But since we cannot expect such behavior from impersonal energy, then we have no right to say of the impersonal Brahman of Indian mythology: "Brahman is love." i.e. only if He is a Person – He is capable of mercy. As V.N. Lossky said: "The highest right of the Tsar is mercy" [1]. The king can forgive where the law requires punishment. In order to recognize mercy in God, one must see in Him not an impersonal and unfree energy or the basis of existence, but a free Personality. According to Blavatsky, "Divine Thought has as little personal interest in them (the Supreme Planetary Spirit-Builders) or in their creations as the Sun has in relation to the sunflower and its seeds" [2]. But from the point of view of Christianity, even "Newton's theory of 'universal gravitation' is only a faded and weak reflection of the Christian teaching about the 'bonds of love' that bind the world together" [3]. What in Newton was simply secularization, in Blavatsky becomes triumphant nihilism. Faithful to Christian intuition, A.F. Losev, when describing the materialistic worldview, uses the same image as Blavatsky – but not with delight, but with bitterness: "Does the Sun care about the Earth? It is not evident from anything: it "attracts it in direct proportion to the mass and inversely in proportion to the squares of the distances" [4]. The law of gravitation simply operates, and if the gravitational field of the earth attracts a certain apple to a certain head, this does not mean in any way that the earth has any personal loving feeling for this apple or for this head. The law of gravitation acts not because it has decided to act in a given situation, but because it generally acts everywhere and always, and acts in the same way. And in the pagan sage, who has known all the power and peremptory nature of Fate, the optimism of Christians, convinced that God is love, can only cause a smile... We will persistently turn to Buddhism with our question about God and love. Is the formula "God is love" acceptable to a Buddhist? No. From the point of view of Buddhism, there is a double heresy in this statement. Firstly, in Buddhism there is no concept of God at all. Buddhism is called an atheistic religion. The most authoritative propagandist of Buddhism, Suzuki, put it this way: "If Buddhism is called a religion without God and without a soul, or simply atheism, its followers will not object to such a definition, since the concept of a Supreme Being standing above his creatures and arbitrarily interfering in human affairs seems extremely offensive to Buddhists" [5].Secondly, love is not thought of in Buddhism as the most perfect state of being. Of course, Buddhists are first and foremost human beings, and like all human beings, they believe that it is better to love than to hate. But there is still a state of the soul that in Buddhism is thought of as rising above love. This is dispassion. The Buddhist ideal of non-action presupposes that a person should stop all his actions so that they do not give rise to effects and do not continue the "karmic chain" of endless alternations of effects and causes. To stop all actions means, including those actions that take place not in the physical world, but in the "mental" world, i.e. to stop all movements of the mind and all movements of the heart and feelings. There are only perceptions, but there is no perceiver. There are actions, but there is no active one. The Buddhist concept of "anatman" denies the existence of personality: "Buddhism denies a single, substantial principle, which is the agent of human actions... According to the Buddha's teaching, introspection is "connected" to all movements of the body, and in the processes of ordinary life. Even the daily routine of a monk's life must be encompassed by introspection—whatever he does, he must do consciously and purposefully, "setting the smriti in front of him" and following certain rules. What are these rules? First, the analysis of reality in terms of "dharmas", "skandhas", "ayatans", "dhatu" (elements, groups, bases, spheres of elements), the main purpose of which is to develop the habit of seeing the world discretely. Second, awareness of any event in the modes of existence, arising and cessation, each of which is instantaneous. Thus the attention of the adept is chiefly concentrated on the composition and changeability of all things and events. This is especially clearly manifested in meditation on the nature of the body, perhaps the most important in the Buddhist practice of "detachment" from the world. The struggle with the flesh, which is waged in one form or another by almost all religions, in Buddhism, in comparison, say, with Jainism and Ajivika, is rather theoretical. Instead of killing it physically, the Buddhist will develop the right attitude towards it, namely, an attitude in the perspective of death (what the body will be after it – a pile of bones or a crowd of insects). Cultivating disgust for the body is one of the most important ways to develop a salutary non-attachment to sensual objects" [6].So, if Brahmanism proposes to see only the One, only God in meditation and to dissolve the perception of all particulars in this experience of unity [7], then Buddhism suggests exactly the opposite: notice only the details, but avoid endowing anything with integrity, unity. "An ignorant person thinks: "I am going forward." But the one who is free from delusion will say: "If the idea arises in the mind: 'I am going forward,' then immediately a nervous impulse arises with the idea, the source of which is the mind, and causes a bodily reaction." Thus the fact that this heap of bones, kindly called the "body," is moving forward is the result of the propagation of a nerve impulse caused by the mind. Who is the one who is coming? To whom does this walk relate? In the final analysis, it is the walking of impersonal physical elements, and the same applies to standing, sitting, and lying down" [8]. So who and whom is to be loved here? In folk Buddhism (perhaps not without the influence of Christianity) the idea of "bodhisattvas" appeared – people who refuse to achieve "nirvana" in order to have compassion for people. In folk Buddhism, Jataka literature also arose, containing the most beautiful examples of sacrificial love. But this is for those who did not understand and did not accept the "straight path". "The desire to do good to living beings is approved only in the lower stages of the mystical path. But later it is completely rejected, since it retains the imprint of attachment to personal existence with its inherent belief in selfhood" [9]. As the Diamond Sutra says, when a bodhisattva brings into "nirvana" as many beings as there are grains of sand in the Ganges River, he must realize that he has not saved anyone. Why? If he believes that he has saved a number of sentient beings, then he retains attachment to the idea of the "self", the "I", and in this case he is not a bodhisattva [10].Buddhists themselves admit that the sacrificial ethics of Mahayana and Jatakas are in contradiction with the foundations of Buddhist philosophy. "It is hardly possible to invent anything more contrary to the teachings of Buddhism than the idea that 'nirvana' can be rejected. One may not enter a paradise represented by a particular place, but "nirvana" is essentially a state which invariably arises after the disappearance of ignorance, and one who has attained Knowledge cannot, however much he may wish it, fail to know what he already knows. These erroneous ideas about the behavior of bodhisattvas are completely absent in the instructions addressed to disciples who are chosen for initiations of higher levels" [11].As can be seen, in Buddhism one should not wait for the birth of the formula "God is love." Everything is an illusion. So the Zen koan asks: "The Buddha and the butterfly are looking at each other. Does Buddha dream about a butterfly? Or does a butterfly dream of Buddha?" But any dreams, from the point of view of a Buddhist, must be destroyed one day. Since only a person is capable of love, we can only turn to monotheistic religions, i.e. to those that the Supreme and Primordial Deity understands as a free Person.Let us approach a Muslim theologian and ask: "Can we say of Allah that He is love?" This is natural, because there is no direct formula "God is love" in the Koran, and it is not so easy for a person of any faith to pronounce a theological formula that is absent in the scripture that is sacred to him. And yet, after some reflection, the Muslim teacher will answer us: "Yes. Of course, first of all, Allah is will. But we can also say that in Him there is love for people. Love is one of the 99 holy names of the Almighty." And I will ask my interlocutor: "And what deeds of love are inherent in the Almighty, according to the Koran? In what way was Allah's love for people manifested and in what is it attested?" – "He created the world. He sent His prophets to the people and gave His law." And then I will ask my third question: "Was it hard for Him?" – "No, the world is negligible compared to the power of the Creator." He addresses people from such a great distance that human suffering is not visible to Him. God's love for the world, as it is understood in the Islamic image of the Creator, is not sacrificial. They love other people's children so much: they happily catch their smiles, but do not spend sleepless nights at their cradle... In the middle of winter, the Muslim world celebrates the holiday of Laylat al-Qadr (the 27th of the holy month of Ramadan). In Russian translation, it is usually called: "Night of Predestination", although the name of the holiday literally means: "Night of Power", "Night of Power". The traditional translation, however, very accurately reflects the essence of the holiday. In Muslim legends about the creation of the world, it is said that Allah first of all created a book (kitab) and a reed stick for writing (kalam) and wrote down everything that would happen to each of the living. However, there is one night in the year when you can beg Allah to rewrite "your" page in the book. It was called "Nights of Predestination". On this night, Allah descends from the seventh heaven to the first heaven, the closest to the earth. Allah becomes so close to people that He hears all their prayers. And if a faithful Muslim spends this night in prayer, then his petitions will be heard and fulfilled [12]. A clear and beautiful image. But as a Christian, I ask: Can't God really go any lower? In Islam, it seems to me that the very idea of setting a limit to love, a limit to God's freedom, is not fully thought out: "Only up to this, and no further!" Islam condemns us Christians for not paying enough attention to the transcendent incomprehensibility of the Creator. The idea of God-manhood seems to Muslims to be incompatible with the ideas of sublime philosophical apophatics (i.e., with the conviction of the complete incomprehensibility of the Absolute). And indeed, when we talk about God, we must be extremely careful. One must guard oneself from imposing our, human, limitations on the Infinite. But does not the Muslim assertion that God cannot become man turn out to be an "all-too-human" doubt of God's power? Does not this denial become a limitation of the Creator's freedom? But love is capable of such actions that will seem impossible and unacceptable to someone who has not yet experienced love. The Gospel presents God's relationship to man in such a way that it can be said: God is full of love for man. Christ crucified is truly both a temptation and foolishness (cf. 1 Corinthians 1:23). God is free to choose His paths to man. He can appear in thunder and lightning. Or maybe in the form of a slave and a wanderer.Here it is: in the "slave form" (Fyodor Tyutchev), and not surrounded by legions of Angels, God visited people. "Hiding" His divinity, the Creator turned out to be Emmanuel ("With-us-God"). God is indeed too different from man, and therefore both strange and wonderful. What do you ask about My name? [It's wonderful.] (Gen. 32:29; cf. Judg. 13:18). And they will call His name Wondrous (Isaiah 9:6).Yes, God's love can come closer to man and to our sins than it seems to Muslims, who, in concern for the integrity of their monotheism, strive to oppose the Creator and the world as strictly as possible.In the early 80s, I heard an amazing story in the Tretyakov Gallery. In those years, the guides of this museum either did not know or did not have the right to tell visitors about the religious meaning of the icon. And therefore they gave icons completely non-traditional, non-ecclesiastical interpretations. Thus, Rublev's "Trinity" turned into a "call for the unification of the Russian lands." Thus, the chalice in which the Blood of Christ was collected, flowing down from the Cross, turned into "a symbol of victory over the Muslims" [13]. But that time I heard something unexpected about one icon. The interpretation was artificial, but still Christian.The guide told about the icon of the Mother of God "of the Sign". Red glints were visible on the uplifted arms of the Mother of Christ. The same reddish tones appeared on the face. A symbolic-theological explanation of this feature of some icons of the Mother of God can be found in the book by E.N. Trubetskoy "Speculation in Colors". The guide preferred to give a historical explanation. It was a Russian icon of the XIII century. And what is this century in the history of Russia? The centenary of the Batu Khan invasion, the century of defeats and fires. And these red tones on the face of the Mother of God are a reflection of earthly fires. The fire that scorches Russian cities reaches Heaven and touches the One Who has spread Her veil over our land... Whether this is really how the iconographer himself understood his icon – I do not know. But it is profoundly true that in Christianity there is a conviction that people's pain becomes God's pain, that the suffering of the earth scorches Heaven, as it were. This feeling – that God empathizes with human suffering – does not exist in Islam... And now let's approach the religion of Ancient Israel with our question.The texts of the Old Testament tell us directly: "God is love." Yes, God has shown His love by His works. He freely, without being compelled by anyone or anything, created the world and man, He gave us prophets and the Law out of His love. And He also brought people the greatest gift – freedom [14].How does God communicate with people? For all His supermundaneness, He does not simply give the Law. He requires people to keep His commandments. Reading the Old Testament, one can easily see that God is concerned about people's lives. How people must have behaved, and how close the Creator must be to them – if once the Bible has to testify: "And the Lord repented that He had created man on earth, and grieved in His heart" (Gen. 6:6). Lossky V.N. Domination and the Kingdom (Eschatological Study) // Theological Works. Moscow, 1972. Sat. 8, p. 214. ^ Blavatsky E.P. Secret Doctrine. Riga, 1937. T. 2. P. 201. ^ Zenkovsky V.V. Osnovy khristianskoy filosofii [Fundamentals of Christian Philosophy]. Moscow, 1992. P. 148. ^ Losev A.F. Filosofiya [Philosophy]. Mythology. Culture. Moscow, 1991. P. 130. ^Cit. From: Lossky N.O. Values and Being. Paris, 1931. P. 131. ^ Lysenko V.G. Buddha kak lichnost', ili Lichnost' v buddhisme [Buddha as a personality, or Personality in Buddhism]. Moscow, 1993. Pp. 131 and 124–125. ^ "From death to death goes he who sees anything like a difference" (Brihadaranyaka Upanishad. 4, 4, 19). ^ Conze E. Buddhist Meditation: Pious Exercises, Attentiveness, Trance, Wisdom. Moscow, 1993. P. 42. ^ Davy-Neel A. Dedication and Initiates in Tibet. St. Petersburg, 1994. P. 159. ^ See: A. Davy-Neel, Initiation and Initiates in Tibet. P. 135. Cf.: "Thus, O Subhuti, the bodhisattva, the great being, leads immeasurable and innumerable beings to liberation. And yet there is no one who is liberated and through whom he is led to liberation" (Ashtasahasrika Prajnaparamita, 1). ^ Davy-Neel A. Dedication and Initiates in Tibet. Pp. 138–139. ^ See: The Holy Qur'an. Semantic translation of the 28th, 29th and 30th parts with commentary by Abdurrahman Saadi. Moscow, 1999. P. 320. ^ Unfortunately, it was this non-ecclesiastical ideological interpretation of the Orthodox Cross with a crescent moon that became widespread and began to cause understandable resentment among Muslims.Here is one of such testimonies: "The President of Tatarstan M. Shaimiev made a statement made by the chairman of the Tatar Public Center (TOTs) Zainullin as dangerous for interethnic and interfaith relations. The leader of the TOC issued an ultimatum demanding that the so-called anchor crests be removed from the Kazan churches, seeing in them a violation of the Muslim crescent (the crescent has been placed at the base of these crosses since ancient times)" (Izvestia. 1998. December 23). This is really an anchor, a sign of hope. And such crosses were still in the ancient Roman catacombs, many centuries before the emergence of Islam. ^ Not all theological and philosophical schools of Islam consider man to be free, claiming that God is the direct cause of all events. For example, Al-Ghazali in his treatise "The Resurrection of the Sciences of Faith" depicts the relationship between the world and God as follows: "The sun, the moon and the stars, rain, clouds and the earth, all animals and inanimate objects are subject to another force, like a pen in the hand of a scribe. It cannot be believed that the signatory ruler is the creator of the signature. The truth is that the real creator of it is the Almighty. As it is said by Him, the Almighty, "and it was not you who threw it when you threw it, but Allah threw it" (quoted from: Stepanyants M.T. Philosophical Traditions of India, China and the World of Islam // History of Philosophy: West – Russia – East. Moscow, 1995. 1, p. 413). Man is the place where Allah's power is applied: "How do you believe in Allah? You were dead, and He made you alive, then He will kill you, then He will revive, then you will be returned to Him" (Qur'an 2:26). The Old Testament statement is quite definite: God created man from the beginning, and left him in the hand of his will (Sir. 15:14). ^

Part 4

And yet the Old Testament does not yet know God who became man [1].Where in the world of religions is there the idea that God's love for man can be so strong that He, the Creator, condescends to people? There are many myths about the incarnation of gods in the human world. But these are always the incarnations of some "secondary" gods, these are stories about how one of the many celestials decided to come to people, while the deity, revered in a given religious system as the source of all life, never crossed the threshold of his own all-bliss. Neither Prometheus, who dies for the sake of men, nor Horus, whose sacrifice was so prized by the Egyptians, embody the Absolute Deity. Odin (Wotan, Wodan), who crucified himself on the world tree Yggdrasil [2], is also not the Absolute. One leads himself through torment in order to acquire the knowledge of runes and spells he lacks [3]. Before us is a sacrifice to oneself and for oneself. Voluntary immersion in pain is one of the traditional means of shamanic initiation [4]. And since Odin needs such experience to acquire the knowledge he lacks, it means that he cannot be perceived as the Primordial Fullness.In folk religions (paganism = nationality) heroes and demigods suffer. But the truly Supreme does not make itself accessible to human pain. This idea is found in Krishnaism, where Krishna is understood as the Personal and One Creator God. The Bhagavad Gita is often called the "Indian gospel." This book [5] really preaches a great idea: God must be approached with love. It is not the technology of meditation or animal sacrifice that brings a person closer to God, but a loving heart. This idea was nothing new in comparison with the preaching of the older Old Testament prophets of Israel. But for India, it was quite revolutionary. Bhagavad Gita" tells us that the "Supreme Lord" Krishna did not just create the world and did not just give revelation. He personally, directly, brought it to people. He became a man. And not even a king, but a servant, a charioteer.And yet, when you get acquainted with this book, questions arise. First: Did Krishna become a man completely and forever? No, only for the duration of the lesson he seemed to be a man. His true forms are not at all human, and he uses his human form only as a cover that allows him to come closer to people. It was not difficult for him to be a man, and he himself did not experience either human pain or human death... He commands people to love him. But whether he himself loves people remains not entirely clear; in the Bhagavad Gita there is not a single line about love for people.The plot of the Bhagavad Gita is built around the young warrior Arjuna, who must forcibly defend his right to the inheritance taken from him by unscrupulous relatives. With the help of Krishna, Arjuna gathers a huge army. But just before the battle, when Arjuna enters the field of the upcoming battle, he peers into the ranks of his enemies and suddenly realizes who he will have to fight; and then he says in a humanly shocked way: "At the sight of my relatives coming to fight, Krishna, my legs give way, my mouth is dry. My body trembles, my hair stands on end. I can't stand, my mind is confused. I find no benefit in killing my relatives, in fighting. Those for whom the kingdom, pleasures, happiness are desired, intervened in this battle, leaving their lives: mentors, grandfathers, fathers, sons, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, fathers-in-law, uncles - all our relatives. I don't want to kill them. After the murder, what kind of joy will we have? After all, having destroyed our race, how can we be happy? Woe, alas, we are plotting to commit a grievous sin: for the sake of the desire of royal pleasures to destroy our kinsmen.Thus speaking, in the struggle, Arjuna drooped to the bottom of the chariot, dropping his bow and arrows; his mind was shaken with grief" (Bhagavad Gita. 1:29-47). And what about the divine Krishna? At that moment he finds the following words for a person: "Having left the insignificant weakness of the heart, arise, ascetic! You are sorry for those who do not need pity: those who know do not grieve either for the living or for those who have departed. These bodies are transitory, the bearer of the body is called eternal. So, fight, Bharata! The born will inevitably die, the dead will inevitably be born; for the inevitable you must not grieve" (Ibid. 1, 3, 18, 26). Krishna says all this "as if with a smile" (Ibid. 2:10). "And without you all the warriors who stand against each other will perish. Therefore, arise, conquer your enemies, attain glory, enjoy the flourishing kingdom, for I smote them before, you be only an instrument, like the warrior standing on the left. All the heroes whom I have killed in battle, do not hesitate" (Ibid. 11, 32-34). I will only say that such a smile is impossible on the face of the One Who wept on the way to the tomb of His friend Lazarus (John 11:35). Such advice is impossible in the mouth of Him Who said of every person: "Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it to me" (Matt. 25:40). Thus, the highest theological formula says: "God is love."We have already talked a lot about love, but we have not yet given its definition. Well, the deepest formula of love can be drawn from the Gospel: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). True love seeks to identify itself with the loved one. Here truly let the two be in one flesh (cf. Gen. 2:24) [8]. In love, the nervous periphery of the lover expands and absorbs the pains and joys of the loved one. And therefore the path of love is the transfer of one's life center from oneself to another. It is a giving, a giving, a sacrifice.Such love for people is not revealed by any theological image in the world outside the Gospel. And we ask the God of the Gospel: "How do You love people?" and He answers: "Until My death..." His love not only created the world. His love not only gave people freedom. His love has not only given us the Law. His love has not only given us prophets and wisdom. His love not only took on a human face. He didn't seem to be – He became a man. "All of you, native land, In the form of a slave, the King of Heaven Came out, blessing" (Fyodor Tyutchev). And His love for us went to the end, to the ultimate point, to the complete surrender of Himself, to the complete renunciation of Himself, to Sacrifice and death. "It was as if a man came out, And carried out, and opened the ark, And distributed everything to the skin" (Boris Pasternak)... To love means to absorb the troubles and joys of the beloved as one's own. And the latter, perhaps, is more difficult than the first. "It is not difficult to weep with those who weep, but to rejoice with those who rejoice (cf. Rom. 12:15) is not very easy: it is easier for us to sympathize with those who are in distress than to rejoice with those who prosper. Envy and ill-will do not allow the not very wise to rejoice in the prosperous. Therefore, let us try to rejoice with those who prosper, in order to cleanse our souls of envy" [9]. If I find out that our employee (whom our entire friendly team rightfully - as it seems to us - cannot stand) has a son, then even I can feel compassion for her. And the presence of this sympathy will in no way be evidence that I have reached moral heights. It would be more difficult to share her joy than her sorrow. For example, if one day I find out that the Soros Foundation [10] gave our employee ten thousand dollars to publish her useless book, will I be able to rejoice with her? Oh no, more likely, while she will run on the ceiling with happiness, I will trail green like her dollars... Rejoicing is rare. And Christ rejoiced with people. And He performed His first miracle in an atmosphere of joy. It was not in the cemetery that the first miracle of the Savior took place, but at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee... And God shares the most important joy with people: "In heaven there will be more joy over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous men who have no need of repentance" (Luke 15:7). He doesn't just love, He is love. He doesn't just have love, He doesn't just manifest in love: He is love.Well, we began our conversation with doubts that religions can be compared with each other. But as soon as we transferred the discussion of religious beliefs to the clear sphere of reason, rational arguments, formulations and comparisons, it turned out that religions can be compared and that in this comparison the differences between religions can be expressed in an evaluative form. A. And when I say that Christianity is not just one of the religions, but that it is the highest religion, the "absolute religion" (let's say so, following Hegel), the only religion that offers a real image of God, I do not say so because my own belonging to Christianity compels me to appreciate it. I am forced to draw this conclusion by ordinary human logic. And ordinary humanity. Yes, in order to notice and understand the obvious, today's person needs to show a remarkable ability for free, independent thinking. Fashions, ideologies, and newspapers have been indoctrinating us with the idea of "equality of religions" for many years [11]. Their favorite "religious studies" thesis was summarized by the ironic Chesterton as follows: "Christianity and Buddhism are very similar to each other; especially Buddhism" [12]. But if religions are treated in a non-ideological way, if they are not primarily seen as the ideological foundation of a certain totally planetary "new world order," if they are not turned into political hostages of human utopias, then the usual sense of realism clearly explains: religions are different. Religions can be deeper and flatter. And with all the diversity of human religions, only Christianity has learned and proclaimed what the greatest religious discovery means. The word God here means "the Spirit Who is everywhere and One, Who has no place or cause, Whom no one could comprehend, Who fills all things, Who embraces, builds, preserves, Whom we call God!" (Gavrila Derzhavin). If one of the readers prefers the language of philosophy to the language of poetry, this means the following: "Philosophical theism means the philosophical conceptualization of the existence and nature of God as an absolute, transcendent in relation to the world spiritual-personal reality, acting as the unconditional source of all non-divine existence and preserving an effective presence in the world." [13] Love means... However, we will refrain from fully "deciphering" this mysterious word. We simply realize that the choice between paganism and Christianity is a choice between the automatism of the "karmic law" and the vision of the relationship between God and the world, about which B. Pasternak said: "The worlds are ruled by pity. Love has inspired the Universe with the unprecedented And the novelty of life." For more information on the religion of ancient Israel, see the chapter "Is the Old Testament Cruel?" (Current edition, pp. 147–181). ^ "I know that I hung in the branches in the wind for nine long nights, pierced by a spear, dedicated to Odin, as a sacrifice to myself, on the tree whose roots are hidden in the bowels of the unknown" (Elder Edda, Speeches of the High One. 138). ^ "No one nourished, no one gave me water, I looked at the earth, I picked up the runes, groaning, I picked them up – and I fell from the tree... I learned nine songs... I began to mature and multiply my knowledge" (Ibid. 139-141). ^ "Voluntary ritual martyrdom is aimed at evoking an ecstatic state in oneself, i.e. it is a form of ritual martyrdom" (Steblin-Kamensky M.I. Elder Edda // Beowulf. Elder Edda. Song of the Nibelungs. Moscow, 1975. P. 671). ^ "The ideological core of the teaching of the Gita was created and recorded in the form of a text in the 3rd-2nd centuries B.C. In this original form, the text of the monument has not been preserved, and we can only make more or less plausible guesses about its composition. Over the next thousand years – until the 9th century AD, the time of the final fixation of the text of the poem – the Gita continued to grow due to insertions, the volume and nature of which are almost impossible to assess" (V.S. Sementsov, The Bhagavad Gita in Tradition and in Modern Scientific Criticism, p. 15). Cm. See also: Sementsov V.S. K postanovke voprosa o vozraste Bhagavad Gita [On the statement of the question of the age of the Bhagavad Gita]. Moscow, 1972; perepech. in: Bhagavad Gita/ Transl. from Sanskrit, research. and note. V.S. Sementsova. Moscow, 1999. Pp. 243–255. ^ "Thy great image with many eyes, lips, O long-armed, with many arms, thighs, feet, with many torsos, with many protruding fangs, beholding the worlds, I also... All the sons of Dhṛtarāṣṭra hasten to enter your horrible mouth with protruding fangs; I saw some hanging between their teeth, with their heads crushed. As moths, having fallen into a brilliant flame, complete their striving with destruction, so do the worlds enter into your mouth to perish, completing the striving. You, licking the worlds on all sides, devour them with fiery lips; having filled the whole world with radiance, your terrible heat inflames it, O Vishnu! Tell me who you are, horrible one, have mercy, lord of the gods; I cannot comprehend Thy manifestations" (Bhagavad Gita, 11:23-31). The answer is: "I, Time, as I advance, destroy the worlds, growing here for their destruction" (Bhagavad Gita, 11, 32). and there is immersion in the absolute... V. Sementsov believes (in contrast to modern Krishnas) that in the Bhagavad Gita, the idea of Krishna as a "Good God", a personal Bhagavan is offered only as an easier and initial path of spiritual ascension, while more advanced adepts should still approach the traditionally pantheistic idea of the Upanishads about the impersonal Brahman (see: V.S. Sementsov, Bhagavad Gita in Tradition and in Modern Scientific Criticism, p. 105). Thus, the Gita turns out to be yoga "for the 'dilettantes' in the form of simple householders... who did not have the opportunity to devote all their time to spiritual training (Ibid., pp. 102 and 105). Pantheism "crosses out the whole world of objective things and wants to strengthen itself in absolute 'knowledge'. However, a living person, who has not yet completely renounced the last remnants of his humanity, can hardly endure the temperature of absolute perfection: he is cold and wants something warmer. The soul is warmed by images, and first of all by the image of a kind, merciful deity who helps and saves. Therefore, Shankara, commenting on the Gita, admits Bhagavan" (Ibid., p. 111). ^ "Killing in battle in the name of religious principles and killing animals in a sacrificial fire are not considered acts of violence, for they are committed in the name of religious principles and are good for all. A sacrificed animal immediately receives life in a human body, without going through a slow evolution from one form of life to another. Kshatriyas killed in battle, like brahmanas who perform sacrifices, end up on heavenly planets" – this is how the founder of modern Krishnaism, His Divine Grace, Srila Prabhupada, interpreted the Bhagavad Gita (Srila Prabhupada, Bhagavad Gita As It Is, Chapter 2: Review of the Bhagavad Gita, Text 39). ^ It should be noted that in the Old Testament language the word "flesh" does not have the flavor of opposition to the soul, as in the language of patristics, it simply means "living being". ^ St. John Chrysostom. Creation. St. Petersburg, 1896. T. 2. Kn. 2, p. 664. Cm. See also: Он же. Creation. T. 9. Kn. 2, pp. 767–768. ^ Strangely, in Greek "soros" means "funeral urn"... ^ An advertising note about the "Bogorodichny Center" in a popular St. Petersburg newspaper ends with the words: "Any undertaking, including in the spiritual sphere, needs support and help" (Lavrova N. "Mother of God, we fall at Your feet" // Smena. 1992. August 12). This is about a pseudo-Orthodox (in fact, occult) sect that calls for the curse of mothers: "The Scriptures reveal the most terrible sinful essence of conception. The mother passes on sins... Let's come to our senses, wake up! Death, catastrophes, earthquakes are near. And we glorify those very impious mothers who now need to be called to repentance" (Bishop John (Bereslavsky), Confession of a wounded heart, Moscow, 1991, p. 145). "In the subconscious, one dream is nurtured: to expose the son's genitals to the universal showcase, for the whole world to see, and then tear it off" (Ep. Ioann (Bereslavsky). ^ Chesterton G.K. Eternal Man. Moscow, 1991. P. 452. ^ Kimelev Y.A. Filosofskii teizm: Tipologiya sovremennykh formov [Philosophical theism: Typology of modern forms]. Moscow, 1993. P. 5. ^

Is the New Testament obsolete?

And yet the Old Testament does not yet know God who became man [1].Where in the world of religions is there the idea that God's love for man can be so strong that He, the Creator, condescends to people? There are many myths about the incarnation of gods in the human world. But these are always the incarnations of some "secondary" gods, these are stories about how one of the many celestials decided to come to people, while the deity, revered in a given religious system as the source of all life, never crossed the threshold of his own all-bliss. Neither Prometheus, who dies for the sake of men, nor Horus, whose sacrifice was so prized by the Egyptians, embody the Absolute Deity. Odin (Wotan, Wodan), who crucified himself on the world tree Yggdrasil [2], is also not the Absolute. One leads himself through torment in order to acquire the knowledge of runes and spells he lacks [3]. Before us is a sacrifice to oneself and for oneself. Voluntary immersion in pain is one of the traditional means of shamanic initiation [4]. And since Odin needs such experience to acquire the knowledge he lacks, it means that he cannot be perceived as the Primordial Fullness.In folk religions (paganism = nationality) heroes and demigods suffer. But the truly Supreme does not make itself accessible to human pain. This idea is found in Krishnaism, where Krishna is understood as the Personal and One Creator God. The Bhagavad Gita is often called the "Indian gospel." This book [5] really preaches a great idea: God must be approached with love. It is not the technology of meditation or animal sacrifice that brings a person closer to God, but a loving heart. This idea was nothing new in comparison with the preaching of the older Old Testament prophets of Israel. But for India, it was quite revolutionary. Bhagavad Gita" tells us that the "Supreme Lord" Krishna did not just create the world and did not just give revelation. He personally, directly, brought it to people. He became a man. And not even a king, but a servant, a charioteer.And yet, when you get acquainted with this book, questions arise. First: Did Krishna become a man completely and forever? No, only for the duration of the lesson he seemed to be a man. His true forms are not at all human, and he uses his human form only as a cover that allows him to come closer to people. It was not difficult for him to be a man, and he himself did not experience either human pain or human death... He commands people to love him. But whether he himself loves people remains not entirely clear; in the Bhagavad Gita there is not a single line about love for people.The plot of the Bhagavad Gita is built around the young warrior Arjuna, who must forcibly defend his right to the inheritance taken from him by unscrupulous relatives. With the help of Krishna, Arjuna gathers a huge army. But just before the battle, when Arjuna enters the field of the upcoming battle, he peers into the ranks of his enemies and suddenly realizes who he will have to fight; and then he says in a humanly shocked way: "At the sight of my relatives coming to fight, Krishna, my legs give way, my mouth is dry. My body trembles, my hair stands on end. I can't stand, my mind is confused. I find no benefit in killing my relatives, in fighting. Those for whom the kingdom, pleasures, happiness are desired, intervened in this battle, leaving their lives: mentors, grandfathers, fathers, sons, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, fathers-in-law, uncles - all our relatives. I don't want to kill them. After the murder, what kind of joy will we have? After all, having destroyed our race, how can we be happy? Woe, alas, we are plotting to commit a grievous sin: for the sake of the desire of royal pleasures to destroy our kinsmen.Thus speaking, in the struggle, Arjuna drooped to the bottom of the chariot, dropping his bow and arrows; his mind was shaken with grief" (Bhagavad Gita. 1:29-47). And what about the divine Krishna? At that moment he finds the following words for a person: "Having left the insignificant weakness of the heart, arise, ascetic! You are sorry for those who do not need pity: those who know do not grieve either for the living or for those who have departed. These bodies are transitory, the bearer of the body is called eternal. So, fight, Bharata! The born will inevitably die, the dead will inevitably be born; for the inevitable you must not grieve" (Ibid. 1, 3, 18, 26). Krishna says all this "as if with a smile" (Ibid. 2:10). "And without you all the warriors who stand against each other will perish. Therefore, arise, conquer your enemies, attain glory, enjoy the flourishing kingdom, for I smote them before, you be only an instrument, like the warrior standing on the left. All the heroes whom I have killed in battle, do not hesitate" (Ibid. 11, 32-34). I will only say that such a smile is impossible on the face of the One Who wept on the way to the tomb of His friend Lazarus (John 11:35). Such advice is impossible in the mouth of Him Who said of every person: "Inasmuch as you have done it to one of the least of these my brethren, you have done it to me" (Matt. 25:40). Thus, the highest theological formula says: "God is love."We have already talked a lot about love, but we have not yet given its definition. Well, the deepest formula of love can be drawn from the Gospel: "Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13). True love seeks to identify itself with the loved one. Here truly let the two be in one flesh (cf. Gen. 2:24) [8]. In love, the nervous periphery of the lover expands and absorbs the pains and joys of the loved one. And therefore the path of love is the transfer of one's life center from oneself to another. It is a giving, a giving, a sacrifice.Such love for people is not revealed by any theological image in the world outside the Gospel. And we ask the God of the Gospel: "How do You love people?" and He answers: "Until My death..." His love not only created the world. His love not only gave people freedom. His love has not only given us the Law. His love has not only given us prophets and wisdom. His love not only took on a human face. He didn't seem to be – He became a man. "All of you, native land, In the form of a slave, the King of Heaven Came out, blessing" (Fyodor Tyutchev). And His love for us went to the end, to the ultimate point, to the complete surrender of Himself, to the complete renunciation of Himself, to Sacrifice and death. "It was as if a man came out, And carried out, and opened the ark, And distributed everything to the skin" (Boris Pasternak)... To love means to absorb the troubles and joys of the beloved as one's own. And the latter, perhaps, is more difficult than the first. "It is not difficult to weep with those who weep, but to rejoice with those who rejoice (cf. Rom. 12:15) is not very easy: it is easier for us to sympathize with those who are in distress than to rejoice with those who prosper. Envy and ill-will do not allow the not very wise to rejoice in the prosperous. Therefore, let us try to rejoice with those who prosper, in order to cleanse our souls of envy" [9]. If I find out that our employee (whom our entire friendly team rightfully - as it seems to us - cannot stand) has a son, then even I can feel compassion for her. And the presence of this sympathy will in no way be evidence that I have reached moral heights. It would be more difficult to share her joy than her sorrow. For example, if one day I find out that the Soros Foundation [10] gave our employee ten thousand dollars to publish her useless book, will I be able to rejoice with her? Oh no, more likely, while she will run on the ceiling with happiness, I will trail green like her dollars... Rejoicing is rare. And Christ rejoiced with people. And He performed His first miracle in an atmosphere of joy. It was not in the cemetery that the first miracle of the Savior took place, but at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee... And God shares the most important joy with people: "In heaven there will be more joy over one sinner who repents, than over ninety-nine righteous men who have no need of repentance" (Luke 15:7). He doesn't just love, He is love. He doesn't just have love, He doesn't just manifest in love: He is love.Well, we began our conversation with doubts that religions can be compared with each other. But as soon as we transferred the discussion of religious beliefs to the clear sphere of reason, rational arguments, formulations and comparisons, it turned out that religions can be compared and that in this comparison the differences between religions can be expressed in an evaluative form. A. And when I say that Christianity is not just one of the religions, but that it is the highest religion, the "absolute religion" (let's say so, following Hegel), the only religion that offers a real image of God, I do not say so because my own belonging to Christianity compels me to appreciate it. I am forced to draw this conclusion by ordinary human logic. And ordinary humanity. Yes, in order to notice and understand the obvious, today's person needs to show a remarkable ability for free, independent thinking. Fashions, ideologies, and newspapers have been indoctrinating us with the idea of "equality of religions" for many years [11]. Their favorite "religious studies" thesis was summarized by the ironic Chesterton as follows: "Christianity and Buddhism are very similar to each other; especially Buddhism" [12]. But if religions are treated in a non-ideological way, if they are not primarily seen as the ideological foundation of a certain totally planetary "new world order," if they are not turned into political hostages of human utopias, then the usual sense of realism clearly explains: religions are different. Religions can be deeper and flatter. And with all the diversity of human religions, only Christianity has learned and proclaimed what the greatest religious discovery means. The word God here means "the Spirit Who is everywhere and One, Who has no place or cause, Whom no one could comprehend, Who fills all things, Who embraces, builds, preserves, Whom we call God!" (Gavrila Derzhavin). If one of the readers prefers the language of philosophy to the language of poetry, this means the following: "Philosophical theism means the philosophical conceptualization of the existence and nature of God as an absolute, transcendent in relation to the world spiritual-personal reality, acting as the unconditional source of all non-divine existence and preserving an effective presence in the world." [13] Love means... However, we will refrain from fully "deciphering" this mysterious word. We simply realize that the choice between paganism and Christianity is a choice between the automatism of the "karmic law" and the vision of the relationship between God and the world, about which B. Pasternak said: "The worlds are ruled by pity. Love has inspired the Universe with the unprecedented And the novelty of life." For more information on the religion of ancient Israel, see the chapter "Is the Old Testament Cruel?" (Current edition, pp. 147–181). ^ "I know that I hung in the branches in the wind for nine long nights, pierced by a spear, dedicated to Odin, as a sacrifice to myself, on the tree whose roots are hidden in the bowels of the unknown" (Elder Edda, Speeches of the High One. 138). ^ "No one nourished, no one gave me water, I looked at the earth, I picked up the runes, groaning, I picked them up – and I fell from the tree... I learned nine songs... I began to mature and multiply my knowledge" (Ibid. 139-141). ^ "Voluntary ritual martyrdom is aimed at evoking an ecstatic state in oneself, i.e. it is a form of ritual martyrdom" (Steblin-Kamensky M.I. Elder Edda // Beowulf. Elder Edda. Song of the Nibelungs. Moscow, 1975. P. 671). ^ "The ideological core of the teaching of the Gita was created and recorded in the form of a text in the 3rd-2nd centuries B.C. In this original form, the text of the monument has not been preserved, and we can only make more or less plausible guesses about its composition. Over the next thousand years – until the 9th century AD, the time of the final fixation of the text of the poem – the Gita continued to grow due to insertions, the volume and nature of which are almost impossible to assess" (V.S. Sementsov, The Bhagavad Gita in Tradition and in Modern Scientific Criticism, p. 15). Cm. See also: Sementsov V.S. K postanovke voprosa o vozraste Bhagavad Gita [On the statement of the question of the age of the Bhagavad Gita]. Moscow, 1972; perepech. in: Bhagavad Gita/ Transl. from Sanskrit, research. and note. V.S. Sementsova. Moscow, 1999. Pp. 243–255. ^ "Thy great image with many eyes, lips, O long-armed, with many arms, thighs, feet, with many torsos, with many protruding fangs, beholding the worlds, I also... All the sons of Dhṛtarāṣṭra hasten to enter your horrible mouth with protruding fangs; I saw some hanging between their teeth, with their heads crushed. As moths, having fallen into a brilliant flame, complete their striving with destruction, so do the worlds enter into your mouth to perish, completing the striving. You, licking the worlds on all sides, devour them with fiery lips; having filled the whole world with radiance, your terrible heat inflames it, O Vishnu! Tell me who you are, horrible one, have mercy, lord of the gods; I cannot comprehend Thy manifestations" (Bhagavad Gita, 11:23-31). The answer is: "I, Time, as I advance, destroy the worlds, growing here for their destruction" (Bhagavad Gita, 11, 32). and there is immersion in the absolute... V. Sementsov believes (in contrast to modern Krishnas) that in the Bhagavad Gita, the idea of Krishna as a "Good God", a personal Bhagavan is offered only as an easier and initial path of spiritual ascension, while more advanced adepts should still approach the traditionally pantheistic idea of the Upanishads about the impersonal Brahman (see: V.S. Sementsov, Bhagavad Gita in Tradition and in Modern Scientific Criticism, p. 105). Thus, the Gita turns out to be yoga "for the 'dilettantes' in the form of simple householders... who did not have the opportunity to devote all their time to spiritual training (Ibid., pp. 102 and 105). Pantheism "crosses out the whole world of objective things and wants to strengthen itself in absolute 'knowledge'. However, a living person, who has not yet completely renounced the last remnants of his humanity, can hardly endure the temperature of absolute perfection: he is cold and wants something warmer. The soul is warmed by images, and first of all by the image of a kind, merciful deity who helps and saves. Therefore, Shankara, commenting on the Gita, admits Bhagavan" (Ibid., p. 111). ^ "Killing in battle in the name of religious principles and killing animals in a sacrificial fire are not considered acts of violence, for they are committed in the name of religious principles and are good for all. A sacrificed animal immediately receives life in a human body, without going through a slow evolution from one form of life to another. Kshatriyas killed in battle, like brahmanas who perform sacrifices, end up on heavenly planets" – this is how the founder of modern Krishnaism, His Divine Grace, Srila Prabhupada, interpreted the Bhagavad Gita (Srila Prabhupada, Bhagavad Gita As It Is, Chapter 2: Review of the Bhagavad Gita, Text 39). ^ It should be noted that in the Old Testament language the word "flesh" does not have the flavor of opposition to the soul, as in the language of patristics, it simply means "living being". ^ St. John Chrysostom. Creation. St. Petersburg, 1896. T. 2. Kn. 2, p. 664. Cm. See also: Он же. Creation. T. 9. Kn. 2, pp. 767–768. ^ Strangely, in Greek "soros" means "funeral urn"... ^ An advertising note about the "Bogorodichny Center" in a popular St. Petersburg newspaper ends with the words: "Any undertaking, including in the spiritual sphere, needs support and help" (Lavrova N. "Mother of God, we fall at Your feet" // Smena. 1992. August 12). This is about a pseudo-Orthodox (in fact, occult) sect that calls for the curse of mothers: "The Scriptures reveal the most terrible sinful essence of conception. The mother passes on sins... Let's come to our senses, wake up! Death, catastrophes, earthquakes are near. And we glorify those very impious mothers who now need to be called to repentance" (Bishop John (Bereslavsky), Confession of a wounded heart, Moscow, 1991, p. 145). "In the subconscious, one dream is nurtured: to expose the son's genitals to the universal showcase, for the whole world to see, and then tear it off" (Ep. Ioann (Bereslavsky). ^ Chesterton G.K. Eternal Man. Moscow, 1991. P. 452. ^ Kimelev Y.A. Filosofskii teizm: Tipologiya sovremennykh formov [Philosophical theism: Typology of modern forms]. Moscow, 1993. P. 5. ^

Part 1

I am a unique person in a certain sense. Personally, it is written about me in the Gospel. A whole chapter is devoted to Christ's conversation with me. It was so pleasant to read: "And the Son of Man said to the candidate of theology..." This Gospel, however, was not from Matthew or John. It was called "The Last Testament. Narration from Vadim" (Part 5, Ch. 17). "Christ" was called by Sergei Torop, who once served as a district policeman in Minusinsk, and after staying in a psychiatric hospital, he felt himself to be the "Savior", the Lord of the Second Coming, the creator of the Third Testament. And he took a new name for himself - Vissarion.Our conversation lasted four hours. First of all, I was interested in the question: what exactly does Vissarion proclaim, what does he consider necessary to supplement the New Testament? I turned to him with this question several times. His first answers did not suit me. Everything that seemed new to the former policeman was not new to me as a person who began to collect a library on the history of religion in those years when the new "Savior" was still on patrol duty... A message of love and reconciliation? This has already happened in the prophets and in the Gospel. The hostility of the Gods of the Old and New Testaments? This was already the case with the Gnostics. The idea of "karma"? This was in the religions of India. Reincarnation? And this idea is far from new. What is it that is so urgent, so strikingly new, is it time to announce to people? In the end, Vissarion formulated the "scientific novelty" of his sermon as follows: "The religions of the East taught that reincarnations are infinite. Christians generally deny reincarnation. But I proclaim that both are wrong. There are transformations, but there are only seven of them. Each soul is given only seven attempts." In fact, Christianity believes that a person acquires eternity (this or that) at the end of one of his lives (Men are supposed to die once, and after that judgment – [Heb. 9:27]). Eastern religions speak of millions of reincarnations. Thus, the traditional Christian version is too demanding and responsible, and the Eastern version is too tiring. But seven attempts are just right... For success in the market, it is quite enough. However, it is not enough for claims to unprecedented novelty... And, of course, Vissarion was not too interested in the question of whether it was possible to connect the ideas of "karma" and reincarnation with the Bible so simply, mechanically. For it was precisely the knowledge of the Bible, as it turned out, that the new "messiah" did not possess.It is not surprising – people who are convinced of their ability to "renew" and "supplement" Christianity, as a rule, have a very poor knowledge of both Christianity and the Scriptures themselves.So, during our conversation with Bessarion, we, of course, turned to biblical texts. And it turned out that I had an interlocutor in front of me, a conversation with whom could not be built in the same way as, for example, conversations with Protestants. I quote some biblical text that is incompatible with Vissarion's views, and he replies to me: "Well, you understand that the Gospels were written about me. However, this is exactly what I did not say. It was the Apostles who misunderstood me. That's not what I meant." You cite some other biblical passage, and in response you suddenly hear the question: "Do you have sins?" Pleased with my confession, the false messiah explains: "Well. And a sinful person cannot understand the word of God purely. I have no sins. And therefore only I can correctly understand the meaning of the Bible."And so I found myself in a situation that is more than usual for a priest. This is a natural, quite ordinary component of the priest's work: to explain to a person that he still has sins. A person comes to confession, not understanding its meaning, not knowing how to repent, and declares: "But I have no sins. If he killed anyone, it was only on business." Or he runs away from the labor of repentance in another way: by hastily confessing all sins at once ("I am a sinner in everything, father" [1]). Or instead of his own sins at confession, he begins to talk about the sins of other people ("I, father, sinned the other day, I said a curse word. But it is her own fault. She..." – and for half an hour a story about the real and imaginary sins of the neighbor).Well, here in front of me was a man who deeply believes in his own infallibility. And I had to show him that he had not enough grounds to consider himself a perfect man, much less the "Only-begotten Son of God." Of course, I was not interested in his personal sins. But the fact is that in the language of Orthodox theology, sin is not only a violation of a commandment, it is also a disease. Sin is incompleteness, inferiority. And this incompleteness of Vissarion's life and thought had to be made obvious. The easiest and most inoffensive way to do this is to find out the limits of knowledge of the false messiah.First I talked to him about Buddhism. Vissarion's movement calls itself the "Community of One Faith." The founder claims that he has found a way to unite all religions, primarily Buddhism and Christianity. However, it soon became clear that Vissarion simply had no idea about Buddhism. And this was so obvious that even he himself understood that he should not present himself as an expert in this Eastern tradition. So I asked him, "How are you going to combine what you don't know? And how can you consider yourself the 'Messiah', the 'Word of God', the 'Logos', the 'Mind of God', if you do not know what is known to any educated person?" The Messiah must know the truth, but he does not have to know lies and sin." – "So, by uniting Buddhism and Christianity, you combine falsehood with truth?" – "No. I talk about unity only to attract more people. In fact, the truth is only in Christianity, only in the Bible and in me."Then I turned the conversation to such subjects, the ignorance of which can in no way be called praiseworthy. It turned out that the false messiah did not know either ancient Greek, or ancient Hebrew, or Latin, or modern European languages. For an ordinary person, of course, there is no crime in this [2]. But the one who pretends to be Christ – how can he not take the trouble to learn the native language of the True Saviour? Is knowledge of Hebrew or Greek also a sin that defiles the "messiah"? Does God not know human languages and does not understand our multilingual prayers? But the culmination of our conversation was the moment when Vissarion began to talk about the existence of many gods. When I heard him preach the usual occult polytheism (the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament are different Gods), I asked him to remember the Ten Commandments. The effect exceeded all my expectations: it turned out that the "messiah" posing as the author of the Bible simply did not know the Decalogue. He began to mumble something about not killing or stealing. But he could not name the first commandment. I had to remind him: "Listen, Israel... I am the Lord thy God... thou shalt have no other gods before me (Deuteronomy 5:1, 6-7). This commandment in itself denounced Vissarion's polytheism. However, ignorance of what an ordinary student of an ordinary Sunday school knows by heart, ignorance of the Ten Commandments, exposed the claims of the false messiah even more and more scandalously... Realizing this, he refused to provide me with video and audio recordings of our conversation, and soon they were completely destroyed... In this man, who claims to be the author of the Third Testament, there is in the most striking form what is noticeable in other religious "innovators": they undertake to renew what they themselves are very superficially familiar with. Sometimes they simply do not know the Bible and Orthodoxy [3]. Sometimes they deliberately distort both. Sometimes they – against their will – use anti-Orthodox caricatures (implanted in their consciousness by atheistic or sectarian upbringing, the press, fashion, etc.). In the latter case, a conversation with such a "reformer" may remind one of the famous conversation that took place in the nineteenth century between a certain priest and a certain atheist. At a chance acquaintance, the Nover declared his "freethinking" with some aplomb: "You know, father, you may be amazed, but I do not believe in God." "Well," the priest replied calmly, "so do I." And then he explained to the bewildered interlocutor: "You see, I also do not believe in a god in whom you do not believe. I don't believe in the bearded old man with a bad temper that you imagine when you hear the word "God." The God whom I serve and whom my church preaches is different. This is the Gospel God of love. You simply have not seriously familiarized yourself with the teachings of our Church, and therefore, not knowing the true image of God, you reject the false caricature of Him. And in this you are right."The mistake of that atheist was that instead of the image of the God of love, instead of the image of Christ, he formed in his mind the image of a police overseer. The mistake of those who intend to "complete" the Gospel is that instead of the image of the God of love, they also imagined a kind of self-made idol, this time calling him the "Great Teacher." If Christ is only a teacher and preacher of the first century, then, with all due respect to Him, it is quite natural to supplement His sermons, based on the experience accumulated by mankind over the next twenty centuries. But can we say that over these centuries we have learned to love more than Christ? If Christ had told people about God's love, one could hope for the appearance of other preachers who could speak on the same subject no less talentedly, but at the same time take examples for their parables from modern life. But Christ did not talk about the love of God in the same way as one talks about something objectively external, external, different from the narrator himself. He did not speak of God in the way that we speak of another person and of the peculiarities of his character. He has revealed this love of God. He, Christ, the Son of God and the True God, did not tell about Himself, but gave Himself to people.And this means that the one who boldly promises to "surpass Christ" can and should be asked a simple question: has your love surpassed the love of Christ? It is not your eloquence that interests me. Explain: what was the Sacrifice of Christ unable to fulfill, and how and what exactly is the "lack" of this Sacrifice that you are going to make up for with your words? Are you sure that God has hidden something, that He has not given us something in the Sacrifice of His Son, and that now God will give us this hidden energy of God's love, having become incarnate in you? But even in your theory, in your theology, in what way have you surpassed the experience of Christian comprehension of the mystery of Christ's love? You think that the Covenant, once called the New, is already "worn out". You say that people lived with the Old Testament for less than fifteen centuries, and with the New Testament for twenty centuries.

Trud (1995, July 1) reported that "on the territory of Russia, according to statistics, there are about 300,000 folk healers, clairvoyants, magicians and astrologers today." Three hundred thousand "saints" and "prophets"! Only five years after the abolition of state atheism in Russia, there is already one "God-chosen" miracle-worker for every three hundred and fifty people! This, however, is quite close to the standards of the modern "civilized world": according to the American sectologist G. J. Berry, "there are about a thousand active 'contactees' in Los Angeles alone" [4]. And the "information" that comes to all these people "from the depths of space" is basically the same: it is time to put aside the Gospel and move on to the occult, which will be the "Third Testament".

It is possible that on the threshold of the third millennium after the birth of Christ, mankind would be ready to accept the "Third Testament". It is possible that in different religions of the world pieces of a single mosaic are preserved; and, putting them together, it is possible to finally obtain an integral image of the Godhead. One priest I know asked such a "sinner": "You say that she is a sinner in everything? Did you steal motorcycles at night? No? Well, then, repent of what you really did." ^ I am by no means a polyglot myself, but at that moment I was greatly helped by Fr. Oleg Stenyaev, who asked Vissarion a few questions in Hebrew. ^ For example, the Vice-President of the International Roerich Theater L. Shaposhnikova confuses the Gospel and the Apostolic Epistles, quoting the latter as follows: "The Gospel, Epistle to the Galatians, 5, 13-15" (see: L. Shaposhnikova, New Planetary Thinking and Russia // The Fiery World. 1996. № 3 (11). P. 17)... We did not outgrow the Gospel, but fell out of the cradle of the Gospel and, hitting our heads hard, thought that we had outgrown the Gospel. ^ Berry, G.J. What they believe in. Moscow, 1994. P. 158. ^

Part 2

However, it is obvious that on this path of "synthesis" and "evolution" all the best that was acquired and consolidated in the previous religious searches of mankind must be preserved.Probably, there is no need to prove that in all the diversity of religious teachings and practices of mankind, those peoples who came to the knowledge of the One First Principle took a step towards a higher worldview than those peoples who remained with a polytheistic worldview (with polytheism). Wherever religious thought was awakened, i.e. wherever religious life was not reduced to ritualism, people came to the conclusion that all the diversity of existence had a Single Source. And the philosophy of Ancient Greece, as well as the thought of Ancient India, believed that the Deity is One. The Prophets of Ancient Israel fervently preached about the same thing: God is One.This means that the synthesis of all the best that has been developed in the religious evolution of mankind should be built on the basis of monism, i.e. on the assumption of the Divine One, with Whom, as with its First Cause and Basis, everything that exists is connected. There are pantheistic schools and there are theistic schools. The first trend believes that the One Principle is impersonal, the second believes that He can be represented as a Person.The difference between pantheistic theology and personalistic (personal) theology was clearly defined by I. Kant: he called pantheists those who "accept the world whole as a single all-encompassing substance, without recognizing this foundation of reason" [1]. The impersonal Absolute of pantheists is a kind of absolute substance that does not know itself, does not control itself, does not have self-consciousness and will. God is not a Person, but simply an Energy like gravity that permeates the entire universe. This Energy has neither the freedom of its actions, nor their awareness, nor control over its manifestations. Throughout the world there is an unconscious multifaceted embodiment of the Single Energy, which manifests itself in good and evil, in creation and in destruction; Its particular manifestations die, but it always remains itself, sparing no one and loving no one. Such is the pantheistic Deity, preached, for example, by Giordano Bruno: "The Deity does not know Himself and cannot be known" [2]; "God has nothing to do with us." H. P. Blavatsky says of it: "We call Absolute Consciousness 'Unconscious' because it seems to us that it must necessarily be so... The Eternal Breath, which does not know itself" [3]. "The Immovable Infinite and the Absolutely Infinite can neither will, nor think, nor act" [4].But there is an understanding of God as a Person. In such a theology, characteristic, for example, of Christianity and Islam, God is infinite, omnipresent, not limited by matter, time, or space. "God is not in the cloud or in any other place. It is outside of space, not subject to the limitations of time, and is not encompassed by the properties of things. He does not contain a particle of His Being in anything material, nor does He embrace it through the limitation of matter or through the division of Himself. What kind of temple can you build for me, says the Lord (cf. Isaiah 66:1) [5]. But even in the image of the universe He did not build a temple for Himself, because He is boundless" (Clement of Alexandria, Stromata. II, 2). But at the same time, He knows Himself, owns all His manifestations and actions, possesses self-consciousness, and each of His manifestations in the world is the result of His free decision. Are self-awareness and self-control among the perfections? Yes. Therefore, when thinking about the Absolute, it is necessary to be sure that the Absolute knows Itself. Is freedom one of the perfections? It is obvious that of the two states of being, the more perfect is the one that can act freely, proceeding from itself, consciously and with rational goal-setting. Consequently, even in the thinking of the Absolute, it is more worthy to imagine that each of His actions takes place according to His free will, and not according to some unconscious necessity. The understanding of the One as a free and rational Personality is more worthy than the assertion of an impersonal Substance.If we are to engage in religious philosophy and create a hypothesis about a certain "Perfect Being", then the more profound and consistent will be the one that relates self-consciousness and freedom to perfections and therefore sees the Personality in the Absolute. The logic of pantheists is incomprehensible and unnecessary, who believe that with consistent thinking about such a Being it is necessary to deprive Him of the ability to think independently, to act freely and consciously, to love and create.According to the fair judgment of Vladimir Solovyov, "the Divinity should not be conceivable impersonal, weak-willed, unconscious and aimlessly acting... It is impossible to recognize God as impersonal, weak-willed, etc., because this would mean placing Him below man. It is not without reason that we consider certain objects, such as furniture, pavement stones, logs, heaps of sand, to be weak-willed, impersonal and unconscious, we thereby assert the superiority of the personal, conscious and purposeful acting human being over them, and no sophisms can change this axiomatic judgment of ours" [6].Pantheists say that to think of God as a Person means to make Him too anthropomorphic. to lower the Divinity. But the pantheists themselves believe that God is one with all existence. And if the Godhead absorbs into Himself everything that exists, then why can't He, indistinguishably identical, according to pantheists, with any stone, tree, comet, etc., resemble a man? If, according to pantheism (all-God), the Divinity is one with everything and is the only subject of all the world's properties and all world processes, then why should He not also be the bearer of the highest human qualities: consciousness, reason, love and anger, goal-setting? Why, when thinking about the Absolute, is it necessary to multiply by infinity the properties of the unconscious world, i.e. the lower properties, and not to raise to an infinite degree such perfections as freedom, reason and love? But how can they not understand that by denying God the right to think, they themselves equate Him with, for example, the same stone? If, nevertheless, we overcome the hypnosis of occultism and admit that man has qualities that elevate him above the world ("In comparison with man, any impersonal creature seems to be asleep: it simply suffers from its existence. Only in the human person do we find an awakened being who really controls himself, despite his dependence on circumstances" [7]), then the Christian proclamation that God is different from the world will be understandable. When Christian theology asserts that God is a Person, it is in fact doing the work of denying, protecting, and protecting. This is apophatic, mystical-negating theology [8]. This is not the encapsulation of the Incomprehensible in human formulas, but His liberation from them. To say that the Deity is devoid of personality, self-consciousness, freedom, reason, love, and goal-setting is to offer not only a too low, but also a blasphemous idea of the Absolute. Consequently, pantheism is rejected by Christian thought on the same grounds that it rejects the pagan ideas about the gods as corporeal, limited, non-omniscient [9] and sinful beings. The affirmation of the Personality in God is the affirmation of the fullness of the Divine being. The denial of this personhood does not mean an "expansion" but, on the contrary, an impoverishment of our ideas about God. After all, if we consider rational being to be superior to being, devoid of reason, if we consider free being to be more worthy than being enslaved to necessity, then how can we think of God, i.e., Being, Whom we consider superior to ourselves, as devoid of these virtues? If a philosopher recognizes the superiority of consciousness over the unconscious world, then he cannot but agree with the Spanish existentialist philosopher M. de Unamuno: "But let someone tell me whether what we call the law of universal gravitation (or any other law or mathematical principle) is an original and independent reality, such as an angel, for example, whether such a law is something that has the consciousness of oneself and others, in a word, is he a person?.. But what is objectified reason without will and without feeling? For us, it is like nothing; a thousand times more terrible than nothing" [10]. If the "thinking reed" (Blaise Pascal) is more valuable than an oak but brainless forest, than the always just and eternally insensitive laws of arithmetic, and than the impersonal principles of cosmogenesis, then the self-conscious man is immeasurably higher than the unconscious "Deity" of the pantheists. Thus, the Christian critique of pantheism is the negation of negations. "You can't forbid!" You can't "forbid" God to think! Christians agree with the positive assertions of pantheism: the Godhead is unlimited and the world is permeated with the Divine. The only difference is that pantheists say that God in His Essence permeates the world, while Christians say that He permeates the world with His energies. This would be no more than a dispute over words if the pantheistic thesis did not entail some very important negative consequences. It is with these consequences that Christians do not agree. The difference between pantheism and theism can be summarized very simply: can we "recognize the moral being as the primary basis of creation" [11], or do we believe that moral values and goals are present only in the consciousness and activity of man, but they are absent in the life of the Divine. I reject goal-setting awareness in the actions of the Absolute, because the goal is something that must be strived for due to the lack, the absence of what is desired. Achieving a goal enriches the one who strives to achieve it. But the Absolute cannot be enriched with anything, it already has the fullness of existence in Itself, and therefore it has no need to act and it does not need goal-setting [12]. So what can the Absolute lack so much? What can the Divinity wish to unite to His fullness? God does not want to assimilate us to Himself, but to give Himself to us. And He gave us freedom so that we could receive this Gift freely. God has let us go from Himself so that we may return. God does not need us for Himself, but for us. He created us in time for the purpose of giving us His eternity. The pantheistic chain of reasoning, which denies goal-setting in God, is built on a purely selfish understanding of the goal: the goal of activity is what the direct subject of activity needs. But you can wish the good of another, you can act for the sake of another. This is called love, and since God is love, He desires the increase of good not for Himself (in Him all good is contained from eternity), but for others. It is the understanding of God as love that allows us to see in Him a Person and a goal-setting Mind. And the moral value that the Divinity brings to the world is the desire for the good of the other.Where does the "other" come from next to the boundless and all-encompassing Absolute? From the free decision of God Himself. God willed that there should be a being other than Him, and for this purpose He diminished His presence in this sphere of existence, giving it freedom. After all, God is almighty? Well, He created the greatest miracle: He gave the opportunity for the other to exist in Himself, and the presence and even rebelliousness of this Other does not fragment His own Unity... Without ceasing to be "everywhere Existing and One," He blessed the existence of other wills, other beings. The very existence of the world, and a world so free that the constant omnipresence of God is not exposed in it, is a manifestation of God's love.Thus, the religion that could surpass Christianity would have to preserve the understanding of God as a free and rational Person [13].If there is no love in God, if God is incapable of a personal and loving existence, then man is nothing more than mold in the outskirts of the swamp of the Universe.And here the choice is inevitable: either to accept the Gospel, which proclaims that He through Whom all things were made, and without Him nothing was made that was made (John 1:3), came to Earth and became man, or to accept the thesis that man and his planet are just a dump of "karmic" garbage. Space, according to pantheists, lives on its own and does not even know that somewhere on its outskirts man suffers and hopes for something. This world does not become fuller if a person comes into it, and it does not become poorer if a person leaves it. Two times two always equals four. Two galaxies plus two galaxies – you always get four. Whether earthlings know about it or not – the multiplication table does not care about it. The beauty of the world is not created for man, does not care about man, and therefore is inhuman in its essence [14].Pantheists most of all do not understand the mystery of Divine love in Christianity. When one of Helena Roerich's correspondents timidly remarked that God is love, and only a subject, but not an impersonal law, can love, the Theosophist [15] reminded: "The East has forbidden any discussion of the Ineffable, concentrating all the power of knowledge only on the majestic manifestations of the Mystery" [16]. In another place, however, she explained that "Divine love" is nothing but the forces of cosmic gravity: "Divine love is the principle of attraction, or the same Fohat, in its capacity as Divine love, the electrical power of affinity and sympathy" [17]. Not merely Law, not merely Reason, not merely "gravitation," not merely "cosmic electricity," but a personal and loving Will. And therefore he experiences the unity of God and the world even more vividly than the pantheist. He not only, like a pantheist, experiences the communion of peace with the Heavenly Principle, but he also knows the name of this Principle, knows to Whom he can utter a word of gratitude for today's sunset and for the future dawn. This is the right lost by the pantheists – they cannot exclaim: "Glory to Thee, Who showed us the light!" Now we can continue our experiment to decide how to think more worthily about God. We have already seen that among the many theological concepts, the purest, the most sublime, the most thoughtful is the one that proclaims: "God is love." And that image of the Divine Person turns out to be both deeper and more attractive, in which the manifestations of God are seen not only in will, in power or in reason, but also in love. God is a Person. God is love. These are the three most important conclusions from the religious history of mankind. And "God is love" is not just a formula, for in Christianity there is not just a reflection of this formula, but its unique embodiment. Christ did not just tell people about God's love. He showed it. It is in the Sacrifice of Christ that the Revelation of God is revealed to a greater extent than in any sermons or parables. Love is revealed not in arguments, but in action. And the most important thing in Christ is His action.Occultists will say: we recognize the great significance of the Sacrifice of Christ, we see in it a sign and a lesson of God's love. But this statement will not make them Christians. In the first place, "karma," which is the highest principle of occult philosophy, loves no one. It just acts automatically. Secondly, for Christians in Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily (Col. 2:9), while for occultists in Christ there was only a particle of the Godhead. Thirdly, for Christians, the Incarnation of God in man, in Christ, was a free and miraculous act of love. For the occultists, however, the Godhead is simply present in every world phenomenon, including Christ, as well as in the spear with which Christ was pierced and in the cup in which Pilate washed his hands. In their view, the Godhead suffered not because He wanted to absorb the experience of human pain, but because He had nowhere to go. From the point of view of the occultists, there is no God outside the world, and therefore, by breaking any stone, they break a piece of the Deity, Who, in general, did not agree at all (He has "nothing" to agree with, there is no Personality in Him) to any suffering. Such logic means that it cannot be said of God that He is love: it was not God who died on Golgotha, but a lower order... And this means that there is no love in the Divinity – it manifests itself only on the lower, earthly, human "planes of existence." God's great love for people cannot be manifested (for "karma" or "Fohat" will not even think of ascending the Cross for the sake of people, and the "signs of the Zodiac" will not change their usual rut for the sake of helping people). Therefore, from Golgotha the path can only be downward: any herald of some religious "novelty" after Christ, if his preaching undertakes to "expand" or "renew" the Gospel, takes a step down into that magicism and legalism from which the Gospel has freed people. Thus, from the North Pole, any step leads in one direction: to the south. For example, from the top of Mount Everest, a step in any direction means a descent.The categories of "modern", "outdated", "medieval", "progressive", "backward" are simply inappropriate here. Here is a different, supratemporal and timeless scale of values. Love does not become obsolete. Time, according to the New Testament, will cease (Rev. 10:6); Love, on the other hand, will remain even after the disappearance of time. Love will outlive even hope (cf. 1 Corinthians 13:1-13), for hope is conceivable only when the present and the future alternate. And this means that the passage of time has no power over the Gospel of love. Among those realities which can never separate a Christian from the love of God manifested in Christ, Ap. Paul names not only prisons and persecutions, but also the river of time (neither present nor future [Romans 8:38]). The flow of time will not be able to thin out, erase the Covenant of love made with Christ. And this is because it was not people who made this Covenant, it was not people who found Christ, but God found people and God created this Covenant with us. What people have created can become obsolete. All the talk about the "Third Testament", about the "Age of the Spirit" and the "Age of Aquarius" does not take into account one biblical circumstance: we live in the "last time". It is the last not in the sense that the end of the world will come not today, tomorrow. Thousands and thousands of years may pass before the end of history, and yet our time is still the last. It is the "last" for two thousand years. The most important thing has already happened. God has already become man, and He does not intend to "disincarnate." Those who are going to surpass the "last time" of Christianity in the "New Age" have in fact descended into the "penultimate" pre-New Testament eras.There is a certain reality in our world, the improvement of which depends, if I may say so, not on God, but on people. This mysterious reality is the Christian religion. God has already done even the most unthinkable for us, people. It was as if He had crossed the threshold of His eternity and entered the stream of time. He, Who created man with His own hand, agreed to endure the slaps in the face at the hands of men. He Who cloths the heavens with clouds (cf. Psalm 146:8) was Himself clothed in the garment of mockery... By His love, He gave us Himself. It is not from God that we should expect new, "improved" Revelations, but from our lives we should demand greater fullness in accordance with the eternal Gospel of Love. As M. Tareev rightly wrote: "Talk about the development or perfection of Christianity is depressingly ridiculous: the Gospel can never be surpassed. The idea of the "Third Testament" conceals, as the idea of endless progress, the denial of any sense of history, the impenetrable meaninglessness of the world process. The Holy Spirit no longer adds anything new to the work of Christ: He only repeats His work in man. Only man can add to Christianity – not in the sense of perfecting Christianity, but in the sense of repeating or resolving the Christian task by man for himself. Christianity is limited, not in the sense that a more perfect religion is possible, but in the sense that it is too lofty to have the last word, which remains with man precisely because he is crowned with glory and honor. Christianity is half of life, true, the absolute half, but still presupposing the other, relative, half, which man combines with Christianity."[19] Thus, there is no need to try to "paste" new pages into the Gospel, there is no need to wait for another "voice" from Heaven, and there is no need to learn a new meditation technique. And you just need to take the half-forgotten Gospel in your hands and open it with the question: "What do You, Lord, want to tell me? May your eternal word tell me what my duty today is, what my faith, my hope and my love should be!" T. 5. P. 452. ^Cit. From: Bogolyubov N. Theism and Pantheism. Nizhny Novgorod, 1899. P. 302. ^ Blavatsky E.P. Secret Doctrine. Riga, 1937. T. 1. P. 102. ^ Blavatsky E.P. Chapters from the "Secret Doctrine" // Bulletin of Theosophy. 1913. № 10. P. 69. ^ In the Synodal translation: Where then will you build a house for Me? ^ Soloviev V.S. Concept of God // Collected Works. St. Petersburg, 1903. T. 7. P. 16. ^ Hildebrand D. von. Teilhard de Chardin: On the Way to a New Religion // Hildebrand D. von. The New Tower of Babel: Selected Philosophical Works. St. Petersburg, 1998. P. 104. ^ Apophatic (negating) is a method of theology that denies the too hasty application of human philosophical, psychological, social, or moralistic categories to God. Apophatic theology emphasizes that God is immeasurably higher than our ideas about Him, it emphasizes that the spiritual experience of the knowledge of God does not fit into too human and therefore understated formulas. It is important to emphasize, however, that apophatics is not agnosticism. An agnostic simply refuses to know God, while a theologian who "works" with the apophatic method works. The agnostic turns away from the sun and says that the very existence of the sun is unprovable and it is absolutely pointless to peer into it. The theologian, seeing the sun, recognized it and to some extent was even burned by it. Of course, each glass darkens, limits the sunshine. But firstly, it would be simply impossible to look at the sun without glass at all. Secondly, it is better to look through darkening glasses at the sun than to live in a dark cave all your life. And thirdly, each new glass (i.e. a human word or formula) still allows us to catch some new shade of the Sun of Truth. And even if it is deliberately unsuitable, this is also a result: we have learned that God cannot be imagined in this way... ^ The famous Greek myth of Athena, born from the head of Zeus, reveals not so much the "impassivity" as the ignorance of the ancient gods. Athena is born from the head of Zeus because Zeus had previously eaten his own wife, the goddess of wisdom Metis, who was already pregnant with Athena, and ate it precisely "so that she might tell him what is evil and what is good" (Hesiod, Theogony, 900). The gods themselves do not know the distinction between good and evil, and must learn it. ^ Unamuno, M. de. About the tragic sense of life among people and nations. The agony of Christianity. Moscow, 1997. Pp. 174 and 180. ^ Kant I. Critique of the ability to judge. P. 492. ^ According to the pantheist Spinoza, the theistic belief that God acts purposefully "destroys the perfection of God; for if God creates for the sake of some end, then He necessarily strives for what He does not have" (Spinoza B. Ethics. Book 1: Addition to Theorem 36 // Selected Works. Moscow, 1957. Vol. 2. P. 397). ^ My book "Christian Philosophy and Pantheism" (Moscow, 1997) is devoted to the comparison of pantheism and Christianity. ^ Twice I have seen the Roerichs stumble over this phrase of mine that "The beauty of the world is not created for man..." (for the first time Natalia Bondarchuk was indignant at it - see: Literaturnaya Gazeta. 1998. 15 July; the second time – Ksenia Myalo in the book "The Star of the Magi, or Christ in the Himalayas" (Moscow, 2000, p.135).Natalia Bondarchuk quotes my phrase and exclaims: "If the great Dostoevsky derived the formula "Beauty will save the world", then Deacon Kuraev refuses us. But perhaps, fortunately for us, it is the deacon himself or his soul that has not yet realized beauty..?" There is a very clear "either-or" here. Either we accept the gospel – or, denying the gospel, we will have to admit that the world is inhuman. It is the anti-evangelical position, i.e. the one with which I obviously cannot agree, that my phrase sets forth (definitely not on behalf of the author), warning the Roerichs that it is into such a soulless and inhuman world that they push themselves, following the dogmas of Theosophy. Let me recall again the words of Madame Blavatsky: "Divine Thought has as little personal interest in them (the Supreme Planetary Spirit-Builders) or in their creations as the Sun has in relation to the sunflower and its seeds." ^ Theosophical is not a derogatory epithet. The Roerichs, who in general were characterized by an amazing insensitivity to the Russian language, used this word (compare: "You, as an old Theosophist..." [Roerich E.I. Letter of V.A. Dukshta-Dukshinskaya of 27.04.1937 // Roerich E.I., Roerich N.K., Aseev A.M. Occultism and Yoga: Chronicle of Cooperation. Moscow, 1996. Vol. 2. P. 303]), not noticing that it sounds rather "name-calling". ^ Letters of Helena Roerich, 1929–1938. P. 439. ^Ibidem. T. 2. P. 12. ^ Madame Blavatsky refuses Christ even this. To her, Jesus is just a man. ^ Tareev M.M. Christian Philosophy. Moscow, 1917. Part 1: New Theology. Pp. 31–32. ^

If Jehovah's Witnesses Are Right

Almost everyone has already met groups of people on the doorstep of their apartment or on the street, distributing The Watchtower magazine along with books such as "You Can Live Forever in Paradise on Earth." These are people from the Jehovah's Witnesses sect. The example of this obsessive sect clearly shows how easy it is, having engaged in a reinterpretation of Christianity, to imperceptibly kill its very soul. They call themselves Christians and recognize the New Testament, but at the same time they deny the Trinity and believe that Christ is a prophet, but not God. I will only try to admit that Christ is simply "a teacher, a prophet, a preacher." But it is not God.Very, very many people who have nothing to do with the sect of Jehovah's Witnesses look at Him with such eyes. I would even say that this is an ordinary and natural point of view. In order to recognize God in Christ, one needs a feat of faith. And in order to see in Him simply a philosophizing Galilean pilgrim – no effort, no special keenness of spiritual gaze is needed; But is it possible to accept the Gospel if one does not accept the divinity of Christ? If you read the Gospel through the eyes of a person who is religious but does not believe in the Trinity, what will be revealed in the pages of the Christian Scriptures? After all, Christianity says: "God is love." And the One Who died on Golgotha, it turns out, is not God at all. What happens? If Christ was not God, then the Heavenly Father whom Jesus begs to pass the cup of suffering past Him turns out to be a strange God. A strange God, Who demands to be called love, but Himself does not accept the supreme service of love, entrusting it to another, Christ.If we follow the Jehovah's Witnesses, if God Himself did not suffer on Golgotha, why and for what should we thank Him at the sight of the crucified Son of Mary? The God of the Old Testament says: "My glory I will not give to another" (Isaiah 48:11). And did He not Himself steal someone else's glory? Did He not appropriate to Himself the human gratitude that we should have offered to the tomb of the Galilean Preacher? To the commander who, out of the safety of his command post, gave permission for a military operation, or to the soldier who, risking his life, snatched me from the hands of terrorists?According to the Scriptures, God proves His love for us by saying that Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). But if Christ is not God, how can the death of another prove God's love? Suppose in our house Ivan, who lives on the third floor, died while rescuing Alexei from the second floor. Does Ivan's sacrificial death prove that Alexander from the fifth floor showed his love for Alexei through it?The Gospel teaches that there is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's neighbors (John 15:13). But the God who gives this commandment Himself, according to Jehovah's Witnesses, acts differently. He does not sacrifice His life for people, but the lives of people themselves: the best of people for the forgiveness of the worst. By the suffering of others, God washes away the sins of others. Looking at the death of Christ, God decides to change His wrath towards people. The blood of Christ is shed – and God no longer sees other iniquities and forgives everything. If Christ is not God, but only a "teacher" or a "prophet", then for God Jesus is just a creature whose blood people must shed for some reason in order to evoke a merciful attitude towards Him before Whose all-seeing eye the Blood of the Sacrificial Lamb was shed. If Christ is not God, then there is no Book in the world that is more offensive to the moral sense. People sinned for a long time and with taste – and God was angry with them. Finally, people did the most vile thing they could do – they killed the only bright Man on earth. And in response to this crime, the Apostles of Christ for some reason declared that God – after the murder of Christ – is no longer angry with people, that our sins are washed away by the Blood of Jesus... For Jehovah's Witnesses, Christ is nothing more than a creature who suffers for the sins of others and is used by the other two parties to sort out their relationship. God is angry with people because they have broken His commandments. But the people of the Old Testament kill – and God is propitiated. It turns out that in the New Testament, in order to change His attitude towards people, God must allow people to kill some incarnate Angel.The God of Jehovah's Witnesses placed the Cross on the shoulders of creation. The God of Christians who believe in the Trinity Himself took the Cross on His own shoulders.If Christ died for us, if Christ showed a love that cannot be greater, and if Christ was not God, then one of the two. Or a Christian, i.e. one who has truly loved Christ, must become an atheist: he reveres Christ, Whose love he has seen and known, but does not want to know anything about God, Who has not shown His own love for people in any way; or should he honor God precisely because He allowed the best of men to be killed... If Christ died for me, why should I love God for this? If Christ is not God, why should we thank God? Christ delivered us from death, and God only gave Him permission to act out of love. It is not the Father that we should thank, but only Christ. And we are saved by creation, not by the Creator. Thus, according to the logic of Jehovah's Witnesses, Christ, by His feat, threatened the very essence of monotheism. He was so impressed upon the memory of men that he eclipsed Jehovah with Himself. It is only natural that Jehovah's name should be forgotten by the saved people. God could not but foresee this. Why did He propose such a method of deliverance of people, which inevitably led people to the worship of a non-God, i.e. to the power of paganism? God was always always concerned that Israel would not over-reverence their heroes and teachers (the tomb of Moses was hidden from the people) and their shrines (the destruction of the brazen serpent). And suddenly - this... If Jehovah's Witnesses are right, then I can congratulate them on a startling discovery: it turns out that one of the very first atheists in the world was... Up. Paul. It was he who once said: "I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and Him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2). If Christ is not God, then Ap. Paul, who said that he did not want to know anything and no one except Christ, thereby declared that he did not want to know God either. Christ eclipsed Heaven with His Cross. In this case, Christ did not reveal the Father, but as it were overshadowed Him.If we do not recognize in Christ the great mystery of piety: God appeared in the flesh (cf. 1 Tim. 3:16), then the apostolic preaching of Christ turns out to be refined atheistic propaganda. After all, the Apostles preach that there is no salvation in anyone else (Acts 4:11). If Christ is not God, but only a "messenger", a "teacher", only a man, if the Son and the Father are not one and the same, then we have before us the preaching of atheism. God will not save and does not save. Salvation is only in the man Jesus. But the Apostles are clearly not atheists. They believe in the Creator. And they understand perfectly well that a man will not give a ransom for his soul (cf. Matt. 16:26). If salvation is in God and salvation is only in Christ, then these two confessions of faith can be reconciled only with the help of the doctrine of the Trinity.And only in one case can we treat the narrative of the New Testament with religious and moral reverence: if in the emaciated face of the Golgotha Sufferer we recognize the One Who once created the entire universe Himself. demands to recognize in the Crucified Christ the Eternal Son, the True God. And the same reproach applies to the "Jehovah's Witnesses" that was made by St. St. Gregory of Nyssa to the Arians, who also denied the Divinity of Christ: "Why do you deprive the Father of gratitude for our salvation, Who has freed people from death by His Power, which is Christ?" [1] St. Gregory of Nyssa. Against Eunomius. 6, 3 // Creations. Moscow, 1863. Part 6. P. 52. ^

Is the Old Testament cruel?