Followup: The Ark of salvation

…the Catholic Filioque, that naïve product of excessive piety and half-baked theology
St. Pavel (Florensky)

The speech of faith

Separate aspects of faith disintegrate only for scholastic theology, but, in living life, these aspects, each retaining its independence, become so closely interwoven that one idea imperceptibly evokes another. For a scholastic theologian, it is easy to say that the concepts Church, Holy Spirit, and Son of God are different: easy, because in his consciousness they are only concepts. But for a believer for whom all of these are realities that cannot be experienced independently of one another, realities that are interpenetrating and interconnected; for a believer who perceives them in their living givenness; for whom the Church is tangibly the body of Christ, the fullness of the Spirit sent by Christ; for such a believer, it is painful to make sharp divisions and separations, for they cut through living flesh. The speech of faith is in no wise like the speech of theology, and faith clothes its knowledge of dogmatic truth in a symbolic garment, in figurative language, which covers the higher truth and depth of contemplation in consistent contradictions.
St. Pavel (Florensky)

The foundations of science

…Our entire understanding of life, our entire science (I speak not of theologial science but of science in general, the scientific spirit) is based on the idea of Logos, on the idea of God the Word. This holds true not only for science but even for the whole of life itself, for the whole structure of our soul. We conceive of everything under the category of the law, the measure of harmony. This idea of logism, an idea that is often distorted to the point of unrecognizability, is the basic nerve of everything that is alive and genuine in our mental, moral, and aesthetic life. The one universal, all-embracing 'Law' of the World, the hypostatic Name of the Father, Divine Providence, without the will of Which a hair does not fall from our heads, Which makes 'the lilies of the field' (Matt. 6:28) grow and feeds 'the birds of the air' (Matt. 6:26), God, Who depletes Himself by His creation of the world and by economy—that is the religious presupposition of our science, and outside of this presupposition, more or less abstratly formulated, there is no science. The 'unformity of the laws of nature'—that is the postulate without which all science is empty sophistry. But this postulate can be made a psychological reality only by faith in That word about Which St. John prophesies in the first verses of his paschal Gospel: 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not' (John 1:1-5). Those are the 'foundations of science.' And if we reject them, a cruel revenge is inevitable: the fall of a science that is built on shifting and engulfing sands.
St. Pavel Florensky

The Kingdom of God is within you

All that belongs to God carries the seal of immortality. And, the Kingdom of God is immortal. If we desire to breathe the air of immortality, we must enter within ourselves, within our hearts, within the Kingdom of God. Outside of ourselves is the air of time, the air of transitoriness and decay in which the soul breathes with difficulty. ... We are constantly outside ourselves. The Lord wants to return us to ourselves, in His home and to His homeland. For us, the Kingdom of God is within us: outside of ourselves is a foreign land. In order to escape from a foreign land and find our true home, in which we directly encounter God, we must enter within ourselves, into our hearts. There is the King, there also is the Kingdom.
St. Nikolaj (Velimirovic)

Just like the kingdom of God, the Spirit has both a gradual historical manifestation and a discontinuously eschatological manifestation, which are irreducible one to the other. Otherwise it is incomprehensible how the final state, the illumination of creation the expulsion of death, in a word, the 'future age' could be distinguished from the preliminary state of waiting, from 'this age,' in which death still reigns.

Thus, the ideas of the Kingdom of God and of the Holy Spirit resemble each other formally. But this resemblance is not only formal. In its general idea, the doctrine of the Holy Spirit as the Kingdom of the Father unquestionably has its roots in the Gospel, and it gets its verbal justification in the Apostle Paul: 'The kingdom of God is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit' (Rom. 14:17)—Εν Πνευματι Αγιωι, 'in' or 'of the Holy Spirit,' i.e., in the righteousness, peace, and joy produced by the Holy Spirit. The subjective state of righteousness, peace, and joy produced by the Holy Spirit is that same Kingdom of God which is 'within' us (Luke 17:21), the barely noticeable mustard seed of faith sown in the soul. But growing and showing itself above the field of what is mine and only mine, above the domain of subjectivity, the sprout of the seed of faith becomes objective, cosmic, universal. Liturgy and the sacraments are the outward manifestations of the Kingdom of God in Church life. The working of miracles and contemplative insights reveal the same Kingdom in the personal lives of the saints.
St. Pavel (Florensky)

The habit of virtue is the restoration of the powers of the soul to their primordial nobility and the unification of the main virtues for action that is proper to the soul by its nature. This does not come to us from outside, but is innate to us from our creation, and through this we enter into the kingdom of heaven, which according to the Lord’s words is within us.
Nikitas Stithatos

The righteous

From today's readings for Vespers:

But the souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, and no torment will ever touch them. In the eyes of the foolish they seemed to have died, and their departure was thought to be affliction, and their going from us to be their destruction; but they are at peace. For though in the sight of men they were punished, their hope is full of immortality. Having been disciplined a little, they will receive great good, because God tested them and found them worthy of himself; like gold in the furnace he tried them, and like a sacrificial burnt offering he accepted them.
(Wisdom of Solomon 3:1-6)

But the righteous live for ever, and their reward is with the Lord; the Most High takes care of them. Therefore they will receive a glorious crown and a beautiful diadem from the hand of the Lord, because with his right hand he will cover them, and with his arm he will shield them.
(Wisdom of Solomon 5:15, 16)


Everything is transient, everything passes by, everything fades away. There is only One Who Abides, Αλη'θεια. Truth- Αλη'θεια is Unforgetfulness, that which is not licked off by the streams of Time; it is Solid Ground not eaten away by corrosive Death; it is Essence most essential in which there is no Non-being at all. In Truth, in the Incorruptible One, the corruptible being of this world finds its protection. From Truth, the Strong One, the world’s being receives strength-chastity. God gives victory over Time, and this victory is 'remembrance' by God Who does not forget. He Himself is above Time and can make everything commune with Eternity. How? By remembering it.
St. Pavel (Florensky)

On the Nativity

'Spiritual light,' sometimes combined with spiritual 'warmth' and 'fragrance,' is in fact the reasonable intuition we have been seeking, the intuition that includes the series of its own groundings. It is perfect beauty as the synthesis of absolute concrete givenness and absolute reasonable justifiedness. Spiritual light is the light of the Trihypostatic Divinity Itself, the Divine essence, which is not only given, but also self-given. Spiritual light is the 'light of reason,' the light that started to shine for the world at the Birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, as is sung in the Christmas troparion:

Thy birth, O Christ our God,
has shed upon the world the light of reason …

Spiritual light is the 'Light of Christ' that illuminates everyone. Spiritual light is the 'mental light' that makes 'the soul vigilant before Thee,' God, as the Holy Church tells us. It is the light of God’s love, about which we pray:

With love illuminate me, I pray
that I may see Thee, Word of God

Spiritual light is the light whose seeing constitutes the contemplation of God and therefore our salvation, the salvation of us who cannot be without God. Does not the Orthodox believer pray: 'Save me with Thy illumination'?
St. Pavel (Florensky)


Nativity Sermon of St. John Chrysostom

I behold a new and wondrous mystery!

My ears resound to the shepherd's song, piping no soft melody, but loudly chanting a heavenly hymn!

The angels sing!

The archangels blend their voices in harmony!

The cherubim resound their joyful praise!

The Seraphim exalt His glory!

All join to praise this holy feast, beholding the Godhead herein... on earth and man in heaven. He who is above now, for our salvation, dwells here below; and we, who were lowly, are exalted by divine mercy!

Today Bethlehem resembles heaven, hearing from the stars the singing of angelic voices and, in place of the sun, witnessing the rising of the Sun of Justice!

Ask not how this is accomplished, for where God wills, the order of nature is overturned. For He willed He had the powers He descended. He saved. All things move in obedience to God.

Today He Who Is, is born ! And He Who Is becomes what He was not! For when He was God, He became man-while not relinquishing the Godhead that is His...

And so the kings have come, and they have seen the heavenly King that has come upon the earth, not bringing with Him angels, nor archangels, nor thrones, nor dominions, nor powers, nor principalities, but, treading a new and solitary path, He has come forth from a spotless womb.

Yet He has not forsaken His angels, nor left them deprived of His care, nor because of His incarnation has He ceased being God. And behold kings have come, that they might serve the Leader of the Hosts of Heaven; Women, that they might adore Him Who was born of a woman so that He might change the pains of childbirth into joy; Virgins, to the Son of the Virgin...

Infants, that they may adore Him who became a little child, so that out of the mouths of infants He might perfect praise; Children, to the Child who raised up martyrs through the rage of Herod; Men, to Him who became man that He might heal the miseries of His servants;

Shepherds, to the Good Shepherd who was laid down His life for His sheep;

Priests, to Him who has become a High Priest according to the order of Melchizedek;

Servants, to Him who took upon Himself the form of a servant, that He might bless our stewardship with the reward of freedom (Philippians 2:7);

Fishermen, to the Fisher of humanity;

Publicans, to Him who from among them named a chosen evangelist;

Sinful women, to Him who exposed His feet to the tears of the repentant woman;

And that I may embrace them all together, all sinners have come, that they may look upon the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world! Since, therefore, all rejoice, I too desire to rejoice! I too wish to share the choral dance, to celebrate the festival! But I take my part, not plucking the harp nor with the music of the pipes nor holding a torch, but holding in my arms the cradle of Christ!
For this is all my hope!

This is my life!

This is my salvation!

This is my pipe, my harp!

And bearing it I come, and having from its power received the gift of speech, I too, with the angels and shepherds, sing:

'Glory to God in the Highest! and on earth peace to men of good will!'

The good of the ascetic

For it is not fasts and other bodily exercises, not tears and good works that are the goods of an ascetic, but a personality restored in its integrity, a personality that has regained its chastity. “Nothing,” says St. Methodius, “is evil by nature. Things become evil by the mode of their use.”
St. Pavel Florensky

Integrity of the saints

For it is not fasts and other bodily exercises, not tears and good works that are the goods of an ascetic, but a personality restored in its integrity, a personality that has regained its chastity.
St. Pavel Florensky

To Live

And I stamped my foot angrily: 'Are you not ashamed, unhappy animal, to whine about your fate? Are you not able to free yourself of subjectivity? Are you not able to forget yourself? Can you not (O shame!) understand that you have to surrender to the objective? The objective, standing outside of you, standing above you, will it not take you over? Unhappy, pitiful, stupid! You whine and complain as if someone is obliged to satisfy your needs. Yes? You cannot live without this and without that? Well, what of it? If you cannot live, then die, let your blood flow out, but live by the objective. Don't descend to contemptible subjectivity, don't seek conditions of life for yourself. Live for God, not for yourself.'
St. Pavel Florensky

On "institutes"

In particular, only true virginity is capable of understanding the whole significance of marriage. A height is measurable only from a height; a mountain grows in the eyes in proportion to the ascent to the opposite peak. In the same way, one can understand the holiness of marriage and its qualitative difference from debauchery only from the height of a chaste consciousness. Only true virginity, a virginity full of grace, understands that marriage is not an 'institution' of civil society but has its origin in God Himself. On the other hand, only a pure marriage, only a conjugal consciousness full of grace, makes it possible to understand the significance of virginity. Only a married man understands that monasticism is not an 'institution' of the ecclesiastical-juridical order but has been established by God Himself, and that monasticism differs qualitatively from the exasperation of the unmarried.
St. Pavel (Florensky)

Surgery for the world

The Holy Eucharist pours healing balm into the wound of repentance, but the Eucharist also judges the communicant. Is it not in this same way that the Anointing and Comforting Spirit will come to heal the wounds of creation with a baptism of fire after the Terrible Day of surgery for the world, after the Judgment of the Son of God and the Word of God, that Very Same Hypostatic Word that “is quick, and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart” (Heb. 4:12)?
St. Pavel Florensky

The Urals of my soul

Again and again, every sin, every 'petty' baseness is present, ineradicably distinct, in my consciousness. More and more deeply, 'petty' inattentions, egotism, and heartlessness are branded into the soul with letters of fire, gradually crippling it. Not that there was anything clearly bad, anything clearly, tangibly sinful. But always it was in the petty things. And out of petty things, mountains grew!
St. Pavel Florensky

Heavy and oppressed hearts

When one hears of so many modern doctrines ostensibly in sympathy with Christianity, but actually proclaiming openly the alleged impotence of Christianity and its inability to branch out into the tree of life, and insisting that it should surrender all spheres of life, except our inner consciousness, to some self-sufficient activities “after the rudiments of this world” (Col. 2:8), one’s heart feels heavy and oppressed indeed. For that is really worse than a direct challenge by unbelief, which hates Christianity, thus obviously crediting it at least with some power. This kind of theology is nothing short of the obsequies of Christianity, when the heat of battle is already past and one may say a good word even for the foe, already annihilated. These teachings, in praising Christianity, without allotting to it any domain of life, destroy it also as our inner possession: for if Christianity is to be driven out everywhere on the ground that a different order, having nothing in common with spirituality, is now to reign on earth, and that there is to be an autonomy all of its own henceforth, then the same thing will have to be said of emotional life, which is also subject to laws of its own, also autonomous throughout, it must have an absolute immanent stability and must in itself be God.
St. Pavel (Florensky)

The contemplation of love

For if reason is not associated with being, then being is not associated with reason, is alogical. Illusionism and all kinds of nihilism, which end in flaccid and pitiful skepticism, are then inevitable. The only way out of this quagmire of relativity and conditionality is the recognition that reason is associated with being and that being is associated with reason. And if that is the case, the act of knowing is not only a gnoseological but also an ontological act, not only ideal but also real. Knowing is a real going of the knower out of himself, or (what is the same thing) a real going of what is known into the knower, a real unification of the knower and what is known. … Considered within me (according to the mode “I”), “in itself,” this “entering into” is knowledge. “For another” (according to the mode “Thou”), it is love. Finally, “for me,” as objectifies and objective (i.e., according to the mode “He”), it is beauty. In other words, perceived in me by another, my knowledge of God is love of the one who perceives. Contemplated objectively, by a third, love of another is beauty.
St. Pavel (Florensky)

Knowledge according to love

For if reason is not associated with being, then being is not associated with reason, is alogical. Illusionism and all kinds of nihilism, which end in flaccid and pitiful skepticism, are then inevitable. The only way out of this quagmire of relativity and conditionality is the recognition that reason is associated with being and that being is associated with reason. And if that is the case, the act of knowing is not only a gnoseological but also an ontological act, not only ideal but also real. Knowing is a real going of the knower out of himself, or (what is the same thing) a real going of what is known into the knower, a real unification of the knower and what is known. … Considered within me (according to the mode 'I'), 'in itself,' this 'entering into' is knowledge. 'For another' (according to the mode 'Thou'), it is love. Finally, 'for me,' as objectifies and objective (i.e., according to the mode 'He'), it is beauty. In other words, perceived in me by another, my knowledge of God is love of the one who perceives. Contemplated objectively, by a third, love of another is beauty.
St. Pavel (Florensky)

The guise of altruistic emotions

But one cannot make a greater error than to identify the spiritual love of one who knows the Truth with altruistic emotions and the striving for the “good of mankind,” a striving that, at best, is grounded in natural sympathy or in abstract ideas. For “love” in this sense, which we call “Judaic,” everything begins and ends in empirical works, the value of which is determined by their visible effect. But for spiritual love, or love in the Christian sense, this value is only tinsel. Even moral activity (philanthropy and so on) is, taken in itself, an absolute zero. What is desirable is not the outward appearance, not the “skin,” of special activities, but life full of grace, which overflows in every creative act of a person. But “skin” as “skin,” the empirical outward appearance as such, can always be falsified. No age dares to deny that there are “false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ,” that even “Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light” (2 Cor. 11 13-14).
St. Pavel (Florensky)

True Philosophy

Rationalism, i.e., the philosophy of concept and rationality, the philosophy of things and lifeless immobility, is wholly connected with the law of identity and can be succinctly characterized as a homoiousian philosophy. It is a fleshly philosophy.
By contrast, Christian philosophy, i.e., the philosophy of idea and reason, the philosophy of persons and creative acts, is based on the possibility of overcoming the law of identity and can be characterized as a homoousian philosophy. It is a spiritual philosophy.
The tendency to pure homoiousiansism as to its limit determines the history of modern philosophy in Western Europe, whereas the attraction to pure homoousianism constitutes the distinctive nature of Russian (and of all Orthodox) philosophy.
St. Pavel (Florensky)

The harmony of the Divine Liturgy

…what…is the baptismal formula? [In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit] It is essentially no more and no less than an expression of the dogma of the consubstantiality of the Holy Trinity. Thus, everything that precedes the Creed is a preparation for 'attending' to the word 'consubstantiality,' ὁμοούσια. 'Consubstantiality' is precisely 'wisdom.'

The idea behind this order of the liturgy is clear: mutual love alone is the condition of 'unity of thought,' ὁμόνοια, the one thought of those who love one another, in contrast to the external relation to one another which yields nothing more than 'similarity of thought,' ὁμοίνοια, on which secular life is based: science, social life, government, etc. But 'unity of thought' provides the ground that makes possible joint confession ὁμολογήσομεν, i.e., understanding and acknowledgement of the dogma of consubstantiality, ὁμοούσια. In or through this unity of thought, we come into contact with the mystery of the Triune Divinity.
St. Pavel (Florensky)

The time has come...

High time that we stop deceiving ourselves with examples of the individual piety of many great leaders of our culture and of the beneficence of their works! It were time for us to recognize clearly the controlling idea of the new culture. Individual personalities and their individual accomplishments may indeed be excellent; but, on the whole, our modern culture is nothing but a state of chronical rebellion against God. Without clearly realizing this, it will be impossible to alter the course of culture.
St. Pavel (Florensky)

The chronic of our culture

High time that we stop deceiving ourselves with examples of the individual piety of many great leaders of our culture and of the beneficence of their works! It were time for us to recognize clearly the controlling idea of the new culture. Individual personalities and their individual accomplishments may indeed be excellent; but, on the whole, our modern culture is nothing but a state of chronical rebellion against God. Without clearly realizing this, it will be impossible to alter the course of culture.
St. Pavel (Florensky)