Et formavit Futurus Deorum hominem — pulvis (sic) ex humo — vajitser Jahveh Elohim eth haadam haphar min haadamah: If the earth in general signifies the soul of the lower world, the dust of the earth indicates the state of abasement or helplessness of this soul when it ceases to assert and exalt itself in the blind desire of an anarchic existence, when repelling all lower suggestions and abandoning in perfect humility all resistance or antagonism to the heavenly Word, it becomes capable of understanding its truth, of uniting itself to its activity and of establishing in itself the Kingdom of God. This state of humiliation, this absolute receptivity of earthly Nature, is objectively marked by the creation of Man (humus — humilis — homo); the sensitive and imaginative soul of the physical world becomes the rational soul of humanity. Having attained an interior union with the heavens, contemplating the intelligible light, it can include by consciousness and reason all that exists in an ideal unity. Ideally an universal being in his rational potentiality as the image of God, Man must become effectively like God by the active realization of his unity in the fullness of Creation. Child of the Earth by the lower life which it gives him, he must give it back transformed into light and lifegiving spirit. If through him, through his reason, Earth is raised to Heaven, through him also, through his activity, the heavens must descend and fill the Earth; through him all the world outside the Godhead must become a single living body, the complete incarnation of the divine Wisdom.
In man alone the creature is perfectly, that is, freely and reciprocally, united to God, because, thanks to his two-fold nature, man alone can preserve his freedom and remain continually the moral complement of God, while achieving an ever completer union with Him by a continuous series of conscious efforts and deliberate actions. There is a marvellous dialectic in the law of life of the two worlds. The very supernatural perfection of the freedom enjoyed by a pure spirit, the absence of all external limitation, means that this freedom, manifesting itself completely, is exhausted in a single act; and the spiritual being loses its freedom by reason of the very excess of freedom. On the other hand, the hindrances and obstacles presented by the external medium of the natural world to the realization of our interior acts, the limited and conditional character of human freedom, make man freer than the angels in that he is allowed to retain his freewill and exercise it continually, and to remain, even after the Fall, an active co-operator in the divine work. It is for this reason that eternal Wisdom does not find her delight in the angels, but in the sons of Man.
Man exists primarily for the interior and ideal union of earthly potentiality and divine act, of the Soul and the Word, and secondarily for the free realization of this union in the totality of the world outside the Godhead. There is, therefore, in this composite being a center and a circumference, the human personality and the human world, the individual man and the social or collective man. The human individual, being in himself or subjectively the union of the divine Word and earthly nature, must begin to realize this union objectively or for himself by an external reduplication of himself. In order really to know himself in his unity, man must distinguish himself as knowing or active subject (man in the proper sense) from himself as known or passive object (woman). Thus the contrast and union of the divine Word and earthly nature is reproduced for man himself in the distinction and union between the sexes.
The essence or nature of man is completely represented by individual man (in the two sexes); his social existence can add nothing to it; but it is absolutely necessary for the extension and development of human existence, and for the actual realization of all that is potentially contained in the human individual. It is only through society that man can attain his final end, the universal integration of all existence outside the Godhead. But natural humanity (Man, Woman and Society), as it emerges from the cosmic process, contains within itself only the possibility of such integration. The reason and consciousness of man, the affections and instinct of woman, and finally the law of solidarity or altruism which forms the basis of all society, these are but a foreshadowing of the true divine-human unity, a seed which has yet to sprout, blossom and bear its fruit. The gradual growth of this seed is accomplished in the process of universal history; and the threefold fruit which it bears is: perfect Woman, or nature made divine, perfect Man or the GodMan, and the perfect Society of God with men — the final incarnation of the eternal Wisdom.
The essential unity of the human being in Man, Woman and Society, determines the indivisible unity of the divine incarnation in humanity. Man properly so-called (the masculine individual) contains already in himself in potentia the whole essence of man; it is only in order to realize that essence in actuality that he must, first, reduplicate himself or render his material side objective in the personality of Woman, and secondly, multiply himself or render objective the universality of his rational being in a plurality of individual existences, organically bound together and forming a corporate whole — human Society. Woman being only the complement of Man, and Society only his extension or total manifestation, there is fundamentally only one human being. And its reunion with God, though necessarily threefold, nevertheless constitutes only a single divine-human being, the incarnate Σοφία, whose central and completely personal manifestation is Jesus Christ, whose feminine complement is the Blessed Virgin, and whose universal extension is the Church. The Blessed Virgin is united to God by a purely receptive and passive union; she brought forth the second Adam, as the Earth brought forth the first, by abasing herself in perfect humility; there is therefore here, properly speaking, no reciprocity or co-operation. And as for the Church, she is not united to God directly, but through the incarnation of Christ of which she is the continuation. It is then Christ alone Who is truly the God-Man, the Man Who is directly and reciprocally (that is, actively) united to God.
It was in the contemplation in His eternal thought of the Blessed Virgin, of Christ and of the Church that God gave His absolute approval to the whole Creation when He pronounced it to be tob meod, valde bona. There was the proper subject for the great joy which the divine Wisdom experienced at the thought of the sons of Man; she saw there the one pure and immaculate daughter of Adam, she saw there the Son of Man par excellence, the Righteous One, and lastly she saw there the multitude of mankind made one under the form of a unique Society founded upon love and truth. She contemplated under this form her future incarnation and, in the children of Adam, her own children; and she rejoiced in seeing that they justified the scheme of Creation which she offered to God: et justificata est Sapientia a filiis suis (Matt. xi. 19).
Mankind reunited to God in the Blessed Virgin, in Christ and in the Church is the realization of the essential Wisdom or absolute substance of God, its created form or incarnation. In truth, it is one and the same substantial form (designated by the Bible as semen mulieris, scilicet Sophiae) which realizes itself in three successive and permanent manifestations, distinct in existence but indivisible in essence, assuming the name of Mary in its feminine personality, of Jesus in its masculine personality, and reserving its proper name for its complete and universal appearance in the perfect Church of the future, the Spouse and Bride of the divine Word.
This threefold realization in mankind of the essential Wisdom is a religious truth which Orthodox Christendom professes in its doctrine and displays in its worship. If, by the substantial Wisdom of God, we were to understand only the Person of Jesus Christ, how could all the texts of the Wisdom Books which speak of this Wisdom be applied to the Blessed Virgin? Moreover, this application, which has been made from the earliest times in the Offices of the Latin Church as well as of the Greek Church, has in our own days received doctrinal sanction in the Bull of Pius IX on the Immaculate Conception of the Most Holy Virgin. On the other hand, there are texts of Scripture which Orthodox and Catholic doctors apply sometimes to the Blessed Virgin, sometimes to the Church; for instance, the passage in the Apocalypse concerning the Woman clothed with the sun, crowned with the stars, and with the moon beneath her feet. Finally, there can be no doubt as to the close link and complete analogy between the individual humanity of Christ and His social humanity, between His natural Body and His mystical Body.
In the sacrament of Communion the personal Body of the Lord becomes in a mystical but real manner the unifying principle of His collective Body, the community of the faithful. Thus the Church, human Society made divine, possesses fundamentally the same substance as the incarnate Person of Christ or His individual Humanity; and since this latter has no other origin or substance than the human nature of the Blessed Virgin, the Mother of God, it follows that the organism of the divine-human incarnation, having in Jesus Christ a single active and personal center, possesses also in its threefold manifestation one single substantial basis, namely, the corporal nature of the divine Wisdom, as both latent and revealed in the lower world; it is the soul of the world completely converted, purified and identified with Wisdom itself, as matter identifies itself with form in a single concrete and living being. And the perfect realization of this divine-material substance, this semen mulieris, is glorified and resurrected Humanity, the Temple, Body and Spouse of God.
The truth of Christianity, under this positive aspect — the complete and concrete incarnation of Godhead — has particularly attracted the religious soul of the Russian people from the earliest times of their conversion to Christianity. In dedicating their most ancient churches to St. Sophia, the substantial Wisdom of God, they have given to this idea a new expression unknown to the Greeks (who identified Σοφία with the Λόγος). While closely linking the Holy Wisdom with the Mother of God and with Jesus Christ, the religious art of our ancestors distinguished it clearly from both and represented it under the form of a distinct divine being. It was for them the heavenly essence clad in the appearance of the lower world, the luminous spirit of regenerate humanity, the Guardian Angel of the Earth, the final appearance of the Godhead for which they waited.
Thus, side by side with the individual human form of the Divine — the VirginMother and the Son of God — the Russian people have known and loved, under the name of St. Sophia, the social incarnation of the Godhead in the Universal Church. It is this idea, revealed to the religious consciousness of our ancestors, this truly national and yet absolutely universal notion, that we must now expound in reasoned terms. It is for us to formulate the living Word which old Russia conceived and which new Russia must declare to the world.
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