It must be admitted at once that this term in theological literature is confusing and often ambiguous. Peace, in addition to its direct meaning, is also used in theology as a well-known ascetic term. It is to this second meaning of the word "world" as a spiritual and moral category that we shall turn in the first place, in order to speak later about the world in its direct sense.

Asceticism understands the word "world" as a certain state of our soul. It is not something outside the person, but in the person himself. This is what the Holy Scriptures and all patriotic literature teach us. The attitude of the Christian mind is especially pronounced in the writings of the Ev. St. John: "The world lies in evil" (1 John 5:19). The world does not know God (John 1:10; 17:25). The Apostle Paul adds that the world has not known God in its wisdom (1 Cor. 1:21). Moreover, the world hates God and Christ (John 7:7; 15:18-19). Hence the clear conclusion: it is impossible to love the world and God (1 John 2:15). Therefore, the pessimistic view of this world is understandable: "The world passeth away, and the lust thereof, but he that doeth the will of God endureth for ever" (1 John 2:17). The Old Testament words come to mind: "vanity of vanities" and "all kinds of vanity" (Eccl. 1:1). Everything passes, everything is perishable, all the aspirations of the sons of men are nothing but vanity...

If we turn to patriotic testimonies, then the "world" in their view is the totality of forces and aspirations hostile to God and goodness around man. The world lies all in evil, it is all poisoned and infected with sin. One should not jump to conclusions. Only the shell of this world is sinful. Evil is seen not in the essence of the world and its nature, but in what surrounds and envelops it. The world is not evil in itself, but it lies in evil.

Here are a few excerpts from the Holy Fathers, and the most severe ones, which, it would seem, should be more irreconcilable with created nature. Prep. St. Isaac the Syrian writes: "Peace is a collective name that includes the enumerated passions. The world is the life of the flesh and the wisdom of the flesh" (Homily 2 and 85). Abba Isaiah of Nitria teaches: "The world is the expanse of sin, the arena of unnaturalness; it is the fulfillment of one's carnal desires; It is the thought that you will always be in this age. Peace is taking care of one's body more than taking care of one's soul. Peace is about what you leave behind." (Philokalia, vol. 1, p. 372). St. St. Mark the Ascetic adds to this: "Because of the passions, we have received the commandment not to love the world, nor the things of the world. But not in such a sense as to recklessly hate the creatures of God, but to cut off from oneself the occasion for these passions" (ibid., p. 529). Theoliptus of Philadelphia put it this way: "By peace I call the love of sensible things and of the flesh" (Dobr. 5:176).

From what has been said, it is clear that "world" in the language of Orthodox asceticism does not mean nature, not the empirical world, not God's creations, but a certain category of negative spirituality. The creature itself is not suspected. There are many stories about the love of ascetics for creatures, for nature, for animals. Orthodox asceticism is characterized by a joyful acceptance of the creature with love and great reverence.

This reverence for and acceptance of the created world makes a significant correction in the use of words. "The world" means not only the totality of passions and the arena of sin, but first of all the creation of God, and it must be remembered that this creation is "very good." The created world is a reflection of another uncreated plane, according to which the Creator created this cosmos that surrounds us. The richest Greek language was content with the same term "cosmos" to denote both "peace" and "beauty." This divine structure of the world, the reflection in it of a reality other than empirical, provides the richest material for the so-called "symbolic realism" of the Holy Fathers, and hence abundant means for deepening into oneself and into the contemplation of this world. Only a creature of divine origin is capable of being sanctified and transfigured. If the world were evil in itself, it would mean that it is the creation of an evil inclination. But evil, as St. Maximus the Confessor teaches, "is not in the nature of creatures, but in the irrational and sinful use of them."

It is necessary to draw from Orthodox dogmatics quite full-blooded and sober conclusions. It is necessary to stop taking under suspicion that which God has not taken under suspicion, that which God has not abhorred. It is impossible to dogmatically confess the Chalcedonian Creed about the perception of human nature by God and at the same time to be a Manichaean, a Bogomil or a Skopets in life and in one's worldview. Christianity defeated the Monophysites dogmatically, but, in the correct words of a Western historian, it did not overcome the well-known "psychological Monophysitism." This abhorrence of man and the world as a creature of God very subtly and firmly envelops asceticism, liturgics, everyday life and ethics of the Christian. First of all, the pastor must understand this and oppose it in every possible way. It is necessary always to bear in mind the decrees of the Council of The Hague, which condemn immoderate asceticism and pseudo-pious Puritanism, which have no place even in a sober Orthodox worldview. This should be the cosmological basis for pastoral care.

A few beautiful thoughts of contemporary writers and clergymen can explain what has been said. Thus, for example, the French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain (Humanisme integral, pp. 113-118) wittily distinguishes three major heresies in the history of thought in the view of the world. 1. "Satanocratic," which believes that the world is all evil in itself, that it is doomed, that it is not subject to the transforming light of Christianity. 2. The "theocratic" heresy, which holds that the world can become the Kingdom of God, that the latter can be realized within the limits of this historical epoch. This is the temptation of Byzantium, and to a large extent it is also the temptation of the papacy.) 3. "Anthropocentric humanism" of the philosophy of Auguste Comte. This is already the opposite picture, since here is the "laization" of the Kingdom of God. The world is, and should be, only the domain of man. God must be expelled from him. This, in other words, is the utopia of pure humanism.

In confirmation of what has been said above, and of the different approaches to "the world" and the danger, it is easy to condemn "the world and what is in it," it is appropriate to quote here an excerpt from the travel diary of a pilgrim of the Holy Mountain of Athos in the middle of the last century (Archimandrite Antonina Kapustin). "There is something logically unclear in the habitual complaint of the monks against the world. For the monasteries of the Holy Mountain, for example, the world begins beyond the isthmus; For the Keliots, the monastery is already a world; For a hermit, a cell is peace; For the recluse, the world is all that is beyond the wall of his cave. What, then, is the world? The world is a human society. But human society is man himself. Where can I get away from myself?"

One of the best Russian women, Abbess Ekaterina (gr. Efimovskaya), the founder and abbess of the Lesna (in the Kholm region) monastery, who appreciated and loved literature, life and people, liked to repeat: "One must not only save oneself from the world, but also save this world."

In clarifying the ideological foundations of pastoral care, it is necessary to answer the second of these questions. The priest-pastor must also know what his attitude towards the person will be.

In these apologetic presuppositions of pastoral care, the pastorologist expects, as in the first question, many difficulties. Here it is much more dangerous than in the first case to succumb to the temptation of simplifying the problem and solving it optimistically and primitively.

Anthropology is the science of man; In philosophical systems, it acquires a somewhat biological flavor, since science approaches man primarily from a naturalistic point of view, considering him as a collection of cells, tissues, nerves, and as a complex tangle of various physiological processes. "Science, in the words of Nesmelov, can only regard man as a prey for grave worms." For the philosopher and theologian, therefore, it is appropriate to raise the question not of science, but of the riddle of man. Man is most likely a mysterious hieroglyph that requires in each individual case a careful, thoughtful, and benevolent solution. The Delphic expression "know thyself" has eternal meaning and application. It is often impossible to justify it logically and rationally. It is very easy to get entangled in the antinomies of a human being, and it is dangerous and naïve to pronounce a hasty judgment on certain actions of a person.

Man belongs to two worlds and two planes of existence: the spiritual and the physical. It is not only a simple thing of the physical world, to which it belongs by the body and by the whole complex system of physiological processes of which we have spoken. In his spirit and personality he denies this world, does not submit to the binding and coercive nature of its inexorable laws. He is suffocated in the narrow confines of determinism, he breaks free from them. He protests against these laws of nature with his freedom, his personality, his thirst for his creativity. Man is a contradiction between the present content of life and its ideal use. In the consciousness of this contradiction lies the riddle of man. The goal that every person sets for himself in life cannot be achieved easily and optimistically. The attainment of this goal in a world of natural necessity confronts the inevitability of admitting the impossibility of achieving this goal.