At the end of the "Three Conversations", the participants in the conversation state that everything seems to be covered with a thin thick veil. There is a lack of complete clarity – and not only in heaven, but also in the soul. There is a certain uneasiness, and there is a foreboding in the air; And this is a sign not only that the earth has grown old and our discernment has weakened, but also that the evil power is at work. The tail of the devil brought the darkness down to the land of God. A sense of delusion is characteristic of the course of history. The preponderance of evil envelops everything in a dark veil, and our gaze cannot find true values anywhere. The earth is falling into disrepair, man is opening up more and more to sin, the mystery of meanness is at work. The Antichrist is manifested "with all power and signs and false wonders. And with all unrighteous deception" (2 Thess. 2:9-10). History, redeemed by Christ, will not accept "the love of the truth," because "God will send them an act of error, so that they will believe a lie" (2 Thess. 2:11). History follows a path that will inevitably end in universal destruction. "The drama of history," says Solovyov, "has already been played, only the epilogue remains. Of course, it can be stretched out into five acts, as in Ibsen; A lot of stupid things and chatter can be done on the world stage, but the drama has long been written, and neither the audience nor the actors are able to change anything in it." Solovyov tries to express the essence of the Antichrist in a single and very simple phrase – "all that glitters is not gold." The Antichrist has enough brilliance, but "no true power." This brilliance blinds the eye and deceives the spirit. In him is the fortress of the power of the Antichrist. It is necessary to turn anew to the study of the manifestations of the antichrist force in the historical existence of man in accordance with the requirements of Christianity in each epoch. The task of the following sections of this work is to reveal this deceptive brilliance and cunning of the Antichrist.

II Signs of the Antichrist Spirit I. SELF-LOVE

The image of the Antichrist in Solovyov's story is quite vivid. This great Russian thinker and poet tried to portray the adversary of Christ without missing the slightest detail. Among them are essential features that reflect his entire gut. An analysis of these traits and their manifestation in human life will lead us to the structure of this spirit.

Solovyov's Antichrist is not an atheist at all. "Conscious of his own great strength of spirit, he was always a convinced spiritualist, and his clear mind always showed him the truth of what he should believe in: good, God, the Messiah." But here Solovyov notes that "he believed in this, but he loved only himself." In other words, the faith of the Antichrist and love were separated. The mind and heart in the existence of this creature went in different directions. Possessing a bright mind, he could not deny God, for only a madman says that God does not exist (cf. Psalm 13:1). For every rational soul the existence of God is so obvious that it cannot deny him in any case.

And the more significant the mind, the less the danger of atheism. Among pure souls there is absolutely no inclination to atheism, even "the demons themselves believe and tremble" (James 2:19). But it is one thing to find God with your mind, and quite another to acknowledge Him with your heart and love Him.

Solovyov's Antichrist does not deny God. He believed. He even believed in the Messenger of God. But he loved only himself. Solovyov notes that the Antichrist "believed in God, but in the depths of his soul involuntarily and unconsciously preferred himself to Him" [394].

The remark is very significant. Self-love distracts the gaze from existence and turns to itself. Everything here focuses on self-cherishing. It is not surprising, therefore, that the creature, guided by self-love, quite imperceptibly rises to the very heights of existence and tries to erect its throne above the stars. Without a doubt, this elevation is only psychological. It is only a mood and only an experience. Self-love has no ontological force, and it does not liberate anyone from the realm of creation. No one becomes God by loving himself. But the gaze, turned from being and directed inward, changes the whole of human life. Selfish action is a serious turn on the path of existence. This turn causes a desire to consider oneself higher than God. And at the same time, this turn banishes creation into the ranks of pure creatures. Self-love is a turn towards non-existence.

St. Teresa of Avila said of the devil: "Poor man, he does not love!" The devil is the one who does not love. He loves neither God, nor man, nor things. And in this property lies the greatest negation of God. St. John, in his Gospel and in his epistles, tirelessly repeats that God is love and that likeness to God and participation in His being stem only from love. "He who does not love has not known God" (1 John 4:8). And on the contrary, "he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him" (4:16). The loss of love is the loss of God, the possession of love is a sign of God living in man.

Therefore, a non-loving being is excluded from the divine life: God does not live in him, and he does not live in God. It can believe in God and even tremble before His power, but without love in itself, it has no existential connection with God. For him, God is only the cause of his being, only the absolute force by the action of which it arose and by the decision of which it is maintained. However, God for him is no longer the person who would make him speak and to whom he would respond. The loss of love is the loss of the personality of God. It is a loss of connection with God. And this is the loss of religion in the deepest sense of the word, for religion is a relationship between two persons. An unloving creature does not interact with God. It only "happens" with God, just as the creature "is" with its cause. And if the devil does not love, then by this he is the greatest denial of God, even if in his mind he believes in God and trembles. But why doesn't the devil love? How did this dislike arise in demonic existence?

The devil does not love because he loves only himself. Love and self-love exclude each other. These are two forces going in opposite directions. Love is always an eruption from oneself. Whoever loves puts himself next to another, transfers himself into another, lays down his life for another. Love, in essence, is a force directed towards being. This is a look directed far from oneself. It is a sound that seeks an echo. The basis of love is the image of God in us. Being created in the image and likeness of the Lord, we ourselves incline to the other, reach out to our Original. God draws our being. By the very essence of our structure, we are turned to Him and turned away from ourselves. Our being is always looking forward. He is destined not to remain in himself, but to step over himself, to enter into the other and to be in the other, for in this deepest Other lies its source, its origin, its model. His life is won by the one who loses it, that is, gives it to the Other, because in this Other he realizes it. Our being is realized only when we "are" together; we "be" not in ourselves, but in the other, and we absorb this other into ourselves. Socialized being is the basis of creative existence and at the same time its fullness.

However, let us imagine that a free creature of its own free will closes itself in on itself, turns away from the other, and turns its gaze to itself. The force that led her to being, she turns to herself. Love turns into self-love. What happens then? Nothing but the negation of everything. Such a creature denies first of all what is near it. Self-love turns into absolute deafness in relation to the environment. A self-lover does not call anyone and does not expect a response from others. His existence becomes closed. He does not "be" together. He "is" alone in his loneliness. Everything that is next to him loses its deep meaning for him. Self-love is the force that draws back from being. This power is in itself. But since the image of the Lord guides us from itself, self-love is directly transformed into a force that destroys our likeness to God. Turning our gaze to ourselves, we encounter the opposite direction of the image of the Lord and must make a choice: either to return back to existence, or to destroy in ourselves the likeness of God. A being driven by self-cherishing chooses the second path. It leaves the image of God, leaves being, and goes into itself. It destroys the likeness of the Lord and thus becomes the opposite of God and a profound negation of Him. A person can be a real and profound atheist only when he is selfish, for self-love is the strictest negation of God, not intellectual, not theoretical, but by the very direction of his being. Self-love is complete atheism.

In the case of the devil, such a serious turn took place. By refusing to serve the Lord, desiring to rise above the stars and there raise his throne and be like the Supreme, he thereby rejected love as a force directed towards existence, and chose self-love as a force directed towards himself. He turned away from God and all other creatures created by God. Self-love cut him off from existence with others and in others and closed him in himself. The devil became the loneliest creature of all God's creatures. His own existence became a prison for him. His existence became a complete silence in relation to the Creator and to creation. The devil does not invite anyone to talk by his existence. His existence is not a dialogue, but a deep, impenetrable monologue; This is a conversation only with yourself. Self-love closed the mouth of his being to every sound outside of him. This is the reason why the devil does not love. He does not love because he has chosen a different direction of his being, opposite to God's, has destroyed the image of God in himself, has separated himself from others and has withdrawn into himself. His dislike is the natural result of his selfishness. He believes in God, for he is God's creature. And he knows this well. For him, the existence of God in itself is not in doubt. But by the direction of his being, he refutes God in such a way that any atheist could hardly refute. The devil is a complete atheist precisely because he is a complete selfish. He also knows that there are creatures of God that he hates and fights against. But by his turn from being, he also denies them, which is beyond the power of every idealist. The devil is a complete solipsist because he is a complete selfish. Self-love makes him both an atheist and a solipsist. It destroys his relationship with God and with the world, locking him in his own lonely being.

Solovyov's remark that the Antichrist "loved only himself" has an extraordinarily deep meaning. He explains why this man, who believes in goodness, God, and even in the Messiah, nevertheless became the devil's helper. His selfish choice turned him away from the Lord and directed him to someone who had also turned away from God. Between the Antichrist and the devil, selfishness created a common space in which they both met. Solovyov tells us that, although his Antichrist believed in good, "the all-seeing eye of Eternity knew that this man would bow down before the evil force." To believe in goodness means nothing else than to be open with one's mind to activity. But to bow down before the good means to become good yourself. And to become good oneself is to give oneself to another, for good is diffusivum sui: it spreads, goes out of itself, and gives itself to another. Good in man is love. To bow down before the good in the deepest sense means to love. This can be done by someone who is turned to being. But this cannot be done by a self-lover who turns to himself. That is why Solovyov's Antichrist, although he believed in good, bowed down before evil in the depths of his being, for in it he saw his own image, in it he felt the growing power of self-love, directed into himself. The worship of the Antichrist before the evil force was not a sign of his weakness, not of his passion, but a sign of the anti-divine direction of his existence. Thus he approached the devil's existence; therefore the devil chose him as his assistant in the struggle with God. Self-love became the gateway to human existence.

This is not only the case with Solovyov's Antichrist, who is only a symbol of the entire Antichrist force active in history. Every antichrist grows out of selfishness, and every selfishness is the devil's path into history. Every self-love is a turn away from Bot, a destruction of His image, a denial of His creativity, and thus a godless act. It strengthens the activity of God's opponents in the world. It leads man into the company of the beast and makes him his own there. Therefore, the struggle with self-love is not only an ascetic task, but also a deeply ontological task. The struggle with self-love is a real struggle with the Antichrist within us. It is a struggle for the image of God, for the divine direction of our existence, manifested by love, which leads us to being.