Notes on moral theology. 5. The question of free will

Why was freedom given to man?

God gave man free will, including so that man could freely and consciously become like Him, spiritually draw closer to Him as his Creator, the Source of all blessings, so that he could, with the assistance of Divine grace, realize his creative powers. Free will, which is essentially inherent to us, when used correctly, allows us to acquire and develop virtues and voluntarily ascend the ladder of spiritual perfection. However, the first man took advantage of this freedom to comprehend sin, and, in addition, he also blamed God for this opportunity given to him.

Orthodox Life

Discourse on the apostolic reading of the 4th Sunday after Pentecost.

In the apostolic conception of the 4th Sunday after Pentecost, the Apostle Paul speaks about freedom. “When you were slaves to sin, then you were free from righteousness. What fruit did you have then? Such deeds of which you yourself are now ashamed, because their end is death. But now that you have been freed from sin and become slaves of God, your fruit is holiness, and the end is eternal life” (Rom. 6:20-22).

In our time, freedom is understood mainly as civil human rights, as “the ability to do everything that does not harm others” (Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen, France, 1789). But talking about freedom only in the categories of law greatly impoverishes its meaning and significance, since it concerns exclusively external manifestations. Yes, a person has the right to freedom of the press, speech, creativity, and political freedom. But, without taking into account the religious understanding of the phenomenon of freedom, we are deprived of the main thing - moral criteria.

For example, what criteria should be used to evaluate the phrase from the Declaration of Rights: “Liberty consists in the right to do whatever does not harm others”? What is harmful to others and what is not? For example, is a gay pride parade harmful? Of course, the Christian consciousness will say. “Do not be deceived: neither fornicators... nor adulterers, nor wicked people, nor homosexuals... will inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 6:9-10). No, the secular worldview will answer, this is a normal manifestation of their sexual preferences by sexual minorities.

This is what freedom without spiritual and moral fence means! About 7 years ago there was such a case in Canada. An Anglican clergyman told parishioners that he wanted to change his sex. “Since we have the majority of women,” he said, “I decided to become a woman.” The parishioners held a vote in the church and decided to support the shepherd's initiative. And the women even told him: “Now you will be closer to us - not only as a spiritual mother, but also as a friend.” This is today's freedom.

The freedom of our time is nothing more than freedom from the will of God; freedom of the Fall, after which Adam, having experienced evil, could no longer do good. Freedom to sin, freedom of permissiveness. A werewolf who entices with the permission of the forbidden, seduces with liberalism and hides his true face with the brand of slavery burned on it. But flirting with sin is not in vain. Whoever looks into the abyss, the abyss looks into him; whoever serves whom is his slave.

What is freedom for Christianity? This is not an idea, but an internal state - independence from passions and being in love. Christ places freedom deep in the heart of man and connects it with the knowledge of the truth: “Know the truth, and the truth will make you free” (John 8:32). The Truth is Christ Himself (cf. John 14:6), and knowledge of the Truth is growth in love for Christ.

He who loves Christ is free in Christ, but he who loves sin is in bondage to sin. There is no freedom beyond good and evil. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom,” writes the Apostle Paul (2 Cor. 3:17). True freedom operates exclusively within the limits of God's goodness, because God alone is absolutely free and has life in Himself. Therefore, only He gives both life and freedom.

Freedom without Christian love naturally turns into arbitrariness and gives birth to evil, suffering, and slavery. The human will cannot remain neutral. Having abandoned God, she will inevitably find herself in slavery to passions and sin, and sin works only in the program of destruction. The Tower of Babel of “freedom from God” will certainly collapse.

It’s a paradox, but a fact: it has always been difficult for a person to carry his freedom given by God. The history of mankind is a multi-part film about how a person leaves the Creator to the far side in search of other owners. It’s amazing how God-given freedom is often experienced by us not as a blessing from God, but as a heavy cross that we try to throw off at the right opportunity.

We both want and do not want to become free. Our morning prayers speak about this state of ours: “Either I want, save me, or I don’t want, Christ my Savior.” And the Apostle Paul wrote: “I do not do the good that I want, but I do the evil that I do not want” (Rom. 7:19). In an amazing way, a person can combine both the desire for God and the attraction to sin; the desire to be free and enslaved. The love of God and the inclination to sin, the desire for purity and infection with vice are tangled in the soul into such a knot that can only be untied by the Lord, who “will judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart” (Heb. 4:12). Therefore, Christ even forbids the Angels to make a division between the wheat and the tares, ordering them to wait until the harvest of the Last Judgment (cf. Matt. 13:30).

Brothers and sisters, we have already come to know one type of freedom well. This is freedom from God and His holy will. Probably, the apostle says about all of us: “When you were slaves to sin, then you were free from righteousness. What fruit did you have then? Such are the things of which you yourselves are now ashamed, for their end is death” (Rom. 6:20–21). Yes, this is our past. But here is what should be our present: “Now that you have been freed from sin and become slaves of God, your fruit is holiness, and the end is eternal life” (Rom. 6:22). Let these words become an inscription on the banner of the coming victory over ourselves and our passions! Such a victory will open the door for us to liberation from sin and to a new life with God and in God.

Sergey Komarov

Was there freedom before man was created?

The basis of the freedom that a person is able to use is Divine freedom, the freedom of God Himself. God does not depend on anything. He is limitless, limitless, He is not determined by anything, but He Himself is capable of determining everything. The very word “definition” presupposes certain boundaries, limits by which an object is limited (in the broad sense of the word), beyond which it is not able to go. God has no such boundaries or framework; for Him, in principle, nothing is impossible. Everything is possible for Him because He is limitless. And since freedom is a kind of boundlessness, then in the true and absolute sense of the word only God alone possesses such freedom-limitlessness.

Freedom of choice and fatalism

Freedom of choice and fatalism, human responsibility and the omniscience of the Lord, who knows in advance the future of each of us - our actions, mistakes and even future death - these questions not only occupy our minds, but often determine the entire course of our lives. On this topic, the correspondent of the portal “Orthodoxy and the World” Natalya Smirnova talked with the philosopher, head of the department of basic theology and apologetics, as well as the department of philosophy of PSTGU, candidate of theology, associate professor Victor Lega.

— How fair is the phrase “He who is destined to be hanged will not drown” from the point of view of the Orthodox worldview?

- God knows everything that will happen to us, knows all times. It is only in paganism that the gods live with us, subject to time. God created the world along with time, so for Him there is no past or future, for Him everything is now. God is above time. This is the basis of Christian teaching. That is why the Bible ends with a prophecy, a revelation from John the Evangelist about the end of the world.

But foreseeing does not mean forcing. For example, if I know that you will be home in the evening, then I do not force you to do this, I just know. God knows the actions that we do of our own free will. Therefore, God's foreknowledge does not abolish our freedom. God has knowledge: when and how I will die. But I don't know that.

— So this does not mean that a person should sit back and wait for the “hanging”?

- Yes, or throw yourself into a stormy sea, thinking that God will pull him out. It would be one thing if they gave me a book where it would be written: you will have such and such a death at such and such a time. But I don’t know this and I will never know. Otherwise it would be scary - if a person knows his future, he is deprived of his freedom.

Free servant of God

— Christianity claims that God gives people freedom to choose good and evil. But isn’t the existence of hell for sinners, which people already know about in earthly life, such a limitation?

— If a mother tells her son: “Don’t go for a walk in the evening, there are hooligans in the yard,” then this is not a restriction of freedom, but a warning of danger. It would be a limitation if God did not allow sinners to sin, but forced everyone to do only good. If a person walks forward and sees that there is an abyss ahead, does it limit his movement? On the one hand, yes, but on the other hand, he can jump into it if he is suicidal.

In the modern world, freedom is one of the main life values, and this seems quite natural. Christians have the opposite attitude towards freedom; there is a tendency to submit to the will of God, the advice of a priest, church teaching, and, in the end, one’s husband. Even Christ’s death on the cross itself is the pinnacle of manifestation of voluntary external unfreedom.

And any Christian calls himself a servant of God. One of the most significant values ​​is obedience, and a person who wants to completely devote his life to serving God goes to a monastery and takes a vow of obedience, i.e. as if he completely renounces his freedom. But this is a superficial view because it contains a misunderstanding of what freedom is. And to resolve this issue, we cannot do without a serious theological basis. Atheists say: “In the Church, as in the army, freedom is suppressed, but atheism is true freedom.” Even in the first centuries of Christianity, Pelagius “broke down” on the question of human freedom and created his own heresy, which was later called Pelagianism. Freedom, according to Pelagius, is the opportunity to do as you want. A person always faces a choice, so he is free. Consequently, no one and nothing can force a person to be a sinner or a righteous person - neither God, nor the Church, nor society - only he himself is responsible for his sins. Thus, a person is saved according to his own will and merits. But Blessed Augustine and St. Maximus the Confessor discovered Pelagius’ error in the definition of freedom. He, like modern defenders of freedom, paid attention only to the external level of freedom, to its manifestation. And Augustine and St. Maximus - on the essence of freedom. And therefore, it would be more correct to say that freedom is not just a choice, but on the contrary, only a free being has a choice.

— That is, choice is only a manifestation of freedom, and not its essence?

- Yes. Freedom lies deeper than the level of choice. For example, God has no choice between good and evil; God cannot sin. But at the same time, any Christian knows that God is absolutely free. Why? Because He does not depend on anyone or anything. He is the Existent, existing by virtue of His own nature. That is, freedom is being in oneself. Complete independence. Freedom, therefore, is opposed not to violence, but to dependence. This is how many philosophers define the concept of freedom. Man, created in the image of God, carries within himself this piece of Divine freedom, which in the created world manifests itself in man as the possibility of choice.

But on the other hand, a person lives in the world and depends on it. He is not free in this world. I cannot cancel the laws of gravity and electricity, they are eternal, unchangeable, dependent on God, and not on me. I have freedom of choice, but I can exercise it within a very small range, which usually lies in the sphere of morality. The one who knows his nature and can act in accordance with it is truly free.

We often say: “This is a weak-willed person, but that one has a strong will.” How are these people different? A weak-willed person is led by external circumstances. He was invited to go for a walk, and he agreed, instead of going to college. They offered him a drink - he gets drunk. And a person who has a strong will says: “No, I won’t, although I want to. I want to go to the cinema, take a walk, lie down, sleep, but I will do what I need.” This person with a strong will has freedom, knowledge of himself, what he needs, and the ability to subjugate circumstances, and not vice versa.

A stone that falls is not free because it obeys the laws of gravity. An animal that eats is not free because it is subject to physiological processes in the body. My body exists using the same mechanisms. Gastric juice comes in, and the body requires food, for example, meat. And I tell him: “No, wait until tomorrow. Today is Wednesday, Lent.” That is, I show my independence from something external, in this case from the desires of my body. In the animal world, and in nature in general, there is no freedom. A stone cannot, when falling, say: “Let me stop and fly sideways.” Freedom is given only to man because he can control himself - and this is what distinguishes him from the rest of the world. Philosophy defines freedom as the ability to act according to one’s own nature, and not according to external ones. Fasting is one of the very important Christian institutions that show a person that he must control himself. There are situations when a person must show who is boss in the house - the soul or the body.

Refusal from sin gives greater freedom, although sin is usually easier to commit, it is pleasant. But it is difficult to commit a moral act, just as it is difficult to force yourself to obey, to develop that very strong will. And therefore, freedom can only exist where there is knowledge of how to act.

— What if a person doesn’t know himself?

- Then he is not free and will always obey some external influences, go with the flow. He will be a thing if he does not know himself. Therefore, in philosophy there has always been a call: know yourself, only then will you become free.

Main compass

— How to know yourself?

— We say that man is the image of God, and the path to freedom is the path to God. Slavery in God is true freedom, although it seems paradoxical. The Gospel says: you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. The Lord said: “I am the way and the truth and the life.” That is, know God - and He will make you free.

Let's say you get lost in the forest. If you don’t know where to go, then you’ll go where it’s easier: downhill, where it’s drier. You will avoid the windbreak. Will you go out to your house like this? Most likely no. You will constantly be confused. If you have a compass, then you will force yourself to walk through the windfall and up the mountain, but in the end you will come to where you want. The Gospel is a compass that tells a person where to go, including in order to be moral. After all, this is the simplest and most complex question: what is morality? What should I do to choose good over evil? It is known that what God called good is moral, and what God did not approve of is immoral.

— This is true for a Christian, but an atheist will ask why the criterion of morality is God?

- Because God is love. And therefore, to know God within oneself is precisely to know love. Since only good can come from God, doing good means acting in accordance with God’s commandments. And vice versa: if we do not obey God, we act badly.

— Comment on the opinion expressed by atheists: if a person is within strict limits - either to submit to the will of God, or to hell, then he turns from an independent person into a creature programmed by someone else's will.

— A Christian always faces some kind of responsibility. If it is Lent, he should give up meat; if it is Sunday, then it would be a good idea to go to church. An atheist should not have any of this. Who is freer? The atheist will say: “I am freer. I do what I want, and you do what you were ordered.” And the Christian says: “Nobody ordered me. I do this because I know it’s the right thing to do.” And this is different from an order. Fasting is not a diet or fasting. Poor people often say: “We fast anyway.” But they do not eat meat not out of their own free will, but because they have no money. And this is an external reason. But a Christian does not eat meat, although his refrigerator may be filled with meat, because he knows that he cannot eat meat during Lent. On this day he wants to fast, that is, he refuses of his own free will. And a person who eats meat on this day acts in accordance with his physiological reaction. The stomach said: “I want meat” - and the person obediently goes to the refrigerator, that is, he acts exactly like a mechanism.

This is the meaning of the paradox of obedience - true freedom is achieved when a person acts not as he wants, but as he should. What you want to do, the Church calls passion. A person cannot get rid of passions, but he can either submit to them (and then he becomes their slave), or dominate them (and then he becomes free). Besides, obedience is like training for an athlete. If a person can control himself every day, then he will be able to control himself in more difficult situations. They say about such a person: “he is a reliable person, you can rely on him.”

If we analyze the case of who is more free, a monk who has taken a vow of obedience, or an atheist who does what he wants, we will see: in fact, the atheist does not do what he wants, but what his body wants, which obeys the laws of nature. And as we know, in nature, in the material world, there is no freedom. By rising above it, listening to my soul and mastering my body, I truly become free. In this sense, where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. The essence of sin is precisely that the body dominates the soul, the lower dominates the higher.

— It turns out that freedom is the right choice of a person in life situations, although it can be very difficult to make, it imposes restrictions. But it seemed to me that freedom is an internal feeling, consonant with something beautiful and desirable, and not at all with restrictions and difficulties.

- You are absolutely right. This is the kind of freedom God wants to achieve from us. There are different levels of freedom. Here is a schoolboy sitting over a theorem and thinking: “How to understand it?” And in five years he will look: “Well, what’s incomprehensible here, it’s elementary.” It’s the same in spiritual work: if earlier we could hardly renounce sin, then at a higher level it is much easier to cope with it. In Orthodoxy there is a term deification. And our task is to “become like God.” As the Gospel says: “Be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Become who God intended you to be. That is, we must reach a state where we cannot even think about the desire for sin. This is the level of holiness that is our ideal. Of course, this is a very long path, but it leads to true freedom.

Laws over which we have no control

— Can people who have achieved such the highest level of freedom even change external circumstances?

— Vladimir Solovyov has a poem:

Although we are forever chained by invisible chains to unearthly shores, But even in chains we ourselves must complete the circle that the gods have outlined for us. Everything that is in accordance with the higher will creates an alien will with its own will, And under the guise of impassive matter, the divine fire burns everywhere.

That is, when I agree to the Divine will, I can change the outside world. A scientist thinks about the same way. After all, he also proceeds from the recognition that there is something higher in the world - the laws of nature, over which he has no control. “Freedom is a recognized necessity.” Let's say, if a person suddenly imagines that he can fly like a bird and jumps off a cliff, he will crash. If he honestly admits that he cannot fly, but can learn the meaning of the laws of gravity and aerodynamics, he will be able to put this knowledge into practice, build an airplane and eventually fly.

Christianity includes this scientific view, but the Christian understanding of the world is much broader. In addition to the material world, which obeys the laws of nature, there is a spiritual world, which also has its own “laws” - first of all, moral principles, that is, commandments. Knowing them and acting in accordance with them, a person also becomes freer, like a scientist who has learned the laws of nature. This is the meaning of the gospel phrase “Know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

He who does not know the truth will always be a slave - in this case a slave of sin, although he will believe that he acts freely. The one who acts in accordance with the commandments will become truly free.

pravmir.ru

How does the freedom of God differ from the freedom of man?

Man is created in the image and called to become the likeness of God, this applies not only to freedom, but also to the entire existence of man. God endowed man with freedom in His image, but Divine freedom differs from human freedom in that it is absolute. Only God is autonomous in the truest sense of the word (from the Greek word meaning “to be a law unto himself”). God has absolute freedom, and man is limited, relative, depending on God and his neighbor. And at the same time, God is good, but for a person, freedom is a choice between good and evil.

What is human freedom in Christianity?

Freedom is that every soul can choose. There are different types of freedom. And, probably, the first freedom will be that everyone can choose good or evil. And, accordingly, receive all the consequences of your choice. After all, if you do not choose God, then how can God save you? After all, you are not His! After all, you didn’t choose Him!

There is another freedom. In every soul. Who is the owner in every body? Soul and mind or passions? Why does a person live? For pleasure - that means he is a slave of pleasure! For money, it means he is a slave to the love of money and serves the golden calf! For other passions, that means he is their slave! Look into your soul and your mind - are you slave to anything? And even if you cannot, for example, give up smoking, are you free?

Perhaps I’m wrong, but from your question I understood that you want to try everything in this life, but so that you don’t have to pay anything for it. But does that really happen? The Church, like parents, warns us with the words of the Apostle Paul :

Don't flatter yourself! Neither harlots, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor defilers, nor harlots, nor sodomites, nor covetous, nor thieves, nor drunkards, nor molesters, nor extortioners will inherit the kingdom of God. (Starts with 134 of the first letter to Corinth).

In the same way, our parents tell us about the dangers in our lives, and we often, to be honest, don’t believe them, or deep down in our souls we believe, but we really want to try “sweet” or “strawberries,” but when the consequences of our choice come, we We run to our parents asking for help.

What's the matter? But the fact is that we will have to answer for absolutely all our deeds. And that any of our sins does not change our soul for the better. And it is not at all a fact that our souls, tormented and spoiled by sins, will be able to be close to God. And even if God, in his ineffable mercy, forgives us our sins and iniquities, we ourselves will remain ourselves. Will we be able to cleanse our souls with repentance and good deeds during the time allotted to us, which we ourselves shorten with our sins, for example, drunkenness and debauchery?

On the topic of free will, I will also quote you Professor A.I. Osipov with his reference to Kant: “By freedom in the cosmological (as he puts it, but in fact in the metaphysical) sense, I mean the ability to spontaneously begin a state. Freedom in a practical (that is, moral, spiritual) sense is the independence of the will from the coercion of sensuality.” So, he rightly notes, calling cosmological freedom what we called metaphysical freedom, that this is “the ability to spontaneously begin a state.” A very important thought! People constantly ask the question: “What is freedom? Why does a person do this and not another?” - forgetting about a simple thing: as soon as you said “why?”, you have already excluded freedom. Freedom lies in the fact that a person does not act for a reason, but begins a series of actions on his own, as Kant writes: “begin a state.” Metaphysical freedom is the ability to begin a series of actions not because of some external, third-party influences, but precisely because I want it so!

And from the earlier words of Thomas Aquinas : “The final goal of all human desires and actions is necessarily the same - good; but it, like any goal, can be achieved in an indefinite number of different ways and means, and only in the choice between them is the freedom of human will.”

But further, descending into the depths of centuries, a simpler and clearer thing is visible: “Both the resistive force and the grace of God turn out to be motivating, and not constraining, so that freedom and arbitrariness are fully preserved in us. Therefore, for those bad deeds that a person does at the instigation of Satan, it is no longer Satan, but man, who is punished; because a person is not forcibly drawn into vice, but is driven to it by his own will. And similarly, in a good deed, grace does not attribute to itself what was done, but to the person, and therefore assigns glory to him because he himself became the author of good. For grace does not make his will indispensable, binding, as it is said, with an involuntary force: but, remaining in a person, it gives room to arbitrariness, so that it becomes clear whether his will is inclined towards virtue or towards vice. For the law is not given to nature, but to free will, which can bend to both good and bad.” (Reverend Macarius of Egypt, “Sermon on Freedom of the Mind”).

And the point is that each of our choices changes our soul, and the state of our soul at the end of its earthly existence can be expressed as the sum of these choices. Simply put, every moment of our existence we and only we sculpt our soul, but what will come out in the end? Will the outcome of our choices be worthy of eternity and will we be able to stand close to God?

So think and reason about what and who you should choose!

Notes on moral theology. 5. The question of free will

From the book of Metropolitan Philaret (Voznesensky) “Verbs of Eternal Life”, published in the series “Spiritual Heritage of the Russian Abroad”, published by the Sretensky Monastery in 2007.

Determinism, its analysis. — False and true concept of indeterminism. — The influence of motives and freedom of choice on us. — Our awareness of our freedom and the fact of repentance

We already know that a person is responsible for his actions only when he is free to commit them. But does he also have that spiritual freedom, freedom of will, which is assumed here? Recently, a doctrine called determinism has become widespread in humanity. The followers of this teaching - determinists - do not recognize free will in man. They argue that in each individual act a person acts only for external reasons. According to their teaching, a person always acts only under the influence of motives and impulses that do not depend on him, and usually obeys the strongest of these motives. These scientists say: “It only seems to us that we are acting freely, this is self-deception.” The famous 16th century philosopher Spinoza defended this opinion. As an example, he spoke about a thrown stone, that if this stone could think and speak, then he would also say that it flies and falls in the place where he himself wants. But in reality, he flies only because someone threw him, and falls under the influence of gravity.

We will return to this example below. For now, let's note the following. The doctrine that is opposite to determinism and recognizes free will in man is called indeterminism. This teaching is accepted by Christianity. But we must remember that there are extreme indeterminists whose teachings take on a one-sidedly false character. They say that a person's freedom is his complete power to do exactly as he wants. Thus, in their understanding, human freedom is his complete arbitrariness, complete power to act according to any desire or whim. The socialists and communists lured and captured the entire unfortunate deceived Russian people to the false bait of such “freedom”; The holy Apostle Peter speaks about such “freedom” (see: 2 Pet 2:19). Of course, this is not freedom. This is an abuse of freedom, a perversion of it. Man does not have absolute, unconditional freedom; only Almighty God possesses such supreme creative freedom.

In contrast to such false indeterminism, true indeterminism teaches differently. His teaching suggests that man is undoubtedly influenced by external motives and impulses of various kinds. For example, he is affected by the environment, living conditions, political situation, his education, cultural development, etc. All this is reflected in the features of his moral character. In this recognition that a person is affected, and sometimes very strongly, by various external motives and influences, indeterminists agree with determinists. But then there is a fundamental discrepancy. While determinists say that a person acts one way or another only under the influence of the strongest of motives, and has no freedom, indeterminists argue that he is always free to choose any of these motives. This motive may not be the strongest at all; moreover, a person may even prefer a motive that other people seem clearly unprofitable. An example of this is the feat of martyrs, who to the pagan tormentors seemed crazy, deliberately destroying themselves. Thus, in the view of indeterminism, human freedom is not unconditionally creative freedom, but freedom of choice, the freedom of our will to decide: to act one way or another.

Christianity accepts precisely this understanding of human freedom, agreeing with indeterminism. Applying it to the moral sphere, to the question of the struggle between good and evil, between virtue and sin, Christianity says that this freedom of man is his freedom to choose between good and evil. According to the scientific and theological definition, “freedom of will is our ability of self-determination in relation to good and evil, independent of anyone and nothing.”

Now we can immediately understand Spinoza's example of the falling stone. We are convinced that a person has free will in the sense of choosing to do one way or another. Spinoza considers the flight of a stone to be an analogy with human actions. But this could only be done if the stone had freedom of choice - to fly or not to fly, to fall or not to fall. But the stone obviously does not have such freedom, and therefore this example is completely unconvincing...

The inconsistency of determinism, which denies free will, is evident from the following. Firstly, not a single determinist implements his teachings in practical life. And it's clear why. After all, if you look at life from a strictly deterministic point of view, then no one should be punished: neither a lazy student for laziness, nor a thief for theft, nor a murderer, etc., since they did not act freely, but would only be slaves, weak-willed performers of what they were commanded by motives that influenced them from outside. An absurd, but quite consistent conclusion from determinism... Secondly, proof of free will is the fact of a well-known experience of the soul, which is called repentance and is familiar to everyone from personal experience... What is this feeling of repentance based on? Yes, obviously, on the fact that a repentant person mentally returns to the moment of committing his bad act and mourns his sin, clearly realizing that he could have acted differently, could have done not evil, but good. Obviously, such repentance could not take place if a person did not have free will, but was a weak-willed slave of external influences. In this case, he would not be responsible for his actions...

We Christians recognize man as morally free, controlling his own will and actions and, therefore, responsible for them before the truth of God. And such freedom is the greatest gift to man from God, Who seeks from him not mechanical obedience, but free-filial obedience of love. And the Lord Himself affirmed this freedom, saying: “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24), and in the Old Testament he said through the prophet: “Behold, I am today I have offered you life and good, death and evil” (Deut. 30:15,19). Choose life so that you and your descendants may live.

Freedom - what is Christian freedom?

Freedom - what is Christian freedom?

Freedom - “freedom” is most often spoken of as freedom in the political sense, freedom from tyranny and oppression by other people.
The Bible begins its story of freedom at this most basic level. The God of the Bible is a liberator, and a liberator in the literal and literal sense. The Ten Commandments begin with the solemn declaration: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery” (Exodus 20:2). God leads His people out of slavery—the very literal slavery in which the Jews were in Egypt—by breaking the stubbornness of their oppressors with formidable signs and wonders.

It is impossible to overestimate the influence that the story of the Exodus had on the formation of the consciousness of Christendom. Some things that we now take for granted looked quite strange in the pre-biblical world. A God who takes the side of the slaves, the side of the oppressed, the side of the powerless, against the powerful of this world - this was strange, incomprehensible and even outrageous news for contemporaries. The gods of the pagans symbolized strength, power, victory; they were closer to the dominant, reigning strata of human society - and farthest from the oppressed and slaves.

But the God of the Law and the Prophets time after time turns against the powerful and glorious and takes the side of the powerless and unknown. This is the fast that I have chosen: loose the chains of unrighteousness, untie the bands of the yoke, and set the oppressed free, and break every yoke (Isa. 58:6).

It is no coincidence that the perception of freedom as a universal value developed precisely in the Christian world; and even those who rebelled against the Church and against faith in God in general, thinking that they would thereby gain greater freedom, consciously or not, appealed to biblical images.

FREEDOM WITHOUT GOD

Biblical prophets attacked unrighteous rulers - including religious ones - in the name of God; and many movements that opposed oppression were distinctly religious in nature, be it the abolitionists advocating the abolition of black slavery or the US civil rights movement of the 1960s, led by Baptist minister Martin Luther King.

But in European history, a different understanding of freedom has developed - a freedom that is not only divorced from its biblical foundations, but also directly rebels against faith in God. This movement first made its presence known in France at the end of the 18th century, where a number of famous thinkers began to perceive the Church as a support of royal power and a source of oppression - oppression that had to be gotten rid of in order to build a new life on the principles of reason, freedom and fraternity. Most of these thinkers adhered to a kind of vague and adogmatic religiosity, faith in God, which had to be “cleansed” of church “superstitions”; but in the same movement “pure” atheists also appeared, such as Baron Paul Holbach, who fiercely rebelled against any faith, especially the biblical one.

The “Dawn of Freedom” that shone over France during the Great French Revolution at first caused an explosion of delight among the thinking European public, but then the news coming from Paris began to become more and more gloomy: the kingdom of reason and freedom turned into a kingdom of blood and terror. Beginning with the “September Massacre,” when mobs massacred thousands of people in Paris and other cities, considering them “counter-revolutionaries,” and continuing with General Turreau’s “hellish columns” that carried out what was later called the “French-French genocide” in the Vendée, the revolution turned its other side.

As the British thinker Edmund Burke wrote in his Reflections on the Revolution in France, “What is freedom without wisdom and virtue? This is the greatest of all possible evils; this is recklessness, vice and madness that cannot be curbed.”

Since then, the world has experienced a number of bloody revolutions, and one of the worst took place in our country. Slogans of freedom, equality, brotherhood were proclaimed, freedom from oppression was promised, people were inspired by dreams of a brave new world, but for some reason it all ended in massacres and the establishment of such tyranny that in comparison with it the regime overthrown by the revolution turned out to be a model of freedom.

From the “September Massacre” at the end of the 18th century to the Cambodian “killing fields” at the end of the 20th century, the promise of freedom turned into much blood. Why? Let us quote another statement from Edmund Burke: “The meaning of freedom for every individual is that he can do as he pleases: we must understand what he likes before we send congratulations, which may soon turn into condolences.”

Freedom from external constraints, if acquired by a person devoid of internal principles, turns into disaster. “Should I congratulate the murderer or the highwayman who has broken the bonds of prison,” wrote Burke, “on the acquisition of his natural rights? It would be like the episode of the liberation of criminals condemned to the galleys by the heroic philosopher - the Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance.”

Therefore, the freedom that the Bible speaks of is much more than just freedom from oppression by other people.

THERE IS ALWAYS A CHOICE

In the ancient world, bandits attacking anyone traveling on the roads were a constant problem. The authorities could not organize patrols or cope with the task in any other way; therefore, they tried to compensate for their powerlessness with increased severity - the captured robbers were given a particularly painful death, which, as expected, should have had a sobering effect on the rest. We can imagine a robber who, as we would say, walks free - he must fear the authorities, but, on the other hand, no one is his master, he is not forced to work hard for some master, he can go wherever he wants. And this man was caught, tied up and thrown into prison. Does he retain his freedom? Obviously not. Thick stone walls, iron bars and stern guards stand between him and the free air. Finally, he was sentenced and, according to the custom of that time, crucified - so that he could not even move his hand and was forced to endure unbearable torment. Is this person free? The question itself may seem mocking. But this is a completely meaningful question, and there is a precise answer to it. A man who cannot move is nevertheless free to make the most important decision of his life. We read about this man in the Gospel of Luke: One of the hanged evildoers slandered Him and said: If You are the Christ, save Yourself and us. The other, on the contrary, calmed him down and said: Or are you not afraid of God, when you yourself are condemned to the same thing? And we are condemned justly, because we accepted what was worthy of our deeds, but He did nothing bad. And he said to Jesus: remember me, Lord, when you come into your kingdom! And Jesus said to him: Truly I say to you, today you will be with Me in Paradise (Luke 23:39-43).

There is a freedom that nothing can take away from us - in any circumstance we have a choice. The prisoner may become embittered or repent; a person confined to a wheelchair can be filled with bitterness, resentment and hatred towards the whole world, or he can turn to God and become a source of support and consolation for the healthy people around him. Circumstances put us before a choice, but they do not determine what we choose. We always determine this ourselves. It seems that freedom of choice is a self-evident, directly experienced experience; nevertheless, we are all inclined to deny it.

IT'S NOT ME!

The third chapter of the Book of Genesis contains a surprisingly deep and accurate story about sin - the first sin, but at the same time sin in general. Have you not eaten from the tree from which I forbade you to eat? - God asks Adam. There seem to be only two answers: “yes, I ate” or “no, I didn’t.” But Adam said: The woman whom You gave me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate (Gen. 3:11-12). The fact that Adam broke the commandment is the fault of his wife - and, indirectly, of God, who slipped this wife to him.

Adam made a conscious choice to eat the forbidden fruit. But he says that this choice is not his, that he is determined by someone or something else - a wife, a serpent, God, just not by him, poor Adam.

A lot of time has passed since this story was written, but the attitude of people towards their lives remains the same: we tend to claim that our actions are determined by someone else. We get angry because other people make us angry; we sin because other people lead us into temptation; We hate our neighbor because he is such a scoundrel that we cannot help but hate him.

Our actions are forced by the circumstances around us - the weather, the country in which we live, genes, anything else - excluding our personal will. It’s not our fault—it’s someone else’s fault, or perhaps—this is fine with everyone—Mother Nature.

Why are we so eager to abdicate responsibility? After all, this is monstrously stupid and destructive from a purely earthly, practical point of view. When we refuse to acknowledge our actions as fully our own, we lose control of our lives.

Who turns out to be the author of the book of our lives, if not ourselves? Other people, circumstances, our own internal impulses that we don’t even try to control. Every passer-by finds himself on the captain's bridge of our lives, our rudder is turned by every random gust of wind, every seagull that sits down on it to rest.

What will happen to our lives? Nothing good. At best, it will simply be empty and pitiful - we will achieve nothing and gain nothing. At worst, we will simply crash into the reefs of alcoholism, drug addiction, or end our days in prison. In fact, what unites people who have suffered a downfall in life? Their belief is that their life and their actions are determined by someone else. They started drinking because those around them treated them like pigs; abandoned their family because their family “never understood them”; committed a crime because they were driven or forced. Even in order to put our lives in order on a purely worldly, this-worldly level, we must admit that we are free in the sense that we ourselves make decisions and are responsible for them.

Sometimes people resort to a more subtle way of denying the reality of choice and responsibility: they adhere to a philosophy that generally declares free will an illusion. The atheistic philosophy of materialism assumes that there is nothing in the world except matter moving according to unchanging laws, and that what we perceive as acts of thinking or free choice are the result of incredibly complex, but purely material processes. Your choice to read this article is due to electrochemical processes in your cerebral cortex, these processes are due to the previous state of the system, input signals and the unchanging laws of nature. You have no more freedom of choice than any other natural process. It seems to you that you are making a free choice, but, from the point of view of materialists, this is an illusion.

But what is the reason for such ridiculous behavior? What is so terrible that people are trying to escape from by resorting to such destructive lies?

ABOUT WHAT WE CANNOT NOT KNOW

People can deny both the reality of objective law and the reality of our free choice; but this is such an awl that you can’t hide it in a bag. In reality, we all deeply believe in both, and this is evident in our tendency to judge other people. As the holy Apostle Paul writes, therefore, you are inexcusable, every person who judges another, for with the same judgment with which you judge another, you condemn yourself, because in judging another you do the same (Rom. 2:1).

Indeed, in order for human actions to constitute the subject of guilt or merit, two conditions are necessary: ​​first, people must perform them freely; secondly, we must evaluate them from the point of view of some law, some criterion of good and evil. A natural process—for example, digestion—is not subject to moral evaluation. We do not scold a person for having a sick stomach and do not praise him for a healthy one. Only his free decisions can make a person guilty. By blaming someone, we are already recognizing that he made a free choice, and this choice is wrong. It was his will to break the moral law or to keep it, and he violated it; this is what makes him guilty and worthy of condemnation.

But for the law to make him guilty, it must be an objective law that we are all obliged to obey, regardless of whether we recognize it or not. By reproaching someone for immorality, we thereby affirm the reality of such a thing as morality, which the other person was obliged to adhere to. But, says the Apostle, since such a law exists (and we ourselves recognize this in relation to other people), then it also exists in relation to ourselves. We ourselves can be - and will be - held accountable for violating it.

Behind the law is the Lawgiver and the Judge, to whom we must give an account. The prospect of possible condemnation frightens us—like Adam. And - like Adam - we try to alleviate our fear by shifting the blame to others or inventing complex systems of self-justification for ourselves.

Recognizing that we ourselves are the authors of our actions confronts us with an unpleasant fact: we have done a lot of bad things in our lives, and we have nothing to say in our defense.

IF THE SON FREES YOU...

Man was originally created free - and has abused his free will to become very corrupt. Christ comes to save us from this corruption. But why was Calvary needed for this? Why can't God just undo the consequences of our sins? Because God gives us real freedom of choice - with real consequences. Our choice cannot simply be taken away; that would mean that His gift of freedom was invalid from the very beginning. God acts differently - He descends to us and becomes a Man in the person of Jesus Christ to die for our sins. As He himself said at the Last Supper - and as the Church has repeated at every Liturgy since then - this is My Blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins (Matthew 26:28). This forgiveness of sins is obtained by everyone who runs to Him with repentance and faith; but the freedom that Christ brings is not only freedom from the guilt of sins.

Imagine a drug addict who committed a crime while trying to get money for the next dose - if only he is released from conviction without curing his vice, in a short time he will break the law again. Likewise, a sinful person needs not only forgiveness, but also a deep inner change that will free him from the craving for sin. Therefore, the Apostles speak of freedom in a deeper sense - freedom from sin, freedom for righteousness, freedom to correspond to the true good and purpose of man.

In the absence of external constraints, a person can do what he wants - but what does he want? The alcoholic desperately wants to get drunk; at the same time, deep down, he wants to get rid of his vice and live a sober and healthy life. The fornicator wants an easy, non-binding connection - but at the same time, in his heart he yearns for true, devoted love. We want different things at the same time, and often our own desires bind us much more strongly than prisons and chains.

The inability to live as we should - and as we want in moments of enlightenment - constitutes that bitter slavery about which the Lord says: everyone who commits sin is a slave of sin (John 8:34). An angry person is not free to remain calm; the fornicator is not free to remain faithful; a greedy person does not control money, but tolerates being controlled by money. So any sin says that our human nature is flawed, insufficient, sick.

And Christ brings us new life, which gradually changes us from the inside; prayer, personal and church, instructions from priests, participation in the Sacraments, reading the word of God - these are the means that God gives us for spiritual growth. This process of finding true freedom will not be easy or smooth - God does not deal with clay, but with free individuals who continue to fall and make mistakes - but if we follow Him, Christ will lead us to that eternal and blessed life for which He created us.

WHAT IF I SAY “NO”?

The Gospel is a book of hope: the most lost sinner, a person who, by all accounts, is hopelessly lost, can turn to Christ and find salvation. But what if I refuse? How often do you hear a direct or implied demand: “I’m not going to believe and repent, but you promise me that everything will be okay with me.” But this actually means that we must deny people their free choice and assure them that they will be dragged into heaven without their consent. We cannot do this - it would simply not be true. God does absolutely everything possible for the salvation of every person - and the Cross of Christ reminds of this. But a person can say “no” and refuse the gift offered to him. He may refuse to enter the door where he is persistently invited - and remain behind the door.

It is sometimes said that God is too good to leave anyone at the door - and this is, of course, true. God will accept even the lowest sinner, but even God cannot do anything with those who refuse to be accepted. He wants us to remain free until the end. It's just our choice. And our responsibility is whether we say yes or no, respond to the call or refuse to come.

The door of His house is open; nothing and no one can prevent us from entering - like that prudent robber. But no one can do this for us.

Sergey Khudiev

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Free personality in Christian and secular understanding

Freedom as the greatest virtue

The Holy Scripture, speaking about man's responsibility before God for the choice between good and evil, presents him not only as reasonable, but also free.
The oldest classical text of the Bible on this topic is verses 15 and 19 of the 30th chapter of the book of Deuteronomy: “Behold, today I have set before you life and good, death and evil... I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Choose life, so that you and your descendants may live, love the Lord your God, listen to His voice and cleave to Him.” Or in the Gospel of Matthew, Christ says to the rich young man: “If you want to enter into eternal life, keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17). If a person is not free, he cannot be called a moral being, just as a computer cannot be praised for correctly solving problems - they are solved within the framework of software. According to N.O. Lossky, “freedom is a necessary condition for morality and at the same time the main basis of its value. Only free beings can be bearers of moral goodness. Only free beings who voluntarily embark on the path of unity with Christ, as a living ideal bearing within Himself the image of perfection, deserve the name of sons of God. And, finally, only a free being is capable of being a co-worker with God in creativity.”

Freedom, like rationality, not only makes us capable of hearing and responding to the highest Revelations of the Creator - it is a condition for the highest dignity and happiness of man created by God. Since there can be no good without freedom, creation can only have perfect meaning if man, as the crown of creation, is able to be free in his choice of meanings and actions. It is clear that such freedom contains the possibility of not only the highest good, but also the lowest evil.

However, God takes the risk of granting man freedom, which is the expression of the highest dignity, having previously provided for the ways of his salvation. Moreover, having endowed man with freedom, God also provided him with sufficient means to formulate meanings and achieve his goals. That is why the person himself bears full responsibility for what he thinks and implements.

Of course, we firmly believe that God's relationship to the world is not limited to creation, as Aristotle and Descartes thought about it. But this presence does not in any way violate the freedom of human choice and action, because man is not limited to deterministic spatial corporeality. Even Voltaire, this deist far from Christianity, in a letter to K.A. He wrote to Helvetius: “I confess to you that I have been wandering in this labyrinth for a long time, my guiding thread has been broken thousands of times, but still I return to the fact that the good of society requires that a person consider himself free... I am beginning... to appreciate more happiness in life than the truth... Why not assume that the supreme being, who gave me the incomprehensible ability of understanding, could give me a little freedom..."

Since for a true deist, happiness in life in old age really represents a value much greater than the truth, and the good of society requires that a person (probably still deluded from Voltaire’s point of view) consider himself free, then perhaps it is so Is that what it is? Moreover, Voltaire himself probably did not want to be entirely a product of social consciousness. For such a proud man as Voltaire, the factor of freedom was mandatory.

Despite the fact that man was created in the image of God, and it would seem quite natural for him to see his own good in goodness, in God as the Source of life, he still remains free. And his freedom extends to the point of having the right to say “no” to his Creator. This problem lies not only in an intellectual error, but also in the will of a free being who asserts himself in his own selfhood and falls into slavery to himself. Because it is impossible to be free from yourself if there is no God.

“From an ethical point of view, freedom is a property of the human spirit, which cannot otherwise be imagined as free. The limitations of freedom lie not in the spiritual sphere itself, but in the manifestation of the spirit in the external world.”

Immersion in deterministic materiality, in animality, is expressed in the Bible through symbolic images: “walking on your belly,” “...you will walk on your belly and eat dust all the days of your life” (Gen. 3: 14), “you will fall before him.” the inhabitants of the desert and his enemies will lick the dust” (Ps. 71:9). Therefore, the concepts of political and economic freedom are always conditional. Freedom, being a property of the human spirit, like other mental properties, belongs to people to varying degrees and initially only as a possibility. Freedom is acquired, it is a task, a God-given opportunity to return to a blissful state. However, only God has absolute freedom, and that is why we can say with absolute confidence that without God, without His help and support, a person will never be truly free.

Lack of external subordination and internal necessity

Freedom is usually defined through its opposition to necessity. Or when an ambiguous choice is offered. But choice always has limits, and thus our freedom is diminished. (In politics, choosing from a certain number and quality of candidates often turns out to be the absence of any choice.) The very necessity of making a choice already destroys our freedom. However, without claiming absolute freedom, which only God possesses, we are, to some extent, still free to choose.

Thus, freedom is the absence of subordination to outside influences. According to Hegel’s apt definition, freedom is being “within oneself.” There is high freedom, as a conscious necessity, which Lenin really liked; it was borrowed from the Stoics, for whom the existing world seemed to be a single space filled with predetermined meaning. This understanding of freedom is also characteristic of Spinoza, for whom the idea of ​​the dissolution of meaning in the nature of things was also extremely dear. And from the point of view of Marxism, a person thinks and acts depending on his motives and environment, and the main role in his environment is played by economic relations and class struggle.

In the “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen” of 1789 (France), human freedom is interpreted as the opportunity “ to do everything that does not harm another: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each person is limited only by those limits that ensure other members of society the enjoyment of the same rights . These limits can only be determined by law.” Thus, while proclaiming freedom, the authors of the Declaration forget about man himself. He becomes dependent not only on his natural habitat, but also on social conditioning. By manipulating the concept of freedom, modern secular liberalism offers a person freedom of creativity as an opportunity for self-expression in the context of atheistic existentialism. However, what a person can take out of himself, doing everything that does not harm another, that which is not sanctified by the light of Divine co-presence, often turns out to be a devilish smile at man himself and his nature, the horror of worthlessness and ugliness of meaning.

But there is also low (or deep) freedom - the existence of a person within himself. After all, he is not only capable of analyzing the events taking place around him, but also subjecting himself to introspection and simulating future events. His imagination can extend to goals that can change the course of historical events. By changing himself, he changes the world around him and, in turn, changes himself again...

According to N.O. Lossky, “freedom is not at all the possibility of anything, causelessness, uncertainty of anything; it, on the contrary, is not only combined with necessity, but is precisely internal necessity, as determination by oneself,” or conformity with God (the ancient Russian word “freedom” correlates with the ancient Indian svapati - one’s own master, where svo is one’s own, poti is one’s master) . Freedom is the opposite of slavery, the highest manifestation of which is coercion from the outside.

Saints are not less, but more free than sinners, although precisely because of their holiness they cannot sin. “Great is the freedom not to sin,” wrote the blessed one. Augustine, “but the greatest freedom is not to be able to sin.”

Freedom as self-realization. The Problem of Sin

Freedom, finally, is self-realization. It is incompatible with sin, because sin, being a betrayal of God, is also a betrayal of our true self. “And the human heart rushes,” exclaimed Blessed Augustine, “until it rests in You, Lord.” This is because our true Fatherland is in God.

Modern culture, civilization and education are built in such a way as to shape a person, if not for the benefit of only a select few, then at least for the public good. In this context, a person himself becomes only a means, losing himself, his self-worth. That is why preaching about Christ, about His Kingdom, which is realized within human existence in accordance with the free will of the individual, is so important today. A Christian can and should call himself a liberal to an incomparably greater extent than modern atheists and agnostics who manipulate the concept of freedom within the framework of economic and political planning. “ Know the Truth,” says Christ, “and the Truth will make you free.”

Knowledge is the most important condition for the possible realization of freedom. And by knowledge it is necessary to understand not only the totality of empirical experience, but also the total spiritual experience of humanity.

This experience, to a certain extent, can be analyzed by those who have it, but it cannot be made prohibited for people, since in this case, a priori, a person becomes impaired in the ability to exercise his right to freedom.

“The weakness of man, of course, lies not only in the weakness of his understanding, but also in the weakness of his will. We do not want sin, but are only attracted to it; we fall into it, it takes possession of us. He is an expression of our lack of freedom...” However, a person who is quite intellectually developed and with a trained will, similar to the literary images developed by Chernyshevsky, Dostoevsky, Solovyov, N. Ostrovsky, does not seem to be the savior of humanity and the arbiter of its destinies today.

The problem of the sufficiency of intellectual and volitional efforts for a person to realize personal dignity and fullness of being is, in our opinion, the most dramatic in the modern debate between traditionally Christian and secular ideas.

From the point of view of Orthodox anthropology, the image of God in man is indestructible, therefore he always has the opportunity to return to the path of good. That is why in Eastern both Greek and Russian religious folklore there are so many stories about the repentance of the most inveterate sinners.

Returning to the words about the impossibility of realizing true freedom without God’s help, we confirm that due to his isolation from God in the Fall, man is not able to independently not only repent of his unrighteousness, but also go through a long path of healing. He needs the grace of God to save him.

Thus, arguing that even “in a state of the deepest fall, a person is able to freely condemn evil and strive for repentance and becoming good, it is necessary to always keep in mind that without the help of God’s grace, independent recovery and even simple repentance are beyond his capabilities.”

“I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life,” says Christ, answering Pilates of all stripes, and only the light of His resurrection makes us able to distinguish good from evil with absolute certainty.

Human freedom and the omnipotence of God

However, despite the seemingly clear explanation of human dignity as the “image of God”, expressed in consciousness, freedom and responsibility, in the history of philosophical thought there are constantly attempts to blame God for all the crimes of mankind committed in history. So, for example, Schopenhauer argued that if God creates a substance, then responsibility for human actions falls on God. These kinds of statements are often quite consistent with views common in everyday life. Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol puts this thought into Thekla’s mouth from the story “Marriage”. She gives the following characteristic of one court councilor that interests us: “He had such a strange disposition: whatever he doesn’t say a word, he’ll lie. What to do, God gave him; He himself is not happy, but he really can’t help but lie - such is the will of God.”

Despite the prevalence of this understanding of freedom, it is clearly untenable. Saint Thomas Aquinas already refuted it, exposing the inconsistency of those sophisms to which it leads when applied to absolute freedom or to the omnipotence of God. These sophisms are well known: if God is absolutely free and can do everything, then He can, for example, become evil or destroy himself.

Thomas Aquinas contrasted these absurdities with the understanding of the unconditional freedom or omnipotence of God, as the unhindered, unrestricted realization of Himself, the discovery of His Own Being. This is precisely the general idea of ​​freedom.

The omnipotence of God is not at all undermined by freedom, as Luther and Hobbes thought. One should not confuse omnipotence with all-creativity, i.e. the creation of everything (both substance and every event) by God himself. As for God’s participation in the world process, it can be understood as being realized in a very diverse way without violating freedom.

In this sense, Socrates' old statement that no one sins voluntarily is true. Truly freely we strive only for good, which corresponds to our being and is what we need and useful. The mistake of Socrates' intellectualistic teaching was only that he considered the commission of sin to be the fruit of only mental delusion, weakness of thought. Thus, moral evil was reduced to unreason. “A wise man who knows the true path will not follow the wrong one.” In turn, Aristotle argued that for moral action, in addition to – and more than – rational knowledge, a firm and constant will is needed. This was also affirmed by the Apostle Paul and Blessed Augustine, and the holy fathers of the Eastern Church, realizing that one can clearly distinguish between good and evil and still fall into sin.

St. Augustine said that the Devil conquers a person not by force, but by seduction, and the Son of God takes a person away from the Devil, conquering not by force, but by lege justitia (the law of justice). Bearing in mind the legal education and culture in which the formation of Blessed Augustine took place, we would carefully correct his thought, asserting that Christ saves man by His sacrificial love.

In other words, according to the saint, the devil subjugates a person’s will not magically, but through the temptation of imaginary values, most often through the temptation of a clever mixture of good and evil. In turn, God, protecting the freedom and dignity of man, does not destroy his empirical character in order to return the soul to pristine purity, but in every moment of life gives man countless reasons to see and feel the absolute Truth of the Kingdom of God...

Archpriest Alexander Ranne,

Candidate of Theology, Associate Professor of St. Petersburg Orthodox Theological Academy

Magazine "NEVSKY BOGOSLOV" No. 11

Newspaper "Vestnik" No. 44

Chairman of the Department for External Church Relations, Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk

Very often, life inside the Church looks like this: frequent exhausting fasts, long church services, morning and evening prayer rules, do they contribute to the liberation of a person? Or, on the contrary, do they only put additional obstacles in his development, “drive” a once free personality into a rigid religious framework, gradually enslaving his will? If you look at the life of the Church from the outside, it may seem that Christians are people overwhelmed by life, who, in search of some kind of “salvation,” do not see the whole diversity of life that passes by them. Often such ideas arise among churchgoers. Those who already have experience of spiritual life suddenly begin to feel like “slaves” and leave the fence of the Church of Christ in search of more “free” spiritual practices.

It is especially difficult to talk about Christian freedom for the reason that this issue affects all other aspects of spiritual life, the whole variety of experiences of believers. To determine the Orthodox understanding of freedom, it is necessary to understand what Christianity is in general, as well as what spiritual aspirations lie at the basis of Christian life.

At the heart of Christianity, like any other religion, is the desire for God. Many philosophers and religious thinkers of the world have not spared their lives in search of the One who alone fills it with meaning. And everyone invariably ran into a wall. The wall that forever separated us from God, closed our path to Him. This is the wall of sin, the wall of our weakness, our old man, covered with sores, a leaky vessel, which God’s grace, having entered it, immediately leaves. This is death, which pursues a person throughout his entire life, and, having overtaken him, consumes him.

A breakthrough through the veil of darkness and nonsense was made by Jesus Christ, Who, being at the same time God and Man, extended His Divine hand to weak humanity. For the first time then, human weakness became our main advantage. “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” Christ preached (Matthew 5:3). “My strength is made perfect in weakness,” taught the Apostle Paul (2 Cor. 12:9). Having come to Earth, Christ became like us right up to death and, together with people, experienced His non-existence and descended into hell! But then the impossible happened - He who cannot be there by His Divine nature descended into hell. Hell was destroyed, the abyss that separated man from God disappeared. This is how St. expressed the joy of the resurrection. John Chrysostom: “Everyone enjoy the feast of faith: everyone accept the wealth of goodness. And let no one weep over his misery: for a common reign has appeared...” And further: “(Hell) took on a body and collided with God. Accepted the earth and met the sky...Where, death, is your sting? Where, hell, is your victory?...Christ has risen, and life has a place to live.”

And today, from the depths of our fall, from the darkness of sin, we see before us the Crucified and Risen Lord, the Good Shepherd, Who was not afraid of wolves and laid down His life for the sheep. Today we, together with the Apostle Peter, who, having lost faith, drowned during a storm, can cry out: “Lord, save me!” (Matt. 15:30). Today we can be sure that the Lord will not look at us with contempt from the height of His greatness. That saving Right Hand, which the Lord extends to us, calls us to a meeting with Him, does not force us, does not set conditions, but quietly invites us to the feast of eternity, which is already opening here to us living on Earth. He quietly invites, but always leaves the final decision up to us. We can respond to this call, realize that outside of God and without God there is no life, that He alone fills it with the depth of eternity. And then only in our will is to do everything possible that depends on us in order to extend our hand in response and merge with our Creator in a single union of Love.

But it is in the will of man not to respond to this call. Only life in God limits the rights of our old man, resurrecting the new man and mortifying our sinful beginning. This means that the answer to God will never be given to us without struggling with ourselves, without self-restraint and self-denial in the sense of cutting off sinful inclinations. Such work may seem too hard to a person, and he has the right to remain with his own, abandoning God’s. But we must not forget about the radiance of eternity in us, which Christianity brought us.

As we see, freedom in Orthodoxy opens up already at the threshold of the Church. We have the right to step forward and respond to the Divine invitation. But we can also step back - and the Lord will not force us. This is the so-called external, visible freedom. But there is also internal freedom, the one that is revealed in life in Christ.

“As many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ,” says the Apostle Paul (Gal. 3:27). And our Lord Jesus Christ, in one of His parables, compared us to wineskins (vessels), which, before new wine (the grace of God) is poured into them, must be renewed (Mark 3:22). This means that by accepting Christianity, we thereby transform our soul and body, we dress in the clothes of light and Truth. This in turn means that we take upon ourselves the whole attitude of Christ. All our thoughts, feelings, words, deeds become Christ’s. Our will begins to work with God's will. And it is no longer we who live, but Christ who lives in us (cf. Gal. 2:20). This is a state of eternal bliss, the Kingdom of Heaven, which in its entirety is available beyond the boundaries of our earthly wanderings, but which we can touch now. This is the Kingdom of boundless freedom, the acquisition of the integrity of human nature, when all the forces of our soul and body work in unison with the Divine melody. No one can feel uncomfortable here. What is happening is what the Holy Fathers called deification, and the Orthodox theologian Vladimir Lossky called “an endless aspiration, just as God Himself is infinite, in which we, by grace, become what He is by His nature.”

This is an ideal point, a limit beyond which all limits disappear and eternity opens. But the path to such unity with God is narrow and thorny. The gates to the Heavenly Kingdom that Christ spoke about are narrow because on the path to God we encounter many difficulties and temptations, and our earthly life according to the commandments is more like a feat than a spiritual delight, a struggle than a feast. What was written about above, the Kingdom of eternity, which is accomplished by Christ and in Christ, reveals the Gospel to us. It is this, the Good News, that fills our lives with Divine light and shows us how wonderful the Lord is. But this does not mean that, having begun our spiritual ascent, we will immediately experience all these feelings. They are known to us from the experience of the saints, from the words of the Savior, and the pursuit of them is the work of our whole life. And it is in our will to desire this union with all our hearts and souls. Only we ourselves can say when the Lord addresses us: “Here I am.” Without striving for God on our part, our faith in “something higher above us” will not bear fruit.

So, the essence of Christianity lies precisely in the fact that the merciful Lord Himself descends to us from the height of His greatness

To be continued

Daniil Salishchev