The Orthodox, on the other hand, cannot draw a line between the era of the "real Church" and the centuries of "semi-pagan pseudo-Christianity." We cannot limit the time of the action of the Spirit of Christ to the period of the life of the apostles. We do not see a turning point between the apostolic Church and the subsequent one. We also see the gifts of the apostles in the Christians of subsequent generations ("The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control" – Gal. 5:22-23). I saw these gifts in my contemporaries. Will Protestants say that they have not seen them among the Orthodox? Well, this will be a judgment that characterizes only their experience, their world, but not the world of Orthodoxy.

In general, the position of a person who asserts, "I have not seen," "I have not seen," "I have not come across," is always weaker than that of those who say, "But we have been there," and that which we have heard, seen with our eyes, that our hands have examined and touched, we declare to you, that ye also may have fellowship with us. Yes, yes, I am here applying to Protestants the argument that we (both Orthodox and Protestants) so often use in polemics with non-believers. How can a person who does not have, who has not experienced any religious experience at all, judge religion? Will not his judgments be as competent as those of a deaf man about music? Isn't the value of "scientific-atheistic" treatises like the dissertations of a man born blind on the history of painting? Protestants know and use the argument of the traveler to the skeptical homebody: if you, neighbor, have not been to Jerusalem and do not know the way there, this does not mean that Jerusalem really does not exist, that it is impossible to get there, and that all the stories of travelers are nothing more than fiction. So, it is precisely on the basis of religious experience that this argument of the traveler can be readdressed to Protestants: brothers, if you have not made pilgrimages to Orthodox monasteries, if you have not felt a quiet breeze of the spirit in the monastic cells, if your heart has not soared with relief after confession and you have not felt the blood of Christ in your veins after communion, then at least do not rush with your denials. Not everyone had such a sad and fruitless experience of touching Orthodoxy. Otherwise, there would be no Orthodoxy.

And even if we start talking about the sins and illnesses of modern Orthodoxy, it will still not be possible to draw a line between the "sinless church" and the "sinful church." "The whole Church is the Church of the penitents, it is the whole Church of the perishing," said St. John the Baptist in the fourth century. Ephraim the Syrian[162]. The sins familiar to us from ourselves, from our contemporaries, and from the history of the Church, existed both in apostolic times and in apostolic communities (lust for power, disputes, schisms, ambition, lack of understanding of Christ, exaggerated material interest, legalism, and libertinism[163]). Christ says to the Apostolic Churches: "You have forsaken your first love [...] I know thy works; thou hast a name that thou art alive, but thou art dead [...] I do not find that thy works are perfect in the sight of my God [...] thou art neither cold nor hot [...] thou say, "I am rich, I have become rich, and have need of nothing"; but you do not know that you are miserable, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked" (Rev. 2:4; 3:1-2; 3:15-17). And already the apostles had to say to their disciples: "You walked well: who stopped you?" (Gal. 5:7).

For a long time there is a story in monastic books about two monks who went on business to the city and were seduced by prostitutes there. Returning to the monastery, they repented, and for the correction and lamentation of their sins, the council of elders determined that they should spend some time in their cells without any communion, but only in prayer. At the end of this time of penance, both sinners left their cells. One was pale, and his eyes were red with tears. The other is cheerful and without traces of weeping. The brothers asked the first, "What were you doing at that time?" "I cried and asked the Lord to forgive me my sin. Then they asked the second: how did you spend this time? "I rejoiced and thanked God that He forgave me my sin and allowed me to return to the monastic life. The elders consulted and said that both ways were good... These two monks are the two main moods of historical Orthodoxy. We know our sin and do not deny it (although it does not consist in the veneration of icons, as it seems to Protestants). But we also know the goodness of God. "For what then? if some were unfaithful, will their unfaithfulness destroy the faithfulness of God? Nohow. God is faithful, but every man is a liar" (Romans 3:3). When an Orthodox person reads this word of the Apostle, then by "everyone" he understands himself as well. Therefore, I can fully say: "God is faithful, and every Orthodox person is a liar." Would a Pentecostal dare to say, "Every Pentecostal is a liar"? Or have they found a way to use the words "all" and "everyone" while excluding themselves from these "all"?

We know that Christians can sin, and therefore we can peer into the chiaroscuro of history. Orthodoxy accepts history: the gift of Christ has not been extinguished, has not faded. His presence, His action in His people has not diminished with the change of generations. But if the Spirit of God breathes in all ages, if Christ is really with us all the days (with us, and not only with the apostles until the day of their death), then is it possible to evade the study and acceptance of the experience of life in Christ that has been accumulated during these "all days"?

We do not place this experience above the apostolic one. We test the works of the Holy Fathers by the Gospel yardstick. But the Gospel is given in order to be put into practice. And life is so complex and diverse. God cannot be contained in books. A person cannot fit into books. Human situations are complex and innumerable. That is why Orthodoxy says: the Gospel is a measure for us, a rule. But life is not reduced to a collection of rules. Not in the sense that it allows exceptions to the rule, but in the sense that the same advice can be carried out in very different ways by different people in different circumstances.

So what did Orthodoxy accumulate during those centuries when, according to Protestants, Christians did not exist on earth? First of all, knowledge of the depths of the human soul. The difference between Protestant and Orthodox literature is obvious: Protestant literature has a missionary character, it leads people to accept God and to the Gospel. Protestant literature speaks of what happens in a person on the border of faith and unbelief (however, Protestant pamphlets do not reach the depths of Dostoevsky and St. Augustine).

Everyone already knows the structure of Protestant preaching: I was an atheist and I was a sinner, but I believed in Christ and became happy. Here is the chapter "Witnessing to God to Unbelievers" from the "Methodical Bulletin for Sunday School Teachers"[164]: "The process of evangelization will be greatly accelerated if the assistant director of evangelism teaches believers to witness to their faith. One way of witnessing is to tell the story of your conversion to God, which can be built according to the following plan: 1. What kind of life I had when I was an unbeliever. 2. How I realized that I needed Christ. 3. How I believed in Him. 4. What my life has been like since I accepted Christ." There is nothing more in this chapter!

Although it is difficult to talk about someone else's spiritual experience, nevertheless, what a person preaches about, which evokes in him the greatest enthusiasm and sincerity, shows quite clearly a certain hidden structure of his spiritual experience. The fact that Protestant preaching is limited to a single moment of personal conversion is not accidental. It simply shows that there is no other serious spiritual experience. The usual Baptist pamphlet tells you how to quickly go from unbelief to acceptance of the Gospel; Traditional Orthodox preaching addresses believers and speaks of the spiritual warfare that arises in the soul of a person after baptism. The most subtle analysis of spiritual and spiritual states and experiences, experimentally developed by Orthodox ascetics, remains both incomprehensible and unclaimed by Protestants. It is precisely the rejection of the tradition of Christian mysticism, the reduction of religious life by Protestantism to a purely linguistic, pamphlet-preaching practice that prompts the people of the West to seek work for their souls "in a distant country" – in Krishnaism and yoga. It is not surprising that in the religious milieu where the word "asceticism" has become a dirty word, non-Christian ascetic practices began to spread extremely successfully.

In church theology there is such a term as "calling grace." This is the action of God that takes place outside the Church, the touch of God's human heart, which turns this heart to faith. Since the purpose of this energy is to bring to the Church a person who is still outside of it, this is the only kind of grace that acts outside the Church. Of it, St. Theophan the Recluse said that "Grace that calls is universal, no one is excluded"[166]. I think that this grace exists in Protestantism, for "no one can call Jesus Lord, except as the Holy Spirit" (1 Corinthians 12:3).

Preaching about Christ is, of course, wonderful. But still: "My house shall be called a house of prayer" (Matt. 21:13). A house of prayer, not a house of preaching. Orthodox worship is first and foremost a prayerful intercession, and not a missionary event. I recognize the goodness of the faith experience of Protestants. I am only saying that this is only a part of the spiritual experience that can be given to a person beyond the threshold of the church. The relationship between Protestantism and Orthodoxy vividly confirms the idea of G. K. Chesterton that every heretic makes an elementary arithmetical error: he counts the part more than the whole. Of each of the Protestant denominations, it can be said that it is a limitation, an overly straightforward deduction of one of those tonalities that in the Church form an integral symphony. For example, the answer to the question of what is the difference between Baptism and Orthodoxy cannot be formulated in a positive form: "Baptism has this, but Orthodoxy forbids it." The answer will be negative: "Orthodoxy has it, but Baptism does not." There are no icons, no priests, no communion, no confession, no baptism of children, no churches, no Tradition, no fasting, no prayers for the dead... I remember a certain character of Mikhail Bulgakov in such cases saying: "What is this, whatever you can grab, there is nothing!" … Normal church life is built according to a different paradigm: "This should have been done, and it should not be abandoned."

There is no man who can see the whole truth. But where, in the name of partial truth, one militantly does not wish to see something more, inferiority is born, a limitation of the fullness and equilibrium of the breath of Tradition, as a disproportionate increase of the particular position to the dimensions of the universal and exclusive, the arbitrary choice of one thing, a part instead of the whole, i.e., precisely one-sidedness. The numerous Protestant "no's" said before the threshold of Orthodoxy are a limitation, an overly straightforward depiction of one of those tonalities that in the Church form an integral symphony. Many theological schemes were rejected by the Church not on the basis of what was in them, but on the basis of what they did not have, what they lacked in order to be Orthodoxy; as Pascal said, "their mistake is not that they follow a lie, but that they do not follow another truth."

Thus, Orthodox literature, in contrast to Protestant literature, is addressed to a person who has already recognized himself as a Christian. It turns out that it is not enough to become a Christian. It is much more difficult for them to stay: doubts, spiritual emptiness and petrification return[170]. Former unscrupulousness also visits.

Human life is generally "striped". Periods of spiritual and spiritual uplift are followed by a decline. It seems that recently my heart flared up with joy from every page of the Gospel, but now I look at the Gospel text with a coldly professional look. Not long ago I was ready to give anything for the right to enter the church and pray in it, but today I am paid money for it myself... This is where a person's faith is tested. A living prayer pouring from the heart, a prayer by inspiration, gives little to a person and therefore is little valued by God. After all, it is inspired, and, therefore, not from man himself, but from God, and is given. God gave this prayer to man – and what more can we expect from this gift? But to pray when "there is no mood", when everything is gray and boring (both around and in the heart) – this is what it means to push oneself to the Kingdom of Heaven. Faith is not only the moment of conversion from denying God to accepting the gospel; it is also faithfulness – faithfulness, faithful memory to the brightest moments of one's life, those minutes when "the wrinkles on the forehead part, and in heaven I see God." When was I real, the minute I was baptized, or the moment I was recounting church gossip? Faith is a constantly necessary effort that brings me back to the "moment of truth." Therefore, "in the event of accidental cooling, please drag and drag out the established order, in the confidence that this dry performance of deeds will soon return the liveliness and warmth of diligence"[171].