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that we see around us is characterised by Solovyov as enveloped in a ‘heavy and
tortuous sleep of separate, egoistic beings’, which from a religious point of view
is ‘enigmatic and requires explanation’. Evil is something subjective and
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internal to being, understood in terms of the incorrect relation of individual
beings to each other. Therefore, evil as relational is in-itself not substantial. The
divine world has exactly the same constituents, but their relationships are
harmonious. Solovyov’s answer to the question of how this state could have
occurred is ‘feedom’. Evil is seen as a tension within the state of the will – but
this will and therefore evil do not find their basis in the physical world. The
first cause of evil ‘cannot be an individual being as a physical appearance itself
already conditioned by external determination’. 39
1 Jn. 5:19 is of particular significance to Solovyov: ‘the whole world lies
under the power of the evil one’. The Russian Synodal Bible simply tells us that
‘the whole world lies in evil’, 40 which is significant as Solovyov does not
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attribute the origins of evil to the devil. Its origins are not to be found in the
physical world, but in ‘God’s garden’, understood as a metaphysical entity. The
origins of human evil are found in Adam, understood as a metaphysical
‘vsechelovek’ or universal human.
In the Ninth Lecture on Godmanhood, Solovyov explains how God’s
freedom is transferred to the world and becomes its own freedom in the act of
creation, a process described by Men as kenotic. The result is the World Soul,
which personalised as ‘the substantial subject of created being and the
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substantial object of divine action’ has a twofold or ambivalent nature. The
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actions of the World Soul are not determined by one or the other, but she is
given freedom to choose. As far as she is determined by the divine Logos, she is
the divine humanity of Christ. On the other hand, the World Soul might strive
towards singularity, to realise itself in-and-of-itself. When the World Soul does
this it loses its power over creation and harmony is lost in the relations
between individual beings: ‘the universal organism turns into a mechanical
collection of atoms’. This means that created beings have not been subjected
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to degradation by their own will, but by the will of the one who subjected

38 Solovyov, Lectures on Godmanhood, p180
39 Solovyov, Lectures on Godmanhood, p185
40 ‘Ves mir lezhit vo zle’
41 In the late 1870s Solovyov did not believe in the Devil, but later changed his views.
42 Solovyov, Lectures on Godmanhood, p192
43 The Russian here is двойственное
44 Solovyov, Lectures on Godmanhood, p194

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