Vladimir Solovyov – great Gnostic thinker

The article examines the well-known negative assessment of the philosophy of Vladimir Solovyov, associated with the fact that he developed the ideas of German philosophy of the 19th century, and did not follow the path of creating “Orthodox philosophy”. Within the framework of the assumption that since the middle of the 2nd century there were two interpretations of the teachings of Jesus Christ – Gnostic and Orthodox, it is proved that in the history of European philosophy from Origen to Schopenhauer, the tradition of mystical pantheism based on Gnostic Christianity absolutely prevailed. There was no “strictly Orthodox” philosophy in history, and, as shown by the attempt to build it, undertaken at the beginning of the twentieth century by S.N. Bulgakov, it is impossible due to the incompatibility of the dogmatic system of the church with meaningful philosophy. It is concluded that Solovyov’s main merit lies in the consistent development of the modern model of mystical pantheism, which was started by German philosophers of the 19th century (Schelling, Schopenhauer, etc.), taking into account the original interpretations of undistorted, Gnostic Christianity in Russian philosophy (Dostoevsky, Tolstoy).