Information about the original source

When using library materials, a reference to the source is required.

When publishing materials on the Internet, a hyperlink is required:

"Orthodoxy and Modernity. Electronic Library." (www.lib.eparhia-saratov.ru).

Convert to epub, mobi, fb2 formats

"Orthodoxy and the World. Electronic Library" (lib.pravmir.ru).

I. The Basic Principles of Civilization

Part 1

"Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you." (Matt. 6:33). By its nature, modern European civilization is officially recognized as Christian, the teaching of Jesus Christ is proclaimed the highest moral truth, the basic law of the spiritual development of man; The Gospel religion is ascribed primary importance in the organization of personal, family and social life. In a word, the outward ostentatious side of the matter leads us to assume that we are governed mainly by the clearly understood and vividly perceived Gospel commandments of love and truth, that in our activity we are guided primarily by religious and moral motives; But reality is far from corresponding to such an expectation.

Take, for example, the word "greatness"; Say it in any congregation. Ask those present what meaning they connect with this concept, to whom, in their opinion, it can be most applicable. You will be told much about the resounding glory of the conqueror of nations, about the brilliance of the genius of the poet, about the laurels of a virtuoso, about the pomp and power of the monarch, and they will hardly remember the moral strength and beauty of the heroes of the spirit, the martyrs of holy ideas: the apostles of love, the brothers and sisters of mercy, the self-sacrificing heralds of truth. You will be named Caesar, Napoleon; perhaps they will remember Shakespeare, Bismarck, Salvini, and, probably, they will forget Epictetus, Socrates, Simon Peter, the Apostle Paul.

Its adherents even categorically assert that the religion of Jesus Christ has already outlived its time, has said its last word, that the Gospel morality was suitable only for the simple-minded fishermen of Galilee, and that the modern enlightened European needs other guiding principles. These principles can and are given to him by science alone. Science, they say, has kindled a beacon, before the brilliant brilliance of which the light of religion is dimmed and must be completely darkened. Religious light was often darkened by a cloud of superstition, flared up with the sinister flame of fanaticism, and was the cause of a fierce fratricidal war. It is enough to recall the nights of St. Bartholomew, the dragonades, the tortures and the fires of the Inquisition to bless the science that liberated mankind from such horrors. What is the answer to this? In the first place, in a critical evaluation of any religion in general, and of Christian religion in particular, from the point of view of their loftiness and significance, one must always distinguish the basic religious idea from the present reality, and not confuse what is with what ought to be. People, in their narrow-mindedness and fanaticism, can distort and humiliate the highest idea, clothe it in an ugly form; But this does not mean that the idea is base, ugly in itself. The idea of pure freedom is of course innocent of the insane crimes of anarchism; so Christianity cannot be blamed for the gloomy deeds of Loyol and Torquemad. Rowe, in his interesting book The Manifest Truths of Christianity, says: "There was often great superstition among believers who belonged to the Church; The Church sanctified works which were expressly forbidden to her by her Founder; she, - it's terrible to say! She even drew her sword, which He clearly commanded her to sheath. All this is certain, but it makes it all the more surprising that the Church found in her Founder an eternal principle for her regeneration. In the person and teaching of Jesus Christ there is a certain deep meaning, which was, so to speak, higher than the real (present) Christianity of all ages. A simple depiction of the personality of the Founder of the Christian Church in the very form in which he was depicted by the Evangelists, without an admixture of false outlines, which were added to His image by human stupidity or evil will, has always been and will always be the cause of the renewal of church life. This is a characteristic and exclusive feature of Christianity." Religious wars, mass massacres of heretics, and the fires of the Inquisition are not natural offspring of the religion of the Saviour; it is a crude, criminal perversion of it, a grave insult, a mockery of the all-forgiving love of the Son of God, Crucified for peace. Christianity, as a religion imbued with the spirit of evangelical meekness, love and mercy, organically hates any violence, especially violence in the name of God, who, in the words of the Evangelist John, is Love Itself. When James and John, ardent and zealous beyond reason, offended by the Samaritans' disrespect for their Master, said: "Lord, wilt we say that fire should come down from heaven and destroy them, as Elijah did?" Jesus Christ turned to them, rebuked them, and said, "You do not know what kind of spirit you are, for the Son of Man has not come to destroy souls, but to save." And they went to another village. In the parable of the tares we read: "The kingdom of heaven is like a man who sowed good seed in his field; And while the people were asleep, his enemy came, and sowed tares among the wheat, and departed. When the greenery sprang up and the fruit appeared, then the tares also appeared. And when the servants of the householder came, they said to him, "Lord! Did you not sow good seed in your field? whence then are the tares on it? And he said to them, The enemy of man has done this. And the slaves said, "Do you want us to go and choose them?" But he said, 'No,' lest when you pick up the tares, you pluck up the wheat with them, let both grow together until the harvest" (Matt. 13:24-30). After the quoted passages of the Gospel, I think it is superfluous to explain that the Christian religion as such should not be condemned for those crimes and follies that are committed by its false, self-styled friends, hardened fanatics. Dull thoughtlessness and sullen malice can throw a gloomy veil of fanaticism and superstition over the bright face of the Saviour, but His Divine beauty will not lose its brilliance in the least; It is necessary to carefully remove the inappropriate veil, to cleanse the face of alluvial soot and dust, but in no way to eradicate the very image that enchants the hearts of the best people with heavenly goodness, meekness and purity. Weigh impartially the role of the evangelical religion in the history of the past nineteen centuries, and you will be amazed at how much it has done for humanity. What an indelible mark it has left on our entire civilization, on our morals, customs, legislation, science, and art. How much it has changed morally for the better, how it has ennobled humanity; How much warmth of heart she brought into life! Millions of people have drawn from it the strength to live in the name of good and truth; On the altar they brought their best feelings and thoughts to her, and in serving her they found the highest consolation. Is it possible that now its life-giving power has dried up, the spring that quenched the spiritual thirst of hundreds of successive generations has suddenly dried up, and the place of the Gospel will be taken by an encyclopedia of sciences? Is science able to replace religion as a guide for man in the bright distance of the future? This is a serious matter; It is criminal to solve it with a light heart: a mistake can lead to a sad disaster.

Just as above our heads, in the boundless expanse of air, new worlds arise and light up in place of extinguished, obsolete suns, so in the innermost recesses of the human heart, in place of obsolete, realized goals, new ideals are clarified and born.

At the dawn of cultural life, a person's attention is completely captured by the external, physical world. Suppressed by a mass of impressions received from without, the philosophical genius of peoples, like a child at the beginning of mental activity, at first is vaguely aware of its personality, does not distinguish itself from the surrounding nature. The inquisitiveness of the mind is aimed exclusively at solving the riddle of the existence of the universe. All Greek philosophy, from Thales to Socrates, solves the question of the essence of the world. What does everything consist of, what did everything come into being, what is everything resolved into in the end? - this is the main subject of the ancient worldview. Water, air, fire, and all infinite matter are in turn recognized as the unchanging essence in changing phenomena. And only after considering this question comprehensively, philosophy sets itself a new, more difficult task, shifts its attention to man. "Philosophical thought," says Bauer, "turns to the inner world and begins to study the miracles that occur in the sphere of spiritual life, only when its eye has already had time to look closely at the eternally identical flow of the heavenly bodies and at the constantly changing phenomena of the physical world around us." It fell to Socrates to open a new era in the history of human thought. Socrates was the first to detach philosophy from physical nature and open to it the spiritual realm. Before Socrates, they taught: "Know the external world around you"; Socrates began to teach: "Know thyself." This was a tremendous step forward, but a complete elucidation of the problem could not be expected at once. Evolution takes place gradually; everything comes in its time, and even philosophical genius does not make leaps. Delving into himself, Socrates could notice only one side of the spiritual nature of man - knowledge. He did not yet suspect the complex, hidden life of the heart, assuming that people are evil and deceitful out of ignorance. "Whoever truly knows the beautiful, will act accordingly," says Socrates. We wish it were so, but the bitterness of experience constantly convinces us that there is a long way between the knowledge of virtue and a life in accordance with it. To reach the intended peak, the traveler, in addition to knowledge of the terrain, needs a strong desire to overcome all the difficulties of the path and a healthy body hardened in walking. It is the same on the path to the heights of virtue. It is not enough to have lofty thoughts, to clearly understand the meaning of good; we also need a well-educated will, which would bring our ideals into reality and realize them. For Socrates, virtue appeared to be something external to man; he thought that virtue, like arithmetic, like reading, writing, could be learned. Due to the novelty of the question he first put forward, Socrates was unable to suddenly understand that virtue is the fruit of long inner work, the result of a stubborn struggle with coarse innate instincts. It took centuries for mankind to understand this, and then through the mouth of the Apostle it was proclaimed: "According to the inner man I find pleasure in the law of God; but in my members I see another law, which is contrary to the law of my mind" (Romans 7:22-23). Depending on the fact that the attention of antiquity was riveted mainly on the external world, that the high significance of the individual had not yet been recognized, and the supreme ideals of ancient cultured peoples in relation to man were of an external nature. The most striking exponents of the culture of antiquity were Greece and Rome, the so-called world of antiquity, and we see that a vast area of diverse spiritual interests almost does not exist for this world: questions about the dignity of man, about the rights of the individual, about the brotherhood of peoples and many other similar things, if by chance, are touched upon, they are always casual and never brought to the fore. The ultimate goal of the aspirations of the ancient world was the cult of physical beauty and brute muscular strength. The Greek aesthetician gave his strength to the first, the proud ruler of the world, the Roman, served the second. The Greek revered the beauty of the body, revered and worshipped it alone. Greek mythology is full of outrageous, scandalous adventures of the deities of Olympus, but it will give a long series of images that enchant with the perfection of plastic forms. The genius of the Greek, amazing in its versatile brilliance, was most clearly expressed in sculpture. The chisel of Phidias, Praxiteles, Polycleitus and others reaches the culminating point of beauty, remaining an eternal, unattainable model for posterity. You can't go any further. The Roman was not an artist, he looked at art as an embellishment of everyday life. Strong, powerful - he put strength above beauty. The most remote peoples bowed before its power, and Rome grew, grew rich, and was adorned at the expense of conquered countries. Rome is the capital of the world; Its greatness, strength - this is the ideal that the ancient Roman lived and sacrificed everything. But both these ideals - the perfection of bodily beauty, and the triumph of brute, muscular strength - were finally achieved. The Acropolis shone with an unprecedented, wondrous beauty; the word of Rome was the law for the remote outskirts of the earth. In the name of what did the ancient world now live? There was no new idea that would imperiously seize society; And the old one has outlived its time. Without an inspiring ideal, even if it is of a low standard, a person cannot live, the people's valor perishes, society disintegrates. Nor could the ancient, Greco-Roman world continue to exist. The time came when the shattered foundations of Rome collapsed and the Roman Empire ceased to exist. She fell, had to fall, because the ideals that inspired her were temporary, and when their power was exhausted, she had nothing to live on. For the revival of a decrepit organism, it was necessary to breathe new strength into it. It was necessary to find new beginnings for the spiritual life of mankind. On the ruins of the ancient world, a new civilization could have been born and blossomed, but for this a new idea was needed, and we see that new ideals are the basis of the nascent civilization. The ancient world sought bodily beauty; he worshipped physical strength; People of the new epoch are seeking spiritual beauty, bowing down before moral power. Now the center of gravity from the outside is transferred inside the person. The spirit of man is recognized as the source of social, political, and all historical life. The elevation of the human heart, moral perfection, and the spiritual growth of the individual become the main task of society; Everything else is of secondary importance. "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you, shall come unto you of their own accord," says the Gospel. By the "Kingdom of God" is meant a perfect life on earth, a life based not on the rule of violence and crude egoism, but on the principles of universal love, complete justice, and the recognition of all the legitimate rights of the individual. The onset of this "Kingdom" is conditioned by the moral regeneration of man, the renewal of his entire inner being. "Verily, verily, I say unto thee," said Jesus Christ to Nicodemus, "except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John 3:3). In another place Jesus Christ said: "The kingdom of God will not come in a visible way, and they will not say, Behold, it is here, or, behold, it is there. For behold, the Kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:20-21). This is the new ideal; The ideal is not temporary, but eternal. The ideals of ancient Greece and Rome could have been outgrown, which is why the ancient world fell. The new ideal indicated by Christianity has no limits; it cannot be achieved. "Be ye perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect" (Matt. 5:48) – this is the Savior's testament to people. This covenant is the pledge of the infinite future of our civilization. The new culture in the very spirit of the Christian, in his inexhaustible ability to improve, will always find the source of its further renewal and development. The almost two-thousand-year history of Christianity is now unfolding before our eyes; Our gaze is now able to embrace and measure the inner, consistent process of its development, the degree of its powerful influence on the conscience and life of mankind, and we see that Christianity has not yet expressed the entire content of its thought, has not yet said its last word. In order to realize the Kingdom of God on earth, mankind still has a long and persistent work ahead of it on itself, on the improvement and moral education of the heart. The Gospel has awakened many good feelings, touched in the heart of man strings unknown to himself, extracted from them the sounds of enchanting beauty and irresistible power, but these sounds have not yet merged into a mighty chord, into a hymn of triumphant love and truth. If science wants to replace religion, it must assume its obligations and, demanding preference for itself, is compelled to give mankind more powerful means, to show the quicker way to the realization of the ultimate goals in life than religion does. And science self-confidently admits that it is capable of this. It solemnly proclaims that only knowledge can lead humanity to a better future. "If we want to make known the conditions on which the success of modern civilization depends," says Buckle, "we must look for them in the history of the accumulation and spread of intellectual knowledge. Physical phenomena and moral principles, of course, produce a considerable disorder in the general course of affairs at times, but in the course of time they come into order and equilibrium, and thus leave intellectual laws free to act independently of these inferior, secondary agents." Such a decisive assertion is based on the opinion that the great development taking place in our civilization is mainly an intellectual movement, and that the moral progress of society is directly dependent on the growth of knowledge. But to reason in this way means not to know the heart of man, not to understand what science is called to do and what it can give. The field of science is vast; infinite, if you like; its tasks are great. She has done so much and will do so much for mankind that her very name should be sacred to thinking people; - But the motive force of cultural progress is still not intellect and education, it alone does not improve morals. Science expands the mental horizon of man, develops his intellectual powers, increases our power over nature, but it cannot revive man spiritually, elevate him morally without the assistance of religion. Leaving the path of long arguments, remember at least the French Panamanists: senators, members of parliament, editors of influential newspapers - all people of extensive knowledge, great abilities, and in general a gang of swindlers. Regrettable, but natural. The heart of man is agitated by the same passions, whether it be the heart of an advanced thinker or the last day-laborer. A simple Galilean illiterate fisherman can morally be higher than a dozen philosophers, luminaries of science. Compare, for example, the moral character of Bacon of Verulam, the father of the experienced spider, with the Negro slave depicted in Uncle Tom's Cabin, and you will see that education can change the forms of evil, make them more refined, but destroy evil, ennoble morals - this is not given to education. It is not for science to lead people through the renewal of the heart to the realization of the Kingdom of God on earth. "Jesus desired to go up to Jerusalem, and sent messengers before his face; and they went and entered into the village of the Samaritans, to prepare for him; but there they did not receive Him" (Luke 9:51-53) ^