In our soulfulness we observe a constant and uninterrupted transition of the "non-religious" into the actually religious; and thus it itself reveals the former as "potentially-religious" or "yet-non-religious." Any thought, any volition and feeling can also be experienced in relation to God, can become religious: it can expand, be enriched, transformed, while remaining fully self. And when the moment of my soulfulness becomes actual-religious, it is not joined by some common quality that is the same for all moments; but he himself becomes religious. If it is destroyed, the religious in its given specificity will also be destroyed, since there is no abstract religious. The moment is different, but it is not done either; is transformed, but also remains the same. It is wholly actualized into the religious, although it would suffice for us to show that in it at least something, while remaining itself, becomes religious. It may be pointed out to us that in its religious transformation the moment loses something. Even if so, he may not lose anything. But it is impossible to consider soulfulness in terms applicable only to a spatially separated world, to add and subtract from each other the moments of soulfulness. In soulfulness, loss is a diminution and imperfection, not at all analogous to the taking away of a part of a material object. Diminished or not diminished, the moment in its religious actualization nevertheless remains itself. Otherwise, it is pointless to talk about its actualization. "At first it was "non-religious", then it became religious. Consequently, "non-religiosity" is nothing but potential religiosity or "yet-not-religiosity", a lack of it.

There is no distinction between "non-religious" and "religious" like the distinction between two "essences" or originalities. There is only a distinction between the actual and the potentially religious, i.e., the insufficiently religious; and the absolutely-non-religious is that which does not exist at all. Religiosity is not the specificity of being, but being itself, a degree greater than non-religiosity. And if we say: "At first the moment was non-religious, then it became religious," it means: "At first the moment was not or was not enough, and then it became." Such an understanding does not at all compel us to abandon the very convenient and useful distinction between the "religious" and the "non-religious," although we prefer to speak of the religious, the religious, the more or less religious. The final basis of our assertion lies in our understanding of the Godhead, which is clarified only later. And in connection with this clarification we will be able to solve another problem that naturally arises before us: "how is the specificity of that which is only the insufficiency of being possible?" as already stated (§ 4), by his own business. Being potentially religious, it was nothing in its religious quality or in its self-manifestation, absolute nothing, and nothing can come out of nothing. Hence, it is necessary to admit a kind of "primacy" and greater reality of the actuality of the moment (i.e., of the moment itself as religious-actual) in relation to its religious potentiality (i.e., to itself as potential-religious). And this will be nothing more than a new expression of the fact that the actuality of religiosity is being, and its potentiality is the lack of being.

A religiously actual moment is a greater fullness of reality than the same moment as actualizing or becoming. Nevertheless, becoming itself in its specificity (i.e., the moment itself as actualizing) is a reality, and moreover it is not contained in actuality, since actuality is already established. If so, then the reality must also be the potentiality of the moment, without which there is no becoming, and which is in each of its moments. Non-existence must be some kind of being! We still have before us the task of resolving this new aporia implicitly given in the basic religious aporia. For the moment we will only note that in connection with it, potentiality is being only in becoming, and not in itself and in itself.

Thus we come to understand the religious moment (and every moment is religious) as the unity of its actuality, becoming, and potentiality, how, to use Nicholas of Cusa's term, "p o ss-e-s t," neither actuality, nor potentiality, nor becoming, exist separately from each other, but are moments of the moment. Let us call the moment M, the potentiality of him or him as a potential is p, the becoming is /, the actuality is a. Then 1) M = p + f + a, 2) M = a, M = p, M = f; but 3) and not = p, not = f, f not = p. This will be the formula of the trinity. Let us explain it as follows. "At first" the moment is its full potentiality, i.e., "at first" it does not exist at all. "Then" it continuously becomes or actualizes from non-being into the fullness of its being, being as it were a mixture of non-being (potentiality) with being (actuality) and the movement from the first to the second, as a being of a special kind. "Finally," the moment ceases to be becoming and is its fullness or actuality, which is inconceivable only as containing both potentiality and becoming. But our "first," "then," and "finally" are only auxiliary concepts, expressing in the language of temporality that which is above time, although it contains it in itself. Let us discard them, and we have the concept of the Trinity that we need (cf. § 4).

The triune moment is not yet a perfect moment. Although we think of its actuality as containing its potentiality and its becoming, we really distinguish becoming from actuality. The moment really becomes from potentiality to actuality, grows, perfects. In his becoming he is poorer than himself in his actuality, but in his potentiality he is completely insignificant, he is not. Becoming is contained in actuality; but there is no actuality in becoming, although it can exist only if there is actuality and if it is itself in actuality. Obviously, the moment is insufficient in its entirety. And the problem becomes even more acute when we turn from general reasoning to empirical reality. In our experience we are given a becoming which contains in itself neither actuality nor potentiality, and they themselves are given in an extreme impoverishment of™ them. Empirically, we know becoming (in the fullness of its specificity?) and impoverished actuality and potentiality. Everything that exists empirically can and does come only from actuality, which is completeness and perfection. Otherwise, the becoming of the moment is inexplicable, just as self-emergence in general is inexplicable. In order for any moment of empiricism to be possible and to exist, in order for it to become possible from potentiality-non-being to actuality-being, it is necessary to "pre-exist" the perfection of the moment and the diminution of this perfection into potentiality-non-being, which becomes fullness or is perfected in it. But how is the fall of perfection possible?

6. It is clear and does not require special proof that the conclusions we have reached in § 5 are applicable not only to the moment of man's being, but to his whole being, to man as a whole. His whole being is religious (potential or actual). Everything in us is in a certain opposition to God and in a certain unity with Him, although it is necessary to distinguish the recognizable religious from the unidentifiable religious, becoming from non-existence from being established in being. Thus we come to the recognition of man as triune in his potentiality (non-being) — becoming — actuality (being) and to the problem of the relationship of imperfect man to his own perfection.

In the most general terms, we have so far clarified the basic religious aporia to which the analysis of the religious act has led us. We must recognize the duality of God with man. At the same time, we must distinguish between the perfect man and his own imperfect, which confronts us with a problem that is still insoluble for us: how is the imperfection of perfection possible?

In any case, it is obvious that it is impossible to get out of the aporia of the Divine-human duality either by denying unity or by denying dualism, but it is necessary to accept this aporia in its entirety. The attempt to deny unity leads, as we have already seen (§ 4), to insurmountable difficulties and bad metaphysics. The denial of unity or the affirmation of absolute and unique dualism gives a dualistic religious concept, the varieties of which are monotheism, pure dualism and polytheism with a clear tendency of the first and third to the second. Particular cases of pure dualism are Arianism, Omiyanism, and Omiusianism. But dualism in its consistent development inevitably degenerates into religious representationism, skepticism, and atheism, which is also noticeable in the secularization of the religious idea by European philosophy.

On the other hand, the denial of dualism or the affirmation of an absolute and unique, and therefore indifferent, unity does not provide a satisfactory way out of the religious aporia either. A pantheistic conception is inevitable here, which manifests itself in two types. The first is characterized by the dominance of the idea of perfection, by virtue of which the existence of man and the world, of everything empirical or imperfect, is denied or recognized as illusory. This type is most clearly expressed in the Hindu religious-philosophical worldview. The second, Germanic type of pantheism, on the contrary, puts forward the meaning of man, absolutizing empiricism and debunking the Deity. It reveals a natural inner affinity for dualism.

The only possible and correct way is to accept the aporia in its entirety, i.e., to recognize the divine-human duality as the initial and supreme religious fact.

This Christian conception presupposes no less dualism than the most consistent dualistic system, and the unity of man with God, no less real and no less than in the most consistent pantheism.

7. God is all that exists and the only being, and therefore is "God without man." But man and God are absolutely opposed to each other, and man exists. Therefore, God is both man and the perfect unity of God and man. From His uniqueness and fullness, which contains everything in Himself, from His perfection, God is reduced to Self-destruction, to absolute non-existence, so that man may exist and be perfected into God. By His self-destruction God makes man's existence possible, and by His belittling He makes his perfection and the fullness of his deification. And man, through his perfection and deification, "restores" the God who is perishing and perishing in him, or God restores Himself in man through the belittling and annihilation of Himself. Man who comes into being is God, who belittles himself. Man, who has perfected and perfected himself to the fullness of being, which is the fullness of non-being, is God, Who has restored Himself from His free non-existence. But man is always and in everything not God, just as God is always and in everything not man. There is no man, for there is God; and there is man, for there is no God, although there is always a God who transcends being and non-being. And "when" man is fully there, there is no longer man, for then he has become God, and God is without man. But there is also man, for he has always been, is, and will be in the God-Man and in God, in a God higher than we are able to conceive, when we limit Him to our imaginary originality.

God is in perfect duality with me, with all that is mine and in me. But He is in the same duality with all other people. Consequently, through Him and in Him I am also dual with each of them. And thus my duality with God is revealed to me as one of the moments of His unity with all people, the Divine-human All-Unity. We arrive at this All-Unity in every attempt to cognize being and knowledge. But the All-Unity that opposes God is not limited to humanity: it is all of humanity and the cosmos that is universal with mankind and in humanity, the created universal Adam.

In all-unity with God are all people, both those who exist now and those who have died and those who have not yet been born, everything that ever and anywhere exists. And I, for myself, transient, constantly dying, in the unity of mankind, in God and for God, do not die, for He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. In God I transcend space and time, I abide everywhere and always, where and when I was, I am and will be, dying I do not die, becoming a new being — I have always already been and am it, I am resurrected dead. If there is all-unity, it is all-spatial and all-temporal, although it is reduced to spatiality and temporality. But if it is diminished in them, it is replenished.