5

Vladimir Sergeyevich Solovyov

A Trinitarian Metaphysics

Solovyov (1852–1900) is often described as the founder of modern Russian philosophy.1 Philosopher, mystic, poet, all of these and more, he was a profound original thinker. In 1862, at the age of nine he claimed to have had a mystical vision of what he came to identify as divine Sophia appearing in a feminine form. Yet, around the age of fourteen, he turned atheist. At about eighteen he returned to a committed religious outlook. At the end of his life, after a long-term interest in Roman Catholicism, he received Holy Communion from a Russian Orthodox priest.2 In 1874, at the age of twenty-one, he defended his master’s thesis, The Crisis of Western Philosophy: Against the Positivists.3 The thesis served for many years in Russia as an important reference in philosophy. Already then in this early work he had shown a strong interest in and gave evidence of being quite enamored with the triadic structure of subjectivity. It would be hard to overestimate his influence on Eastern, but especially Russian, thought.

He went to England for further study and while there was told, in 1875 in a second vision, to look again for divine Sophia in Egypt. There in 1876 he reported a third and final vision of her in the desert near Cairo.4 He taught briefly in Moscow and in St. Petersburg but resigned his university appointment after encouraging without success the Tsar Alexander II to pardon the assassins of the Tsar’s father.5 For the rest of his rather solitary life, beyond lecturing briefly in France “he lived out his ideal of practical Christianity to the point of folly.”6 Generous perhaps to an extreme, he gave away whatever he might have in his wallet to someone in need or his coat and shoes to some needy person he met on the street. Apparently even animals loved him.7 Through all of this he continued to work, in various original and creative ways, with a wide range of religious and scriptural sources as well as with much of Western and Russian philosophy including, for example, the thought of the Neo-Platonists, of British Empiricists, and of German Rationalists and Idealists.

Of particular present interest, he focused on religious and philosophical themes such as, for example, an enriched and seemingly at least initially Spinoza-inspired view of the all-unity or absolute taken as oneness inclusive of multiplicity.8 Further examples would include a variously understood notion of Sophia or wisdom9 and the ancient idea of divinization, so dear especially in Eastern Christian traditions. He reworked this notion of divinization rather dramatically into what he called “divine humanity” (bogochelovechestvo).10 He also worked to favor Church unity. He did this in some ways reminiscent of Schelling’s interrelating of the Petrine, Pauline, and Johannine Churches. He sketched out a philosophically expressed reading of the history of the Church and the particular role the Russian Orthodox Church would play in the eventual attainment of true Church unity. This unity was ultimately to be “a ‘tri-unity’ of papal, imperial and prophetic forces representing a temporal manifestation of the Trinity.”11 The famous twentieth-century Roman Catholic theologian, Hans Urs von Balthasar, generously, and indeed with some reason, accepted the description of Solovyov’s work as “the most universal intellectual construction of modern times” and “the most comprehensive philosophical statement of the Christian totality in modern times.”12 For von Balthasar, Solovyov was right up there with Thomas Aquinas in his ability to order the history of thought13 and, we might add, with Hegel and Schelling.

As we turn to his thought on Trinity, we can already now by anticipation call attention to Solovyov’s concern for wholeness, which we will highlight through more direct quoting when he speaks of it. He creatively brings together this Idealist concern with what he finds to be a similar concern in the overall Russian mindset. Solovyov’s trinitarian religious metaphysics, a form of concrete Idealism, reflects the dialectical development proposed by Hegel but is closer to Schelling in its stress on will, facticity, and existence.

Solovyov’s Lectures on Divine Humanity

Solovyov delivered his famous series of twelve lectures in St. Petersburg from 1877 to 1881 before a distinguished audience that included Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.14 In these exquisite and lofty reflections, published as Lectures on Divine Humanity,15 he gave a carefully developed philosophical interpretation to a good number of religious themes. The Lectures represent his major systematic effort to construct a reasoned, coherent presentation of Trinity.16 Solovyov himself probably composed, at least partially, the following excerpt from the announcement of his lectures, in which he focuses on the notion of Divine Humanity, the final flowering of his understanding of God as Trinity:

The central idea of the lectures is Divine humanity as the living God. Of the twelve lectures the first six will represent a necessary transition from the natural content of human consciousness to that central idea that first received historical actuality in Christianity … The remaining six lectures will be concerned with the positive development of the religious idea itself. They will cover the actualization of Divine Humanity.17

In the first six lectures Solovyov proceeds in a manner generally speaking similar to the ways in which Hegel and Schelling had, each in his own way, done in arguing to their philosophical readings of Trinity. That is, he sees the understanding of God or the absolute, considered as Trinity, as the climax to a philosophical reading of the varied ways in which several selected exemplary religious and philosophical traditions conceive of God. Consistent with his just-cited announcement of the lectures, Solovyov confirms in lecture ten that he had earlier on in lectures three, four, and five respectively pointed out the relative significance of the Hindus, Greeks, and Jews in religious history (147). To appreciate his creative reworking of the notion of Trinity and be better positioned to reflect on the varied German Idealist influence on his understanding of Trinity, we will select several insights and remarks found in the first five lectures. These insights and remarks are needed to understand better what Solovyov will say more explicitly concerning Trinity in lectures six and seven. Following upon a somewhat longer review of his creative presentation on Trinity in these two lectures, we will then refer to several of his ideas developed in lectures eight through twelve insofar as they complement and provide further insight into his presentation on Trinity in lectures six and seven.

Solovyov opens the first lecture with reference to what he calls the religious principle: “Religion is the connection of humanity and the world with the absolute principle and focus of all that exists” (1). This is in fact his first reference to what he will later on in the lecture refer to as “the reality of all, the universal, integral reality … the reality of Him Who is all. It is the reality of God” (9–10). It is this notion which he will further refine, step-by-step, throughout the lectures and various aspects of which he will recall time and again as he analyzes negative and positive realizations of reality, among them, especially here in the first lecture, the sorry state of religion. He regretted that in his day religion had been reduced to the private sphere. He cleverly sets up the overall argument of his lectures by examining what he says has replaced religion, namely, either socialism or positivism. Socialism, especially as it arises in the West, ought to work for material equality but is unsuccessful. In a tightly argued analysis, Solovyov introduces the notion of will, which becomes so central to his overall argument in the lectures. Of particular interest is the way in which he proposes that egoism is the root of social untruth, and that social truth lies in self-denial and love. All can be freely subordinated to the will of all only when all have freely accepted the absolute or moral principle of being properly related to the focus of all that exists. In Solovyov’s succinct analysis socialism ironically leads to religion (6–8). Positivism, which stresses truth as fact or given, equally leads for Solovyov to religion. For neither a single separate fact, that is, a single will, nor the totality of them yields the truth. “Consequently, the reality of the all … is the reality of Him Who is all” (9–10). Thus, positivism likewise leads to religion.

In this first lecture Solovyov works especially with the notion of will to argue to the free realization of the religious principle, namely, his understanding of the “all” as inclusive and thus unlimited. This is for him the only principle which truly grounds, for example, the French Revolution’s call for liberty, equality, and fraternity (3 with 10). In this lecture he has variously introduced the themes of all-inclusivity, will, and freedom with which he will work in various ways to carry his argument throughout the lectures.

In the second lecture, Solovyov continues to develop these three themes, but now more specifically with reference to two aspects of or, perhaps better, movements in overall Western thought. He sees Western thought as a necessary transition, a negative moment opening the way to a more positive, fuller religious future. In Western thought these two aspects or movements are Roman Catholicism, representing the religious past, and materialism. For Solovyov, Roman Catholicism contains within it the truth of God, as he so colorfully puts it, “even if this truth wears an unbecoming garment” (14). Roman Catholicism includes within it the general principle that the spiritual should include the secular and civil.18 But it tries to achieve this inclusion as an external unity by means of force. And, in so doing, it reduces itself to a merely external force rather than working to bring about this inclusion in a way appropriate to the divine principle that should lead to this form of subordination. According to this divine principle, God is love and free spirit, so that the inclusiveness appropriate to the Church must be that attained by free consent, by spiritualizing secular society. Solovyov then sees Protestantism as liberating the concrete individual to turn freely to the divine principle. The individual can so turn because he or she has, as he puts it, absolute, divine significance (16–17).

Solovyov uses this reference to human absoluteness to introduce a careful, doubled analysis of absoluteness which will lead him to affirm that in God freedom is necessary (17–21). He distinguishes two types of absoluteness characteristic of the human person, the first of which is negative absoluteness referring to the individual’s capacity to go beyond any finite content (17). This negative absoluteness constitutes as well a demand for all of reality, positive absoluteness. He goes on to say that Western civilization has come to affirm human inner freedom and the absolute rights of the person, but then without acknowledging positive absoluteness. Contemporary consciousness asserts absolute rights but recognizes that the holder of these rights is limited and transitory. For Solovyov presence of this assertion and this recognition in fact posits a contradiction within human consciousness itself (19). He then pursues the question of ever-sharpening contradictions arising out of this situation as he moves slowly to the insightful but surprising conclusion that contemporary consciousness leads to a fuller religious future.

For Solovyov this affirmation of contradiction is rooted in a false reading of the notions of matter and force, on the one hand, and of necessity, on the other. He instead argues to the existence of spiritual forces and not merely material ones. He likewise claims that necessity means different things at different levels. It is one thing to assert that a stone necessarily falls to the ground when released. It is quite another to say that a “sublime idea … provokes one to do noble deeds.” Freedom is for Solovyov one form of necessity. In the case of God, “it is necessary for God to love all … for God freedom is necessary” (21).

Finally, Solovyov turns briefly to the question of materialism (22–23). To the extent that it concerns itself only with physical forces, materialism is true. It is false insofar as it extrapolates beyond them to assert that only such forces exist, for it goes beyond its own domain into the wider realm of philosophy within which it is only one of many philosophical opinions. The truth is that the human person is negatively absolute but also able to be positively absolute in that the human person is able to attain the fullness of being and content. Solovyov ends the second lecture with a fundamental announcement opening the way to the rest of his lectures. Belief in the human person is equally belief in God “for Divinity belongs to human beings and to God.” Yet God’s divinity is eternal actuality whereas for humans it is given to them, present only in “possibility, only [in] striving.” But belief in God and in humanity are fully actualized when they “meet in the one, complete, integral truth of Divine humanity” (23–24).

As Solovyov had announced at the beginning of his lectures, in the third, fourth, and fifth lectures he turns to Buddhist pessimism and nihilism, then Plato’s idealism, and Old Testament monotheism. In each case, he explores the notion of God and the relationship between God and humankind typical of each people as he moves, in his own form of dialectical progression, toward Christianity and its idea of that relationship.

However, in the third lecture Solovyov does considerably more than simply reflect on Buddhism as the last word uttered by Hindu consciousness (147). He first sets up his basic understanding of the three spheres making up human consciousness (25–30). He starts out by distinguishing between material and mechanical means used to give expression to what he calls a universal content itself independent of such means. He refers to such content as the idea and the organs of speech or the brain and its functioning as the means used to express it. Once he has established the independence of this absolute content or idea, he identifies will, reason, and feeling as means through which a determinate content is realized but not constituted (28). He continues to lay the groundwork for his overall triply structured understanding of reality. He sets up, as point of departure for further reflection, the need each of these three forms of consciousness, namely, will, reason, and feeling has for an object appropriate to it and which attracts it. Thus, the will has as its object something objectively good, thought something objectively true, and feeling something objectively beautiful, with good, truth, and beauty being characteristics of one and the same thing. Since will, reason, and feeling are “forces of one spirit,” they are three spheres of the spiritual life, merely “different forms (ideas) of the one absolute principle, which in its actuality is the proper object of religion” (29–30).

With this affirmation Solovyov arrives at the second topic he presents in his third lecture, namely, a further development of the overall understanding of religion to which he had referred in the first lecture. Here he argues to the importance of philosophy of religion or thinking about revelation. He will then identify three stages of religious development (30–38).

Solovyov proposes that the reality of God, or even that of any other being beyond us, is necessary “for the will and moral activity, for reason and true knowledge, for feeling and art” (30). But this necessity only establishes the highest degree of probability. To paraphrase several of his remarks rather closely, he says that absolute certainty about this reality comes only through faith. He follows up this affirmation with various examples and a careful consideration of them. For him, facts beyond those of our direct consciousness are beyond the limits of our experience. It takes faith as an act of spirit reaching beyond what we actually are. However, once faith confirms the existence of an external reality, experience provides the content, with the latter becoming a further confirmation of the former. For example, once we accept the existence of the sun, the experience of warmth and light confirm that acceptance and tell us something about the sun (30–32).

This approach toward confirming the existence of an external reality can be applied to the reality of God as well. Once we believe that God is, we experience and work to know what God is. To know what God is we need to develop a philosophy of religion. For “only … a connected system and a complete synthesis of religious truths can give us adequate knowledge of the divine principle as the absolute or all-embracing principle” (33). He argues that religious development is a divine-human process in which religion at various stages in this development is not false but simply seen from a later perspective as becoming an element in a fuller or complete revelation (35).

Solovyov succinctly sketches out what are for him the characteristics of the highest degree of religious development and divine revelation. This series of characteristics sets the stage for his interpretations of Buddhism, Greek religion, Jewish religion, and his subsequent presentation of Christianity as the trinitarian religion. That which is to constitute the highest degree of religion must be free from exclusiveness and one-sidedness, thus representing the greatest generality, and have the greatest positive content, fullness, and integrity. It must constitute positive universality, the opposite of negative universality. He rejects deism and the like, which reduce religion to a lowest common denominator. Rather, the highest form of religion must have the fullest positive content, rich, alive, and concrete. The perfect religion contains all religions within itself. In an Hegelian turn of phrase reminiscent of Hegel’s true infinite, he says that the truest form of religion, as possessing all religions, is free of all of them for they are not external to it and do not limit it.

In focusing on the ideal content of religious truth, Solovyov abstracts for the moment from the means by which that ideal content is revealed. This way of proceeding permits him to concentrate on sketching out the progressive order of historically disclosed religious truth to humankind since historical order and logical order coincide, as he says, in their content. He identifies three elements that will structure this order, thus laying as well the groundwork for his later development of the notion of divine humanity. These three elements are “nature, the given, present reality … the divine principle, the sought goal and content, which is gradually revealing itself … the human person, the subject of life and consciousness … [which last] passes from the given to the sought and, by assimilating the divine principle, reunites nature too with this principle, transforming nature from the accidental into what ought to be” (37).

The first stage of religious development is that of mythological or natural religions where polytheism reigns in this, the stage of natural or immediate revelation. The second stage is the one in which the divine principle stands out over against nature. It is best represented by Buddhism and involves the negation of nature and can be called negative revelation. In the third stage the divine principle “is successively revealed in its own content, in that which it is in itself and for itself” (38). This is positive revelation.

In nature religion, humans first submit themselves to nature and then find it is merely external and without content, no longer divine. They are liberated externally and then internally from nature. This latter is liberation as first developed in Indian philosophy, namely, as pure personhood (39). Nature appears as evil, deceit, and suffering. Humans realize that all they have comes from themselves, and that they are linked only by will with nature when they strive to overcome suffering. The recognition that nature does not bear the significance of the absolute principle means it receives a “negative determination … the absence of being, as nothing, as nirvana” (42).19 Solovyov recalls that this philosophical negation of all being is found, in contemporary consciousness, in the systems of Schopenhauer and Hartmann. He sees this negative worldview as “a logically necessary step in the development of the religious consciousness,” a worldview to which contemporary Western philosophy had returned. Solovyov brings the lecture to a close by remarking that if nature, considered outside of the divine principle, is evil, deceit, and suffering, then it becomes in its positive relation to the absolute principle that which makes possible the full actualization of the divine principle itself (44).

Solovyov opens the fourth lecture with reference to the Buddhist understanding of the absolute principle as nothing, but here only a negative nothingness or the deprivation of all being. In positive nothingness, freedom from all things presupposes dominion over all things. So, the divine principle is “free from all being” and “thereby the positive force or power of all being” (45). The divine principle is absolute. He asks in what the all or content of this positive content of the divine principle consists, and immediately says it cannot consist in natural phenomena individually or in total since they are in constant transition and constitute only appearance. So we find “the positive all (the all-integrity or fullness of being)” only in the “world of ideal essences, as the realm of ideas.” But, as he had done in the third lecture, here too he does considerably more than simply reflect on Plato’s Idealism. His lecture takes on the form of a brief review of the history of thought from Platonism to present-day views. He argues that logical consistency leads “from the sensuous experience of phenomena to the speculative belief in ideas” (46).

Solovyov begins his brief review, in itself a remarkable tour de force, with what could be called a quasi-Kantian presentation of certain elementary truths. He argues, for example, that sound and light are representations of the one who hears and sees. Sound and light as such do not exist independently of the one hearing and seeing. Of themselves they would only be waves or motion. Yet he will also insist that our world of representation is not arbitrary, for that which is material is not as such merely subject to will (47). This involuntary character obliges us to affirm the existence of independent causes which, given our phenomenal world of representation, must interact with one another.20 For him, “the essence that generates them must also constitute a certain multiplicity, or it could not contain the sufficient ground or cause of the given phenomena” (48). In alluding in various ways to early Greek philosophers, he goes on to speak of this general foundation as an aggregate of eternal and immutable elementary entities or causes, as indivisible atoms. These atoms he in turn describes as that in which the phenomenal world is real. He again appeals to our sense perception, this time of hardness, to argue that there is a cause of this sense of hardness. So atoms are forces which bring about this sensation of hardness or any sensation. They are active forces moving outward from themselves. Yet they are as well passive. We act upon something in movement, and we receive from others in representation. He goes on to say that these forces have reality for themselves as well, what we call consciousness, so they are entities. Solovyov seems to be thinking here in a Fichtean way as he works to explain interaction. With reference to Leibniz he goes on to call these entities monads and argues to interaction among them. Each fundamental entity making up the content of the absolute principle is qualitatively different from every other such entity or there would be no interaction among them (49–51).

Solovyov closes the fourth lecture with several concluding remarks. Platonism agrees with Buddhism that the world is not true. But he then says that such a claim can be seen as untrue only if there is another reality that is true. Whatever is found in the untrue natural world must be found in the true realm. This realm is “therefore determined not simply as an idea but as the ideal all, as the world of ideas, the realm of ideas” (52).21 He illustrates this point by referring to that which characterizes the human person. A person is a natural phenomenon with actions and receptions externally determined. Yet each person is somehow unique, beyond all external determinations and thus something absolute. This absolute character determines the individual human person in all which that person does. Solovyov then returns to the relation between fundamental entities. He proposes that there is something common to them, something which is itself a particular idea or fundamental entity, resulting in a complex organism of entities. And so on with other such organisms whose center lies in a still more general idea.22 The general and broadest idea is one which must include within itself other ideas. “This is the idea of absolute goodness, or more precisely, absolute love. … Absolute love is precisely that ideal all, that all-integrity, which constitutes the proper content of the divine principle” (53).23

In the first half of lecture five (54–64), Solovyov prolongs his presentation made in lecture four on the world or domain of ideas. At the same time, his continuing remarks on ideas form a transition to Jewish monotheism. He moves more or less in five steps in this transition from idea to person, with reference to the latter then opening the way to his reflection on Judaism and divine personhood. In briefly highlighting selected aspects of this multi-step move, we should note that in a first step (54–57) he speaks of entities as being the synthesis of atom, living force (monad), and idea. He takes up the question of the one and the many as he argues, in various ways, that entities are both single and multiple. They are atoms, but also forces interacting. Given that entities are, most importantly, determined by their ideal content, there is “an internal connection among all entities, by virtue of which the system of entities is an organism of life” (56–57).

In a second step (57–59) in this transition to Judaism, Solovyov recalls his earlier assertion of a certain correspondence between ideal cosmos and our rational concepts. Particular entities are embraced by more general ones and specific concepts by generic ones. He uses this reference then not only to show this continuity but also to distinguish the ways interrelationships occur among rational concepts and among essential ideas (57). Whereas concepts become more inclusive through abstraction from particular details, essential ideas become more inclusive and broader to the extent that they have a richer content. The greater number of particular ideas with which a more general idea interacts, the fuller and more determinate is the general idea. Solovyov defines ideas as “perfectly determinate, special forms of metaphysical entities that are not the product of our abstracting thought but are inherent to the entities themselves” (59).

Solovyov’s third step (59–63) in this transition from idea to person consists basically in his distinguishing among three ways of knowing: sense perception of phenomena and experience; rational or abstract thinking; and, intellectual intuition. To illustrate what he means by intuition in particular, he appeals to artistic creation. For him art has a close linkage with what he calls the metaphysical world of ideal entities. Artistic ideas and images are not the result of one’s perception or reflection. Rather, they “appear to mental vision all at once, in their inner wholeness” (62).

In a fourth step (63–64) leading to his presentation on Judaism, Solovyov refers again to absolute love as expressing the notion that there is an inner connection among all ideas within absolute love as itself one all-embracing idea. It is by nature “the concentrated expression of the all; it is the all as unity” (63). For Solovyov this unity can only be real if what is united has its own autonomy, for entities are not only ideas but also monads and atoms. Without multiplicity the unity could not be actual but would only be potential. For the all-one to be its full unity it must not only be the unity of others but also that unity in itself. “The all-one idea must be the proper determination of the one central entity” (64).24

In a brief fifth and final step (64–65), Solovyov recalls that the idea is objective as the object of intuition by the other. The bearer of that idea must be an independent center for itself, possessing self-consciousness and personality. So the bearer of the idea is for Solovyov a person. Applying this notion that person and idea stand in relationship to one another and need one another, Solovyov finds that we herewith are given the idea of the living God. “God is all.” Just as every entity says “I am” in relation to its determinate essence, so “the divine being affirms its ‘I am’ not with respect to any separate particular content but with respect to the all, that is, first with respect to the absolute, all-one, and all-embracing idea, and through it and in it, also with respect to all the separate ideas that constitute the scope and content of the absolute idea” (64–65).

At this point, Solovyov turns in the second half or part of the fifth lecture (65–72) to the Bible, Moses, and Jewish monotheism.25 At the beginning of this second part he succinctly summarizes the trajectory traced so far. He recalls that in Buddhism the divine principle was understood negatively, as nirvana or nothingness. In Greek idealism it was determined objectively, the ideal all. In Jewish monotheism it “receives an inner subjective determination as the pure “I” or the absolute person” (65). But Buddhism and Greek idealism only affirmed a content and not the divine principle in itself, for an idea is actual only in as it is the content of something which is. Divinity, so understood only as a content, has nothing to offer the human will. Solovyov says that for the Greeks Divinity was ultimately considered objectively, impersonally, and without a will, merely the object of contemplation. But to have a positive moral value, “a religion must reveal Divinity as a willing person, whose will gives the supreme norm to the human will” (66). And this is what Old Testament revelation has done.

Solovyov then takes up the question, so hotly discussed in nineteenth-century German thought, as to whether or not the absolute can be a person. He says that those who say the Divinity is only a person and, thus limited, take up a position against which Pantheists rightfully rebel. Divinity as the absolute is more than a person. But he likewise notes that those who deny divine personhood fail in the opposite direction in that they see the Divinity as impersonal substance. For even, as substance, Divinity must assert its own being or there would be no container, as Solovyov says, no inner independence. It is necessary for Divinity to involve “self-determination and self-discernment; it must possess personhood and consciousness” (66–67). Divinity is free from personal being not because it lacks personal being but because it is not exhausted by it and contains it within.

The fifth lecture comes to a close with further remarks concerning the advance Judaism represents over Hellenism and with a final reference to the full truth of Old Testament revelation. For the understanding of God as absolute “I” and personal will brings with it, if this understanding does not undergo, further developed, a notion of God as arbitrary author of law binding upon the human will. Solovyov appeals to the prophetic tradition in Judaism, especially as found in Isaiah and Jeremiah, to show that this notion of law was meant to be transitory. As absolute, the will of God cannot be linked to any specific external object or act, ceremony or activity for its object. “Its object … can only be the all” (70). God’s will excludes none. Solovyov sees God’s will as love, as loving all, and thus able to serve no longer as external force but now as inner law for the human will. “The will of God must be the law and norm for the human will, not as acknowledged despotism but as the consciously chosen good.” Prophetic revelation announces that external law is replaced by a new relationship, a new and nonexclusive covenant through which humankind and through it nature are renewed (71).

With the sixth and seventh lectures we arrive at Solovyov’s core presentation of Trinity. Here he presupposes and builds upon what he had said in his previous lectures.26 He opens the sixth lecture, as he often does more generally in these lectures, with a helpful summary (73–74) of certain aspects of what he had spoken about so far but especially in the previous lecture. He does this, however, not simply to help in following what he is saying, but also as a further step in his overall argument. He of course recalls that in Judaism prophecy provided a corrective to a possible reading of God the personal divine “I” as arbitrarily imposing his will in an external fashion. He notes parenthetically that this earlier Jewish understanding of God seems to some extent at least to characterize a Muslim view of God. For Solovyov, Jewish prophecy identified God as love and thus as will which appears as norm internal to humans, freely inviting them to respond. With this notion of God as love, which insight fittingly arose in relation to one nation, God becomes the God of all and salvation is available to all. For divine love is not exclusive. However, he reiterates as well that the Greeks had brought us to the realization that the divine idea or content is itself universal. So now the task becomes one of bringing the universal “I” and the universal idea or essence into a synthesis: “If the truth of Divinity consists in the unity of God as an existing being, or the absolute subject, with His absolute essence, or objective idea, then this unity, this inner relation of the two elements (the personal and the essential) in Divinity must be conceived in a certain manner, must be defined” (74).

This synthesis occurs, according to Solovyov, when the Jewish and Greek worlds collide in Alexandria among Jews who received a Hellenistic education. He names especially Philo and Plotinus. The Neo-Platonists argued philosophically to a trinity of three divine hypostases. But Christianity came to an understanding of Trinity on the basis of a lived experience. For in Christianity the divine life appeared in a living person. Christians saw the Logos in the crucified and risen Jesus and experienced directly the Spirit as the cause of their spiritual regeneration (75). So the early Church Fathers quite naturally turned to Greek and Greco-Judaic thinkers as they reflected on the divine principle. Solovyov then describes what he intends to do during the rest of this lecture six. He will focus on the essential truth of the trinitarian doctrine and bring forth truth in what he calls a logical form meeting reason’s requirements (77).

Solovyov carries out his logical development of the notion of Trinity in four main steps. First, he discusses the relationship of divine subject to divine content (77–79). Second, he argues to three modes of divine existence (79–84). Third, he turns to a consideration of our triadic structure as human beings (84–86). And, fourth, he further clarifies his notion of Trinity. He does this by distinguishing between the ways in which God and humans manifest a threefold structure of being (86–95). He analyses the temporal character of the triadic structure of human consciousness (86–87) and argues to three eternal subjects (87–88) which do not equal three gods (88–89) and are not to be thought of in any merely mechanical way (89–95).

In discussing the relationship between divine subject and divine content, Solovyov creatively identifies existence with subject as existent subject and essence with content. Subject gives rise to and expresses itself in and as content, which two, namely, subject and content, he later on also identifies respectively with God the Father and God the Son. Here he no longer ties consideration of the relationship between existence and essence with the divine as substance, as had been done so often in prior philosophical and theological reflection. He now thinks in terms of subjectivity, arguing that to say God is and God exists is to say in fact that God is a “What.” If, on the one hand there were no “What,” God would simply be being in general which, as he acknowledges Hegel had shown, is simply nothing (78). On the other hand God cannot be only something and limited to a particular content, for then God would not be absolute. He concludes that God must be the all in a positive, inclusive sense. Otherwise there would be something outside of God limiting God externally, and God would then not be God.

Once he has established the distinction between divine subject and divine content, with the distinction between subject and content being in fact characteristic of all entities, Solovyov builds upon this distinction to argue to three modes of divine existence. He will base his argument on the three different ways in which the all-total is present in the Divinity as God’s content or essence. He sets up a guiding principle, namely, that if the all represents God’s essence or content, then God as existent subject must be distinguished from it, “what expresses from what is expressed, oneself from one’s own. And this distinction is a relation.” For this content to be God’s own, God must manifest it and “possess it substantially, that is, He must be all or the unity of all in an eternal inner act.” In this first positing we have God as existent is actual and his content “exists only in a latent state, potentially” (79). Without this content existing in God at least potentially, God as existent would be nothing. But then, for this universal essence to be actual it must exist not only in God but also for God as distinct from Him.

With this affirmation Solovyov has arrived at the second mode or positing of divine existence. Here the all-total is no longer present as potential in a latent state, but “as a certain ideal actuality … posited as an object.” This object is of course not external to the divine subject since it is absolute. It is, rather, the subject’s own inner content. Solovyov recalls again, by way of explanatory example or incomplete analogy, the artistic idea which, when realized, is the externalization for the artist of what he or she is within, namely, the idea. This second mode of existence is a different expression of what is in the first mode. Solovyov then reflects further on the nature of the first positing in which only the existent subject is actual. “This absolute subject, as unitary, is pure act, pure absolute actuality” (80). He says we can gain some insight into this first positing by referring to a deeply spiritual experience in which we abstract from all forms of impression, feeling, and the like. There we come into contact with the spiritual source of spiritual life and of the universal life. In what has the ring of an appeal to a form of mystical experience, he says that “we come to know God essentially, as the first principle, or the substance of all. We come to know God the Father” (81).

Solovyov returns to the second positing, the second mode of existence, as he insists that the first positing would, without the second positing, be unable to act. There would be no object for which it could appear as “a positive possibility or force, since, in itself, it is actuality” (81). For the absolute to be fully absolute, it cannot be only actuality but must also be potentiality or power without limitation by another. The absolute, to be absolute, must become “actual not only in itself but also for itself” (82) through self-determination. The true one is that which not only is one in itself but produces multiplicity for itself, within itself, without then being disrupted in its unity. At this point, Solovyov asserts, in the briefest of fashions, a third positing or mode of existence. The first is immediate and indifferent. The second manifested through differentiation “and it is thereby intensified. … Thus, we have here the third positing, or mode, of that which absolutely is—the mode of a perfect unity, of the absolute that has asserted itself as such.” Solovyov then describes these three positings or relations succinctly. The first possesses content in nondifferentiated unity including all in absolute power. The second opposes its own absolute content to itself by self-determination. The third asserts its own content by “realizing itself in an actual, mediated, or differentiated unity with this content, or essence, that is, with the all—in other words, as finding itself in its other, as eternally returning to itself and remaining ‘at home with itself’ ” (83).

Solovyov’s next major move will be to identify these three modes of divine existence as three subjects. But first, to facilitate the transition from mode to subject, he briefly sketches out the triadicity, similar to that of divine existence, which is necessarily to be found in the human spirit. He first of all identifies what he calls states of our consciousness, by which he means all desires, thoughts, and feelings which we experience consciously. He then insists that there are other states of consciousness constituting us as spirit, and which are not tied to the external or internal world. He gives some examples, referring to sleep and loss of consciousness. Since our spirit perdures beyond determinate states of consciousness, it would be absurd, he argues, not to recognize this deeper spiritual form of consciousness. So Solovyov speaks of the primordial, indivisible, and integral subject in whom our identity is there only substantially, “in immediate unity with the subject as its inner idea, an idea as yet unrevealed and unembodied.” We have, secondly, of course as well our differentiated conscious life wherein our spirit is revealed and our content or essence “exists actually, in a multiplicity of diverse manifestations” (85). Thirdly, these various manifestations are “disclosures of one and the same spirit present in all of them.” Solovyov appeals to the fact that we can reflect upon these manifestations and come to be a single subject. He identifies this assertion as self-consciousness. In it our spirit asserts the content as its own and in so doing “asserts itself as that which has manifested this content” (86).

Solovyov acknowledges the correspondence between, on the one hand, the triadic relation of the human subject to its content and, on the other hand, that of the absolute subject to its absolute content. But of course, the parallel goes no further, given the temporal character of the triadic structure of human consciousness. For Solovyov we cannot at the same time be conscious at the predeterminate and deeper level as well as be conscious in a determinate way. He says we cannot both think and think about our own thought (at the same time) (87). For Solovyov, these three positings or modes of existence characterize a single human subject.

In continuing to clarify his notion of Trinity, Solovyov now distinguishes between the ways in which a time-conditioned human subject and the eternal subject manifest a threefold structure of being as he argues to three eternal subjects. The very concept of absolute entity excludes the possibility of a temporally based “alternation of its three positings, or of the three relations to its essence or content.” Again, we cannot think of one subject as having three exclusive positings. “One and the same eternal subject cannot at the same time conceal in itself all its determinations, and manifest them for itself, separating them from itself as its other, and still remain in them ‘at home with itself’ ” (87). We must then assume three eternal subjects (hypostases), the second proceeding from the first and the third from the first as having already manifested itself in the second. God would not be God if God did not have the absolute content not only as potentially present but also for himself and with himself (88).27

Yet monotheism will not permit the assertion of three gods. Solovyov says that if we are thinking of any subject which simply participates in the divine essence we have many gods. But if we think of God as the One who is in total possession of the divine content, then the three divine subjects can be called God only insofar as they exist in absolute unity. It is only in our abstracting thought that the three divine subjects exist separately. God the Father cannot exist without the Word expressing him and the Spirit asserting him. The Word and the Spirit cannot exist without the first subject, their common source. “God … actualizes Himself in three indivisible and consubstantial subjects (hypotheses). (89)

Solovyov dedicates the rest of this sixth lecture to presenting further remarks giving greater precision to his logical presentation of Trinity as found so far especially in this lecture. He first of all distinguishes between, on the one hand, merely mechanical thinking that separates and considers entities in their separateness and, on the other hand, organic thinking that considers “an object in its all-sided wholeness and, consequently, in its inner bond with all the other objects” (89–90).28 He identifies this organic thinking with the intellectual or ideal intuition he had discussed in his previous lecture. While saying that rational knowledge of the divine content present in three ways within the Trinity is knowable by reason, he agrees that there is a specific sense in which the Trinity is unknowable by that same reason. As existent and individual subjects the three modes of divine being are in themselves unknowable, as is any entity in its singular individual existence. He returns briefly to his earlier remarks on the triunity of finite human beings, noting that inner analogies arising from a consideration of spiritual beings serve not to prove the truth of God’s triunity but as examples that can help us understand better (93). He takes a moment to present conditions for a real analogy. Triunity must be the inner law of the life of what is being considered as reference for an analogy and characterize the very essence of what is being considered. Furthermore, Triunity must “follow from unity and unity must follow from trinity” (94). With regard to essential significance, he cites Leibniz as originally pointing this out with full clarity, and attributes a major role to this notion in German Idealism. With reference to triunity following from unity and vice versa, he brings up the example of Augustine who in the Confessions writes, as Solovyov sums it up, of differentiating simple immediate being (esse), its knowledge (scire), and its will (velle). Solovyov says these three acts are identical in content in that there is one subject and each of these, namely, being, knowing, and willing include the other two. He sees in Augustine’s example a natural transition to his further consideration, in the next lecture, of the particular relation of each divine subject to the one divine essence or idea which each subject “actualizes” and in which they are themselves “concretely actualized” (94–95).

As has proven customary for Solovyov over the course of these lectures, he opens the seventh lecture with a concise, confirmatory summary of what he said in the previous lecture. We must acknowledge three consubstantial subjects and indivisible subjects in the divine principle as absolute content. Each subject has the same content possessed in its own way. The first is spirit “immediately existing as absolute substance.” The second is the Word, the eternal manifestation of the first. The third is the Spirit “returning to itself and thereby closing the circle of divine being.” He has referred to these three subjects in more logical terms as being-in-itself, being-for-itself, and being-at-home-with-itself. Now in the seventh lecture he proposes to speak more concretely of them, working out, as he says, their more meaningful determination (96).

Given our primary interest in identifying possible German Idealist influence on Solovyov’s trinitarian thought, we need not review here in detail the various steps in Solovyov’s tightly presented and argued effort to give a more particular determination to each of the three subjects. We will, however, want to note his creative description of these subjects in terms of will, representation, and feeling along with their absolute content or object considered, respectively, as goodness, truth, and beauty. We shall note as well his initial reference to Christ and wisdom, respectively, as active and passive sides to what he calls the divine world. With this remark he will bring the lecture to a close.

In this seventh lecture, Solovyov first recalls a basic principle, namely, that “if determinate being is a certain relation of that which is, or the subject, to its essence, or content, the modes of that relation are the modes of being” (96). Following through with this basic principle, he describes three ways in which the subject is related to its content. In the first case, what I posit is at the same time my own and yet object distinct from me. Here the essence is both that which is and its other is that other “only potentially, or by its tendency,” what Solovyov then calls will. For that which is to desire its other, that other must be distinguished from the will of that which is and in some way be given to that which is. It must represent that which is, so we have, secondly, “the being of that which is … determined not only as will but as representation.” The represented essence also manifests will in that it has the capacity to act on that which represents. The two in so acting “become sensitized to, or capable of, feeling each other.” Solovyov calls this interaction, as the third mode of being, “feeling” (97). In line, then, with the basic principle that that which is is simply its relation with its content, that which is is will, representation, and feeling.

Solovyov makes reference to our own experience of these three modes of being and distinguishes them from modes of divine being. In this way, he is able further to clarify his understanding of divine being in its relationship with absolute content. He identifies the content, or other, appropriate to each of the three modes of divine being as, respectively, goodness, truth, and beauty. Strictly speaking, he insists that the content or divine idea remains ever the all-total. But now that all-total can be described in relation to will29 as goodness, in relation to representation as truth, and in relation to feeling as beauty. The unity of that which is of course already contains goodness, truth, and beauty within it. Yet, they must also be separated out from their initial indeterminacy and considered separately, though they remain always interrelated, one not there without the other two. That which is is, first, preeminently willing, second, preeminently representing, and, third, preeminently feeling (100). He calls the three subjects, respectively, primordial spirit, intellect, and soul. He further insists that the content of the divine idea as goodness, as truth, and as beauty is simply the all, different only in “the mode of containment (formal differences)” (102). In his creative reworking of what is traditionally referred to as transcendentals or universal characteristics of being, Solovyov has distributed the notions of goodness, truth, and beauty among the three divine subjects, Father, Son, and Spirit. With love understood as inner unity, he says that goodness represents unity more fully than the others, given its mode of more potential realization (103). Truth is love as objectively represented, and beauty is love as made available to the senses. In their interpenetration, goodness, truth, and beauty form a new concrete unity, which we find in Christianity (104).

Solovyov recalls the four forms of religious consciousness: pessimism and asceticism, especially found in Buddhism; idealism or an ideal world beyond material reality, clearly represented in Plato; monotheism or the “absolute principle or the positive subject as the I, in Judaism”; and, the absolute principle’s determination as Trinity, in Alexandrian theosophy. In Christianity Trinity becomes the central focus, and Christianity includes within itself the four different forms of religious consciousness not in an eclectic fashion but in a new and integrated way. That is, in Christianity the divine content is realized in a concrete way in the Christ who teaches that he himself is “the way, the truth and the life [John 14:6]” (105). The content of Christianity is Christ himself.

Solovyov goes on to argue that God is an organism, with multiplicity in God being reduced to a wholeness. He works with a general principle that, given the interrelatedness of elements in an organism, the more elements in an organism the more determinate it is. So the most inclusive organism is the most universal organism and thus the most individual. “This individual entity, the actualized expression of the absolutely existent God, is Christ.” Given as well that there are in every organism two unities, namely, that which actively reduces multiplicity to oneness and multiplicity reduced to unity, “there is the unity that produces and the unity that is produced” (107). With this distinction Solovyov introduces his view of the divine organism of Christ as being constituted by the absolute as such, namely, an active principle, the Word, or Logos bringing multiplicity to unity and by the absolute’s content or produced unity, which he here identifies as Sophia or wisdom. Logos and Sophia are both distinct and internally related. “This unity, Christ, as the integral divine organism, both universal and individual, is both Logos and Sophia” (108).

Referring back then to God more generally, Solovyov acknowledges many would claim that considering God as integral being, as inclusive living organism, would threaten the absoluteness of Divinity. In response he argues that if one would not “acknowledge in Him [God] His own distinctive eternal nature, His own distinctive eternal world” (108–9), one would be conceiving of God as more abstract and poorer than the world. Considering God as an empty abstraction ultimately leads to atheism.

To God, then, belong both unity and multiplicity, including “the multiplicity of substantial ideas, of potencies or forces with a determinate, particular content” (109). Solovyov here speaks especially of forces in general and then, more specifically, of three forces in the divine world. He seems to be laying the groundwork for a more clearly constructed trinitarian metaphysics, for these forces establish three spheres within the divine world, spheres in which the force actualizing the content “can have this content as an object of will, or contain it as what is willed; it can represent it; and finally, it can feel it.” These forces can “relate to the determinate content, or idea, substantially, ideally, and really, or sensuously.” He speaks respectively of the will (the moral principle), representation (the theoretical principle), or feeling (the aesthetic principle). These three spheres in the divine world are, then, respectively composed of pure spirits, intellects, and souls—three closely united spheres in which each fulfills the other. “Thus, a single, unbreakable bond of love unites all the countless elements that form the divine world” (110).

Solovyov brings the seventh lecture to a close by opening on to the prolonged constructive reflection on humanity which he will carry out in the following lectures. Here he simply argues that access to this rich divine world is available only to those who pertain to it. And he finds them in human beings, who can enter into that world by intellectual intuition (110).

Over the course of the following three lectures Solovyov develops at length his understanding of the human being not merely as either an agglomeration of individuals or simply individual human beings. Rather, he focuses on the ideal human being as such or, perhaps more exactly, the idea of the human being, humanity (114–15). In the eighth lecture he speaks of various questions concerning humanity as the necessarily eternally presupposed receiver of God’s act of self-othering (114), and ends the lecture with an argument in favor of human immortality. In the ninth lecture, he takes up at length the questions of human freedom, evil, and suffering. Human freedom will become for Solovyov a most important consideration since for him human beings must be free in their identifying with the divine in the development of divine humanity (for example, 132).30 And in the tenth lecture, Solovyov presents a dense and compact, indeed quite rich, reading of the movement from an original fall from unity toward a renewed all-unity, a reading reminiscent of Teilhard de Chardin’s later constructive reading of the universe as an increasingly complex process of unification.31 In his presentation, Solovyov sees the movement toward all-unity as taking place in two phases of incarnation, taken first in a wide sense and then more traditionally, of the divine principle. First, a cosmogonic process in which there is a development through various stages of material development culminating in humans. And, second, a theogonic process in which there is a movement from earliest forms of religious consciousness on through those of Buddhism, the Greek and Roman worlds, and Judaism (for example, 141). He ends the lecture with reference to the crucial moment toward which these two processes lead, namely, the arrival of a unique individual: With the arrival of “truth … embodied in a living force” and the eternal truth “concentrated in one living person … a deified human, the Roman Caesar—it is then that God’s truth appeared—in the living person of God incarnate in humanity, Jesus Christ” (154).

In the final two lectures, eleven and twelve published together, Solovyov moves in whirlwind but fascinating fashion through what we might call Christology and ecclesiology. In each case he builds upon, and works in a coherent way with, what he has said in the previous lectures. We should note that in his Christological argument he first succinctly announces his Christological project: “In the sphere of eternal divine being, Christ is the eternal spiritual center of the universal organism. This organism, or universal humankind, falling into the stream of phenomena, became subject to the law of external being and, by labor and suffering, had to restore in time that which it lost in eternity: its inner unity with God and nature” (155).

The rest of his creative Christological reflection consists in an examination, first, of the possibility of the real union of Divinity with humankind and then the way in which that union occurs (156). He argues that a new unity between the divine principle and the natural one in humankind had to take place in a single person or it would not be real. In Christ then there had to be two wills, with the divine will renouncing itself to make room for the human will freely to embrace the divine will (158–59). Solovyov further develops this thought by bringing into consideration the three temptations of Christ, namely, making material welfare (bread) the goal, the “self-assertion of human personality” or the sin of pride (having the angels protect Christ in a fall), and using “one’s divine power to force the world into subjection.” In this way Christ divinizes his humanity in freely subordinating his human will to the divine will after having humanized his divine will in the incarnation. This inner self-renunciation must be followed by an external renunciation as well, hence the suffering and death of Christ (161–63).

Solovyov makes a transition from Christology to ecclesiology by referring to “ideal humankind as the body of the divine Logos” in the eternal world and the Church as “the body of the Logos incarnate, that is, of the Logos historically individuated in the divine-human person of Jesus Christ” (164). Then, in applying again the three temptations this time to the social aggregate of humankind, he argues, among various observations, that the Roman hierarchy gave in to the temptation to rule by force rather than to work for moral improvement through free assent.32 He notes that Protestantism corrected this approach, but that it naturally passed into Rationalism, the idea that “human reason is a law unto itself … the pride of the mind.” He calls this the essence of German philosophy and notes its complete realization in Hegel, with “a failure just as complete” (168). This domination by reason was then replaced by an effort falsely to see all in terms of materialism and empiricism (166, see 166–69).

In his final remarks, Solovyov widens his reflection to cover, at least in principle, the whole of Western and Eastern ecclesial and philosophical thought. Though he insists on the ultimate failure of Western thought, he sees the importance of the West in having developed the human principle. He sees the East, and especially Russia, as having preserved the focus on the divine principle but, regrettably, without having developed the “spontaneous human principle, which is necessary for the perfection of this truth [Christ’s truth, Divine humanity]” (172). When the human principle recognizes its utter helplessness, it can “enter into a free union with the divine foundation of Christianity, preserved in the Eastern Church, and … give birth to a spiritual humankind” (174, see 170–74).

An Eastern Testimonial to Idealist Influence

It is reported that Solovyov himself described his philosophy as concrete Idealism.33 He interweaves philosophy and theology, in line with many Eastern Christian and more generally Eastern philosophical approaches. He does this while himself proceeding in his reflections on the basis of reasoned argument.34 We can gain some first insight into what he meant by concrete Idealism if we recall that he insisted on facticity, positive facts, and existence (76), which cannot be grasped by logic or reason as such and can be asserted only on the basis of faith (31). We should note as well that he affirmed the ideal existence of a content, essence, or idea, knowable by intellectual intuition, of each actually existing entity. This ideal existence was located in the divine world which itself served as the content, essence, or idea of the second existent divine subject identified as Word or Logos.35 For Solovyov, concrete Idealism would seem to refer to, and describe, his doubled insistence on each real entity’s particular facticity or actual existence and that entity’s ideal existence in the Divinity.

Though Vasily Vasilevich Zenkovsky does not use the term “concrete Idealism” in his important study, A History of Russian Philosophy, he recognizes the strong Idealist cast to Solovyov’s thought as he helpfully identifies a series of more philosophical as well as other influences on Solovyov.36 He describes Solovyov’s task as one of developing an organic synthesis in which Solovyov brings together in integrated fashion elements from many and varied sources.37 With reference to those more philosophical sources, Zenkovsky cites both Western and Russian thinkers,38 though for present purposes we will focus on Western philosophers.

It should not be surprising that Solovyov would be well acquainted with the thought of various Western philosophers and, in particular, with that of post-Kantian German Idealist thought. The latter was already well-known in the university where his father, a recognized historian, taught.39 Now, as we explore the influence of Idealist thought on Solovyov, it will prove enlightening to consider first of all Zenkovsky’s evaluation, along with that of several others, of the influence of various philosophical positions and especially that of post-Kantian German Idealists on Solovyov’s thought more generally considered. Zenkovsky shows himself particularly well situated to appreciate Solovyov’s thinking and writing. Beginning with Zenkovsky will then provide a context within which we can look in more specific fashion at post-Kantian Idealist influence on Solovyov’s trinitarian thought. This approach, starting with such a more general focus, will be especially helpful in light of the fact that Solovyov worked assiduously to develop a coherent, almost seamless, religious metaphysics applicable across the broad spectrum of reality, whether divine or cosmic or human. What can be said of his overall thought can readily be said as well, at least in principle, of his more explicitly trinitarian thought.40 Sampling Zenkovsky’s identification of various sources with which Solovyov worked to develop his own creative religious metaphysical synthesis will in effect help us come to understand the wide scope of Solovyov’s interests. It will, as mentioned, also set the stage for specific remarks on Idealist influence, and consequent impact on, Solovyov’s trinitarian thought.

Zenkovsky succinctly states that Solovyov “deduced his metaphysics from the general doctrine of the Absolute; and [that] here he combined Schelling and Spinoza in an original way, engrafting Platonic elements at certain points.”41 In pointing to Spinoza, Zenkovsky speaks of him as Solovyov’s first philosophical love, the one who provided Solovyov not only with “a living sense of God’s reality but a clear ‘experience of the spiritual total unity of the world.’ ”42 Zenkovsky alerts the reader as well to the influence of Kant and Schopenhauer, with Solovyov apparently having read Schopenhauer before Fichte43 and before Hegel and Schelling as well.44 He stresses Hegel’s influence on Solovyov in the area of historicity, where Solovyov usually constructs his historical syntheses “in the forms of the Hegelian dialectic.”45 According to Zenkovsky, Solovyov reinterpreted Hegel’s idea of the end of history as the “glory of Sophiology. The ‘end of history’ is the Kingdom of God, i.e. the complete union of the ‘Absolute in process of becoming’ with the First Principle.”46 Solovyov took over both formal dialectical method and rationalism from Hegel.47 But of course we should add that Solovyov worked with dialectic more widely taken and often in the form of a movement of consciousness, and indeed religious consciousness, rather than as a movement of conceptual thought. Still, Zenkovsky sees Solovyov working “wholly in the spirit of Hegel” when he holds that historical and logical order “coincide in their content, i.e. in their inner connection.”48

Zenkovsky’s following insightful and more specific remark complements the citation above concerning Solovyov’s deducing his general metaphysics from Spinoza and Schelling: “In particular, one senses very clearly a twofold series of ideas in Solovyov’s metaphysics: on the one hand, the doctrine of the Absolute as a ‘total-unity,’ and the generation by the Absolute of its ‘other,’ dominates all of his metaphysical constructions. Here Solovyov drew inspiration from the doctrines of Spinoza and Schelling, which had captivated him in his youth.”49 For Zenkovsky, the most important of all these influences was that of Schelling.50 From Schelling, for example, Solovyov integrated ideas such as that of there being two Absolutes, poles, or principles (and of course from Fichte as well in that Fichte had spoken of the “I” and the “not-I”). Zenkovsky notes that the idea of, to use his words, an Absolute in process of becoming is, however, rooted in the thought of Hegel.51 Importantly, for Zenkovsky, Solovyov works with Schelling’s notion of intellectual intuition.52 Solovyov brings “together … the ‘intellectual intuition of ideas’ and artistic intuition—wholly in the spirit of early Schelling.”53 Continuing in line with Plato, Plotinus, and Schelling, Solovyov saw beauty not as an appearance but as a reality and thus as “an actual, transforming force.”54 He developed the Schellingian notion of world soul considerably beyond what Schelling had done with it.55 Zenkovsky sees Solovyov as learning of three forms of knowledge from Spinoza, namely, “experience, reason, and the ‘mystical realm,’ corresponding to the three kinds of being (phenomena, the realm of ideas, and absolute being).” This leads Solovyov to make his own several of Schelling’s “epistemological ideas.”56 To these remarks by Zenkovsky concerning Schelling’s influence on Solovyov or, perhaps better put in this case, concerning Schelling as source with which Solovyov worked, we should add that Solovyov made his own Schelling’s stress on existence. He saw existence as that which is not deducible from conceptual thought (92). Solovyov stressed will as well as freedom in its relationship with and as a form of necessity. Though on this last point, namely, freedom in relation to necessity, Solovyov did not insist as strongly as Schelling had on the role of free decision in relation to the nontemporal arising of each of the three modes of divine being. We could add that Solovyov worked with the more general post-Kantian German Idealist understanding of the self not as substance but as subject, and especially with the Hegelian and Schellingian views of the subject as dynamically developing.57

In addition to Zenkovsky’s remarks especially concerning the influence of Schelling on Solovyov, Michael Aksionov Meerson draws attention to several further points that he holds Solovyov learned from Schelling. These were “the concept of nature as a manifestation of the absolute, the concept of the world-soul, the view of the universe as ‘a unified self-developing and self-organizing super-organism,’ the idea of the Absolute as ‘total unity,’ and the concept of God’s humanity (Godmanhood, bogochelovechestvo).” Meerson goes on to note that it was Schelling who said philosophy’s true task is cognition of the Absolute. Meerson says Solovyov faults Schelling for not having worked out a truly dialectical development and cites Hegel as having accomplished this. “Though following the formal rules of Hegel’s dialectic, Solovyov radically changes its content by replacing Hegel’s idea of being with his concept of the existent (subject).”58

In this brief review of philosophical sources of Solovyov’s overall philosophy, we will do well to complement Zenkovsky’s and Meerson’s remarks with those of George L. Kline as found in a paper, “Hegel and Solovyov.”59 He read this paper at the 1972 Hegel Society of America Conference. He focuses more on the early Solovyov and enters into some rather detailed distinctions between what Hegel said and what Solovyov ended up saying. For present purposes we can remain with his more general remarks concerning Solovyov in relation to Hegel. Kline refers to Solovyov as “the most systematic and original of the Russian neo-Hegelians,” his early systematic thought being “profoundly influenced by Hegel.”60 Kline describes Solovyov’s early work, The Crisis of Western Philosophy, as “a Hegelian taxonomy of historical philosophies in their dialectical interconnection and development.”61 In this work Solovyov sees the Western empiricist tradition or syllogism concluding with J. S. Mill and the Western rationalist tradition or syllogism climaxing with Hegel.62 Solovyov’s general conclusion was that, with Hegel, rationalist philosophy came to an end. Kline proposes that Solovyov’s system “is a neo-Hegelian and, as compared to Hegel’s own philosophy, a moderately de-Aristotelianized and heavily re-Platonized position. It attempts a universal synthesis—not a Hegelian Aufhebung.” Solovyov takes seriously the Platonic triad of beauty, truth, and goodness.63 Kline notes that, in contradistinction to Hegel, Solovyov with his notion of integral knowledge does not subordinate doing to knowing. We could add that here we see an example of Solovyov’s working with a quasi-Hegelian sense of dialectic, namely, with a more generalized movement from “in itself” to “for itself” to “in and for itself or being at home with itself,” but without tying that dialectic directly to and rooting it in a movement of conceptual thought.64 Kline interestingly compares Solovyov’s working with a notion of wholeness and Hegel’s position on it: “Solovyov’s terms tsel’nost’ (“wholeness”) and tsel’ny (“integral”) are stronger synonyms for Hegel’s ‘concreteness’ and ‘concrete.’ … In Hegel’s usage ‘concrete’ means ‘many-sided, adequately related, complexly mediated’; Solovyov’s tsel’ny seems, in addition, to connote ‘harmoniously unified.’ ”65

In Solovyov’s system the development seems more horizontal, with the three divine subjects interacting simultaneously within the eternal and as well as within the temporal realm. This sense of a more horizontal orientation can be seen as well in the point that the three major elements, so to speak, of each temporal entity structure that entity in a threefold way. In Hegel the movement seems more vertical, with the various moments or elements following one another dialectically and, in certain cases at least where history comes into play, temporally sequentially.66 Kline sums up his stress on Hegel’s influence on Solovyov:

In his early works Solovyov was, as I have suggested, systematically Hegelian in metaphilosophy [especially Solovyov’s early study, The Crisis of Western Philosophy] and systematically neo-Hegelian in philosophy, even though he assigned Hegel a rather reduced role in the history of speculative thought. Later he came to confess his debt to Hegel more honestly and more openly. One of his last published works, a long encyclopedia article on Hegel, is both fair and sympathetic.67

Before turning directly to the more specific question of the influence and impact of post-Kantian German Idealism on Solovyov’s trinitarian thought, we can refer for a moment to Solovyov’s early work of 1874, The Crisis of Western Philosophy. Referring to this work will help us indicate, at least by citing numbers of references to various thinkers, his intimate knowledge of Kantian but, especially important here, post-Kantian German Idealism. Here in Crisis we find documentation confirming his profound understanding of German Idealism, which will serve him well in his 1877–81 Lectures on Divine Humanity.

It is especially in the first chapter68 of Crisis that Solovyov demonstrates his in-depth knowledge of Kantian and post-Kantian German Idealism. Yet he refers to and discusses Kant, Fichte, Hegel, and Schelling throughout the book. In it he names Kant around seventy-eight times as he discusses at some length various aspects of Kant’s thought and implications of the various philosophical positions to which Kant argues. He identifies Fichte as the first to reject Kant’s notion of the thing in-itself or Ding an sich, with Fichte thus introducing a move from thinking or consciousness to that which is known.69 Over the course of Crisis Solovyov mentions Fichte at least nineteen times. In criticism of Fichte, he points out that the absolute act precedes our consciousness and that this “is the meaning given to Fichte’s principle by his successor in philosophy Schelling.”70 He refers to Hegel explicitly at least eighty-four times, manifesting in the process an insightful understanding of Hegel’s philosophy. Several times Solovyov criticizes it as one-sided, a rather strong criticism given Solovyov’s interest in wholeness, an interest already discernible in this early study.71 For Solovyov, Hegel’s notion of the concept cannot tell us anything about whether something exists or not.72 At first sight surprisingly, Solovyov refers explicitly to Schelling only about fourteen times. However, though he will make rather sweeping statements to the effect that Western philosophy as a whole is one-sided,73 he will as well speak more positively of Schelling: “There appears [in Hegel’s philosophy] that indeterminacy and fogginess of metaphorical expressions which Schelling, in his positive philosophy, was the first to notice and ridicule.”74 Such references and remarks by Solovyov lead us to think that he was influenced, in a substantial way, in his trinitarian thinking more by Schelling than Hegel. Still, he seems as well to have learned a great deal from Hegel and indeed from post-Kantian German Idealism in general.75

We have reviewed the question of the overall influence of several Western philosophers on Solovyov’s thought and confirmed Solovyov’s own profound understanding of post-Kantian German Idealism. This review and confirmation will permit us now to speak, in surer and more succinct fashion, of the influence and impact of Hegel, and of Schelling in particular, on Solovyov in his trinitarian thinking. It will be helpful to look at that thinking through the prism of his emphasis on the notions first of wholeness and then of development.

This post-Kantian German Idealist influence shows up especially well in the ways in which Solovyov conceived of and worked with his notion of the whole, namely, the all, the all-one, and the all-unity. It is in effect this notion of the all as inclusive whole which provides the constant point of reference for his various constructive reflections on everything. Here we refer more especially to his reflections ranging in the Lectures from the history of religious consciousness to nature-oriented, human, ethical, and spiritual considerations. This notion of the “all” serves as the fundamental criterion on the basis of which and in line with which he works out his varied philosophical stance in relation to the whole host of ideas and positions with which he works and which he modifies as he uses them to build his own system. In working with this notion of the all and its various forms, Solovyov is surely reflecting his deeply rooted, perhaps partially pre-reflexive awareness and appreciation of the sense of wholeness and inclusiveness which we are told is so fundamental to the Russian psyche and overall outlook on reality.76 Solovyov criticizes, for example, Neo-Platonism for its notion of oneness which does not include within itself multiplicity. For Solovyov the one gives rise to and includes within it the many, otherwise it is not truly one and leaves the many outside of it.

We see this idea of the one including the many made explicit in Solovyov’s presentation on Trinity. In this presentation he insists that ideal multiplicity is to be found even in the eternal divine principle itself. Solovyov goes even further with his understanding of Trinity as inclusive wholeness when he insists that there must as well be a real multiplicity “outside” of God, hence the eternal creation of a temporal world. Following upon this notion of creation as the realization of multiplicity, Solovyov arrives at his notion of divine humanity, which is the Kingdom of God understood as inclusive divine-human reality. This divine-human reality is the final integration of the one and the many in the inclusive divine and human all-unity of God’s humanity. It is of course true that Solovyov’s rich notion of the all in its various forms is creatively constructed in dialogue with and drawing upon a wide variety of philosophical, theological, and mystical sources. Yet that notion would surely be unthinkable in the philosophically expressed forms it takes, and among them preeminently as Trinity, in Solovyov’s thought without some recognition that Solovyov is working rather more directly with Hegel and Schelling. He is surely thinking of Hegel’s own concept of the true infinite inclusive of finitude. He surely has as well in mind Schelling’s notion of the final reestablishment of initial divine unity through what is, for Schelling, the interaction of three modes of divine being becoming three divine Persons in the realization of a renewed and enriched, inclusive divine unity.

Solovyov is particularly indebted to post-Kantian German Idealists, and especially Hegel and Schelling, for his insight that the all or inclusive whole can be such only if it develops from an original moment which is both whole and yet needs an other to come fully to be inclusive whole.77 When Solovyov speaks more formally of this dynamic development, he tends to call upon Hegelian terminology to express this development, which latter he sees as at least formally and structurally speaking Hegelian in character. He refers to it as a movement from “in itself” to “for itself” to “being at home in itself.” As mentioned earlier, however, he of course works with this dynamic developing of the other to which the initial mode of being needs to give rise if the initial mode is to represent itself and include ideal multiplicity without defining this dynamically developing movement as one of pure conceptual thought. We will momentarily refer to this move by Solovyov as his embrace of Schelling’s critique of Hegel. Again, Solovyov recognizes the need for that which is represented and that which is representing to interact in such a way that the first and second modes give rise to a third mode. In this third mode that which represents is at home in that which is represented. In using such terms and describing Trinity in these terms, Solovyov gives his overall trinitarian thinking an at least initial and indeed continuing overall Hegelian cast.

However, Solovyov in effect embraces Schelling’s critique of Hegel when he insists that thinking, and indeed the wider notion of consciousness, requires a prior act. More precisely, Solovyov insists that there must be an initial existent subject logically prior to any movement of thought and to any content attributable to that subject. Without denying the Hegelian cast Solovyov has given to his trinitarian thought, we can affirm that with this doubled insistence he shifts to a more Schellingian understanding of the dynamic development of the divine principle as Trinity. While so adopting Schelling’s stance, Solovyov is still in fact acknowledging the importance of the previously more generally noted movement common to both Hegel and Schelling. That movement is one away from a substance-based to a subjectivity-based understanding of reality and, of special concern here, of the trinitarian God.

In so working with a subjectivity-based understanding of reality, Solovyov has in effect picked up on and made his own the notion of becoming and development so characteristic of the Idealist thought of both Hegel and Schelling.78 Hegel had seen this development as a movement of inclusive subjectivity, inclusive in that it moved, as we have mentioned, from potentiality to actuality to necessity. This is simply a way of referring to his movement of thought from its first moment as, generally stated, “in itself” or implicit to “for itself” or the explicitation of what was implicit in the first moment to “in and for itself” or the advancing resultant integration of what was previously merely implicit and explicit.79 In Hegel this dynamic took the form, essentially, of a monosubjectivally structured movement of subjectivity dialectically developing through sublation (Aufhebung) of previous moments in an ever richer and more inclusive momentary whole. This movement ends in the culminating moment of absolute spirit inclusive of all that came before it, an enriched return to the original moment of pure being. In Schelling this development took the form of a free movement of will from an initial moment of pure being or actuality to that act’s potential for development, indeed a threefold potentiality involving three potencies. They are a first potency for development through self-othering (the Father), a second potency which is the potentiality to become actual or real (the Son), and a third potency as the realization, in and through creation, of the actuality of the two first potencies in the renewed unity of being of the Father (the Spirit).

Solovyov’s move away from a Hegelian understanding of subject as a movement of conceptual thought to a more Schellingian approach permitted him to describe “subject” in terms of existence. Rather than taking up Hegel’s monosubjectivally developing dialectical movement of subjectivity in and through a series of sequentially related moments, Solovyov embraced Schelling’s model of three modes of divine being interacting in the temporal realm to arrive at a renewed and enriched divine unity. He of course modified considerably what Schelling had said when he veered away from Schelling’s more radically developmental approach. In that approach modes of divine being became divine Persons through their interaction in the temporal realm as they worked to restore the original divine unity in a final and fuller form. For Solovyov, these three modes of divine being were, each in its own way, an inclusive whole from the beginning. Each was existent subject bringing about, again in its own way, the inclusive all-unity of God and humankind in what he called divine humanity. So Solovyov took up Schelling’s approach to working with three interacting modes of divine being and ran with it, so to speak. He did this as he worked out a rich description of the Father as will whose content is love as good, Son as intellect whose content is love as truth, and Spirit as feeling whose content is love as beauty. In the process, Solovyov stressed less the absolute freedom of God in the arising of each of these modes than did Schelling.

Solovyov did then indeed develop his trinitarian thought in the form of a concrete Idealism, in effect a trinitarian religious metaphysics. In a sort of metaphysical shorthand, we can describe his concrete Idealism at least in the earlier Solovyov as, from the perspective of the existent self, a necessary movement from an initial actuality to potentiality to renewed and inclusive actuality. From the perspective of content, it was a necessary movement, again at least in the earlier Solovyov, from potentiality to ideal actuality to real actuality, with the last considered finally as being the unity of divine and human through free human participation in divine humanity. In this trinitarian religious metaphysics Solovyov worked in a manner similar to that of Schelling in Schelling’s positive philosophy of revelation. That is to say, Solovyov interwove philosophy and theology while he proceeded in his reflections on the basis of reasoned argument. In these reflections and in his constructive work in general, Solovyov never seemed able fully to tear himself away from Hegel. He referred regularly to Hegel’s terminology and overall emphasis on self and other and renewed, enriched self. He seemed ever ready to work, at least in a general way, with that terminology and emphasis. Still, with Schelling he stressed facticity and existence, which he insisted cannot be grasped by logic or reason as such. He affirmed the ideal existence, in the divine world, of a content, essence, or idea of each actually existing entity in the temporally conditioned or real world, which content was knowable by intellectual intuition. It was this stress upon the ideal existence of the essence of each entity in the divine world parallel to the actually existing entity itself in the temporal realm which made it possible for him to speak of inclusive wholeness. He spoke of this wholeness in regard both to the eternal realm of the trinitarian God and to the temporal world in as it is brought together with God in divine humanity. It was this doubled actualization, ideal and real, which permitted Solovyov to work out his understanding of God as developing without, at least in his own view, threatening the transcendence of God. Whereas Schelling seemed to stress so much potentiality in God, Solovyov spoke more positively of an ideal actualization in God so that God was, as triune God, already in an eternal way inclusive whole or all-one. God could then actualize in a temporal way that inclusive wholeness in relation to the world through free and divinely inspired human participation in divine unity.

While most of those who study the thought of Solovyov admire his brilliance and strength in constructive reflection, there are discernible two overall evaluations of what he has accomplished. On the one hand, there is the evaluation of those, represented by Zenkovsky, who speak highly of Solovyov’s organic synthesis80 while noting what they consider serious, unresolved inconsistencies in his integrating thought.81 On the other hand, there is the evaluation of those, represented by Frederick Copleston and von Balthasar,82 who readily acknowledge Solovyov’s working with a great variety of sources. But they then stress, in what we might call more generous fashion, Solovyov’s own creative advance as he brings forth something new in and through his synthesis. It might be helpful to provide an example, in line with this second evaluation, of the way in which Solovyov made his own, but in a new way, something typical of post-Kantian German Idealist thought. He brought together, in one overall movement climaxing in his idea of divine humanity, notions such as those of Trinity, Incarnation, creation, history, divinization, Church, and Kingdom of God.83 He did this by adopting, but as well strongly adapting, the move characteristic of post-Kantian German Idealists to favor subject over substance as fundamental notion on the basis of which they elaborated their philosophical insights. I myself would be closer to Copleston and von Balthasar than to Zenkovsky in my evaluation of Solovyov’s efforts to rethink Trinity anew by working with the trinitarian thought of Hegel and Schelling in conjunction with Scripture, Orthodox tradition, and so many other philosophical and mystical thinkers.

Throughout these remarks concerning the ways in which others, but in particular Hegel and Schelling, have influenced Solovyov’s thinking, and especially his trinitarian thought, I have often used the phrase “working with.” Speaking in this way permitted us to recognize that Solovyov took much inspiration from the thought of Hegel and Schelling, and especially their trinitarian thought. At the same time, it allowed us to acknowledge that he referred to and drew upon the insights of other sources, whether they be those of Scripture, early Church Fathers, Medieval thinkers, mystical writers or other philosophers, and philosophical as well as literary traditions. He referred to and drew upon such insights while creatively modifying positions taken by Hegel and Schelling to bring these insights and modified positions together in harmony with the overall direction his own trinitarian thought was taking. In effect, in his own integrating trinitarian thought Solovyov retained many of the more formal and structural directions which Hegel and Schelling laid out in their own philosophical reflection and in their trinitarian thought in particular. Admittedly, Solovyov often did this in ways divergent from what they had done.84 He went further in working with Hegel and Schelling in that he made his own many of their more specific insights, sometimes more or less the way Hegel and Schelling had presented them but often in significantly modified form. The end-result was his own unique way of thinking Trinity as a Schellingian reworking of Hegel’s notion of the individual as inclusive universal and true infinite. His concrete idealism is a clear testimonial concerning the impact of post-Kantian German Idealism on trinitarian thought. It has, in turn, come to influence greatly subsequent Russian thinking.

The work of Marheineke, Dorner, and Solovyov on Trinity would be unthinkable without reference to post-Kantian German Idealism, and to Hegel and Schelling in particular. Marheineke, Dorner, and Solovyov are three important nineteenth-century trinitarian thinkers who each in his own way in thought and word witnesses to and constitutes a testimonial concerning the influence of German Idealist trinitarian thought in philosophical and theological circles. In his constructive trinitarian reflection, Marheineke is an example of a first effort early on in the nineteenth century to work with the thought of Schelling and then with that of Hegel as he interweaves notions of being and thought. Interestingly, it seems quite probable that he himself in turn reinforced Hegel’s own commitment to working with the notion of Trinity. Dorner is in a sense a man out of season, especially given the onslaught, during the second half of the nineteenth century, of historically oriented thinking often Neo-Kantian in its approach and epistemology. But he does lay the groundwork for a renewed theological interest in the possibility of working, in the twentieth century, with post-Kantian German Idealist trinitarian thought. As the Neo-Kantians were winning the day in Germany, Solovyov burst upon the Russian philosophical and theological scenes with his Idealist-inspired dynamic understanding of oneness and unity as inclusive of multiplicity, a notion richer and fuller than the earlier Neo-Platonic notion of oneness. With his enriched understanding of oneness Solovyov recognized and reinforced the overall Russian appreciation for a sense of inclusive wholeness. He creatively reworked German Idealist trinitarian thought and mediated it to generations of Russian philosophers and theologians coming after him.85 But it took a couple decades into the twentieth century before Idealist-influenced trinitarian thinking would, in part through Dorner, return with a vengeance to the German theological scene.