Nikolai Berdyaev Reads Symeon the New Theologian

The article discusses how Nikolai Berdyaev elaborates his conception of Godman based on mystical texts of Symeon the New Theologian. The article demonstrates that one can find the roots of Berdyaev's personalism in Byzantine theology with its explored theory of deification. An interesting point of this theory is an idea that a person transcends their own individual constrains becoming a Christ - Godman with their specific personality (hypostasis). The author focuses mainly on two main works by Berdyaev: The Philosophy of Free Spirit and The Meaning of the Creative Act. These books contain the most significant points of Berdyaev's thought on personality and creative freedom. Since Berdyaev cites Byzantine theologians, the author concentrates on Symeon the New Theologian, whom Berdyaev most frequently mentions. The choice is also supported by historical research of Russian intellectual trends in the early twentieth century, in which Symeon was quite an influential person. The author also notices the heritage of the famous Russian patrologist I. Popov, who could have an impact on the Russian philosophical tradition and on Berdyaev's thought particularly. As a leading method, hermeneutics with elements of historical-philosophical analysis is applied. First, the author examines the issue of Byzantine heritage translation into Russian in the early twentieth century. She learns that, at the time Berdyaev published his two main books, two translations of Symeon were more than assimilated by Russian readers - his Hymns and Epistles. The author emphasizes Berdyaev's interest in fragments of Symeon's texts on a bodily transformation of a person who experiences the process of deification, God's grace and love. The study revealed differences between the Byzantine theory of deification and Berdyaev's understanding of it. Whereas Symeon speaks about divine fear and love as a whole, Berdyaev insists on the feeling of love, withdrawing fear as a negative emotion. The author traces Berdyaev's line of argumentation, which is based on the existential personalist idea of relations between two or more equal participants. Berdyaev presents God as the other, who can feel anger or sorrow, or craving for the lover (man). Berdyaev understands divine fear as an Old Testament's characteristic which Jesus Christ, who symbolized the idea of equality between God and Man, overcame. On the contrary, according to the official dogmatic line of the Eastern Church, man should feel fear in front of God due to their different ontological statuses. Consequently, the mystical experience of love is more complicated than Berdyeav's one. The article strengthens the difference between these two conceptions by analyzing the Russian translation of Symeon's Epistles, which also differs from the original. The article demonstrates the divergences between Symeon the New Theologian's and Nikolai Berdyaev's conceptions of God-human relations.

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