This means, in short: the cause of Christian revival must overcome in itself every temptation of sectarian narrow-mindedness and sectarian conceit. Christ's truth is not only not invented by us, but also not realized for the first time (or for the first time after the first Christians) by us, it has never died in the soul of mankind and unites into one holy church all, even the weakest and most sinful people, in whose souls it at least barely flickers. The Christian revival, like any collective human cause, presupposes, of course, the leadership of a minority – a close, intimate union of ascetics and soldiers of Christian truth, which guides this cause in all its diverse tasks: many are called, but few are chosen. But this necessary and valuable spiritual aristocracy of the leading minority, which presupposes a certain separation of it from all that is sluggish, dissolute, and dull in the broad masses of the Christian world, must be combined with broad democracy, or, more precisely, universalism, which is grounded in the very essence of Christian truth – with loving attention to any, even the weakest Christian (in the above-mentioned sense) soul, with the recognition of each such soul as a brother and accomplice in the common cause. A firm and hardened warrior of God's army will only be a true Christian if he combines strict self-discipline with a broad spirit of love, forgiveness, and solidarity toward others.

This brings us to the problem of a task which has never ceased to be presented to the most sensitive souls of the disunited Christian world, but which has only in our own time formed the basis of the Christian social movement. I have in mind the task of reuniting the Christian Church, which has disintegrated empirically into separate, isolated confessions, and often bitterly fighting among themselves. It is striking that it is only in very recent times (apart from isolated temporary movements of this kind in the Middle Ages and in the fifteenth century, caused mainly by the political danger threatening the Byzantine Empire and the Church) that Christendom has become acutely aware of the abnormality and sinfulness of the fact that the holy Church of Christ, the universal unity of men in love and faith, has disintegrated in human empiricism into a multitude of alienated "churches" or confessions. The so-called ecumenical movement is still very weak; Not to mention the fact that the main branch of the Christian Church, the Roman Catholic Church, stands outside of it and rejects it on principle, it embraces only a small minority of Christian believers in the composition of other Christian confessions, and is still groping, as it were, looking for the right path. But covertly and potentially, it has already touched many hearts; Those confessions that officially remain alien to it (such as the Catholic Church) also respond to it, in the person of its individual representatives.

From a broader point of view, this ecumenical movement in essence coincides in some way with the common cause of Christian revival. First of all, it can only be the fruit of an inner religious revival, and it is fruitful, or even possible at all, only by flowing from it; On the other hand, such an internal religious revival has it as its perfectly necessary consequence. For, like any human disunity, the separation between confessions is the very expression of religious decadence, the victory of human passions over the spirit of love, the loss of a living sense of the unity of the mystical Church of Christ – the unity of all in God. Therefore, the overcoming or even only the weakening of this separation is possible only through a new awakening of the spirit of true faith, the consciousness of the rootedness of everything and everyone in God. As one ancient Eastern ascetic, Abba Dorotheus, said, God is the center, and people are the periphery of his circumference; the closer to God, the smaller the distance between people, the individual points of this circle. This obviously holds true in the relationship between confessions. However important the differences of dogmatic and canonical order between the various confessions may seem, and in part they really are, the awakening of genuine religious faith, and especially of the Christian faith in the God of love, nevertheless automatically leads to an experienced realization that these differences are insignificant in comparison with the fraternal unity of all in Christ, in the one faith in the saving power of love. Only on this path, i.e., with a true burning in the hearts of that which forms the very essence of the Christian faith, is the basic condition for unification possible – the awakening of the awareness of that often completely forgotten fact that, despite all the differences, all Christian confessions have remained faithful to the basic, identical dogmas of the Christian faith – faith in Jesus Christ Himself, in His Divine-human nature, in the salvific nature of His redemptive feat and, what is even more important, faith in the above-mentioned the basic dogma that God is love or that love is a divine saving force. This consciousness alone is enough for any separation to be potentially overcome, as it were, and the conviction of the inseparably common belonging of all to the one holy Church of Christ is resurrected; Then all disputes begin to feel as relatively insignificant disagreements within the fraternal solidarity of members of the same family, as was the case in the era of the early Christian Church.

But you can go even further. In accordance with the true concept of the Church outlined above, it can be asserted that the work of uniting the faithful and regenerating the Church of Christ, strictly speaking, is not at all limited to the unification or rapprochement of confessions that openly and consciously recognize themselves as Christian; from a broader – from a truly Christian – point of view, it means in essence, and especially in the face of the onslaught of anti-Christian, demonic forces, the unification of all people around Christ's truth – including members of other, non-Christian confessions, or even people who, according to their theoretical views, are non-believers – since in their hearts there actually lives the power of love and faith in its salvific and in the necessity of serving it. This, of course, does not contradict the fact that, on the other hand, such true missionary work – the conversion of unconscious Christians to Christ – as well as the success of Christian moral regeneration, has as its condition a preliminary "truce" between all conscious Christian confessions, an end to the scandal of the "civil war" between them – this greatest temptation of the Christian Church.

The "ecumenical movement" arose, as is well known, in two forms at the same time: in the form of the "Stockholm" movement of uniting all Christians in the common cause of the moral regeneration of the world, on the unity of Christian life and activity (Life and Work), leaving aside all dogmatic and canonical differences, and in the form of the "Lausanne" attempt to come to an agreement and approach precisely on questions of a dogmatic and canonical order (Faith and Order). After a decade of parallel work, partly by the same persons, in these two directions, it was recognized (in 1937) as necessary to merge the two movements into one. This is not the place to enter into a discussion of the details of the problems of the "ecumenical movement." I confine myself to a few indications of fundamental importance.

First of all, it seems quite obvious that the "Stockholm" form has a certain natural primacy over the "Lausanne" one. For, as I tried to explain in detail in the first reflection, religious and even more so Christian truth is not in its very essence theoretical truth, but living truth, truth as "the way and the life." A true Christian is not one who confesses Christ in words or minds, but one who does His works, or at least actively seeks to follow His way. And the true truth of Christ is exposed only by its practical fruits. "The children of God," according to the words of the Apostle, are those who do what is righteous and love their brethren. "Dogmas", as I tried to understand it above, are the truths that help to find the right way of life and create moral truth. Only such a test will make it possible to distinguish in the dogmatic (and canonical) teachings of various confessions the authentic truth of God – God's covenant – from the subjective, or erroneous, or religiously insignificant "human tradition." Therefore, from a subjective, human, psychological point of view, people of different convictions can most easily come together, understand each other, overcome their differences, participating in the common work of moral improvement of life, which animates them all. It is pedagogically useful to forget for a while about all theoretical differences and to unite in fraternal solidarity on the common task of fighting for the triumph of the beginning of love over world evil.

This does not mean that the very task that the "Lausanne" form of movement sets itself is aimless and should be abandoned. On the contrary, it follows from what has just been said that the distinction between true and false "dogmas" and between the degree of Christian legitimacy and expediency of certain "orders" of church life is of extremely significant importance. If it be admitted that in certain epochs of its past the Church has fallen into unnecessary and harmful exaggerations in judging the significance of certain dogmas and canons, not to mention the mortal sin of hatred and persecution, which it has sometimes practiced and approved of in this connection, it remains indisputable that in religious life, as elsewhere, The distinction between truth and error is essential, of paramount importance. If the very salvation of the human soul – contrary to the view often prevailing in church circles – does not depend on opinions and theoretical views, but only on the depth and intensity of the very search for truth and God, the volitional readiness to serve them, then it still remains true that a person can always get lost in this search and, imagining to do good to himself and others, actually do evil. not to heal life, but to destroy it. But this task of finding true faith alone is impossible in the form of an isolated "Lausanne" movement, and for a number of reasons, which I would like to briefly state here.

The first and most important of these reasons has already been mentioned: a true verification of the truth of the position of faith is possible only through the testing of their suitability, their fruits, in their practical application to spiritual and moral life and to social construction. No theoretical discussion can yield decisive and indisputable results here, precisely because it is not a question of the truths of theory, but of the truths of life. But to this is added something else. A purely theoretical discussion here ultimately rests on faith in the authority of a particular tradition (a reference to the Gospel, as I have already pointed out, is also a reference to a certain tradition, and at the same time a particular interpretation of the meaning of the Gospel text is also based on a certain tradition). But each confession now has its own special tradition, its own authority; and theoretical discussion does not provide a precise and indisputable criterion for assessing their truth. This criterion lies only, as I have tried to show, in religious experience; and religious experience is inseparably linked with moral and general life experience and must be somehow supported by it. Finally, there is also the fact that, since we abstract ourselves from the living moral truth, the habitual forms of faith – like everything habitual in general, but to an even greater extent than in other areas of life – gradually clothe ourselves for us in the halo of something inviolable and sacred; The "faith of the fathers" becomes sacred to us not because it is the true faith, but, on the contrary, is revered as the truth – and the sacred truth – only because it is the faith of the fathers, because our religious feeling is psychologically inseparably fused with these habitual forms of its discovery and theoretical comprehension from childhood. Such everyday religious conservatism – like any conservatism in general – has its great practical value, especially in epochs when all the foundations of life begin to shake and fall apart: it protects the positive spiritual capital inherited from ancestors; The inviolability of the subjective-human form is here a protective device necessary or useful for safeguarding the inviolability of the most positive spiritual property contained in it. And yet, on this path, an element of human subjective partiality is introduced into the discussion of tradition and the dogmas of various confessions, moreover, clothed in the form of an unconditional obligation to preserve the sacred object reserved by the Fathers. This makes it largely fruitless to discuss the substance, to find a common solution that satisfies everyone.

It does not follow from this that the "Lausanne" form of the movement is entirely sterile. Theoretical theological communion between different confessions can have one relatively very valuable positive result: it can dispel mutual misunderstandings that have arisen from the previous complete alienation between them, from ignorance of the very content of other confessions and, what is even more often the case, from a false, biased interpretation of them, accumulated out of polemical bitterness, conscious dishonesty or unconscious blindness. Interconfessional theological communion can gradually cultivate a fraternal, loving and attentive attitude to other people's beliefs and create preparatory favorable conditions for an objective discussion of differences. But this, I repeat, is a relatively significant result that exhausts all that can be achieved on this path. By itself, it can never lead to a genuine overcoming of disunity, to the restoration of the unity of the Church.

In essence, the very meaning of dogmatic teachings is truly understood, and the divergence on them can be overcome only in connection with the clarification of concrete practical conclusions from them, as has just been pointed out. The experience of the ecumenical movement and the search for Christian answers to the problem of moral and social life in general shows that the solution of these problems rests on problems of a dogmatic nature. Thus, for example, it has been seen empirically that one or another solution to the question of the relationship between the "church" and the "world," of the responsibility of the church for the order of life, etc., ultimately depends on an understanding of the relationship between "grace" and "nature"; This kind of verification first of all helps to distinguish in the composition of dogmatic teachings the vital from the non-essential, the dogmas the meaning of which is clear to us and have actual significance for the regulation of our life, from the dogmas that are only potentially preserved in the religious consciousness, having no vital use (as I have already said above, in the 5th chapter of the first meditation: "Religious Experience and Dogmas of Faith"). But at the same time one curious and very comforting fact is revealed: in theoretical discussion, certain quite insoluble disputes about dogmatic formulas precisely fixed in the tradition or teaching of the Church often have no vital significance, and the most vivid meaning of these formulas remains incomprehensible, while the truly essential disagreement between confessions can and often does lie in their peculiarities. which are not dogmatically fixed at all, by virtue of which the disagreement is in principle reconcilable and reducible to a natural, mutually agreeable difference in spiritual and religious types, equally legitimate. Let me give you an example: I think that no serious and conscientious theologian can say that he understands the religiously essential meaning of the disagreement between the Catholic formula "filioque" and the Orthodox teaching on the procession of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit from the Father (and, according to the teaching of the Church Fathers, the Spirit proceeds from the Father "through the Son") – a disagreement that has caused such fierce disputes since the time of Patriarch Photius and is hardly reconcileable in view of the sanctification of the verbal formula itself for each side. On the other hand, one of the truly essential religious differences between the Eastern and Western Christian attitudes lies in the difference between the Eastern Christian consciousness of man's mystical closeness to God, his rootedness in God, the possibility of his "deification," and the Western Christian consciousness, which comes mainly from Augustine, and the Western Christian consciousness, which comes mainly from Augustine, which feels more acutely the transcendence of God. the distance separating fallen nature from God, and therefore the need for strict religious re-education of man. There is no irreconcilable disagreement at all, expressed in the harsh form of the dividing judgment "either one or the other," but there is a legitimate variety of religious types, a variety of "abodes" harmoniously compatible in the common "house of the Father." In such a life test, a completely unexpected grouping of religious trends is sometimes revealed. Thus, for all the depth of the difference in other relations between Catholicism and Calvinism, they are in solidarity with each other – against Lutheranism – in affirming the obligatory Christian formation of all aspects and spheres of human life, in the responsibility of the Church for the moral principles of worldly life, in a word, in recognizing the common idea of "theocracy." As soon as we, following the Apostle's commandment, cease to be ministers of the "letter" and become ministers of the "spirit" of the New Testament – that is, ministers of living, active truth – the hopelessness of the disagreement between fixed, rigid formulas ends for us, and quite different, lively and flexible differences begin, and thus at least the possibility of agreement on them opens up in principle.

In this connection, it is revealed that the movement of the reunification of confessions not only encounters the subjective and psychological difficulty of overcoming the differences between different traditions, sanctified by a long history, but must also reckon with the objective difficulty, namely, the need to combine conservatism in religious life, fidelity to tradition with living religious experience and creative religious thought. As has just been mentioned above, the collective power of Church Tradition, in which the memory of the great and valuable achievements of the creative epochs of the Church's life is preserved, has a tremendous systemic and pedagogical significance, especially in epochs of spiritual turmoil and religious decline. If we do not understand much in Church Tradition now, then we must first of all have a humble awareness that this may arise from our religious weakness, from the elementality of our religious thought, or from its poisoning by the prejudices of the era of unbelief and rationalism. And even the most refined and sensitive individual religious thought cannot save humanity from the fanatical onslaught of godless and demonic forces, but only (if we do not speak of the power of personal holiness) the great and powerful spiritual forces accumulated and preserved in the collective Church tradition. In the religious sphere, more than anywhere else, Goethe's wise words express the true power of conservatism are valid: "Das Wahre war schon längst gefunden, hat edle Geisterschaft verbunden, das alte Wahre, fass'es an." On the other hand, every tradition carries with it the danger of ossification and necrosis; And besides, the presence of many competing traditions in the face of different confessions simply forces a creative resolution of the essence of the disagreements between them. Thus, a reverent and careful attitude to tradition is equally necessary, because it preserves the authentic divine truth, which is sometimes inaccessible to personal experience, and the independence of creative religious thought, of living religious experience, without which we run the risk of replacing God's covenant with human tradition. Here, as elsewhere, healthy spiritual development must be a peaceful evolution, in spite of the inevitability of frequent dramatic conflicts, and not a violent uprising that breaks with the whole past at once and completely and daringly dreams of creating the fullness of truth anew, "out of nothing." [35]

From this we find another general correlation, which is often overlooked and is of essential importance in determining the ways and forms not only of the ecumenical movement, but also of the cause of the Christian revival in general. In an epoch of decadence, the Church usually forgets that the Christian construction of life is the work of the whole Church as a whole, of the entire "body of Christ" in all the fullness of its organs and functions. This construction is accomplished in particular through the opposing harmony, the concordia discors, the two eternal and indispensable organs of religious life, the "priestly" and the "prophetic" office. (Whereas I have taken the term "priesthood" in its broad sense, in which it presupposes a universal priesthood and includes a prophetic calling, I return here to the common usage in which "priesthood" is opposed to both "laity" and "prophecy.") The task of the priestly office is, first of all, the careful preservation of the holy things preserved in the church, and the inculcation of them in the members of the church; the task of the prophetic office is the search for living religious truth, as it is required by the conditions of the time and the present spiritual state of the world – attention to the voice of God as it is addressed to people at a given moment, in their given concrete situation. This prophetic office is primarily and in principle the office of the "laity," the members of the church, who actively participate in the fullness of human moral and social life and are less bound by the duty of observing tradition. If it were permissible to use a well-worn but useful term, I would say: "Christian progress" is, at least to a large extent and first of all, the work of the laity, while the work of the "priesthood" is the preservation of the sacred, which has already been attained by the Christian religious consciousness and has entered into the general use of the Church. I think that this position can be confirmed by the entire history of the Church, especially if we remember that "monasticism" as such, from the point of view of the church hierarchy of ranks, is a religious grouping of the laity. The same applies in our time to the work of Christian revival, and in particular to the work of the reunification of confessions.

The Christian revival is at its core the awakening of the prophetic consciousness, the search for God's authentic truth in the concrete conditions of life in our time. It is, therefore, primarily the work of the laity, of free Christian minds, of course, not of the "libre penseurs" in the historical sense of the word (such are, on the contrary, slave minds, fettered by all the narrowness of unbelief, and in our time, moreover, hopeless conservatives, servants of the dead tradition of the recent past), but genuinely free-thinking and believing minds. Such were, for example, the great Russian religious thinkers of the nineteenth century, or Charles Péguy in France. Drawing their inspiration from the purest sources of traditional faith, they also draw it from a responsible moral conscience, from a sensitive attention to the spiritual needs of their time. Recognizing themselves as faithful sons of the mystical Church of Christ, they find themselves in inevitable opposition to the "scribes and Pharisees," to all those who are proud of their orthodoxy, to the dead and sinful, purely human tradition of the empirical Church. If a Christian cannot be a "revolutionary" – neither in the sense of a demagogue who expects to achieve his ideal by unleashing the blind, dark, evil passions of the masses, nor in the sense of a utopian who dreams of bringing about the kingdom of truth and goodness on earth by an external political upheaval – then he, on the other hand, must be a fighter for God's truth, if necessary, against all earthly instances; he must always be ready to be a "revolutionary" on the model of Sophocles' Antigone.