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In the Lectures on Godmanhood, ‘the connecting link between the divine
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and natural worlds is the human being’. Eternal Wisdom/Sofia, identified with
the World Soul, ‘is the origin of humanity; it is the ideal or normal human’.
32
Although the human appears to be temporal as an earthly ‘fact’ – ‘science…
shows that our natural or earthly human appeared on the earth at a particular
point in time, as the conclusive link of organic development’ – his/her being is
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therefore necessarily eternal and all-embracing as an expression of this eternal
Wisdom/Sofia. These ideas combine an evolutionary outlook with Origenist
metaphysics. 34
Although Solovyov’s proposal that human spiritual development takes
place through evolution requires that evil is included in a dialectic of
becoming, just as in Teilhard’s system, Solovyov differs from Teilhard in his
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neutral rather than positive understanding of the natural world. ‘Nature is by
itself just a collection of indifferent processes – peaceful and uninterested
being’. This is despite their both seeing humans as ‘fulfilling’ the natural world
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and revealing its ultimate significance. Solovyov tells us: ‘It is not humans who
receive from nature something that they do not have, that could satisfy and
fulfil their existence – conversely he himself brings to nature that which she
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does not have, that he derives from himself’. Although at this stage in
Solovyov’s writing, he has an optimistic view of the progress of the natural
world, in Appendix 10 of Origins of Religion, Men remarks on the
apocalyptic/negative nature of Solovyov’s later works (e.g. Three Conversations).
Here we see a tension between two competing views of the progress of the
universe, a tension which Men retains in his own thought, as we have already
considered in our discussion of Teilhard.
The divine world, originally created as Wisdom, does not correspond to
the imperfect natural world that we see. This world, when realised in ideal
spiritual contemplation, must be recognised as perfect. Conversely, the world

31 Solovyov, Vladimir. Lectures on Godmanhood, p170. Соловьёв, Владимир. Чтения о
Богочеловечестве. [Азбука-Классика, Санкт-Петербург, 2014] [Azbuka-Klassika, St.
Petersburg, 2014] – contains Russia and the Universal Church
32 Solovyov, Lectures on Godmanhood, p171
33 Parallels the noosphere of Teilhard – Solovyov, Lectures on Godmanhood, p171
34 Introduction by Zaikin, Solovyov Lectures on Godmanhood, p23
35 Krasitsky, Yan. God, the Human and Evil: An Investigation into the Philosophy of Vladimir Soloviev,
p128. Красицкий, Ян. Бог, Человек и Зло: Исследование Философии Владимира Соловьева
[Прогресс-Традиция, Москва, 2009] [Progress-Tradition, Moscow, 2009]
36 Solovyov, Lectures on Godmanhood, p82
37 Solovyov, Lectures on Godmanhood, p84

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