Spiritual literature, the ancient sacred wisdom of the Bible, the dogmas of the Church are built on the principles of symbolism. They are signs that transmit to people the Higher Reality, which has been revealed to them in all its paradox. Sometimes people ask why God is One, and in three persons. Wouldn't it have been easier to say that He was simply One? Probably, logically, it would be so. But the spiritual experience of Christianity was different, and it was necessary to sacrifice rational logic and create an antinomic, paradoxical, or dialectical dogma, whatever you call it. The same applies to the dogma of Christ. Who is he? Person? Yes, the Church, the true Man, answers. Does He mean that He is not God? No, says the Church, He is the true God, the true God. A paradox, a contradiction? Would it be easier to remove one of the statements so that everything fits logically? But no. In fact, the Higher Reality was revealed as a superlogical secret. And there was nothing left to do but to accept it in a paradoxical form, as it was revealed.

Comprehending the laws of the universe, man gradually came to the conclusion that nature in its depths is also built on paradoxes. Let's take a textbook example.

Henri Bergson said that our elementary logic is the logic of solids, that is, of some simple relations. Meanwhile, physics already knows so many paradoxes that our rational thinking seems to stop before them. We know that there are other systems of mathematics. For simple rational logic, parallel lines will never converge, but for non-Euclidean geometry they do; For logic, a thing is either continuous or discontinuous—for physics, particles are also continuous waves.

In other words, human thinking cannot encompass the whole of reality. Therefore, physicists have created the so-called complementarity principle. This is a very important scientific principle. It fully applies to dogmatics, moreover, the principle of complementarity was used in the dogmas of the Church long before Niels Bohr and others who put forward this principle in science. It consists in the fact that significant and fundamental phenomena of reality can only be described in contradictory terms; It is impossible to find an integral description connecting them in principle—it does not exist.

Father Pavel Florensky, one of the outstanding Christian thinkers of the 20th century, said that the whole truth, falling from heaven, seems to be broken into separate parts, and we see it in such a split state. Hegel noted that the Nicene-Constantinople Creed is not presented in a speculative form, that is, it is not a philosophical or theological system, it is a chain of images. I would say, artistic, capacious images that hint at the reality that stands behind these words.

The first word that is pronounced by the reader of the Symbol of Faith is "I believe." Often this word is used in a negative context, for example, "blind faith". We strongly oppose such a definition. On the contrary, faith is not blind, but clairvoyant. Each cognition requires a certain approach. As the Russian philosopher Ivan Ilyin, one of the greatest metaphysicians of the 20th century, said, it is necessary to carry out the "right act" (he had such an expression). He said that if a person wants to see a painting, he must have eyes – a blind or blindfolded person will not see the painting. If you want to listen to a Beethoven symphony, you need to have ears and ears. If you want to know any thing, the smallest object, you need a microscope and other devices; for distant objects, radio and other telescopes. In order to comprehend the highest reality, the spiritual reality, our own spirit serves as an instrument. And when people say that they need to "touch God with their hands – where He is, show me!" – there is a certain misunderstanding here: after all, the most important things in the world cannot be touched. Show me a person who has ever felt conscience, love, inspiration, wisdom. That which makes man human, that which is the main feature of our human existence, is based on things that cannot be touched.

From a certain time in history, about 300 to 400 years ago, there has been a growing temptation among mankind to attach the greatest importance to things that can be touched, measured, and weighed. No one objects – these things exist, and it is necessary for a person to study them, and use them, and create them. But when there was an infatuation with them, when there was nothing left but the sensual world, man stepped on the wrong path of development. Because it differs from the animal world in that it is possible to develop supersensible powers and faculties. Knowledge, love, freedom are all supersensible things, super-temporal. I emphasize that they are potentially embedded in a person as capable of becoming super-temporal. But we are facing a great temptation. Man set himself the task of having as much food, clothing, and good material conditions for his personal life as possible. Is it good? In principle, yes, but only if the human in him also develops. For having as much shelter, clothing, and so on as possible is not human, it is common with all living beings. And the bird must have a nest, and the animals must have a burrow, and the antelope must have a place where it will graze, and each bird has its own hunting region where it can feed. This is a general biological regularity, a struggle for existence. Of course, plants, animals, and humans have it.

But man became a man when a special principle appeared in him, which rises above all this. If we take the best – I emphasize, the best representatives of humanity: great sages, saints, poets, artists, heroes – we will immediately see that for the sake of their inner world, for the sake of their principles, ideas, convictions, they often went against the needs of the body. They could stay awake at night, go without food for a long time, sacrifice comfort, family, comfort, even life. And when a person aspired only to material things, he began to stifle these higher needs in himself.

And two models emerged. One model is real acquisitiveness. Real acquisitiveness means that a person is entirely focused on material benefits. This disease still exists all over the world. How does it end? A catastrophe, a special catastrophe, because here man deceives his nature and, satiated, begins to rage. That's where suicide, drug addiction, and so on come from in highly developed countries.

The second model is utopia, when material well-being is not given, but endlessly promised. And that is why people strive for it for decades, through all kinds of sacrifices, as to some unattainable goal, and in the end they do not achieve either spiritual or material. All this, too, ends in a deep moral, social, and economic crisis.

Only harmony between the spiritual, physical and mental in a person can ensure normal, harmonious development.

Faith is the core in which a person finds the unity of his own "I". Therefore, potentially, every person, even a militant atheist, is a believer in his subconscious. There are no non-believers, because the human spirit is programmed to unconsciously strive for the Higher Principle. The history of the twentieth century has proved this to us with extraordinary clarity. It is not for nothing that Mao Zedong told one of the journalists before his death that he understood the meaning of the mystery of God only when thinking about his own cult. He understood that a person who is devoid of the concept of God will eventually deify anything. And this turned out to be quite obvious.

In all countries where the concept of the Divine principle was tried in one way or another, it was immediately replaced by something else, much more vulgar, much more insignificant; An idol was created, the role of which turned out to be either abstract social ghosts or political figures, more than half of whom were scoundrels – always, in all ages.

Thus, faith is man's unconscious striving for the higher meaning of existence, its acceptance. Moreover, faith is a state of the human spirit, which is achieved by this unconscious perception of the meaning of existence. If there is a meaning, it is worth living. When the meaning is completely destroyed, it is as if a person loses the core of life and dies alive. There is a conscious faith – such is the Christian faith. It is aware of what a person strives for and why. It is she who tells us about the one God the Father, the Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth.