Dugin's guideline: The final division between the Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness

In the third part of his study, the Russian philosopher compares the spiritual and physical worlds, focusing on the division of humanity after the Last Judgement. Who is destined to live forever and who is destined to perish in the abyss is a question that has preoccupied men since their birth.

We find this anthropological dualism in a purely Christian context with the Apostle Paul. In his first letter to the Thessalonians he writes:

In the Gospel of John, Christ himself says the following about "children of light":

The Apostle Paul's division into 'children of light' (υἱοὶ φωτός) and 'children of darkness' (υἱοὶ σκότους) draws our attention to the same anthropological dualism. Those who are with God, with Christ, who believe in the light are the humanity of Abel, of Noah, of the ancestors, of the saints and martyrs. They, being in time, prepare with their being the sacrificial animals of the Last Judgement - the sheep, the lambs. This is a humanity of light.

But people do not become such by predestination, by birth or by rigid mechanical conditions, but by free choice. Only those who are absolutely free can choose between light and darkness. This is why the Apostle Paul invites Christians to "become" children of light: to be awake, not to sleep, to wake up from the inertia of everyday life.

To be "children of light" means to put oneself in the position of "children of light".

Christ says the same thing in the Gospel of John: "Believe in the light, that you may be children of the light". If you believe, you will become children of the light. No one is deliberately born a child of the light. Man always defines his own nature, placing it either above himself - in the realm of the faithful angels - or below himself - succumbing to the attraction of Dennika, sinking into the sheol, slipping into the abyss of Avaddon.

And if a man falls, turns away from the light, he becomes a 'child of darkness', a 'child of the night'. And again: he is not born, but becomes, constituting his being with the support of freedom - mind and will. No one can be forced to become a 'child of light' or a 'child of darkness'. There is always a choice. Man is the true choice. This, in fact, is what the Psalms and the Gospels, the Bible as a whole, tell us.

Anthropology and Physics of Resurrection

The Last Judgement takes place after the resurrection of the dead. Christian teaching specifies that "not all will die, but all will be changed". The Apostle Paul writes:

The dualism of eschatological anthropology will be fully revealed after this fundamental metamorphosis of humanity, when the resurrected dead coexist with the living changed - clothed in incorruptible flesh.

To better understand the significance of the resurrection of the dead, the expectation of which is included in the Christian's Creed and is thus an integral part of all doctrine, we must look at the stages of creation. The eschatological processes partly repeat the stages of creation in reverse order. Creation comes from God and is directed outwards (towards Him). The end of time brings creation back to God, sets it before God - bringing it to his judgement. This return is the universal resurrection, when the entire content of world history is recreated instantaneously and simultaneously.

However, resurrected humanity requires different ontological conditions than the world in which we find ourselves. These conditions can be summarised as the physics of resurrection. There are other laws at play, beyond time and space. The Apostle Paul says this about the physics of resurrection:

These are the properties of the resurrected body. It is:

• incorruptible,
• in glory,
• in power,

Thus also the second coming of Christ will take place in power and in glory. Hence the expression Saviour in power, which refers to the figure of Christ, the Almighty, seated on the throne of heaven. Here the imperviousness and spiritual nature of the world is directly revealed as an area of direct experience. The moment of the Last Judgement reveals a special ontological dimension.

Eternal Creation

The physics of resurrection will become clearer to us if we carefully retrace the stages of the cosmogonic process.

The main ontological difference in religion is the creator-creation pair, God and the world. God is eternal, immutable, primordial, uncreated. The world is placed in time, i.e. finite, limited and created. This is the basis of theology and the entire tradition of the Church.

However, in addition to this basic distinction, already in creation itself one should distinguish at least two levels, two slices - corporeal and spiritual. This refers to the created spirit, not to the Holy Spirit who is God and the Third Person of the Holy Trinity. To this area of the spirit belong the heavenly paradise and the hosts of angels, as well as the congregation of those saints who, through their faith, works and labour, have attained the spirit and have been transformed into the new nature - have become, in the full sense of the word, "children of light".

The other area of the created world is the realm of the flesh, which is denser and coarser than the spiritual worlds

The laws of time and space apply to the corporeal creation and determine the life, forms and timing of corporeal bodies and phenomena. The spiritual worlds are governed by other laws. In the world of bodies, there is no such thing as 'time' and 'space'. The spiritual worlds are creation, not God. Therefore they are partly similar to the corporeal world (created and finite), but also closer to God himself (there is no time and space).

This is why Christ himself says: "The kingdom of God is within you" (Gospel of Luke, ch. 17, 21). This kingdom of the spirit, as already mentioned, is not subject to the laws of time and space (thus, being all-encompassing, it is able to fit the human heart). Compared to the totality of the history of the corporeal world, the spiritual realm is eternal.

Such are the angels, the intelligent spirits, the 'second light'. They belong to this spiritual dimension - vertical to the corporeal cosmos. They can be anywhere and at any time. They are not subject to death and decay. But at the same time they are fundamentally finite, once they were not and once they will not be. It is said that "the heavens will pass away" (Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 24:35). Likewise, the spiritual creation will pass away. Compared to the corporeal creation it is eternal. Compared to the true eternity of God, it is finite and relative.

In the process of creation the spiritual world occupies the first place, it begins with it. Spiritual beings - the angels - were created first and help God to order creation. The corporeal world - with time and space - is formed at the next stage. In the cross of creation, first the vertical of eternity is drawn and only then the horizontal of the corporeal world. Man is in the centre of this cross - he is in the centre of the corporeal world and in the centre of the vertical of eternal creation - between the good and bad angels.

At the end of time, this process takes place in the opposite direction. First, the corporeal world is elevated to the heavenly-spiritual world, and this is the moment of the resurrection of the dead. And then this resurrected - eternal - creation is brought before the Last Judgement. Horizontal time ascends to vertical eternity.

The resurrection is thus not a return to earthly bodily life, but to the structures of spiritual creation. Hence the following characteristics of resurrection physics: imperviousness, power, glory, spirit. These same attributes are proper to the angels. Christ answered the Sadducees who denied the resurrection:

This comparison does not imply immortality, but the resurrection body itself will change its nature, becoming spiritual, heavenly and imperishable (though finite) compared to normal earthly bodies.

Eternal Resurrection

If the resurrection of the dead or the change of the living who will be caught up in the earth by the Second Coming recreate, that is, an eternal spiritual creation, then it must be noted that the time of resurrection cannot be uniquely associated with the structure of time. The time of resurrection is not an ordinary time. In a sense, it is a special time and consequently the spiritual world of created eternity is always present, from the beginning of the world to the end.

Likewise, there are always angels, spiritual entities. They do not come into the world like corporeal persons and do not leave it. They are only visible or invisible. Similarly, there are people who will rise again. For them to be resurrected, they must already be - in a sense always. Not necessarily in time and body, but necessarily in conception, in their sense. To be able to resurrect sometimes, one must always resurrect - in this vertical dimension, resurrect in the spirit.

This is exactly what Christianity advocates. Christ will not resurrect everyone simply by rising from the dead, but he has already resurrected everyone because he has recreated, renewed creation, restored its spiritual structure.

In every human being, beneath the ordinary physics, lies the physics of resurrection. Beneath the corporeal man is the spiritual man, who belongs to the world of resurrection, to the kingdom of heaven.

The resurrection, not being an event in time, is an event in eternity, that is, it is always active. And so it is now.

The dividing line between the living and the dead in the view of the resurrection has been erased. Everyone is equally faced with the fundamental problem of choice. Bodily life, precisely because of its extreme distance from God, offers unique opportunities to demonstrate devotion to God - despite the fact that the very conditions of earthly existence force one to deny His being.

But man cannot be totally deprived of mind and will, that is, of involvement in the world of the spirit. Otherwise he would be a machine or an animal. Therefore, deep within every human soul there is a fundamental area of choice.

This is the territory of the body of glory, the resurrection body. It exists not just after, but now, always. It stands - like the original Adam - on the vertical between the archangel Michael (who is like God) and the fallen angel, the devil, the Dennitz, the 'son of dawn'. It is this ontological placement of his heart - on the line of eternal creation and, consequently, in the realm of resurrection - that makes man human.

Eschatological anthropology does not refer to the future in the ordinary sense, but to the eternal present.

It is important that the Creed says of Christ's second coming:

Here it should be emphasised that Christ will also judge the 'living', not just the resurrected dead. But these will be special 'living' - already 'changed' (ἀλλαγγησόμεθα - from the verb ἀλλάσσω), according to the apostle. What is this change?

It gives man back the 'body of glory', the 'body of spirituality' without him having to go through the three successive stages - birth in the body, death, resurrection. Such a change - albeit as an extreme case - is possible precisely because of man's intrinsic nature of 'creaturely eternity'. At the deepest level of his being, he is already resurrected, and this 'resurrection' can take place either through death or by circumventing it.

Saints, martyrs and those Christians who have fully developed their Christian identity are able to reach the state of being 'resurrected' before the Last Judgement. The phenomenon of imperishable relics and other relics is related to this. The bodies of the saints themselves are transformed, emerging from the material conditions of time.

This means that the spiritual man, the mighty man, the body of glory, is already in each of us, and this is the Christian's way of changing himself already during his life, in order to be as close as possible to the ontological conditions of the Last Judgement. We must strive to reach this Court as soon as possible, without waiting for the end of time, and it is precisely the will to make a corresponding change in human nature that leads to the second coming of the Saviour.

Such a change of life means to become a 'child of light', to awaken and irrevocably share one's destiny with the 'children of darkness', who are in a state of senseless and insensible sleep.

Part I -  Dugin's guideline: The Anthropological Problem in Eschatology

Part II - Dugin's guideline: The Dualism of the Spiritual World

By Alexander Dugin

Translation by Lorenzo Maria Pacini