FREEDOM OF A CHRISTIAN, FREEDOM OF THE CHURCH AND RELIGIOUS FREEDOM IN THE ORTHODOX UNDERSTANDING

Osipov A.I., professor of MDAiS, doctor of theology

“Church and Time”, No. 1(8), 1999

The concept of “freedom” is very ambiguous; it is used in different senses. Let's note three. The first is the metaphysical meaning, when it is understood as free will, which is one of the fundamental properties of human nature and is expressed in the internal self-determination of the individual in the face of good and evil. According to Christian teaching, free will is the property, the loss of which leads to complete degradation of the individual. No one has power over this human freedom: neither another person, nor society, nor laws, nor any authority, nor demons, nor angels, nor God Himself.

However, as soon as a free act of will begins to be carried out in the external world, “materializes,” it encounters many phenomena that limit human actions to varying degrees. The problem of external freedom or human rights arises, that is, the problem of actions permitted (by law, customs, public morality) in the surrounding world. This is the social understanding of freedom.

And another category of freedom is spiritual. The Apostle Paul writes: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor. 3:17). Spiritual freedom is a Christian’s special participation in the Holy Spirit, which is expressed in a person’s power over his egoism, his passions, sinful feelings, desires - over himself 1. The Apostle calls a person who has achieved spiritual freedom “new” (Eph. 4:24) , thereby emphasizing the renewal of his mind, heart, will and body in the image of Christ. On the contrary, he calls the one living sinfully “old” (Eph. 4:22), “slave” (Rom. 6:6, 17), as not having the power to follow what his faith, reason and conscience tell him and what is for him. good for him. The Apostle Paul describes this state of spiritual slavery as the antithesis of true freedom in the following vivid words: “For I do not understand what I do; for I do not do what I want, but what I hate, I do... I do not do the good that I want, but the evil I do what I do not want... I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin” (Rom. 7:15, 19, 23).

This spiritual freedom, and not external, is the highest goal of the Christian’s quest.

There is also an obvious difference between spiritual freedom and free will. Kant expressed this difference as follows:

“By freedom in the cosmological (metaphysical - L.O.) sense, I mean the ability to spontaneously begin a state. Freedom in a practical (moral, spiritual—L.O.) sense is the independence of the will from the coercion of sensuality” 2.

These three categories of freedom allow us to speak quite clearly about which of them is the freedom of a Christian, and not just an individual or a member of society. This, of course, is spiritual freedom, which is acquired by him only in the process of correct ascetic life. What kind of life is this, what laws exist in it, by what criteria can one judge the correctness or incorrectness of the chosen path, what steps does a Christian go through in it, achieving freedom - this, naturally, is a separate topic of paramount and greatest importance for every Christian and every Christian Church. (And I would like to hope that this topic will someday become the subject of the most serious study in inter-Christian dialogues.)

In other dimensions we must talk about the freedom of the Church. To do this, we must first return to the understanding of the Church.

The Church is the unity of the Holy Spirit of Pentecost in those Christians who realize the Gospel in their lives and thus enter into the unity of the Theanthropic Organism of Christ3 (cf.: “And you are the body of Christ, and separately members.” 1 Cor. 12:27). The degree of this unity, or membership in the Church, is naturally a mystery to the outside eye, since the sincerity of faith and the holiness of the soul are immeasurable by human standards. The visible expression of the Church and always imperfect (due to the sinfulness of Christians) is the community led by the bishop (Local, Ecumenical Church), which has the unity of faith, the foundations of spiritual life, governance and discipline. Membership in the visible church is no longer a mystery: all those who are baptized and not canonically excluded from it, regardless, practically, of the holiness (or sinfulness and even depravity) of their lives belong to this church. The visible church is sui generis the mother liquor in which the process of birth, formation and salvation of a Christian in the Body of Christ takes place.

Due to this dual nature of the Church, there are also two different freedoms in it, which are incommensurable with each other.

The Church as the invisible unity of the Holy Spirit in those who love Christ (cf.: “Whoever has My commandments and keeps them, he loves Me” John 14:21) is always free, for “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” It is above all external freedoms, rights and privileges. She is not afraid of any human restrictions and oppression; persecution itself serves her greater glory. Such it was during the earthly life of Jesus Christ and His apostles, it is the same after His Resurrection, Ascension and to this day: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8).

A visible community, a church-organization, like any social and religious organization, needs appropriate conditions for its existence, including religious freedoms regulated by the state. Religious freedom is the right to openly profess and practice one’s religious beliefs, both individually and collectively. From this side, religious freedom is no different from other important social freedoms, or human rights, which are given exceptional importance in the modern world.

In this regard, let us pay attention to the following two most important features.

Firstly, any right can be used for purposes and directions not only positive, but also directly opposite to personal and public benefit (for example, information and defamation or preaching peace, chastity and propaganda of violence, debauchery, etc.).

Secondly, rights in their legal sense do not yet say anything about the most important thing for a Christian - spiritual freedom. Moreover, the modern catastrophic moral degradation of man in the freest, from a humanistic point of view, countries and the obvious decline of spirituality in Christian churches there show that external freedoms without a “restrainer” (2 Thess. 2:7) not only do not elevate a person, but and often serve as one of the effective means of his spiritual and moral decay.

For this reason alone, external freedoms cannot be considered as an unconditional and self-sufficient value.

However, this same conclusion also stems from the Christian understanding of the very nature of man and the meaning of his life. The Christian view of man is based on the affirmation of two equally unacceptable positions by humanistic secular consciousness: the “given” God-like greatness of man (Gen. 5:1) and, at the same time, his so deep painfulness that God Himself needed to come so that “the first fallen resurrect the image"4. Hence, Christianity quite clearly defines the “strategic” direction of human upbringing. In its essence it is like that.

The truly normal person is Christ, the new man (Eph. 2:15), and the so-called “ordinary” person is spiritually abnormal, unhealthy, since all his properties are damaged and distorted in Adam. Therefore, the task of society is to create conditions that would not only prevent the disease from progressing, but would also contribute to its healing.

What are these conditions in terms of freedoms?

There are rights that stem from the natural necessity for a person in certain material, spiritual and social conditions of life; they also demand corresponding rights (to work, to education, to freedom of religious and philosophical beliefs, to associations of interests, etc.). However, there are also those that stem from purely voluntaristic and even downright vicious motives (for example, the right to promote pornography, discrimination based on nationality, Satanism, etc.). How to evaluate these and other rights? 5

Within the boundaries of the Christian worldview, the answer to this question is given by its fundamental dogma of God-love. It follows from it that the main Christian criterion in assessing any rights (that is, permitted actions) can only be love, which seeks the good of another (and the good of not only earthly, but also, first of all, eternal - Matthew 22:37-39 ). Such love is the main Christian criterion in the regulation of all human freedoms and rights6. That is, any right must always stem from the principle of love. Therefore, only those of them, and only within those boundaries, are worthy of society that contribute to the cultivation in its members of true love for man and the eradication in them of everything that grows selfishness and the passions arising from it.

This criterion also follows from the Christian understanding of spiritual freedom as the highest goal of all human freedoms.

God is absolutely free. The saints have achieved great spiritual freedom 7. Every “ordinary” person has relative freedom. Only those incapable of good have lost their freedom (John 8:34, 44). That is, the true spiritual freedom of a person can endlessly develop only “within the boundaries” of the will of God. Christianity, thus, “limites” the spiritual freedom of the creature by God, and thereby, in principle, excludes the possibility of some kind of ephemeral-autonomous existence of it “beyond good and evil.” That is why the Apostle Paul says: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.” 8. But God is love (1 John 4:16). Therefore, freedoms and rights, affirmed regardless of the principles of Christian love, turn out to be outside of what in human language is called good, freedom, life.

Freedom “not limited” by love, which has become above love, is terrible. It was that original temptation which, offering knowledge of “good and evil” “free” from the will of God, defeated the first man and defeats his descendants, opening the doors of permissiveness and giving rise to slavery to the flesh and all passions. The ancient pagan sages understood this. Epictetus, for example, wrote: “He who is free in body and unfree in soul is a slave; and, in turn, whoever is bound physically, but is free spiritually, is free” 9. But the latest Christians have difficulty understanding this. Therefore, social freedoms have acquired paramount importance in their lives and consciousness. Although it is obvious that these freedoms, proclaimed as unconditional and primary values, by their very nature carry their opposite - arbitrariness, and naturally lead to the moral and spiritual degradation of the individual and society, to anti-culture, ideological anarchism and inevitable slavery to strong individuals , parties, secret and open societies and the like. For there can be no freedom other than the “freedom” of passion, sin, that is, evil where Christian love is not put at the forefront. For this reason, the Apostle Peter, denouncing preachers of such external freedom, who “forgot” about internal freedom, directly wrote: “For, uttering inflated idle talk, they entrap into carnal lusts and depravity those who have barely lagged behind those who are in error. They promise them freedom, while they themselves are slaves of corruption; For whoever is overcome by someone is his slave” (2 Pet. 2:18-19). The thought of the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians boils down to this: “You, brethren, have been called to freedom, provided that your freedom is not a reason for pleasing the flesh, but serve one another through love... I say: walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the desires of the flesh, for the flesh desires what is contrary to the spirit, and the spirit what is contrary to the flesh...” (Gal. 5:13-17). Then he lists the “works of the flesh” and concludes quite unequivocally: “Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap: he who sows to his flesh will reap corruption from the flesh, but he who sows to the Spirit will from the Spirit reap eternal life” (Gal. 6:7-8) 10.

For this reason alone, external freedoms cannot be an end in themselves. They are one of the possible, but not even mandatory, conditions for achieving the main goal - spiritual freedom, and therefore, from the point of view of the Orthodox understanding of a person, they must always be limited in order to become useful.

The good of another, and only therefore and then one’s own - this is the Christian thought, the starting point in the light of which all freedoms, rights, obligations, including religious freedoms, can be understood. Good, from a Christian point of view, is everything that likens a person to the source of all good - God, that is, the commandments, or the properties of the new man, which every Christian knows about. Hence, everything that interferes with the implementation of the idea of such a good cannot, from a Christian point of view, claim a legitimate place in human society. Secular legislators of all countries agree with this Christian idea, at least in its most elementary form, prohibiting murder, theft, violence and the like - life cannot give freedom to death. However, at the same time, they have difficulty seeing the real causes of crime - the abnormal spiritual and moral state of a person, which is not least due to an incorrect understanding and use of civil liberties. Therefore, modern European civilization in the East and West, while asserting with unwavering straightforwardness the freedom and safety of the flesh, completely ignores the safety of the human soul. Our civilization, which affirms the freedom of passions and is rapidly moving away from Christian love, is increasingly leading people into the final circle of death. All modern crises have their source precisely in absolutized external freedom, which, with the loss of the concept of sin, turns into arbitrariness in relation to nature, to thought, to creativity, to the spiritual, moral and other laws of our existence.

Freedom, for example, of speech and information is a normal phenomenon as long as it operates “within the boundaries” of love, the idea of human good. Having forgotten this idea and bowed before the “golden calf,” freedom turns into a source of idle talk, lies, propaganda of debauchery, violence, war, and so on, i.e., it becomes a legalized instrument of evil. Can it be called freedom in this capacity and have the right to exist in a normal society? Is it not because all rights are called freedoms that they are called upon to free man from violence rooted in his fallen nature of evil, to create and spiritually improve him, and not to corrupt, not torment, not to kill himself and his fellows?

What about freedom of television information? Unconstrained by the idea of human good, it becomes, as one newspaper aptly put it, “a television plague of violence.” One American psychologist described television in his country as follows: “When you turn on the TV, you automatically turn off the process of becoming a Human Being.” This is true. For if a schoolchild, according to one of the statistics in the USA, by the age of 18 manages to witness 150 thousand violence, of which at least 25 thousand are murders, then isn’t this right to promote violence trampling on the most important human right - to live without violence?

Without a spiritual and moral criterion, there is no real possibility of positively resolving the issue of freedoms. The dominant principle in the modern civilized world: “freedom for the sake of freedom,” i.e., the actual primacy of freedom over love, turns out to be for a person, as a rule, a powerful drug that destroys and is destroying an increasing number of people. The entire set of rights that a very young person receives immediately, simply by birth, and not because of his moral maturity and stability, is one of the effective means of developing spontaneous, instinctive forces in him, with all the ensuing moral and spiritual consequences. Isn’t this what the ancient Greek wisdom says: “Everything that is given freely can corrupt”? eleven

Such freedom is easily sold for basic comfort. One of the modern writers rightly said about our time: “Everywhere in the world freedom is dying - political, economic and personal... It is easier to live without freedom. More and more people are willing to give up their freedom in exchange for a comfortable and quiet life. There is no need to make any decisions. Less responsibility” 12. This refusal of freedom is quite understandable: passions, receiving freedom and enslaving a person from within, naturally lead him to external enslavement. Revelation of St. John the Theologian quite definitely foreshadows this universal voluntary slavery due to the all-common apostasy: “And all who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb, who was slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8).

The Russian thinker of the last century, I. S. Aksakov, assessing the development of European progress, prophetically wrote: “... progress that denies God and Christ, in the end, becomes regression;

civilization ends in savagery; freedom - despotism and slavery. Having taken off the image of God from himself, man will inevitably take off - he is already taking off from himself - the human image and will become jealous of the bestial image" 13.

Christianity affirms the primacy of love over all other values of this life. Only in the light of it14 is the optimal realization of all those rights that are necessary in every human society possible.

This understanding of the problem of rights and freedoms makes it possible to look at religious freedom accordingly.

If personal religious freedom does not essentially contain anything different from other human rights, then the freedom of religious communities already has certain specifics and corresponding problems.

The first is the search for more specific and precise criteria to determine the religious nature of a particular organization. There are many different societies with very dubious religious content. Therefore, at the present time, when there is an incredible mixture of good and evil, darkness with light, and bitter with sweet (Is. 5:20), it would be extremely necessary to conduct authoritative studies for the purpose of a clear and strict description of those necessary and sufficient elements of doctrine that allow talk about him as religious. Second, more responsible moral criteria are required in assessing the moral purity and principles of teaching of any religious organization that requires registration. The sad example of Aum Shinrikyo is one of the clearest illustrations of the urgent need for this. The legalization of Satanism is already an open challenge to modern social reason and its understanding of religious freedom.

Third, the concepts of equality and equality should not be confused. It is easier to show their difference with examples. Thus, all citizens of the country are equal before the law. But under the same law, its president has significantly more rights than his former election rival. And the law itself names the reason for this inequality - the will of the majority, which gave it greater rights than others. This is the principle of democracy. This natural principle should also be valid in resolving issues related to religious freedom, especially when it concerns such aspects of public life as education, upbringing, television and radio broadcasting, etc.

Another example. How would you evaluate the following fact? A sect that has multimillionaires among its members, having bought up all the media in country N, would promote ideas that are completely alien and hostile to the religious beliefs of its people. What would this be: a manifestation of religious freedom and democracy (= the power of the people) or evidence of a gross distortion of both, evidence of the rejection of the fundamental core of freedom - love?

Apparently, the religious freedoms granted to each religious organization must be correlated by law with the degree of its public recognition. Only in this case equality and equal rights do not come into conflict with each other, and religious freedoms turn out to be an expression of the love for truth and truth by which a person lives.

* * *

I would like to complete the topic of freedom with the thoughts of one of the Russian saints of the last century, Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov (+ 1867): “As long as humanity is subject to the influence of sin and passions, power and subordination are still necessary. They will certainly exist throughout the life of the world: they can only appear, are, will appear in various forms.” “There can be neither equality, nor perfect freedom, nor prosperity on earth to the extent that enthusiastic false teachers desire and promise.” “Relations of power and subordination will collapse with the destruction of the world; then principalities and powers will cease (1 Cor. 15:24); then brotherhood, equality, freedom will be established; then the cause of unity, power and subordination will not be fear, but love” 15.

1 Rev. Mark the Ascetic, for example, says this about spiritual freedom: “The law of freedom is read by true reason, understood by doing the commandments” (Philokalia. T. 1. M., 1905. P. 523).

2 Kant I. Op. T. 3. M„ 1964. P. 478

3 Blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria writes: “Do not say that people gathered the Church. It is the work of God, the living and terrible God.” St. says the same thing. Ecumenium (10th century): “It is built by God, dedicated to God, and has God living within itself.”

4 Troparion to the Forefeast of the Nativity of Christ.

5 As is known, the issue of human rights was especially actively addressed by French thinkers of the 18th century, and most of all by Rousseau, according to whose conviction every person has natural inalienable rights, the protection of which is the most important function of the state. Built on these principles, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen (1789) gave the following definition of freedom (rights): “Freedom consists in the right to do everything that does not harm others, therefore the enjoyment of the natural rights of each person has no other limits than those who ensure that other members of society enjoy these same rights. These boundaries can only be determined by law.”

However, the concept of “harm to others,” ignoring the Christian context of moral values, immediately (during the so-called Great French Revolution) and subsequently revealed its complete failure as the desired criterion of human rights.

6 The idea of the primacy of God-like love in man as a necessary condition for his freedom and the creation of a normal human society was especially persistently developed and substantiated by Russian Slavophile thinkers of the 19th century: A. Khomyakov, I. Kireevsky, Konstantin and Ivan Aksakov, Yu. Samarin. Considering the Church as a conciliar principle and in this capacity as a prototype of an ideal society, for example. Khomyakov names the following two main constitutive properties of it: “We profess a single and free Church,” for “freedom and unity are the two forces to which the mystery of human freedom in Christ has been worthily entrusted.” The main principle that guarantees the preservation of these principles in the Church is, in his opinion, love. “This principle,” he wrote, “is the beginning of mutual love in Jesus Christ” (Khomyakov A.S. Theological and church-journalistic articles. Soikin’s edition. P. 109, 205, 244).

7 The blessed one very successfully correlates the degree of holiness with the degree of freedom. Augustine, when he says: “Great freedom is to be able not to sin, but the greatest freedom is not to be able to sin” - Magna est libertas posse non peccare; sed maxima libertas - pop posse peccare.

8 V. S. Solovyov wrote: “Only by believing in the invisible God and acting by faith from God, our will turns out to be truly will, that is, a free principle, free from itself, that is, from its given factual state: here is the will no longer acts as a psychological phenomenon only, but as a creative force that precedes every phenomenon and is not covered by any fact, that is, essentially free” (Soloviev V.S. Soch. T. 3. SPb. P. 293) .

9 Roman Stoics. M., 1995. P. 252.

10 Indeed, the desire for the so-called. the fullness of this life, enjoyment is unthinkable without the fullness of social and political freedoms. Maximum fullness of rights and freedoms is a necessary condition for a materialistic paradise. However, this axiom of materialism is utopian. Kant said it well: “In fact, we find that the more an enlightened mind indulges in the thought of enjoying life and happiness, the further a person is from true satisfaction” (Kant I. Works. Vol. 4. Part 1. M.. 1965. P. 230).

11 In a society truly interested in the education of Man, not all rights should be simply and unconditionally given, but their boundaries should gradually expand and deepen as the moral and spiritual growth of a person and society (now there are enough testing methods).

12 Kalinovsky P. Transition: The last illness, death and after. M., 1991. P. 15.

13 Aksakov I. S. Christianity and modern progress // Cited. by: Palitsky A. To the requests of the spirit. Petrograd, 1914. P. 7.

14 The largest researcher of the work of Khomyakov V. Z. Zavitnevich in these words expresses the essence of his understanding of the problem of personal freedom and the common good: “The Church is defined as unity in freedom according to the law of love, which solves one of the greatest problems of human life, which raises the question of reconciliation of the principles of freedom personality and unity of the whole" (Zavitnevich V. 3. Russian Slavophiles. Kyiv, 1915. P. 45-46)

15 Articles by Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov on church and social issues // Sokolov L. Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov. His life and moral and ascetic views. Applications, Kyiv, 1915. S. 20, 21.

God's will and man's will: points of contact

So how do we combine these two concepts and these two things into one? Let me say two things about this. First of all, God exists outside of time. He knows the past, present and future. He knows how everything will end before anything else has begun. Therefore, when God predicts the future, this does not mean that He is speeding things up, as we might think. When God predicted that Judas would betray Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, this did not mean that He sped things up, as we might think. God exists outside of time. Second, He influences people's lives, but He does not predetermine where people will ultimately go - to hell or heaven. Consider Judas. God could use the fact that Judas turned from Him for His plan to fulfill the prophecy, followed by the crucifixion of Christ and the forgiveness of the sins of mankind. However, I believe that Judas was given complete freedom of choice by God.

He could repent after betraying Jesus Christ. Peter betrayed Jesus Christ. He could have ended his life as tragically as Judas, but he repented. Judas decided to steal money from the piggy bank. He chose sins. It may appear that God is manipulating events to accomplish His will, but I see no evidence that Judas was deprived of free will.

We can remember many more examples. Romans chapter nine challenges us by saying “who are we to ask such questions of God.” This is a good idea. If we try to hint to God about His justice, then His patience may end. This explains the tone of this passage. God is just. God is loving. Who are we to speak to Him in such a tone? Even in Pharaoh's case, I believe God hardened his heart. God allowed a series of events to happen before Pharaoh sent the people of Israel out to serve God in the wilderness. Pharaoh's heart became so hardened that he finally sent the people away into the desert. Yes, I see that God intervened in this story. God's will in the lives of Pharaoh and the people of Israel was so that they could begin to celebrate Passover. However, I do not see that Pharaoh was deprived of freedom of choice - he could soften his heart at any time. He could repent even after he had sent the people away. He could humble himself, repent, and be saved from his sins.

God always wants the best for man

My conclusions are this: God intervenes in our lives. God's will is to take us to a better place. I trust God, although I cannot prove it, I believe in His justice. I believe that He gives us complete freedom of choice, even though He interferes in the lives of individuals. We have complete freedom to choose to serve Him or the devil. For me or for you this is a lot. That's a lot of power and strength. This is so much that we cannot cope on our own. But God is great. He said that he would justify everyone who believes in Jesus Christ. God rules and has power over the nations, but somehow at the same time He still gives everyone a choice - to serve Him or not.

At least that's how I see it.

John Ochs