ON CONFORMING TO JESUS CHRIST, MIRACLES, SACRAMENTS, AND THE HOLY UNIVERSAL ORTHODOX CHURCH

90. Anything can be absolutely justified (Chapter II) only in duality with the Absolute. But the empirical is always separated, solitary, and disconnected. Therefore, in order to substantiate empiricism, the Incarnation of God is necessary, as the duality of the Absolute with the concretely separated or empirically individual. And such a duality in the entire imperfect world can exist only once: otherwise it is no longer "so" (§ 82). If all the moments of the world were equal, each in its own solitude, deified, their separation would remain and the perfection of the imperfect would be impossible. The Incarnation of God would simply not have happened then. By the fact that the Incarnation of God is singular, empirical gives a principle and a criterion for the justification of the concretely limited, for there is a Person who, although limited, is nevertheless absolutely justified by a special duality with God, and therefore is not only limited, but also universal. Its foundation is accomplished and comprehended through faith, i.e. entirely (§ 85, Chapter II – See the first chapter of the Gospel of John!).

Does not a new aporia arise before us here, which, however, has long awaited us? For the foundation of any empirical personality, the preeminence, singularity, and uniqueness of Jesus are necessary. But the true foundation and deification of every person requires the same unity with the All-Unified Christ as in Jesus, the namelessness of Christ. If there is only one moment of absolute significance in a disconnected world, the absolute significance of all the others, of all solitary being and knowledge, has not yet been substantiated. If there are many such moments, there is no unity, i.e., there is none. It is necessary, while preserving the uniqueness of Jesus, to affirm His real connection with all other people, which would make possible both their complete unity with Him and the separateness of each. And this means to reveal not only the meaning of the birth of Jesus from a man, the Virgin Mary, but also the meaning of His birth according to humanity from God, His "first-birth," as well as the meaning of His sonship with God through Christ Jesus.

The justification of any moment through the validity of the empirical Person of Jesus is obviously impossible, if we assume an absolute or irreconcilable separation of personalities. But it is precisely on the basis of the absolutization and exaggeration of the™ disconnected world that our new aporia arises, so characteristically expressed in modern philosophical pluralism, but in fact imaginary. The disconnection of the moments of empirical is relative; and they are separated because they are one. The Incarnation of God in Jesus does not deny this unity, but affirms and "fulfills" it, being in the disunited™ beginning of the incarnation of the All-One Christ. In Jesus begins the Divine-human event, spreading from Him in the world affirmed as the one race of God. Recognizing in Jesus the "fulfillment" of the Incarnation, we dare to affirm the validity of all empirical existence (§§ 85-87). Through Jesus, the Son of God, and in mankind begotten of the One and Reuniting God, we become sons of God by the grace of the Spirit, not figuratively, but in the most real sense of the word. Every person can justify himself by individualizing himself through his relationship with Jesus as His brother.

The Incarnation of God is a singular and therefore universal act, the focus of the temporal-spatial order (§§ 54-56). Spreading in empirical being from Jesus Christ forward and backward, it empirically actualizes the incarnation of God; However, in such a way that it ends beyond the boundaries of empiricism. Everything empirical stands in real connection with Jesus; but this connection has a different measure of reality. Believing in God, comprehending our duality with Him, recognizing ourselves as the acquired and individualized all-unity of the created world, the "microcosm" (Chapters I and III), we already confess the One Christ incarnate and incarnate in our brother Jesus. But we still "do not remember our kinship" and are only preparing for our journey to Damascus. In the same way, "before" the appearance of Jesus Christ on earth and outside the knowledge of Him, the world lives by a vague foreknowledge of Him, hope in Him, types and prophecies.

91. In an imperfect world, the relationship of the moment with the other moments of its series is concrete and primary, although this is possible only through the moments of the higher series (§§ 46 f., 54-56). It is to this sphere that the empirical personality is predominantly limited, diminished in its interrelations by both higher and lower moments, in its "upward and downward movement," which is possible only from itself as from the center. The centrality of the empirical self is a necessary condition for the existence of the personality and its knowledge, which, being a partaker of the "Knowledge" of God, is absolutely valuable in all its specificity.

In every act of our knowledge it is possible to reveal and distinguish in the abstract the types of knowledge already established above (§ 36): dialectical, historical, logical, and natural-scientific. But it is quite obvious that the preponderance of our element is historical knowledge. It is this which proceeds from the empirical personality and is most of all in the main sphere of its being. Abstract knowledge is a partaker of the knowledge of the highest moments, which in itself is no less "historical," but is given to the empirical personality in acquisition. Natural-scientific knowledge, on the other hand, is separated from personality in another sense. It diminishes the personal, lowering the sphere in which the personality is, and needs to be substantiated by the abstract. From all this, of course, it does not follow that other kinds of knowledge do not possess a special value of their own, which is equally inaccessible to historical knowledge. There are areas of existence in the cognition of which the predominance of natural-scientific and abstract methods is inevitable for the empirical personality. On the other hand, these methods are to a certain extent inseparable from the historical. But the more fully being is given to us, the more historical it is. The sphere of the most actualized being and of our predominant being is the world in its development (§§ 55, 59). The essence of cosmic life appears to us as a historical process, the Divine-human through the historical fact of the Incarnation of God. Christian metaphysics must be the Christian history of the world (see my Philosophy of History, especially §§ 13, 28, 37, 44-51).

Historical knowledge, which is the quality of historical being, is impossible without evaluation, and evaluation presupposes (§54 e.) the existence and a certain recognition of the God-man-man Person of Jesus Christ, who is at the center of the entire historical process. There are two ways to escape from this conclusion. First, you can replace Jesus with a collective person, for example, the Church, the Jewish people. But among the collective personalities that individualize the Human-Cosmos, there is a central one in each row. Its possibility and recognizability can only be substantiated by the Incarnation of God, which necessarily requires the Incarnation of God (§§ 82, 90). In addition, any collective personality is a developing concrete unity of individuals, and therefore is unrecognizable without a concretely individual God-man. The "historicism" of Judaism is the historicism of Christianity that has not been fully thought out. Secondly, one can try to understand the historical process from the beginning or, better, from the end of history. But the inadequacy of such attempts is already obvious to us (§§ 56, 59). Thus, the historical existence of the world necessarily presupposes the God-Man Jesus, who lived at a certain time and in a certain place. Without Him, there is no history. This means that without Him there are no other aspects of being and knowledge. After all, everything that exists is a historical fact, at least potentially; and it is possible to overcome the stiffness of abstract knowledge and the discontinuity of logic and natural science only if they also become historical knowledge.

Each person realizes all-unity in its special aspect. Therefore, the "life path" of a person is individual through and through; and the more individual the more perfect the personality. Just as there is no general abstract Truth, but only universal Truth, so there is no general abstract Good, but only concrete, all-one Good (§§ 19, 37, 48, 66). The moral ideal is always individually concrete: the personality always proceeds from itself, as from the center, embraces first of all its own sphere, and, as if concentrically expanding from itself, makes the world itself. It is only in the "depreciation into spirituality" – falling under abstract habits of thought and substituting ideology for idealism – that we try to distinguish between the end and the means (§§ 20, 71 f.l., 75) and to express morality in abstract formulas (§ 66).

Sinful activity (§§ 69-75) is also a misunderstanding of the nature and meaning of all human activity. It disrupts the natural movement from the center to the periphery by means of salto mortale into the void. Jesus precisely pointed out the first and last goal of man: first of all, we must seek the Kingdom of God, which is within us, and everything else will be "added," i.e., it will come by itself when necessary, it will reveal itself in the process of development. The same meaning in the advice not to worry about "tomorrow". "Today" is our sphere, in which, of course, there are also some thoughts about tomorrow, but, insofar as they are compatible with the concerns of "this day," i.e., they realize something in it, they "bear good fruit" in it as well.

The moral ideal of a person is his individual-concrete perfection, which is always not realized by him in empiricism. Empirically, the person only moves towards his ideal, never reaching it, although not only our ideal, but also our movement towards it, is justified and justified by the empirical personality and earthly life of Jesus. Through unity with Him (§ 90) we comprehend the eternal truth of our individual ideal, the meaning of our activity, our knowledge. It is not for nothing that Christianity alone is able to justify personal existence and personal life (§§ 47, 49). But for this a real unity of Jesus is also necessary, for otherwise even in Christianity there is a negation of empiricism, culture, body, matter. The real unity with Jesus is a "historical" unity, a unity in the movement towards perfection that He adores. He saves every person in all its concreteness, all that is dear and true, and the perfected fullness and perfection itself, and all the beauty of movement and flowering. In this way, the "historicism" of Christianity justifies not only the existence of the individual, but also his unity with all others and with the whole world.

92. We are in real unity with the people with whom we come into direct contact in one way or another, although through the medium of higher personalities. But no less real (though less) is our unity with those people whom we know only through the intermediary of others, according to other people's words and "impressions." (Intuitionist, think about it). In its essence, this unity is also immediate. True, by virtue of our materialistic habits, it always seems to us that we are not in the person of whom we are told, but only his "image" (§§ 26 f., 34 .e.). But such an assumption is both inconsistent and unfounded. If A, in communicating with B, is dual with him, and B in turn is dual with C, it is necessary to admit the duality of A with C. We cognize the alien in his self-personality; but sometimes it is only in itself and in us, sometimes in itself and in a third that is in us. And it should be remembered that our duality with another person ("direct" or "mediated-immediate" is all the same) cannot be only spiritual: it is always mental-bodily. All this makes the duality of each of us with Jesus somewhat clear (§ 90). We cannot empirically enter into "proper-direct" communion with Him: hear Him, see Him, touch Him; and yet our duality with Him is quite real, as "mediated-immediate." His name is not a sound for us.

Communication or the "temporary duality" of any people rests on mutual self-giving, on the dialectic of being-non-being. Next to this are special types of duality (e.g., loving, §§ 39, 70, 83). However, our duality with Jesus must be strictly distinguished from any other. An "odd" person does not look for its "complement" in Him, similar to the "complement" of an "even" person in marriage, just as a mother does not look for a marriage complement in a son, a brother in a sister or brother. An "even" person relates to Jesus through his duality or through his fullness in marriage and as a dual-married spouse (for this reason the pagan spouse is "sanctified" by the Christian spouse). A dangerous and sinful "delusion" is the understanding of the relationship of the individual to Jesus in the categories of earthly love, which is so characteristic of Catholicism, which is inclined to understand the relationship to the Mother of God in the same way, and which is the subject of psychopathology. Every "soul," being a moment of the One Church and a "daughter" or "younger sister" of the Mother of God, is a "bride" and even a "spouse" of the One Christ. But Christ is her "bridegroom" not in Jesus, who can never be (contrary to the mystical hallucinations of some medieval legends) a "rival" of the earthly bridegroom, but in her chosen one, in her brother Jesus, or in herself as a twofold one. The Holy Spirit, Who perfects every duality, binds the person to Jesus in a different way, forgetfulness of which gives rise to "delusion." — It happens that an "even" person, unable to contain his loneliness, in search of a bride or groom, turns to Jesus or the Mother of God as to the "heavenly bridegroom" or to the "heavenly bride" (instead of the Mother!). She seeks unity (not marriage) with Jesus, but unconsciously seeks unity with the unknown, unnoticed or forgotten by her "betrothed". And through weakness and foolishness it "transfers" to Jesus that which can only refer to the "betrothed," through the duality with whom it must be twofold with Jesus. Hence the blasphemous filth.

Duality with Jesus is the relationship of an odd (dual in themselves) person or Christian couple to the Holy Family (§ 84): to the Mother and the Son. The marital or individual duality is "inside" this relationship and is subordinate to it; and it is fuller and more fundamental than any other. The duality of man with Jesus uniquely and absolutely actualizes man's relationship to the All-One Christ, and through Him to all people, which is revealed in historical development (§ 91). This duality substantiates the existence of the personality, its ideal and activity, certifies the attained overcoming of sinful ultimacy and the hope for the fullness of its overcoming through death and resurrection into transfiguration. If the God-Man Jesus loves a person, giving Himself wholly to him, the one who is loved by Him cannot but be, but must be resurrected and grow to the measure of the perfect stature of Christ. This is not dialectics, but a living religious experience, in which faith is given both the divinity of Jesus and the real duality with Him. "You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. All of you who were baptized into Christ have put on Christ" (Gal. III, 26 el.; cf. I Cor. XV, 12 el.; Rome. VI, 8; Stake. II, 10 el. and III, 3 el.). Of course, we can all become Christ only by grace. But "by grace" does not mean "in the likeness." God "in essence" is not so different from the "Divine by grace" that the latter is outside of God, but in such a way that God's is Divine from time immemorial, and "Divine by grace" is Divinely secondary: as an infinite and deified creature.