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 to know the truth, and he would consider your Trinitarian God to be a lie, completely inconsistent with the teachings of Mohammed. Then I would go to a Buddhist. He would tell me legends about the Buddha and assert that he alone knows the real truth. I'd come to a heathen. He would name me a few dozen of his gods and also claim to know 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 there is truth in any of them. 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 doubt is like someone doubting 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 both neo-Lamarckians and neo-Darwinists. There are still disputes in science about this basic question of biology. However, you do not say, "Biology does not know the truth, because different scientists consider different things to be the truth."

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 except 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. And what about the Catholics? Protestants? Anglicans? Calvinists? And what about the many sects of all kinds? Mennonites, Baptists, Quakers, Molokans, Doukhobors, Khlysts -- after all, they all consider themselves to be true Christians, and Orthodoxy seems to them a gross distortion of the Gospel. 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 full 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, out of 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, egoism, passions make a person so insensitive 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 that it is your own fault that you would have sinned less.

Confessor. Yes, it is absolutely true, 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 with 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 being, a "human personality," and the question was only about its composition. Here we are talking about something absolutely fantastic. We are talking about some non-existent "person" that has created our own imagination, and we pretend that we are talking about something that really exists. And what is most remarkable 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 discover its fantasy. After all, if everything in God were clear, it would be immediately clear that He does not exist. What, then, is God, according to your teaching? 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 this "personality" at the same time has 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 a person, and there is obviously nothing outside of 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. In fact, it is 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?