People can be given simple negative commandments, very important ones: do not kill, do not steal, do not commit adultery, etc., and a person will know, even if he violates this commandment, that this is the commandment. But here's the question: knowing that some behavior is good and its opposite is bad, how do you avoid being satisfied with yourself by practicing good behavior, and contempt and unfriendliness toward another when the other behaves badly (or just not like me)? It is difficult to fulfill the commandments and definitions, the moral and ritual requirements of the same Judaism, the same Islam. Let's not lie, it's easy, it's very difficult. The righteous who fulfill their religious duty to the end are, of course, very few in each of these religions. But one can imagine a person who, in the system of Judaism or in the system of Islam, would fulfill EVERYTHING that religion requires of him, and would honestly know that everything is in order. A Christian is not threatened by such a prospect. He cannot accomplish EVERYTHING.

A few words about doctrinal disputes. This is a necessary and meaningful thing for Christianity. I wonder when doctrinal neglect increases. I am not talking about the phenomena of simple indifference and the erosion of faith, but even where faith is strong, doctrinal inaccuracy usually arises precisely when too much importance is attached to ritualism. One can see (sometimes unexpectedly) careless doctrinal formulations in the minds of very respectable people: teachers of the early Old Believers. And this is understandable: the Old Believers found themselves in the position of Jews: again a sacred people, whose faith is the faith of their ancestors, and their identity is expressed in the fact that they preserve rituals. Under such prerequisites, the doctrinal tension instantly subsides, and in the writings of a remarkable man, Archpriest Avvakum, one can find such striking expressions about the Holy Trinity: "Inseparable (i.e., Indivisible) — flog!"

But for full-fledged Christianity, for Christian Christianity, doctrine is very important. This does not exclude the fact that in disputes, in clashes, in conflicts, a certain madness arises. Even in the most ancient times, Gregory of Nyssa, condemned by the Fathers of the Church, at the end of the fourth century very vividly describes that life in the world has ceased to exist: you come to a bakery to ask for bread, and a dogmatic formulation is heaped upon you and asks whether you believe this way or not; When you come to the bathhouse, the bathhouse attendant does the same.

It can also be said that the perception of Greek philosophy was an acquisition for which one had to pay. Be that as it may, without the apparatus of Greek philosophy, the strict formulations of Christian doctrine would have been impossible. It was Greek philosophy that gave first of all the simplest forms of definition, built on the type "a" is "b". In the New Testament there is only one definition, in the Epistle to the Hebrews (11:1). This is the definition of faith. Faith is the "rebuke of those who are hoped" – in Slavonic, as if the reality (hypostasis – in Greek) of what we hope for. This is the definition. But in the Gospels we do not encounter definitions, we encounter metaphors and parables again and again. "The Kingdom of God is like"... to this and that. And when the Apostle Paul in the 13th chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians speaks of love, he says WHAT LOVE DOES, he does not say that there IS love. But when we take any medieval treatise – not only on moral theology, but even on mystical theology, and not only Western, but also Orthodox – there we find definitions of WHAT IS LOVE.

The price that had to be paid was a certain substitution of the philosophical-idealistic, Platonic substitution of eschatology and the biblical understanding of existence in general. The division into spiritual (in the Platonic sense immaterial) and material is perhaps very important for Christianity, but it is not a biblical division. In the Bible there is no concept of the immaterial in the Platonic sense, in the Bible there is the concept of the Holy Spirit as a power of sanctification, and, in the end, the ontology of the Bible, perhaps most preserved by Syrian theologians, emphasizes the gulf between the holy and the unholy, between that which, although material, is permeated by the Holy Spirit, and everything else. But European Christianity accepted Plato's dichotomy of the material and the immaterial, and accepted it very deeply; We encounter the word "immaterial" itself in Slavonic translations of such texts as, for example, church hymns.

The significance that the dogma of the immortality of the soul acquires in the European tradition is interesting. Of course, Christianity presupposes the doctrine of the immortality of the soul; I do not intend to deny this in any way, but, for example, the Creed does not say, "I believe in the immortality of the soul," but says "I hope for the resurrection of the dead." And another ancient creed speaks of the resurrection of the flesh, resurrectio carnis: this is the so-called Apostolic Creed, accepted in the Western tradition since ancient times, since the time of the undivided Church, but unknown in the East. The resurrection of the flesh, the resurrection of the dead, the day of judgment — this is biblical eschatology. But when already in modern times a list of four truths was spread in Europe, which every Christian must know (this list was developed in the Catholic world, but found spread in all religious spheres, including Orthodoxy), then this list no longer included the resurrection of the dead, but the immortality of the soul. It can be said that there are a number of points that in no way contradict the Bible, but give different emphasis. Heaven as the place of God's glory is mentioned, of course, in many biblical texts, but at some point there was a convergence of this biblical heaven as a place of glory, a place of royal epiphany ("The Lord reigned"...) of a personal God, with the empyrean, that is, the fiery sphere – the outermost, farthest from the earth, the highest sphere of the so-called Ptolemaic image of the world, which, in fact, is based on Aristotle. As for the word "heaven," there is the use of this word in the Bible as a chaste synonym for the word "God" (which in itself is not alien to European usage: "May heaven reward him," or something like that).

At the end of the Old Testament period and in the time of Christ, the Jewish milieu was especially characterized by a pious fear of saying the word "God" once again, therefore, in particular, instead of "the Kingdom of God" they preferred to say "the Kingdom of Heaven", in our traditional translation – "the Kingdom of Heaven". The Kingdom of God is a concept inherent in mystical historicism, it is a state of all things that comes in time, though not for time, but for eternity, in which not only all false, tyrannical, usurper power in the world is abolished – for example, the power of pagan princes (which was very important for the Jewish consciousness), but also in general – the power of evil people and the power of evil passions within man himself; and the power of all usurpers will be replaced by the power of the only true King, the power of God. This kingdom of God must come in an eschatological perspective in a future zone ("age"), in a future world state, but it is already coming.

In the Gospel there are words of Christ, the translation of which is not entirely clear, for they can be translated in two ways. The traditional translation, the possibility of which is beyond any doubt, is "The Kingdom of God is within you." This means: in the soul, in the heart of a righteous person, where evil passions have ceased to reign and only God reigns, only His royal power is recognized. But the words of Christ can mean something slightly different, said to the disciples: "The kingdom of God is among you" (that is, in your interpersonal relationships, as it is said elsewhere in the Gospel: "Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there I am in the midst of them"). But no matter how it is understood, in both cases it is a breakthrough of the Kingdom of God, the kingdom of truth, grace, true authorities instead of false ones; A breakthrough that comes in time.

The preaching of John the Baptist and the preaching of Christ Himself, according to the Gospel of Mark, begins with the words: "This kingdom of God is at hand, which is coming in time." You will notice that the most Jewish, the most Palestinian of the Gospels, the Gospel of Matthew, speaks of the "kingdom of heaven," literally, "the kingdom of heaven," according to the way the devout Jews of Palestine used to speak; while in the other Gospels, written for people who are not necessarily familiar with this pious usage, the phrase is deciphered, and it says, "the kingdom of God." But in the system of concepts conditioned by the influence of Platonism and the influence of the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic model of the cosmos, etc., the "kingdom of heaven" began to be understood as "heaven" — in the meaning of those empyreans where the souls of good people were still placed by pagans. In this sense, an important role was played by Cicero's "Scipio's Dream", which speaks precisely about where the souls of great and just people go: exactly there – to the highest, fastest, most fiery sky. This is not in any contradiction, I repeat, with anything biblical; but nevertheless such "heavens" are no longer synonymous with God acting in history, but a certain part of sacred cosmology; not an event semantically connected with the resurrection of the dead in the flesh, but a place for the souls of the bodiless and immortal, who may not really need to be resurrected in the flesh. This is an important reorientation that weakened and neutralized some biblical accents inherent in the core of Christian doctrine in their traditional European perception (not at the level of theologians, but at the level of dissolution of the doctrine in culture, in everyday consciousness).

Важный вопрос: правы или не правы те скептические историки, которые предлагают отказаться от концепции единого, тождественного себе христианства, пребывающего в течение двух тысячелетий изменяющегося именно на основе своей идентичности; живущего и постольку меняющегося, но живущего именно как идентичная себе сущность. Скептический, позитивистский, эмпирический взгляд тяготеет к тому, чтобы раздробить явление христианства на совершенно различные исторически осязаемые феномены христианства такой–то эпохи, такой–то культуры, в таком–то месте. Поскольку каждая эпоха христианства имеет свои идеи, предполагается, что преемственность остается разве что в словах, в которые, в конце концов, разные поколения могут влагать разный смысл. Что я могу против этого возразить? Возразить не как верующий человек (которым я являюсь, но это решает вопрос только для меня), но как человек, размышляющий об истории? Мне кажется очень важным доказательством противоположного именно то обстоятельство, что целый ряд необходимых смысловых компонентов христианского учения долго не находит достаточного воплощения в культуре, в жизни, дожидаясь своего времени (иногда много веков), что некоторые важные для христианства понятия долго и мучительно не воплощались в слова, уже существуя. Да и из самого затруднения, самой угловатости и искусственности некоторых вероучительных формулировок мы ощущаем эту драматическую ситуацию нетождества между верой как таковой, учением как таковым — и тем арсеналом и аппаратом культуры, который находится в этот момент в ее распоряжении.

Скажем, для христианства очень важно понятие «личности». Понятие личности является одним из центральных понятий нашей культуры только потому, что наша культура хотя бы была христианской. Но христианство застало такое положение, когда термина «личность» не было в греческой философии. Греческая культура, которая дала поразительно много, не знала, по–видимому, понятия личности в нашем смысле и в нем не нуждалась. Греческое слово prosopon, которое обозначает «лицо», означало «маску», и это было очень важное значение. Если наш язык различает лик, лицо, личину, то греческий язык этого не различает, и поэтому, когда христианскому богословию в самом начале понадобилось сформулировать учение о трех лицах в нераздельной Троице и о едином лице Христа при двух его естествах — божественном и человеческом — то в обоих случаях слово prosopon не годилось. Оно было очень отягощено коннотациями, связанными именно с его значением как «маски»; а что касается лица как некоего средоточия и источника личного бытия индивида — таких коннотаций у слова prosopon попросту не было.

Несколько лучше обстояло дело в латинском языке: римляне много занимались работой над своей юридической системой, над «римским правом», а построить правовую систему римского типа без понятия «юридического лица» невозможно. А потому, хотя латинское persona тоже могло означать «маску», оказалось, что persona может, как это на церковном языке говорится, «никого не вводя в соблазн», никого не смущая, не возмущая и не побуждая к каким–то чересчур «юридическим мыслям», — быть применяемо к лицам Пресвятой Троицы, к единому Лицу Христа — в то время как в греческом обиходе это было невозможно. А все–таки богословствовали гораздо больше по–гречески, чем по–латыни, и пришлось искусственно наделить особым смыслом старый философский термин «ипостась» (hypostasis), который сам по себе не нес значения личности; у авторов дохристианских hypostasis означает всего–навсего окачествованное, конкретизированное бытие, в отличие от абстрактно всеобщего. Но нужда в термине для личности, для лица была настолько острой, что язык пришлось сломать, пришлось наделить слово «ипостась», hypostasis, смыслом, которого попросту не было в нем, искусственно договориться, что слово будет иметь такой смысл.

Когда я говорю о таких моментах христианства, которые реализовывались в культуре много времени спустя после того, как они были заявлены в вере, — на что еще я могу сослаться?

Хотя бы вот такая вещь, как христианское чувство семьи. В Евангелии мы встречаем рассказ о том, как Христос благословил брак в Кане Галилейской, как Он благословил детей, как Он говорил о детях такими словами, какими никто никогда не говорил о них. Но по ряду обстоятельств, средневековое христианство приобрело специфически монашеский характер. Жизнь мирян, в особенности крестьян, очень долго оставалась недостаточно проникнутой христианскими началами. Приходилось как бы заново обращать, заново делать христианами. Это были люди крещеные и ходившие в церковь; впрочем, очень редко исповедовавшиеся и причащавшиеся. В Средние века понятия на этот счет были довольно несообразными во всем мире, также и на Руси было довольно часто, что мирянин вообще исповедовался только на смертном одре.