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.

The philosopher, theologian, and pastor is most interested in the ideal, spiritual side of man. And on this side lie all those intractable knots that make up the inner mystery of man. Let's try to outline at least some of the most important ones.

1. Personality. In this sphere, the Christian religion has given the fullest revelation of the unique principle inherent in man, which is different from any other man. The identity was not revealed in the ancient pagan world. Hellenic thought, which rose to the heights of philosophical consciousness, did not even find expression for the individual, which was especially acute during the period of theological disputes that were conducted around the Trinitarian and Christological dogmas. Christianity established the divine origin of the person. The Trinitarian controversy provided a theological foundation for the human face by realizing the Person, the Hypostasis, in the Godhead. The Greek language, in the writings of its higher philosophical minds, Plato and Plotinus, was satisfied with the pronoun ekastos, "each," characterizing it as a member of the ekastos, i.e., thus giving it a strict individuality. Only theology, the concept of "hypostasis" as an independent "being in itself," was able to fill the void in language which in modern vocabulary is replaced by the word "person." It is not only the "individual," as a part of the species, as a product of the biological birth process, as something mortal, as a number of the naturalistic series, not as a whole. quite repeatable. Personality is the imprint of the Divine Person, a creation of God, and not at all the offspring of the race. Personality is spiritual and belongs to the spiritual world first of all. This is the supreme value of spiritual existence.

To all these differences between the individual and the personality, so vividly realized in Berdyaev's philosophy, must be added his remark that "man is not a fractional part of the world, he contains the whole riddle and solution of the world" (On the Purpose of Man, p. The human person is not a product of society, or of the natural world, or even of the clan and family. In a spiritual sense, every human being is a direct creation of God. That is why man does not depend in his origin on the whole, on the race or the world. The human spirit is higher and broader, and most importantly, more primordial than the species, society, and the world. It is not these fellowships that have given birth to the spirit of man, and therefore this spirit is not a part of this race, society, and world. On the contrary, he embraces them, accepts them or rejects them. The genus and society are composed of human individuals, but the spirit of man, his personality, is not an integral part of this genus and society. The human spirit may depend on them as much as it pleases, but it is by no means the property of these social organisms and not their slave. The individual is above society, more primary, more important than it. In addition, no person is unique and cannot be replaced by another "same" person. There is no such thing as the "same" person. There are "the same" impressions, prints, serial numbers, as the products of some machine, but every person, no matter how many billions of them the historical process generates, is the only one. A pastor must know all this, take it into account, and always remember it.

2. Freedom. And in this quality of his, man reflects his divine origin. In man there is a glimpse of divine freedom. Inasmuch as all other beings, being part of species, genera, families, societies, herds, packs, etc., obey, whether they like it or not, the laws of nature by which these groups are constituted and live; A person may want to rebel against these laws of natural existence (e.g., monasticism) or submit to them more or less unquestioningly. It is always given to man, by virtue of his divine origin and the reflection of the divine freedom in him, not to accept this nature and its laws. A person may not go along with society and the tribe, he may oppose himself to it in a way that neither bees, nor ants, nor other animals can do. But in speaking of human freedom, it must first of all be clearly remembered that theology does not speak of the political freedom which the tribunes of the people advocate and which lives in the dreams of the young rebel in the period of his "storm and impulses." Its aim is not social or political independence, but the liberation of the human spirit from all that degrades it and deprives it of its divine foundation. This freedom is not arbitrariness, which the anarchist and rebel dreams of, it is not arbitrariness, but the liberation of one's spirit from that which can humiliate its primacy and replace its primacy from other, non-spiritual values. This freedom is not subject to the power of evil, sin, worldly or other temptations, but it is also freedom from the absolute power of the tribe and society over the religious independence of man. The primacy of freedom is perhaps the most deeply rooted feeling in man, but at the same time it is the most paradoxical.

A) In the first place, man may have no conception of freedom at all, for this concept is a rather complex product of the development of thought, but he cannot be without the consciousness of freedom, because in fact he acts only in the name of this consciousness.

B) In addition, no matter how unconditional the primacy of freedom over everything else in man is (the sense of kin, family, society, etc.), this freedom is given to man by force. A person is not asked at birth whether he wishes to be born a free spirit, or a slave, or a part of a herd, herd, beehive, etc. Our freedom is given to us without our free will. This may be the greatest paradox of freedom.

(B) Freedom, however much all those who dream of it may desire to acquire it as soon as possible, is at the same time such a great burden, because it is always connected with the consciousness of responsibility, that man easily renounces it. Dostoevsky understood this, and the subtle inquisitors of souls, who love to shepherd through the "dictatorship of conscience," which can easily be called eldership, although it has nothing in common with real eldership. And this is what the pastor must know and understand.