists in the heroic paving of the way to the ideal of "integral knowledge," in the all-embracing synthesis of philosophy and Christian dogma, in the creation of a theocratic church historiosophy in the light and on the basis of the dogma of God-manhood. Solovyov's system for Orthodox theology is a brilliant illustration of the modern revelation of the undying vitality and salvific nature of the Chalcedonian dogma. Quite consciously and directly, relying on the definition of faith of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, Solovyov ascribes the divine-human nature and the divine-human meaning to the process of the earthly history of mankind, included on the same basis in the framework of general cosmic life.

As a fighter against a one-sided, ahistorical deviation in theology, Solovyov is an example of an orthodox theologian, a Chalcedonian theologian. But his ideas and constructions within the Orthodox framework of the Chalcedonian oros are a new, free addition of the philosopher. While welcoming the orthodox framework adopted by Solovyov as the precept of Chalcedon, we are critical of his theological constructions within this framework.

But the feasible feat of the mind in clarifying the infinite horizon of mysteries, of course, lies on the holy path of serving the truth of Christ. Solovyov, on this, so to speak, inner front of dogma, within the Chalcedonian barriers, erected two philosophical landmarks: "all-unity" and "sophiology." "All-unity" is for him, as for any philosopher, a seductively universal, all-embracing, all-crowning focus, in which the entire composition of relative being is crossed and by which is connected, and together with... Absolute! It is this salto mortale from the finite to the Infinite that no philosophical ecstasy obliges us to admit. This is one of the swamp lights that lead philosophers into a silent failure at the heights of their latest achievements. Another winged horse, not only rational, but also mystical, on which Solovyov flies over the terrible yawn of the abyss between God and the world, is the long-abandoned and half-forgotten Sophia.