Глава первая. Рождество Христа: откровение в Нем божественной жизни

In Him life appeared, eternal life, which was with the Father and appeared to us § 5. A mechanical view of the revelation of divinity in Christ Jesus The starting point for us in understanding the life of the Lord Jesus Christ should be our own inner experience of Christian life. Only under this condition can we firmly assert that the life of our Savior is understandable only to His followers, and for “outsiders” its meaning is completely closed. This is the only real advantage of the believing philosophy of gospel history over groundless abstract rationalism. We live a spiritual life, which is eternal divine life. Where is the beginning and source of our spiritual life? In the historical fact of the earthly life of Jesus Christ. In Him, divine life appeared in the conditions of human existence, and from Him, like light from light, a stream from a source, flows and on Him the spiritual life of Christians of the whole world and all ages is established. Therefore, the revelation of divine life in the conditions of earthly existence constitutes the main meaning of the earthly life of Christ, both in the essence of His personality and in His historical significance. In Him “life was made manifest, eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us.” In this initial experiential knowledge of Jesus Christ, through fellowship with Him and His Father, we have the basis for the preliminary elimination of false preconceptions about the person of Jesus Christ. These are two extreme views. According to one, having the appearance of piety, the divine life was revealed in the face of Christ in its externally majestic properties, omnipotence, omniscience, omnipresence, so that Jesus Christ, according to this view, was an omnipotent, omniscient person. This is that imaginary piety, in the name of which a person reproached the Lord in His intention to suffer: “Be merciful to yourself, Lord, so that this will not happen to you.” According to this view, the divine can manifest itself in human life only to the extent that human life loses its limitations and ceases to be human life. Wanting to exalt Christ, zealous for His glory, but not according to reason, this view does not embrace the work of Jesus Christ, for which He laid down His soul - the work of glorifying the name of the Father on earth, giving His eternal life to people, acquiring real human life for divine glory. The revelation of divine life in Christ must be understood in such a way that the fullness of revelation was dependent on the fullness of human life. This is the meaning of the fact that in Him the fullness of divinity appeared bodily. Of course, in this we see a combination of opposites, but the whole life of Jesus Christ represents the resolution of such opposites, which are not reconcilable for abstract logic. Here is given a method for studying Gospel history appropriate to the subject. In particular, in relation to the question under consideration, we must see in the reality of Christ's human life, in the fullness of its limitations and infirmities, not an obstacle to His work, but a condition for the revelation of divine glory. That it was the actual human life of Christ that was the discovery of divine glory, the experience of divine life, this thought forms the threshold of the gospel story, beyond which its mind opens: not to cross this threshold, not to assimilate this thought in all its depth, means to refuse to understand the life of our Savior. Only in this way can we properly evaluate the Gospel testimony that what was born of Mary was called the Son of God (Luke 1:31-32.35), and Mary gave birth to a weak baby and “wrapped Him in swaddling clothes... And the child grew and was strengthened in spirit, and the grace of God was upon Him, and increased in wisdom and stature, and in love with God and men” (Lk. 2:7. 40. 52). How different from these gospel testimonies about the natural development of the Son of God born of Mary is the cloudy image of the infancy of Jesus Christ in the apocryphal gospels, in which the story of His childhood is filled with fictitious miracles in order to present Him as omnipotent!... § 6. The Ebionite view of the face of Jesus Christ Jesus, the Son of God, born of Mary (cf. Acts 3:13; 4:27, etc.), was a real man, but was He not a mere man? This is another preconceived view of the face of Jesus Christ, constituting the opposite extreme to the one described. This view has been known since ancient times, and now it has a huge number of defenders 11. Jesus Christ, they say, was a simple man or only a man. Accordingly, in the Gospel testimony about the conception of Jesus born by Mary from the Holy Spirit, they see a fiction introduced into the Gospels relatively later - a product of theological thought. The seeming inconceivability of the extraordinary conception of Jesus from the Holy Spirit, evidenced in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, apparently serves as a sufficient basis for a negative attitude towards the Gospel narrative. In order to correctly judge this view of the face of Jesus Christ, it should be borne in mind that the church teaching and gospel history it rejects do not in the least detract from the full reality of the human nature of Jesus Christ. It is enough to point out that the Gospel story presents Jesus Christ in an almost continuous feat of prayer, and “to pray,” let’s say in the words of St. John Chrysostom, oh, is uncharacteristic of God” 12. Also, the fathers of the VI Ecumenical Council express the church teaching as follows: “we, without making a joke of the sacrament of the economy, believe that the all-holy soul of the Savior not only had reason and will, but was actually moved by all natural forces and was arbitrarily overwhelmed by passions similar to ours, but sinless” 13. Therefore, the view we are considering is opposed to church teaching, which does not deny the reality of the human nature of Jesus Christ, and its essence is not that Jesus Christ was an actual man, but that He was only a man, whereas, according to church teaching and the Gospel image, He was more than a man - He was not only the son of David, but also his Lord. What does this limitation mean when applied to the person of Jesus Christ and does it have a basis? Apparently, the conclusion from the reality of Christ's human nature to the fact that He was a simple man is an assertion of simple identity, for every real man is a simple man. But in fact, this limitation, when applied to Christ, involves a sophistical manipulation of concepts. Saying that every real man is a simple man and that Jesus Christ is a simple man, what is meant in both cases is different by the words “simple man.” In the first case, by simple human nature we mean that which is characteristic of man, excluding from the concept everything unusual for him, but without defining the limits of the human being; in the second case, the name of a simple person means only that which in human existence is limited by the limits of consciousness and the historical conditions of individual human life. The fact of the matter is that when applying this limitation to Jesus Christ, they do not want to say that He was what every person really is, but that He was only what every person is in his consciousness and as a product of historical conditions. But the essence of man is not exhausted by the limits of his consciousness and is not entirely explained by historical causality and dependence on the environment. This is what modern serious science asserts, based on the collapse of frivolous attempts to explain human personality as a product of the historical process and environmental influences. It is impossible to deny the historical causality and dependence of the human personality on the environment, but a person is not only a product of such causality: his personality is the center of an original existence and a unique response to external influences, although in the degree of this originality and originality there can be a great difference between individuals. The human being is not limited by the limits of his own consciousness. For our consciousness, nature is given as something gradually cognizable, but not accessible to knowledge in all its depth. Of course, a person’s originality is also reflected in his free influence on his nature, to some extent, so that the conscious will is partly inherent in a creative character, but only partly. Man cannot master his entire being, either in knowledge or in will. Simply put, a person cannot say with complete confidence what he will do in such and such a case, whether he will resist the upcoming temptation, whether he will be capable of a selfless act or not. His desire and consciousness at the moment should not be overly valued: despite the desire to be selfless, he may turn out to be a coward due to his nature, and, despite the modesty and timidity of his opinion of himself, nature at the right moment can give him unexpectedly enormous spiritual forces, which, due to this unexpectedness, are called inspiration. This power of nature over consciousness is known and discussed in literature and science, but it is known more for the bad side 14 than for the good. But not only in evil, but also in good respect, our nature is not covered by our consciousness, and the evil nature of man is entirely explained by heredity, and his good nature, with its ideals that go beyond the boundaries of earthly life and the conditions of the world, cannot be explained by heredity, but presupposes for itself an extra-worldly basis. Be that as it may, there is no reason to reduce the entire being of a person to the boundaries of his consciousness and historical conditions, 15 and therefore the name of Jesus Christ as a simple man in this sense does not withstand purely scientific criticism: the nature of each person goes beyond the boundaries of his consciousness and presupposes an extra-worldly basis with his good aspirations. Not only that. In this unlimitedness of the human being by the limits of consciousness and historical conditions lies the limit of the science of man 16 . Science can cognize a person within the limits of his consciousness and as a product of a biological and historical process, but a person outside these limits is not accessible to it; for it we cannot solve the question of the origin of man, his consciousness, his will. But if so, if science must stop before the boundaries of natural knowledge of human nature, then what can it object to religious ideas that explain the area of ​​​​the human being inaccessible to science? And according to the religious concept of Christian truth, man - every simple person is the image of God, i.e. in God has the basis of both its physical existence and its moral nature. If we visually depict the Christian teaching about man, then the human soul must be represented in the form of a ray emanating from God and returning to Him again, and only delimited for some extent by consciousness. Of course, this image has shortcomings, 17 but the shortcomings are explained by the very impossibility of figuratively representing such a sublime teaching; in any case, the image has its basis in the word of God 18 and well elucidates both the divine basis of human existence lying beyond the limits of consciousness, and the immortality of man. And in this case, what is the meaning of the desire of Protestant theology to equate Jesus Christ with a simple man in order to eliminate His divinity? After all, every person lives, moves and exists on a divine basis. An impartial comparison of Jesus Christ with a simple man should not lead to a diminishment of the divine dignity of Christ, but to an elevation of His human dignity. “The Jews said to Jesus: We do not want to stone You for a good deed, but for blasphemy, because You, being a man, make Yourself god. Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your law, I said, you are gods?” If He called those to whom the word of God came gods, and the scripture cannot be broken; Do you say to him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, “You are blaspheming, because I said, “I am the Son of God” (John 10:33-36)? However, by comparing the personality of Jesus Christ with the nature of each person, as the image of God, only the capacity of human nature for the divinely filial dignity is indicated, the path to understanding the natural sonship of Jesus Christ is only outlined, but His divinely filial dignity is not fully explained 19 . The concept of man as the image of God, as a revelation of divine life, presupposes the gradualness of God's revelation. The physical world created by God with plant and animal life is the first stage of the external world, revelation of God. Man, created in the image of God, represents the next stage of revelation of God: in one side of his being he belongs entirely to external nature, to the physical world, but in his soul he is a new creation of God. In his person, a new divine content was invested into the physical organism, a new freely intelligent life was breathed in. The earthly life of Jesus Christ constitutes the highest, perfect stage of revelation of God. He is fully human, but in His person human life served as a new revelation and was filled with new content: this new content is spiritual, eternal divine life 20 . In man, created in the image of God, the divine life was revealed from the formal side - freely rational; in the face of Christ, freely rational human life was filled with essential content - real, spiritual, divine life. It is instructive in this regard to compare the revelation of God in Christ with the former revelation in the prophets. “God, who at times and in various ways spoke of old to the fathers through the prophets, has spoken to us in the last days through the Son.” Prophetic revelation was addressed exclusively to the human mind, while in Christ His very human life was a revelation of God, so that people in Him heard, saw with their own eyes, examined and touched with their hands the eternal life that was with the Father, and through Him received vital communion with the Father. Those who saw Him saw the Father. Only in the light of these reasonings and religious beliefs can one fully appreciate the Gospel testimony about the conception of the “man Jesus” born by Mary from the Holy Spirit. Abstract rationalism in the Gospel narrative about the conception of Christ from the Holy Spirit sees an exclusively physiological treatise and discusses it exclusively from the point of view of physiological ideas and knowledge, and discussing it this way, of course, rejects it. He is not deterred from such a point of view even by the simple consideration that the narrated event essentially does not allow for physiological discussion. The meaning of the Gospel narrative is not at all in physiology, but in the fact that the spiritual life of Jesus Christ is divine life. In this case, the interest of the gospel narrative is not theoretical, but practical, the interest of faith. We Christians live a spiritual life and for its sake we count all the blessings of the world as nothing and endure everything. What then? Is our spiritual life a ghost that will dissipate, or is it an eternal divine life? Is there the life of Jesus Christ from which our spiritual life, illusory earthly life, or eternal heavenly life flows? This is the interest of this gospel narrative, these are the questions it answers 21. It is in vain to object that it is transmitted only in Matthew and Luke, that it is not found either in John or in the epistles of Paul. The birth of Christ from the Holy Spirit is presupposed by every line of the fourth Gospel, which testifies that in Christ the Word of God became flesh (John 1:14), that He is the bread of eternal life (John 6:48) and came that people might have life (John 10:10), that He and His Father are one (John 10:30), that the Father abided in Him (John 14:11), that He came from the Father and came into the world, and again left the world and went to the Father (John 16:28)... The Apostle Paul not only gives testimony equivalent to the Gospel narrative of the conception of Christ from the Holy Spirit, but also properly explains this narrative when he writes that Christ was born of the seed of David according to the flesh and was revealed to be the Son of God in power, according to the spirit of holiness (Rom. 1:3-4), that Christ is God's as we are Christ's (1 Cor. 3:23). If the gospel story about the conception of Jesus Christ from the Spirit of the Father has an interest not of theoretical, but of practical interest - the interest of faith, then the reliability of this story is established not on our physiological ideas, but on our faith 22 - not on theological faith, which you can have or not have, but on that living faith, without which not a single person can exist. Everyone believes either in the external world or in spiritual life, everyone lives by his own faith. For some, the external world is more real than the spiritual world, and for others, spiritual life is more real than the external world. That's the point. If we believe in our spiritual life and live by this faith, if for us spiritual life is eternal divine life, then we can imagine the life of Christ in no other way than as a life that came from the Spirit of the Heavenly Father. § 7. The revelation of God in the humiliation of human life Thus, in the “man Jesus” “born of a woman,” the Son of God was revealed, the divine life was revealed not in the shadows of Old Testament prototypes, but in full reality. This is not only a historical fact, but in it we see the fulfillment of a divine promise - the fulfillment of the laws of divine revelation in human history. The first people wanted to be “like gods” - they wanted personal possession of externally divine perfection, and as a result of this they fell under the power of death. But God, condescending to them, gave them the promise that death would be defeated by the “seed of the woman,” the son of the woman, the son of man. The seed of a woman, or the son of man, is a man who is aware of his natural insignificance and, to the extent of this consciousness, places all his trust in God. In such a consciousness of natural weakness and hope in God, man serves as an instrument for the revelation of the glory of God, since the only basis for the revelation of God in nature and history is His condescension and love. The image of the wife's son runs through the entire Old Testament revelation, expressing with it the fundamental law of God-manhood. The Son of Man in Psalm VIII is depicted as being a little lower than the angels, but crowned with glory and honor from God. Delivered from his mother’s womb, the wife’s son is presented in Psalm XXI in extreme humiliation and suffering from the self-righteous and proud opponents of God, but in complete trust in God from the day he was born; and God does not neglect the sorrow of the sufferer, does not hide His face from him. In Chapter VII of the Book of St. Daniel, the Son of Man is compared with terrible beasts, symbols of arrogance, the personification of human kingdoms - and so to him, the Son of Man, is given from the Ancient of Days power, glory and an eternal kingdom. The Old Testament symbolic image of the son of man was fulfilled in the Son of Mary, in whom eternal divine life was revealed in its entirety and who, therefore, was the only son of man, as the Lord Jesus Christ called Himself, meaning the revelation of the glory of God in His humiliation. In this connection of thoughts, the Gospel narrative about the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ in Bethlehem becomes especially instructive. In those days, says the Evangelist Luke, a command came from Caesar Augustus to make a census throughout the entire earth. This census was the first during the reign of Quirinius in Syria. And everyone went to register in their own city. Joseph also went from Galilee, from the city of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, called Bethlehem, because he was from the house and family of David, to enroll with Mary, his betrothed wife, who was with child. When they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn Son, and wrapped Him in swaddling clothes, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn... Negative criticism considers this story to be fictitious, and the motive for the fiction is the desire to present Jesus Christ as a descendant of David, the heir of his kingdom. But what a discrepancy, then, between the motive of the fiction and its content! If people were left to imagine the place and circumstances of the birth of the Messiah, the Son of God, then, of course, they could only stop at the royal palace and magnificent surroundings. Meanwhile, what do we see in the gospel narrative? There was no room in the inn for the newly born Savior of the world; the mother herself wrapped Him in swaddling clothes and placed Him in a manger. Here we have not fiction, but that divine truth that governs the entire history of the world; Here we encounter the most striking application of that law of God-manhood, according to which divine glory is united not with human glory, but with human humiliation. Suffice it to recall the controversy that arose about ten years ago in the German Protestant world over the Apostolic Creed, which was rejected by Schrempf, Rade and Harnack, mainly because of the third member, containing the doctrine of the conception of Jesus Christ born of the Virgin Mary from the Holy Spirit. Harnack found himself numerous followers. Let’s not even talk about the completely unbelieving Renans and Strauss, of whom there are also quite a few... 64th Discourse on the Gospel of John. See, for example, Turgenev. “Song of Triumphant Love”, Chekhov’s “Misfortune”. See S. Trubetskoy. “The Doctrine of the Logos in His History” vol. I, 1900, pp. 380 – 381 Du Bois-Raymond, “On the Limits of the Knowledge of Nature.” It is this image that can be interpreted in a pantheistic sense, but that is why we use it with a reservation. As Gausrath apparently accepts, “Neutest. Zeitgeschichte" 1 Th. 2 AufL, 1873, Ss. 354–355. Just as Adam was God, so Christ was the Son of God (Luke 3:22.38, cf. Rom. 5; 1 Cor. 15). With Christ, rebirth began in the history of mankind (παλιγγενεσία Matthew 19:28). This is what J. Bovon does not understand, “La vie et 1’enseignement de Jesus (Theologie du N T.” t. 1, 1893), p. 202, F. Schleiermacher, “Der christliche Glaube”, B II, 3 AufI 1836 S. 64 folg., W. Beyschlag, “Das Leben Jesu”, I, 2 AufI. 1887, S. 163 folg., not to mention scientists of a more negative direction. Lacking living faith, rationalism, at best, can only reach “eine dogmatische Construction”, as in J. Holtzmann, “Lehrbueh d. neutest. Theologie", I, 1897, S. 415. You might be interested in: