Earthly Life Research Articles

Freedom as a Matter of Perspective and Perception in Martin Luther's De servo arbitrio☆

AbstractMartin Luther's notion of freedom, as presented in De servo arbitrio, is often interpreted as a denial of free choice in matters of God (salvation) and as an affirmation of free choice in earthly life. This article questions this twofold distinction and argues that in De servo arbitrio Luther's notion of freedom is set into epistemic discourse in which he distinguishes between different perspectives or perceptions and reality. The article demonstrates that for Luther, freedom denotes human perception, misperception, and deception. This indicates that beneath the free choice debate lies a fundamental question of human ability to understand reality.

An Analysis of the Conceptual Function of Facing the Sea with Spring Blossoms

Since Facing the Sea with Spring Blossoms has attracted widespread attention, many scholars have formed four interpretations from various perspectives, namely: the poem conveys the love of life and the pursuit of happiness; the poem is a deathbed poem, expressing the poet's despair of earthly life; the poet is a sad and bitter soul in pursuit of happiness; the poem is the poet's choice between “existence or destruction.” Poetry is the poet's choice between "existence or destruction," and he finally chooses to give up earthly happiness. Systemic functional grammar was founded by Halliday, who believed that language has three meta-functions: conceptual function, communicative function, and textual function, which are linked to the transitivity system, mood system, and thematic system. Since its inception, Systemic Functional Grammar has been applied to many text analyses, demonstrating its powerful interpretative power. Guided by this theory, the author conducted a conceptual-functional analysis of Facing the Sea with Spring Blossoms and found that there are 25 processes in the poem, including nine material processes, five mental processes, six relational processes, three verbal processes, and two existential processes. The author analyzed the three types of processes that are more typical in this poem and drew the following conclusions: first, happiness is an important theme for the poet; second, the poem is opened by me (the poet) choosing between two kinds of happiness; third, the poet finally chooses non-earthly happiness, i.e., “I only wish to face the sea, with spring blossoms.”

Sections of Hell in Ancient Egypt

The ancient Egyptian mentality was characterized by endless philosophical ideas. The foundations of the sources of these philosophical ideas were born from the natural phenomena in ancient Egypt. The ancient Egyptian found the phenomenon of the Nile flooding and then its recession and the drought that affected the country and its positive and negative impact on crops. He also found the phenomenon of sunset at night and its interpretation was its death. The explanation for the sunrise in the morning was its revival after death. Also, in ancient Egyptian mythology, the god (Osiris) was resurrected after his death. All of this naturally had an impact on the ancient Egyptian mentality and its reality on ancient Egyptian society in particular. The concept of death and resurrection that emerged in the ancient Egyptian mentality explained that there is another life after death and this life settles in a world that separates his material world. The life after death that the ancient Egyptian believed in was settled in the underworld. What concerns us here is the section in which the guilty were punished after their trial in the court of the god (Osiris) in the underworld. It is known that criminals and outlaws in the material world were punished and held accountable according to the decisions of the court that were conducted inside or outside the temples. Among these decisions were execution, flogging, imprisonment, and others. The ancient Egyptians worked to apply them to the underworld by recording the texts of (Coffins), the Book of the Dead, the Book of (Amudat), and the Book of (Caves). He included in these books a topographical division of the underworld, the most important of which is the section of Hell, which in turn divided it into many sections, including lakes of fire, islands of flame, and hills, as well as the presence of fiery pits and fiery furnaces. These sections related to Hell played an actual role in punishing the guilty for what they committed in their earthly lives. Because of the breadth of the subject, the areas of hell in the underworld, we have chosen for this research the section (Fire Pits, Fire Furnaces), and other places that were used for torture, as this subject carries the utmost importance to know what is going on in the ancient Egyptian mentality and the extent of the religious and philosophical intellectual level that he reached to uncover the mystery of life after death, and his awareness of the topography of this hidden world and his attempt to match it with his material world, and to put forward different ideas for punishing sinners in the material world and seeking to apply it in the underworld.

Survey on machine vision-based intelligent water quality monitoring techniques in water treatment plant: Fish activity behavior recognition-based schemes and applications

Abstract Water is a vital resource essential to the survival and development of all creatures. With the rapid growth of industry and agriculture, people face a severe threat of ecological destruction and environmental pollution while living earthly lives. Water pollution, in particular, harms people’s health the most. As a result, water supply security has become a top priority. As a critical point in water supply safety, monitoring water quality effectively and forecasting sudden water contamination on time has become a research hotspot worldwide. With the rapid development and wide applications of artificial intelligence and computer vision technologies, biological activity identification-based intelligent water quality monitoring methods have drawn widespread attention. They were taking fish activities as the water-quality indicator has gained extensive attention by introducing advanced computer vision and artificial intelligence technologies with low cost and ease of carrying. This article comprehensively reviews recent progress in the research and applications of machine vision-based intelligent water quality monitoring and early warning techniques based on fish activity behavior recognition. In detail, it addresses water quality-oriented fish detection and tracking, activity recognition, and abnormal behavior recognition-based intelligent water quality monitoring. It analyzes and compares the performance and their favorite application conditions. Finally, it summarizes and discusses the difficulties and hotspots of water quality monitoring based on the fish’s abnormal behavior recognition and their future development trends.

Efflorescence of Relationships in Christ – Theological Fundament and Resonating Prospect

The aim of the paper is to examine the potency contained in the mystery of Christ as Alpha and Omega of human history. The issue will be viewed through the prism of accidental encounters, etc. that is, those which in our earthly life have no visible importance or continuation. It is striking that our life largely consists of such contacts: thousands of people passing by every day seem to be accidental, “non-productive” and not important. Broken relationships belong to the same set as well. Thus, the real question is whether they have any deeper meaning or not. I will try to argue, by reference to spiritual theology, that life in Christ brings a real answer to this question. The apparently accidental encounters become, subsequently, relationships flourishing in Christ, on the basis that He is the one spiritual principle of all believers and the Head of the Mystical Body of the Church. In Him, our particular present encounters are purified and come into perfection to the state when they will appear as true and everlasting relationships. A man who is overlooked now turns out to be a real co-author of my eternal happiness. Although this sense will fully be realised in heaven, it can now be experienced by hope and the contemplation of the neighbour in God.

Дионисийские мотивы в лирических сочинениях Фридриха Гёльдерлина

The article is devoted to the Dionysian motifs in the Friedrich Hölderlin’s lyrical works. It considers the role of historical context in development of poet’s philosophical and aesthetic ideas and reveals the specificity of the ancient topos in Hölderlin’s works which reflects his religious and pantheistic views. The Dionysian motifs in Hölderlin’s poems are connected with the idea of death. All forms of life tend towards death and decline of existence under the influence of the sense of primordial unity and religious ecstasy. The end of earthly life, according to Hölderlin, marks the beginning of a true life in eternity.

The “Temporal Rift” and the Temporalities of the Capitalist Social Metabolism

AbstractThis paper advances a reading of the social metabolism as a dynamic orchestration of heterogeneous rhythms, encompassing those intrinsic to human bodies and other natural processes, and those of relations mediating both. Contrary to pre‐capitalist societies, as the collective mediation of the social metabolism adopts a capitalist form, it becomes autonomised from its conditions of existence, and a “temporal rift” emerges, with two distinct dimensions: the rhythmic conditions of regeneration of human bodies and natural processes, as well as the terms of occurrence of non‐subsumed practices, become subordinated to capital's reproductive needs, thus compromising the reproduction of all Earthly life.

Wondering Animals: Reflections on Human Exceptionality

Both historically and in common human practices, attitudes, and beliefs, a sense of human exceptionality in comparison with other animals undergirds normative anthropocentrism, i.e. prioritization of human interests. The question I wish to address in this article is whether we can use a particular element of the cognitive apparatus or toolkit that supposedly makes us special, namely our s e n s e of wonder, to decenter us. Several authors have argued that when we view other beings or the natural world with wonder, we are inclined to care for and wish to protect them. But here I am interested in what happens when we turn our sense of wonder onto ourselves as the peculiar animal, the strange evolutionary experiment that we are. Not, as has historically been done, in an admiring way, but in an evaluatively more neutral way, characterized by puzzlement, an attunement to mystery, and a sense of unlikeliness and contingency. In particular, how might our thinking about ourselves change when we think from a wonder that revolves around our embodiment, around that which roots us most firmly in the world, in “nature,” and reminds us most clearly of our membership of a community of earthly life? Wondering at and about ourselves as an animal species may remind us of our material embeddedness in the world, but what could its ethical import be? More specifically, the paper explores whether there is an escape from the ethical quandaries of human exceptionality, which relate to the impossibility of doing with or without that exceptionality. I argue that there is not, but that in wonder we can hold together incompatible possibilities.

DREAM MOTIF IN VLADISLAV KHODASEVICH’S POETRY COLLECTION “EUROPEAN NIGHT”

The article describes the semantic content and poetics of the dream motif present in Vladislav Khodasevich’s collection “European Night”, and we form our own concept of “inspiration”. It is shown that the dream leitmotif characterises the psychological state of the lyrical hero associated with the arrival or absence of creative inspiration. The semantics of the motif is implemented antinomically. On the one hand, the dream-inspiration saves the lyrical hero from the mundane routine. On the other hand, ordinary earthly life in some poems appears to the lyrical subject as a dream-obsession. The story of this dream-obsession gets a particularly tragic sound in the context of the collection. The expanded metaphor “European Night” in the author’s incarnation reinforces two intentions – obsession dream and salvation dream are opposed. In the lyrical space of Vladislav Khodasevich’s “European Night”, dream becomes a metaphor for a special borderline state, instilled and even “imposed” from the outside on the creator hero. According to the poet’s artistic philosophy, inspiration, being the result of the mobilisation of all word artist’s abilities, is an “otherworldly” being sent from above, leading to greater creative productivity. The “dream” motif in the contradictory context of the above-mentioned poems of “European Night” indicates the salvation function of inspiration, which allows the creator to get rid of the “earthly dream”, to spiritually “see through” and to lead people.

Антиномічна природа штучного права

Circumstances of earthly life, various vital factors that took place in society, the national state, and interstate relations require specific regulation. The creative atmosphere of a person generates a powerful set of laws. Their number is constantly growing, which requires constant attention to quality, as insoluble, insurmountable contradictions appear. Knowing these contradictions is inextricably linked with doubts. A person does not directly confront the reality of life. Her mind cannot go beyond synergistic, invisible narratives. Therefore, she is forced to create norms and laws for every case of life (this is such an effort). Of course, all regulations begin with customs and moral traditions. These man-made norms also form the basis of man-made laws, which should ensure good relations between people, with the state, between states, etc. But we know that good can be normative and non-normative. It depends on the current morality and laws. The quality of morality and the quality of laws contribute to normative or non-normative good. What causes this phenomenon? Undoubtedly, the reason lies in the legitimate antinomian nature of artificial law. Artificial law arises from artificial morality, from artificial ideology, politics, etc. It should be noted that the cited architectural factors of artificial law are sources of contradictory thinking in rulemaking: ontological thinking cannot accept the leap-like, inconsistent, mostly contradictory logic of deontological legal thinking. That is why it is impossible for a person to combine all deontological laws into a single artificial law due to the essence of the agreement between them. A problem arises: how to combine existing antinomies with the creation of a state. Society has its antinomies of morality, and the state also has some artificial ones – newly introduced moral norms, customs, traditions. And it is impossible to reduce these norms into one artificial law – the natural laws of conservation of energy and momentum will not work, legal reflection will not work, etc. That is, mandatory synergistic law has No. place for artificial, positive law due to the presence of various kinds of antinomies. There are few ways out of this state, but one of them is the observance of ontological morality by the state; implementation of ontological, legal ideology and ontological legal policy. Ontological morality is consistent with natural and supernatural law. This is their visible part. If there are No. antinomies in natural and supernatural law, then they are also absent in ontological morality, since it is called virtue. It is necessary to find out what place virtue occupies in positive law, which is the most antinomian in nature.

The presentation of the concept of existential despair in Lermontov's poem “Demon”

The author of the article believes that the main character in Mikhail Lermontov's poem “Demon” strives to become a part of earthly life, but he understands the objective impossibility of realizing this desire. The contradiction generated by this realization turns into tragic despair, which the founder of existentialism, Soren Kierkegaard, defined as “a disease to death”. As if extrapolating the thought of the founder of existentialism, Lermontov gives the immanence of despair to the main character of his famous poem. The demon wants to reunite with both earth and heaven, hoping to be reborn through love. However, the determinism of his demonic essence prevents the main character of the poem from realizing this aspiration. The rebellious spirit of the Demon, which cannot belong to any of the worlds, reflects the Russian intelligentsia of that period in general and Lermontov himself in particular. However, in this identification, the Demon's rebellion is much closer to the poet's own rebellion, given Lermontov's criticism of his contemporaries, whom the Russian classic describes as prisoners desperate in the face of power in his famous poem “Thought”. The author of the article argues that in identifying the Demon with Lermontov, the rejection of God and the Divine world order comes to the fore. That is why Lermontov's characters are sometimes considered as harbingers of Nietzscheanism. The Demon, paradoxically, begins his path of striving for good from evil, killing Tamara's fiancé. Thus, it is in the poem “Demon” that the existential and psychological foundations of the criminal behavior of artistic characters in borderline situations are laid. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that it is impossible for the Demon to make an existential choice, he is doomed to forever arrive in the borderline situation described in Karl Jaspers' existential theories, without the possibility of its resolution, which results in an irresistible despair, from which even the path of faith proposed by Kierkegaard cannot be saved.

Flourishing through Prayer by Singing in a Liturgical Choir

Prayer in human life enables directing attention to God and a transcendent goal beyond Earthly life. Singing has been present in the life of Israel since the oldest times, which is proved on the pages of the Holy Scriptures, in the Books of Exodus and Psalms. In the New Testament, there is a lot of encouragement to sing the glory of God in psalms and songs, as well as praising God Most High in Revelation. The Catholic Church is concerned with the quality of liturgical music through a number of recommendations and requirements defining the pieces that may become a part of the liturgy. Liturgical choir singing is a special form of common prayer. The aim of the present paper is to examine the effect of prayer by choral singing on human flourishing. The aim was achieved by analyzing recommendations of the Church on liturgical music, presenting the assumptions of the theoretical model investigating the effect of art on human flourishing, and then conducting empirical studies. Sixteen in-depth interviews were carried out with members of fourteen choirs. There were four groups of respondents according to their gender and family status. All obtained codes were organized into five main themes with four subcategories. They confirmed the assumptions of the model presented in the theoretical part and made it possible to identify the effect of choral singing on the performers’ health and the improvement of their skills. In addition, they showed a direct relation between prayer and spiritual well-being when singing in a choir, a coherence of activities with values as well as the striving for happiness.

A Reconciliation with Reality and Self-preservation

ABSTRACT The untimely loss of a loved one is an excruciating ordeal. Renowned Victorian Scottish writer George MacDonald was obliged to face the recurring early deaths of family members all his lifetime. Drawing from the background of Victorian literature and his working experience in church, he forges a reconciliation with reality and realizes his self-preservation through religion. His masterpiece, At the Back of the North Wind, is the reflection of his life sufferings, inner world, and way of reconciliation with reality. By examining the characterization of Diamond and North Wind, two leading characters in the book, and the employment of his unique literary technique, this article aims to reveal his motivation in portraying the protagonist of the book—Diamond, a poor little boy living in London, and conclude MacDonald’s means of self-preservation, i.e., interpretation of early death: those who pass away at a young age are angels from heaven. After fulfilling their earthly missions, they return to a better realm they inherently belong to—Heaven. Hence, earthly life is only a fragment of human beings’ existence. MacDonald’s coming to terms with bereavement while facing death holds practical significance today, especially for the people suffering from the loss of loved ones during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Interdisciplinarity of Themes and Artistic Means in Matei Vișniec’s Drama for Children


 
 
 Matei Vișniec’s drama for children is built around the idea of interdisciplinary artistic creation and is dedicated to a highly receptive audience. Matei Vișniec is the investigative journalist who questions the truth of the plot through his characters; he is the philosopher who speaks about the ephemerality of earthly life; he is the moralist who analyses the transfer of guilt from the culprit to the vengeful victim; he is the sociologist who addresses the children left behind by their parents who have gone to work abroad; he is the political scientist who speaks about tyranny and war; he is the man of theatre who comments on his work through metatheatrical insertions. This thematic interdisciplinarity of Matei Vișniec’s drama is also found in the children’s theatre performance, where the actor relates to the puppet, the theatre play combines with the clown tradition, where the spectator and the character interact directly, advise, and educate each other. Starting from the five dramatic texts by Matei Vișniec published by Arthur Publishing House, we will analyse2 the sets of masks that the playwright puts on, aiming to provide an overview of the interdisciplinarity of themes and artistic means found in his drama for children and the configuration of motifs and cultural references that make up complex worlds open to interpretation on several levels. 
 
 

Труд в практике исихазма в Древней Руси

In the context of “fluid modernity”, one may perceive a need to preserve and protect basic patterns, with the labor playing an important role. Each culture develops and substantiates its own attitude towards work. Hesychasm has been the spiritual foundation of Russian society since the time of Sergius of Radonezh. As a consequence, in the spiritual practice of hesychasm physical work was an essential part of the life of hesychast monks. Studying the Legends of Old Russian Saints and the charters of coenobitic monasteries shows that the Old Russian monasticism had embraced the Doctrine of St. Gregory Palamas about unity of spiritual and bodily in man's earthly life and the possibility of cleansing the body from sin as a basis. In the praxis of Russian hesychasm, spiritual labor was inseparable from physical labor, which did not contradict the practice of internal doing, but always closely accompanied and supplemented it. The soul and body worked tied together. Since spiritual labor was complex and difficult, the physical labor of a monk was meant to be no less difficult. In order to ordeal themselves, the hesychast monks left the livable conditions of monasteries for alienation of the north-east of Rus', and thus found themselves in more severe conditions where only intense physical labor ensured their survival. The soul was solidified through hard work. The strengthened soul, in turn, became the basis for overcoming the trials chosen by the monk and achieving the goal of unity with God in earthly life.

К ВОПРОСУ О ЖАНРЕ PASSIO PERPETUAE ET FELICITATIS

Early Christian genres called in antiquity “passions” and “martyrias” or “acts” had no clear genre boundaries. Neither literary frameworks were established, nor fidelity to generic canon was much important to Christians who wrote about martyrdom. They often wrote epistles because they wanted to tell their fellow believers about the deeds of the martyrs, often relied on authentic records of trials and eyewitness accounts, often praised the passion-bearers, and used martyrologies as liturgical texts. Martyrology gradually developed into hagiography with its subgenres. But even against this background, the “Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas” demonstrates exclusively elusive generic nature. The traditional title “Passio” corresponds to the content of the text under discussion. However, the work is made up of many parts written by different authors, not simultaneously, and combined into a single book. At least five persons were involved in the compilation of this set of documents (the communis opinio – three persons). These five had different statuses and different tasks. Theologue and author of the Prologue and Epilogue preached and glorified the martyrs, Perpetua created extragenre commentaria or hypomnemata for her congregation about the events of the prison, mainly about her dreamy visions given to her by the Holy Spirit: a heavenly journey, two journeys to the underworld, and a symbolic dream of the coming martyrdom as a victory over the devil. The Vision of Saturus has apocalyptic features, but what he saw he saw as if already beyond his earthly life; the Eyewitness created an account of what happened in the prison and in the arena, very vivid, but not fulfilling the minimum conditions of acts and martyrdoms: interrogation, sentence, burial, cult. The fifth author brought all the texts together and provided explanatory inserts, thus turning the whole functionally into an epistle that could be sent from Carthage to the larger world to be read in the Church. The result is a genre to which there are no analogues in ancient literature, and attempts to define this book through the genres of ancient literature both as a whole and in parts are unsuccessful. However, the genre of the documentary book, written by different authors at different times, in different genres, including apocalyptic, acts and passions, sermons, epistles, and visions, had emerged by the time of our Passio as the whole collection of the New Testament, with all the disparate texts, though independent, all dealing with one great event: the life, death, and resurrection of Christ and the establishment of his church. It served as a model for the compilation of the “Passion of Perpetua and Felicitas”.

Животъ, житиуе и жизнь в Учителното евангелие на Константин Преславски

In the article the use of the three lexemes for ‘life’ in Constantine of Preslav’s Didactic Gospel from the end of the 9th is analysed. The focus lies on their distribution, especially considering their contextual meaning. The systemised data are compared to those of the SJS and of the First Epistle against the Arians translated by the same Constantine. It is established that the Didactic Gospel – unlike the early Slavonic texts included in the Prague dictionary that show a higher degree of variation in the correlations between lexeme and meaning, but also unlike the First Epistle against the Arians, where жизнь dominates – presents a rather clear lexico-semantic differentiation in the translation correlates for Greek ζωή: for life as opposed to death животъ is used, for earthly life it is житиуе, and жизнь for eternal life. The distribution of the synonyms in the Didactic Gospel coincides to a large degree with that described in general diachronic analyses. This tendency may be observed in both the translated and the original parts of the Didactic Gospel, deviations occurring mainly in biblical quotations, probably due to the direct influence of the well-known sacred text. The material analysed shows that Constantine of Preslav understood very well the semantics of the words used in the language of the original, but also the semantic nuances of closely related words in the target language and used them according to the textual meaning.

Духовное просвещение и благочестие в проповеди конца XVII века

<p>The crucial 17<sup>th</sup> century raises the question of the importance of systemic education — churches as a concentration of knowledge become centers of education. The sermon becomes a channel for broadcasting reflections. «Propoved’ v nedeluy 23 po soshestvii Svyatago Duha» [Sermon on Week 23 after the Descent of the Holy Spirit] from the anonymous handwritten collection of sermons «Statir» of the late 17<sup>th</sup> century is published according to all the rules for the transmission of the Church Slavonic text and identifying the sources of the intertext. By spiritual enlightenment the preacher understands attention to the sermons delivered, the study of patristic writings. Along the way, related topics are comprehended — book publishing, respect for people of intellectual labor (writers, preachers). The author deduces the idea of the need for spiritual enlightenment by comparing the Gadarians from the parable of the possessed Gadarin (Luke 8) and modern people who also reject the Word of God, which is embodied in sermons and interpretations, but they do it consciously, unlike the people from the parable. Comparing the flock with the early Christians, the author notes the decline in the ability to think, and in the second part of the sermon he shows the social and spiritual state of people who chose sin instead of diligence in faith. The sin of drunkenness, chosen for illustration, is considered by the author to be one of the most dangerous, because it is he who feels the source of other sins, and is also the most visible in public life. The main conclusion of the author's reflections is that spiritual enlightenment and the ability to reflect are necessary for priests and laity because unrighteous behavior in earthly life and the impossibility of future salvation are due to sins, the harm of which can only be understood if one follows authoritative sources of knowledge. In addition to the author's reflections, the literary talent of the author becomes the subject of research. The complex semantic structure of the sermon, the art of eloquence, the rhetorical strategy of exposing drunkenness associated with the creative processing of patristic and biblical quotations are noted.</p>

Kohelet’s Escape: The Heart Freely Subordinated to Divine Navigation

It is often claimed that Ecclesiastes constitutes an irremediable enigma which flies in the face of traditional Hebrew cosmology, making the author’s intended meaning not much more than a bewildering speculative task. Biblical scholars disagree on just about every aspect of this ancient Hebraic work: authorship, date, structure, narrative framework, and even its connection to a Creator God. This essay utilizes Ballantine’s strategic rhetorical perspective to introduce and wade through some of the central controversies and debates about the meaning of Ecclesiastes: Is earthly life meaningful or meaningless ? Is there eternal meaning to earthly life or not? Is the earthly life of human beings pointless and futile or not? If the simple pleasures of earthly life are gifts from God, then how can earthly life itself be ‘hevel’? and more. Somewhat surprisingly, it concludes that Ecclesiastes is anything but an enigma when viewed rhetorically, and certainly not in contravention of basic Hebraic and Christian biblical principles about the sovereign importance of believing in God and obeying the Commandments, even despite all the trials and tribulations offered by earthly life.

Генезис концепции спасения в религиозно-философском наследии Кирилла Туровского: византийское влияние и оригинальность идей

The article is devoted to the study of the development of the soteriological concept in the religious and philosophical work of Cyril of Turov. The continuity of the ideas of the Turov author with Byzantine patristic thought is analyzed, and the originality of the views of the Old Russian theologian is also revealed. Cyril of Turov, borrowing a number of Byzantine soteriological ideas, perceives them as already-solved problems that have clear answers and are not intended to continue theological reasoning. In his work, the Old Russian author solves the tasks set in accordance with the realities of his time and the surrounding reality. Thus, the main goal of the bishop of Turov after taking the dignity is to attract the Russian masses to the adoption of baptism and a new faith. Cyril of Turov sees the essence of the spiritual activity of Christian priests and monks in faithful service to ordinary people. In this regard, the idea of individual, personal salvation, presented in the early "monastic" creativity, is transformed into the concept of universal salvation, primarily associated with the dominant nature of God's grace granted to all mankind. The perfection of the incarnation of the Son of God for Cyril of Turov is equal to the perfection of the deification of all mankind. Reverend Cyril does not express to his flock strict requirements regarding morals and moral existence, realizing the weakness of human nature. His soteriological concept is based on the optimistic idea of divine forgiveness and love; therefore, the main principles of Christian virtue leading people to salvation, in accordance with the views of the ancient Russian theologian, are baptism and repentance as opportunities for renewal and the beginning of a new earthly life. Baptism, according to Cyril, regenerates people; repentance gives them the possibility of eternal existence by transforming evil into good.