4. The Participation of Faith in Knowledge

The limitations of the powers of reason do not prevent us from recognizing the reality of what is "superreasonable," what is not comprehended by our reason. In this case, the work of reason is supplemented by our faith, and this combination of reason and faith is possible because both reason and faith are manifestations of the life of one and the same human spirit. The difference between reason and faith is not at all in the content of what reason recognizes or what is revealed to our faith. Their content may coincide or diverge, but their inner unity follows from the fact that both reason and faith have inherent the luminous power that is given to us by Christ. In the words of Ap. John (chapter 1, verse 9), the Lord "enlightens every man that cometh into the world"; from this light, which is brought into the soul by Christ, proceeds both the light of reason and the light of faith. That is why their complete unity is possible only when we are in Christ. If our spirit does not live in Christ, then a wall between reason and faith easily arises.

But in relation to the knowledge of nature and man, does faith belong to any place? And if faith can communicate to us certain Revelations about the world and about man, then can reason approach such teachings with its own means? Yes of course! Statements of faith based on Revelation can be super-rational, i.e., they exceed the powers of our reason, but they cannot be unreasonable, i.e., they contain contradictions. The Christian faith allows and even requires the application of reason to the clarification of its assertions, but the condition of truth is our following Christ, following the Church. The individual mind is often weak; we must listen to the Church's reason, as it is revealed in the Ecumenical Councils, in Holy Tradition. In general, it is not faith that creates conflicts with reason, but reason, divorced from the Church, can come into conflict with the data of faith.

In the study of nature, the data of experience and the construction of reason may, for example, come into conflict with what the Christian faith gives us. Such discrepancies should not confuse us, they should not be hushed up, but we must remember that the hypotheses created by science are constantly in an inevitable change: some fall, others rise. The study of nature cannot but be free, but that is precisely why it does not stand in one place. These changes and fluctuations in scientific constructions may confuse our religious consciousness, but we must honestly and directly state the discrepancies (in our time) between certain statements of science and the teachings of our faith. But the truth is one; our faith in Christ is faith in the Truth (as the Lord Himself said: "I am the seven truth, the way, and the life").

It is necessary, however, to distinguish the teachings of faith from those teachings that do not have their source in faith. Christianity does not know any "obligatory" worldview for believers – we are free in that synthesis of science and philosophy that is called "worldview". It is true that in the Middle Ages and even in modern times, Western Christianity established a certain worldview obligatory for believers, but it was precisely this imposition of a certain worldview on believers that led to the tragic departure of many believers in the West from the Church, which had incalculable sad consequences for both the Church and culture. The sad experience of the Middle Ages in the West teaches us that the participation of faith in knowledge should be limited only to basic and fundamental questions. To make this clearer, let us touch on a question that is of cardinal importance for both faith and knowledge, the question of the admissibility of recognizing miracles.

5. The Question of the Possibility of Miracles

In extra-scientific thinking, i.e., in ordinary life, there has been and is a tendency to reduce to a miracle everything that is unusual or difficult to explain. Primitive people saw a miracle in everything, i.e. the direct action of higher forces, but with the development of science, much that was considered a miracle turned out to be the action of one or another force of nature. Thunder and lightning, earthquakes and floods have long found their natural explanation, i.e., they have been reducible to the action of natural forces. Hence, with the development of science, a skeptical attitude began to develop towards what had previously been taken as a miracle; The credulity with which the concept of miracle has been and is being used, with the growth of knowledge, has caused and continues to cause rejections of miracles in advance. Science in general developed as a "study" of nature, as an insight into its internal laws, and hence the psychological inclination of scientists to always look for "natural" causes where ordinary consciousness easily sees a miracle. The successes of science have led to the fact that the principle of determinism, that is, the recognition of the subordination of all phenomena in nature to the law of causality, has acquired absolute force. But if absolutely everything in nature happens according to the law of causality, then there is obviously no room for a miracle? In the scientific consciousness, and then, with the growth of enlightenment, the conviction spread in broad circles that the scientific understanding of nature completely supplanted and even abolished the concept of miracles, that the assertion of the possibility of miracles was incompatible with the scientific study of nature. Many, even among scientists, have grown so much into this that the recognition of a miracle seems to them evidence either of ignorance or of a deliberate limitation of science in its right to explain natural phenomena according to the principle of causality. Sometimes you can come across the idea in scientific research that it is simply unacceptable to use the concept of a miracle in our time.

In order to understand this question, which is of the utmost importance in religious life, let us first touch upon the question of the possibility (from the point of view of principle) of miracles in general, and then turn to the question of the reality of a miracle in any particular case.

Принцип детерминизма верно выражает общую тенденцию научного подсознания, но есть ли основания утверждать всеобщую и абсолютную силу причинности? Тут прежде всего приходится указать на понятие «случайности», в котором отвергается всеобщая значимость принципа причинности. Но само понятие случайности может ли сохранять какое-либо значение, если развитие науки утверждает с неопровержимой силой реальность причинных связей? Не называем ли мы случайным лишь то, для чего мы не сумели найти причинное объяснение?

Понятие случайности очень твердо держалось в античной философии — но и в новой философии оно не исчезает. Однако только в XIX в. было построено (французским философом Cournot) такое понятие случайности, которое не только не противоречит идее причинности, но даже из нее вытекает. Согласно учению Cournot, о случайности должно говорить тогда, когда встречаются два (тем более если больше, чем два) причинных ряда, каждый из которых не зависит один от другого. Если мы имеем движение какого-либо тела по линии

А-------В

то и сама встреча их и точка, в которой они встретятся, не имеют основания в каждом из причинных рядов. Тело, движущееся по линии А—В, может никогда не встретиться с другим телом, но если встреча произойдет, то для первого тела это будет столь же случайно, как случайно оно будет и для второго. Случайность и есть встреча двух независимых друг от друга причинных рядов.

Но совершенно ясно, что самую эту встречу двух независимых рядов может создать или, наоборот, предотвратить какой-нибудь посторонний фактор. Так, если автомобиль, движущийся с большой скоростью по линии А—В, может неожиданно столкнуться с автомобилем, движущимся по линии С—Д, то шофер в одном и другом автомобиле, если вовремя заметит опасность, может предотвратить это столкновение — или свернуть в сторону, или затормозить машину. Причинность, определяющая движение каждого автомобиля, не нарушается действиями шофера, а лишь видоизменяется. Так и в жизни нашей можно заранее сделать так, что два лица, встреча которых не лежит в планах ни одного из них, все же встретятся (если все будет сделано для этого), и из этой встречи двух лиц для каждого из них могут наступить события, которых не было бы, если бы не было «случайной» встречи. Но разве Бог не может создавать такие «встречи», т.е. направлять и видоизменять движение в мире, среди людей — без нарушения закона причинности? Конечно, да! Вхождение Бога в жизнь мира, без нарушения закономерности его бытия (установленной Богом!), возможно именно как видоизменение того, что намечалось раньше ходом событий через «встречу» различных, до этого не связанных друг с другом событий. Без нарушения причинных связей Бог может направлять течение событий так, как это соответствует Его воле. Его Промыслу. Такое понятие чуда, принципиально не устраняющее закона причинности, вполне и до конца соединимо с детерминизмом.