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.

My words are incomprehensible and obscure. "Wait: they will be cleared up later, and forgive me my ineptitude and haste, but do not accuse me of incoherence and mistakes. Think better how high our goal is! "We raise God from the abyss of non-existence, save Him from destruction, restore Him, return ourselves to Him, so that He may be again. With every deed, with every thought, we do the work of God, we build up the beautiful Body of Christ. It seems impossible to you. "But we live, act, and think by the power of God, and what is impossible for men is possible for God. Are you afraid that this is not enough for us? Are you afraid that without threats and lashes we will not build up the Body of God? Remember, then, that Christ suffers, that God in Him suffers and awaits our work, languishing in the twilight of a half-existence. Of course, He does not need our help, for even in His non-existence He does not cease to be. Of course, we restore Him by His own power, and in Him we have already done all that we still have to do. But He is both waiting for our help and suffering. For what we have already accomplished in Him is what we are now doing and what we will still do. If my words still seem to you impious and destroy the meaning of your activity, then it is better to think in the old way for the time being, for you have not yet understood my words and the Truth in your naïve thoughts is even closer to you.

8. God is not this, not another, not a third... He is nothing that exists, the Detached. But He is not so detached that this, the other, the third... was something outside of Him. He is so Detached that everything in Him and everything is Him, i.e. He is not Detached at all. God is the non-Definite, the non-Conditioned; but not in such a way that there is no definite or conditioned definition and conditioning in Him. He is the best, but it is not that He is among other things, although He is the best, and it is not that there is anything outside of Him. Therefore He is neither the Indeterminate nor the Best. Whichever of God's names we take, each in its imperfection reveals God's ineffable perfection, which cannot be called perfection. The more God's names we pronounce, the deeper we delve into each of them, the farther God is from our understanding and the closer we are to Him. Thus we reach the limits of thought and thought, comprehension and comprehension; and only then do we begin to commune with God, not thinking His thoughts or comprehending Him. Everything is spinning on an unattainable height, and everything is whirling unshakable. And something is revealed about which nothing can be said, but in which everything is the basis of everything, in which everything arises, in which everything is and nothing is. It's all and nothing. You think and comprehend, and suddenly you feel that you are comprehension, and then that comprehension wavers, floats, melts, and in it you perish, sink into nothingness; but nothing is the fullness of everything. Your comprehension floats and melts, and in it you melt. But you melt and dissolve into something, and this "something" is fullness. And are you melting? Does not Fullness itself dissolve in Itself, perish and blossom with Fullness, glimmering in you for a moment?

The concept of absolute or unconditioned is relative to the concept of relative or conditioned. The absolute is that which does not depend on the relative, known or thought by us, in particular on ourselves. Consequently, the Absolute must be the only thing, and therefore all that is and can be, i.e., by us. But by its very conception the Absolute depends on the relative and, consequently, is not absolute. We think of the Absolute in His relation to us; we think of the Unconditioned as conditioning us, and therefore conditioned by us. And it is no longer unconditional, not absolute.

Thus, in trying to know the Absolute, we discover in the depths of Him or above Him something which can no longer be called the Absolute, for it is higher than the Absolute. It is the Incomprehensible and the Ineffable, outside of which there is nothing, and which therefore we are, for we still exist. But when we identify ourselves with the Absolute in the Incomprehensible, we immediately see that we ourselves (and, therefore, the Absolute) are something incomplete, only striving towards the ideal, only becoming it, perfecting itself in it, and conditioned by it. In the Incomprehensible itself we find insufficiency, and the insufficiency is twofold. It is (1) separation into the perfect and the imperfect or incomplete, and (2) separation from the self and the other (us). Without the elimination or overcoming of the second, the separated cannot™ be eliminated or overcome by the first. Apparently, we are unable to eliminate the second. We can, however, say that on the threshold of Incomprehensibility we disappear. But we were, we are only disappearing, and therefore we must be in the Incomprehensible, for what is in us is always in Him.

Disunity is possible only if there is a dissociable or primordial unity. Therefore, the Incomprehensible is not only disunity, but also 1) the unity of Self as perfect with Itself as imperfect and 2) the unity of Self with the "other" (with us). Contemplating God from us (from the other), we see Him perfecting, becoming. But how is it possible in the Incomprehensible, and more than in the Absolute, of self-formation and self-perfection without diminishment? And how is diminution possible without primordial perfection? And the primordial perfection — how can It be diminished?

The incomprehensible is not outside the Absolute, not above Him, and does not exclude Him from Himself; It contains Him in Itself, and therefore contains in Itself both the relative (and us). Thinking of the Incomprehensible as the Absolute (It is the Absolute), we think of Him in relation to His relation to the other, conditioned by Him, i.e., to us, we think of Him in a different definite way, i.e., no longer absolutely. And yet we comprehend the Incomprehensible as truly the Absolute, i.e., without relation to anything. And therefore we think of the Incomprehensible as conditioning and, consequently, conditioned, that we also think of Him as truly Unconditioned. And therefore we are able to think of Him as truly Unconditional, that we think of Him as conditioned. The incomprehensible and confronts the relative (us) as the Conditioner and is one with the relative, transcending opposition but not denying it. Only by virtue of this can we think of the difference between the relative and the Absolute (§ 1), we have knowledge of the True God and knowledge in general.

In the words of Anselm of Canterbury, the Deity is "ens quo maius cogitari nequit," i.e., the Most Perfect. But He is not the Most Perfect in the sense of opposition to that which is diminished and perfected. It contains in Itself both the perfect and the diminishing-perfecting. The most perfect must be all, and outside of Him there can be nothing, there can not even be a difference between Him and the other. If there were something outside of Him, it would not be the Most Perfect. But then it would contain Him in itself something that still contains something else; and this something would be the Most Perfect. Outside of the Most Perfect, it is impossible to conceive not only something qualitatively different, but even something that only "repeats" Him. Everything is only God, and there is nothing but God. Apart from God, there is only "pitch darkness," absolute nothingness. And God is the perfect all-unity of Himself and the other, the relative, which is really opposed to Him.