Metaphysics of unity and the Christian worldview: experience of interpretation in the works of E. N. Trubetskoy and priest Pavel Florensky

The article examines the main features of the V. S. Solovyov’s concept of total unity, and analyzes attempts to rethink it from the point of view of traditional Christian doctrine and worldview. Several provisions are highlighted in connection with which this concept, according to the author of the article, especially clearly goes beyond the Christian church tradition. In addition to the “temptation of pantheism”, this is a unique interpretation of the creation of the world, the idea of the presence of “eternal” humanity in God, the idea of Sophia as a special ontological reality and a specific perception of the event of the Fall, which is described in the Holy Scriptures. As experiments in the Christian interpretation of the metaphysics of unity, the selected, most characteristic in this regard, works of E. N. Trubetskoy and Priest are analyzed. P. Florensky. It is noted that E. Trubetskoy most decisively tried to defend the traditional Christian doctrine of the creation of the world “out of nothing” and the doctrine of the deep ontological difference between the nature of the creature and the Creator. Total unity, from the point of view of E. Trubetskoy, was only given in the Divine plan for the world and must be realized through the Incarnation and deification of the world. From Florensky’s point of view, the Divine plan for unity was initially realized in Divine eternity and must also be embodied in the material world. According to the author of the article, Florensky, much more than E. Trubetskoy, remained on the basis of the basic principles of V. Solovyov’s metaphysics and did not so much rethink them as try to adapt them to the traditional Christian worldview.