The apophaticism inherent in the God-thinking of the Eastern Church is not identical with impersonal mysticism, the experience of absolute Divine non-being, in which both the human personality and the Divine Person disappear.

The limit that apophatic theology reaches, if it is possible to speak of a limit and a consummation when it is a question of ascent to the infinite, this infinite limit is not a nature or an essence; it is also not a person, it is something that transcends at the same time every concept of nature and person, it is the Trinity.

(Lossky 1991, 36) [433].

Of course, Sergius' life also had its own personal context, which providentially directed him to the idea of the Trinity – and the cry of a baby that was heard three times in church from the mother's womb, the meaning of which was by no means immediately understood, and the strange words of the mysterious elder to the parents of the boy Bartholomew: "Your son will be the abode of the Holy Trinity, and will bring many after him to the mind of the divine commandments." and the bold choice of the name of the first monastery on Makovets, referring to a dogma that was hardly clear to Bartholomew himself, and rather even to the image of the Most Holy Trinity (see above for other references to this theme in the "Life"). The very dedication of the church in the name of the Trinity before Sergius cannot be considered ordinary and accepted in Russia, as both Florensky and Bulgakov wrote. "It [dedication. — V. T.] in itself was rather an innovation and a kind of boldness, so amazing in the young humble-minded Sergius. And yet, the Life assures us with particular insistence — without any hesitation, with full determination, obeying an undoubted inner voice, St. St. Sergius: The Most Holy Name to His Church and Monastery" (Bulgakov 1991, 348). How could it happen that a young man, seemingly inexperienced in theology (in fact, it was), suddenly chooses for himself "the most sublime and important dogma of the Christian faith, but also the most mysterious and difficult both for exact expression and for speculative comprehension, a kind of glaring incongruity ensues. But St. Sergius had an experiential knowledge of the Presv. Trinity, he knew what he was doing [...]" (Bulgakov 1991, 348).

And further:

The fullness of the Church embraces all church dogmas, and, however, at different times and in different persons, one or another aspect of Christian dogma appears in the consciousness and is perceived with the greatest acuteness. And the special, deliberate gift of St. Sergius drew him to the mystery of the Holy Virgin. He made of him Her chosen servant and venerator. What did St. John see and what did he tell by his silence about this? Sergius? Isn't this question bold? "For we love as silence is more comfortable with fear", but does not love for the Monk and the desire to learn from him command us to overcome fear and gaze into the spiritual face of the Monk?

(Bulgakov 1991, 349) [434].

Further reflections on love lead to the theme of the Self – both in the pronominal linguistic space and in the existential space. The linguistic and ontological analysis of the Self leads to the essential conclusion that "the nature of the Self is conciliar, conciliarity, or polyunity, is an inalienable property of the personal Self, the hypostasis, outside of which it cannot be revealed and simply exist: when I speak, the hypostasis is spoken simultaneously by you, and we, and they. Such is the self-testimony of our spirit about its own nature: it is not one, although it is one, its unity is given only in the multiplicity of triunity, it is one-person in multiplicity, it is catholic, conciliar, and pure monohypostasis is an abstraction, nonsens" (Bulgakov 1991, 351–352).

The condensation of self-contradictions leads to that hopelessness which has no solution on the direct paths of logic. But the paradox of the Trinity, seemingly incomprehensible to the human mind and consciousness, prescribes the way to the clarification of the Trinitarian idea:

[…] man was created by God as a plurality, which is essentially reduced in relation to hypostasis to a trinity. The fullness of the image of God is revealed and realized not in a separate individual, but in the human race, a multitude, for which there is not only I, but also you, and we, and you, which is conciliar as a race and is called to love. The trinity of the hypostasis in God was reflected in creation as a multiplicity of separate, but mutually confined and connected with each other by a personal pronoun of subjects. Only God is characterized by the trihypostasis, which is incomprehensible in human nature, as a complete given, but it is contained in the fullness of the image of God, as a givenness, as the ultimate goal of likeness to God. The path of this likeness to God is love. Divine love, the eternal image of sacrificial self-denial as the force of Love, completely overcomes the boundaries of the self, makes the other self one's own self, and identifies itself with it. But the path of self-identification with the other self is the path of love and the power of love in human life. And every experience of love is this life in the other and in others, the transference of one's self into a certain you, self-identification with it in the image of triune love. But this conciliarity of love is the Church, the human race in its churchification, likeness to God, deification, which is the goal and task of human life. And this is what the Lord prays for in His high-priestly prayer, in which He defines the ultimate purpose of creation. "That all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, that they may be one in us" (John 17:21) [...]

(Bulgakov 1991, 354–355).

It is very possible that Sergius came to a similar understanding of the Trinity in other ways: I, man, love, God, the Trinity, "that all may be one", the likeness of man to God and the belittling of God for the sake of man – all these images-ideas, their chain could lead Sergius to the main meaning of the Trinity. It is hardly expedient to speak more specifically about the boundaries of Sergius' personal theology and the realization of the image and essence of the Trinity. It is important that the reduction and simplification of the Trinitarian teaching of the great Fathers of the Church was done, apparently, quite correctly, in accordance with the spirit of this idea and deep personal involvement in it. And such examples are known at different levels – from philosophical and theological numerology, which is trying to solve the paradox of unity and trinity (one is a monolithic unity that longs for the other, unity; two is a formed unity, threatened by a split of the component parts, gravitating not only to fusion, but also to oppositivity, to disintegration; three is complete and perfect fullness with an emphasis on the leading role of the center that draws everything to itself, that is not the center), to the simple ideas about the Trinity of the three elders from the most real fantasy of Leo Tolstoy in his story of the same name (1885): when the bishop unexpectedly visited a deserted island in the White Sea and met the three elders who were being saved there (they "did more and more silently, and speak little to each other"), he asked them: "How do you pray to God?" "We pray thus: three of you, three of us, have mercy on us", where "three of you" are the three Persons of the Trinity, where "three of us" are me, you, he (worshippers of the Trinity, "human", "have mercy on us" (the connection of I, you, he, the "human" with the Trinity, the "divine") [435]. 228). If you like, this Tolstoy's "three of you, three of us, have mercy on us" is also, with a given measure of simplicity and brevity, a variant of the Trinitarian teaching, or rather, a variant by which one can go further to clarify the meaning of the image of the Trinity [436].