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Sophia in philosophy. The evolution of the concept of “Sophia” in the philosophy of Vl

The entire philosophy of Solovyov, his life and work is permeated by the doctrine of Sophia. Briefly this doctrine can be presented as follows.
The word “sophia” in Greek means wisdom, and it denoted an important concept in ancient philosophy, which itself, in its concept, is “love - philo - for wisdom, that is, for sophia.” But the goddess of wisdom among the ancient Greeks was called Athena. The philosophical term “sophia” in late antiquity began to designate what in biblical texts was called the Wisdom of God. Soloviev himself wrote that “in the canonical book of Solomon’s Proverbs we encounter the development of this idea of Sophia...”. In the Proverbs of Solomon, Wisdom declares: “The Lord had me as the beginning of His way, before His creatures from time immemorial: / From the beginning I have been anointed, from the beginning, before the existence of the earth. lt;...gt;/ When He prepared heaven, I was there. When He drew a circular line across the face of the abyss, / When He established the clouds at the top, when He strengthened the sources of the abyss, / When He gave a charter to the sea so that the waters would not exceed its borders, when He laid the foundations of the earth: / Then I was an artist with Him, and I was everyone’s joy day, rejoicing before His face all the time, / Rejoicing in His earthly circle, and my joy was with the sons of men” (Prov. 8:22,27-31).
Who is Wisdom-Sophia? What place does she occupy in the sacred hierarchy? What is her relationship to God and the other persons of the Divine Trinity - Christ and the Holy Spirit? What is her relationship to the human race? All these questions were considered in pre-Christian and early Christian ancient philosophy - in Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, and then in a number of philosophical, mystical and theological teachings of the New Age. There was a special attitude towards Sofia in Rus'. Inheriting the tradition of Byzantine veneration of Sophia, Orthodoxy in Rus' dedicated three main churches to Sophia, built in the 11th century - St. Sophia Cathedrals in Kyiv, Novgorod
and Polotsk. Sophia in the form of an angel in royal vestments is depicted on icons of the 15th - 16th centuries. The image of Sophia came close to the image of the Mother of God and acted as an embodiment Universal Church.
All this was well known to Solovyov and interested him extremely. However, he developed his doctrine of Sophia, which had a great impact on subsequent Russian religious and philosophical thought and Symbolist poetry. There was also a personal-mystical aspect in his attitude towards Sophia. We have already discussed above the vision of Sophia to the philosopher in November 1875 in Egypt. Impressed by this vision, he wrote the following lines in Cairo:
Today, all in azure, my queen appeared before me, - My heart beat with sweet delight, And in the rays of the rising day, My soul shone with a quiet light, And in the distance, burning out, the Evil flame of earthly fire smoked.
Already in the Bible, the Wisdom of God appears as feminine. And for Vl. Solovyova Sofia is the embodiment of Eternal Femininity, “only one image of female beauty,” but at the same time “like the first radiance / of the World and Creative Day.”
Solovyov's Sophia is “a realized idea,” “the body of God, the matter of the Divine, imbued with the beginning of divine unity.” Sophia, in this understanding, enters into Christ, who realizes this “divine unity” as “a whole divine organism - universal and individual together” (1989, II, 108). And just like Christ, who unites the Divine and the human, Sophia, according to Solovyov, forms “an all-human organism, like the eternal body of God and the eternal soul of the world” (1989, II, 119).
In “Readings on God-Humanity,” the philosopher sees two principles in man: “the elements of material existence that connect him with the natural world,” as well as “the ideal consciousness of unity that connects him with God.” Moreover, a person is a “free “I”, capable of defining himself in one way or another in relation to two sides of his being, capable of leaning towards one side or the other, of establishing himself in one sphere or another” (1989, II, 140). Humanity can be both bestial humanity and divine humanity. The historical process represents a long and difficult transition from the first to the second (see I, 257). This “historical process of humanity” is “the liberation of human self-consciousness and the gradual spiritualization of man through the internal assimilation and development of the divine principle” (1989, II,
145). According to Solovyov, “Sophia is ideal, perfect humanity, eternally contained in the integral divine being, or Christ” (1989, II, 113-114).
Sophia, thus, personifies God-humanity - humanity as a whole, as a “pan-human organism.” In “The Idea of Humanity in August Comte” (1898), the Russian philosopher highly appreciates the French positivist philosopher’s thought about Humanity as a “Great Being,” a “living real being,” and not simply as an “abstract concept” or “empirical aggregate” (II, 577). Soloviev believes that the idea of Humanity as a “Great Being” is akin to his understanding of Sophia, interpreted as “the true, pure and complete humanity itself, the highest and all-encompassing form and living soul of nature and the universe, eternally united and in a temporary process uniting with the Divine and uniting with Nim is all that is” (ibid.).
The key idea for Solovyov’s entire philosophy about a single Humanity as Sophia, that is, as the highest wisdom of the Universe, is still relevant today. After all, its very existence in the face of military and environmental disasters that threaten it depends on how aware humanity is of its unity and integrity. Let us also pay attention to the fact that the Russian philosopher considers the very idea of Humanity as a “Great Being” as “a grain of great truth” (II, 562), despite the fact that this idea is defined as an object of “positive faith” in a non-Christian “religion” alien to Solovyov of humanity”, invented by the “atheist and non-Christian” Comte. For Solovyov, the “grain of great truth” is more important than the ideological shell in which it is contained. And this is also the meaning of the philosophy of unity of the remarkable Russian thinker, which is capable of uniting people of different philosophical convictions and beliefs around the idea of an all-unity Humanity.
Being the most important expression of Solovyov’s principle of all-unity, Humanity as Divine-Humanity, as “The Great Being is not an empty form, but the all-encompassing Divine-human fullness of spiritual-physical, divinely creative life, revealed to us in Christianity” (II, 578). Solovyov's principle of unity, thus, is also manifested in the affirmation of the unity of the spiritual and physical, an affirmation that permeates Solovyov's entire philosophy. In a poem of 1875 he wrote:
And under the guise of impassive matter, the divine fire burns everywhere.
A.F. Losev sees the specificity of Solovyov’s “Sophian idealism” in the fact that his “general doctrine of unity as the main substance of being” brings together the spiritual and material as closely as possible, and in this sense - idealism and materialism1. The Russian philosopher has obvious sympathy for that materialism, which he calls “religious materialism”, or “sacred materialism”, which does not separate “matter from its spiritual and divine principles” (1989, 1, 219, 220).

The meaning of the word SOPHIA in the Newest Philosophical Dictionary

SOFIA

(Greek sophia - skill, knowledge, wisdom) - an image of meaning of ancient, and later Christian and generally European culture, which captures in its content the idea of the semantic fullness of the world, the assumption of which underlies the very possibility of philosophy as comprehension of the full meaning of the universe (Greek philisophia as love, attraction to wisdom, genetically ascending to philia - philia, love and sophia). Originally in ancient Greek culture the term "S." was correlated with the creativity of a craftsman - demiurgos, who creates things full of meaning, i.e. arranged in accordance with the principle, rationality and goals of applied operation, which ensured the possibility of their sale (see Homer about S. the carpenter trained by Athena in the Iliad, XY). Ancient philosophy focuses attention on the meaning-forming aspect of C, which is defined as “knowledge of essence” (Aristotle) or “knowledge of the first causes and intelligible essence” (Xeocrates), still relating to the subject, but - unlike the pre-philosophical tradition - not with the subject of activity, but with the cognizing subject. However, ancient Greek philosophy (in the person of Plato) carried out a kind of ontological turn in the interpretation of C: the latter is semantically associated with the transcendental subject of cosmos creation (the Demiurge, as opposed to the artisan-demiurgos), acting in the human frame of reference as an intelligible entity. According to Plato’s formulation, S. is “something great and befitting only a deity” (Phaedrus, 278 D), and the Demiurge creates the world in accordance with the eternal Sophian eidotic image (Timaeus, 29 a). Neoplatonism is designated by the term "S." the architectonics of eidos, which “is knowledge of itself and self, directed towards itself and imparting properties to itself” (Proclus). The initial eidotic pattern C, however, is discerned by man in the phenomenology of things, open to comprehension (Plato’s “remembering,” for example), allowing us to speak of the sage precisely as a lover of wisdom, i.e. about those striving for it: the ascent to truth along the ladder of love and beauty (see Plato), the epistemological interpretation of Eros among the Neoplatonists (see Love), etc. The ontological aspect of S. comes to the fore in religious and philosophical systems of monotheism. Thus, within the framework of Judaism, the idea of a sophian (eidotic) pattern (law) as underlying creation as a fundamental creative act can be fixed: “God looked at the law and created the world” (Talmud, Rabba Ber. 1. 1). Using ancient terminology, we can say that within the framework of the monotheistic tradition, the absolute model, the wisdom of God in its original existence can be designated as Logos; being embodied in Creation, Divine wisdom appears as S, the flesh of which (matter, semantically associated - from antiquity - with the maternal principle) gives its semantics a feminine coloring: shekinah in Judaism as the female hypostasis of God and Christian S. In combination with the characteristic focus of theism on a deeply intimate, personal perception of the Absolute, this sets the personification of S as a female deity, the characteristics and manifestations of which are initially ambivalent: S. can be considered in her relation to God and in her relation to humanity, revealing Each reference system has its own specific features. In relation to God, S. acts as a passive entity, perceiving and embodying his creative impulse (compare with the ancient Indian Shakti - the feminine cosmic principle, the union with which is a necessary condition for the realization of the cosmic creative potential of Shiva - see Tantrism). However, if the eastern version of cosmogenesis assumes as its initial model the figure of a sacred cosmic marriage, imparting the creative energy of Shakti to Shiva, then the Christian S, while retaining the female attribute of “multiple” creativity, is practically deprived - in accordance with the system of values of asceticism - of any erotic semantics, which is reduced to such characteristics of C as “fun” and free play of creativity (Bible, Pres., VIII, 30-37). The semantic accents of femininity, on the one hand, and non-sexuality, on the other, set the vector for the interpretation of S. as a virgin (cf. the motive of maintaining chastity as a guarantee of preserving wisdom and witchcraft powers in traditional mythology, the maiden Athena in classical mythology, etc.). S. is born into the world, proceeding “from the mouth of the Most High” (Bible, Sir., 24, 3), being a direct and immediate generation of the Absolute: S. appears as “the breath of the power of God and the pure outpouring of the glory of the Almighty” (Prem. Sol., 7, 25 ff.), virtually identical to him in wisdom and glory (cf. the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus). The interpretation of the virgin S. as a conceiving womb in relation to God leads to the subsequent semantic merging of her image with the image of the Virgin Mary, whose purity and enlightenment brings meaning to the created world (equivalent to the coming of the Messiah), thus giving it sophia (for example, in German the mystic G. Suso (c. 1295-1366), student of Meister Eckhart). In the opposite situation of the complete dissolution of the Divine essence of S. in created being, semantically isomorphic to the loss of virginity, the image of the fallen S. arises, as, for example, in Gnosticism, where S.-Ahamoth, being in darkness, carries only a reflection of gnosis (knowledge, wisdom ), and her desire for reunification with God is the guarantee of the total harmony of the Pleroma, semantically equivalent to the creational world order. As for the other side of S., in relation to humanity she acts as personified Divine creativity: the Old Testament S. artist (Prov. 8, 27-31), the semantic fullness of creation. In the context of Western Christianity, the cultural dominant of rationality sets an interpretive vector, within the framework of which the image of S. comes closer to the concept of logos, largely losing its extra-logos characteristics: for example, S. as “the incorporeal being of diverse thoughts, embracing the logoi of the world as a whole, but at the same time animate and as if alive" (Origen). In this regard, S. is actually deprived of female personification, semantically identified in Western Christianity with Christ as the Logos - Jesus as “God’s glory and God’s wisdom” (1 Cor. 1, 24) - or even with the Holy Spirit (Montanism). At the same time, in the mystical tradition of Catholicism, personified feminine, non-logo traits of S, dating back to early patristics, continue to be articulated. Thus, in Boehme the term S. is the only guarantee of enlightenment of the “dark” created world: if earthly, i.e. The “carnal” world is thought of by Boehme as “damaged” (corruption of the spirit during the incarnation: the forbidden “fruit was damaged and tangible...; Adam and Eve received the same carnal and tangible body”), then the only light penetrating the created world is S. as “blessed love”, “mother of the soul”, “blessed bride rejoicing over her groom.” The “enlightened human spirit” is able to comprehend and love it (philo-Sophia as service to the Lord), for, comprehending being, “it ascends to the same exact image and by the same birth as the light in Divine power, and in the same qualities as in God." Similarly - in G. Arnold in Protestant (pietism) mysticism. In the philosophy of romanticism, the image of S. acquires a new - lyrical - arrangement, however, retaining the key nodes of its semantics. So, for example, in Novalis, S. is articulated in the context of an allegorical plot, almost isomorphically reproducing the basic gestalts of Scripture: in the kingdom of Arcturus, who personifies the spirit of life, S. is both the “highest wisdom” and the “loving heart”; being the wife of Arcturus, she leaves him in order to become a priestess at the altar of truth in “her country” (“nature as it could be”) with the goal of awakening, giving her sacred knowledge, her daughter Freya, who thirsts for spiritual enlightenment and ascent (the imposition of Christian semantics on the folklore basis of the plot of the sleeping girl - see Ananka). This knowledge is given to Freya by the matured Eros, and S. reunites with Arcturus, which symbolizes the universal unity and harmony of the revived kingdom: Arcturus's wreath of ice leaves is replaced by a living wreath, the lily - a symbol of innocence - is given to Eros, "heaven and earth merged into the sweetest music" (the semantics of sacred marriage, which has a creational meaning). In the axiological system of Novalis's gallant-romantic post-courtly allegorism, S. is actually identified with love ("- What constitutes the eternal secret? - Love. - Who holds this secret? - Sophia."), Absolute Femininity (it is S. who endows Eros with the cup with a drink that reveals this secret to everyone) and the Virgin Mary (comprehension of the secret introduces one to the sight of the Great Mother - the Ever-Virgin). Synthetism of Christian axiology (emphasis on Mary), plots of pagan mythology (Freya falling asleep and rising, the mythology of the Great Mother), fairy-tale and folklore motifs (sleeping beauty, theme of the love potion), courtly symbolism (blue flower, lily, rose) and reminiscences of the classic chivalric romance (isomorphism of the image of S. to the image of Queen Guinevere from the novels of the Arthurian cycle) - makes the semantics of S. in Novalis extremely polyvalent. Archaic pagan meanings also determine the semantic layer of Goethe’s Faust, where the question of S. as “eternal femininity,” the harmony of the bodily and spiritual principles, necessary for humanity as an alternative, a cultural counterbalance to total intellectualism. Thus, in its relation to humanity, S. turns out to be as fundamentally significant as in its relation to God. The most important aspect S. in this context is that, being a phenomenon ontologically related to the Cosmos as a whole, S. and humanity correlate only as a whole constituted as a community (community). In Western culture, with its dominance of logos as the embodiment of rationality, this leads to the gradual (starting with Augustine) identification of S. with the church, interpreted in a mystical spirit as the “bride of Christ” (see, for example, “Inscription on the book “Song of Songs” by Alcuin : “Into this book Solomon put unspeakable sweetness: // Everything in it is full of sublime songs of the Bridegroom and the Bride, // That is, the Church with Christ...” In contrast, in the Eastern version of Christianity it is the paradigm of non-logosity C that turns out to be dominant, setting its axiologically accentuated articulation: the very fact of the baptism of Rus' was assessed by Metropolitan Hilarion as “the reign of the Wisdom of God.” Orthodox culture a rich tradition of S iconography is emerging; in the hagiographic tradition of Christianity, the name “S.” also refers to the martyr executed by Emperor Hadrian (2nd century) along with her three daughters - Faith, Nadezhda and Love - which, in an allegorical rethinking, makes S. the mother of the main Christian virtues. The problem of theodicy in the context of Eastern Christian culture is formulated as a problem of ethnodicy, and the idea of a God-bearing people is closely connected with the idea of sophia, setting in Russian culture the ideal of conciliarity, in Russian philosophy - the tradition of sophiology, and in Russian poetry - the ideal of Absolute Femininity, which stands behind specific incarnations of it in individual female faces (B.S. Solovyov, Y.P. Polonsky, M.A. Voloshin, Vyach. Ivanov, A.K. Tolstoy, A. Bely, A. Blok, etc.) In this context, the real beloved acts as a “living the embodiment of perfection" (A. Blok) - perfection itself is C, which is always and initially characterized by divine participation ("God shone in her beauty" by J.P. Polonsky). Because of this, rushing towards the perfection of a woman, a man invariably rushes to S. as personified perfection (in the terminology of B.S. Solovyov’s allegorism - to the “sun”, the “rays” of which are living women's faces): “Sometimes in the features of random faces // Her smile smoldered... // But, unchanged and not the same, // She shows through the unsteady fabric” (M.A. Voloshin). It is S. ("The Virgin of the Rainbow Gate" by V.S. Solovyov) who, on the paths of love (universal syzygy), can bestow Sunday and the grace of God on the soul. But the devilish obsession is the skill personified in Don Juan to see S itself, and not its shadows (“Let the Heavenly Juan seek on earth // And in every triumph he prepares for himself grief” by A.K. Tolstoy). Meanwhile, for B.C. Solovyov’s metaphorical calls to S. serve as milestones on the path of spiritual improvement (the symbolic system of the poem “Three Dates,” which is actually congruent with the analogous system of Dante’s “New Life”), and the “Sophia cycle” of poems defines the axiological space within which S.’s involvement is the maximum value . Nurturing B.C. Solovyov’s dream of the unity of Christianity was organically linked in his views with the mystical idea of the direct involvement of the High Priest, whom he thought of as the unifier of the Christian church (and himself as the executor of this mission) with the feminine essence of S.M.A. Mozheiko

The latest philosophical dictionary. 2012

Sofia (philosophy)

Plan:

1 Etymology
2 Sophia in the Old Testament
3 In Christianity
4 Sophia in the Western tradition
5 Sophia in Russian philosophy

Introduction

Sofia, Wisdom(Greek Σοφία - “skill”, “knowledge”, “wisdom”, Hebrew. חכמה) is a concept in ancient and medieval philosophy, Judaism and Christianity, expressing a special idea of wisdom or personified (embodied) wisdom.

In pre-philosophical usage (Homer) - reasonable skill in creativity; “knowledge of essence”, of “causes and sources” (Aristotle).

In Judaism and Christianity - the personified wisdom of God. The idea of Sophia as the “Wisdom of God” received special development in Byzantium and Rus'. In Russian religious philosophy of the 19th-20th centuries, the doctrine of Sophia was developed by V. S. Solovyov, S. N. Bulgakov, P. A. Florensky.

In Judaic and Christian religious ideas a cosmic (often female) being that contains within itself the principles and ideal prototype of the world. Analogous to Tara in Buddhism and the Mother of the Book in Islam.

1. Etymology

The term "Sofia" originated in Ancient Greece as a sign of wisdom. In Homer (Not. P. XV 411-412) it is closely associated with the name of the goddess Athena, emphasizing the attribute of construction and ordering, art and handicrafts.

2. Sophia in the Old Testament

Icon “Wisdom Created a House for Herself” (Kiev).

In the Old Testament tradition, the concept of Wisdom denotes the feminine principle in God. Late biblical didactic literature (“The Book of the Wisdom of Solomon”, “The Book of Solomon’s Proverbs”, “The Book of the Wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach”) gives an image of the “Wisdom of God”, described as a personal, personified being. She appears as the virgin offspring of the Supreme Father, close to Him to the point of identity: “She is the breath of the power of God and the pure outpouring of the glory of the Almighty” (Wis. 7:25 et seq.), which came “from the mouth of the Most High” (Sir. 24:3; for comparison: the image of Athena is also a virgin, emerging from the head of Zeus; according to the stable scheme of the myth, wisdom belongs to the virgin).

In theology, Wisdom in its relation to God can be considered as His demiurgic, world-ordering will. She is described (Prov. 8:27-31) as an “artist” who builds the world according to the laws of divine craft (which again brings her closer to Athena); the nature of this cosmogonic Sophia the “artist” includes “fun”.

In rabbinic and later Gnostic thought (which also knew the concept of “fallen Sophia” - see Achamoth), Sophia became closer to the Hebrews. re'shith and Greek. arhh - both terms mean “beginning” - in the sense of the foundation, origin, womb of primordiality. The specificity of Sophia is feminine passivity associated with maternal multiple births, her “gaiety,” as well as a deep connection not only with the cosmos, but also with humanity (Prov. 8:31, etc.), for which she stands up. If in relation to God Sophia is a passively procreative womb, “the mirror of the glory of God,” then in relation to the world she is a builder who creates the world, just as a carpenter or architect puts together a house as an image of a lived-in and ordered world, fenced off by walls from the boundless spaces of chaos; house is one of the main symbols of biblical Wisdom (Prov. 9:1, etc.).

3. In Christianity

The interpretation of Sophia as a mediator between God and the world in Christianity goes back to the Gnostic Valentinus (II).

Some representatives of Christian philosophy and theology viewed Sophia as a person. Origen describes it as, although “the incorporeal being of diverse thoughts, embracing the logoi of the world whole,” but at the same time as “animate and, as it were, alive.” In early Christianity, the idea of Sophia came closer to the face of Christ the Logos (the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 1:24) defines Jesus as “God’s power and God’s wisdom”), and then with the third hypostasis of the Trinity - the Holy Spirit (the concept female in Semitic languages and close to Sophia in the aspects of play, fun, festivity).

In Latin Christian literature, the term “Sophia” is replaced by an almost synonymous designation for the mystically understood “Church”, and therefore the Catholic tradition knows almost nothing about “sophiology” itself. It was different in Byzantium, where the development of the image of Sophia as a symbol of the theocratic principle gained great importance, and in Rus', where Christianity came under the sign of Sophia (Metropolitan Hilarion describes the baptism of Rus' as the arrival of the “Wisdom of God,” that is, Sophia; Sophia was dedicated to buildings built in the 11th century . three main Orthodox churches in the principalities of Eastern Europe- in Kyiv, Novgorod and Polotsk).

Sophia - Wisdom of God (Novgorod). 2nd half 15th century

On Russian soil by the XV-XVI centuries. a rich iconography of Sofia is emerging. Sofia has the appearance of an Angel; her face and hands are fiery in color, and behind her back are two wings. She is dressed in royal vestments (dalmatic, barmy), and has a golden crown on her head. Standing before her (like Christ in the “Deesis” iconography) are the praying Virgin Mary and John the Baptist; above her head, a blessing Christ is visible from the waist up (i.e., not identical to Sophia, but representing her “head”, approximately as He is, according to the New Testament teaching, the “Head” of the Church).

The personal appearance of Sophia in both the Byzantine-Russian and Catholic tradition gradually moves closer to the image of the Virgin Mary as an enlightened creature, in which she becomes “Sophian,” and the entire cosmos is ennobled. In the Christian hagiographic tradition, the name “Sophia” is also borne by the martyr executed in Rome in the 2nd century. together with his daughters Vera, Nadezhda and Love (the names are symbolic - “Wisdom” as the mother of the three “theological virtues”).

4. Sophia in the Western tradition

In the West, only German mysticism in the person of G. Suso, and then J. Boehme, and later Pietism (G. Arnold) specifically turns to the symbol of Sophia. From the hands of German mysticism, Goethe takes the symbol of Sophia, but in contrast to Boehme and with a strong bias towards paganism, emphasizing her maternal features: Faust, not satisfied with pure intellectualism and being in deep inner loneliness, finds deliverance in coming to S. (“eternal femininity”). - the spiritual-physical principle, in which contradictions and obstacles to human communication are removed. Sophia symbolizes the world measure of existence. Faust, having destroyed the outdated medieval measure and turned to technical activism, finds himself in danger of losing any measure at all, and Goethe hastens to lead him to a free and reasonable measure - Sophia. Novalis also perceives the image of Sophia. But the development of the “anti-Sophia” possibilities of new European individualism continues (images of the destructive “anti-Sophia” in the musical dramas of R. Wagner - Brünnhilde, Isolde, Kundry).

5. Sophia in Russian philosophy

Sophia's ideas in Russia at the beginning of the 20th century were developed by the philosopher Vladimir Solovyov, priests Pavel Florensky and Sergius Bulgakov.

For Vl. Solovyov’s Sophia is “... a true unity that does not oppose itself to plurality, does not exclude it, but... contains everything within itself,” which results in a universalist utopia, where none of the opposing principles of each antithesis (authority and freedom, tradition and progress, etc.) etc.) is not subject to abolition, but everything must be shown its “real” place in a free unity (cf. similar ideas in neo-Thomism). Solovyov’s initiative was picked up by the so-called. "Russian Renaissance". Florensky, who made a significant contribution to the scientific study of the history of the image of Sophia (historical-philosophical and iconographic excursions), sees in Sophia the “ideal personality of the world”, the “psychic content” of the mind of the Divine, wisdom as chastity, which supports the integrity of the world, “actual infinity” ( see "The Pillar and Ground of Truth", 1914, pp. 319-92). The systematic development of this range of ideas was carried out by S. Bulgakov, who emphasized the inapplicability to Sophia of the antitheses “...absolute and relative, eternal and temporary, divine and created” (“Non-Evening Light”, M., 1917, p. 216). The thought of N. O. Lossky, S. L. Frank with his “panentheism” and others moves around the concept of Sophia.

Despite the status of the clergy of the Church of some of the above-mentioned thinkers, sophiology has never been accepted as a recognized branch of Orthodox theology; Moreover, it was condemned as heresy at the 1935 Council of Bishops of the Russian Church Abroad.

Literature

Vl. S. Soloviev, “Readings about God-Humanity”, “Reading Eight”.
P. A. Florensky, “The Pillar and Statement of Truth”, M.: “Put”, 1914; Chapter “Letter Nine: Sophia.”
S. N. Bulgakov, “Non-Evening Light”, M.: “Path”, 1917, Dept. second, “Sophia of the creature.”
E. N. Trubetskoy, “The Meaning of Life”, Moscow, Type. t-va I. D. Sytin, 1918; Chapter III "Sophia".
Prot. Georgy Florovsky, “On the veneration of Sophia, the Wisdom of God, in Byzantium and Rus'.”
T. Schipflinger, “Sophia-Maria. A holistic image of creation": trans. from German, B.M.: "Gnosis Press - Scarab", 1997.

Greek sophia - skill, knowledge, wisdom) - an image of meaning of ancient, and later Christian and generally European culture, which captures in its content the idea of the semantic fullness of the world, the assumption of which underlies the very possibility of philosophy as comprehension of the full meaning of the universe (Greek philisophia as love, attraction to wisdom, genetically going back to philia - philia, love and sophia). Originally in ancient Greek culture the term "S." was correlated with the creativity of a craftsman - demiurgos, who creates things full of meaning, i.e. arranged in accordance with the principle of rationality and the goals of applied operationality, which ensured the possibility of their sale (in Homer about S. the carpenter trained by Athena in the Iliad, XV). Ancient philosophy focuses attention on the meaning-forming aspect of philosophy, which is defined as “knowledge of essence” (Aristotle) or “knowledge of the first causes and intelligible essence” (Xenocrates), still relating to the subject, but - unlike the pre-philosophical tradition - not with the subject of activity, but with the cognizing subject. However, ancient Greek philosophy (in the person of Plato) carried out a kind of ontological turn in the interpretation of S.: the latter is semantically associated with the transcendental subject of cosmos creation (the Demiurge, as opposed to the artisan-demiurgos), acting in the human frame of reference as an intelligible entity. According to Plato’s formulation, S. is “something great and befitting only a deity” (Phaedrus, 278 D), and the Demiurge creates the world in accordance with the eternal Sophian eidotic image (Timaeus, 29 a). The ancient paradigm of hyliomorphism connects the semantics of S. with the idea of an embodied eidos or, accordingly, a formalized substance, which centers on the phenomenon of sophia both ontology (existing being as permeated by S.) and epistemology (cognition as insight into the embodied original plan and the sacred meaning of being in its Sophia). In this context, Neoplatonism shifts the emphasis from the articulation of embodiment in an anthropomorphic manner, traditional for hyliomorphism (the design of matter-mother as the fertilization of it by logos, the introduction of a formative eidotic sample) towards the creation paradigm: “the sophic is the absolute identity of the ideal and the real. The ideal in the sphere of the sophic is not abstract, it turns into a special form called material. The real in the Sophian sense is not simply the process of the real, the formation of things, but... creativity" (Plotinus). Accordingly, such a quality of S. as reflexivity, self-awareness of oneself as an embodied idea is also actualized: Neoplatonism denotes the term “S.” the architectonics of eidos, which “is knowledge of itself and self, directed towards itself and imparting properties to itself” (Proclus). The initial eidotic sample of S., however, is warmed up by a person in the phenomenology of things, open to comprehension (Plato’s “remembering,” for example), allowing us to speak of a sage precisely as a lover of wisdom, i.e. about those striving for it: the ascent to truth along the ladder of love and beauty (see Plato), the epistemological interpretation of Eros among the Neoplatonists (see Love), etc. The ontological aspect of S. comes to the fore in religious and philosophical systems of monotheism. Thus, within the framework of Judaism, the idea of a sophian (eidotic) pattern (law) as underlying creation as a fundamental creative act can be fixed: “God looked at the law and created the world” (Talmud, Rabba Ber. 1.1). Using ancient terminology, we can say that within the framework of the monotheistic tradition, the absolute model, the wisdom of God in its original existence can be designated as Logos; being embodied in Creation, Divine wisdom acts as S., the flesh of which (matter, semantically associated - from antiquity - with the maternal principle) gives its semantics a feminine coloring: shekinah in Judaism as the female hypostasis of God and Christian S. In combination with the characteristic theism's focus on a deeply intimate, personal perception of the Absolute, this sets the personification of S. as a female deity, the characteristics and manifestations of which are initially ambivalent: S. can be considered in her relation to God and in her relation to humanity, revealing in each frame of reference its specific traits. In relation to God, S. acts as a passive entity, perceiving and embodying his creative impulse (compare with the ancient Indian Shakti - the feminine cosmic principle, the union with which is a necessary condition for the realization of the cosmos-creative potency of Shiva). However, if the eastern version of cosmogenesis assumes as its initial model the figure of a sacred cosmic marriage, imparting the creative energy of Shakti to Shiva, then the Christian S., preserving the female attribute of “multiple” creativity (“the body of God, the matter of God” by V.S. Solovyov) , is practically deprived - in accordance with the value system of asceticism - of any erotic semantics, which is reduced to such characteristics of S. , as “fun” and free play of creativity (Bible, Pres., VIII, 30-37). The semantic accents of femininity, on the one hand, and non-sexuality, on the other, set the vector for the interpretation of S. as a virgin (cf. the motive of maintaining chastity as a guarantee of preserving wisdom and witchcraft powers in traditional mythology, the maiden Athena in classical mythology, etc.). S. is born into the world, proceeding “from the mouth of the Most High” (Bible, Sir., 24, 3), being a direct and immediate generation of the Absolute: S. appears as “the breath of the power of God and the pure outpouring of the glory of the Almighty” (Prem. Sol., 7, 25 ff.), virtually identical to him in wisdom and glory (cf. the birth of Athena from the head of Zeus). The interpretation of the virgin S. as a conceiving womb in relation to God leads to the subsequent semantic merging of her image with the image of the Virgin Mary, whose purity and enlightenment brings meaning to the created world (equivalent to the coming of the Messiah), thus giving it sophia (for example, in German the mystic G. Suso (c. 1295-1366), student of Meister Eckhart). In the opposite situation of the complete dissolution of the Divine essence of S. in created being, semantically isomorphic to the loss of virginity, the image of the fallen S. arises, as, for example, in Gnosticism, where S.-Ahamoth, being in darkness, carries only a reflection of gnosis (knowledge, wisdom), and her desire for reunification with God is the key to the total harmony of the Pleroma, semantically equivalent to the creational world order. As for the other side of S., in relation to humanity she acts as personified Divine creativity: the Old Testament S. artist (Prov. 8, 27-31), the semantic fullness of creation. In the context of Western Christianity, the cultural dominant of rationality sets an interpretive vector, within the framework of which the image of S. comes closer to the concept of logos, largely losing its extra-logos characteristics: for example, S. as “the incorporeal being of diverse thoughts, embracing the logoi of the world as a whole, but at the same time animate and as if alive" (Origen). In this regard, S. is actually deprived of feminine personification, semantically identified in Western Christianity with Jesus Christ as the Logos - Jesus as “God’s glory and God’s wisdom” (1 Cor. 1, 24) - or even with the Holy Spirit (Montanism) - Wed with the idea of S. expressed in the Eastern Christian tradition as a possible fourth face of the Trinity (S. Bulgakov, Florensky). At the same time, in the mystical tradition of Catholicism, the personified feminine, non-logo traits of S. continue to be articulated. , dating back to early patristics. Thus, in Boehme the term S. is the only guarantee of enlightenment of the “dark” created world: if earthly, i.e. The “carnal” world is thought of by Boehme as “damaged” (corruption of the spirit during the incarnation: the forbidden “fruit was damaged and tangible...; Adam and Eve received the same carnal and tangible body”), then the only light penetrating the created world is S. as “blessed love”, “mother of the soul”, “blessed bride rejoicing over her groom.” The “enlightened human spirit” is able to comprehend and love it (philo-S. as service to the Lord), for, comprehending being, “it ascends to the same exact image and by the same birth, like light in the Divine power, and in the same qualities that are in God." Similarly - with G. Arnold in Protestant (pietism) mysticism. In the philosophy of romanticism, the image of S. acquires a new - lyrical - arrangement, retaining, however, the key nodes of its semantics. So, for example, in Novalis S. is articulated in the context of an allegorical plot, almost isomorphically reproducing the basic gestalts of Scripture: in the kingdom of Arcturus, who personifies the spirit of life, S. is both “the highest wisdom” and a “loving heart”; being the wife of Arcturus, she leaves him in order to become a priestess at the altar of truth in “her country” (“nature as it could be”) with the goal of awakening, giving her sacred knowledge, her daughter Freya, thirsting for spiritual enlightenment and ascent (overlay Christian semantics on the folklore basis of the plot of a sleeping girl). This knowledge is given to Freya by a matured Eros, and S. reunites with Arcturus, which symbolizes the universal unity and harmony of the revived kingdom: Arcturus’s wreath of ice leaves is replaced by a living wreath, the lily - a symbol of innocence - is given to Eros, “heaven and earth merged into the sweetest music” (semantics of sacred marriage, which has a creational meaning). In the axiological system of Novalis’s gallant-romantic post-courtly allegorism, S. is actually identified with love (“- What constitutes the eternal

secret? - Love. - Who holds this secret? - At Sophia."), Absolute Femininity (it is S. who endows Eros with a cup of drink that reveals this secret to everyone) and the Virgin Mary (comprehension of the secret introduces one to the vision of the Great Mother - the Ever-Virgin). Synthetism of Christian axiology (emphasis on Mary), plots of pagan mythology (Freya falling asleep and rising, the mythologeme of the Great Mother), fairy-tale and folklore motifs (sleeping beauty, the theme of the love potion), courtly symbolism (blue flower, lily, rose) and reminiscences of the classic knightly novel (isomorphism of the image of S. to the image of Queen Guinevere from the novels of Arcturus cycle) makes the semantics of Novalis extremely polyvalent. Archaic pagan meanings also determine that semantic layer of Goethe’s Faust, where the question of S. as “eternal femininity”, the harmony of the bodily and spiritual principles necessary for humanity as an alternative, is explicitly raised , a cultural counterbalance to total intellectualism.Thus, in its relation to humanity, S. turns out to be as fundamentally significant as in its relation to God. The most important aspect of S. in this context is that, being a phenomenon ontologically related to the Cosmos as a whole, S. and humanity relate only as a whole constituted as a community (community). In Western culture, with its dominance of logos as the embodiment of rationality, this leads to the gradual, starting with Augustine, identification of S. with the church, interpreted in a mystical spirit as the “bride of Christ” (see, for example, “Inscription on the book “Song of Songs” by Alcuin : “Into this book Solomon put unspeakable sweetness: // Everything in it is full of the Bride and Groom of sublime songs, // That is, the Church with Christ...”) In contrast to this, in the Eastern version of Christianity it is the paradigm of non-logos S. that turns out to be dominant. , setting its axiologically accentuated articulation: the very fact of the baptism of Rus' was assessed by Metropolitan Hilarion as “the reign of the Wisdom of God.” In Orthodox culture, a rich tradition of S. iconography is emerging; in the hagiographic tradition of Christianity, the name “S.” also refers to the martyr executed by Emperor Hadrian ( 2nd century) together with her three daughters - Vera, Nadezhda and Love, which in an allegorical rethinking makes S. the mother of the main Christian virtues. The concept of S. finds special articulation in the tradition of Russian cosmism (in the context of the paradigm of the deification of nature) and “philosophy of economics”: “nature is humanoid, it recognizes and finds itself in man, and man finds himself in S. , and through it it perceives and reflects into nature the intelligent rays of the Divine Logos, through it and in it nature becomes sophia" (Bulgakov). The problem of theodicy in the context of Eastern Christian culture is formulated as the problem of ethnodicy, and the idea of a God-bearing people is closely associated with the idea of sophia , setting in Russian culture the ideal of conciliarity, in Russian philosophy - the tradition of sophiology, and in Russian poetry - the ideal of Absolute Femininity, which stands behind its specific incarnations in individual female faces (V.S. Solovyov, Y.P. Polonsky, M.A. Voloshin, Vyacheslav Ivanov, A.K. Tolstoy, Bely, A. Blok, etc.) In this context, the real beloved acts as a “living embodiment of perfection” (A. Blok), - perfection itself is S., for whom Divine participation is always and initially characteristic (“God shone in her beauty” by Y.P. Polonsky). Because of this, rushing towards the perfection of a woman, a man invariably rushes to S. as personified perfection (in the terminology of V.S. Solovyov’s allegorism - to the “sun”, the “rays” of which are living female faces): “Sometimes in the features of random faces // Her smile smoldered... // But, unchanged and not the same, // She shows through behind the unsteady fabric” (M A. Voloshin). It is S. ("The Virgin of the Rainbow Gate" by V.S. Solovyov) who, on the paths of love (universal syzygy), can bestow Sunday and the grace of God on the soul. But the devilish obsession is the skill personified in Don Juan to see S. herself, and not her shadows (“Let Juan look for Heavenly Juan on earth // And in every triumph he prepares grief for himself” by A.K. Tolstoy). Meanwhile, for V.S. Solovyov, S.’s metaphorical calls serve as milestones on the path of spiritual improvement (the symbolic system of the poem “Three Dates,” which is actually congruent with the analogous system of Dante’s “New Life”), and the “Sophia cycle” of poems sets the axiological space, in within the framework of which S.’s involvement is the maximum value. The dream of the unity of Christianity nurtured by V.S. Solovyov was organically linked in his views with the mystical idea of the direct involvement of the High Priest, whom he thought of as the unifier of the Christian church (and himself as the executor of this mission) with the feminine essence of S.V. modern philosophy the theme of S. (in the absence of explicit use of the corresponding term) is subject to radical reduction within the framework of the postmodern paradigm. This is due to postmodernism’s programmatic rejection of classical metaphysics, which is based on the idea of meaning immanent in being and the presumption of reference based on this. If traditional philosophy, according to Foucault, was characterized by the theme of “original experience” (“things already whisper to us some meaning, and our language only has to pick it up...”), then postmodernism formulates its strategy in a fundamentally alternative way: “not to assume , that the world turns its easily readable face towards us, which we supposedly only have to decipher: the world is not an accomplice of our knowledge, and there is no pre-discursive providence... Discourse, rather, should be understood as the violence that we commit over things." in narrative practices of signification. (See also Discourse, Signification, Narrative.)

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In Florensky’s mental structure, which is both theological and metaphysical, there is one element that is extremely important to talk about, not only because it complements this structure - without it it is impossible to correctly evaluate the idea of the trinity. Moreover, this element is closely connected with Florensky’s subsequent books. It's about about the concept of Sophia the Wisdom of God. And the trinity itself, says Florensky, is complemented by a fourth hypostatic element, which is the Love of God, or the Wisdom of God, called Sophia the Wisdom. The detail with which Florensky examines the theme of Sophia is extremely characteristic. He does this because the idea of Sophia, the Wisdom of God, is both a very old one from ancient traditions (including the traditions of the Gnostics, traditions running through the entire history of Christian thought), and very popular in Russian philosophizing of the 19th-20th centuries. Florensky clarifies in detail the characteristics of Sophia in various religious, philosophical, metaphysical teachings - precisely in order to dissociate himself from them and put forward his own understanding, although, of course, he supports some shades of interpretation of his predecessors and contemporaries.

What is the meaning of the concept of Sophia in the metaphysical and metaphysical-theological teachings of Florensky? Firstly, it is extremely important that Sophia in the metaphysical structure serves as a bearer and symbol of unity, and such a unity that embraces the Trinity itself. This is also the unity of the Divine with the world. “Sophia,” writes Florensky, “is the Great Root of the entire creation [... that is, the entire creation, and not just the whole], by which the creature goes into the intra-Trinitarian life and through which it receives Eternal Life for itself from the One Source of Life; Sophia is the primordial nature of creation, the creative Love of God." “In relation to the creature,” Florensky continues, “Sofia is the Guardian Angel of the creature, the Ideal personality of the world. Forming the mind in relation to creation, it is the formed content of God the Mind, His “psychic content,” eternally created by the Father through the Son and completed in the Holy Spirit: God thinks with things. Therefore, to exist means to be thinkable, to be remembered, or, finally, to be known by God.”

It is the creation of beingness, its preservation that is entrusted to the fourth hypostasis - Sophia. To Sophia in the theological and metaphysical sense, Florensky adds another side of unity when he builds a bridge from the cosmic to the human. “If Sophia is the whole of Creation, then the soul and conscience of Creation - Humanity - is Sophia par excellence. If Sophia is all of Humanity, then the soul and conscience of Humanity, the Church, is Sophia par excellence. If Sophia is the Church of the Saints, then the soul and conscience of the Church of the Saints, the Intercessor and Intercessor for creation before the Word of God, judging the creation and cutting it in two, the Mother of God, “the Purgatory of the world,” is again Sophia par excellence. But the true sign of the Blessed Mary is Her Virginity, the Beauty of Her soul. This is Sophia."20 In this sense, a person’s involvement in sophia is of great importance. "... Secret of the heart a person in the imperishable beauty of a meek and silent spirit" - also rises to Sophia and Sophia.

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