The general definition of the human soul gives St. John of Damascus(“Exact statement ...”, book 2, ch. 12): « Soul there is a living essence, simple and incorporeal, not visible by nature to bodily eyes, immortal, endowed with reason and mind, having no definite figure or form. It acts with the help of the organic body and gives it life, growth, feelings and the power of birth.Mind , orspirit , belongs to the soul, not as something different from itself, but as the purest part of it. The soul is a free being, possessing the ability to will and act. It is subject to change at will.

Properties of the soul: independence of the soul, spirituality of the soul, reasonableness of the soul, freedom, immortality.

Independence. Property independence means that the soul is a special substance that is different from the body, and is not just a certain phenomenon or a set of phenomena that are the product of a person's higher nervous activity; is not a form of highly organized matter.

Spirituality . Holy Scripture speaks of the spirituality of the soul, and the very words "spirit", "soul" in relation to the human soul in the Holy. Scriptures are interchangeable: "The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak"(Mark 14:38). "Just as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead"(James 2:26). Rev. Maxim the Confessor speaks of the spirituality of the soul in the sense of its insubstantiality, its difference from everything corporeal: “If any addition and decomposition is appropriate only in bodies, then the soul is not a body, since it does not participate in anything like that. As an image of the mental, we call it mental; but as an image of the immortal, incorruptible and invisible, we recognize these qualities in it, as an image incorporeal and incorruptible, i.e. alien to any materiality.

Intelligence and Consciousness

Independence is manifested, first of all, in the ability of self-consciousness, i.e. in the ability to distinguish oneself from one's body, from the visible world and from the content of one's own life. It is thanks to this ability of the human soul that such an action as repentance is possible for a person, because repentance is based on a person's awareness of the non-identity of himself and his actions. It is on this ability of self-consciousness in the Holy. The Scriptures are based on repeated calls to examine oneself: "Let a man test himself"(1 Corinthians 11:28-31), "Test yourselves to see if you are in the faith"(2 Cor. 13:5).

Rationality is expressed in the ability of rational knowledge and in the ability of religious knowledge, as well as in the gift of the word, the ability of articulate speech.

Immortality. The soul is a simple and uncomplicated being, and that which is simple and uncomplicated is that which is not composed of various elements, cannot be destroyed, disintegrate into constituent parts. AT New Testament belief in the immortality of the human soul is expressed quite clearly.

Concerning Old Testament, there is no such clarity. In the Old Testament, the doctrine of the immortality of the soul did not have the same significance as in the New Testament, it did not constitute the center of religious life - the main religious experiences of the Old Testament man were not connected with it. In the early Old Testament era, there was no positive teaching about the immortality of the soul. Immortality was conceived as the stay of the soul in Sheol, a kind of Greek kingdom of shadows, where the soul drags out a sad existence on the verge between existence and non-existence.. But nonetheless, the idea of ​​immortality is quite clearly expressed both in the Old Testament as a whole and in Moses. For example, in the Pentateuch of Moses, the death of a person is repeatedly referred to as "application to his people"(Gen. 25, 8-9; 35, 29, etc.). Thus, it is implied that there is a place in the world where the souls of people who belonged to this people reside. The Old Testament patriarchs called themselves wanderers or strangers on earth, thereby, as it were, indicating that human existence is not limited to the limits of earthly life.. Finally, in the Old Testament, including Moses, God is called the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, moreover, it is called after all these patriarchs died. The words of the Savior (Matt. 22, 32) - "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living"- mean that the patriarchs did not disappear without a trace, and with God they continue to exist. The belief in the immortality of the soul is most explicitly expressed by Moses in Gen. 37, 35. These are the words of Patriarch Jacob after he learns of Joseph's death: "I will go down in sorrow to my son in the underworld." The subsequent Old Testament authors believe in immortality, in the preservation of the existence of the human soul after death, is undeniable. In 1 Kings. 28 Saul invokes the spirit of the prophet Samuel; in Proverbs. 21, 16: "A person who has strayed from the path of reason will settle in the assembly of the dead." Other places can be cited, for example, Is. 38, 17 or Ps. 88 48-49. In some words of the Old Testament, one can catch hints of the unequal posthumous reward, for example, Ps. 48:11-16.

freedom . In the textbooks of dogmatic theology, among the properties of the human soul, such a property as freedom is usually indicated. However, freedom cannot be regarded as a property of the soul alone. If, for example, rationality is a property that belongs only to the soul, has its basis in the soul, but not in the body, then freedom is something that belongs not only to the soul, but to man as such. Rather, it is not a characteristic of the soul, but of a person consisting of a soul and a body.

Freedom can be spoken of in two senses: on the one hand, freedom of formal or psychological , and about moral or spiritual freedom, on the other . Orthodox anthropology distinguishes Man has two wills: physical will as the ability to desire and act for the satisfaction of desire, and gnomic will as the ability to self-determine in relation to the desires of one's nature, i.e. choose some desires and reject others.

Formal (psychological) freedom- this is the ability to direct one's will, activity to one or another object, to choose one or another path, to give preference to one or another motivation for activity. Many of the commandments of St. Scriptures. Deut. 30, 15: “Behold, today I have offered you life and good, death and evil.” And then it is said about the need to make a choice between these proposed beginnings. AT Is. 1, 19-20: “If you want and listen, you will eat the good of the earth. If you renounce and persist, the sword will devour you.” This formal freedom is preserved in man even after the fall; it is preserved even in hell. By itself, formal freedom is not at all a sign of perfection. Rather, on the contrary, it testifies to some imperfection, since God does not have a gnomic will, because. does not have to choose from different possibilities. Any choice is always associated with some imperfection: ignorance, doubt, hesitation - and God always perfectly knows His goals and means to achieve them. Therefore, God is a completely free Being. He is free in the sense that He is always what He wants to be and always acts in the way He wants to be; nothing hinders Him, no necessity, either internal or external, satisfies Him. Such freedom is called moral, spiritual freedom. By itself, the ability to choose does not yet make a person free, because a person's desires and his capabilities do not always coincide. A person often desires what he cannot achieve, and, conversely, is often forced to do what he does not want to do. Most clearly in St. Scripture expresses this idea in Rome. 7, 19-23: “The good that I want, I do not do, the evil that I do not want, I do.” Therefore, the path to true freedom lies through liberation from the tyranny of sin and from the power of natural limitation, which, in itself, is not a sin, is a consequence of the fall. The need to strive for such freedom is much spoken of in the New Testament. Savior He speaks: “If you continue in My word, then you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free”(John 8:31-32). "Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin... If the Son sets you free, then you will be truly free"(John 8:34-36). The Apostle Paul says: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death"(Rom. 8:2) and exclaims: “Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom!”(2 Cor. 3:17). In other words, through communion with the Divine, through union with God, a person joins the freedom that God possesses, and he himself gains freedom, freeing himself from the power of sin and from natural necessity.

People have always wondered: what awaits a person at the end of his earthly life? The fact is that a person is unable to believe that he will someday cease to exist completely. In addition, if life is given for the sake of death, then why is it needed at all?

All these doubts were resolved with the coming of Christ to earth. He announced through his Resurrection the possibility of eternal life. To do this, through repentance and atonement for sin, restore the broken relationship of man with God.

Philosophical proofs of the immortality of the soul only supplement the theological ones.

The immortality of the soul is a philosophical and religious concept that states that the personal inner self of a person is not destroyed simultaneously with the death of the body. According to it, the Personality of a person, or his soul, continues to exist in a different form. This idea is shared by almost all world religions, including Christianity.

Philosophical and mystical currents also adhere to this concept. Separately, it is necessary to highlight the spiritualistic schools, which say that the human spirit is an original substance. Spiritualists claim that after the death of the body it is not destroyed and continues to exist in a different hypostasis.

Many thinkers have pointed out that the idea of ​​immortality is natural to the human spirit. Socrates, Plato, Descartes, Pascal spoke about this. This circumstance indicates that the idea of ​​the immortality of the soul arose in the process of the formation of the religious consciousness of man.

That is why belief in immortality is an integral part of almost all known world religions. Philosophical schools also pay much attention to it.

Christianity says that the existing union of God with man cannot be destroyed after his death.

This eternal union and therefore it is the strongest conviction of religion. Without him, she does not exist.

Religious evidence that a person's soul continues to exist after death is based on the property of the Personality of Godhead. It is goodness, justice and omnipotence. Philosophical evidence is derived from the natural properties of the human soul itself.

The moral ones are contained in our moral consciousness, while the historical ones are derived from the history of mankind.

The believer considers theological evidence to be the most important. The main of these proofs is the following: God is a living person. She has such qualities as omnipotence, all-goodness, unconditional justice.

Thus, if there is a God, then there is the immortality of the soul. Philosophical proofs come to the aid of a believing person only when he comes across theories that deny a personal God. This is pantheism, materialism, atheism.

The Resurrection of Christ shook the whole building of ancient metaphysics

The answer to the question: why the soul is immortal, philosophical thought has always been looking for. At the same time, philosophers started from the postulate that there is an irreconcilable difference between matter and reality.

It is the unborn that can be immortal, and everything else in time has a beginning and an end. Speaking of man, philosophers argue that the human body belongs to the material world, and the soul to the world of reality or ideas.

The Greek philosopher Aristotle recognized the immortality of the soul.

The following philosophers directly recognized the immortality of the human soul:

• Aristotle.
• Plato.
• Zeno of China.
• I. Kant.

The body is material, therefore it is mortal.

The body is material, therefore it is mortal. The soul is not born, not created, and therefore belongs to the world of ideas. It is unchanging and beginningless and therefore has no connection with perishable phenomena. This statement is typical, for example, for the Stoics.

They said: "the soul is a spark of the universal soul and, therefore, is immortal, unchanging and unborn." The founder of Stoicism was Zeno of Kitia, who lived around 336-264 BC.

The Greek philosopher Plato developed the doctrine of the immortality of the soul.

The great Greek philosopher Plato in his "Dialogues" created and developed the doctrine of the mortal body and the immortal soul. In addition, he gave four proofs of this. In the dialogue "Phaedra" there are such lines: "Clearly, Socrates: the soul is similar to the divine, and the body to the mortal."

According to Plato's philosophy, the human soul comes from the world of ideas, and the body is the dungeon of the soul. Since the soul is immaterial, being in a material body, it suffers.

Another great ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus argued that only the atoms that make up all living bodies can be immortal. As for the philosophers of the materialistic school, they do not recognize the immortality of the soul. M. Montaigne noted: “that only God and religion promise us immortality. Neither nature nor our mind speaks of this."

To summarize, it can be noted that for philosophy, the doctrine that the human soul is immortal consists of three postulates:

• First: the soul is not born, therefore it belongs to the world of ideas and therefore is not created.
• Second: the human soul is valued more than the body, since the body is the result of falling and smoldering. The material body, according to ancient philosophers, keeps the soul in prison and does not allow it to return to the world from which it came out. This statement is the basis for numerous sects and heresies that call for the destruction of the human body. Christians, on the other hand, consider the body of a person to be the Temple of God, since a person was created in His image and likeness.
• As for the third postulate, it denies the possibility of the resurrection of the body. If we know which of the philosophers recognized the immortality of the human soul, then we cannot give examples when philosophers would talk about the resurrection of the human body. That is why, despite the ridicule of the Apostle Peter in the Areopagus, his statement about the Resurrection of Christ shook the whole building of the metaphysics of Antiquity.

In Orthodoxy there are four concepts of immortality

In the Bible and the works of theologians, the word "immortality" occurs, and this concept is different from its understanding in philosophy. In total, in Christianity there are four options for deciphering this concept:

• concerning the immortality of God;
• regarding immortality by grace;
• about spiritual death.

The first interpretation of the term refers to the immortality of God. Only He can be absolutely immortal, because He is eternal and beyond the limits of time. The Apostle Paul speaks of Christ "the only one who has immortality, who dwells in unapproachable light" (1 Tim. 6:16).

Orthodoxy has four proofs of the immortality of the soul.

there is evidence of the immortality of the soul in Orthodoxy

The second meaning is closely related to such a concept as immortality by grace. This means that the human body is mortal, because everything that has a beginning has an end. The human soul, created by God, has no end, since He makes it immortal, granting it grace.

After the death of the human body, she does not die, as she is waiting for the Second Coming of Christ. She must enter a resurrected human body in order to whole person lived forever.

The third meaning concerns spiritual death. The soul exists in the human body, but at the same time it lives in God, as it is united with the grace of God. The souls of sinners do not die, but are deprived of the Grace of God. This is the spiritual death that comes as a result of sin and the absence of God's Grace.

The fourth concept of immortality in Christianity is the immortality of the soul and body of a person after his communion with the Resurrection of Christ. Its meaning is that the resurrected righteous will forever live a paradise life through constant communion with God. Sinners will also live forever, but will lose the Sacrament through their sin.

The soul of sinners is separated from God's Grace if they do not atone for their sin.

If we talk about the difference in views on the immortality of the human soul of philosophy and religion, then the Orthodox believe that the immortal soul was created by God. She is immortal not by nature, but because God gave her such Grace.

At the same time, Christians do not give preference to either the soul or the body, since after the Resurrection of Christ, both the body and the soul of a person will gain the opportunity to resurrect.

Orthodox believe that after the death of the body, the human soul does not die.

Ancient philosophy and the heresy of the Gnostics seriously influenced the Ancient Church. The result was a heresy that claimed that the human soul is mortal. Heretics believed that it was similar to the soul of animals and therefore could disappear after the death of the body. They denied the presence of God's Grace in the human soul.

Despite the fact that in Holy Scripture there is no definite and clear description of the question of the immortality of the soul; in many places it says that, by the will of God, the human soul lives forever. This is the departure of the soul to God, for it is said:

(Eccl. 12:7)

“... the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it”

Naturally, that is why it is impossible to compare the soul of man and the soul of an animal. The soul of an animal has no essence, but only energy. Because of this, she has neither spirit nor mind. They allow you to revive the body connected to it.

In addition, there is such a kind of heresy as the assertion that the human souls of the dead sleep. This heresy is also condemned by the Christian Church. The fact is that after the death of a person, the soul does not sleep, but lives a full life in heaven or hell.

By the way, Christ also descended into hell in order to bring Adam out of it and thereby atone for the original sin of mankind. The souls of the dead are waiting for the connection with the body, after His second coming, and only then will a person live forever both in body and spirit. This is the main position in the Christian doctrine of the immortality of the soul.

The dissertation of John Romanidis sparked heated debate over heretical teachings

In the 1950s, Archpriest John Romanidis presented his doctoral thesis for defense at the faculty of the University of Athens. The dissertation, among other things, contained theses concerning the immortality of the soul. They were concentrated in a chapter called "The Destiny of Man."

It is an integral part of Father John's dissertation. The main issue of the research work is the question of the deification of man in Western culture and the church. The Western branch of the Christian Church, in his opinion, is essentially at odds with the Eastern branch. It brings man to the fore, not God.

This year, Father John Romanidis wrote a dissertation that sharpened the issue of the immortality of the soul

In his work, Father John spoke about the fact that the immortality of the human soul is possible through the Grace of God. By this he drew a line between the philosophical and theological views on this issue. The dissertation was rejected by Western theologians, brought up in the scholastic tradition of the West.

For such people, this view of this problem has become some kind of new teaching. Thus, Father John Romanidis was able to confirm with his dissertation the fact that Orthodox Greek theology was captivated by Western theology. The views of the eastern and western branches of Orthodoxy do not coincide on many things.

Father John revealed that Western theologians have a perverted idea of ​​God and his energies. In addition, they also incorrectly answer the question: is the soul immortal.

The author, in his dissertation, said that the Holy Fathers did not write about the material issues of the existence of the soul, but about its involvement or non-participation in divine energy. At the same time, he referred to the works of the martyr Justin the Philosopher and the holy martyr Irenaeus of Lyon.

They talked about the fact that man, created by God, has a body, soul and spirit. The Spirit is the Grace of God. Man has lost the Grace of God because of original sin. That is why sinners are deprived of Grace. The righteous receive it through repentance and prayer.

Views on the immortality of the soul of philosophers and the Church should not be confused

Summing up the question of the attitude towards the immortality of the soul in Orthodoxy, three main conclusions can be drawn:

1. By nature, only the Lord God is immortal.. He is Self-life. Angels and people were created by Him. That is why they themselves and their souls have a beginning.
2. The human soul is immortal, because the Lord God so willed. This is a fundamental difference from the philosophical concepts of Antiquity, which claim that the soul itself is immortal by nature.
3. Spiritual death is the separation of a person from the Grace of God. That is why the soul cannot die, but it can become spiritually dead if during life a person commits a sin that deprives him of God's Grace and does not repent of it.

In Christianity, there are three main postulates about the immortality of the soul.

The Bible says that a person must be perfect, as the Heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48).

This ideal was left to humanity by the Savior.

Only by cleansing oneself from sin through repentance and prayer, one can ensure that the Grace of God stays with a person forever. This is the true immortality of the soul, from the point of view of an Orthodox Christian.

I must admit, I made a startling discovery: our quite legitimate and normal desire to know nature and essence, to know whether the soul exists apart from the body and whether it really lives after the earthly shell of man is destroyed, this seemingly innocent desire gives us enemies , adversaries who expend incredible efforts in order to erect thousands and thousands of obstacles in the way of free and independent research in order to stop them at any cost and put an end to the search for truth!

Now we will try to consider the problem of interest to us ...

“Research into the nature and essence of the human soul, as well as the possibility of its existence, should be carried out according to the same method and according to the same system as any other scientific research, that is, without prejudice, without prejudice, without taking into account the influence of any feelings or religious beliefs. .

Can the spirit of the dead be alive? That's the question! And I declare that it can and is! Since the "Journal" drew general attention to the question of the immortality of the soul, which worried the best minds for centuries, I want to offer one story, which for me was the best proof of the immortality of the soul.

Let's move on to the presentation of the facts ... It happened with the owner of two factories, one of which was located in Glasgow, and the second - in London. In his service in Scotland was a young man named Robert Mackenzie, who felt a deep gratitude to the owner for having taken part in his fate. It should be noted that the patron usually lived in London, and in Glasgow he was only on business trips.

One Friday evening the workers of Glasgow had their annual feast, with copious feasts, music and dancing. Robert McKenzie, who had no taste for dancing, asked to be allowed to help behind the bar and serve food and drinks. Everything went pretty well, the holiday continued on the second day, on Saturday. And on Tuesday, at about 8 o'clock in the morning, the spirit of Robert Mackenzie appeared to the owner of the factories, who was at that time in his house in Camden Hill in London, as it became clear later.

The boss himself spoke about it this way: “I had a dream that I was sitting at the table and talking with some unfamiliar gentleman. Suddenly, Robert Mackenzie appears and walks straight towards me. I was annoyed that he had interfered with our conversation, and rather sharply told him that he was busy. Robert walked away, but it was noticeable that he was extremely upset about something.

However, after a few minutes, he again approached us, as if he wanted to immediately talk to me about some urgent matter. Even more sharply than the first time, I reproached Robert for lack of tact and inability to behave. Meanwhile the gentleman with whom I had been negotiating bowed out, and Mackenzie came up to me again.

What does all this mean, Robert? I exclaimed, out of anger. - Why did you behave so unceremoniously? Can't you see that I'm busy?

“Yes, sir, I did,” he replied, “but I need to speak to you immediately. - About what? Why such a hurry? “I want to inform you, sir, that I am being charged with a crime I did not commit. It is very important to me that you know this and that you forgive me, for I am innocent. Then he repeated once more: “I did not do what I am accused of. But what are you accused of? I insisted. In response, he repeated again that it was not his fault. “But how can I forgive you if you don’t want to tell me what you are accused of?”

I will never forget how sadly and with what pathos he uttered the words in the Scottish dialect: "Soon you will know about everything."

I repeated the question twice, and he answered the same question twice in the same pompous tone. Then I woke up, and after that strange dream I was left with a vague sense of uneasiness. I was wondering if this dream meant anything, when my wife hurried into the room, very excited, with a letter open in her hand. She started talking right off the bat:

— Oh, James! What a terrible misfortune happened during the annual holiday of the workers! Robert Mackenzie!

That's when I realized what the vision that dreamed in a dream meant. I said with full confidence in my innocence: - No, he did not commit suicide. - But how can you say that? How do you know?

“He just told me about it himself. I note that, not wanting to interrupt my story, I omitted some essential details ... So, when Robert appeared to me in a dream, I was struck by his appearance: his face was deathly pale, even bluish, and profuse sweat broke out on his forehead and there were some dark spots.

After a while we found out what really happened to poor Robert. When the party ended on Saturday night, Mackenzie took home a bottle of crude nitric acid, mistaking it for a bottle of whiskey. Arriving home, he poured himself a glass and drank its contents in one gulp. On Sunday, he died in terrible agony.

Everyone thought that he had taken his own life like that. That is why his spirit came to me and began to assure me that he was not guilty of the crime of which he was accused. I later specifically checked what symptoms could be in nitric acid poisoning, and found that they coincided with the signs that I noted on the face of Robert Mackenzie.

Soon the authorities in Glasgow admitted that they had mistakenly attributed the death of poor Mackenzie to suicide, as my representative in Scotland informed me by letter the next day.

His spirit appeared to me, apparently because Mackenzie felt for me a feeling of deep gratitude for the fact that I pulled him out of poverty. The poor fellow seemed to want my kindness to him to remain unchanged.

What can be said about the report placed at my disposal by an industrialist from Glasgow? Does not the appearance of the spirit of a dead worker serve as proof of the immortality of the soul? By the way, it should be noted that in England suicide was considered a crime.

In the above case, a young man who had poisoned himself by mistake on the night of Saturday to Sunday in Glasgow, appeared on Tuesday to his patron in London, who knew nothing of his death, in order to announce that he had not committed suicide. But by that time he was already dead, and not an hour, not two, but two whole days! In this case, it is impossible to assume the existence of a random coincidence ... Camille Flammarion.

“Let me tell you this story.
1861 - One evening, Mr. Harry Cauer was sitting in the dining room of his home in Sydney (Australia). He was in a bad mood, he had no appetite, and he could not distract himself from sad thoughts. Suddenly, he heard a strange low sound, something like crackling. He turned around and saw that the mirror above the fireplace had cracked.

— How strange! said Harry Cauer. - Why's that?

And what do you think? A few weeks later, he learned that it was at the same time that the mirror cracked that his elderly aunt, Mrs. Dorothea Elizabeth McClure, died suddenly at her home in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Here is the story of Mr. Archibald Blackburn of Chicago, who in 1874 at Woodstone, Ohio, saw the spirit of his friend, Mr. John William Sullivan, who lived in the town of New Tipperary, Massachusetts. According to Blackburn, he suddenly saw his friend in a rather strange form: his face was somehow wrinkled, distorted, he was breathing heavily, gasping for air and waving his arms absurdly.

- What's wrong with you? Blackburn asked. - For help! I'm drowning! Sullivan croaked, and promptly disappeared.

Very alarmed, Blackburn returned home. A week later, he learned that his friend had drowned while swimming in the Missouri River, and it happened just at the very time when his spirit called for help.

“On the night of March 25, 1880, I had a dream that my brother Richard was sitting in a chair across from me. I tell him something, but he just nods his head, then gets up and leaves the room. Then I woke up and found that I was not lying, but standing in a rather strange position: one foot on the floor and the other on the bed. In addition, I try to speak and pronounce the name of my brother. The feeling that he had actually just been in my room was so strong, and the scene itself was remembered so accurately and vividly, that I immediately went in search of my brother.

Suddenly I had a premonition that some terrible and inevitable misfortune was about to happen. I made an entry in my diary, about my vision, .. that I had a bad feeling. In conclusion, I wrote: “Do not allow this, Lord!” But it did not help... Three days later I received the news that my brother had died on March 24 at half past eight in the evening due to injuries that he received when he fell from a horse while hunting. So death came a few hours before I had the vision.”

It happened in Paris in 1911...
“My father died as a result of an unsuccessful operation in February 1906 in a hospital. Our family was so poor that my mother did not have money for a decent funeral, and therefore the hospital took care of the burial and expenses, as a result of which my father was buried in a common grave in the Bane cemetery.

The incident I am relating took place five years after my father's death, when I was living in Paris on the rue Etex. So one morning I was at home. I went to the kitchen, getting ready to have breakfast (it was 7 in the morning), and suddenly I saw the spirit of my father standing right in the middle of the kitchen, he leaned on the sink with one hand. It was him, I recognized him! And he looked as calm and peaceful as he usually used to be in life.

Several months passed after that. I did not tell anyone that the spirit of my father appeared to me, because I was afraid of ridicule. But one day, when I came to visit my sister, I told her my secret. She listened to my story very carefully, pondered, and then, with genuine astonishment, exclaimed:

- Well, you must! After all, it happened just on the day when the ashes of the father were reburied!

Now it's my turn to be surprised. I did not know anything about the fact that my father was reburied, and asked why I was not told and called.

“Yes, we thought that you were a sleepyhead and you wouldn’t be able to come to the cemetery so early,” answered the sister.

What time were you at the cemetery? - At 7 a.m.

Why did my father's spirit come to me? Perhaps he wanted to reproach me for not being present at the cemetery at that time? But it's not my fault, I wasn't warned...

Then I still did not believe in God, I did not believe in anything at all, because I was brought up outside of any religion, but from the very day when I saw the ghost of my father, I swear, I believed in God and in the immortality of the soul.

Deign to accept my assurances of the complete truth of everything I have told.
Mademoiselle N.N. (Please keep my name a secret from everyone).

I will give one more example of the appearance of the soul of the deceased, in this case there are two independent witnesses. The letter came from Strasbourg and was written on June 17, 1922:

“My brother Hubert Blanc was the confessor of the inhabitants of the monastery in Saint-Paul-Trois-Château in the Drôme department. One of the monk brothers had been so bad for a long time that he did not get out of bed. Everyone knew that he was dying. My brother came almost daily to the dying man to spend a few minutes at his bedside. Once, during a leisurely conversation, the patient, who knew that his days were numbered, said:

“You know, my father, I will not go to another world without saying goodbye to you. If you are not around, I myself will come to say goodbye to you.

“I count on it very much,” my brother answered in a jocular tone.

Two or three days later, my brother and my mother, having gone to bed at 10 o'clock in the evening, simultaneously heard someone turn the key in the lock of the front door, and then they heard someone's footsteps in the corridor. It should be noted that their bedrooms were quite far from each other.

My mother, frightened by an incomprehensible night visit, began to scream, calling for help from my brother: “Hubert, someone has climbed into our house!” My brother, having heard the mysterious sounds and cries of my mother, jumped out of bed, walked around the whole house, examined the front door and made sure that it was locked. There was no one in the house but the two of them. But as soon as the brother finished his inspection of the house and was about to go to bed again, there was a phone call.

— Hello! Holy Father, such and such a brother is dying and wants to say goodbye to you. Come quickly!

The brother, of course, hurried to the monastery and arrived just at the moment when the monk breathed his last.

The brother immediately told this story to the abbot of the monastery, and it made a great impression on the brethren, because they had no reason to question the testimony of their brother and mother, respectable, honest and faithful people.

Brother and mother often remember that incident, and I ask you, if you consider it necessary and appropriate, to bring it to the attention of your readers.

My brother died and was buried in Grignan (Drôme department), where he served the Lord and the people as the curate of the canton.

Marius Blanc, technical manager of the Aist biscuit factory in Strasbourg.

I will give one more example of the fact that the phenomenon of the soul of the deceased took place, and not the telepathic contact of two living people.

So, a certain Mrs. Storey from Edinburgh, who lived in the town of Hobart Town in Tasmania, once had a strange, confused and nightmarish dream, consisting of a series of vague visions that seemed to be even unrelated to each other. First, she saw her twin brother, who was sitting in the open air on some kind of elevation.

He raised his hands to the black night sky and said, “Train! A train!" Then there was a dull blow, as if some large body had flown into this man, he fell to the ground lifeless, and something huge and black swept past with a whistle. Then Mrs. Storey dreamed of a compartment in a railroad car, and in this compartment sat Pastor Johnston, whom she immediately recognized. Then she again saw her brother, who raised his hand to his forehead, as if he had a very bad headache and he was in great pain, and after this, an unfamiliar voice told her that her brother had just died.

As it became known later, Mrs. Storey's brother died that night under the wheels of a train, as he sat down on the embankment to rest.

It should be noted that all the details of the dream corresponded exactly to reality; for example, Reverend Johnston was actually on the train that killed Mrs. Storey's brother. Since this fact could not become known to the unfortunate victim of this tragedy during his lifetime, it remains to be recognized that it was the spirit of the deceased who learned about this circumstance and, showing the course of events to Mrs. Storey, informing her of this detail.

As a rule, obeying the laws of logic, a person must seek explanations for some phenomena in the abilities inherent in living people, but not yet known to science. As for me, I tend to do just that, because in astronomy we are dealing with stars that no longer exist. But the light of these long-extinguished luminaries reaches us now, although it was radiated a million years ago. The stars are dead, but they speak their language to us...

So, the immortality of the soul is proved. This revolution in modern medicine was made by Dutch scientists. Pim van Lommel is the name of the leader of the research team. It was an interview with him that was published by the famous medical journal "Lancet". The Dutch professor shared the results of his scientific research in the field of studying the basic functions of the human brain.

What is the essence of many years of research? The Dutch were critical of the basic postulate of physiology, which categorically states that human consciousness is born in the depths of the brain. Based on this, numerous experiments have been carried out. They found that consciousness does not disappear with the cessation of the functioning of the gray matter. It continues to live and perceive the surrounding reality.

Pim van Lommel is of the opinion that the brain is not "thinking matter". Most likely, such matter does not exist at all in the Universe. English scientists from Southampton came to similar conclusions.

It is no secret to anyone that during the transition to another world, people have a wide variety of visions. They are reported by patients who have come back to life after clinical death. Such memories of those who were for a short time "beyond" have always been carefully studied. They were even given a name - NDE, derived from the phrase: near death experience. Translated, it means "near-death experience".

It is explained by a variety of reasons that lie in the field of the psyche and physiology. The prevailing opinion is that progressive hypoxia (a state of oxygen starvation) contributes to the appearance of visions. But then visions are simply obliged to occur in any person who has gone through clinical death. However, practice proves otherwise.

The Dutch examined 348 patients who went through resuscitation. But only 22% reported any memories. Of those 77 people, 55% said that they were aware of the fact that their body was dying. 32% met with long-dead relatives. 31% moved through long tunnel. 25% saw themselves from the outside. But dazzling light was observed by 18% of patients. What is striking is that the blind patients reported exactly the same story as the sighted ones.

In a state of clinical death, the heart stops. Respiration also stops, which leads to oxygen starvation of the gray matter. It stops functioning, and a flat line appears on the electroencephalogram. The main difficulty in this lies in exact definition the period of time when the NDE took place.

The Dutch scientists tried to determine whether patients really experienced NDE when the electroencephalogram line was flat, or visions visited them at the moment when, thanks to the diligence of doctors, the brain began to function. Pim van Lommel stated that he and his colleagues were able to establish the existence of consciousness with a direct electroencephalogram. This means that it lives outside the gray matter. And so, it is safe to say that immortality of the soul - reality.

There are many examples to support such a bold assertion. The most characteristic is the case of a patient brought to a clinic in a coma in the city of Strasbourg. He was given a heart massage, defibrillation, but it did not give any results. The electroencephalogram was a straight line, which meant only one thing - the brain died.

We decided to try intubation, but the patient had a denture in his mouth. One of the nurses took it out and placed it on a side table. Soon the patient showed the first signs of life, and an hour later the heart rate returned to normal. A week later, the same nurse, distributing medicines to the sick, went into the ward to the "resurrected" patient. He looked at her and said, "Give me back my prosthesis. You put it in the drawer when the doctors saved my life."

This patient was questioned, and it turned out that the man was watching his body and the doctors around him from above. He accurately described the room and spoke about the behavior of those present. He was involuntarily seized with fear at the thought that the doctors would stop, stop bringing his body back to life. He tried in every possible way to inform the Aesculapius that he was alive.

The Dutch scientists in scientific world there are many opponents, because the immortality of the soul is perceived by most scientists skeptically. But Pim van Lommel and his associates base their confidence on the purity of their experiments. The patients interviewed were mentally completely healthy people. They were interviewed by psychologists to rule out false memories. After all, many people, under the influence of the stories of others, can "remember" something that has never happened to them.

The Dutch conclusions are unequivocal: NDE is observed just at the moment when the brain stops working. This phenomenon cannot be explained by oxygen starvation. The visions of blind patients correspond exactly to those of sighted patients. Those people who witnessed the most vivid visions die within a month after returning to life. Women are subject to deeper sensations than men.

Such a sensation looks incredible given the current development of medicine. But many scientists believe that their colleagues from Holland most reliably and fully proved the immortality of the soul. Pim van Lommel himself is in favor of a further thorough study of this problem. He is deeply convinced that achievements in this area will contribute to a radical revision of the usual views on human life after death..

souls

Prot. Georgy Florovsky

Article "The" immortality"of the Soul" first appeared under the title "The Resurrection of Life" in Bulletin of Harvard University Divinity School, XLIX, no. 8 (April, 1952), 5-26. Translation made according to the edition The Collected Works of Georges Florovsky, vol. 3, Creation and Redemption, Nordland Publishing Company, Belmont, Massachusetts, 1976.

Introduction

Should Christians, as Christians, necessarily believe in the immortality of the human soul? And what does immortality actually mean in the space of Christian thought? Such questions only seem rhetorical. Étienne Gilson, in his Gifford Lectures, found it necessary to make the following startling statement: “In general,” he said, “Christianity without immortality makes perfect sense, and the proof of this is that it was so thought at first. Christianity is truly meaningless without the resurrection of man.”

Amazing feature early period The history of the Christian idea of ​​man was, apparently, an emphasized denial by the brightest authors of the second century of the natural immortality of the soul. And it seems that this is not a strange or absurd opinion of individual writers, but rather a general trend of the time. It was not completely lost even later. Bishop Anders Nygren in his famous book Den kristna karlekstanken genom tiderna praises the apologists of the second century precisely for this bold idea and sees in it the expression of a truly evangelical spirit. The main emphasis was placed in those years, and, according to Nigren, it should have always been placed, on the “resurrection body,” and not on “immortality souls. The 17th-century Anglican scholar Henry Dodwell (1641-1711, formerly the Camden “Praelector” of Oxford University history) published a curious book in London with a rather puzzling title: Epistolary reasoning, proving from the Scriptures and the early Fathers that the soul is originally a mortal principle, made, however, immortal either for eternal torment - by divine will, or for eternal life - by combination with the Divine Baptizing Spirit. By which it is proved that since the time of the Apostles, no one except the bishops has the power to give the Divine Spirit of Immortality (1706).

Dodwell's arguments are often confused and inconsistent. However, the main advantage of the book is the incredible erudition of its author. Dodwell was apparently the first to collect a vast amount of information on the early Christian doctrine of man, although he himself failed to make proper use of it. And he is absolutely right when he claims that Christianity recognizes, rather, not natural"immortality," a supernatural union with God, who is “only having immortality” (1 Tim 6:16). Not surprisingly, Dodwell's book provoked a furious controversy. The author was formally charged with heresy. Despite this, he gained a number of passionate adherents, and an anonymous writer, "an Anglican priest," published two books on the subject, citing a thorough examination of the patristic evidence that "the Holy Spirit was the creator of immortality, that is, immortality was a special New Testament grace, and not a natural property of the soul” and that “immortality was supernatural for human souls, the gift of Jesus Christ communicated by the Holy Spirit in Baptism.”

An interesting feature of this controversy is that Dodwell's position was criticized mainly by the "liberals" of the time, and his main literary opponent was the famous Samuel Clarke of St. James, Westminster, a follower of Newton and correspondent of Leibniz, known for his unorthodox views and ideas, is a typical representative of the age of Freethinking and Enlightenment. An amazing situation: “immortality” is attacked by the “orthodox,” and defended by the enlightened one. Actually, this is to be expected. After all, the theory natural immortality was one of the few dogmas of the enlightened deism of those years. A man of the Enlightenment could easily get rid of the doctrine of Revelation, but he had no right to doubt the “truth” of the arguments of Reason. Gilson suggested that “the so-called 'Moralistic' doctrine of the 17th century was originally a return to the positions of the early Fathers, and not, as is commonly believed, an expression of free-thinking sentiments.”

Generally speaking, such a statement is not serious. The state of affairs in the 17th century was much more complicated and confusing than that described by Gilson. But in the case of Dodwell (and some other theologians), Gilson's conjecture is fully justified. There is a “return to the position of the first Fathers.”

The soul as a "creature"

St. Justin in Conversation with Tryphon tells about his conversion. In search of truth, he first came to the philosophers and for some time was completely satisfied with the views of the Platonists. “I was greatly fascinated by the Platonic doctrine of the incorporeal, and the theory of ideas inspired my mind.” Then he met a Christian teacher, an elderly and respectable man. Among other questions raised in their conversation was the question of the nature of the soul. “The soul should not be called immortal,” the Christian argued. “For if it is immortal, then it is also without beginning,” by itself, is the thesis of the Platonists.

However, God alone is “beginningless” and indestructible, and therefore He is God. The world, on the other hand, “has a beginning,” and souls are part of the world. “Probably there was a time when they didn’t exist.” And that means they are not immortal, “because the world itself, as we have seen, received a beginning.” The soul is not life in itself, but only "participates" in life. God alone is life; the soul can only have a life. “For the ability to live does not enter into the properties of the soul, but into the properties of God.” Moreover, God gives life to the soul “because He wants it to live.” Everything created “has a destructible nature and can be destroyed and cease to live.” It is "perishable" ( Razg., 5 and 6).

The most important classical proofs of immortality, leading from Phaedo and Phaedra, are bypassed and ignored, and their basic premises are openly rejected. As Professor A.E.Taylor pointed out, “for the Greek consciousness immortality or imperishability invariably meant almost the same thing as "divinity", implying unbornness and indestructibility.” To say "the soul is immortal" for the Greek is the same as to say "it is uncreated," i.e. eternal and "divine." Everything that has a beginning must have an end. In other words, the Greeks always understood the immortality of the soul as its “eternity,” i.e. eternal "pre-existence." Only that which had no beginning can exist indefinitely. Christians could not agree with this “philosophical” position, because they believed in Creation, and therefore had to renounce “immortality” (in the Greek sense of the word). The soul is not an independent or self-governing being, but precisely creature, and even its existence it owes to God, the Creator. Accordingly, it can be "immortal" not by nature, those. by itself, but only according to "God's will," i.e. by grace. The “philosophical” argumentation in favor of natural “immortality” was based on the “necessity” of being.

On the contrary, assert creatureliness world means to emphasize, first of all, that he not is a necessity, and, more precisely, it is not necessary being. In other words, created the world is the world that might not exist at all. This means that the world is completely ab alio and by no means a se. As Gilson puts it, “Some beings are radically different from God, if only in that, unlike Him, they might not exist at all and may still cease to exist at some point.” From " may stop,” however, it does not follow that their being in fact stops. St. Justin was not a "conditionalist," and his name was invoked by the advocates of "conditional immortality" in vain. “I do not affirm that souls are destroyed...” The main purpose of this dispute is to emphasize belief in Creation. We find similar reasoning in other writings of the second century. St. Theophilus of Antioch insisted on the "intermediate" quality of a person. “ By nature Man is neither "immortal" nor "mortal," but rather "capable of both." “For if God had made him immortal in the beginning, he would have made him God.” If a person, obeying the divine commandments, initially chose the immortal part, he would be crowned with immortality and would become God - “God accepted,” deus assumptus (To Autolycus II, 24 and 27).

Tatian goes even further. “The soul itself is not immortal, Hellenes, but mortal. However, she may not die.” Speech against the Hellenes, thirteen). The views of the early apologists were not free from contradictions, and it was not always possible to express these views accurately. But the main point has always been clear: the problem of human immortality must be considered in the light of the doctrine of Creation. It can be said differently: not as an exclusively metaphysical problem, but, first of all, as a religious one. “Immortality” is not a property of the soul, but something entirely dependent on the relationship of man with God, his Lord and Creator. Not only is a person's ultimate destiny determined by the degree of communion with God, but even human existence itself, its sojourn and “survival,” are in the hands of God. St. Irenaeus continues the same tradition. In his struggle with the Gnostics, he had special reason emphasize the creatureliness of the soul. The soul does not come from the “other world,” which does not know corruption; it belongs to this created world.

St. Irenaeus argue that for the infinite existence of the soul must be "beginningless" ( sed oportere eas aut innascibiles esse ut sint immortales), otherwise they will die with the bodies ( vel si generationis initium acceperint, cum corpore mori). He rejects such an argument. Being creatures, souls “continue to exist as long as God pleases” ( perseverant autem quoadusque eas Deus et esse, et perseverare voluerit). Here perseverantia, obviously corresponds to the Greek diamond i . St. Irenaeus uses practically the same words as St. Justin. The soul is not life in itself; she participates in the life given to her by God ( sic et anima quidem non est vita, participatur autem a Deo sibi praestitam vitam). One God there is Life and the one Life Giver ( Against heresies II, 34). Clement of Alexandria, despite his adherence to Platonism, mentions in passing that the soul is not immortal “by nature” ( Brief explanations on the 1 Pet 1:9: hinc apparet quoniam non est naturaliter anima incorruptibilis, sed gartia Dei ... perficitur incorruptibilis).

St. Athanasius proves the immortality of the soul with the help of arguments going back to Plato ( On the pagans 33), but, nevertheless, insistently repeats that everything created in its nature is unstable and subject to destruction ( there, 41: f y sin revst i n u san ke dialyom e ni). Even St. Augustine recognized the need to limit the immortality of the soul: Anima hominis immortalis est secundum quendam modum suum; non enim omni modo sicut Deus (Message vff, Jerome). “Looking at the impermanence of this life, one can call it mortal” ( on John, tr. 23, 9; cf. About the Trinity I.9.15 and About the City of God 19.3: mortalis in quantum mutabilis). St. John of Damascus says that angels are also immortal, not by nature, but by grace ( Acc. izl. orthodox faith, II,3), and proves this in much the same way as the apologists ( Dialogue against the Manichaeans, 21). An emphasis on a similar statement can be found in the "conciliar" epistle of St. Sophronius, Patriarch of Jerusalem (634), read and favorably received by the Sixth Ecumenical Council (681). In the last part of this epistle, Sophronius condemns the errors of the Origenists - the pre-existence of the soul and the apokatastasis - and clearly says that “reasonable beings,” although they do not die, are still “not immortal.” by nature," but only by God's grace (mansi, XI, 490-492; Migne, LXXXVII.3, 3181). It should be added that even by the 17th century in the east they had not forgotten the train of thought we analyzed early church, and an interesting dispute of those years between two Orthodox bishops of Crete on this very topic is known: whether the soul is immortal “by nature” or “by grace.”

We can summarize: when discussing the problem of immortality from a Christian point of view, one must always remember the created nature of the soul. The very existence of the soul is not necessary, i.e., one might say, “conditional.” It is conditioned by the creative fiat, coming from God. However given being, i.e. a being not contained in nature is not necessarily transient. A creative act is a free but irrevocable act of God. God created our world for being(Wis 1:14). And there can be no renunciation of this creative command. Here is the core of the paradox: having unnecessary start, world has no end. He is held by the immutable will of God.

Man is mortal

Modern thinkers are so preoccupied with the "immortality of the soul" that the original fact of human mortality is almost forgotten. Only recent "existential" philosophies have once again powerfully reminded us of the inevitability of the current human life subspecie mortis. Death is a catastrophe for a person. She is his last(or rather, final) enemy,” Cor 15:26). “Immortality,” is certainly a term containing negation; it is associated with the term “death.” And here we again see a sharp conflict between Christianity on the one hand and "Hellenism," and above all, Platonism, on the other. V.G.V. W.H.V. Reade in a recent book Challenge Christianity Philosophy very successfully contrasts two quotes: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14) and “Plotinus, the philosopher of our time, seemed always to be ashamed of the fact that he lived in bodily form” (Porfiry, Life Dam, I). Further, Red continues: “If we make a direct comparison in this way of the gospel reading at Christmas with the essence of the teaching of his mentor captured by Porfiry, it will become quite clear that they are absolutely incompatible, that it is impossible to imagine a Platonist Christian or a Platonist Christian; and the Platonists, to their credit, were well aware of this trivial fact.” I will only add that, unfortunately, “this trivial fact,” does not seem to be familiar to Christians.

From century to century, up to the present day, Platonism has been the favorite philosophy of the Christian sages. We do not set out to explain now how this could happen. However, this, to put it mildly, sad misunderstanding produced an unprecedented confusion in contemporary views to death and immortality. We can use the well-known definition: death is the separation of the soul from the body (Nemesius, About the nature of man 2, he quotes Chrysippus). For the Greek it is release, “return” to the native realm of the spirits. For the Christian catastrophe, crossed out human existence. The Greek theory of immortality will never solve the Christian problem. The only worthy solution is the news of the Resurrection of Christ and the promise of the coming General Resurrection of the dead. Turning again to the origins of Christianity, we find that this idea was clearly expressed already in the first centuries. St. Justin is very insistent on this matter: “If you meet such people who. . . do not recognize the resurrection of the dead and think that their souls immediately after death are taken to heaven, then do not consider them Christians ”( Razg., 80).

Unknown author of the treatise About the Resurrection(usually attributed to St. Justin) very accurately sets out the essence of the question: “What is a person, if not a rational animal, consisting of a soul and a body? Is the soul itself a person? Not She is the soul of a person. Can a body be called a man? Not - it is called the human body. If neither one nor the other separately constitutes a man, but only a being consisting of a combination of one and the other, is called a man, and God human called to life and resurrection: then he called not a part but whole, that is, soul and body" ( Oh Sunday eight). Athenagoras of Athens makes a similar argument in his excellent work About the resurrection of the dead. God created man for a very specific purpose - eternal existence. If so, “God endowed independent being and life not with the nature of the soul in itself and not with the nature of the body, taken separately, but rather with people consisting of soul and body, so that with both parts, with which people are born and live, they reach the end of earthly life of a common goal; soul and body make up in man one living being.” The person will disappear, says Athenagoras, if the integrity of this bundle is destroyed, because in this case the personality will also be destroyed. The immortality of the soul must be accompanied by the immutability of the body, the incorruptibility of its own nature. “A being endowed with reason and intelligence is Human, but not soul itself. Therefore, man must always remain composed of soul and body.” Otherwise, it will not be a person, but only parts of a person. “And eternal union is impossible if there is no resurrection. For if there is no resurrection, the nature of the whole man will not be preserved.”(15).

The main premise of such reasoning was the inclusion of the body as a part in the fullness of human existence. And it follows from it that a person will cease to be a person if the soul has to “disincarnate” forever. This fact is in strict contrast to the claims of the Platonists. Hellenes, rather, dreamed of a final and perfect disincarnation. The body is the bond of the soul. On the contrary, for Christians, death is not the normal end of human existence. She is ruin and madness. It is “the wages of sin” (Rom. 6:23). She is deprivation and perversion. And from the moment of the fall, the mystery of life has been supplanted by the mystery of death. The "union" of the soul and body is, of course, mysterious, as evidenced by the direct feeling by a person of an organic psychophysical unity. Anima autem et spiritus pars hominis esse possunt, homo autem nequaquam, wrote St. Irenaeus ( Adv. haereses V, 6.1). A body without a soul is just a corpse, and a soul without a body is just a ghost. A person is not a disembodied ghost, and a corpse is not a part of a person. Man is not a “disembodied demon,” hidden in a carnal dungeon. This is why the “separation” of the soul from the body is death exactly the person cessation of its existence, its existence like a person. Therefore, the death and corruption of the body can be said to erase the “image of God” from a person. Not everything is human in the deceased.

St. John of Damascus, in one of the famous hymns of the funeral service, conveys it this way: “I cry and weep when I think of death, and I see in the tombs our beauty, created in the image of God, lying in the image of God, ugly, inglorious, having no form.” St. John speaks not of the human body, but of man himself. “Our beauty is in the image of God” - not the body, but the person. He is truly “an image of the inexpressible glory of God,” even after being “slain by sin.” And death reveals to us that man is a “reasonable statue” fashioned by God - to use the expression of St. Methodius ( About the resurrection I, 34.4) is just a corpse. “Naked bones man, worms food and stench.” One can call a person “a single hypostasis in two natures,” and not from two natures, namely in two natures. Death splits this single hypostasis. And the person is no more. Therefore, we humans expect redemption of our body” (Rom. 8:23). As St. Paul in another epistle, “because we do not want to be put off, but put on, so that the mortal may be swallowed up with life” (2 Corinthians 5:4). The whole torment of death lies precisely in the fact that it is “the wages of sin,” i.e. the result of a broken relationship with God. It is not just a natural inferiority or a metaphysical dead end. The mortality of man is the mortality of one who has fallen away from God, Who is the only Giver of Life. And being in such alienation, a person cannot remain, “abide,” a full-fledged person.

Mortal, strictly speaking, “ subhuman.” To emphasize human mortality is not to offer a "naturalistic" interpretation of human tragedy; on the contrary, it means to expose its deep religious roots. Interest in human mortality was the most important point of support for patristic theology, for it was an interest in the promised Resurrection. The poverty of existence in sin was not diminished in any way, but it was considered not only from the standpoint of ethics and morality, but also from the theological point of view. The sinful burden consists not only in an unclean conscience and consciousness of guilt, but also in an irreversible split in the whole of human nature. Fallen man is no longer a man: he has become ontologically degraded. And evidence of such “degradation” was human mortality, human death. Outside of God, human nature becomes discordant, in a sense, begins to be false. The building of human nature is losing stability. The “union” of the soul with the body turns out to be fragile. Soul without vital energy, can no longer animate the body. The body turns into a dungeon and a grave of the soul. Now physical death is inevitable. The body and soul are already, one might say, not built, do not fit together.

Violation of God's commandment, according to St. Athanasius, “returned people to their natural state.” “So that, just as they were created out of nothing, so in the very being, over time, in all fairness, they would suffer corruption.” For the creature, brought into the world from non-existence, exists above the abyss of nothingness, being always close to falling ( About the incarnation 4 and 5). “We will die and be like water poured out on the ground, which cannot be collected” (2 Samuel 14:14). “The natural state,” of which St. Athanasius, there is a current of cosmic cycles, tenaciously sucking fallen man, and this captivity is a sign of human degradation. Man has lost his privileged position in the created world. However, his metaphysical catastrophe is only a manifestation of a distorted relationship with God.

“I am the resurrection and the life.”

The Incarnation of the Word was the true manifestation of God. Moreover, it was a revelation of Life. Christ is the Word of Life (1 John 1:1). The Incarnation itself has already partially revived man and resurrected his nature. Not only was abundant grace poured out on man in the Incarnation, but his nature was perceived into a secret unity, unity “by hypostasis” with God Himself. The fathers of the early Church unanimously saw in such an achievement by human nature of eternal communion Divine Life the whole point of salvation. “That is saved that is united with God,” says St. Gregory the Theologian. And what is not connected cannot be saved at all ( Message 101, to Clydonius). This idea was the leitmotif of the entire theology of the first centuries: St. Irenaeus, St. Athanasius, Cappadocians, St. Cyril of Alexandria, St. Maximus the Confessor.

However, the culmination of the Incarnate Life was the Cross, the death of the Incarnate Lord. Life has fully revealed itself in death. Here is the paradox, the mystery of the Christian faith: life in death and through death, life from the grave, The mystery of the grave, fraught with life. And Christians are born anew into true, eternal life only after passing death and burial in Christ in baptism; they are reborn with Christ in the baptismal font (cf. Rom 6:3-5). Such is the immutable law of true life. “What you sow will not live unless it dies” (1 Cor 15:36). Salvation was accomplished on Golgotha, not on Tabor, and even on Tabor they spoke of the Cross of Christ (cf. Luke 9:31). Christ should was to die to give abundant life to all mankind. This need is not of this world. Perhaps this is the imperative of Divine Love, the imperative of God's order. And we will not be able to understand this mystery. Why did true life have to be revealed in the death of Him Who Himself was “the resurrection and the life”? The only possible explanation is that Salvation was to be a victory over death and human mortality. Death is the ultimate enemy of man. Atonement is not just the forgiveness of sins or reconciliation with God. It is deliverance from sin and death. “Repentance does not lead out of the natural state (to which a person returned after sinning), but only stops sins,” says St. Athanasius. For man not only sinned, but also “fell into corruption.” So, God’s mercy could not allow “that once created rational beings and those who participated in His Word perished, and through corruption again turned into non-existence.” Therefore, the Word of God descended and became a man, taking on our body, in order to “return those who have turned into corruption into incorruption again, and revive them from death, appropriating a body for Himself and the grace of the resurrection, destroying death in them like straw with fire” ( About the incarnation 6-8).

Thus, according to St. Athanasius, the Word became flesh in order to expel “corruption” from human nature. However, death is conquered not by the manifestation of Life in a mortal body, but by the free death of the Incarnated Life. The Word became incarnate for the sake of death in the flesh, emphasizes St. Athanasius. “For this reason the Word has put on a body, so that, having found death in the body, to destroy it” (44). Or, to quote Tertullian, forma moriendi causa nascendi est (De carne Christie, 6). The main motive for the death of Christ is human mortality. Christ died, but overcame death and overcame mortality and corruption. He revived death itself. “Destroy death by death.” Therefore, the death of Christ was, one might say, the development of the Incarnation. The death of the cross is important not as the death of the Immaculate, but as the death of the Incarnate Lord. To use the surprisingly bold wording of St. Gregory the Theologian, “we have need of God incarnate and mortified, that we may come to life” ( Word 45, for holy easter, 28). It was not a man who died on the Cross. Christ has no human hypostasis. His personality is divine, though incarnated. “For it was not a man of little importance who suffered and struggled with the feat of patience, but God incarnate,” says St. Cyril of Jerusalem (13th catechumen, 6). It is fair to say that God died on the Cross, but died only in His human nature (which, incidentally, is “consubstantial” with ours). It was the voluntary death of Him Who Himself is Eternal Life.

Of course, this is a human death, a death “according to human nature,” but it occurs within the hypostasis of the Word, the Incarnate Word. Therefore, it leads to resurrection. “By baptism I must be baptized” (Luke 12:50). This baptism is the death on the cross and the shedding of blood: “The baptism of martyrdom and blood, with which Christ Himself was also baptized,” believes St. Gregory the Theologian (Word 37:17). Death on the Cross as baptism with blood is the very essence of the redemptive mystery of the Cross. Baptism is cleansing. And the Baptism of the Cross was, one might say, a cleansing of human nature, leading to rebirth in the Hypostasis of the Incarnate Word. It was the washing of human nature with the flow of the sacrificial blood of the Divine Lamb and, above all, the washing of the body, that is, not only sins were washed away, but also human infirmities, and even mortality itself. Such a cleansing was a preparation for the coming resurrection - the cleansing of all human nature in the face of its new, mystical, first-born, “ Last Adam.” It was the baptism with the blood of the whole Church and, moreover, of the whole world. Let us quote again St. Gregory the Theologian: “Purification is not a small part of the universe, and not for a short time, but the whole world and eternal” ( Word 45.13). The Lord died on the Cross.

It was a real death, but, nevertheless, not quite like ours, if only because it was the death of the Incarnate Word, the death within the indivisible Hypostasis of the Word, who became a man, the death of the “hypostatic” human nature. This does not change the ontological properties of death, but now it takes on a different meaning. “Hypostatic unity” was not broken, not torn apart by death, and therefore, although the body and soul were divided among themselves, they still remained connected through the Divinity of the Word, from which they were not removed. In this “imperishable death” both “corruption” and “mortality” are overcome, which means that the resurrection begins.

The very death of the Incarnate signifies the resurrection of human nature (St. John of Damascus, An Accurate Statement of the Orthodox Faith, 3.27; cf. Conversation on Holy Saturday 29). “Today our Lord Jesus Christ is on the cross, and we are celebrating,” according to St. John Chrysostom ( First Discourse on the Cross and the Thief). The death on the cross became a victory over death not because it was followed by the Resurrection. She is a victory in her own right. The Resurrection is only the result and manifestation of the Victory of the Cross, which took place as soon as the God-man fell asleep. “You die reviving me...” As St. Gregory the Theologian: “He gives His life, but He has the power to take it back, and the veil was torn, for the secret doors of Heaven were opened; the stones were scattered, the dead rose. . . He dies, giving life, destroying death by His death. He is buried, but rises again. He descends into hell, but brings out souls from there” ( Word 41). The mystery of the Resurrection Cross is especially revered on Holy Saturday, the day of the descent into hell. After all, the descent into hell is already the Resurrection of the dead. As a result of His death, Christ unites with the dead, and this is a further development of the Incarnation. Hell is the abode of darkness and the shadow of death; it is rather a place of insane torment than a well-deserved punishment, gloomy “ sheol,” a place of hopeless disincarnation, barely touched by a dim gliding ray of the Sun that has not yet risen, by a ray of hopes and hopes that have not yet been fulfilled. There, the ontological weakness of the soul was manifested, which, when separated in death, lost the ability to be genuine. entelechy of his body - the impotence of a fallen, wounded nature. And not a “place” at all, but spiritual state- “prison of spirits” (see 1 Peter 3:19).

Exactly at this dungeon, in this"hell" the Lord and Savior descends. In the darkness of pale death, the inextinguishable light of Life, Divine Life, lit up. “Descent into Hell” - the manifestation of Life amid the despair of those dissolved by death; This triumph over death. “The body did not die due to the infirmity of the nature of the indwelling Word, but for the destruction of death in it by the power of the Savior,” says St. Athanasius ( About the incarnation 26). Holy Saturday is more than just Easter Eve. She is “blessed Saturday,” “ Sanctum Sabbatum,” - requies Sabbati magni, according to the word of St. Ambrose. “This is a blessed Saturday, this is the day of repose, take away from all His works the Only Begotten Son of God” (stichera on the Lord cried, Vespers of Great Saturday according to the Orthodox rite). “I am the First and the Last and the living; and was dead, and behold, alive forever and ever, amen; and I have the keys of hell and death” (Rev. 1:17-18).

The "hope of immortality" of Christians is founded and maintained by this victory of Christ, and not by any "natural" ability of man. Moreover, it follows that such hope is due historical event, those. a historical phenomenon God, and not the original device or property of human nature.

Last Adam

Death has not yet been abolished, but its helplessness has already been demonstrated. “Yes, we are still dying as before,” says St. John Chrysostom, - but death cannot hold us forever, which means that this is not death. . . the power and essence of death is that the deceased cannot return to life; but if after death he comes to life and, moreover, gets a better life, then this is no longer death, but just a dream” ( On the Epistle to the Hebrews imp. 17.2). Or, in the words of St. Athanasius, “like seeds thrown into the ground, we are resolved not to perish, but as sown we shall rise” ( About the incarnation 21). There has been a healing and renewal of human “nature,” and therefore all will rise, all will be resurrected and everyone the fullness of their nature will return, albeit in a transfigured form. From now on, all disincarnation is temporary. The gloomy vale of hell is destroyed by the power of the life-giving Cross. First Adam, by his disobedience, revealed and realized the innate capacity for death. Second Adam, by obedience and purity, realized the ability to immortality, and so completely that death became impossible. A similar analogy is made by St. Irenaeus. Faith in Christ would be vain and useless without the hope of a Universal Resurrection. “But Christ has risen from the dead, the firstborn of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor 15:20). Christ's Resurrection is a new beginning. It - " new creation.” One might even say eschatological the beginning, the last step on the historical path of Salvation.

But we, nevertheless, should clearly distinguish between the healing of nature and the healing of the will. “Nature” is healed and revived by force, by the mighty power of the omnipotent and all-conquering God's mercy. Health is, so to speak, “imposed” on human nature. For in Christ all human nature (“the seed of Adam”) is finally cleansed of imperfection and mortality. The acquired perfection will definitely play its role, will definitely manifest itself in full measure at the appropriate time - in the Universal Resurrection, the resurrection all: both righteous and sinners. And as far as nature is concerned, no one can evade the royal decree of Christ, no one can resist the all-pervading power of the resurrection. However will a person cannot be healed by command. The human will must herself aspire to God. There must be a voluntary and sincere feeling of reciprocal love and admiration, there must be “free circulation.” Only in the "sacrament of freedom" is it possible to heal the will of man. Only by such a free effort does a person enter the new eternal life revealed by Christ Jesus.

Spiritual rebirth occurs only in conditions of absolute freedom, through self-denial and dedication to God in Christ. This distinction was pointed out emphatically by Nikolai Cabasilas in his excellent work About life in Christ. Resurrection is “the restoration of nature,” and God gives it freely. The Kingdom of Heaven, and the contemplation of God, and union with Christ is the enjoyment of desire, and therefore is available only to those who desire, and love, and desire. Everyone will receive immortality, just as everyone enjoys God's providence. It does not depend on us whether we will be resurrected after death or not, just as our birth did not depend on us. Christ's death and resurrection bring immortality and incorruption to all equally, for every man has the same nature as Man - Christ. But no one can be forced to desire. Thus, the resurrection is a universal gift, and only a few will receive blessedness ( About Life in Christ II, 86-96). And again the path of life appears as a path of self-denial and humility, self-sacrifice and self-slaughter. We must die to ourselves in order to live in Christ. Everyone must himself make a personal and free act of union with Christ, the Lord, Savior and Redeemer, through the confession of faith, through the acceptance of love, through the mystical oath of allegiance. Whoever does not die with Christ cannot live with Him. “If we are not ready to die voluntarily through Him in the image of His suffering, then His life is not in us” (St. Ignatius, Epistle to the Magnesians 5; here is clearly a Pavlovian syllable).

This is not only an ascetic or moral instruction or just a threat. This is - ontological law spiritual being and, moreover, all life. After all, the return of health to a person acquires meaning exclusively in communion with God and life in Christ. For those who are in hopeless darkness, for those who deliberately cut themselves off from God, even the Resurrection itself must seem groundless and superfluous. But it will come - come as "the resurrection of condemnation" (John 5:29). And they will end the tragedy of human freedom. We are truly on the threshold of the incomprehensible and incomprehensible. Apocatastasis nature does not exclude free will - the will from within must be driven by love.

This was clearly understood by St. Gregory Nyssky. He fully admits something like a general conversion of souls in the afterlife, when the Truth of God will be revealed and presented with absolute and irresistible obviousness. It is here that the limitations of the Hellenistic worldview are manifested. For him, the obvious decisively affects the will, i.e. “sin” is simply “ignorance.” The consciousness of the Hellenic had to go through a long and hard path of asceticism, ascetic preservation and self-testing in order to get rid of intellectualistic delusions and naivety and discover the abyss of darkness in fallen souls. Only after several centuries of ascetic labors, St. Maxim, we find a new, rethought and in-depth interpretation of the apocatastasis.

St. Maximus did not believe in the inevitable conversion of stubborn souls. He taught about natural apocatastasis, i.e. about the restoration of each person in the fullness of his nature, about the universal manifestation of Divine Life, which will become obvious to everyone. However, those who, during earthly life, became stagnant in gratification of carnal passions, lived “against nature,” will not be able to partake of this eternal bliss. The Word is the Light that enlightens the minds of the faithful, but with judgmental fire scorches those who, out of love for their flesh, dwell in the night darkness of this life. The difference here is between ep i gnosis and m e thesis. “Recognize” does not mean “participate.” God will indeed be in everyone, but only in the Saints will He abide "mercifully," in the wicked - "unmercifully." And sinners will be alienated from God by the absence of a determined will to do good. We are dealing with division again. nature and will. By the Resurrection the whole creation will be reborn, i.e. brought to perfection and absolute incorruptibility. However, sin and evil are rooted in the will. Hellenistic thinking concludes from this that evil is unstable and must inevitably disappear on its own, for nothing bypassed by God's will is eternal.

The conclusion of Christianity is just the opposite: there is an inert and stubborn will, and such stubbornness cannot be cured even by “universal Healing.” God never commits violence against a person, which means that communion with God cannot be imposed on a stubborn one. In the words of St. Maximus, “does not give birth to the Spirit of the will that does not want, but He only transforms the willing [will] for deification” ( Questions to Thalassius, 6). We live in friend world - he became different after the redemptive Resurrection of Christ. Life is revealed, Life will triumph. The incarnated Lord is the Second Adam in the full sense of the word, and in His person the beginning was laid new humanity. Now not only the final "survival" of man is certain, but also the realization in him of God's purpose of Creation. Man " made immortal." He cannot commit "metaphysical suicide" and erase himself from existence. However, even Christ's victory does not impose "Eternal Life" on opposing beings. As St. Augustine, for a creature “to be is not the same as to live” ( On Genesis Literally I, 5).

“And eternal life.”

In the Christian worldview, there is inevitably a tension between “given” and “expected.” Christians tea "Life future century,” but they also know Life, the expectation is already come true:“For Life has appeared, and we have seen and testify and declare to you this eternal Life which was with the Father and appeared to us” (1 Jn 1:2). It's not only temporary tension between past, present and future. This tension between prejudice and decision. We can say that Eternal Life proposed man, but his business - to accept her. Whether or not a divine “decision” in relation to a particular individual succeeds depends on his “determination to believe,” which consists not in “recognizing,” but in sincerely “participating.” The beginning of the Christian life is the new birth by water and the Spirit. And, above all, "repentance" is needed - an inner change, intimate, but complete.

Symbolism of Baptism.

Complex and multifaceted. However, first of all, it is a symbolism of the death and resurrection of Christ (Rom. 6:3-4). It is the sacrament of resurrection with Christ through participation in His death, resurrection with Him and in Him to new and eternal life (Col 2:12; Phil 3:10). Only after passing through the burial do Christians resurrect with Christ: “ if we died with him, we shall live with him” (2 Tim 2:11). Christ truly The second Adam, but people must be born again and united with Him in order to inherit His new life. St. Paul spoke of the "likeness" of Christ's death (Rom. 6:5). However, "similarity" here is something much more than external similarity. It is not just a symbol or a memory. For the apostle himself, the similarity consisted in the fact that Christ can and must be “depicted” in each of us (Gal 4:19). Christ is the Head, all believers are His members, and His life dwells in them. This is the mystery of All Christ - totus Christus, Caput et Corpus. All are called and each is able to believe and feed on faith and baptism in order to live in Him. Therefore, baptism is “regeneration,” a new and blessed birth in the Spirit. According to Cabasilas, baptism is the beginning of a blessed life in Christ, and not just life ( About life in Christ II, 95).

St. Cyril of Jerusalem exhaustively explains the true essence of all baptismal symbols. It is true, he says, that in the baptismal font we only“we become like” death and burial and, experiencing them “symbolically,” we do not rise from the real grave. However, “similarity is in the image, and salvation is in the thing itself.” For Christ was truly crucified, truly buried, and truly resurrected. "In the thing itself" - Greek translation o ndos- a word that is even stronger than just "actually." It emphasizes the exceptional significance of the death and resurrection of Christ, which was a completely new achievement. Now He has made it possible for us, by “imitatively” participating in His sufferings, to “actually” receive salvation. It is not only “imitation,” but also “likeness.” “Christ was crucified and buried in reality, but you have been given the opportunity to experience crucifixion, burial and resurrection with Him in likeness.” In other words, in baptism a person “mysteriously” descends into the darkness of death, but nevertheless rises with the Risen Lord and passes from death to life. “And everything above you is perfect in the image, because you are the image of Christ,” concludes St. Kirill. That is, all are united by Christ and in Christ, hence the very possibility of “likeness” in the sacrament ( Mystery Teachings 2.4-5,7; 3.1).

St. Gregory of Nyssa also elaborates on this topic. Baptism has two aspects: birth and death. The carnal birth is the beginning of mortal existence, the end of which is corruption. We must find a second, new, birth, leading to eternal life. During baptism, “the presence of the power of God elevates that which is born in corruptible nature into an incorruptible state” ( Big categorical word, 33). This happens through imitation and likeness in fulfillment of the bequeathed by the Lord. Only by following Christ can one go through the labyrinth of life and find a way out. “For I will compare the path of suffering mankind under the ever-watchful guard of death with wanderings in a labyrinth.” Christ escaped from it after three days of death. In the baptismal font “there is a complete likeness of what He did.” Death is “depicted” by the water element. And just as Christ returned to life by the resurrection, so the one who is baptized, connected with Him by bodily nature, “imitates the resurrection on the third day.” It is only “imitation,” not “identity.” In baptism, a person is not actually resurrected, but only freed from natural damage and the inevitability of death. In the person being baptized, “the evil infinity of vice” is torn. He cannot be resurrected, because he does not die, and all the time of the sacrament abides in this life. Baptism is only a shadow of the coming resurrection, and, passing the rite, a person only anticipates the grace of a universal resurrection from the dead. Baptism is the beginning, and resurrection is the end and completion; and everything that happens in the Great Resurrection has its germ in baptism. It can be said that baptism is “like a resurrection,” “Homiomatic resurrection” ( big verb, 35). It should also be remembered that St. Gregory especially emphasized the need to preserve and carefully guard the grace received in baptism. For it changes and transforms not only nature, but also the will, which, nevertheless, remains absolutely free. And if the soul is not cleansed and guarded by the free effort of the will, then baptism will not bear fruit. The transformation will not be fully realized, and the new life will not be fully perceived. This does not subject the baptismal grace to the sanction of man - Grace always descends.

It, however, cannot be imposed on anyone who is created free in the image of God - it requires the consent and response of synergistic love and will. Grace does not warm and give life to closed and stubborn, truly “dead” souls. Reciprocal movement and co-operation are needed (40). The reason for this is precisely that baptism is a mysterious death with Christ, communion with His voluntary suffering and His sacrificial love, which can only happen freely. Thus, baptism, like a living sacred icon, reflects and depicts the death of Christ on the Cross. Baptism is both death and birth, burial and “bath of resurrection.” “A time to die and a time to be born” in the words of St. Cyril of Jerusalem ( Secret Teachings 2,4).

Symbolism of Communion

The same is true of all sacraments. All the sacraments have been instituted precisely to enable the faithful to "participate" in Christ's atoning death and thereby receive the grace of His resurrection. The sacraments emphasize and demonstrate the extraordinary, universal significance of the sacrifice and victory of Christ. This was the main idea of ​​the work of Nicholas Cabasilas About life in Christ in which the entire doctrine of the sacraments of the Eastern Church was excellently summarized. “For this we are baptized, that we may die His death, and be raised His resurrection; let us be anointed, that we may become partners with Him in the royal anointing of deification. When we feed on the most sacred Bread and drink the Divine cup, we commune with that very flesh and that very blood that the Savior accepted, and thus unite with Him who was incarnated for us, and the Deified, and the Dead, and the Risen One. . . Baptism is birth, the world is in us the cause of action and movement, and the bread of life and the cup of thanksgiving are food and true drink. About life in Christ II, 3,4,6).

All the sacraments of the Church contain a variety of symbols that are “likened” and depicted by the Cross and the Resurrection. This symbolism is realistic. Symbols don't just remind us of something that happened "in the past" and is long gone. What happened “in the past,” gave rise to “Eternal.” All sacred symbols are and in themselves the true Reality, which is absolutely adequately revealed and transmitted. This sacred symbolism is crowned great Mystery Holy Altar. The Eucharist is the heart of the Church. She is the Sacrament of Redemption in its highest sense. It is more than “similarity” or mere “remembrance.” She is Reality itself, at the same time hidden and revealed in the Sacrament. The Eucharist is “the perfect and final Sacrament,” says Cabasilas, “one cannot go further, one cannot apply more.” This is the “limit of life.” “After the Eucharist, there is nothing more for us to strive for, but stopping here should try to find out how to preserve this treasure to the end” ( About Life in Christ IV, 1,4,15). Eucharist is herself The Last Supper, which takes place, one might say, again and again, but, despite this, is not repeated. For, creating it every time, we do not just “depict,” but in fact join the same“Secret Meal,” created once (and forever) by the Divine High Priest Himself as the threshold and beginning of the free Sacrifice of the Cross. And the true Priest of every Eucharist is certainly Christ Himself.

St. John Chrysostom repeatedly stated this: “So, believe that the same supper is being served today, at which He Himself reclined. One is no different from the other" on Matthew, conversation L, 3). “The actions of this sacrament are not performed by human power. He who did them then, at that supper, still does them now. We take the place of ministers, and Christ Himself sanctifies and transforms the gifts. . . This is the same meal that Christ offered, and no less than that. It cannot be said that Christ does the one and man does that; both are performed by Christ himself. This place is the same upper room where He was with the disciples” ( there, discourse LXXXII, 5). This is a matter of paramount importance. The Last Supper was the offering of a sacrifice, the sacrifice of the Cross. The sacrifice continues to this day. Christ is still the High Priest of His Church. The Sacrament is the same, the Priest is the same, and the Meal is the same. Once again, let us turn to the creations of Cabasilas: “Having offered and sacrificed Himself once for all, He does not stop His eternal ministry, performing it for us, and will always be our intercessor in it before God” ( Interpretation of the Divine Liturgy 23).

The resurrecting power of Christ's death is manifested in full force in the Eucharist, which is “the medicine of immortality, not only protecting from death, but also granting eternal life in Jesus Christ,” according to St. Ignatius ( to the Ephesians XX,2). It is “the heavenly Bread and Cup of life.” This terrible Sacrament becomes for the faithful "the betrothal of Eternal Life," precisely because Christ's death itself was already a Triumph and Resurrection. In the Eucharist, the beginning and the end are connected: the memories of the gospel events and the prophecies of the Apocalypse. She is - sacramentum furi, because she - remembrance (anamnesis) of the Cross. The Eucharist is the sacrament of anticipation and anticipation of the Resurrection, the “image of the Resurrection” is the expression of prayer for the consumption of the Holy Gifts of the Liturgy of St. Basil the Great). Only the “image” is not because it is a simple symbol, but because the story of Salvation continues, and it is to be expected, “ look forward to the life of the next century.”

Conclusion

Christians, as Christians, should not believe in philosophical theories of immortality. They should believe in the Universal Resurrection. Man is a creature. He owes his very existence to God. Human existence is not necessary. It is the grace of God. But God created man for being, i.e. for eternity. Eternity can be reached and found only in union with God. Violation of this unity undermines, although it does not break, human being. Human death and mortality testify to the broken unity, to the loneliness of man, to his alienation from the source and purpose of his being. However, the action of the creator fiat continues. Unity is restored by the Incarnation. Life is revealed again in the shadow of death. Incarnate - Life and Resurrection. Incarnated - Conqueror of death and hell. He is the Firstborn of the New Creation, the Firstborn of the dead. The physical death of a person is not a separate “natural phenomenon,” but rather an ominous stigma of the original tragedy. The "immortality" of incorporeal "souls" does not solve the human problem. And "immortality" in a world devoid of God, "immortality" without God or "outside of God" immediately turns into eternal torment. Christians, as Christians, seek something greater than "natural" immortality. They aspire to infinite unity with God, that is, according to the amazing expression of the early Fathers, to deification(theosis).

There is nothing “naturalistic” or pantheistic about this. Deification is called the close, intimate communion of human personalities with the Living God. To be with God means to abide in Him, becoming a partaker of His perfection. “So that the Son of God became the son of man so that man might become the Son of God” (St. Irenaeus, Against heresies III, 10.2). In Him man is forever united with God. In Him is our Eternal Life. “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord” (2 Corinthians 3:18). And at the end of time, all creation will enter the Blessed Saturday, the real “Day of Repose,” the mysterious “Seventh Day of Creation,” when the Universal Resurrection and the “Coming Age” come.

Footnotes

1. L "Esprit de la Philosophie Medievale(2 ed., Paris, 1944), p. 179.
2. Agape and Eros: The History of the Christian Idea of ​​Love(London, 1938), II:I, pp. 64ff.
3. The author is usually identified as Joseph (or John) Pitts (Joseph, John Pitts), about whom, however, nothing is known. His name is indicated in old catalogs (for example, the British Museum, etc.). and bibliographies. The titles of the books are too long to list them here in their entirety. Both books were printed in 1706. Dodwell defended his point of view in the work A Preliminary Defense of the Epistolary Discourse, Concerning the Distinction between Soul and Spirit(London, 1707). Apparently, Dodwell's starting point is St. Irenaeus; cm. Dissertationes in Irenaeum, auctore Henrico Dodwello, A.M., etc., Oxoniae, 1689, pp. 469ff. I touch on this whole discussion in another article of mine, The problem of man in English theology and philosophy of the 17th century, preparing for publication.
4. Gilson, 179, n.i.
5. p. 176; cf. J.Lebreton, Histoire du Dogme de la Trinite, t.II (Paris, 1928), pp. 635ff.
6. Wed with my article “The Idea of ​​Creation in Christian Philosophy,” The Eastern Churches Quarterly, VIII, additional issue: Nature and Grace, 1949; see also Gilson cit.op., ch. IV: “Les etres et leur contingence,” pp. 63ff.
7. gilson, God and Philosophy, 1941, p. 52.
8. Recording of a conversation between Athanasius Caravella, Bishop of Hyères, and Neophytus Patellarius, Metropolitan of Crete, with the participation of Panagiotis Nicousius, a famous dragoman from Porto, who helped publish Peter Mohyla's "Orthodox Confession" in Holland and Acts Synod of Jerusalem in 1672, was published by Archimandrite Arseniy (Ivashchenko). “Description of the manuscript, which was in the library of the monastery of Mount Sinai” christian reading, 1884, July-August, pp. 181-229.
9. This idea is beautifully developed by Hermann Schultz in his instructive book Die Voraussetzungen der christlichen Lehre von der Unsterblichkeit(Gottingen, 1861).
10. London: S.P.C.K., 1951. Citation Op., p. 70. In the Eastern Rite, the passage from John 1:1-17 is read at Easter, and not at Christmas (as in the West).
11. The succession of the burial, the stichera are blessed, the stichera are self-voiced.
12. In the New Testament the word ken o s means not so much new, how many final,“pertaining to the final goal.” Throughout the text, the word obviously carries an eschatological meaning. Wed article by Behm sub voice at Kittel's Worterbuch, III, 451 et seq.
13. St. Maxim the Confessor, Questions to Thalassius, vop. 39, art. 3; Capit. quinquies cent. II, 39. Urs von Balthasar, Kosmische Liturgie: Maximus der Bekenner(Freiburg i/Br., 1941), 367ff (or French edition, Paris, 1947, pp. 265ff). Unfortunately, Balthazar's interpretation is at least incomplete.

*. Similar reflections can be found in the patristic tradition, for example, in St. Ephrem the Syrian. At first, he simply states the freedom of creative command: “The reason for so many beauties is not forced; otherwise they will be the work of someone else, and not of God; because necessity excludes arbitrariness.” Next, St. Ephraim comes to the direct connection of this freedom with the problem of the eternity of the creature to the Creator: “He had his own will, which was not subject to necessity, and did not create creatures coeternal for himself ... For His action was not necessary; otherwise the creatures would be co-eternal with Him” ( Self-denunciation and confession St. Ephraim Sirin, “Creations,” Volume 1, M.1993, pp. 163-164) - Note. transl.7a. One can, however, doubt the reliability of the translation (performed by Cassiodorus).