His reports at numerous conferences become the basis for articles, each of which is equal in its depth to serious theological work. Among them: "Tradition and Traditions", "Temptations of Church Consciousness", "Darkness and Light in the Knowledge of God", "St. John of Damascus and the Byzantine Teaching on Spiritual Life", "Palamite Synthesis", "Theology of the Image", "Catholic Consciousness" and many others. After the death of V. Lossky, several books were published, also compiled on the basis of his lectures: "Apophatic Theology and the Knowledge of God in the Teaching of Meister Eckhart" and "The Vision of God". Some of them were translated into Russian and appeared in different years in the publications of the Moscow Patriarchate, but the overwhelming part of the theological heritage of the outstanding Russian theologian of the 20th century has not yet reached the Russian reader.

According to Archpriest John Meyendorff, Vladimir Lossky was able to "show the West that Orthodoxy is not a historical form of Eastern Christianity, but an enduring and catholic truth."

Today the Russian Church is faced with the task of finding ways to revive a truly Christian life in Russia. We hope that the new edition of the main theological works of the remarkable Russian theologian Vladimir Nikolaevich Lossky will help our compatriots to understand how and on the basis of what experience such a life can be built.

Chapter I. Introduction. Theology and Mysticism in the Tradition of the Eastern Church

We set out here to consider some aspects of the spiritual life and experience of the Eastern Church in their connection with the basic data of the Orthodox dogmatic tradition. Thus, the term "mystical theology" in this case means an aspect of spiritual life that expresses one or another dogmatic attitude.

In a sense, all theology is mystical, since it reveals the Divine mystery given by Revelation. On the other hand, mysticism is often contrasted with theology as a realm inaccessible to knowledge, as an ineffable mystery, a hidden depth, as something that can be experienced rather than known, something that lends itself more easily to a particular experience that surpasses our powers of judgment than to any perception of our senses or our reason. If we were to accept unconditionally this conception of a sharp opposition between mysticism and theology, it would eventually lead us to the position of Bergson, who distinguishes between the static religion of the Churches - the social and conservative religion - and the dynamic religion of the mystics - the personal and the renewing religion. Was Bergson in any way right in asserting this opposition? This is a difficult question to solve, especially since the two definitions that Bergson opposes in the field of religion are based on the two "poles" of his philosophical vision of the universe - as nature and as a vital impulse. But even apart from Bergson's views, we often hear the judgment that mysticism is a domain reserved for a few, an exception to the general rule, a privilege granted to certain souls who possess the truth by experience, while all others must be content with more or less blind submission to dogmatic teaching imposed from without in the form of coercive authority. In emphasizing this contrast, one can sometimes go too far, especially if one also deviates somewhat from the historical truth; thus it is possible to oppose the mystics to the theologians, the Spirit-bearers to the Church hierarchy, and the saints to the Church. Suffice it to recall a number of passages in Harnack, Sabatier's Life of St. Francis, and other works that most often arise from the pen of Protestant historians.

Eastern tradition has never made a sharp distinction between mysticism and theology, between personal experience of the knowledge of the Divine mysteries and dogmas affirmed by the Church. The words spoken a hundred years ago by the great Orthodox theologian, Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, beautifully express precisely this position: "It is necessary that (we) should not consider any wisdom, even in secret, to be alien to us and not belonging to us, but with humility to dispose the mind to divine contemplation and the heart to heavenly sensations" [2]. In other words, the dogma which expresses the revealed truth, which seems to us to be an incomprehensible mystery, must be experienced by us in a process in which, instead of adapting it to our mode of perception, we must, on the contrary, compel ourselves to a profound change in our mind, to its inner transformation, and thus become capable of gaining mystical experience. Theology and mysticism are by no means opposed; on the contrary, they support and complement each other. The first is impossible without the second: if mystical experience is a personal manifestation of a common faith, then theology is the general expression of that which can be experienced by everyone. Without the truth preserved by the whole Church, personal experience would be devoid of all certainty, of all objectivity; it would be a mixture of the true and the false, the real and the illusory, it would be "mysticism" in the bad sense of the word. On the other hand, the teaching of the Church would have no effect on the soul of man if it did not somehow express the inner experience of the truth, given in varying "measure" to each believer. Thus, there is no Christian mysticism without theology, and, what is more important, there is no theology without mysticism. It is no accident that the tradition of the Eastern Church has retained the name "theologian" for only three spiritual writers: the first of them is St. John the Theologian, the most "mystical" of the four Evangelists, the second is St. Gregory the Theologian, the author of contemplative poems, and the third is St. Simeon, called the "New Theologian," who glorified union with God. Thus, mysticism is considered in this case as perfection, as the summit of all theology, as a theology "preeminent."

In contrast to gnosis, where knowledge in itself is the goal of the Gnostic, Christian theology is always in the final analysis only a means, only a body of knowledge that must serve an end that surpasses all knowledge. This ultimate goal is union with God or deification, of which the Eastern Fathers speak. Thus we arrive at a conclusion which may seem rather paradoxical: the Christian theory has a highly practical significance, and the more mystical this theory is, the more directly it strives towards its highest goal, union with God, the more "practical" it is.

All the complex struggle for dogmas that the Church has waged for centuries appears to us, if we look at it from a purely spiritual point of view, first of all as the tireless concern of the Church in every historical epoch to ensure that Christians have the opportunity to attain the fullness of mystical union with God. And indeed, the Church fights against the Gnostics in order to defend the very idea of deification as a universal consummation: "God became man so that man could become God." It affirms the dogma of the One-in-Essence Trinity against the Arians, for it is the Word, the Logos, that opens to us the way to union with the Godhead, and if the incarnate Word is not of the same essence as the Father, if He is not the true God, then our deification is impossible. The Church condemns the teaching of the Nestorians in order to destroy the mediastinum, with which in Christ Himself they wanted to separate man from God. It rebels against the teaching of Apollinaris and the Monophysites in order to show that since the true nature of man in its entirety was taken upon Himself by the Word, so our nature in its entirety must enter into union with God. It struggles with the Monothelites, for without the union of the two wills in Christ – the Divine will and the human will – it is impossible for man to attain deification: "God created man by His one will, but He cannot save him without the cooperation of the human will." The Church triumphs in the struggle for the veneration of icons, affirming the possibility of expressing Divine realities in matter, as a symbol and pledge of our deification. In the questions that arise successively in the future – about the Holy Spirit, about grace, about the Church herself – the dogmatic question posed by our time – the main concern of the Church and the pledge of her struggle are always the affirmation and indication of the possibility, mode and means of man's unity with God. The whole history of Christian dogma develops around one and the same mystical nucleus, which in the course of successive epochs defended itself with various kinds of weapons against a great multitude of different opponents.

The theological systems developed throughout this struggle can be seen in their most direct relation to the purpose of life, the attainment of which they were supposed to contribute, in other words, to union with God. And then they are perceived by us as the foundations of Christian spiritual life. This is exactly what we mean when we say "mystical theology." This is not "mysticism" in the proper sense of the word, that is, not the personal experience of various teachers of high spirituality. This experience remains most often inaccessible to us, even if it finds a verbal expression for itself. Indeed, what can we say about the mystical experience of the Apostle Paul: "I know a man in Christ, who fourteen years ago (whether in the body I do not know, whether out of the body I do not know: God knows) was caught up to the third heaven. And I know of such a man (only I do not know whether in the body or out of the body: God knows), that he was caught up into paradise, and heard ineffable words, which cannot be told to man" (2 Corinthians 12:2-4). To dare to pass any judgment on the nature of this experience, one would have to know more about it than the Apostle Paul himself, who confesses his ignorance: "I do not know: God knows." We resolutely distance ourselves from any psychology. Nor do we intend to expound theological systems as such, but only those theological principles which are necessary for the understanding of spiritual life, and those dogmas which are the basis of all mysticism. Here is the first definition, which is also the limitation of our topic, as "the mystical theology of the Eastern Church."

The second definition of our theme closes it, so to speak, in space. The field of our study of mystical theology will be precisely the Christian East, or, more precisely, the Eastern Orthodox Church. It must be admitted that such a restriction is somewhat artificial. Indeed, since the rupture between the Eastern and Western Churches occurred only in the middle of the eleventh century, everything that precedes it is the common and undivided treasure of the two separated parts. The Orthodox Church would not be what it is if it did not have St. Cyprian, Blessed Augustine, St. Pope Gregory the Dialogist, just as the Roman Catholic Church could not do without St. Athanasius the Great, Basil the Great, and Cyril of Alexandria. Thus, when we want to speak of the mystical theology of the Eastern or Western Church, we follow one of those two traditions, which up to a certain moment were two local traditions of the one Church, bearing witness to the one Christian truth, which only later divided and thereby gave rise to the emergence of two different and in many points irreconcilable dogmatic positions. Is it possible to judge these two traditions on neutral ground, equally alien to both? This would mean judging Christianity as non-Christians, that is, refusing to understand anything in advance about the subject of the proposed study. For objectivity does not at all consist in placing oneself outside a given object, but, on the contrary, in considering this object in it and through it. There are realms where what is commonly called "objectivity" is simply indifference, and where indifference means misunderstanding. Thus, in the present state of dogmatic disagreement between East and West, if we want to study the mystical theology of the Eastern Church, we must make a choice between two possible attitudes: either to take the side of Western dogmatics and to consider the Eastern Tradition through the prism of the Western Tradition, that is, by criticizing it, or to present the Eastern Tradition in the light of the dogmas of the Eastern Church. This last attitude is the only acceptable one for us.

Perhaps it will be objected that the dogmatic disagreement between East and West was accidental, that it was not of decisive importance, that it was rather a question of two different historical worlds, which sooner or later had to separate from each other and go their separate ways, that the dogmatic quarrel was only a pretext for finally dissolving ecclesiastical unity, which in fact had long ceased to exist. Such assertions, which are very often heard in both East and West, are due to a purely secular speculation, to the generally accepted methodical habit of considering the history of the Church without regard to its religious nature as such. For such a "historian of the Church," the religious factor disappears because it is replaced by other factors: the play of political or social interests, the role of ethnic or cultural conditions, which are taken as the decisive forces that determine the life of the Church. To speak of these factors as the true causes governing church history is considered more far-sighted and more contemporary. But every Christian historian, paying tribute to these conditions, cannot but consider them only "external" in relation to the very existence of the Church; he cannot refuse to see in the Church a certain original principle, subject to a different law, not the deterministic law of "this world." If we turn to the dogmatic question that divided East and West, to the question of the procession of the Holy Spirit, then it can in no way be spoken of as an accidental phenomenon in the history of the Church as such. From the religious point of view, it is the only real cause of the concatenation of the factors that led to the separation. Although this reason may have been due to several factors, nevertheless the dogmatic definition became for both of them a kind of spiritual obligation, a conscious choice in the field of confession of faith.