The vision of Sophia is a vision of the beauty of the Divine cosmos, of the transfigured world. If Sophia is Aphrodite, then Aphrodite is heavenly, and not vulgar. Solovyov's teaching about Sophia – the Eternal Feminine and the poems dedicated to her had a huge influence on the symbolist poets of the early 20th century, Alexander Blok and Andrei Bely, who believed in Sophia and had little faith in Christ, which was a huge difference from Vl. Solovyov. In the West, the brilliant doctrine of Sophia was in the possession of Jacob Boehme, but it was of a somewhat different character than that of Vl. Solovyov and Russian sophiologists[68]. J. Böhme's teaching about Sophia is a teaching about eternal virginity, and not about eternal femininity. Sophia is virginity, the wholeness of man, the androgynous image of man. The fall of man was the loss of his Virgin Sophia. After the fall, Sophia flies to heaven, and Eve appears on earth. A person yearns for his Virgin-Sophia, for wholeness. Sex is a sign of duality and fallenness. It is possible to discover the kinship of Behmew's teaching about Sophia with Plato (the doctrine of androgyne) and with the Kabbalah. Sophiology in Böhme has mainly an anthropological character, in Vl. Solovyov is mainly cosmological. Bömöv's teaching is purer than Solovyov's, which allows turbidity in the moods of Sophia. In Vl. Solovyov was undoubtedly a cosmic seduction. But there was a great truth in his expectation of the beauty of the transfigured cosmos. And in this he goes beyond the boundaries of historical Christianity, like all the original currents of Russian religious thought. Article Vl. Solovyov's "The Meaning of Love" is the most remarkable of all that he wrote, it is even the only original word said about love-eros in the history of Christian thought. But in it one can find a contradiction with the teaching about Sophia, the teaching about love is higher than the teaching about Sophia. Vl. Solovyov is the first Christian thinker who truly recognized the personal, and not the generic, meaning of love between a man and a woman. The traditional Christian consciousness did not recognize the meaning of love and did not even notice it, for it there was only a justification for the union of a man and a woman for procreation, i.e. a generic justification. What Bl. Augustine, resembles a treatise on cattle breeding. But this is the prevailing ecclesiastical point of view. Vl. Solovyov establishes the opposition between the perfection of personality and procreation. This is a biological truth. The metaphysical truth is that there is an opposition between the prospect of personal immortality and the prospect of the succession of newly born generations. The personality disintegrates, as it were, in procreation, the impersonal race triumphs over the personality. Vl. Solovyov combines mystical eroticism with asceticism. In the brilliant insights of "The Meaning of Love" an anthropological problem is posed. It has less of that synthesizing conciliatory attitude which often irritates in Solovyov, which irritates most of all in his Justification of the Good, a system of moral philosophy, in which he thinks radically. His only predecessor in this field can only be recognized as Fr. Baader, but his point of view is still somewhat different.

At one time, Vl. Solovyov was little appreciated and misunderstood. His idea of theocracy, i.e., the weakest thing in it, was appreciated; His liberal journalism was more widely recognized. Later, he had a huge influence on the spiritual renaissance of the early 20th century, when a spiritual crisis occurred in part of the Russian intelligentsia. How to evaluate the case of Vl. Solovyov? His manner of philosophizing belongs to the past, it is more outdated than the philosophy of Hegel, which in our time is carried away in a new way. His construction of a universal theocracy with the threefold ministry of king, high priest and prophet has been destroyed by him himself and can least of all be restrained. Also, the method of uniting the churches he proposes, addressed to church governments, seems naïve and inconsistent with modern sentiments when more importance is attached to types of spirituality and mysticism. And yet the meaning of Vl. Solovyov is very large. First of all, his assertion of the prophetic side of Christianity is of great importance in Solovyov's case, and in this it is most of all included in the Russian idea. His prophetism has no necessary connection with his theocratic scheme and even overturns it. Solovyov believed in the possibility of novelty in Christianity, he was imbued with the messianic idea turned to the future, and in this he is closest to us. The Russian currents of religious thought, the Russian religious searches of the early 20th century will continue the prophetic service of Vl. Solovyov. He was an enemy of any Monophysite deviation in the understanding of Christianity, he affirmed the activity of man in the Christian divine-human cause, he introduced into Christianity the truth of humanism and humanitarianism. The question of Catholicism by Vl. Solovyov is usually misrepresented by both his Catholic supporters and his Orthodox opponents. He never converted to Catholicism, it would have been too simple and would not have corresponded to the significance of the theme he posed. He wanted to be both Catholic and Orthodox, he wanted to belong to the Universal Church, in which there would be a fullness that neither Catholicism nor Orthodoxy has, taken in their isolation and self-assertion, he admitted the possibility of intercommunion. This means that Vl. Solovyov was super-confessional, believing in the possibility of a new era in the history of Christianity. Catholic sympathies and deviations, especially expressed when he wrote the book "Russia and the Universal Church", were an expression of the universalism of Vl. Solovyov. But he never broke with Orthodoxy and before his death he confessed and communed with an Orthodox priest. In The Tale of the Antichrist, the Orthodox Elder John is the first to recognize the Antichrist, and this affirms the mystical calling of Orthodoxy. Vl. Solovyov, like Dostoevsky, went beyond the boundaries of historical Christianity, and therein lies its religious significance. His eschatological moods towards the end of his life will be discussed in the next chapter. He was disappointed in the optimism of his theocratic and theosophical schemes, saw the power of evil in history. But this was only a moment of his inner destiny, he belonged to the type of messianic religious thinkers, akin to the Polish messianist Czeszkowski. It must also be said that the struggle which Vl. Solovyov's approach to nationalism, which triumphed in the 1980s, may outwardly seem outdated, but it remains alive for our time. This is his great merit. Just like the struggle for freedom of conscience, thought, speech. Already in the XX century, from the rich, diverse, often contradictory thought of Vl. Solovyov followed different trends - the religious philosophy of S. Bulgakov and kn. E. Trubetskoy, the philosophy of all-unity by S. Frank, the symbolism of A. Blok, A. Bely, Vyach. Ivanova; The problems of the beginning of the century are very much connected with it, although, in the narrow sense, we may not have had Solovyovism.

3

But the main figures in Russian religious thought and religious searches of the 20th century are not philosophers, but novelists – Dostoevsky and L. Tolstoy. Dostoevsky is the greatest Russian metaphysician, or rather, an anthropologist. He made great discoveries about man, and from him begins a new era in the inner history of man. After him, a person is no longer the same as before him. Only Nietzsche and Kirchegard can share with Dostoevsky the glory of the initiators of this new era. This new anthropology teaches about man as a contradictory and tragic creature, extremely dysfunctional, not only suffering, but also loving suffering. Dostoevsky is more of a pneumatologist than a psychologist, he poses problems of the spirit, and his novels are written about the problems of the spirit. It depicts a man going through a bifurcation. He has people of double thoughts. In Dostoevsky's human world, polarity is revealed in the very depths of being, the polarity of beauty itself. Dostoevsky becomes interested in man when the inner revolution of the spirit begins. And he depicts the existential dialectic of human bifurcation. Suffering is not only deeply inherent in man, but it is the only cause of the emergence of consciousness. Suffering atones for evil. Freedom, which is a sign of the highest dignity of man, his likeness to God, passes into self-will. Self-will gives rise to evil. Evil is a sign of the inner depth of man. Dostoevsky discovers the underground and the underground man, the depths of the subconscious. From this depth, man exclaims that he wants to live "according to his foolish will" and that "twice two is four" is the beginning of death. The main theme of Dostoevsky is the theme of freedom, a metaphysical theme that has never been so profoundly posed. Suffering is also associated with freedom. Giving up freedom would alleviate suffering. There is a contradiction between freedom and happiness. Dostoevsky sees the dualism of evil freedom and coercive good. This theme of freedom is the main theme of The Legend of the Grand Inquisitor, the pinnacle of Dostoevsky's work. Acceptance of freedom means faith in man, faith in the spirit. The rejection of freedom is a lack of faith in man. The denial of freedom is the spirit of the Antichrist. The mystery of the Crucifixion is the mystery of freedom. The crucified God is freely chosen as the object of love. Christ does not force in His image. If the Son of God had become king and organized an earthly kingdom, then freedom would have been taken away from man. The Grand Inquisitor says to Christ: "Thou hast desired the free love of man." But freedom is aristocratic, it is an unbearable burden for a million million million people. Having placed the burden of freedom on people, "You acted as if you did not love them at all." The Grand Inquisitor accepts the three temptations rejected by Christ in the wilderness, denies the freedom of the spirit, and wants to make millions of millions of babies happy. Millions will be happy to give up their identity and freedom. The Grand Inquisitor wants to make an anthill, a paradise without freedom. The "Euclidean mind" does not understand the mystery of freedom, it is rationally incomprehensible. Evil and suffering could be avoided, but at the cost of renouncing freedom. The evil engendered by freedom, as self-will, must be burned, but it is a passage through a tempting experience. Dostoevsky reveals the depth of crime and the depth of conscience. Ivan Karamazov declares a rebellion, does not accept the peace of God and returns the ticket to God to enter world harmony. But this is only the path of man. Dostoevsky's entire worldview was connected with the idea of personal immortality. Without faith in immortality, not a single question can be resolved. And if there were no immortality, then the Grand Inquisitor would be right. In Legend, Dostoevsky had in mind, of course, not only Catholicism, not only any religion of authority, but also the religion of communism, which rejects immortality and freedom of spirit. Dostoevsky would probably have accepted a kind of Christian communism and would probably have preferred it to the bourgeois capitalist system. But communism, which denies freedom and the dignity of man as an immortal being, he recognized as the offspring of the spirit of the Antichrist.

Leo Tolstoy's religious metaphysics is less profound and less Christian than Dostoevsky's religious metaphysics. But Leo Tolstoy was of great importance in Russian religiosity in the second half of the nineteenth century. It caused a search for the meaning of life. Dostoevsky, as a religious thinker, had an influence on a relatively small circle of the intelligentsia, on more complex souls. Tolstoy, as a religious moral preacher, had an influence on a wider circle, he also captured the popular strata. Its influence was felt in sectarian movements. The groups of Tolstoyans, in the proper sense, were not numerous. But Tolstoy's morality had a great influence on the moral evaluations of very wide circles of Russian intellectual society. Doubts about the justification of private property, especially landed property, doubts about the right to judge and punish, denunciation of the evil and untruth of every state and power, repentance of one's privileged position, awareness of guilt before the working people, disgust for war and violence, the dream of the brotherhood of man – all these conditions were very characteristic of the middle mass of the Russian intelligentsia, they penetrated into the upper stratum of Russian society. even captured part of the Russian officialdom. This was Tolstoy's Platonic morality, Tolstoy's morality was considered unrealizable, but the highest imaginable. Such, however, was the attitude towards evangelical morality in general. In Leo Tolstoy, there was a consciousness of his guilt in the ruling stratum of Russian society. It was, first of all, aristocratic repentance. Leo Tolstoy had an extraordinary thirst for a perfect life, it tormented him for most of his life, there was an acute awareness of his imperfection[70]. From Orthodoxy he received the consciousness of his sinfulness, an inclination to tireless repentance. The idea that one must first of all correct oneself, and not improve the lives of others, is a traditional Orthodox thought. His Orthodox foundation was stronger than is usually thought. His very nihilism in relation to culture was received from Orthodoxy. At one time he made an effort to be the most traditional Orthodox, in order to be in spiritual unity with the working people. But he did not stand the test, he rebelled against the sins and evils of the historical Church, against the unrighteousness of the lives of those who considered themselves Orthodox. And he became a brilliant denouncer of the untruths of the historical church. In his criticism, in which there was much truth, he went so far as to deny the very foundations of Christianity and came to a religion closer to Buddhism. Leo Tolstoy was excommunicated from the Church of St. The Synod, a body of little authority. Meanwhile, the Orthodox Church did not like to excommunicate. It may be said that Tolstoy excommunicated himself. But the excommunication was outrageous because it was applied to a man who had done so much to awaken religious interests in a godless society in which people who were dead to Christianity were not excommunicated. Leo Tolstoy was, first of all, a fighter against idolaters. That was his truth. But the limitation of Tolstoy's spiritual type is due to the fact that his religion was so exclusively moralistic. He never doubted only the good. Tolstoy's worldview sometimes makes it stifling, and with Tolstoyans it can be unbearable. Hence Tolstoy's dislike of rituals. But behind Tolstoy's moralism was hidden the search for the Kingdom of God, which must be realized here on earth and now. We need to start now, but, according to him, the ideal of the Kingdom of God is infinite. He liked to express himself with deliberate rudeness and almost nihilistic cynicism, he did not like any embellishment. In this there is a great resemblance to Lenin. Sometimes Tolstoy says: Christ teaches not to do stupid things. But he also says: what is is unreasonable, what is not is reasonable, the world's rationality is evil, the world's absurdity is good. He strove for wisdom and in this he wants to be together with Confucius, Laodze, Buddha, Solomon, Socrates, the Stoics, Schopenhauer, whom he greatly revered. He revered Jesus Christ as the greatest of the wise. But he was closer to Buddhism and Stoicism than to Christianity. Tolstoy's metaphysics, best expressed in his book On Life, is sharply anti-personalistic. Only the rejection of personal consciousness will overcome the fear of death. In personality, in personal consciousness, which for him is animal consciousness, he sees the greatest obstacle to the realization of a perfect life, to union with God. For him, God is true life. True life is love. Tolstoy's anti-personalism separates him most from Christianity and brings him closest to the Hindu religious consciousness. He had a great respect for Nirvana. For Dostoevsky, a person stood in the center. For Tolstoy, man is only a part of cosmic life, and man must merge with the divine nature. His very art is cosmic, in it, as it were, cosmic life expresses itself. The most important is the life fate of Tolstoy himself, his death before his death. Tolstoy's personality is extraordinarily significant and brilliant in its very contradictions. He was a telluristic man, he carried within himself all the weight of the earth, and he aspired to a purely spiritual religion. This is its main tragic contradiction. And he could not join Tolstoy's colonies, not because of his weakness, but because of his genius. All his life this proud, passionate, important lord, a true grand seigneur, had the memory of death, and all the time he wanted to humble himself before the will of God. He wanted to fulfill the law of the master of life, as he liked to say. He suffered a lot, his religion was without grace. It will be said of him that he wanted to realize a perfect life by his own efforts. But, according to his God-consciousness, the realization of a perfect life is the presence of God in man. In his search for truth, the meaning of life, his search for the Kingdom of God, his repentances, his religious-anarchist rebellion against the untruth of history and civilization, he belongs to the Russian idea. It is the Russian opposition to Hegel and Nietzsche.

Russian religious problems had very little to do with the spiritual environment, with theological academies, with the hierarchs of the church. In the eighteenth century, a remarkable spiritual writer was St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, who had such significance for Dostoevsky. In the nineteenth century it is possible to name few people from the spiritual milieu who are of interest, although they remain outside the main spiritual currents. Such are Bukharev (Archimandrite Fyodor), Archbishop Innokenty, Nesmelov in particular, and Tareev. Bukharev's life was very dramatic. As a monk and archimandrite, he experienced a spiritual crisis, doubted his monastic vocation and traditional forms of asceticism, left monasticism, but remained a fervently believing Orthodox. Then he got married and attached a special religious significance to marriage. All his life he continued to be a spiritual writer, and through the inertia of traditional Orthodoxy, novelty broke through him, he posed problems that were not posed by official Orthodox thought. He was, of course, persecuted, and his situation was tragic and painful. The official Orthodox environment did not recognize him as their own, and the broad circles of the intelligentsia did not read and did not know him. He wrote in a very old-fashioned way, in a language not characteristic of Russian literature, and it was not very pleasant to read him. His book on the Apocalypse, which he wrote for most of his life and to which he attached special importance, is the weakest of his works, very outdated, and now it is impossible to read it. Only his very appeal to the Apocalypse is interesting. What was new was his exceptional interest in the question of the relationship of Orthodoxy to modernity, and this is the title of one of his books. Bukharev's understanding of Christianity could be called pan-Christism. He wants to acquire and assimilate Christ, and not His commandments. He reduces everything to Christ, to His face. In this he differs sharply from Leo Tolstoy, who had a weak sense of the personality of Christ. The Spirit of Christ is not turning away from people, but love for humanity and self-sacrifice. Bukharev especially insists that Christ's main sacrifice is for the world and man, and not the sacrifice of man and the world for God. This is the opposite of the judicial understanding of Christianity. For the sake of every man, the Son of God became man. The lamb was slain before the creation of the world. God created the world by giving Himself to the slaughter. "The world appeared to me," says Bukharev, "not only as a realm lying in evil, but also as a great environment for the revelation of the grace of the God-Man, who took upon himself the evil of the world." "We use the thought of Christ's kingdom not of this world only for our inhumane, lazy, and faint-hearted indifference to those who labor and are burdened in this world." Bukharev affirms not the despotism of God, but the self-sacrifice of the Lamb. The spirit is strong by freedom, not by the slavery of fear. Most precious to him is "Christ's condescension to earth." Nothing essentially human is rejected except sin. Grace is opposed to sin, not to nature. The natural is inseparable from the supernatural. The creative powers of man are the reflection of God the Word. "Will we have and when will we have this spiritual transformation, according to which we would begin to understand all earthly things according to Christ; all civil orders would be understood by us and consciously maintained in the force and meaning of the grace-filled order." The idea of the kingdom of God must be applied to the destinies and affairs of the kingdom of this world. Bukharev says that Christ himself acts in the church, and does not transfer authority to the hierarchs. His originality lay in the fact that he did not so much want the realization of Christian principles in the fullness of life as the acquisition of the fullness of the life of Christ Himself, as if the continuation of the incarnation of Christ in all life. He asserted, as N. Fedorov later did, the extra-church liturgy. In general, Russian religious thought was characterized by the idea of the continuing incarnation of God, as well as of the creation of the world continuing in the appearance of Christ. This is the difference between Russian religious thought and Western thought. The relationship between the Creator and the creation does not evoke any idea of a judicial process. Bukharev is characterized by extraordinary humanity, his entire Christianity is imbued with the spirit of humanity. He wants to realize this Christian humanity. But he, like the Slavophiles, still clung to the monarchy, which, however, was not at all like absolutism and imperialism. Sometimes it seems that monarchism was the protective color of Russian Christian thought in the nineteenth century, but it also had an unovercome historical romanticism.

The only hierarch of the Church who is worth mentioning when talking about Russian religious philosophy is Archbishop Innocent. Metropolitan Philaret was a very talented person, but he was not at all interesting for religious philosophy, he did not have his own interesting thoughts in this area. Bishop Theophan the Recluse wrote exclusively books on spiritual life and asceticism in the spirit of the Philokalia. Archbishop Innocent can be called more of a philosopher than a theologian. He, like the Slavophiles and Vl. Solovyov, went through German philosophy and thought very freely. Zealots of orthodoxy probably recognize many of his thoughts as insufficiently Orthodox. He said: the fear of God is appropriate for the Jewish religion, it is not suitable for Christianity. And he also said: if there were no germ of religion in man, in his heart, then God Himself would not have taught religion. Man is free, and God cannot make me want what I don't want. Religion loves life and freedom. "Whoever feels his dependence on God will become above all fear, above despotism." God wanted to see his friend. Revelation should not contradict the higher mind, should not humiliate man. Sources of religion: the illumination of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, the chosen people, the tradition and the Holy Spirit. Scripture, and the fifth source is the shepherds. Revelation is the inner action of God on man. It is impossible to prove the existence of God. God is known by both feeling and intellect, but not by intellect and concept. Religion is accepted only by the heart. "No science, no good action, no pure pleasure is superfluous for religion." Jesus Christ gave only the plan of the church, and left its organization to time. Hierarchs are not infallible, corruption is present within the church. Like Vl. Archbishop Innocent thinks that "all knowledge is based on faith." Imagination could not invent Christianity. Some of his thoughts do not correspond to the prevailing theological opinions. Thus, he rightly thinks that the soul must pre-exist, that it was eternally in God, that the world was created not in time, but in eternity. He looked at the Middle Ages as a time of superstition and robbery, which was an exaggeration. In the religious philosophy of Archbishop Innocent there were elements of modernism. Western liberal trends also affected our spiritual environment, which was very musty. Many professors of theological academies were strongly influenced by German Protestant science. And this had a positive meaning. But, unfortunately, this led to insincerity and pretense: those who were no longer Orthodox had to pretend to be Orthodox. Among the professors of theological academies, there were also completely non-believers. But there were also those who managed to combine the perfect freedom of science with the sincere Orthodox faith. Such was the remarkable historian of the church, Bolotov, a man of immense learning. But in Russian theological literature there were no works at all on biblical criticism, on the scientific exegesis of Holy Scripture. This is partly due to censorship. Biblical criticism remained a taboo area, and some critical thought had difficulty seeping through. The only remarkable work in this field, standing at the height of European science and free philosophical thought, was the book of Book II. S. Trubetskoy "The Doctrine of the Logos". But there were many valuable works on patristics. Spiritual censorship was rampant. Thus, for example, Nesmelov's book "The Dogmatic System of St. Gregory of Nyssa" was distorted by spiritual censorship, he was forced to change the end of the book in a sense unfavorable to the teaching of St. Gregory of Nyssa about universal salvation. Nesmelov is the greatest phenomenon in Russian religious philosophy that came out of theological academies, and in general one of the most remarkable religious thinkers. In his religious and philosophical anthropology, he is more interesting than Vl. Solovyov, but in him, of course, there is no universalism of the latter, there is no scope of thought, there is no such complexity of personality.

Nesmelov, a modest professor at the Kazan Theological Academy, outlines the possibility of a peculiar and in many respects new Christian philosophy[73]. His main work is called "The Science of Man". Of great interest is the second volume of this work, entitled The Metaphysics of Christian Life. Nesmelov wants to build a Christian anthropology, but this anthropology turns into an understanding of Christianity as a whole, because of the special importance that he attaches to man. The riddle about man is the problem that he poses with great acuteness. For him, man is the only mystery of world life. This mysteriousness of man is determined by the fact that, on the one hand, he is a natural being, and on the other hand, he does not fit into the natural world and goes beyond it. Of the teachers of the Church, St. Gregory of Nyssa had an undoubted influence on Nesmelov. The teaching of St. Gregory of Nyssa about man surpasses patristic anthropology, he wanted to raise the dignity of man, for him man was not only a sinful being, but was really the image and likeness of God and a microcosm[74]. For Nesmelov, man is a dual being. He is a religious psychologist, and he wants to deal not with logical concepts, but with the real facts of human existence, he is much more concrete than Vl. Solovyov. He offers a new anthropological proof of the existence of God. "The idea of God is indeed given to man, but it is not given to him from somewhere outside, as a thought about God, but objectively and actually realized in him by the nature of his personality, as a new image of God. If the human person were not ideal in relation to the real conditions of his own existence, man could not have an idea of God, and no revelation could ever communicate this idea to him, because he would not be able to understand it. The human person is real in being and ideal in nature, and by the very fact of its ideal reality it directly affirms the objective existence of God as the true person." Nesmelov especially insists that the human personality is inexplicable from the natural world, surpasses it, and requires a higher being than the being of the world. It is interesting that Nesmelov appreciates Feuerbach very much and wants to turn Feuerbach's thought about the anthropological mystery of religion into a weapon for the defense of Christianity. The mystery of Christianity is first of all an anthropological mystery. And Feuerbach's atheism can be understood as a dialectical aspect of Christian knowledge of God. Abstract theology, with its play on concepts, must have provoked an anthropological reaction from Feuerbach. It is Nesmelov's merit that he wants to turn Feuerbach's anthropology in favor of Christianity. His psychology of the Fall is interesting and peculiar. He sees the essence of the Fall in a superstitious attitude towards material things as a source of power and knowledge. "People wanted their lives and fate to be determined not by themselves, but by external material causes." Nesmelov constantly fights against pagan, idolatrous, magical elements in Christianity. He is the most extreme opponent and sharpest critic of the legal theory of redemption as a bargain with God. In the search for salvation and happiness, he sees a pagan-Jewish, superstitious distortion of Christianity. He contrasts the concept of true life with the concept of salvation. Salvation is acceptable only as the attainment of true and perfect life. He would also like to banish the fear of punishment from Christianity and replace it with a consciousness of imperfection. Like Origen, St. Gregory of Nyssa and many Eastern teachers of the Church, he wants universal salvation. He fights against the slave consciousness in Christianity, against the humiliation of man in the ascetic-monastic understanding of Christianity. Nesmelov's Christian philosophy is to a greater extent personalism than the Christian philosophy of Vl. Solovyov. Russian religious-philosophical thought posed the problem of religious anthropology in a different way than Catholic and Protestant anthropology, and it goes further than patristic and scholastic anthropology, in which humanity is stronger. Nesmelov has a great place in this religious anthropology.

Professor of the Moscow Theological Academy, Tareev created an original concept of Christianity, most different from traditional Orthodoxy[75]. A hidden Protestantism was found in him, which, of course, is a conventional terminology. But there is also something characteristically Russian in it. According to Tareev, the Russian people are humbly believing and meekly loving. In Christology, its main place is occupied by the doctrine of kenosis, of Christ's self-abasement and subordination to the laws of human existence. The divine word was united not with human power, but with human humiliation. The sonship of Christ with God is at the same time the sonship of each person with God. The individually valuable in the religious sphere can be seen only immanently, by kinship with the object. True religion is not only priestly conservative, but also prophetically spiritual, not only spontaneously popular, but also personally spiritual, it is even, predominantly, prophetically spiritual. Tareev is a supporter of spiritual Christianity. The Gospel is characterized by personal and spiritual absoluteness. This absoluteness and spirituality cannot be expressed in the natural historical life, which is always relative. The spiritual truth of Christianity cannot be embodied in historical life, it is expressed in it only symbolically, and not in reality. Tareev's concept of Christianity is dualistic and very different from the monism of the Slavophiles and Vl. Solovyov. Tareev has a lot of true things. He is a determined enemy of theocracy. But he is also an enemy of all Gnosticism. The Kingdom of God is the kingdom of individuals, spiritually free. The main idea of the Gospel is the idea of divine spiritual life. There are two understandings of the kingdom of God: eschatological and theocratic. The eschatological understanding is correct. In the Gospel, the church is secondary, and the kingdom of God is everything. In the kingdom of Christ there can be no power and authority. Tareev wants the liberation of spiritual religion from its symbolic shell. He contrasts symbolic service to God and spiritual service to God. The evangelical faith is an absolute form of religion and is immersed in unlimited freedom. Tareev asserts the freedom of the absolute religion of the spirit from historical forms and the freedom of natural-historical life from the claims of religious power. Therefore, for him there can be no Christian people, no state, no marriage. Eternal life is not life beyond the grave, but true spiritual life. The spirit is not a part of human nature, but the divine in man. Tareev's insurmountable dualism has its reverse side of monism. Nesmelov's religious anthropology is higher than Tareev's religious anthropology. Tareev's dualism is of great value as a criticism of the falsity of the historical incarnations of Christianity, this dualism rightly points to the confusion of the symbolic with the real, the relative with the absolute. But it cannot be final. The meaning of the existence of the historical church with its symbolism remains unclear. Tareev does not have a philosophy of history. But he is an original religious thinker, sharp in his contrasts, and it is wrong to reduce him entirely to German Protestant influences by comparing him with Ritschl. Tareev's dualism is in everything opposite to the dualism of K. Leontiev. Tareev was inclined to a certain form of immanentism. K. Leontiev professes extreme transcendentism. His religion is a religion of fear and violence, and not of love and freedom, as in Tareyev's, it is a religion of transcendental egoism. For all Tareev's deviations from traditional Orthodoxy, his Christianity is more Russian than Leontiev's Christianity, completely, as has already been said, non-Russian, Byzantine, exclusively monastic, ascetic and authoritarian. It is necessary to establish a distinction between Russian creative religious thought, which poses the anthropological and cosmological problem in a new way, and official monastic-ascetic Orthodoxy, for which the authority of the Philokalia stands above the authority of the Gospel. What was new in creative religious thought, so different from deadening scholasticism, was the expectation, not always openly expressed, of a new epoch in Christianity, the epoch of St. John. Spirit. This is most of all the Russian idea. Russian thought is essentially eschatological, and this eschatologism takes different forms.

Chapter IX

Waiting for a new era of the Holy Spirit. The Eschatological and Prophetic Character of Russian Thought. Denial of bourgeois virtues. Wandering. People's seekers of the Kingdom of God. Eschatological mood among the intelligentsia. Perverted eschatology among the revolutionary intelligentsia. Wandering of L. Tolstoy. Eschatologism and messianism in Dostoevsky. Leontiev and Solovyov have a breakdown. Fedorov's brilliant idea about the conventionality of apocalyptic prophecies. Cheshkovsky's epiphany. The problem of birth and death in Vl. Solovyov, Fedorov and Rozanova.

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In my book on Dostoevsky, I wrote that Russians are apocalyptics or nihilists. Russia is an apocalyptic revolt against antiquity (Spengler). This means that the Russian people, by their metaphysical nature and by their vocation in the world, are the people of the end. The Apocalypse has always played a great role both in our popular stratum and in the highest cultural stratum, among Russian writers and thinkers. In our thinking, the eschatological problem occupies an incomparably greater place than in Western thinking. And this is connected with the very structure of the Russian consciousness, which is incapable and little inclined to hold on to the perfect forms of the middle culture. Positivist historians can point out that in order to characterize the Russian people I make a choice, I choose a little, an exceptional, while much, ordinary, was different. But the intelligible image of the people can be drawn only by choice, intuitively penetrating into the most expressive and significant. I have always emphasized the prophetic element in Russian literature and thought in the nineteenth century, and I have also spoken of the role played by the eschatological mood in the Russian schism and sectarianism. The pedagogical and landscaping element was either very weak, almost absent, or was terrible, ugly, as in "Domostroi". The moral books of Bishop Theophan the Recluse are also of a rather base nature. All this is connected with the fundamental Russian dualism. The earth and earthly life are arranged by evil forces that have departed from the truth of Christ, while good forces await the City to come, the Kingdom of God. The Russian people are very gifted, but they have a comparatively weak gift of form. A strong element overturns every form. This is what Westerners, especially the French, for whom the primordial element has almost disappeared, seem barbaric. In Western Europe, a civilization that has reached a great height is increasingly closing the eschatological consciousness. The Catholic consciousness fears an eschatological understanding of Christianity, since it opens up the possibility of dangerous novelty. Striving for the coming light, the messianic expectation contradict the pedagogical, social, and organizational nature of Catholicism, and cause fear that the possibility of guiding souls will be weakened. Likewise, bourgeois society, which believes in nothing, fears that eschatological consciousness may shake the foundations of this bourgeois society. Léon Blois, a rare writer of the apocalyptic spirit in France, was hostile to bourgeois society and bourgeois civilization, he was disliked and little appreciated. In the years of catastrophes, apocalyptic sentiments also appear in European society. This was the case after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars[77]. Then Jung Stilling prophesied about the imminent appearance of the Antichrist. In the more distant past, in the ninth century, there was an expectation of the Antichrist in the West. Closer to the Russians are the prophecies of Joachim of Florida about the new epoch of the Holy Spirit. An era of love, friendship, freedom, although all this was too much associated with monks. The image of St. Francis of Assisi is also close to the Russians, atoning for many sins of historical Christianity. But the Christian civilization of the West was built outside the eschatological perspective. It is necessary to explain what I mean by eschatology. I do not mean the eschatological part of the theological system, which can be found in any course of Catholic or Protestant theology. I have in mind the eschatological understanding of Christianity as a whole, which must be opposed to the historical understanding of Christianity. Christian revelation is an eschatological revelation, a revelation of the end of this world, of the Kingdom of God. All early Christianity was eschatological, awaiting the second coming of Christ and the coming of the Kingdom of God. Historical Christianity, the historical church, means that the Kingdom of God has not come, it means failure, the adaptation of Christian revelation to the kingdom of this world. Therefore, in Christianity there remains a messianic hope, an eschatological expectation, and it is stronger in Russian Christianity than in Western Christianity. The Church is not the Kingdom of God, the Church appeared in history and acted in history, it does not mean the transfiguration of the world, the appearance of a new heaven and a new earth. The Kingdom of God is the transfiguration of the world, not only the transfiguration of the individual man, but also the social and cosmic transfiguration. This is the end of this world, the world of unrighteousness and ugliness, and the beginning of a new world, the world of truth and beauty. When Dostoevsky said that beauty will save the world, he meant the transfiguration of the world, the coming of the Kingdom of God. This is the eschatological hope. Most representatives of Russian religious thought had it. But the Russian messianic consciousness, like Russian eschatologism, was ambivalent.

In Russian messianism, so characteristic of the Russian people, the pure messianic idea of the Kingdom of God, the kingdom of truth, was clouded by the imperialist idea, the will to power. We have already seen this in relation to the ideology of Moscow, the Third Rome. And in Russian communism, into which the Russian messianic idea passed in a non-religious and anti-religious form, the same perversion of the Russian search for the kingdom of truth by the will to power took place. But the Russian people, in spite of all the temptations to which they are subject, are very characteristic of denying the greatness and glory of this world. Such, at least, are they in their highest states. The greatness and glory of the world remain a temptation and a sin, and not the highest value, as with Western people. Characteristically, rhetoric is not characteristic of Russians, it did not exist at all in the Russian Revolution, while it played a huge role in the French Revolution. In this, Lenin, with his coarseness, his absence of any embellishment, all theatricality, with his simplicity turning into cynicism, is characteristically a Russian man. As for Peter the Great and Napoleon, images of greatness and glory, the Russian people created a legend that they were the Antichrists. The Russians lack bourgeois virtues, namely virtues so valued by Western Europe. The Russians have bourgeois vices, namely, vices that are recognized as such. The words "bourgeois" and "bourgeois" in Russia were of a condemnatory nature, while in the West these words meant a respectable social position. Contrary to the opinion of the Slavophiles, the Russian people are less familial than the peoples of the West, less chained to the family, and relatively easily break with it. The authority of parents in the intelligentsia, in the nobility, in the middle strata, with the exception, perhaps, of the merchants, was weaker than in the West. In general, the Russians had a comparatively weak hierarchical feeling, or it existed in the negative form of adulation, i.e., again a vice, and not a virtue. The Russian people, in the profound manifestations of their spirit, are the least philistine of the peoples, the least determined, the least chained to the limited forms of everyday life, the least valuing the established forms of life. At the same time, the very way of life of Russia, for example, the merchant life described by Ostrovsky, was ugly to a degree to which the peoples of Western civilization did not know it. But this bourgeois way of life was not considered sacred. In the Russian person one can easily find a nihilist. We are all nihilists, says Dostoevsky. Along with adulation and slavery, a rebel and an anarchist are easily detected. Everything proceeded in extreme opposites. And there is always an aspiration for something infinite. Russians always have a thirst for a different life, a different world, there is always dissatisfaction with what they have. Eschatological aspiration belongs to the structure of the Russian soul. Wandering is a very characteristic Russian phenomenon, so unknown to the West. The wanderer walks on the vast Russian land, never settles down and does not attach himself to anything. The pilgrim seeks the truth, seeks the Kingdom of God, he is directed into the distance. The pilgrim does not have his abiding city on earth, he is directed towards the City to come. The popular stratum has always singled out wanderers from among them. But in spirit, the most creative representatives of Russian culture were also wanderers, such as Gogol, Dostoevsky, L. Tolstoy, Vl. Solovyov and the entire revolutionary intelligentsia. There is not only physical, but also spiritual pilgrimage. It is the impossibility of resting on anything finite, striving towards the infinite. But this is the eschatological aspiration, the expectation that everything finite will come to an end, that the final truth will be revealed, that there will be some extraordinary phenomenon in the future. I would call this messianic sensibility, which is equally characteristic of people from the people of the people and people of high culture. The Russians, to a greater or lesser extent, consciously or unconsciously, are chiliastics. Western people are much more sedentary, more attached to the improved forms of their civilization, more valuing their present, more devoted to the improvement of the earth. They fear infinity as chaos, and in this way they resemble the ancient Greeks. The word "element" is difficult to translate into foreign languages. It is difficult to give a name when reality itself has weakened and almost disappeared. But the element is the source, the past, the force of life, while eschatology is an appeal to the future, to the end of things. In Russia, these two strands are connected.