Burning bush

Contents From the compiler The Burning Bush I. Absence of personal sin in the Mother of God II. The Power of Original Sin for Our Lady III. Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady IV. Glorification of the Mother of God Excursion I. About the Glory of God in the Old Testament Excursion II. Old Testament teaching about the Wisdom of God Excursion III. The Teaching of the Wisdom of God by St. Athanasius the Great and other Fathers of the Church The proposed essay, devoted to the issue of Orthodox veneration of the Mother of God, was originally conceived (several years ago) only as a critical analysis of the Catholic dogma of 1854 on the immaculate conception of the Mother of God. However, during the work it became clear that criticism cannot remain only negative, but must be accompanied by at least some positive coverage of the issue on the basis of the dogmatic teaching about the Mother of God, which is contained by the Church and is revealed from different sides in the church veneration of the Ever-Virgin Mary. The compiler is aware of the difficulty of such a theological interpretation and does not think of attaching more importance to his personal conjectures than to a private theological opinion, moreover, in an area that has been poorly researched and difficult. As an inexorable basis for theology, in addition to the direct dogmatic definitions of the Church, the Word of God and the Patristic Tradition, is the prayer life of the Church, moved by the Holy Spirit, its instructions and testimonies - in other words, dogmatic facts are more important than theological doctrines. Holy Lady Theotokos! Strengthen my weak and thin hand. The Orthodox Church honors the Mother of God as superior to all creation, “more honorable than the Cherubim and more glorious than the Seraphim without comparison.” It is impossible even to express in words all the prayerful veneration of the Most Pure One that every believing soul, together with the saint, renders to Her. Church. This purity and holiness, which surpasses every mind, “is amazing for every mind to praise according to its property.” It seems that nothing can be added to this veneration, it is impossible to please or exalt the Most Pure Virgin more than the saint has already exalted Her. Church. And, however, in accordance with the general spirit of Orthodoxy, for which life is more dominant than formula, the Church, in essence, does not have an exhaustive dogmatic definition about the Mother of God, except for the Decree of the Third Ecumenical. Cathedral of the Virgin Mary. The veneration of the Mother of God, based, of course, on a certain church-dogmatic teaching about Her, is affirmed by church practice, mainly through worship, moved by the Holy Spirit and expressing the prayer life of dogma. On the contrary, the school teaching on this subject in Orthodoxy is confusing and unclear, largely absent, or, even worse, falls into a polemical dependence on Catholic dogmatization, distracting from its direct and positive task. In this essay, the task is to reveal primarily one side of this teaching, namely about the sinlessness of the Mother of God. I. Absence of personal sin in the Mother of God Does the Most Pure, Immaculate One have any personal sin? Is it possible to imagine, even for a moment, this terrible blasphemy? And, however, oddly enough, those Orthodox theologians who are tempted by excessive zeal to crush to the ground the failed Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception of the Mother of God are inclined to such an assumption. And it is even more strange that in patristic writing the church point of view was not immediately established and not only Origen, but also St. deviated from it. Basil the Great and St. John Chrysostom and others etc. 1 However, in the end, the understanding of St., which more accurately expresses the church veneration of the Mother of God, prevailed. Ephraim the Syrian, Epiphanius, Gregory Naz., Ambrose Mediol., Blessed. Augustine and others. First of all, regarding the complete personal sinlessness of the Mother of God, it should be established that it is impossible, on the basis of the data of the Gospel tradition, as well as by the testimony of immediate feeling, to attribute to the Mother of God the commission of a personal sin at any time in Her life. In fact, let’s think about all Her ages: which of them “will be touched by the hand of the evil”? Mary, already blessed from her mother's womb and born of St. and the righteous God-father, did she commit a sin in her infancy, which is considered a blissful state for all people? (See the rite of infant burial, in which the idea of the uncorruption of sin at this age is repeatedly repeated: “before the temptation of earthly weaknesses, Christ the Savior received him, an immaculate baby... uncorrupted... pure... blessed, like a pure bird in the purity of heaven... in the next century he prepared for them space, Abraham’s bosom, and according to the purity of the angels holy places”, etc.) True, it may be objected that the idea of ​​the blissful and sinless state of infants applies only to those “reborn by water and spirit,” that is, baptized, and baptism became possible only after Pentecost. However, the absence of committed personal sin, except for original sin, is a general property of infancy, and it distinguishes it from later, which invariably turns out to be susceptible to sin, despite baptism. Outside of baptism, this negative childhood sinlessness, non-involvement in sin due to the absence of conscious and responsible acts, however, does not yet provide salvation, 2 but is it really possible that in relation to personal sin, blessed from the womb by the Spirit, St. Mary the Virgin turns out to be different from all people in an unfavorable sense? Is it possible to attribute personal sin to the Mother of God in Her infancy, in that blissful three years that She spent under the pious roof of Her parents? It is enough just to pose such a question out loud to immediately feel its impiety. But further, would an evil mind dare to attribute personal sin to the Ever-Virgin in those years of Her childhood and adolescence, when She was observed in the church, eating the food of angels and being in communion with them, indulging in prayer and contemplation of God? Or will She do this in relation to those months in which, leaving the church, the Most Pure One remained in the care of Righteous Joseph and prepared Herself to receive the Annunciation? Would this last thing have happened if the Pure One had been in sin? Let there be no place for such malice. And after the Annunciation, when the Holy Spirit descended on the Blessed One, “cleansed Her” 3, and Her womb became heaven, during the womb of the Infant of God, would an ungodly thought dare to attribute to Her the possibility of any sin? Or is it possible to think about the time when the Mother of God raised the Infant God, continuously illuminated by the light of His Divinity? This strange thought takes as its pretext the prophetic words of the righteous Simeon about the “weapon” that has “to pierce the soul” of Mary (Luke 2:35), and interprets this image in a derogatory sense, as doubt and lack of faith. This idea is further attached to the story of the sermon of the youth Jesus in the church. The words of the Mother: “Behold, Your Father and I are looking for You with great sorrow” - and what was said about His answer: “But they did not understand the words He spoke” (Luke 2:48,50) - are interpreted as a sign of lack of faith. A similar exegesis is applied to the case when the Mother and brothers sought an opportunity to speak with the preaching Jesus (Matthew 12:46, 50; Mark 3:31-35). Both cases - both in the church and in the sermon - represent a test on the human path of Mary, which She passed in Her earthly life on the path of Her Motherhood. She had to constantly sacrifice the natural feelings of human motherhood for the service of Her Son, which required complete self-denial. And these sacrifices were not easy and not in vain; weapons constantly passed through the heart of the Mother - and before Golgotha, for all life before her was the path to Golgotha, its destiny. With all the usual restraint of information, reaching the point of stinginess in everything related to the Mother of God, the Gospels recorded, however, these two cases of tempting trials, silently revealing to us the suffering of the mother’s heart, its struggles and temptations on the way to Golgotha, its human exhaustion (for even Her Divine Son was tempted and exhausted humanly). And, however, in these texts, speaking about the temptations of the Mother of God, there is not the slightest indication of the attack of sin. She remained sinless along this entire path, which ends with her unshakable standing at the cross. This Golgotha ​​standing of the Mother at the cross of the Son exposes the purity and sinless sacrifice of Her entire life, which prepared Her for Golgotha. So, where and what grounds can there be to attribute sin to Her in the days of the Savior’s earthly life, when She contributed Her tribute of maternal suffering to the work of redemption? But perhaps sin found a place for itself after the Resurrection, after Pentecost? However, even raising this question means only exposing all its inappropriateness. In a word, there is no reason to attribute any attack of sin to the Most Pure One in the Gospel, and if this is sometimes done, it is due to some dogmatic ideas of a misunderstood nature (as, for example, in Origen, who attributed to the Virgin not only the greatest sorrow and suffering, but also doubts at the cross on the imaginary basis that without the presence of personal sin the Lord could not have appeared as Her savior and redeemer). St. firmly and clearly teaches about the complete sinlessness of Mary in Her birth, Her holy childhood and adolescence at the Annunciation, in the birth of the Son and throughout life. The Orthodox Church in its countless services dedicated to the Mother of God. We will dwell only on the most important dogmatic evidence borrowed from the services of the feasts of the Mother of God 4. As can be seen from these testimonies, the Blessed Virgin has been called since Her very birth the “Holy of Holies,” “the animate heaven,” “the church of all kings and thrones,” “the one immaculate,” “the true divine church pure from infancy,” “the current of sin is unpleasant,” etc. The question is whether the thought of any attack of sin that is allowed is compatible with this veneration even some Church Fathers, and with them other Orthodox theologians? Obviously not. The Mother of God remained sinless; not a single attack of sin came close to Her most pure soul, the bearer of perfect virginity. But in this case, is She not equated with the “one sinless” Lord Jesus? No, and that's the whole point. Sinlessness belongs to the Son of God conceived without seed from an unmarried Virgin in the only and exclusive sense, in the sense that He is alien not only from any personal sin, but also from original sin. The latter has no power over the new Adam: He appeared only in “the likeness of sinful flesh” (Rom. 8:3), but not in sinful flesh, and He, by a free feat, having diminished himself (Phil. 2:7), for the sake of our salvation, accepted and endured the infirmities of human nature, weakness and fatigue of the body and death on the cross. Just as Adam before the Fall was not available to natural death, for it was not in his nature (“God did not create death” - Wisdom 1:13–14; 2:2324), so the new Adam was not subject to the natural law of death, but voluntarily submitted only to violent death, and all the unnaturalness of this death for Him was revealed, for “death could not restrain Him” (Acts 2:24). Due to His unconditional sinlessness, His death received redemptive significance for all people, for He did not have and could not have had His own sins. T. arr., the likeness of the flesh of sin, accepted out of self-abasement, according to the plan of human salvation, only covered the complete sinlessness and integrity of human nature in the God-man. Quite the opposite, in the Most Pure and Immaculate One, original sin retains all its power with its fatal consequences - weakness and mortality of the body (for death is only the final manifestation of this weakness). Our Lady died a natural death in fulfillment of the natural law that She bore in Her human nature. Death was defeated only by the saving power of the resurrection of Christ and was finally abolished by it. The Lord Jesus is in this sense the Savior for the entire human race, and in it also His Mother, therefore the Most Pure One sang in Her song: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and My spirit rejoices in God My Savior.” The purity and sinlessness of the Ever-Virgin does not relate to Her nature, but to Her condition, to Her personal attitude towards sin and her personal overcoming it. This requires a deliberate explanation: can personal sinlessness be combined with the presence of original sin, or is there a contradiction in this? II. The power of original sin for Our Lady In order to answer the question posed, we need to pay attention to this cornerstone of dogmatic theology, on which Christian anthropology and, in particular, the doctrine of atonement is based. Man was created by God in His image and likeness. This means that God imprinted His trinitarian image in the spirit of man and at the same time placed him in the created world, as it were, in His own place, making him a created god. The power of the Trinitarian revelation of God was revealed in creation, and the first-created man was created pure and blameless. Therefore, he was a personal bearer of Divine Wisdom, as if created Sophia: the image of God, which was not contradicted by the state of man, the likeness of God in him. In Catholic theology, from medieval scholasticism to the present day, a distinction has been established between donum superadditum, justitia originalis, status naturae purae... According to the meaning of this teaching, in man as a created being, even before the Fall, it is necessary to make that distinction that was revealed only after it, namely, between what belongs to man as a creature, and what is given to him only by virtue of an extraordinary gift of grace, but does not itself belong to him. According to Catholic teaching, the “pure nature” (natura pura) of man is characterized by neither immortality nor freedom from lust (concupiscientia carnis): natural man was created by God not free either from death or from lust. He is freed from both only by an extraordinary gift of grace (donum superadditum) together with the gift of original righteousness (justitia originalis). Both principles - natural and grace-filled - in relation to the primordial man are conceived in Catholic anthropology as separate and even opposite, and the only reason for the first man to be endowed with these gifts is the free will of God, so to speak, the arbitrariness of divine love and benevolence towards people. There is no ontological connection, internal necessity, here. Of course, this teaching meets with the direct testimony of the Word of God that God did not create death and, on the contrary, everything created was created “good,” while concupiscentia, which introduces a lustful mood into a human being, is not good even before the court of the limited human mind, so this teaching turns out to be blaspheming the Creator and creation. It actually eliminates the power of the image of God in man, since it reduces him, even in the original outline, to mortal life in lust. Let this state be covered up and weakened in the primordial man donum superadditum, but this is done in relation to human nature super, violently, unnaturally, and therefore super naturam, like Deus ex machina. The possibility of such a division or dualism in the interpretation of human nature, by virtue of which some of its properties are human-natural, while others are super-proper and superhuman, is associated with the general absence in Catholic theology of a clear anthropology that would rest on solid foundations and would not be influenced by juridicalism in the theory of the atonement. Such a basis for anthropology can only be the doctrine of Wisdom as the pre-eternal basis of creation, pre-eternal humanity, by the power of which earthly man was created in the image of the heavenly Man Christ (ὀ ἀνθρωπος ἑξ οὐρανοῦ - Cor. 15:47). It is enough to take only this basic relationship seriously so that the scholastic constructs about what a person should and should not, is super, dissipate like a cobweb. With man, the Image of God shone in creation, the Trinitarian Divine Sophia was revealed, by whose power created, human hypostases were created. In the creatureliness of man lies the reason for the fragility of his condition, his incompleteness, the possibility for him of the fall. In its sophianity lies the ontological basis of the fullness of human nature. His createdness is not manifested at all in the defectiveness of his created nature in essence, as Catholic theology teaches, which attributes to him both mortality and concupiscence precisely by the power of this creatureliness, but only in the image of possessing this fullness of his. An uncorrupted and virgin person has in himself both the power of life - posse non mori - and the power of chastity - posse non resage - not an extraordinary gift - donum super additum, but as an internal norm, the true nature of his nature. Both death and sin are possible in man due to his creatureliness (just as sin, until a certain time, was possible for the world of ethereal forces: this is proven by the fall of Lucifer and his angels and the struggle with him in the sky by Michael and his army, who finally survived and won in this struggle), but they appeared to him precisely abnormal and unnatural. Meanwhile, according to Catholic teaching, this turns out to be just the opposite, so that it becomes incomprehensible and ontologically absurd, how was the Fall possible at all, since man was kept from sin not by his own freedom, but by supernatural divine power? How did she, this power, faint before the temptation of the serpent, or how could a person from himself - by his own or by satanic forces - spew out this grace? From the Catholic point of view, the original fall from grace seems impossible, unclear and incomprehensible; here it is attributed to man not the naivety of ignorance characteristic of his age, and not the weakness of an untempted will, but a direct satanic rebellion against grace, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, which is not forgiven either in this age or in the future. But this was not the fall of Adam. This very distinction between the natural and the gracious, in the sense of the given and the super-given when applied to primordial human nature, is false and constitutes a fundamental defect, πρῶτονψεῦδος of Catholic anthropology. We must take the thought of the image of God in man in all its ontological meaning, with which such defectiveness cannot be tolerated. Here, as applied to primordial man, the distinction between two types of grace: in creation (creativa) and in providence (providentialis), which became common in scholastic theology, is not applicable, for here everything is natural or everything is gracious. The world before the Fall, although it had not yet become the world in which God is everything in everyone, is nevertheless the beginning of this very world. Likewise, man was completely open to the influence of the Divine, the beginning of deification, simply by virtue of his purity and sinlessness: God came in the cool of the day to talk with man as with a friend, and this “conversation” was not a donum super additum in relation to his uncorrupted nature, on the contrary, this communication with God was given and given in it. It is for this purpose that man was created, so that, by joining the divine life, he could mediate between God and the world. In a word, the Catholic opposition between the natural and the grace-filled in man is removed by his fundamental ontological definition: man bore the image of God, and, as the image of the Divine, although he is a natural created being, he is at the same time open and accessible to the influences of the Divine. He was blessed and adored by them from measure to measure, thereby becoming a god in nature, a god-world or a god-man, and not some kind of ontological centaur, an animal, only covered in his animality donum superadditum. By the way, Catholic theology thereby undermines, without noticing it, the foundations of Christology associated with anthropology. It is quite possible to accept and ontologically understand the embodiment of the Logos in man, as by nature conforming to the Logos Himself. But it is completely impossible and unacceptable for God to incarnate into a lower creature, mortal and lustful, not only by its given sinful state, but by its nature, into some kind of half-animal. So, the primordial man by his nature was neither mortal nor lustful, for his very nature included a grace-filled life in God and with God, for he was created in the world for God. But, as a created being, he had in himself the created weakness and instability of nature; it contained the possibility of life not only in God and for God, but also in the world and for the world. And in original sin, man extinguished the grace-filled life in himself, interrupted direct grace-filled communication, “conversation,” with God, he committed murder against himself, ceased to be a man, a friend of God, but became a natural being, plunged into cosmism. And this fall, this murder was at the same time suicide: just as the soul is the life of the body, so God for man is the eternal belly, the life of the soul. Having turned away from God, man lost the strength and source of life in himself, and, weakened, he could no longer restrain and bind his body. Death has entered the world. At the same time, he, being the ontological center of the world, its soul, also lost the ability to “dominate” in the world. The world fell into orphanhood and was left without an owner. The Fall was a cosmic catastrophe, a “curse” of the earth; it manifested itself not only in man, but throughout the world (and through this doomed man to work by the sweat of his brow). The world fell ill with man, and to this day the whole creation groans and suffers for “him who subjected it,” for tea and its deliverance from him (Rom. 8:19–22). The world, in man remaining Sophian in its fundamental principles, essentially God's world, ceased to be a world-cosmos, but became a world lying in evil and suffering. By corrupting his body, man damaged the whole world, and evil in the world, becoming the law of his life, began to multiply and multiply in the same way as in man. After the Fall, a new world era begins, a special state of the world in damage and groaning, and we, the sons of Adam, no longer know the “good” in which the world was created. And if fallen man, according to the words of the apostle, has “another law which is in our members, the law of sin” (Rom. 7:11:20), then this same disorder extends to the whole world. So, what is the power and essence of original, or hereditary sin? It, like any sin, has two sides: subjective and objective, guilt (reatus) and its consequences - damage and corruption, it has its own freedom and its own necessity. In Adam himself, obviously, these two sides of original sin are combined: here was his free self-determination and personal sin of disobedience, unbelief and dislike for God, due to which he imagined that spiritual power and immortality could be acquired by the forces of this world, by eating the forbidden fruit. Adam fell into cosmism or practical atheism and was punished precisely by this cosmism: he became a natural, cosmic being. The objective consequences of his sin are necessarily connected with this cosmism - illness, labor, sorrow and death. To the extent that Adam's fall is considered in the category of personal human sin with personal responsibility, this is quite understandable. However, all difficulties arise in theological thought when Adam’s sin has to be understood as a ancestral, “original” or universal sin that determined the destinies of all mankind. Theological thought, from the blessed. Augustine to this day agonizes over the explanation of this imputation of Adam's sin to his descendants. According to the direct teaching of St. Paul: “just as by one man sin entered the world, and death by sin, so death spread to all men, since (Ἐφᾦ) all sinned” (Rom. 5:12), “by the crime of one, death reigned through one” (5:17), “by the crime of one condemnation came to all men” (5:18) - Adam’s sin has universal significance for all humanity, it was for him a source of damage (άμάρτημα). How can we understand this representation of one for all in destruction, with which the apostle parallels the representation of one in salvation: “through the righteousness of one there is justification for all men in life” (Rom. 5:18)? The usual answer to this question, since the time of St. Augustine, is given in the sense that Adam committed his sin not only for himself, but also for all his offspring, to whom it is transmitted through birth; carnal conception is the channel through which sin spills over all humanity. At birth, a person already receives, as it were, a hereditary disease of sin, which distorts his soul. In this sense, original sin, peccatum originale, is innate sin, peccatum naturae (άμάρτημα according to Apostle Paul, in contrast to παράπτωσις or παράβασις - personal sin). All men constitute one race as regards bodily origin; therefore, one can accomplish merit or give satisfaction for many, appear as their representative, just as for the sake of five righteous people Sodom and Gomorrah could be spared. In Adam's sin, the entire human nature was damaged; this is the natural side of original sin or its consequences (in Catholic theology this is called peccatum habituale, a sinful state). This idea constitutes the general conviction of the Church Fathers and is expressed in different forms among them. 5 But there is another side to original sin: every sin has its source in the bad use of human freedom, and in this sense it is a personal sin. And the original sin committed by Adam is the personal sin of everyone, actively committed by him - peccatum actuale. Both sides of original sin must find their explanation. – Let us first dwell on the natural consequences of original sin. We have already indicated that it extends not only to human life and the human body, but also to all of nature, since man is the center of the world. Man is not given the power to create the world, but due to his supreme position in this world, it turned out to be possible for him to ruin it. From the moment in creation when it was said to the first-created man: rule over all the earth and have dominion over every creature (Gen. 1:28), man became, as it were, a responsible guardian of the universe, so that his own self-determination is also the fate of the whole world. In this sense, man, not being in any sense the creator of the world, was, however, a responsible participant in its destinies and condition. The whole world would be different if Adam had not sinned. Having a cosmic significance, Adam's sin also had a universal significance, so that the sin of one became the lot of all. This does not mean that Adam was a representative of the human race in the legal sense, as one of many and for many, but that this entire race existed in him, all humanity was present, as a single, integral nature and essence. This must be understood ontologically. Humanity can be thought of in two ways: as a collection of identical or similar individuals, repeating each other in a certain sense and, at the same time, different from each other and mutually impenetrable: A B C... etc. etc., and their unified humanity is an abstraction, a common thing that is taken out of brackets, but really exists only in individuals. This is a nominalistic understanding, which, being interested in the logical operations of thought, refuses to see their metaphysical basis and is limited to description as comprehension. But humanity, more precisely, humanity, can be thought of realistically, as a kind of spiritual essence or force, united in its being, representing the organism of the world (microcosm), but at the same time multiple, multi-hypostatic in its implementations. This is the only multiplicity it sees, and therefore nominalism is seduced by it. For the realistic view, individuals are only bursts, hypostatic phenomena of a single humanity. From here follows a certain ontological solidarity of the entire human race, grounded in its metaphysical unity: not that “everyone is to blame for everyone else” (as Dostoevsky said), but everything is one, and everyone, doing for himself and for himself, does in and for all humanity. This is a terrible and creepy thought, because it reveals to every person its bottomless depth and eternal destiny. However, each individual person turns out to be not only determining, but also determined by his nature; it is he who is a quitter to sin, a captive of the flesh, a slave of sin. His nature is already determined for him, in his personal existence. However, there was a time when it was not so defined, but was still definable, and depending on this definition it could become this or that. This was in the paradise state of Adam, before the Fall, when Adam was faced with the ontological commandment of not eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the double possibility of self-determination: to God or to the world. This possibility of choice, of alternative, disappeared after the choice was made, not only for Adam, but for all his offspring. In this sense, this choice stands beyond the boundaries of history and even this world itself in its present state: although this is an event, it is not in the series of events that began after it, like its consequences. It is the beginning of our time, our century (zone). Adam, being on the one hand only an individual, also acts as an all-man, defining his nature with his definition insofar as it concerns, although not its essence, but its state. In this special position of the individual all-man Adam lies his personal peculiarity, which is not repeated in any of his descendants, who had before them the already accomplished fact of Adam’s self-determination and carried it within themselves as their own nature. This decisive significance of Adam’s act is understandable due to the unity of humanity and humanity, but it is not entirely clear in the sense of why and in what capacity exactly Adam appeared as that individual, that hypostatic bearer of humanity, who turned out to be the arbiter of destinies for all of human nature. It should be borne in mind here, first of all, that the critical moment of choice, testing and self-determination inevitably lay on the path of man due to his creatureliness and, therefore, the dual possibility objectively inherent in him: by turning to God, to become a god by grace for the whole world, or, by turning to the world, to become its slave, giving strength to the elements of non-existence and death. This self-determination was part of God’s plan for the creation of man, who in this self-determination carried out, as it were, his own self-creation. But a person could generally accomplish this self-determination or self-creation only as a hypostasis, in an individual image, as an individual, for humanity is not realized without hypostasis, it is an abstraction. What exactly is that hypostasis that is given the power to perform this defining act at this critical moment? Whatever it may be, it is clear that by virtue of the very properties of the position associated with this moment, this primordial hypostasis, like the first, is also unique in its kind. It is she who opens the account of further hypostases, without entering into this account herself, but justifying it with herself, starting from herself. This is generally the property of the first - it is not only an ordinal quantity, one of many, which is immediately followed and adjoined by the second, but it is also the only one who, strictly speaking, stands outside of any order, as its beginning. And this is the first and only Adam’s hypostasis in position: Adam is not only the first man, but he is also the only one of his kind, the forefather, the forefather. And this very position is ontologically substantiated in the nature of man, as a free-spiritual being created by God in the freedom of his self-determination (and in this the creation of man differs from all animals, which are not given this self-determination except with and in man). One hypostasis in the human race must be the progenitor, Adam, who thereby alone in himself originates and contains within himself everyone and everything. At the same time, the main, immanent property of such an Adam is his primordial nature, unburdened by sin, clarity of vision and closeness to God. And this position of the primordial, his closeness to God, who converses with him in paradise, determines all the immeasurable advantage of Adam, in comparison with which all his personal qualities, in the sense of special giftedness, genius or talent, as we now distinguish them in people, are completely destroyed, are insignificant, as if non-existent. In other words, as sinless, as primordial, Adam does not have an individual face in the sense in which we now understand it, for in our understanding, any individuality such as certainty is also limitation (omnis definitio est negatio) - and now the concept of the individual is precisely the opposite of the universal, the all-man. In this sense, Adam was not an individual, although he was a hypostasis, for a sinless man is, at the same time, a man in general, he is an all-man, free from the bad, limiting influence of individuality. Individuality in our current sense is the fruit of the Fall, something undesirable. She is different from the hypostasis, which is the center of love, the intelligent ray of Sophia; Its property as chastity, wisdom, integrity is that all these rays of it are equal and equal, all points are equally central. From here we come to the paradoxical conclusion that Adam’s own individuality does not have any specific meaning, for his position as the primordial was decisive, and in relation to this primordial purity and chastity, any of Adam’s descendants, placed in his position, would be no different from him, would be Adam. And in this sense, Adam was a genuine all-man, a real representative of the entire human race. All people are not only equal, but also equal, equal in their primordiality and chastity, for they participate in Sophia herself, the Wisdom of God, and differences in individual talent and strength come later, only in the Fall, in its limiting, and therefore differentiating power. Consequently, since Adam committed his sin as a primordial man, he committed it as a person in general, as an all-man, and therefore loses its meaning, the question becomes inappropriate, what would have happened if it were not Adam who was primordial, but, for example, Seth? Every primordial being would equally turn out to be Adam, and we cannot imagine two different Adams. So, we come to the conclusion that Adam’s own individuality did not exist before the Fall, although there was a hypostasis, a personal center, as the possibility of love. The individuality of Adam, as one of many, having his own destiny and place, arises only with and as a result of the Fall (“you will be like gods, knowing good and evil”). Then Adam, together with Eve, recognizes themselves as separate, disparate, non-repeating and already mutually impenetrable centers, in the multi-centrism or ex-centrism of being. And humanity, instead of a single but multi-hypostatic being, a single nature with many hypostases, scattered into many individuals, individual representatives of humanity, who can even ask themselves whether humanity exists as one. The metaphysical unity of humanity also justifies its empirical unity, which in the change of generations is expressed as heredity, or the vital connection of ancestors with descendants, living through this some common life of the clan. Man, being an individual, remains a generic being in which the race lives. Generation after generation, intertwining with each other, form the family tree of the human race. Original or hereditary sin, as a natural sin, is a manifestation of the general power of heredity, the unity of human nature. Adam's sin in this sense is a general definition - not so much a sin as a certain state of human nature, and in it the whole world. And just as the world is not created anew for each person, but there is one common world for all humanity, so human nature, realizing itself in different forms, remains united and does not outgrow itself. The question still remains: could Adam have avoided original sin? Isn't it a fatal predestination for man? Or, perhaps, another representative of the human race, if he had stood in Adam’s place, could have avoided him? The last question has already been answered above: in the attitude and position of Adam there is no difference between individual representatives of the human race. One could also refer here to the foresight of God, to whom the powers and destinies of every person are open and known, and the most suitable individual is chosen by him for the decisive test. However, this consideration is not at all useful here and is therefore simply unnecessary. To the first question about the fatality of the Fall, one cannot help but point out that the truly understood freedom of the primordial includes, as the blessed one also recognized. Augustine, liberum arbitrium indifferentiae, as a real opportunity to choose freely, that is, unmotivated, from oneself. At the same time, in Adam, who was not yet experienced, this also concealed the inevitable possibility of a fall, as it was already apparent in higher, but still created, spirits. The fact of God’s commandment, addressed to human freedom and containing an ontological revelation of the foundations of man, indisputably testifies to the possibility for man to refrain from sin, although, at the same time, God also knew the possibility of Adam’s fall into sin. Therefore, before the creation of the world, God planned its salvation through the sacrifice of the Only Begotten Son. The foreknowledge of God is not twofold. God also sees through the freedom of created beings in their self-determination. However, due to this foreknowledge of God, sin does not cease to be the work of a spiritual and moral being, that is, the action of his freedom. And in relation to man, sin was not necessary; more precisely, it could equally be defeated and accepted by freedom, the freedom of a created being. There was no necessity here, in the sense of fatal doom. And therefore sin, like any action of freedom, is inexplicable causally. He is the free, i.e., creative self-determination of the creature in man. It is as a result of this that the sin is imputed to the perpetrator as something wrong. You can also ask yourself about original sin, as a natural sin that has force for the entire human race without any exception (the One Sinless One, the Lord Jesus, does not represent such an exception, for He is the new Adam, the new, true man): why could the fall of Dennitsa and his angels not spread to the entire angelic nature and, on the contrary, be sharply localized? 6 We do not know the nature of angels, but from this fact we must conclude that angelic spirits, although they constitute a consonant hierarchy, an angelic council, do not form an angelic race in the sense of unity of origin through reproduction, that is, repetition of essentially equivalent, equally essential, naturally identical hypostases of the one many-faced Adam. Does this mean that each of the angels was created by a separate creative act, eliminating reproduction as a repetition of their own kind, or that in the angelic world their own special reproduction takes place, we have no direct indications about this in the Word of God and church tradition. The essential and decisive thing here is that only man has been given the dominant focus in the world, has been entrusted with the calling to dominate and command creation, only he is the legitimate king of this world (the power of the “prince of this world” is stolen, and one day he will be expelled in order to again give up his place to man, headed by the new Adam, Jesus Christ, to whom “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given”). Ontologically, man is the world, and his self-determination, like his fall from grace, has power for the whole world. Angels, although they are servants of God, “second lights” standing before the Throne of God, are not the essence of the world, and therefore among themselves they constitute a cathedral, and not a genus - individual rays, collectively revealing the glory of God, but ontologically isolated. (Therefore, we can say that the Aristotelian definition of the unity of substance as κοινόνένπολλοΐς is applicable to the angelic world, while to man, on the contrary, Plato’s έν έν πολλοῖς). Therefore, the category of original or natural sin, which extends to all of nature, is not applicable to the angelic world: its head, Dennitsa, by his fall determines only his personal destiny, for there is no single nature of angels, as there is in man. Each angel has its own nature, it has its own special self-closed world. The salvation and eternal destruction of angels therefore occurs in its own special direct way through personal appeal to the Divine. And at the same time, the fate of the angelic world is indirectly connected with the human world, to serve which angels are intended, for man, and not an angel, is a microcosm, the ruler of the universe. Likewise, Lucifer, in order to gain cosmism, to become a cosmic being, the prince of this world, from a lonely, homeless and groundless wanderer, an eternal beggar, thieves, deceitfully finds a foothold in man and in the world through man (from which he is expelled by incantatory prayers before holy baptism). It should also be especially noted that the above-mentioned consequence of natural sin is that in it a human personality is born, not only as a hypostasis created by God in His image, but also as an individuality that is isolated and different from others. This obscures and distorts the natural, ontological equality of people, as multiple centers of not only similar, but also a common unified life. The integrity of the human race is destroyed, unfolds along with the loss of chastity, and in place of plurality there appears diversity, bad plurality, instead of concentrism - eccentricity. And this plural contains a satanic lie, namely, as gods who know not only good, but also evil, that is, their limitations, and always carry their shadow with them. Individuality is the reflection of Dennitsa on a person whom he wanted to distort in the image of his metaphysical egoism - monohypostasis without love. In this sense, it is a consequence of original sin: fallen man knows hypostasis only in the form of individuality, and all of humanity is decomposed into individuals, which logic considers possible to unite only in abstractions, mentally bracketing out general characteristics. And the condition for Christian salvation is the destruction of one’s soul for the sake of Christ, that is, liberation from the captivity of individuality. However, in the fallen world, individuality is the only form for the life of the soul, just as the sinful body is for the life of the flesh, and only life in Christ frees the hypostasis from individuality, introducing it into its proper multi-unity in love, into the Church. Therefore, we repeat once again, the very question of whether Adam’s individuality is not of decisive importance for original sin: it, the individuality that distinguishes him from others, did not yet exist before the Fall, and Adam was really a representative of the entire human multi-hypostatic race. In him and his face, every human hypostasis lived and acted in harmony. This was how it was before the Fall, after it it became different: each hypostasis began to live at its own expense, as an individual, and at the same time everyone found themselves enslaved to the rent of sin, became children of wrath - τέκναόργῆς (Eph. 2:3). The first objective consequence of Adam's fall is the falling away of man, and in him the whole world, from God, a violation of the internal norm of his being, as a result of which a deep abnormality or depression of his state, with the liberation of the lowest, created element in humanity, passionate lust - concupiscentia. In this sense, sin is a hereditary disease, weighing like fate, like a disaster, over the entire human race. If the essence of original sin were limited to this alone, then it would not be so much a sin as a misfortune, which is what any hereditary disease is in our eyes. Sin becomes sin only as personal guilt associated with personal freedom. In this sense, is Adam’s sin the personal sin of each of the people, in other words, did each of us commit original sin, and if so, when and how? In principle, we have to answer this question in the affirmative, because, first of all, both Holy Scripture and Tradition clearly testify to this. Redemption from sin, the shedding of blood by the Lord Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, is directly related to the original sin of one, through which death entered. True, here we are talking about sins in the plural, but these sins are the consequence of one sin, which caused sinfulness and gave rise to sins. And this sinfulness is connected with the personal guilt of each, with his complicity in the sin of Adam. As it turned out as a result of the Pelagian disputes, the practice of the ancient Church triumphed in the Church, which corresponded to the way of thinking of the blessed one. Augustine in his struggle with Pelagius regarding infant baptism. Baptism is taught for the remission of sins, and on this basis, say Baptists following the Pelagians, baptism is possible only for adults, and not for infants, who do not even need it due to the absence of personal sins. And yet, the Church confirmed by the decrees of the Council of Carthage the need for the baptism of infants, as bearing the weight of Adam’s sin, and thereby established a difference, although it did not receive further disclosure and a more precise definition, between the afterlife state of baptized and unbaptized infants. And this fact - baptism of infants for the remission of sins, is, although indirect, the main dogmatic argument in favor of the fact that for infants, “blessed” and “blameless,” there is a need for “forgiveness of sins” through baptism, that is, liberation from original sin. (Compare prayers of prohibition before baptism). To this we must add the following consideration. The Lord defeated death and healed the entire human race from original sin. All power in heaven and on earth belongs to Him, and He will resurrect the entire human race (for the Last Judgment) and renew nature, revealing a new heaven and a new earth. The world is saved by Christ, for the power of His Resurrection operates in the world. The new Adam has already taken the place of the old one, and if the latter is still decaying and with his decaying body covers the flesh of the resurrection, then here the empiricism no longer corresponds to the true reality, just as in the Holy Mysteries the empirical reality of bread and wine does not correspond to the true presence of the Body and Blood. And if original sin were only a hereditary disease, then final healing would have already occurred, not only as a possibility for everyone, but also as a reality. However, the Lord established baptism for the remission of sins, and it is the only way, according to His immutable word, to salvation. (True, here we encounter the mystery that baptism is not available to everyone, through no fault of theirs: it turned out to be inaccessible to all Old Testament humanity, to paganism and to the entire non-Christian world. But their fate and salvation is the mystery of God, to which there are indications about preaching in hell, about some other, unknown to us, ways of salvation beyond the grave, however, for Christians, who are entrusted with the secrets and keys of the mystery here on earth, there is only one way of salvation - through baptism.) So, the baptism of infants, which is necessary even after the healing from the disease of original sin in Christ’s incarnation and resurrection has already taken place, means the presence in them sin - in the subjective sense (reatus), as the blessed one rightly testifies. Augustine. But if so, if all people are sinful, even if only for one hour of their existence on earth, if newborn babies are sinful, then what is this sin, where and when was it committed? This is a fatal question for theology, over which the theory of original sin struggles helplessly. The theory of reincarnation of souls (or their pre-existence) is based on this difficulty, which wants to explain the unknown through the unknown, postulating previous existences in order to understand the present. However, this only complicates the question and moves it, because the previous reincarnations require the same explanation. The wretched theory of arbitrary imputation (imputatio) to the descendants of the sin of their ancestor, or the no less arbitrary Catholic theory, according to which God deprives a person of supernatural grace already at his birth, as a result of which he is born in an improper state, in sin, is equally unsatisfying. So, does each of us, the sons of Adam, belong not only to the sin of state - res. habituale, but also an actual sin. Or, as is commonly thought, the latter is only the property of Adam alone, but remains alien to his descendants, who are thus are its unwitting victims? There is a sense of infidelity in such a view. Firstly, in the depths of our spirit we feel some basic guilt of our entire being, not sins, but precisely sin, a basic anomaly or improperness: that confrontation of the will to good and evil, “another law” ruling in our members and attracting not what I want, but what I don’t want, to which the apostle testifies. Paul. (Rom. 7:18–24). And this dull, but also deep consciousness of some kind of primordial self-determination, as improper, is evidence of our personal participation in the original sin of Adam: not only Adam, but also each of us personally, with him and in him, but for ourselves, we committed and are committing his sin, and this sin in some sense is our sin, that is, it is a matter of our freedom, and not just bondage. But, on the other hand, Adam’s sin itself is not just one of the sins, the first in a row, which belonged specifically to Adam personally. No, this is a very special sin, not one of many, but the only one that is the metaphysical source of moral sins. This is a sin of human freedom against one’s nature, an incorrect and improper metaphysical self-determination. It stands, strictly speaking, outside of individual, historical fate, on its very edge, on the threshold of life. And Adam’s sin, as has already been explained above, was not his individual sin, for then there was no individuality itself in the present sinful, Luciferic sense, but a sin characteristic of the position of an ancestor entering life and self-determining in it. And due to this non-individual nature of sin, it cannot be considered an individual sin of Adam, which only he sinned, but in fact another person did not sin or could not have sinned. No, Adam sinned in original sin not like Adam, or not only like Adam, but like every person. And everyone, all of us, each of us, was present and participated in this metaphysical sin, burdened with which we are born as individuals, having our own special destinies and our own special sins. In other words, Adam, as the one who committed original sin, as a real, and not just an ideal or legal representative of humanity, like everyone else, is not more sinful and not more righteous than all people: in original sin everyone is equal, and, to the extent that it is a sin, they are still sinful. What happened to Adam happened metaphysically - for everyone and with all his not yet born, but coessential descendants with him, and this incident is realized in birth, for everyone it is realized anew. The Church condemned (at the Ecumenical Council) Origen's doctrine of the pre-existence of souls, which was associated with the Neoplatonic understanding of the origin of the world as a consequence of the falling away from the Divine, and the body as a consequence of the fall of the soul from the Divine world. The pre-existence of human souls without a body or outside and before the body contradicts the firm church teaching that man by nature, by virtue of the Divine plan for him, is an incarnate spirit, consisting of body and spirit. And there is and never was any other time preceding the time of his existence: man first appears in a divine creative act. But this denial of pre-existence in time, of course, does not at all eliminate the existence of everything that exists outside of time, in eternity, in God, as the creative basis of everything that happens in time. On the other hand, this does not eliminate the possibility that something happens on the edge of time in human life, no longer in eternity, but not yet in time. The Lord creates the human soul in His image and likeness: this means that He creates it differently from all other creations of the world, by the power of His omnipotence, without asking them about it. He creates these souls with His creative power, but in their freedom, by the power of which they are given, as it were, to participate in creation, agreeing to their existence. In a mysterious and inexplicable act of God’s creative love, the Lord humbles himself to the point of recognizing the self-determination of the creature in His creation. Therefore, every living soul has its will to live (why metaphysical suicide is madness and a direct contradictio in adjecto, and every empirical suicide is only writhing and convulsions of the will to live). But in this timeless moment, on the verge of time, in the creation of the soul, each individual’s participation in the original sin of Adam is realized for himself. When a soul is created (no matter how closely one understands this creation, about which below), it is not involuntarily, but by will, precisely by the will of life, it is united with the body, it is infused into this world, which has already fallen away from God and is sick with sin, and in this free incarnation, in this will to life, its solidarity with Adam and its personal participation in original sin are realized. The latter is not repeated, but is realized again in each new hypostasis of a single human being 7 . And in this sense, it is true that we are born in sin: “I was conceived in iniquities (this is from the side of the body - the world), and in sins my mother gave birth to me” (this is from the side of the soul that accepted this sinful world). This fall occurs at birth, on the brink of this world, but the Fall of Adam also occurred, albeit in time, on the brink of the present sinful world, in a different, still pre-sin state of the world. It is true that Adam was created in integrity. He revealed his will for a sinless life at creation, but this self-determination remained incomplete, and was followed by a second one - in the Fall. For his descendants, these two acts or moments of Adam’s self-determination already merge into one, due to the unity of the human race and the world. This duality of moments for Adam again belongs to his position as the primordial, and not to his individuality. But perhaps they will ask: why doesn’t the soul know and remember about this completed self-determination, about this consent to incarnation into a sinful body, an act of the will to live? Isn't this a fantasy and an invention? This question would be appropriate if we were talking about a separate act of life, or an event in time, which could be remembered or not remembered among other events. (The idea of ​​such a temporary pre-existence is precisely what the Church condemned in Origenism.) But in this case we are not talking about an event, but about emergence, therefore, not about a temporary, but about a premature act. It cannot be remembered as a temporary event of life, but the soul retains a memory of it, an anamnesis, having its stamp on itself. And in this sense, she always remembers him and constantly remembers him in the consciousness of the wrongness and damage of her being, her personal responsibility for this and sinfulness. And the correctness of this understanding is evidenced by the Church, which extends the guilt of original sin to everyone and in baptism resolves precisely this pre-temporal guilt, original sin committed at birth itself 8 . The soul, by the will to life, to incarnate into a body defiled by sin and a world polluted by sin, takes part in the universal human original sin, in the solidary identity of all humanity. In this case, she defines herself as a person in general, as a generic humanity, and in this self-determination everything is one, everyone is the same. But at the same time, this self-determination is also completely individual, for along with sin, in a certain sense even thanks to sin, individuality is born: principium individuationis is original sin. Becoming united in sin, which is essentially the depravity, depravity of integral being, its decentralization and hence multicentricity and the corresponding eccentricity, humanity itself loses the integrity of its consciousness and disintegrates into individuals. Humanity, as the single spiritual essence of all people, as their nature in the one Adam, becomes a hidden basis, which is realized only in individuals and their generations. Freedom, inherent in the human spirit, takes on a qualitative, individual character in the individual, and, along with the unity and solidarity of all humanity in its nature, receives strength, inequality and the difference of individuals in their freedom and the associated difference in their destinies. It is necessary to accept that people not only receive different destinies by birth, but they are also born different, and each person bears a more or less clearly expressed quality, a certain “intelligible character”, which, as Schopenhauer correctly noted, lies at the basis of the empirical. In other words, if with original sin individuality is born in its individualism, then original sin also occurs individually in everyone; souls do not come into the world the same. This is what everyday experience tells us: usually we notice only external inequalities and differences in the destinies of people, but we do not notice much more significant internal differences. Since the birth of people with souls of a certain quality is the work of God, it is an axiom of faith that the external destinies and circumstances of birth are also the work of God; in other words, there is a pre-established harmony, an inner correspondence between the soul and its visible destiny. The freedom of created beings and their possible self-determination are not closed to God's foreknowledge. The Providence of God, which rules the world and leads it to a specific goal, knows all the components of this world and all their mutual relationships. God knows the secrets of the human heart and knows everything. In this sense, the apostle says: “Whom He foreknew, He also predestined (to be)... and whom He predestined (to be), them He also called; and those whom he called, he also justified; and those whom he justified, he also glorified” (Rom. 8:29–30). And, in particular, it is said about Isaac and Jacob: “when they were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, it was said to Rebekah: the older will serve the younger” (Gen. 25:23). Just as it is written: “Jacob I loved, but Esau I hated.” “What shall we say? Is it really not true with God? No way” (Rom. 9:11–14). God sends individually qualified souls into individually qualified bodies, that is, this includes all the circumstances of birth and earthly destinies. This pre-established harmony is completely incomprehensible to the created mind, but it is a postulate of faith in the Creator, in the depths, riches and knowledge of the mind of God. What is clear to us in this is that, although humanity individualizes in its destinies, in the realization of its humanity, this individualism does not destroy the general ontological connection, expressed in the heredity of original sin, as well as in the particular series of particular heredities leading up and down and in different directions. Individuals do not exist entirely separately, but in families, each human leaf attached to a branch established on a common trunk. Different possibilities, realized against the general background of heredity, are revealed in genera and generations composed of corresponding individuals. One must think that this special heredity also has a basis in the freedom of the premium self-determination of the soul, and that there is neither chance nor arbitrariness here, although it does not allow for an understandable, i.e. rational, explanation (of which the notorious reincarnation is an attempt). On the basis of special heredity, it is possible to move up and down, not only individually, but also strengthened by it, the accumulation of individual differences occurs, and the self-creativity of individuality goes beyond its boundaries and becomes generic. Spiritual energies are hereditarily retained and accumulated, and different types are, as it were, capacitors of these energies. From the outside it may even seem that they completely determine the individuals within their influence. By virtue of the principle of pre-established harmony, on the contrary, they themselves are determined by them, bringing into the world in their free self-determination definitely qualified energies, but in order to implement them, they find for themselves the appropriate environment or body for embodiment. Thus, from the very beginning, the Bible outlines two possibilities or two paths in the single family of Adam: Cain and Abel and then Seth, the Cainites and the descendants of Seth; then the race of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the people of God, is chosen, and in its composition the tribe of Levi, the branch of the priesthood, and the tribe of Judah, the royal branch. Finally, in these tribes and in their special heredity, a chosen race stands out, or “the genealogy of Jesus Christ the Savior,” 9 which the Evangelists Matthew and Luke deliberately set out differently. In the Mother of God the pinnacle of human ascent into the race of the old Adam, damaged by original sin, is reached. The effect of this latter is revealed, first of all, as the weakness of nature, expressed in the mortality of a person: his spirit does not sufficiently take possession of the body at birth, so that already from birth, along with the energies of life, the energies of destruction begin to develop and accumulate; Mortality is already the basic internal quality of life, its incompleteness, which manifests itself at the end of life as death. The morbidity of the body is only a partial expression of its mortality. Connected with this is his dependence on natural elements, hunger, cold, on the weakness of the body, its fatigue, on the weakness and limitations of the mind and knowledge, on the weakness of the will and its fluctuations, on the affectivity of the entire passionate being of man. All these properties that aggravate and limit human life can be expressed more sharply or weakly, but in every human being they form the source of his weakness. However, this weakness, which can only be paralyzed in the order of grace, although it is a consequence of original metaphysical sin, it is not yet a personal sin; This is most clearly evidenced by the fact that our Lord, one and sinless, took upon himself “the likeness of the flesh of sin,” “the weakness of nature.” It is sin as a disease, ἀμάρτημα, but differs from sins as human acts, crimes - παράπτωμα - as the creation of evil in the world. The latter, although based on the weakness and limitations of nature, allows for the widest differences and fluctuations. At the same time, the power of sin in a person can increase to the point of satanization (Antichrist) or fleshing (antediluvian humanity), but also weaken to such an extent that he is able to rise to the highest holiness, the pinnacle of which is reached in the Virgin Mary. The Most Pure Virgin came from the holy God-fathers, who absorbed all the Old Testament holiness and grace. By her natural origin from Adam, having within herself all the power of original sin as weakness, She remains free from all personal sin, from all participation in the creation of evil, of course, with the help of divine grace. The weakness of Her nature is expressed most clearly in the fact that She was subject to the natural law of death, which She accepted in Her honest Assumption. Of course, it would be entirely within the power of God’s omnipotence to free Her from this universal human exodus, just as the righteous Enoch and Elijah, who did not possess Her exclusive and only holiness, were freed from it. But in death the weakness of human nature was providentially revealed, which was overcome in Her glorious resurrection. Catholic theology, which after the dogma of 1854 on the Immaculate Conception is forced to prove the freedom of the Mother of God from original sin, is forced to deny the connection between death and original sin, contrary to direct religious evidence. According to Catholic theologians (see, for example, Scheeben), man, by nature, by virtue of his connection with the body, is subject to death, as well as to illness and passionate lust, concupiscentia. From all this he was saved only by an extraordinary gift of grace, which was taken away from him after the Fall (although, however, it follows precisely from this that the Mother of God, as freed from original sin, should be freed from human weakness and from death, and generally remain in a heavenly state and among the non-paradise world). This assumption indicates a deep and fundamental defect in Catholic anthropology, which sees in the connection between man and the body not a special advantage of the human being, placing him above the angels, but the cause of his fatal and irremovable, created mortality. Contrary to the teaching of the Word of God that God did not create death, the exact opposite is stated here, that God created man to be mortal. Man, this image of God, a created god, carries death in his nature, is created mortal and is only protected from death by grace, which can be taken away - this is the thesis that underlies all Catholic anthropology. On the contrary, according to Orthodox teaching, death entered the world through sin, in which a person literally committed suicide on himself, turning away from God and thus losing the life of his soul; he realized in his soul the power of death inherent in it only as a possibility. And the same applies to all other manifestations of the weakness of human nature. This weakness of nature, of course, also determines the active power of sin and gives rise to sinfulness, in which the power of the devil, the “prince of this world” over man, is exercised. However, this power of sinfulness can be weakened and brought closer to a state of potentiality. The law, living in the members of man and opposing good through the “body of death,” can be weakened to a greater or lesser extent, which is why the active power of sin can change. Here, of course, there is a fundamental difference between the Old and New Testaments, or more precisely, between the state of those who have received baptism and those who do not know it (which is all of Old Testament humanity). In the waters of baptism, the guilt of original sin is washed away and the grace of new life is given, but the weakness of human nature is not weakened, and it retains its force as the law of sin, which opposes the good in the human body and his will, so that a baptized person also has the ability to sin and needs, as it were, repeated baptisms in the sacrament of repentance. And in this respect, the position of the Old Testament man in relation to sin is not so different from the New Testament man, to whom his sin is forgiven and the grace-filled sacraments of the Church are given for his rebirth, but the sinful weakness of nature, the consequence of sin, retains its power. But grace did not fail in the Old Testament, for it also knows the great righteous, the holy prophets who spoke, acted and wrote by the Holy Spirit. Of course, the action of the Holy Spirit in the world was different than after Pentecost. It was preparatory, preliminary, just like the action of the Word in the world before His incarnation. And yet, Old Testament humanity was not completely deprived of the grace of the Holy Spirit, and, in particular, the Old Testament Church with its divinely established priesthood and divine service was not deprived of it. All of it had only a mountain-building character, spoke of the future, but the prototypes are not allegories, but symbols, religious significance and reality. Those exploits of the Old Testament faith, which are spoken of in the Epistle to the Hebrews (chap. 11), testify to the presence of grace, for such faith is a gift of grace. The host of the Savior's forefathers and fathers, prophets and righteous men, clearly testifies to this abundance of prevenient grace: the fulfillment of these promises belonged to the New Testament, to the Resurrection and Pentecost, but it began in the Old Testament Church. Otherwise, could Enoch and Noah, Moses and David, Elijah and Elisha, Isaiah and Jeremiah and other prophets not have the Holy Spirit? And after all, about John the Baptist, about whom it is said that he is the greatest of those born of a woman and, however, less than the least in the Kingdom of God, the angel announced: “and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit from his mother’s womb” (Luke 1:15). This also testifies to himself and St. prophet Jeremiah (1.3). So why can one generally deny the action of the sanctifying grace of God in humanity that has not yet been redeemed and regenerated, as a guarantee of future benefits? Likewise, the blessings of this present age are also a guarantee or prototype of the blessings of the future age, which it never entered into the heart of man that God has prepared for those who love Him. This brings us back to the question of grace and blessing. What is the mutual relationship between grace and freedom, divine and human? According to the Orthodox understanding, grace does not force or impose itself, but is sought by a person and given to the seeker. God, in His love for creation, abolished the abyss that lay between Him and creation, and created man for deification. And in his primordial state, before sin, man had this power of deification, as a direct consequence of the well-being of his spirit, the power of chastity. Adam was, so to speak, naturally blessed, receiving with an intact spirit the grace of life in God and with God flowing into him. He was not separated from God, and therefore there was not even a place for the opposition of the natural and the gracious in their inseparability, in the power of the deification of man, which began with his creation. His real godlikeness makes his blessing understandable and natural, as the fulfillment of a creative plan for him. And at the same time, this blessing is not something that comes from outside, which could not have existed, but internally, immanently justified by the creative act in man, as created Sophia. Here we are again faced with the Catholic doctrine, which destroys the sophia of man, tears apart and contrasts righteousness and grace in him to such an extent that one is thought of in complete isolation from the other, and grace itself is a donum superadditum, an act of generous arbitrariness. This donum can be separated or taken away without damaging nature itself, precisely as something given or supergiven: this is exactly how the taking away of grace in original sin is thought of, as a punishment, but not as a consequence of a person’s deviation from his norm, that is, from sophia with its chastity. True, the scholastics claim that as a result of sin, man found himself spoliatus gratuitis, vulneratus in naturalibus; however, this vulneratio is only an indirect consequence of a less favorable state of human nature, which remained unchanged and intact 10. Catholic doctrine, on the one hand, immeasurably distances man from God and practically denies his sophia or the image of God, since it is associated with natural lust and mortality (for there cannot be the image of God in an animal). On the other hand, it makes God’s condescension in grace ontologically unfounded and completely arbitrary: a person here is not revealed to grace by the power of the image of God inherent in him, but is only an object for it, remaining himself and preserving his nature both before and after its taking away. The divine-human act, which is the deification of man in his grace (and man is not only an object, but also the subject of it, a grace-natural, super-created being), is here considered only as an act of God over man, and not in man, from the outside, but not from the inside. The mechanical and superficial nature of this entire understanding is striking along with its inappropriate jurisprudence: God gave man a commandment as the legal basis of the contract, man violated this commandment and was deprived of the corresponding benefits, remaining, however, himself, that’s all. This creates a complete and complete gap between God, as the source of grace, and man, as his successor. Fallen man remained without grace, and at the same time it remains possible to return this grace by a unilateral act of the Divine, by divine arbitrariness, for the whole change occurred on the part of God, who took away the supergiven gift, and not of man, who remained unchanged (for Vulneratio is ontologically insignificant). This, of course, destroys the foundations of the very process of the divine economy of our salvation. And the sanctification of man to the acceptance of God, to the incarnation of God, is also not the ascent of the human race itself to the incarnation of God, but an act of God over man, namely over the Virgin Mary, to whom the lost donum superadditum has been returned. The entire Orthodox understanding proceeds from completely different anthropological premises, and in particular, a different teaching about original sin. In an intact, Sophian man, everything was moved by the grace of God, but it was not a donum superadditum, but the breath and life of a human being, which was still possessed by the image of God, as the divine basis of his nature. But this image was given to him not only as his Sophia basis, but also as a task for implementation in likeness: in other words, the very assimilation of the image of God was entrusted to the freedom of man. The state of grace before the Fall was normal and in this sense natural for man (just as his state in sin, “natural,” is unnatural, not corresponding to his true nature). But already in the very creation of the human spirit, God, calling it into existence from non-existence and imprinting it with His power, gives place to the freedom of its self-determination. So is created man, in the foundations of his being imprinted with the image of God and therefore being a God-receiving, natural vessel of grace (and the idea of ​​a vessel also contains the idea of ​​accumulation, not as a donum superadditum, although as a donum): In his freedom he realizes or does not realize the image in likeness. This expresses human self-creativity, which was once expressed in the general and basic existential self-determination, and then in particular is accomplished in a number of derivatives. Original sin deprived a person of the grace-filled gifts that belonged to him according to his created order (and not super him) due to the fact that human nature was violated in him: he fell ill, as a result he lost power over himself and became mortal. But this weakness, already insurmountable by the forces of man himself and actually overcome only through the donum superadditum in the person of the new Adam, did not abolish in him the image of God as the internal basis and norm of his nature. It did not abolish either his freedom, no matter how diminished it was by sin, or his self-creativity, although already to a weakened degree 11. Man changed after sin in his entire state, but did not lose anything significant, nothing was taken away from him as an externally imposed punishment, except for what he himself could no longer accept: the fullness of grace and communion with God, as well as immortality, incompatible with a sinful life, as unnecessary and undue for it. That. it turns out just the opposite of what happens in Catholic doctrine: not first privatio and as a consequence of its vulneratio, but exactly the opposite: vulneratio has as a consequence privatio. And the fallen Adam does not remain at all deprived of the grace-filled gifts of God, for immediately after the fall God gives a promise about the seed of the woman. Adam, moved by the prophetic spirit, gives his wife the name: Eve - life. His sons, obviously, following teaching from their father, already know the sacrifice. Under Seth, the Name of God is called; righteous Enoch, by walking before God, is freed from death. Unknown to the world, Melchizedek is worthy to accept the gift from the father of nations, with whom God has already entered into direct communication and entered into a covenant, etc., etc. etc. In a word, even after the Fall, the ontology of God’s relationship with man did not change, only man shook and weakened its human side in his freedom. But whenever human freedom restored this violation, to the extent of this restoration God gave His grace to man, sanctifying and strengthening. The ladder between heaven and earth was not interrupted, and angels sent to man ascended and descended along it. Unlike the state of man before the Fall, grace here is truly a donum superadditum, a special influence of God on the fallen created nature. That justitia originalis, which, according to Catholic theologians and the definition of the Council of Trent (Sess. V, I), was an extraordinary gift of grace, a consequence of donum superadditum, is precisely the natural state of a sinless person, open to the influence of the Divine: in this openness his nature is like God by grace (“you are gods by nature”), Closedness to grace, which man created in himself by the power of his sin, reduction His gracious divinity to one potency means an abnormal state for a person. And grace can reach it only through a supernatural way - donum superadditum, breaking through to fallen nature. The way of teaching it, so to speak, regularly, is the divinely established cult and priesthood at the church, as a channel through which grace continually flows into the world onto man. Irregular is the extraordinary personal direct blessing of the forefathers, patriarchs, prophets, kings, saints and, finally, John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary. Of course, grace here does not force in the sense that it chooses vessels worthy for itself: the feat of human holiness, hands raised and open to heaven, does not remain without reward, and this, indeed, donum superadditum restores fallen nature to an extent that is completely inaccessible to human powers. And in this sense, saving grace also operates in the Old Testament, before the coming of the Savior. This extraordinary grace, according to the will of God, inaccessible to man, is limited to the boundaries of the Old Testament Church, the chosen people of God, which is a saving nursery for all mankind. The rest of humanity lives on the grace-filled gifts received during creation, gratiacreativa, although weakened in action, but not completely taken away from the world as its supernatural, sophian basis. (“Christ, Light of truth, enlighten and sanctify every person coming into the world,” reads the prayer of the first hour.) And here the difference remains between individuals, as well as nations. “God is no respecter of persons, but in every nation he who fears Him and does what is right is acceptable to Him” (Acts 10:34–5), in other words, there remains room for achievement and freedom. But this is not on the path of our consideration now. Let's summarize what has been said. In fallen man, original sin manifests its power as the weakness of nature associated with the damage of the whole world in man and the suffering of all groaning creatures, morbidity and mortality, and as sinfulness, the power of sin, fettering and paralyzing human freedom, captivity and service to the “prince of this world.” The first, weakness, as the common lot of the whole world and man, cannot be overcome by individual human strength and is in this sense a constant value. It is overcome only by the power of Christ’s incarnation, the incarnation of His glorious resurrection. And even the very exceptions from this general law, liberation from the weakness of mortal nature, such as the cases of Enoch and the prophet Elijah being taken alive into heaven, only confirm it. For it is not overcome here, but is only canceled by the deliberate action of God’s omnipotence, and, as one must think, only for a time, not completely: according to the belief of the Church, both of them will appear in the world before the second coming to taste death according to their common destiny (Rev. 2:3-12). The second power of sinfulness is a variable value, it can be less or more, sometimes condensing to the pre-Flood corruption and abomination of Sodom, sometimes brightening up to the righteousness of God’s friend Moses and the purity of John the Baptist, and here the extraordinary grace of God replenishes the impoverished and heals the weak, elevates a person to a higher natural state, really bringing him closer to justitia originalis (however, in addition to guilt original sin, the Fall at birth itself and at birth, in the above-explained sense). The question arises: to what limit, with the assisting grace of God, can this weakening of the power of personal sinfulness in a person be brought and can this limit be indicated at all? It can only be indicated from below: original sin, as a weakness of nature, cannot be defeated or eliminated by any human holiness. And this also retains full force in relation to the Virgin Mary, to the extent that She is fully and truly human, and only because of this could She serve the true and true incarnation of Christ. To the extent that sin, through the paralysis of human freedom, gives rise to personal sinfulness, this latter can be weakened to a minimum and even reduced to a state of full potentiality: posse non cessare (although the state of non posse cessare cannot be achieved before redemption and baptism). Of course, such an ultimate achievement is unthinkable for fallen man without the help of God’s grace, which, however, only assists freedom, but does not force it. In other words, while original sin remains in force as a weakness, personal freedom from sins or personal sinlessness can be realized by the grace of God. John the Baptist is already approaching such personal sinlessness, according to the firm and clear consciousness of the Church. The Most Holy One possesses such sinlessness. Virgin Mary, Most Pure and Immaculate. Only by the power of this sinlessness could She say: behold, the servant of the Lord - with all Her will, with all Her undivided being, saying so that in response to this complete self-giving to God there was the descent of the Holy Spirit and the unfamily conception of the Lord Jesus Christ. The slightest sin in the past or present would destroy the integrity of this surrender and the power of this utterance. Decisive for the entire human race and the whole world, this word was not the utterance of just a given moment, but came from the depths of Mary’s immaculate being, it was the deed and result of Her life. The inadmissibility of personal sin in the Virgin Mary becomes axiomatically certain, if only we understand what answer was required here from Mary. It was not a private consent of the will to a private action relating only to a given moment of life, no, it was the self-determination of Her entire being. The Virgin Mary is often called the new Eve. Like any comparison, and this is valid only within certain limits, subject to the tertium comparationis. But this is precisely the personal sinlessness of Eve (before the Fall) and the Virgin Mary; in all other respects, the old and new Eve differ from each other. In particular, the original Eve did not know the burden of original sin that the Virgin Mary bears. Therefore, Eve’s personal sinlessness remained untested, unjustified, free; on the contrary, freedom from the personal sin of the Virgin Mary was not only Her personal feat, but also the feat of the entire Old Testament Church, all the forefathers and godfathers, this is the pinnacle of the ascent of the entire human race, the crown of heaven that blossomed on the human tree. That. Naturally, Eve has the advantage of position, in the sense of freedom from original sin; her personal righteousness decisively retreats before the personal purity of the Ever-Virgin, who has conquered sinfulness in Herself. However, a puzzling question remains: is it possible to allow such personal sinlessness, understood not in the sense of overcoming the sinfulness of nature, but only its manifestation - personal sins, so to speak, not substantial, but functional, given the presence of damage to human nature by original sin? Doesn’t the apostle here testify against this opinion? Paul (Rom. 7:15-25), speaking about the sin that lives in us, prompting us to do evil even against our will? However, this testimony cannot be used against the personal sinlessness of the Virgin Mary, if only because it proves too much for this case, and therefore does not prove anything. In fact, is it really applicable to the Most Rev. To the Virgin these words: “I don’t do what I want, but what I hate, I do... the good that I want, I don’t do, but the evil that I don’t want, I do” (7:15,19)? If anyone dares to touch God’s Icon with these words, let him give a full account of his daring and indicate where, when and in what way the Most Pure One committed evil that She Herself hated? It is enough just to pose this question to be horrified by it. No matter how great, holy and wondrous the ap. Paul, but what he said here about himself in his righteous self-flagellation, and in his person about the entire sinful human race, cannot be applied to the Immaculate One. Here, in addition to personal holiness associated with the hereditarily accumulated holiness of the forefathers and godfathers, it is necessary to give full strength to Her unique and exclusive grace. Although the idea of ​​the Catholic dogma about the freedom of the Mother of God from original sin due to a special act of God’s grace is incorrect, it will be absolutely correct to accept here the action of God’s grace, to a completely exceptional degree, unique and insurmountable for man. After all, if St. Jeremiah, and then the Baptist John, were sanctified by the Holy Spirit while still in the womb of their mother, did this remain without consequences throughout their lives, and was not the struggle with the power of sin made easier through this? And in relation to the Blessed One, who was blessed already at Her very conception, as at birth, did not the protecting, anticipatory and sanctifying grace of the Holy Spirit act all the time in order to weaken “another law operating in the members” and crown Her feat, Her struggle with complete victory? It goes without saying that this personal sinlessness cannot be achieved only by human strength without the grace of God. However, this latter does not carry it out mechanically, but with the participation, efforts, and feats of man himself, who in sin preserved the sophistry of his being, and the nobility of his origin, and his high destiny. In this and only in this sense, it is possible and should be said that the Most Pure One was protected by the special grace of God from all sin, moreover, committed not only in deed, but also in thought: no sinful attack, no sinful lust, by the grace of God, replenishing Her own feat, touched Her most immaculate soul. She was accessible to temptations only as tests due to the weakness of Her human nature, but not as temptations that entered inside and poisoned the heart with their poison and stained it. Her attitude towards temptation is completely similar to that of Her Divine Son, in Whom “we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with us in our weaknesses, but who has been tempted in all things like us, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15), Who “Having Himself endured, being tempted, is able to help those who are tempted” (3:18). Therefore, the Lord in the desert, due to this weakness, human nature, which He accepted out of love for the human race, after forty days of fasting, “the last one was hungry” (Matthew 4:2). However, the attempt of the devil, taking advantage of this weakness to turn it into sinfulness, to instill in it the attack of sin, at first at least in the form of sinful thoughts, was put to shame, and he was told: “Get thee from Me, Satan: for it is written: Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and thou shalt serve him alone” (4:10). Here the weakness of the damaged, weakened human nature, which was accepted by the Lord, precisely in order to return strength to it, and sinfulness, which, having its basis in weakness, was, however, forever overcome and rejected by Him, are quite clearly distinguished and contrasted. It is precisely this separation of weakness from sinfulness that we have in the Virgin Mary, with the difference that in the God-man this overcoming is achieved not only by the grace-filled sanctification of human nature, but also by the power of the incarnate God, while in the man Mary it was entirely a consequence of the purification of human nature, all-assisted by grace, by human ascent to the motherhood of God 12 . To this comparison we can add some further considerations. Original sin as weakness is the common fate of all, but this fate can be accepted differently. And if it is true that souls, at their very origin, are determined in freedom, then it is quite necessary to admit that entry into this world, the acceptance of original sin, occurs differently and in different senses. The Lord, remaining free from original sin, accepted, however, along with the “likeness of the flesh of sin” its consequence - weakness, he accepted it out of love for humanity, in order to overcome it from within, atone for sin. Of course, the attitude of the God-man himself to the flesh of sin and its weakness remains completely unique, as a sacrifice of love, complete and unconditional. But some kind of sacrifice at birth into this world with the acceptance of not only the “likeness”, but also the very flesh of sin, must also be allowed in relation to the Virgin Mary. She was prepared even before her birth by the feat of the Old Testament Church, and for such holiness, which is difficult to combine with greedy, selfish immersion in the flesh of the world, but rather forces us to assume the sacrificial acceptance of common sin as the common fate of people for the sake of their salvation. The Mother of God, although dependent, feminine and, so to speak, suffering, passively, goes together with her Son the entire path to Golgotha, starting with the Bethlehem manger and flight to Egypt, and accepts the torment of the cross. In Her face the mother of the human race, Eve, suffers and is crucified. She is called in church songs the Lamb along with the Lamb 13. But if this is beyond doubt regarding the earthly life of the Savior and the Mother of God, why cannot this same relationship, within certain limits, be extended to Her very Nativity? Why not accept that, given the holiness of Her spirit, even Her most pure Nativity, Her communion with the burden of original sin by virtue of accepting not only the likeness, but also the very flesh of sin, also, to a certain extent, has a sacrificial character? Out of love for suffering humanity, selfless doctors inoculate themselves with the most terrible diseases and move in among lepers. But it is precisely this very power of sacrifice, of saving love, that accumulates in the entire series of ancestors of the Mother of God, and it also gives a completely exceptional meaning and uniqueness to Her Nativity itself. In any case, we must not forget that this birth was foreseen and foretold by God himself in paradise (“the seed of the Woman will erase the head of the serpent”) and by the Holy Spirit was announced to the prophets David, Solomon, Isaiah and others. 14 So, the Mother of God, by the power of Her personal freedom and the grace of the Holy Spirit, is completely free from all personal sin at birth and after birth. Therefore, original sin has power in Her only as the weakness of human nature, but deprived of its seductiveness and powerless to cause sinfulness, even as a mental attack of sin or an involuntary movement of lust. This is the understanding of this issue in Orthodox teaching, since it can be established on the basis of the entire prayer life of the Church (see Appendix A). III. Catholic dogma of the Immaculate Conception of Our Lady Faith in the personal sinlessness of the Mother of God in Orthodoxy is, so to speak, a fragrant incense, a prayer cloud, thickening from the incense of Her pious veneration in the Church. If you ask yourself the question of what exactly it means, how to express the power and meaning of such veneration in theological language, then exactly these or similar dogmatic formulas involuntarily suggest themselves. However, such formulas, inevitable in theology, still remain in Orthodoxy in the position of private theological opinions, theologumena, they have not been the subject of broad church discussion. In this case, as in many others, the Church, while maintaining true veneration of the Mother of God, and the traces, and the correct teaching contained in it, did not begin to dogmatically identify this teaching. The need for it can arise either due to the reverent penetration of the mind into the mysteries of God, due to the needs of Christian contemplation and speculation, or due to the practical needs of the fight against false teachings and heresies. Apart from the ancient heresy of Nestorius, already defeated and condemned by the Church, that Mary was not the Mother of God, but the Mother of Christ, new heresies about the Mother of God appeared only recently, initially in Protestantism, which completely rejected the veneration of the Mother of God. This heretical teaching is the cause, and at the same time the consequence, of the distortion, impoverishment, and drying out of Christian piety in Protestantism. Indeed, what a deep and comprehensive change would occur in our entire religious life if we were to remove from it all those thoughts, feelings, experiences, and attitudes that are associated with the veneration of the Mother of God, with the living, experienced knowledge of the Mother of God’s presence in the world. Christianity with one Christ, but without the Mother of God - this is, in essence, some other religion than Orthodoxy, and Protestantism is separated from the Church not by its private false teachings and arbitrary cuts, but first of all and most significantly by its insensitivity to the Mother of God. How such insensibility arose and became possible in the Christian world is the mystery and mystery of Protestantism, or rather, Western. Christianity. In Catholicism, the veneration of the Mother of God, in general, is no less than in Orthodoxy, but here, too, it was subjected to that general spiritual oppression that weighs on the entire Catholic world. The need to demonstrate and feel the absolute power of the pope in everything, in particular in matters of faith, to dogmatize from above, to issue dogmatic laws where life does not require them at all, was reflected here too. Just such a law, not caused by anything other than the need for dogmatic rule, was the new Catholic dogma of 1854, issued by Pope Pius IX, which de facto anticipates in it the dogma of the future Vatican Council on papal infallibility in matters of faith. True, the bishops were formally surveyed by mail and telegraph and, of course, their consent was obtained, but in general this dogma already bears the shadow of future events, cast back, namely the Vatican Council with the Vatican dogma. Dogma 1854 not caused by any vital necessity (except for the voices of church parties or the visions of individual pious souls who do not yet represent dogmatic authority). For Catholicism, there was a time when the need for the dogma of the veneration of the Mother of God was really present; it was precisely when the Reformation rejected it. However, having not done this in a timely manner, it no longer had this need - now that the church rivers had entered the banks, and the Protestant denial of the Mother of God was exposed in its complete unchurchliness. And, in any case, the new dogma has no significance for the fight against Protestantism. The dogma of 1854 was in this sense an arbitrary doctrinaire of individual parties and voices and reflected all their influence with its one-sidedness. In general, Catholic dogma is an incorrect expression of the correct thought about the personal sinlessness of the Mother of God, and it does this by completely unsuitable means. Namely, he introduces problematic, and even downright incorrect teachings as the main elements of dogma, and completely incorrectly formulates the thought itself, completely denying the power of original sin in the Mother of God 15. It is, in itself, a dogmatic misunderstanding and even just a mistake. But he forces Orthodoxy to clarify the true dogma, the vital content of Orthodoxy, about the veneration of the Mother of God as the sinless, Most Pure, Immaculate Ever-Virgin. Unfortunately, Orthodox polemicists, with excessive zeal, began to deny not only the false dogmatic formula, but also this very truth, and began to talk about the imperfection of the Mother of God. Catholic dogma of 1854 states that the Most Rev. Virgo in primo instante suae conceptionis fuisse singulari omnipotentis Dei gratia et privilegio intuitu meritorum Christi Jesu Salvatoris humani generis ab omni culpae labe praeservatam immunem, i.e. from the first moment of her conception, by the special grace of almighty God and by special privilege, in consideration of the merits of Jesus Christ, the Savior of our race, she was preserved free from every stain of sin. The subject of the immaculata conceptio is the Mother of God from the first moment of her conception or, according to the interpretation of Alexander VII (Const. Sollicitudo omnium ecclesiarum 1661), at the moment of the creation and infusion of Mary’s soul into the body. At the same time, there is no question of the purity of the procreative activity of the parents at the moment of marital union. Conceptio activa, more precisely, generativa, but also the very conception of the child (conc. passiva) is not an object of privilege. For, if we understand that concupiscentia passiva, which is the direct product and content of the generative principles of the conceptio seminis, conc. camis, conc. inchoatae personae and in time, or at least in nature, precedes the infusion (Eingiessung) of the rational soul, then it does not yet contain the personality of Mary. In any case, privilegium corresponds only to that passive conception, which the later theologians call conceptio passiva adaequata et consummata, and the early defenders call conceptio germinis (as opposed to conc. seminis) and conc. spiritualis sive personalis, and sometimes vitalis sive animalis (as opposed to conceptio camis) and coincides with nativitas personae in utero. In this case, the product of birth is attributed purity not due to the method of origin, but, contrary to it, by a special divine action through which the soul of Mary was created and poured into the body 16. In relation to human conception, conc. humana, this is designated as conceptio divina, i.e. a Deo. The Immaculate Conception signifies that freedom from original sin that is given at baptism, and is, therefore, the baptism of Mary before Her birth, and, consequently, before the birth of Christ. The dogma under consideration in its theological formulation is associated with two prerequisites: 1) the Catholic teaching about the action of original sin in man in connection with the doctrine about his original state; 2) the doctrine of the origin of human souls through a new creative act - creationism. In the light of these two teachings, it is only possible to understand the main idea of ​​​​the dogma and evaluate it on its merits. Indeed, what we are talking about here is precisely that during the creation of Mary’s soul, the gift of justitia originalis, taken away from man during the Fall, was returned to Her, in the form of a special grace-filled exception. Her body came about in the usual way, but this is not an obstacle to the “immaculate conception,” because the body itself is not damaged by sin. The whole power of the latter lies precisely in the taking away of the gift of original righteousness, which is why its return alone is sufficient for the immaculate conception. It is this peculiar and, of course, very controversial teaching that determines the content of the dogma of the immaculate conception, introducing so. scholastic doctrine into the very heart of dogma and thereby demonstrating an example of scholastic doctrinalism. With the elimination of these school teachings, nothing will remain of the dogma except the general pious and completely correct thought about the sinlessness of the Virgin Mary. Nevertheless, some gaping contradiction in the dogma cannot help but be seen even with these premises. It was Mary’s body, conceived naturally, that for some time, at least in the embryonic state, remained unpurified and unblessed. It is said about the body that it is “a dirty and spoiled vessel and, like a lead weight, weighs down and binds the soul” 17. However, let us examine both premises in more detail. The Anselm-Duns-Scotian doctrine of the original nature of man and original sin, associated with the theory of satisfaction and representing the so-called. semi-Pelagianism triumphed in the Catholic church doctrine not only thanks to the proclamation of the dogma of 1854, but also the condemnation of the teachings of Bayus (XVI century), by the resolution of the Council of Trent (5 sessions 1, 2, 5,). What was Adam like before the Fall and what did he lose in it? The answer that is given by Catholic doctrine, with all the mitigations and reservations, is this: human nature itself has not changed, only the supernatural help that graciously regulates human nature has been taken away, as Bellarmine says about the integrity of the first man: integritas ilia, qua primus homo conditus fuit sine qua post eius lapsum homines omnes nascuntur, non fuit naturalis eius conditio, sed supernaturalis evectio... fuisse donum supernaturale (Bellarmini, de grat. primi hominis, 2, ibid, 5). The newest theologian directly says that man, due to the weakness of the body, infirmitas camis - not due to his fall, but by his very creation, is inherent in the character of animal life with all its imperfections. In other words, man is an animal, and, like all animals, he is subject not only to the possibility, but also to the necessity of reducing and ending life, if only the food created for him by God did not protect him from this forever 18, which is why the presence of the tree of life in the middle of paradise was required for this 19. In other words, man’s tendency to sin and the weakness of his nature stems from his connection with the body, which darkens the image of God in man 20 . This reveals a peculiar combination of practical semi-Pelagianism with Manichaeism, which penetrated into Catholicism through Augustinianism, a characteristic insensibility of the body as the fullness of the image of God in man. According to this view, human nature is defective due to its connection with the body; it lacks primordial, immanent harmony and natural grace, which is based in the sophia of man. Therefore, it can only be supported by an external influence, transcendentally, by supernatural grace, an act, so to speak, of divine arbitrariness, deus ex machina, not in conformity, but in incongruity, contrary to human nature. Moreover, this very nature, in its contradictoriness, is also an act of divine arbitrariness, which brought into existence a being that is obviously defective, self-dividing, in this sense inferior not only to angels, but also to animals. And, of course, it is completely incomprehensible that such a being is placed at the head of all creation and is given dominion over the entire animal and plant world; that it is “made this little thing from an angel” and is “joy” for the Wisdom of God. The same act of Divine arbitrariness, which has no basis in the very nature of man, is the incarnation of God, which becomes completely incomprehensible given the internal and irremovable defectiveness of the human being. Therefore, in the incarnation of God, it is not the revelation of true nature, the fulfillment of human nature, with the outline of the fullness of the image of God in man, but again some of our violence through external action on human nature. The Incarnation becomes an internally contradictory act; Catholic anthropology undermines the very foundations of Christology (and soteriology). Naturally, the incarnation itself becomes a kind of accident caused by... the fall of Adam, the merit and fruit of this fall: “o felix culpa, quae talem ac tantum meruit habere Redemptorem. O certe necessarium Adae peccatum, as the Catholic Church sings. “Hereditary sin can be attracted here only to the extent that, thanks to it, the garment of grace has been removed, which insufficiently covered it and prevented its manifestation,” and, in any case, it “can only be attracted as a meritorisher Grund, while the physischer Grund must still be sought in the union of the soul mit dem korruptiblen Leibe.” The body is now essentially structured no differently and connected to the soul no differently, as it was with the first man (ib.). The union of the soul with the body constitutes the main defect - Mangel, on the basis of which is sinfulness peccatum habituale, from which p. actuale. “One cannot be surprised that man, with the exceptional complexity of his nature from high and low, making him the center and connecting link of creation, is alone by his nature less able to satisfy his special position and calling, like purely spiritual beings above him and animals below him. Therefore, it would be very arbitrary and criminal to wish, in the interests of the honor of the Creator, that man, by virtue of the structure of his nature, should be such as to satisfy on his own the full implementation of his idea” (234). On the contrary, its complexity and imperfection allows the Creator to show special gracious help to it and magnify it more than the angels. In their understanding of grace in relation to man, Catholics primarily emphasize its supernatural, supercreative character, the moment of divine descent, as a deifying force, but they underestimate the grace-filled creation itself, God's image in man, real, living, and therefore accepting and, one might say, attracting to itself - with its natural grace, the very image of its nature - heavenly grace. Hence the mechanicalness and crudeness of the view of Catholic theology regarding status naturae purae, elevatae, lapsae. According to this doctrine of divine assistance, adjutorium divinum, Adam had balance in his nature and original righteousness, iustitia originalis; he also curbed the disorderly lust inherent in him by nature, like the rider of a horse. But if man’s strength was not in his special God-bearing nature, with its inherent inalienable freedom, but in the donum superadditum, which in a certain sense violates, changes human nature, gives strength unusual for it, then it becomes incomprehensible how a person could sin and reject this violence of grace? Or was grace itself powerless? Without a convincing answer to this question, Catholic theology is forced to understand original sin essentially as carentia or nuditas justitiae debitae, that is, a mechanical and equally arbitrary taking away of donum superadditium. If it can still be interpreted with a stretch as a punishment for Adam, then in relation to his descendants this is a matter of pure arbitrariness, which is confirmed by the dogma of the Immaculate Conception: what was arbitrarily taken away could be just as arbitrarily returned. Catholic doctrine introduces dualism into anthropology and, as a consequence of it, mechanically understands the union of the divine and the human in man: this is its Manichaeism. And his semi-Pelagianism is that no distinction is made here between the state of natural and fallen man, except in quantitative terms: that vulneratio of nature, which the scholastics talk about, consists in weakening human powers, but not in changing the very image of humanity in man. According to the Orthodox understanding, a sin committed by a person in his freedom affects him immanently in his nature, depriving it, due to its perversity, of the knowledge of God and the direct acceptance of His gifts. Punishment for sin is also not imposed from outside, but only confirmed by the Divine will, the self-determination of human nature, the consequence of sin. It acquires an ontological meaning, just as God’s commandment to man was ontological, although it had a deontological form: it was clothed in a command. Its observance was an ontological condition of human humanity, and its violation was an ontological catastrophe, introducing a new law and new life into man, in a certain sense unnatural, not meeting the ontological norms and tasks of man. For Catholics it is just the opposite: status iustitiae originalis is unnatural for man, even in the sense of his supernaturalism, and, on the contrary, status naturae lapsae is more consistent with status naturae purae. The state of man before and after the Fall is here determined from the outside, as a law, transcendental to his nature, as an act of the omnipotent will of God, not in man, but above man, or about man, first as mercy and then, as judgment and judgment, punishment: thus, what is essential here is that the state of man changes in his relation to grace, but not he himself. The Catholic Church expressed this idea in its condemnation of the teachings of Baiusa in the bull of Pius V in 1567. Baius taught about the original state that it is status naturae debitus (as opposed to indebitus), and all the advantages of the first parents in paradise were associated with this original human nature 21. All human suffering, even death, are punishments for sins, and this applies even to the Virgin Mary. This teaching was condemned in the form of a series of anathematized theses (Enchiridion Denzingeri, 1001, Sqq), and it was established that man can be created by God in the same state in which he is now and regardless of guilt, and, consequently, the grace of the original state is supernatural, i.e. superhuman, man is more an object of the influence of grace than its subject. The second time a similar teaching took place was in the 19th century. condemned in the person of Hermes and Gunther, who also argued that the original state was not of a grace-filled, but of a natural character: divine goodness and wisdom would not have allowed the creation of man without original justice, by which is meant the subordination of sensuality to reason. These glimpses of the doctrine of the primordial sophia of man were condemned at the provincial Council of Cologne 22 (p. 15). So, the currently accepted teaching of the Catholic Church on original sin and the original state considers sin as privatio, a withdrawal of grace, which, by the will of God, can be returned to man, and thereby he is restored completely and entirely to his original state. Therefore, the Mother of God is completely and completely likened to Eve before the Fall. Here, a kind of deus ex machina, a reference to divine arbitrariness, is used to such an extent that the entire human side of the preparation for the incarnation becomes insignificant and unimportant. In essence, the genealogy of Christ the Savior is abolished in its meaning. In fact, with such an understanding, this act of return iustitiae originalis could occur at any moment in history, and not in the fullness of time, and indeed history in general, as a common cause of humanity, as a single and coherent act, with the incarnation as its center, with such an understanding does not exist at all. All the mechanicalness of the Catholic view is manifested in this anti-historicism, which abolishes the power and meaning of the Old Testament preparation of humanity for the incarnation and, in essence, denies freedom for humanity. It turns out that the holiness of the Virgin Mary is inherent in Her not because of Her personal and hereditary righteousness accumulated over centuries in Old Testament humanity. It was not She who attracted to herself the extraordinary, exclusive gifts of the Holy Spirit, but a unilateral act of divine election, even before Her birth or at her very birth, which placed Her in a privileged (privilegium), an exclusive position in which She could no longer sin by her own power. And by this, human freedom and dignity, which are so inviolably preserved in Orthodox teaching, are humiliated 23. To this we must also add the fact that the idea of ​​anticipating the “merits” of the Savior in order to redeem Mary from original sin also suffers from crude legalism in the understanding of salvation. Of course, if we understand salvation as a redemption on “merits”, as the payment of a due debt, then perhaps it is also possible to imagine a credit transaction in which the debt is offset before its actual payment. True, this is injustice, partiality, which, if shown to one, could be shown to all, and thereby the consequences of Adam's original sin would be prevented for the whole world. Here there remains only a reference to the omnipotence of God, Who is free to forgive and have mercy, i.e., the direct path to Calvinism with its doctrine of arbitrary predestination. But the very possibility of such a preliminary amnesty destroys the entire ontology of original sin, according to which it is as much a wine (res. actuale) as it is a state (p. habituale). It is this ontology that resolutely opposes the Catholic thought of redemption on credit, the previously accomplished redemption of all. This latter is not, after all, a legal act of imputation of merit, but, first of all, a real change in the entire human nature through the incarnation of God; this is the grace-filled creation of man anew, which is realized for everyone in the Holy Spirit. baptism. Therefore, the anticipation of redemption, which the Catholic dogma of 1854 speaks of, even if it can still be thought of as an amnesty, that is, as a legal act, cannot be understood at all as the deepest degeneration of human nature. This cannot be anticipated before its actual occurrence. In this sense, both baptism and the idea that Presv. The Virgin was, as it were, baptized before the establishment of baptism, that is, before the onset of its very possibility, internally contradictory - in ontology there is no place for privilegium - the very thought of which exposes the anti-ontological jurisprudence of Catholic theology. And the dogma considered from this side is an ontological misunderstanding, an attempt with inapplicable means for a given case, that is, unsuitable. But it also has another dogmatic premise. It lies in the doctrine that souls at the birth of people are created by God each time through a special creative act, and in this act they are already deprived of the extraordinary sanctifying grace justitiae originalis. Because of this, they are born children of wrath, aggravated by original sin (although it would seem that, if this is so, then there is no personal guilt in this deprivation, and it is not clear why those who are deprived of this super-duty gift should also bear personal responsibility for this deprivation). It is assumed, according to this general thought about creation, that man is born of God in relation to sin as a tabularasa, free from every sinful attack, but in need of a special gift for protection from it, which he does not receive. In this case, the only source of sin is the body, and bodily birth is already the beginning of sin. But this role of the body contradicts to a certain extent the Catholic view of the absence of change in the nature of Adam after sin. On the other hand, this inevitably leads to the assumption that the body had to infect the soul of Mary with original sin, even if free from original sin by virtue of its privilegium. But then Her immaculate conception turns out not to be realized. However, all these are just partial inconsistencies and ambiguities of the dogma, which was carried out in a hasty manner by the administrative-dogmatic order of the pope and bears traces of this haste. Essential is its one-sided focus on the doctrine of the creation of souls directly by God Himself, from which it is dogmatized (of course, without any internal necessity for this and without sufficient motives) and this teaching, quite controversial, and in any case, incompletely clarified. The cumbersome question about the image of the origin of the soul, intertwined here, has its own complex and long history, determined mainly by the struggle of two views: one by one, souls are directly created by God - creationism; (This also includes Origen’s pre-existentialism, which was also condemned by the Church, according to which souls existed before incarnation, and this latter is a consequence of their heaviness or falling away from God). According to another view, souls are born from parents - generationism or traditionalism, as a result of the power invested by God during the creation of man: be fruitful and multiply. In church literature there was no shortage of opinions expressed in favor of both creation and the birth of the soul, although still the majority speaks out for the first 24. In the West Creationism has decisively triumphed in the Church; in Orthodoxy, also some theologians (M. Macarius, Apostle Sylvester) see it as the norm of Orthodox teaching, which, however, does not prevent others (for example, Arch. Philaret of Chernigov) from expressing a completely opposite opinion 25. The Word of God does not give a decisive answer, therefore the texts cited by the defenders of both opinions, in essence, do not confirm them at all, as they themselves admit. For traditionism is given: Gen. 1.28, 2.2. 23. Against him: Isa. 57.16; Is. 32.15; Prem. 8.19; Eccles. 12–7. Even less decisive are the arguments from reason, which clearly expose the impossibility of rationalizing thought to comprehend the mystery of its own birth, or the origin of the soul. The main argument against the possibility of the birth of souls from parents, after Thomas Aqu., is the simplicity, indivisibility and uncomplexity of the soul, which is contradicted by the idea of ​​the birth of the souls of children from the souls of parents. On the contrary, generationists point out that the thought of a new creation of souls breaks the unity of the human race, the transmission of hereditary sin becomes incomprehensible, and all heredity is generally eliminated. In addition, parents find themselves here providing only meat, or flesh, for their children and, in essence, are no longer parents. Others point out that the thought of unceasing creation violates the peace of God's sabbath after the end of the worldmaking and, as it were, subordinates the creative will of God to human lusts and conceptions. Considerable difficulties arise for creationism in the doctrine of the incarnation, which in this case turns out to be the adoption of only one body. – The conclusion is that the Mother of God cannot be called by this name, for She gave only flesh to Her Son. Finally, this question is sometimes complicated by the question of the dicho- or trichotomous structure of human nature: whether a person consists of only two parts, flesh and spirit, as is directly stated in many texts, or of three: spirit, soul and body (to which the subject texts can also be cited: 1 Thessalonians 5:23, Hebrews 4:12). The prejudice against trichotomy is partly explained here by the fact that it was adhered to by Apollinaris, who based his heretical Christology precisely on this teaching 26 . Given the trichotomous structure of man, it is natural to think about the origin of only the spirit directly from God, and the soul and body from the parents. With a dichotomous approach, it is more convenient to think that the soul is created from God, and only the body is created from parents. However, this question is not brought into such a connection in the history of dogma, although it arises naturally and, as it seems to us, inevitably. So, should we certainly speak out in favor of one or another school teaching, make a choice in favor of creationism or generationism (traditionism)? Or is there a third outcome possible here, completely freeing one from choosing between both points of view, and therefore leaving the possibility of seeing a number of misunderstandings here? The matter appears to us in precisely this way: the whole question received an inappropriate, anthropomorphic formulation as a result of the application of the category of time to the life of the Divine. The choice between generationism and creationism in this sense would mean one thing: when and how does God create the souls of people? But this is when in application to the work of God there is already a misunderstanding, because the category of time is not applicable to God. Everything that God creates, He creates from eternity and in eternity, and only for creation, for man it is revealed in time, as concrete filled time. It is wrong to think that time has its own limiting power for God, and therefore to assume, for example, that there was a time before the creation of the world, when God was not yet the Creator. This is the very question that the blessed one irritably waved away. Augustine: What did God do before the creation of the world? There can be only one answer to this: in God there is no when, and every when in Him is pre-eternal, super-temporal, and therefore does not exist and never: everything that unfolds in time abides in God from eternity. Therefore, on the one hand, it is said that God created the world in six days and then rested from His works, creating the world in its entirety; but at the same time, according to the testimony of the Word Itself: “My Father works until now, and I work.” This does not at all mean the continuation of acts of creation in time, as theologians usually imagine, but its eternity: every temporary creation (and all creation is temporary, for it is in time) is eternal in God. This does not at all mean that Origen’s doctrine of the pre-existence of souls is condemned by the Church, for Origen’s teaching distinguishes precisely two times and places another pre-earthly time before our earthly time, that is, it simply lengthens and somewhat complicates earthly time. Meanwhile, our thought refers to that which has the power of time, or rather, above time, as its basis. God has pre-eternally with Himself the world in its prototypes, and the world is Sophia’s eternity, reflected in the flow of time. Thus, every being from God proceeds in eternity and develops in time, once caused by a creative act: let it be. For God, nothing arises, but everything exists from eternity. That. The truths of creationism and generationism are completely compatible in their most general sense, i.e., as the doctrine of continuous emergence, as if an always ongoing, although once accomplished creative act - creationism, and of the autonomous, immanent formation or development of the created created world, which has received in itself the fullness of the creative powers of being - generationism. In dogmatics, both sides are distinguished as the creation of God and the providence of God, which is an unceasingly ongoing act of creation, once identified in all its originality and diversity: having left Your spirit, they will be created, take away their spirit, and will disappear, and return to their dust” (Ps. 103). In addition, although everything arises in time, traces, is limited by its framework, but, at the same time, it pre-emerges before its revelation. Everything is seeded in everything and is maintained in its existence by a one-time, supra-temporal creative act. This is in general, applied to the general foundations of existence. Now let us consider the same question regarding the creation of man. Man occupies a special place in the universe. On the one hand, he was created together with the whole world, everything is from the fullness of the divine, and in this sense he is one with the world. On the other hand, God Himself breathed into him the breath of life and honored him with His image. The latter is, of course, not just a similarity, a “property,” but an essence, ens realissimum in man, who is a created god, in the image of the existing God. In what concepts, philosophical and theological, should this breathing of a living soul into Adam by God Himself be expressed, this can and should constitute a special theological problem. There is no doubt, however, that from such an origin the spirit of Adam does not cease to be a created, created spirit. He is a creation, just like the angels, the “second lights” poured out from the one, first Ever-Essential Light. Through this origin Adam does not acquire any participation in the pre-eternal life of the Holy One. Trinity. But, as the image of God and, in a sense, a repetition of the Divinity Himself in the world, arising not only from creation with the word: let it be, but also from the mysterious internal secretion from the depths of the Divinity, through the “breathing in” of the soul, Adam is a premium, eternal being in the world. In other words, in a certain sense, Adam is created and uncreated, but brought forth by God, he is a created and uncreated being, temporary and eternal, a world - and a non-world, a super-world, a god in the universe, a citizen of this world, and through this its ruler. Thus, in his very composition (in whatever terms we express it: dichotomously or trichotomously, for this does not belong to the essence of the question) a person is dual, ontologically complex, two-part. He, as a citizen of the world, was created in the world and together with the world, and in this sense does not have a special person, does not require a special creation. But it arises from God through a special act not of peacemaking, but of “breathing in,” bringing out. This duality or two-partness of a person (dichotomy) is the metaphysical basis of his being, which is invariably reproduced in every person: he receives his hypostasis, his face, his self, from God, as His image, as a mirror of the Divine, in which It reflected His face. All these images, in a certain sense, merge into a single image of Adam, the old, and then the New, for there is one Divinity, which defines this image. But at the same time they are actually multiple, for each has in itself a reflection of the entire Divinity, has His image and through this is ens realissimum, like many reflections of a single sun in plurality. These are the foundations of human nature, reproduced in every person. And it is inappropriate, immodest and even naive to ask: was it enough for God to once breathe a living soul into Adam’s body and thereby reflect His image in it, or is this repeated many times? After all, both are already contained in a single creative act 27 of the creation of man. In it, every human person has existed for God from eternity, and does not arise accidentally or spontaneously, as a result of the play of world forces. That. The truth of creationism is that in the composition of man, in his very nature, there is a super-peaceful principle, which cannot occur by world forces, even by the force of heredity, but presupposes the direct participation of the Divine: like Adam, or together with Adam and in Adam, each person is specially created by God, is a repetition of His Image, as a God-like and God-emanating spirit, as a hypostasis, in itself bearing the seal and knowledge of its eternity and its divine origin. However, this does not relate to chronology, but to ontology: we are not talking about the fact that God “infuses” some kind of spiritual essence at a certain, specific moment in the development of the embryo into this latter. This is what the Latin theologians (and partly the Eastern patriarchs seduced by them) think so. 28 On the contrary, in each birth the form is realized and the eternal command of God is fulfilled as a plan for every person. In God and for God there is one image of Him, one person in the person of the primordial Adam, but in this image all the images of this Image are given, all of its individual, as realized in time, individualities. So, the question about the time of “infusion”, about its method - a deliberate, one-time creative act, or a general one-time creative act - is simply inappropriate, it is a kind of misunderstanding, because here it is only possible to ask what, and not how. Creationism simply expresses in a crude and naive form the truth about the super-mundane origin of the human hypostasis. The truth of generationism is that, just as in Adam God breathed the breath of life only after He created his body from the “earth,” i.e., the world, so in the sons of Adam the image of God, the spirit, the hypostasis, is realized only in man born from the world nature, from the tree of Adam. In other words, by natural conception and birth, which is as incomprehensible an action of the omnipotence of God as the birth of a soul, a body is created, and not only the body, but also the animal soul that inspires it. For, in fact, what is the living body of man, thirsting and waiting for the seal of his divine spirit? Is it just a pile of bones and meat? Is it really smaller and lower than animals, which in their “blood” have, according to Moses, a living soul, and this special animal soul has within itself not only power over the body, but also its own, albeit lower, spiritual energies, and its own mind, and its own body, and its own character? But on the body of a person with his animal soul, his innate, hereditary character is also imprinted; the person was not born tabularasa. His hypostasis, his divine spirit, the image of God, inhabits a certain church, and, as we tried to explain above, the soul agrees to this installation, deigns it, accepts it, as if making it by its act and becomes responsible for it. This is where genealogy and heredity come into play. If expressed dichotomously, then it must be said that a living, animate body of a person is born from the seed of parents, and a soul is infused into this body. If we express it trichotomously (which is essentially the same thing, which is why in the word of God we find both dichotomous and trichotomous expressions: for the consequences see Heb. 4:12), then we must say that from the parents not only the body is born, but also the animal soul, empirical character, and into this union of body and soul the spirit 29 is infused. The birth of only a body from parents, firstly, would humiliate a person, even before animals: a person’s place at the end of the six-day period presupposes for him complete possession of everything created in the previous days. Six days is human ontogenesis. He is, first of all, a perfect all-animal, having in himself everything that animals have, in particular the living animal soul. Secondly, the separation of body from soul and the origin of both separately, one through birth, the other through creation, is in any case no less incomprehensible than the birth of a soul from the souls of parents. Strictly speaking, both are equally incomprehensible in their how, and are the mystery of God’s creativity, a miracle. The metaphysical necessity of separate origin really exists, but not in relation to the body and soul of an animal, but in relation to the body in conjunction with the soul or simply to the living body on the one hand and the spirit, hypostasis, image of God, on the other. For the first form the cosmic, animal principle in man, while the second forms the divine. And, of course, they cannot be mixed in the sense that one can come from the other. But at the same time, there is a certain connection, conjugation, correspondence between them - there is the individuality of body and soul, the corresponding individuality of the spirit. And if creationism wants to abolish or weaken this connection, to destroy these bonds, then it encounters one obstacle in this, which is completely insurmountable for it, which further confuses the blessed. Augustine, specifically on original sin and heredity in general. Since creationism includes this principle, it becomes discolored. It loses its main strength - the opposition of soul and body, as independent principles. The statement of radical creationism about the complete independence of the created soul from the body being born would lead to a complete denial of heredity and genealogy, the unity and connection of the entire human race, original sin and the entire Old Testament economy, including the genealogy of the Savior. For the meaning of the latter comes down, at most, to the preparation of the body of the Savior, detached from all spiritual power. Creationism in this sense is a crude and naive occasionalism and atomism in the understanding of human destinies; each person arises separately, has his own destiny, is separated from his own kind through his origin, by virtue of a new creative act. When carried out consistently, this teaching breaks all of Christology and soteriology as the teaching of a single Adam, Old and New. To the extent that creationism is ready to include a pre-established relationship between the spirit created by God and the body born from parents, it actually loses its position and represents only a kind of traditionalism. The same occasionalism also affected the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Mother of God in the dogma of 1854. It was necessary to introduce this controversial, dark and undeveloped doctrine into the very core of the dogma, to perform such an imprudent and unwise act, because in this way it seemed easiest to establish the sinlessness of Mary as a privilegium given on credit, in an extraordinary manner, and thereby resolve everything dogmatic difficulties associated with the issue of veneration of the Mother of God. Mary is removed from the general order at the creation of Her soul. In it, the donum super-additum, taken away from everyone, is returned to Her. But since this is an act of unilateral divine arbitrariness, this privilegium would seem to be possible for all the descendants of Adam. This, in essence, undermines the entire inexorable power of original sin, which unites everyone not only in devotion to God, but also in salvation. That. this imprudent dogma shakes the very foundations of Christian dogma, and moreover, deprives the Most Pure Virgin of Her own merit in sinlessness, for in advance, freely, as a privilegium, it endows Her with immunity in relation to sin. So, this dogma, although it pursues a good goal - the glorification of the Most Pure One, but does this by completely unsuitable means and is an example of dogmatic arbitrariness and haste. According to Catholic dogma, the “immaculate conception” of the Mother of God simply means a different creation of Her, unlike all other people: She is endowed with a special gift that other people are not endowed with, only everything. And this corresponds, indeed, to advantage, understood in the sense of privilegium ["privilege"]: here we have an example of a mechanical coarsening of theological concepts, with the elimination of human freedom in favor of arbitrary pre-destinism, the improper application of the ex opere operato principle. Removed from original sin, Mary would have been removed from all humanity, separated from the tree of the old Adam, and yet it was through Her that a new branch was to be grafted into it. An extraordinary, one-of-a-kind outpouring of the gifts of the Holy Spirit both at conception, and in the conception, and in the birth of the Most Holy One. The Virgin was the divine replenishment of human weakness. It was, firstly, for the sake of the already revealed righteousness and holiness of the “godfather” Joachim and Anna and the entire godly series of their ancestors, and the holiness of birth corresponds to the holiness of parents. Secondly, it was for the sake of holiness and the Most Pure Virgin Herself, revealed even at Her earthly birth, in Her pre-temporal and pre-mundane self-determination. And as far as we can talk about the “immaculate conception” and the birth of the Most Pure and Most Immaculate, here too grace does not automatically or mechanically choose for itself an object that remains passive in this election, but responds to the oncoming movement of human nature itself. The Mother of God gains freedom from personal sinfulness, retaining in Her nature all the power of natural sin and her weakness. And it is wrong to talk about Her baptism before the birth of Her and Her Son. The Mother of God was baptized along with all the apostles on the day of Pentecost. And, besides, according to the law of sin, She tasted death. She did not have freedom from death, which for our first parents was associated with the absence of original sin. In a word, from all sides the newly invented dogma seems unnecessary and contrived. IV. Glorification of Our Lady According to the meaning of Catholic dogma, the decisive event in the life of the Mother of God took place before Her birth, at Her conception, when She was freed from original sin. Everything that followed in Her was only the implementation of this act of deus ex machina - the return of donum superadditum to Her. On the contrary, Orthodox veneration of the Most Pure One does not know such a single threshold, for Her whole life is a series of steps in a continuous ascent from earth to heaven. In relation to original sin, there are only two possibilities - to have it or to be free from it. On the contrary, on the path of personal holiness there is a continuously increasing sanctification: the true Sophia image of the creature, which is the ontological basis of Its holiness, and together with the power of being, is realized in creation more and more brightly until it appears with full force. Then creation is already a revelation of the Trinity Wisdom, in which the Word of God, begotten by the Father, is embraced by the Holy Spirit. This is precisely the path of the Mother of God. In the life of the Mother of God, one can point out a number of events that the Church celebrates with special celebrations or prayers and which form facets in Her spiritual growth and glorification. Such events are: the Nativity of the Mother of God, the Entry into the Church, the Annunciation (with the associated visit of Elizabeth), the Nativity of Christ, then a series of events of His earthly life from the flight into Egypt to standing at the cross, the Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, Pentecost and the Dormition of the Mother of God. Celebrating the Nativity of the Mother of God, the Church indicates Her special, pre-chosen holiness already at birth itself, due to which Her further development towards the Mother of God was possible. The Church also celebrates the birth of John the Baptist, as especially blessed, along with the Mother of God, testifying that the celebrated holy birth is not yet an “immaculate conception” with liberation from the power of original sin, but is only the beginning of a holy and ever-increasing life in the sanctification. Childhood purity and holiness, associated with ignorance of sin and special chosenness of God, must be tempered, perfected and increased in strength - the absence of sin must be replaced by its victorious overcoming. The introduction of the living Church of God into the church, the entombment of the Virgin Mary, corresponds to the next step in the consecration of the Mother of God. The church was the only consecrated place in the world on earth where God lived (cf. Solomon’s prayers at the consecration of the church - 1 Kings, 8-13 ff.; 2 Chron. 6, 5 ff.). This was a place of paradise in the land of the curse, [which here was lifted from the world and creation, for the church was holy. And to this holy place, where the angels went, the Most Holy One was taken into communion with them. The Virgin was introduced by the High Priest, by prophetic inspiration, into the Holy of Holies. From this time on, the power of the Old Testament Church as the only place where man meets God begins to be abolished. Mary becomes the Church of the church and takes upon herself the power of church consecration. The meaning of the church has already been exhausted, and it remains only to be a place of prayer meeting until the moment when the church veil is torn apart and the Old Testament church shrine is abolished. The Annunciation is already the accomplishment of the Mother of God. The descent of the Holy Spirit and His infusion into the Mother of God, who by the power of this infusion received the ability to conceive without family, is generally the highest blessing that can be imagined for creation. The indwelling of the Holy Spirit already means the deification of human nature in the person of the Mother of God. And, however, at the same time it was not yet salvation, but only preparation for salvation. Life in the Holy Spirit was revealed to man only through Christ and in Christ, who begged the Father to send the Holy Spirit after His ascension. Before this, the Holy Spirit is revealed as an overwhelming force that acts on a person in a certain sense from the outside, transcendentally, but not from the inside, not immanently; the latter became possible only when Christ became incarnate and became immanent to humanity. Therefore, the unique infusion of the Holy Spirit into the Virgin Mary, which is not repeated with another created being, does not exclude Pentecost for Her, does not close the possibility of receiving the grace of the Holy One. The Spirit, already as the beginning of a person’s own life, as his inner deification. The Virgin Mary became the Church into which the Holy Spirit moved in for the incarnation of Christ, but as a person, for her nature born in original sin, like every person, she needed baptism and acceptance of the Holy Spirit, and She accepted the fiery tongue of the Holy Spirit together and on an equal basis with all the apostles, with the entire Church. The grace of the Annunciation turned out to be compatible with the grace of Pentecost. As a person burdened with original sin, Mary needed redemption by the blood of Her Son and the assimilation of this redemption through the gift of the Holy Spirit, in the language of the sacraments of the Church, that was baptism (with the Holy Spirit and fire) and anointing (sealing with the Spirit), which in itself sufficiently refutes Catholic dogma. Otherwise, there would be no reason for Her to be present at Pentecost (it is noteworthy that the only mention of Mary in the Acts of the Apostles refers specifically to this story, and on the icons of the Descent of St. The Mother of God of the Spirit is always depicted in the center of the apostles, receiving Her special fiery tongue). This compatibility of the Annunciation and Pentecost is significant; it testifies that even the most complete acceptance of the Holy Spirit for the Mother of God did not eliminate the need for baptism and atonement, which is why the Mother of God, without hesitation, calls Her Son Her Savior: “My Spirit rejoiced in God, My Savior.” The Holy Spirit, who descended at the Annunciation, gave the power of unfamily conception; He made Her the earth of God, from which the Body of Christ, the new Adam, grew. The action of the Holy Spirit in the Annunciation is therefore a direct influence on the body of the Mother of God (similar to how the Spirit of God rushed above the water at the beginning of the universe), although, of course, with the participation of the Spirit; on the contrary, Pentecost was a new spiritual birth, according to the word of the Lord in a conversation with Nicodemus. Beginning with the Annunciation, the Virgin Mary becomes the Mother of God, as the Mother of the Forerunner, Elizabeth, calls Her in prophetic insight, in whose person the entire Old Testament Church greets Her: “And from where do I receive this, that the Mother of my Lord come to me!” Becoming the Mother of God does not mean only a temporary state that continues during pregnancy and ends with the birth of Christ, it is a property that lasts forever, for we always please the Mother of God as the real Mother of God, not only in the short-term past, but also in the present, as is expressed in the icon images of the Mother of God with the Child in her arms. The connection between mother and child is generally a kind of common life, although it is vaguely recognized. The connection of this common life is expressed in the unity of the flesh, which, although it has become separate, is also common. It does not stop or end with birth, but extends throughout life. This inner, invisible power of motherhood, manifested in human birth, is, so to speak, a natural icon or prototype of the Mother of God. By inspiration of St. Holy Spirit flesh The Virgin acquired the supernatural ability of unmarried conception, thus becoming the beginning of humanity in the New Adam. The action of the Holy Spirit here exceeds the powers of human nature, it exceeds the natural powers and the Most Holy One Herself. Virgo and in a certain sense anticipates Her own path. For Her personally, Pentecost, which revives the spirit, should have preceded the Annunciation, which directly affects the body (this postulate about the baptism of the Mother of God before the Annunciation is precisely what is fulfilled in Catholic dogma). However, in reality, this logical order must certainly be overturned: for the spiritual rebirth of the entire human race, and at its head the Mother of God herself, the completed incarnation of God, which already presupposes the Mother of God, is necessary. That. The Virgin Mary had to become the Mother of God by the power of the Holy Spirit before Her own salvation from original sin, which occurred only at Pentecost. Therefore, the Annunciation precedes Pentecost, which in turn presupposes it. If the Entry into the Church is the worship of the Most Holy One. Virgins, the Annunciation is the fulfillment of this enthronement: the Virgin Mary becomes “a consecrated Church, Her womb is more spacious than the heavens.” But the incarnation, which is also the descent of God, takes place in time, the pre-eternal God is born as a Child and gradually only develops to the extent of perfect age, undergoes His earthly service, accepts death on the cross, resurrection and ascension, and each of these facets corresponds to its own stage in the implementation of the work of salvation. Likewise, the Mother of God in the Mother of God develops and is accomplished along with the completion of our salvation, and the Virgin Mary, from Whom the Son of God was incarnate by the Holy Spirit, becomes the Mother of God, the Queen of heaven and earth only beyond the bounds of time, after Pentecost and the Dormition. Therefore, we can say that in the Annunciation, as in the seed of a plant, “the main thing of our salvation and the manifestation of the Mysteries from the age of God” is pre-laid: both the Mother of God and the God-Humanity. But grace does not force and always leaves room for human achievement and freedom. And the Annunciation, although it imparted to the Mother of God such spiritual powers as were unusual for any human being, leaves for Her the possibility of achievement. And along with the earthly ministry of the Savior, the Holy One also passes His ministry. The Virgin, all the time remaining in humility, shadow and obscurity, but, undoubtedly, participating maternally in the sacrificial service and suffering of Her Son and growing in these sufferings. The Church, through countless prayers, “the Holy Cross,” expresses this idea about the participation of the Mother of God in the suffering of the Son. And the little that the Gospels contain, when the veil of silence about Mary is lifted, testifies precisely to Her trials, struggles, temptations, and sufferings. This includes: the incident at the Presentation of the Lord - the prophecy of Simeon, and the confusion after the loss of the Youth and finding Him in the church among the elders, and the desire to see Him during His ministry, and the hasty appeal to Him for a miracle in Cana of Galilee, and standing at the cross, in the image of which the Calvary torment of the Mother about the death of the Son on the cross was expressed. (Catholics have a special memory of the “seven sorrows” of the Mother of God.) There is and cannot be any indication that the Mother of God succumbed to the power of sin and temptation, but almost all of these indications testify to Her sufferings and struggles. This was the sacrificial service of the Mother of God, the Mother of God being performed, in the fullness of which its fulfillment followed. But in order for the last and only obstacle to it, consisting of original sin, to be eliminated, it was necessary to be baptized at Pentecost, liberated from natural sin, born in the New Adam, and put on Christ by the one who gave birth to Him. With Pentecost, the work of the Mother of God can be considered completed: the ladder from earth to heaven has been restored, the goal of peacemaking has been realized, for a perfect, deified man has appeared. The Mother of God, personally sinless and purified from original sin, was the expression of Ever-Virginity in creation, the complete revelation of Sophia in man. She was not freed from the law of death, which is valid for all the descendants of the old Adam: in Her humility, the Mother of God did not refuse to go through the universal path of death in order to sanctify it. But death no longer had power over Her. However, a long time of existence on earth must have elapsed before Her departure. This was the time of the ministry of Our Lady to the militant Church, for which She was the affirmation and focus. Nowhere is it written down or told in books about the significance for the destinies of the Church that the Ever-Virgin’s stay on earth had. No “histories of early Christianity” noticed this, and yet the presence of the Mother of God on earth is the real mystery of early Christianity, its strength, its joy (in particular, in the writings of St. John the Theologian, the most New Testament of the New Testament writers, one cannot help but see, following Origen, the spirituality associated with his special closeness to the Mother of God). But this earthly service was needed by the earthly Church, although it was no longer needed and could not add anything to the fullness of the Mother of God. The Most Pure One appeared as a perfect vessel of the Holy Spirit, as if it were His personal incarnation: in Her not only was the fullness of His gifts revealed, but in Her most pure face His personal hypostasis shines. To fully understand what has been said, we must also dwell on the meaning of Her Assumption. The completed Mother of God also presupposes the glorification of the Mother of God, which is Her Dormition. However, the first impression of this event is not glorification, but some humiliation: why was the Mother of God, the holiest of all creation, destined to taste death when Elijah and Enoch passed this fate even in the Old Testament? Why did She Who appeared as the inspired Church, the Throne of Heaven, turn out to be guilty of death? One can here cite a religious-practical motive that involuntarily suggests itself: With Her death, the Most Holy Virgin, following Her Son, passed the gates of death, which all humanity was doomed to pass through. She sanctified this path and did not want to separate here from the entire human race, of which She is the Matter, after adopting it to Her at the cross in the person of John. And according to the teachings of the Church, the Mother of God meets the departing soul on this terrible path, and her last dying prayers are addressed to Her (see Canon of prayer for the departure of the soul to the Most Holy Theotokos). The Universal Mother is faithful and close to the human race even in the hour of death. Along with this boundless love of the Mother of God for people, we must remember here Her boundless humility, to which She remained faithful to the end. “All the glory of the Tsar’s Daughter is within (Ps. 44:14), it is said about Her in the prophetic psalm, - hidden by humility.” Is it possible not to be amazed that the Mother of God, in Her great humility (like Her relative, the Forerunner), did not perform miracles on earth, at least within the framework of the Gospel narrative, and only once asked Her Son (and even then indirectly) to perform a miracle in Cana of Galilee (John 2:1). And if Her Son humbled himself to a free death out of love for the human race, then could His Most Pure Mother separate from Him in this? This gives at least some partial answer to why the Mother of God did not escape death in some special, extraordinary way. But here it is essential to establish the difference between the death of the Lord Jesus Christ and His Mother. The first death was voluntary, but not natural. Therefore, as unnatural, it could only appear violently, and to this violence, due to the Lord’s self-abasement, He did not provide any counteraction. The God-Man, by virtue of His unfamily conception from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, appeared free from original sin, and therefore the New Adam was not subject to death, at least no less than the old Adam before the Fall. And if the New Adam freely accepted death, which reigned in the world after the crime of the Old Adam, in order to abolish death, then the powerlessness of this unnatural death over Him was exposed by His glorious Resurrection. Death could “attack, but not hold” Him, and it itself turned out to be for Him only a special state of His theanthropic life, which had the task of uniting with Himself everyone, dominating the living and the dead (“In the grave carnally, in hell with the soul, like God, in paradise with the thief, and on the throne you were, Christ, with the Father and the Spirit, fulfilling everything, the Indescribable”), And like the Lord He did not accept a mortal body, burdened with sin, but only the likeness of the flesh of sin, and His death was not a true or ordinary human death, but only a likeness of death. On the contrary, the Dormition of the Mother of God - this is important to dogmatically understand - was a true, real, natural death to which She was subject as a person, which is why Her death was not violent, but natural. The providence of God deliberately protected Her from the wrath of the synagogue of the Judaizers, although she treated the Mother of the Lord with hatred, in order to reveal with particular clarity the naturalness of Her death. The latter, according to ancient Tradition, is even accompanied by some embarrassment: the Mother of God asks that Her spirit be accepted by Her Son and that the demonic images that surround the path of death be removed by Him. From here follows, by the way, a clear, practical refutation of the Catholic dogma of the immaculate conception of Mary, in the sense of Her complete removal from original sin. If this were so, then the return of donum superadditum to the Virgin Mary to the same extent as Adam had it before the Fall, that is, freed from original sin, would inevitably have to mean liberation from the power of death. The latter was part of the donum superadditum, which in this sense represented some violence against human nature, created by mortal nature. And the Dormition of the Mother of God is clear proof of the falsity of this entire theological construction. True, Catholic theologians can object to this that immortality was still a special, special gift associated with eating the fruits of the tree of life, which was not available to the Most Holy One. Virgo for his absence in the world. However, such apologetics would be theologically insincere, because the direct and positive connection of death specifically with sin is quite clearly established both in the Old and New Testaments: the judgment of God in paradise over the first parents and the word of the apostle. Paul (Rom. 5). And eating from the tree of life, which, according to some fathers, is Christ, was not compensated by the possessions in the womb of God? But Rev. The Virgin tasted death as subject to original sin and by virtue of the law of this sin. Therefore, She did not overcome death by Her own power, death was defeated for Her by the power of Christ: the deceased Mother of God was awakened from her dormition by Her Son, She was resurrected by Him and thus appeared as the firstborn of the resurrection of all creation. But this resurrection only confirms the power and authenticity of death. Catholics, dating back to the Vatican Council, have, as far as we know, a draft dogma on the resurrection and ascension of the Mother of God. It is difficult to understand what exactly causes this need to dogmatize (except, perhaps, the need to implement Vatican infallibility), in relation to the Mother of God, whose humility makes Her rather the subject of silent, especially intimate and chaste worship. However, if for some reason it is necessary to call this mystery by its name, then we must unconditionally admit that in the essence of this projected dogma, apart from its possible formulation, into which, one must think, the usual share of Latin theology will be brought, there is absolutely nothing new for the Orthodox consciousness. In fact, Orthodoxy contains the doctrine of the resurrection, ascension to heaven and heavenly glorification of the Mother of God (something that corresponds in Catholic iconography to the motif of le couronnementdela Vierge, which, however, is not alien to Orthodoxy). All this represents the content of the Feast of the Assumption, to the extent that its essence is revealed in its liturgical interpretation, as it is established through iconography and worship, in this case being the only church source for theology on this subject. It is known that information about the celebration of the Dormition of the Mother of God dates back only to the 4th century, and earlier it has no traces in church Tradition; the same applies to the very legend about the event of the Assumption, which has been preserved, in the story of Meliton of Sardis, clearly embellished with legend, since the end of the 4th century “about the death of the Mother of God.” However, the legendary style of this story is in no way an objection to its truthfulness, so to speak, its religious realism. For historical naturalism, to which “religious-historical” research strives, is completely inappropriate where events take place simultaneously in all worlds and even outside the world: here the only appropriate language is the language of legend, which is quite similar to the symbolism of iconography, which is also alien to naturalism. In any case, this lack of information about the veneration of the Dormition of the Mother of God corresponds to the general absence of direct indications about Her veneration in the first centuries of Christianity, shrouded in sacred silence. For unbelief and rationalism, this is a sufficient reason to deny this veneration. But for reverent comprehension and faith it is clear that here we are dealing with a special, mysterious will of Providence, which granted the veneration of the Holy One. Virgos to free inspiration, not bound by “history,” faith and love. A remarkable feature in this matter is that the veneration of the Mother of God appears with some axiomatic obviousness, takes root with irresistible force in the Christian heart to the extent of its churching; along with its growth, its degree, a certain measure of churchliness is determined. The Gospels tell us about the Savior, His image stands before our eyes, sculptured by the four Gospel narratives and the testimony of the apostles. The image of the Mother of God, not captured anywhere except for individual features, enters the heart by itself, being recreated in it, as if from its own fabric, in accordance with the fact that the Mother of God belongs to the human race and that in this sense the entire Christian Church is the Mother of God. Therefore, this very veneration of the Mother of God is connected with her, which in individual souls is born as a later fruit than the love and veneration of Christ the Savior: love for the Son teaches love for the Mother, not vice versa. If you think about all this rhythm and harmonies inherent in the revelation of the Mother of God, this lack of early information about Her and, in general, the thick shadow hiding Her, becomes natural and ceases to confuse. According to Church Tradition, which is fully confirmed in worship and iconography, the Ever-Virgin, having died, gave up Her Spirit to Her Son, who appeared to receive Him in glory with all the holy angels. This is, as it were, a precursor to the second glorious coming, which, however, is not the Last Judgment, for she who is presented to judgment does not come, but has passed from death to life. However, this is death, like the separation of the soul from the body, which remains incorruptible in the tomb for three days. It differs from the three-day Sabbath in the tomb of the Savior, which was an active state beyond the tomb, a sermon in hell, a necessary part of the saving feat. Here this is the human lot, which could not be avoided in order to be freed from the mortal body and put on the body of the resurrection. And after these three days, the Mother of God was resurrected with Her body and taken from the world with it, to the surprise of the angels: “The angels saw the Dormition of the Most Pure One and were amazed at how the Virgin ascended from earth to heaven” (chorus of the holiday 30). Here, first of all, the ascension to heaven of the risen Mother of God is established, not by the own power of the Divine, like the ascension of the Savior, but by the power of God. This removal from the world does not mean a complete withdrawal from it with the cessation of all connection with it; on the contrary, as is sung in the troparion of the holiday, “in the Dormition you did not leave the world, O Mother of God,” but, however, at the same time She left the world, for she was ascended from the world to heaven. In Her and with Her, the world itself has already tasted or anticipated that resurrection, with the acceptance of Which it ceases to be “the world”, in the sense of falling away from God and enmity towards God, but again becomes a world-cosmos, “good is good”, “a new heaven and a new earth, in which truth lives.” The Mother of God in her resurrected and glorified body is the already accomplished glory of the world and its resurrection. With the resurrection and ascension of the Mother of God, the world is completed in its creation, the goal of the world is achieved, “wisdom being justified in her children,” for the Mother of God is already this glorified world, which is deified and open to the reception of the Divine. Mary is the heart of the world and the spiritual focus of all humanity, all creation. She is already a completely and completely deified creature, giving birth to God, bearing God, receiving God. She, man and creation, sits in heaven with Her Son, who sits at the right hand of the Father. She is the Queen of Heaven and Earth, or, in short, the Queen of Heaven. The glorification of the Mother of God, Her elevation from creatureliness, as it were, to a supercreated state of perfect deification, to the dignity of the Queen of Heaven, corresponds to some special, almost completely invisible moment or event for the created sinful eye, also belonging to Her Dormition, although already lying beyond the boundaries of earthly life and this world itself. This is exactly what is symbolically depicted in icon painting as the laying on of a crown, the crowning of the Mother of God with a royal crown, a motif equally inherent in both Orthodoxy and Catholicism. It is expressed verbally in the naming of the Mother of God the Queen of Heaven, which is, of course, not only a verbal decoration, but expresses a certain reality, a spiritual essence. In the days of Her earthly humility and humiliation, the Most Pure One was undoubtedly not called this Queen, although she was pre-elected for this from eternity and after the Annunciation she became such in predestination 31 . She became Her after Her Dormition, which in this sense also became a certain boundary. What is this line and what does it consist of? Here, first of all, an analogy with Her Son arises, Who only after His resurrection testifies of Himself to the apostles: “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to Me,” as if earlier He, at least in His Humanity, did not yet have that fullness of power that was given to Him upon the glorification of His body. The Lord, in His perfect Humanity, accepts the glory for this humanity, acquired by Him through perfect obedience to the will of the Father. In. 17.4–5. “I glorified You on earth, I completed the work that You gave Me to do; and now glorify Me, Father, with You, with the Glory that I had with You before the world was.” The Lord eternally has this Glory in His Divinity and receives it from the Father in His Humanity, so that in His person, the perfect God-man, in whom the divine and human natures were inseparably and inextricably united, the Creator and creation, glory and power and splendor rested on His created human nature. The Lord has the Glory that He receives from the Father, this is His own, the Glory that has belonged to Him from all eternity, shining in His most pure flesh, the Glory of the Transfiguration. He is therefore God in both of His natures (due to the so-called περιχώρησις - communicatio idiomatum) by I. Damascene. On the contrary, the Mother of God, in Her glorification, receives through the Son from the Father glory and power, which are not inherent in Her by human nature. This is, in the precise sense, deification, the overshadowing of the divine grace-filled life of that being to which it is not inherent and transcendental. Hence the whole difference remains between the Son and Matter, between His and Her power and glory. The first is limitless and unlimited, absolute, like the power of God in creation. The second is derivative, as a gift of grace, and because of this derivativeness it is not limitless, not absolute. In other words, the Lord is God by nature, but the Mother of God is not God by nature, no matter how complete and perfect Her deification may be, but only by grace. In Her person only what is destined for all people is fulfilled: “Az reh: you are gods” (Ps. 81.6. Wed. 10. 10.345). Hence the well-known antinomy in determining the measure of the Mother of God’s power, as it is done in prayer addresses to the Mother of God. On the one hand, She is exalted as the “Heavenly Almighty Queen”, “all the elements, heaven and earth, air and sea obey You, and all the opposing souls tremble with fear, fearing Your holy name”, “for all that you can, whatever you want” 32, Christians appeal to Her in the same way as to the Savior: “Most Holy Mother of God, save us” (and we turn to all saints: “pray to God for us”). But at the same time, it is quite clearly indicated that this power of the Mother of God is derivative, conditioned by Her “holy and all-powerful prayers,” with which She “continuously” “prays to Christ our God for everyone, and causes everyone to be saved.” And in this capacity, the Mother of God is only the first in a series of holy prayer books, as is depicted, for example, in all dismissals: “Christ, our true God, through the prayers of Thy Most Pure Mother,” etc. A similar place for the Mother of God is given in the rank of proskomedia. She is an intercessor for the human race and a mediator between God and people, as a glorified and deified person. If the Lord is an intercessor and High Priest, as the one sacrificing Himself, then She is an intercessor before Him and bears in such a capacity, according to the vision of St. Andrew the Fool, the bishop's omophorion as a prayer book before the Son, as the humanity of His God-manhood. He unites two natures in Himself, and She in Herself lifts and elevates humanity and all creation to God. As a creation, She does not participate in the divine life of the Most Holy One. Trinity by nature, as Her Son participates, She only joins it by the grace of deification. But this grace has already been given to Her to the utmost and final degree, so that by its power She is the Queen of Heaven. Between Her and all the saints, no matter how high they are, angels or men, there remains an insurmountable line, for the Church does not cry to any of them: save us, but only: pray to God for us. In relation to the entire human race, She is already on the other side of the resurrection and the Last Judgment; neither one nor the other has power for Her. She is only present at the Last Judgment at the right hand of Her Son, again as an unchanging intercessor, as St. saw Her “in the air praying for us.” Andrew in Vlaherna. She is already a glorified creation, prior to her general resurrection and glorification. She is the already accomplished Kingdom of Glory, at a time when the world is still in the “kingdom of grace.” Therefore, we must recognize a significant fundamental difference between the current afterlife state of the glorified saints, beholding the face of God, and the glory of the Mother of God, for the saints are not yet in the Kingdom of Glory. They undergo a certain grace-filled growth from strength to strength, or ongoing sanctification. In this sense, although they have freed themselves from the evil power of the sinful world, they still remain in this world, and not above the world, not above the world, not in heaven, like the Mother of God. They still have to resurrect and unite with the body, which, although it remains with holy “relics” and does not completely lose its connection with their soul, remains separated from it until the time of the general resurrection. Of course, we pass through the world of saints from above, it is accessible to the Mother of God, who therefore appears to Her chosen ones, accompanied by the apostles and saints. But still the distance between heaven and earth remains in force. Our Lady resides in heaven as the Queen of Heaven; Saints, although they stand before the throne of the Most High, do not enter the intellectual heaven, which is above all creation. They taste eternal life from the sight of the Lord, but they also maintain a connection with the life of the world, which the Queen of Heaven has surpassed. Therefore, She no longer grows from glory to glory, does not ascend from strength to strength, for there is nowhere and nothing to grow and ascend to. She participates, albeit by grace, in the life of the Divinity Himself, in the Most Holy Trinity of the existing God. “You see, people, and wonder: for the mountain, holy and visible to God, will be lifted into the heavenly abode of the highest, the earthly sky will be inhabited by the heavenly and incorruptible settlement” 33. This difference is expressed externally by the fact that saints always have their own saints. relics, no matter open or hidden, unknown to the world. They have in the world their sanctified body, embraced by their spirit, which is now the place of their grace-filled presence in the world and connection with it, and together with the seed of the coming body of resurrection. Holy relics are the firstfruits of the body of resurrection in this world, but only the firstfruits, and, moreover, inherent precisely in this world. The Dormition of the Mother of God is evidence that when applied to Her there cannot be even a thought about Her relics. Even this very thought is blasphemous and blasphemous, just as the thought of the relics of the Savior would be the same. The most pure body of the Lord was in a state similar to St. relics 34, three days in the tomb, until the resurrection. After him, the Lord remained with His glorified body in this world, prefiguring with it the coming bodies of resurrected humanity. After the Ascension, He lifted His Most Pure flesh from this world, presenting it only in the Sacraments of body and blood. But the resurrected body of the Mother of God was also taken from this world to heaven; it is not in this world, which cannot accommodate its shrine. The Queen of Heaven with Her body resides in heaven, together with Her Son, sitting at the right hand of the Father. The superiority of the Mother of God is expressed not only in the fact that She is completely removed from the earthly and human world, but is also “the most honest Cherub and the most glorious without comparison (i.e., essentially, fundamentally) Seraphim.” This exaltation of the Mother of God over the entire angelic world, and not only in degree, but in essence, not quantitative, but qualitative, is difficult to comprehend, due to the fact that the life of the angelic world is inaccessible to us. Angels have no body, no traces, and there can be no question of a difference related to the relationship to the body. The angels, who remained faithful and cast down Satan from heaven (Rev. 12:7-9), were finally established on the path of good, and for them there is no difference between the kingdom of nature and grace, grace and glory, which exists for people. They know neither death nor resurrection, for them there is no Last Judgment and second glorious coming, for their lot has already been finally decided (the Last Judgment exists only for the spirits of evil, the devil and his angels, who did not survive in their rank). In relation to them, it cannot be said that they are on the other side of the world transformation and general resurrection, for they are already on the other side of the world. Nevertheless, the ministry of angels is somehow connected with the destinies of the world, and its accomplishment and transformation is in some sense significant for the angelic world. And the Last Judgment over man, the head of this world, will be some kind of judgment over the angels, about which the Apostle Paul spoke the mysterious words: “Do you not know that we will judge the angels”? (1 Cor. 6:3). We know nothing about the judgment of angels, but the judgment of demons has already been completed in heaven and will finally be fulfilled along with the Last Judgment of the whole world, when the power of the “prince of this world” is completely abolished. The height of the angels, their closeness to God, as “second lights standing before the first light,” of course, exceeds that of humans, but it does not change the ontological difference in their nature and does not eliminate the superiority of humans over them. Only man possesses the fullness of creation, compared even with the angels. He is the center of the world and the king of the world, he is a microcosm. This cannot be said about angels, who are only servants of God in this world. Here they occupy an intermediate place between the world and God, having in themselves the power of hypostatic existence, but not having the power of cosmic existence, which they serve. In this sense, according to the explanations of St. Gregory Palamas, having a body constitutes an ontological advantage of a person, connecting him with the whole world, although this is precisely what limits him in his current state. The incorporeality of angels is not so much an advantage as a property inherent in the angelic world. It is impossible to imagine, following Origen, the Neoplatonists and modern reincarnated theosophists, that our natural, “material”, i.e. embodied world appeared as a result of some fall of the initially disembodied equal-angel spirits, temporarily imprisoned for correction in earthly bodies. On the contrary, the world with man was created by God at the end, that is, in the fullness of creation. He already presupposes the angelic world as the “servants” of creation 35 . That which is later in time takes precedence in regard to completeness: man, created after the angelic world, is by destiny superior to it. And that this is so is clearly demonstrated by the incarnation of God, which was precisely the incarnation of the Logos. He did not accept the angelic nature, although, it would seem, it would have been even more natural to accept the nature of the incorporeal. And the Virgin Mary, in whose person human nature ascended to the acceptance of God, the Mother of God, is thereby - in Her glorification - the most glorious Seraphim without comparison, that is, in essence, hierarchically, above them. “The Word, co-originating with the Father and the Spirit, with an archangel’s voice, the Mother of God, conceived in the womb, appeared above the Cherubim and Seraphim and thrones” (service to the archangels and angels, verse, on the Lord’s proclamation). So, in the Assumption of the Mother of God we glorify the glorification of human nature. The latter, having been resurrected, deified and ascended to the right hand of the Father, as the flesh of the Son, is now glorified in itself, as such, in the person of His Most Pure Mother. The ladder, as Jacob saw it, is realized in its entirety, for heaven and earth have reunited and become one. The Mother of God is the Glory of the world, the world glorified in God and with God and having and giving birth to God. We need to understand this in all its ontological significance, to give ourselves a full theological account of the dogmatic sense of veneration of the most honest Cherub and the most glorious without comparison Seraphim. In the glory of Our Lady the glory of creation was revealed. The Mother of God is the personal manifestation of the Wisdom of God, Sophia 36, ​​which in another sense is Christ, God's power and God's wisdom. Thus, there are two personal images of Sophia: created and Divine-human, and two human images in heaven: the Divine-Man and the Mother of God. This must be understood in connection with the teaching about the Most Holy. Trinity, about God and the world. The image of God in man is revealed and realized in heaven as the image of two: Christ and His Mother. The Son of God contains in Himself all the fullness of Divinity, characteristic of all the Holy Ones. Trinity, consubstantial and indivisible. And as the New Adam, incarnate and made man, the Son of God is also the eternal Man who imagined himself in Adam. On the basis of this ontological means of image and prototype, only the incarnation of God, the incarnation of the Second Hypostasis, is possible. The human image as the image of God and the image of God as the human image, glorified in the first and second Adam. And, however, in heaven there is another human image, which also obviously relates to the fullness of the human prototype, namely the Mother of God, the “second Eve.” The first Eve was created from the rib of the first Adam. Its origin turned out to be possible only in connection with it, as its necessary disclosure and addition, the image of God in man was fully realized only in two (Gen. 1:27: And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them). The first Adam and the first Eve are both entirely the creation of God, although a hierarchy of genesis is established between them: “Adam is God’s,” and Eve is from Adam. The second Adam is the Lord Himself, who took upon Himself flesh, that is, His own creation, while the second Eve is a creation - a person belonging to the created world. In this sense, She comes from the Second Adam, that is, from God, although she gives a human, created hypostasis, such a Being who is the vessel of the filling of the Holy Spirit. She completely gives up her human hypostatic life, makes it transparent to the Holy Spirit, testifying about herself: behold, the servant of the Lord. Such a Being, Rev. The Virgin is not a personal incarnation of the Holy Spirit, but becomes His personal, animated companion, an absolutely spirit-bearing creature, a Spirit-bearing Man. For, if there is no hypostatic spiritual incarnation, then there can be hypostatic spirituality, in which the created hypostasis in its creatureliness completely gives itself up and, as it were, dissolves in the Holy Spirit. And in this penetration perfected by Him, She will remain alien to Herself, that is, a deified, completely blessed creature, “animated by God’s ark,” a living “consecrated Church.” Such a spirit-bearing personality is radically different from the God-man, for She is a creation, but She is just as different from the creature in its creatureliness, for She is exalted and joined to the divine life. And in this spirituality the image of God is also realized in man 37 . Therefore, one must think that the human being of the Mother of God in heaven, together with the God-man Jesus, together reveals the complete image of man. The icon of the Mother of God with the Child, the Logos and the creature that receives Him, filled with the Holy Spirit, in its unity and inseparability, is the complete image of man. The God-Man and the Spirit-Bearer, the Son and the Mother, who reveal the revelation of the Father through the Second and Third Hypostases, also reveal the fullness of the image of God in man or, conversely, the human image in God. In the image of God in man, as stated in Gen. (1.27), the masculine and feminine principles, Adam and Eve, are united. Male and female in themselves, without the Fall, are not gender at all, although they subsequently give rise to two sexual modes of human nature. Initially they are spiritual principles, certain spiritual qualifications. Just as much as the masculine principle is determined by the primacy of reason and will over feeling, as the power of direct experience, the primacy of feeling and experience over reason and will is also manifested in the feminine principle. Masculine is truth in beauty, feminine is beauty in truth: truth and beauty are inseparable and consubstantial, but together they are distinguished as two images of a single principle, the revelation of a single Father, giving birth to the Son and bringing forth the Holy Spirit. These both images belong to the fullness of the image of God in man. In the Holy Trinity, the Father gives birth to the Son and gives birth to the Holy Spirit, revealing Himself in a single and eternal act of hypostatic trinity. In a single-hypostatic person, this dual image is revealed as a dual-unity, as two possibilities, two images of a human being, each of which individually does not fully express it. A person is not only a male or only a female principle, but he contains both of them, and, moreover, not as gender, that is, half-heartedness, incompleteness, but precisely as the fullness of his being. Therefore, the Lord Jesus Christ, perfect God and perfect Man, truly becoming human and taking on all human nature, in the image of His Humanity is united inseparably with His Most Pure Mother, is the Son not only in His Divinity, as the Only Begotten of the Father, but also in humanity, as the Son of the Mother, begotten by Her from the Holy Spirit. Thus, in human nature, His masculine principle is united inseparably with the feminine principle of the Mother of God, and the fullness of the Divine image in man or, conversely, the human image in God is expressed through two, through the “New Adam” and through the “new Eve.” As God, Christ took on the fullness of human nature in order to save it and resurrect it. In this sense, the Apostle Paul says: “there is neither male nor female: for all are one in nature in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28). But He expresses the fullness of the image of human nature only in conjunction with the Mother of God, who therefore found Her place in heaven next to the glorified human nature of Her Son, so that not only the male, but also the female nature is glorified and deified (albeit in different ways). There can be neither chance nor arbitrariness here, but only a strict and unwavering ontology. One must reverently embrace the mysterious meaning of the Dormition of the Mother of God and Her heavenly glorification precisely as the Mother of God, the Mother of the God-Man and therefore inseparable from Him. We must understand this unity not as an accident or a temporary state, but as the revelation and realization of the fullness of the human image in the God-man and His Mother, which is given in any icon of the Mother of God. The masculine principle in man is in relation to the Logos, Who is born as a “male child” (Luke 2:23)”, “firstborn son” (Matt. 1:25, Luke 2:5). Feminine - with the Holy Spirit, which descends on the Mother of God. Motherhood, characteristic of the feminine principle of Eve, “as the mother of all living” (Gen. 3:20), is combined here with the influx of the Holy Spirit. If it is said in the Creed that the Son of God was incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, then this does not at all mean the paternity of the Holy Spirit in relation to the God-Man. The Holy Spirit is never called in church writing the father of Jesus - this thought would be heretical impiety 38, for the Son has only one heavenly Father (like the first “Adam is God’s”: Luke 3:38). The Holy Spirit, by His overshadowing in the Virgin Mary, creates Her motherhood, possession in the womb of the Child 39. The Father eternally begets the Son, and the Son is born from the Father - the mystery of fatherhood - sonship. But the Father, proceeding to the begotten Son, brings forth the Holy Spirit, Who is the hypostatic Love of the Father for the Son and of the Son for the Father. The Holy Spirit is not born and does not give birth, but finds the already born Son, and He unites Him in a new, hypostatic way with the Father, there is a living hypostatic connection between the Father and the Son. Thus, as the Third Hypostasis, as the hypostatic Love of Two between Himself, He closes the Trinitarian being. This special place of the Holy Spirit, as the Third Hypostasis, which already has the Father and the Son before it, is determined by the relationship of all Three Hypostases. In church writing (in disputes about the filioque), mainly from the Catholic side, the opinion was sometimes expressed that if the Holy Spirit emanates only from the Father, and not the filioque, then He is the brother of the Son (others go even further, saying: sister), and thus it turns out that the Son has a brother or sister. However, such considerations must be completely set aside, for sonship is established only by the birth of the Only Begotten Son. Although it is inaccessible to man to understand the mystery of birth and procession, as St. Gregory the Theologian, we can at least understand that this is not the same thing. The only positive indication that is given to us about the nature of this relationship is not based on human speculation. It is given in the Virgin Mary, who becomes the Mother by the power of receiving the Holy Spirit. What is motherhood in its uniqueness as opposed to fatherhood? We now know motherhood only through the prism of gender, that is, we do not know it at all in essence. For us, birth is entirely a function of gender, presupposing the union of male and female, and through this a certain abolition of fatherhood and motherhood in their originality. Fatherhood, like birth, is even completely unknown to fallen man. He knows only the sexual act, a certain ecstasy of the flesh, which contains only the possibility of conception, and not as a goal, but only as a consequence, an unintended and in most cases even an unwanted or unexpected result. Spiritual fatherhood, as the revelation of oneself in another, and sonship, as the revelation of another in oneself—spiritual birth in the proper sense—is unknown to fallen man. And, paradoxically, the spiritual nature of birth appears more clearly not in physical paternity, which takes place, so to speak, through a person’s head, but in spiritual paternity: ap. Paul, for example, in pain gives birth to spiritual children (Gal. 4:19) and maintains a connection with those born. Therefore, spiritual ties, relationships of spiritual kinship are often more concrete, stronger, more tangible, and most importantly, more humane than carnal ties, in which a lot of selfishness is mixed in with blood. On the contrary, motherhood, as the presence in the womb, pregnancy, is given much more directly in the experience of fallen humanity, namely in the female experience, although it is obscured in it by illnesses, according to the definition of God over Eve: “By multiplying, I will multiply your sorrow in your pregnancy; in sickness you will give birth to children” (Gen. 3:16). Motherhood is the presence in the womb before birth, which further creates a direct connection between the mother and the child born from her. This direct connection in paternity does not exist, for it is by no means established by conception alone: ​​the father may not know his child, which cannot be the case for the mother. The connection with the father has a mystical basis in the dull voice of the blood, as some sociological fact, which may be completely absent and in thousands of cases, both among cultural and uncultured peoples, and in fact is absent. On the contrary, for motherhood this connection cannot be eliminated and can only be weakened or paralyzed by the influence of sociological and psychological factors. Motherhood is the feeling of something being born or already born and the joy of this birth. The mother, as such, does not conceive, she contains within herself what has already been born, but she has it in herself as her own - her own and at the same time not her own, herself and the other. In general, fatherhood is the direct finding of oneself in another, the revelation of oneself through another, the Father in the Son (“no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son.” Matthew 2:27).” In motherhood, this immediacy is mediated - what is already given, already conceived for the mother, becomes her own, is pregnant. The Father in His paternity begets the Son, and the Father, however, no longer by paternity, but in connection with paternity, brings forth the Holy Spirit. The Father, precisely as the Father of the Son, the Second Hypostasis, is also the originator (προβολεύς) of the Holy Spirit, the Third Hypostasis, which already presupposes (of course, not chronologically, but ontologically) the First and Second Hypostases. The Holy Spirit, proceeding from the Father to the Son, finds the already born Son, but realizes Him for the Father by Himself. In this sense, He is, as it were, hypostatic motherhood, emanating from the Father to the Son, “life-creation,” as a deliberate property of the Holy Spirit 40. The Father is the first principle, the first culprit, from which comes sonship, and then motherhood, inseparably associated with it, as with birth. At the same time, the features of the image of God inscribed in man are also designated as a dual unity of male and female. The First Author, the Father, Himself resides outside this duality, remaining transcendental to it. He grounds it in Himself as the First Principle, but reveals Himself as the Father and as the Maker, in both beginnings. For the Son is the male principle, as this is irrefutably revealed in His incarnation and in the male Child. The Holy Spirit is revealed by influx on the Most Holy One. Virgin, in the Mother of God. The Mother of God gives birth to the Son, who is eternally begotten by the Father. This son does not have an earthly father, but only the Father who is in heaven: “before even Abraham was not, I was” (John 8:58). Therefore, in the Mother of God we have an exact image of true Motherhood: the Mother does not give birth Herself, She has in her womb someone who has already been born before all ages, for truly only the Father gives birth. But She bears the womb, reveals the born, gives life. In the divine-spiritual side of Her Motherhood, in relation to the Logos, She is the receptacle of the Holy Spirit, but in the human side, She Herself gives the Son what she has and what she can give: human flesh, which is henceforth one, common, and at the same time separate from Her and the Son, from man and God. This is what the text of the Symbol means: “who became incarnate from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary and became human.” This does not mean that the Holy Spirit with His power compensated for the absence of a physical father, but that He gave the power to the man Mary to appear as the true Mother of God, the Mother of God, and not just the Mother of Christ, according to the superstition of Nestorius. The heretical temptation of Nestorius consisted precisely in the fact that he was embarrassed by the mystery of the Mother of God in general and in Mary in particular 41. This temptation lies in that outwardly mechanical understanding of the birth of God, which was rejected and condemned by the Council of Ephesus in its Nestorian conclusions, but continues to be held in its premises. According to this essentially Nestorian, although outwardly Orthodox in appearance, understanding, the power and action of the Holy. The spirit lies precisely in the manlessness of this birth and in the seedlessness of this conception; attention is attracted only by, so to speak, the physical side of the miracle, same-sex or extrasexual birth, virgin conception. The matter seems to be that by the power of the Holy Spirit, flesh was formed in the womb of Mary, into which the Logos indwelled as a soul. But this understanding represents the same heresy of Nestorius, only in a different presentation: what Nestorius relates comparatively to a later (albeit generally indefinite moment) here refers to the birth itself: the body is accepted by the Logos as external clothing 42. The Church, condemning the doctrine of the “Christ Mother” in Nestorianism, condemned it in all forms, and the dogma of the Mother of God must be accepted and assimilated in all its meaning. The birth of a person is his complete birth, inseparably, both body and soul, together and at the same time. No matter how one understands the most immediate way of the origin of the soul (i.e. whether in the spirit of creationism or traditionism), undoubtedly, the soul is somehow born with the body, and is not clothed with it, so to speak, post factum. Therefore, parents are actually like that, their role is not limited to preparing the body, and the giving birth force is invested in them by the word of God: “be fruitful and multiply.” Also, the birth of the Infant of God, in a sense, was a complete, true birth of God (which is precisely why Nestorius stumbled), which is why St. constantly confesses the Virgin Mary as truly the Mother of God. Church. Mary appears not only in the flesh as the Matter of the Lord, but also in relation to His soul. This “glorious and glorious mystery,” this indescribable miracle, is, of course, incomprehensible in its implementation neither to men nor to angels, like all the events of the economy of our salvation: the resurrection, and the ascension, and the second coming. However, we firmly and unquestionably profess their dogmatic foundations and must therefore clearly reveal them. How, in fact, can Mary, a human being, become and be called the Mother of God? - asks Nestorius. But, obviously, as a person, She could not become the Mother of God, and at most only the Mother of Christ, i.e., the Mother not of the Infant Logos, but only of His bodily clothing: like, as Nestorius rightly pointed out, can only give birth to like. At the same time, She did not become for one moment the God-man, which only the Lord Jesus Christ is. How was it even possible for the Virgin to be the Mother of God while remaining human at the same time? The clear answer to this is given in the words of the angel: “The Holy Spirit will come upon You, and the power of the Most High will overshadow You; therefore the Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God” (Luke 1:35). The “born Holy One” will be “called” (i.e., will be) the Son of God because the Holy Spirit will come upon Mary and with Him, in Him and through Him the power of the Most High will overshadow Her. According to the opinion of interpreters (for example, St. John of Damascus), by “the power of the Most High” one can understand the directly born, Second Hypostasis, the Logos, inseparably coexistent with the Holy Spirit, as the Third Hypostasis. But even if you do not resort to such a somewhat expanded interpretation and understand by the power of God even simply the gifts and actions of the Holy Spirit, the meaning will not change. Mary becomes the Mother of God precisely as a result of the overshadowing of Her by the Holy Spirit (in the icons of the Annunciation, this interpretation is emphasized by the fact that the descending Holy Spirit is depicted in the form of a dove, as in the Epiphany, when descending on the Lord), and this overshadowing, according to the task, could not but be complete and perfect. Mary did not and could not become from this a hypostatic God-man, already due to the fact that She was already a person possessing a created human hypostasis, and could no longer lose it, and also due to the fact that incarnation in general is characteristic only of the Second, and not the Third Hypostasis. The influence of the Holy Spirit on man and the world is different, by no means the hypostatic incarnation of the Logos. It consists in deification, in the communication of divine life to the creature. This deification is accomplished to the extent that the creature is able to accommodate it. In the Virgin Mary, a special, unique and exceptional case of the relationship of the Holy Spirit to creation was manifested, namely His dwelling in Her as His church, as in the body. Mary became the Spirit-Bearer at the Annunciation. The Holy Spirit moved into Her in the sense in which it is characteristic of Him, in contrast to the hypostatic incarnation of the Logos, the Second Hypostasis. The infusion of the Holy Spirit into man does not consist in His Hypostasis becoming instead of the human hypostasis in its quality, as happened in Christ, where the one Divine Hypostasis reunited two natures, divine and human. It is expressed in the fact that from all generations the chosen human hypostasis becomes transparent to the Holy Spirit and, in itself remaining a created, human hypostasis, it acquires a dual life, human and divine, that is, it is completely adored, which is why in its hypostatic existence it is a living created revelation of the Holy Spirit. Although not itself being the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit, this spirit-bearing hypostasis is His hypostatic revelation to the extent and in the sense in which this is generally possible for the Third Hypostasis. In the incarnation of the Logos, the single Divine Hypostasis reunites two natures, divine and human, and has in them the dual life of the God-man, a “complex” (in the words of St. I. Damascus) nature. In the influx of the Holy Spirit onto the Mother of God, the single all-human hypostasis has the dual life of a deified, spirit-bearing human nature, in which the element of human nature is enlightened by divine grace. According to the difference in hypostases, the difference in natures is also established: for the divine hypostasis of the Logos, His own nature is the divine nature, and human nature is assimilated and accepted by Him from Mary “for our sake as humans and for our salvation”; for the human hypostasis of Mary, Her own nature is human nature, and divine life is communicated to Her by the grace of deification, according to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the Mother of God cannot in any way be venerated as the God-man. But Her spirituality, which makes Her an animated church of God and the Mother of God, elevates Her above human and even all created nature. The spirit-bearing 43 person, Mary, appears above every creature, and therefore in the grace-filled “every creature, the angelic council and the human race rejoices.” Although this is a man by nature, she is already higher than a man, the Spirit-Bearer. And although She is not the God-Man, who is only One, Jesus, She is located to the God-Man in the necessary essential and inseparable relation of Motherhood, precisely in such a relation that has its basis in the relationship of the Second and Third Hypostases. By the power of this essential relationship in heaven, at the right hand of the Father sits the God-Man, the Son of God incarnate, but together with Him, at His right hand, and His glorified Mother, the abode of the Holy Spirit, is not the God-Man, but the God-Bearer, the Spirit-Bearer, truly the “real” Mother of God. So, the descent of the Holy Spirit on Mary made her become the Mother of God already in this very descent. This is what Elizabeth expressed in prophetic insight: “and where do I get this from, so that the Mother of my Lord may come to me” (Luke 1:43). Mary became “truly the Mother of God” not because She bore her body while pregnant; This happened due to the fact that She united in Her spirit with the Holy Spirit and therefore became the Mother of God. Motherhood of God was an expression of the fact that Her own life as a “servant of the Lord” was filled with the Holy Spirit, as if identified with Him, and thereby acquired that essential relationship to the Logos, which is characteristic of the Third Hypostasis. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father to the Son διὰτόνΥίὸν - because of the Son, on the Son, for the Son. He embraces, has in Himself and reveals to the Father the One born of the Father. This mystery of the birth of God is imprinted in the image of the “truly Mother of God.” Mary, by the fact that She accepted the Holy Spirit, became the receptacle of the Mother of God. She spiritually became the Mother of God, and because of this she conceived the Son Emmanuel in her womb. She conceived Him in the Holy Spirit, Who has Him within Her, resting on Him, and that is why she truly became the Mother of God. Here, and only here, is the answer to the bewilderment of Nestorius and at the same time the rejection of his blasphemy: how, being a man, could Mary give birth to the God-Man, and not just a man into whom the Logos subsequently had to inhabit? How is Mary truly the Mother of God? As a person, Mary would not have been possible, but as a Spirit-Bearer, that is, more than a person, namely the hypostatic friend of the Holy Spirit, it is not only possible, but also natural. It is necessary to accept that which constitutes the most hypostatic nature, the property of the Third Hypostasis: comes from the Father to the Son, to have a Son for the Father, Him - not giving birth, but giving life. And therefore Mary, receiving the Holy Spirit - not only His gifts, or power, but the Holy Spirit itself - becomes the Mother of God. This is the direct and exact meaning of the Archangel’s word: “therefore [διὸ]” (Luke 1:35), that is, by virtue of the influx of the Holy Spirit, the holy fruit will be none other than the Son of God, whom the Holy Spirit hypostatically has. Although the Holy Spirit does not give birth in the eternal order, but only has one already born, in the temporal order the Mother gives birth by His power. She conceives the Eternally Born. Only the Father gives birth eternally, which is why fatherhood is synonymous with birth, and in the eternal birth there is no place for motherhood 44 . Christ, as the Son of God, born of the Father, is motherless at His birth, but as the Son of Man, He does not know the Father, but has only a Mother. Thus, in the God-Man, sonship in His Divinity is addressed only to the Father, and in humanity only to His Mother. And for this sonship, fatherhood, independent of motherhood, and motherhood, independent of fatherhood, turn out to be essential. And at the same time, both of these definitions are identical and coincide, according to the above. The Holy Spirit does not give birth, but only has the One who has already been born, but therefore it is the influx of the Holy Spirit that brings the Spirit-Bearer the power to give birth, and therefore the birth is fatherless or manless. If there had not been a pre-eternal motherless birth from the Father, there would have been no maleless birth from the Mother. Moreover, what connects both births is the Holy Spirit in His relation to the Son, whom He eternally bears as the Only Begotten from the Father and, by virtue of this, imparts the power of birth to His Mother. Therefore, unfamily conception is accomplished by the influx of the Holy Spirit. Each of the divine hypostases is inseparable from the others, but each realizes this inseparability in its own special, hypostatic way, which is why the order of revelation of the hypostases in creation differs. The Father, the primary author and the first cause, is not personally revealed to creation except in the Son and the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the full revelation of the Father refers to that fullness of times that has not yet come to the world, when God will be all things in all, the Son will subdue and deliver all things to the Father (1 Cor. 15:24) and the Spirit will fill all things with Himself. The Holy Trinity is revealed to the world in the Son and the Holy Spirit. Moreover, these revelations, many-part and diverse, are at first preliminary and incomplete, and then become complete in the God-Man, in Whom the fullness of the Divinity dwells bodily, and in the Mother of God, Who is the personal chosen vessel of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit-Bearer. The outpouring of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, Pentecost, is in a certain sense a consequence of the Incarnation of the Second Hypostasis. – Together with Himself, Christ brings to humanity, “sends” and “begs the Father” for the sending of the Holy Spirit. The Comforter, Who will give the strength to feel Christ, to reveal the living incarnation of God for all creation. The Comforter will reveal precisely life in Christ, not the new content of revelation, but its new life perception. Therefore, He will not speak from Himself, but He will say what He hears... “He will glorify Me, because He will take of Mine and tell it to you” (John 16:13-15). The revelation of the Holy Spirit is not a new word as a content, for the pre-eternally born Word contains everything, and therefore fulfills everything (“all things were, and without Him nothing came to be”). It gives a new sensation, living knowledge, vital assimilation of this Word, the use of words, a certain universal, cosmic motherhood of God. However, this must necessarily be preceded by the incarnation of the Word Himself, His union with human nature, inseparably and unmerged, in such a way that It became His own for man, for He assimilated human nature and through the Holy Spirit was assimilated by him. This assimilation of Christ into creation, a living sense of the universal Christ-bearing of creation, and in this sense, the bearing of Christ or motherhood of God is the action of the Holy Spirit, the world Pentecost. But this Pentecost of Zion, opening into the world, had to be preceded by a personal Pentecost, Nazareth, the Annunciation, the infusion of the Holy Spirit into a certain human person, as a precondition for the Incarnation and general Pentecost, as well as another personal Pentecost - the descent of the Holy Spirit on Jesus at baptism. Thus, here we have the reverse order of relations: the descent of the Holy Spirit into man precedes the descent of Christ into him, which becomes His birth from man. And if the Holy Spirit, sent by Christ from the Father after His resurrection and ascension, fulfills the work of Christ, reveals among people the Christ who has appeared, already incarnated and exists in them, then the same Holy Spirit, descending earlier than the descent of the Second Hypostasis, before the incarnation brings Christ himself in Himself and with Himself, accomplishes the conception of God from the Blessed Virgin. And the first and direct consequence and discovery of Pentecost was the sermon of St. Peter and the other apostles about Christ, with the manifestation in them of the power of Christ, as a clear and tangible gift of the Holy Spirit for all. The Annunciation, with its descent of the Holy Spirit, had the direct and only consequence not of preaching or knowledge of the power of Christ, but of the reception into the womb, the womb of Christ himself, the personal Mother of God, which only later, in the fullness of time, should become universal, cosmic. Then creation will appear as the born Christ, and the human being as the womb giving birth to God, the whole world as the Mother of God 45. Thus, in the order of internal succession, the theophany of Christ precedes and conditions Pentecost, as the theophany of the Holy Spirit. But in the order of the divine construction of our salvation, the opposite happens: the descent of the Holy Spirit on the Virgin Mary precedes the incarnation of the Second Hypostasis and brings it with it. We are talking, of course, not about chronological, but about ontological succession. Chronologically, this is inseparable; In that sacred, incomprehensible and wondrous moment, before which the covering faces of the cherubim and seraphim tremble, when the Virgin said: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, let Me be according to Thy word,” the descent of the Holy Spirit appeared, at the same time, without family conception. The Spirit-Bearer became the Mother of God, together with the Holy Spirit. She also received the Logos as the born Son. And this event contained the basis both for the incarnation of God and for the Pentecost of the Holy Spirit, for the fulfillment of the building of God: “the day of our salvation is the main thing and the manifestation of the sacrament from the ages: the Son of God is the Son of the Virgin” (troparion of the Annunciation). The effect of the influx of the Holy Spirit on the Virgin Mary is the unfamily conception of the Infant of God. This “sacrament from time immemorial,” the pre-eternal mystery, does not need to be understood as some kind of physical miracle consisting of a supernatural or unnatural, asexual or same-sex conception (parthenogenesis). Of course, in relation to human nature, aggravated and perverted by sin, here “the rules of nature are defeated”, and the miracle of a virgin birth occurs with the preservation of virginity antepartum, inpartu and postpartum: “of the unfamilyless conception, the unspeakable Christmas of the husbandless Mother.” This miracle is incompatible with the current physiology of man, it contradicts it and overthrows it, it is unnatural. And, however, this conception does not mean at all that in this case human nature itself in its most essential and intimate manifestation, namely in the form of birth and reproduction, was canceled, destroyed by an act of divine omnipotence. If this were so, would it be possible to talk about the true incarnation of the Lord, which is of such paramount, decisive importance in the construction of our salvation? In its origin, His humanity would then appear inhuman, inauthentic, the result of some deus ex machina, a completely new and special act of creation. Didn’t all the attacks of Docetism rush into this gap, questioning precisely the authenticity of the human body of the Lord, wishing to understand it only as a veil of the Divine, ghostly decorative in its essence? Therefore, while affirming the miraculousness of unfamily conception in the sense of its deliberate grace, in connection with the influx of the Holy Spirit, we at the same time must resolutely deny its unnaturalness and, therefore, some kind of inhumanity. On the contrary, it should be considered that it appeared completely natural precisely in full compliance with the laws of human nature undamaged by sin. It alone was a true, natural, sinless birth. Its miraculousness, and at the same time its naturalness, consists precisely in liberation from the captivity and power of sin (which is why the body of the Lord is called in the Word of God only “the likeness of the flesh of sin,” not in the sense of docetism, but precisely in the sense of its freedom from sinful nature), but by no means in liberation from human nature itself. The Lord was, like the New Adam, truly a man in the sense that He alone was the true Adam. The entire human race in the old Adam does not have true humanity in itself, being stricken by sin, and it receives it only in Christ. And therefore His Nativity was truly a birth, not abolishing, but fulfilling God’s commandment about Him. We must take a closer look at this mystery and discern what in it belongs to human nature and what to Divine will. Adam and Eve were created from one flesh, as husband and wife, they were given the commandment: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth,” but the method of this reproduction characteristic of them, if they did not know sin, remains completely unknown to us. On the contrary, it is reliably known that the current image of reproduction is associated with sin: after the Fall, “to the woman (God) said: By multiplying, I will multiply your sorrow in your pregnancy; in illness you will give birth to children; and your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (Gen. 3:16). He will rule not by his hierarchical superiority, which was given to him by God, but by the bad, enslaving rule of sexual lust. It follows from this that the pain of pregnancy and childbirth is a direct consequence of sin and does not belong to human nature at all; on the contrary, painless childbirth is natural. Also, sexual desire is somehow connected with the Fall, after which people felt their nakedness and the shame of this nakedness, and made themselves aprons from fig leaves (Gen. 3.7), thereby indicating an awakened sense of sexual shame. Therefore, sexual feeling, with sexual lust, is not characteristic of a normal, i.e., sinless, person. Consequently, sexual conception is not characteristic of him, which is inseparably connected with sexual lust (“I was conceived in iniquities, and my mother gave birth to me in sin” - Ps. 50). From this it is necessary to conclude that Adam and Eve would have been characterized, by their own nature, not corrupted by the whisper of the serpent and not poisoned by its poison, a completely different, extrasexual or supersexual method of reproduction. According to the interpretation of many Church Fathers (in particular, I. Chrysostom 46, virginity was the norm for the relationship between a man and a woman, and physical marriage is already leather vestments lying on the body of a sinful person. So, although it is completely unknown how God’s commandment about reproduction would be carried out, 47 but if carnal conception is excluded, then spiritual conception is not at all excluded, in which the wife would give birth, giving her flesh to the child spiritually conceived by the father. Without entering this inaccessible region further than it opens, we can, however, confidently say that asexual conception would also be a virgin conception, without violating the virginity and chastity of the human couple. And so on. childbearing would be combined with virginity, in the sense of freedom from copulation, pregnancy and disease. Consequently, the unfamily conception and painless birth that we have in the Nativity of Christ, in this regard, is precisely natural and normal, not the abolition of nature, but the fulfillment of its laws. In this, the Mother of God truly appeared as a new Eve, who knew no sin. Birth ceases to be a function of gender. In a non-family conception, the Mother of God is completely healed from the power of gender, although, of course, this does not cause her to lose Her feminine nature. From Virgo she becomes Ever-Virgin, ὰει-παρθένος, that is, essentially Virgo. Therefore, Virginity becomes inherent to Her as Her inalienable property, as Her nature, which She can never lose 48. Virginity for Eve (together with Adam) was only a state that still had to be confirmed through testing. But they lost it after sin, falling into captivity of the sex. In the Ever-Virgin, this became not only a state, but Her very nature. In other words, being a female being, a Virgo and a Mother, the Ever-Virgin is not a woman in the sense of gender. Likewise, Her Son, although having a male nature, of course, also possesses the most perfect Ever-Virginity, is not a man in the sense of gender. The Lord and the Mother of God, having male and female natures, nevertheless remain free from sex, above sex, ever-virgin. On the contrary, sex, as the state of a man and a woman facing each other, is the lot of the entire sinful human race 49 . From here it is clear that the only case of a completely sinless ever-virgin birth from the Ever-Virgin is realized in perfect ever-virginity, that is, a familyless and husbandless conception and a virgin, painless Nativity. And the question that arises here in this regard can only be this: how is it that the Virgin Mary, still guilty of original sin, is suddenly freed from it in its most significant consequence, that is, freed from sex? Are we not introducing here, albeit unnoticed by ourselves, the Catholic dogma of the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, which precisely frees Her from the power of original sin, and therefore makes Her an Ever-Virgin? However, regarding such an objection, it must be remembered that, according to the Catholic understanding, the nature of man did not change significantly in the Fall. A person is not considered here at all to be free to sin from lust (hence, from sex), only this concupiscentia was kept in check by the power of donum superadditum. Therefore, freedom from original sin is not brought into connection with unfamily conception: Catholic dogma does not explain it, and in any case, in order to be used in this direction, it must be accordingly changed, supplemented and clarified. It contains, although in an incorrect dogmatic formulation, a premonition of the correct thought that the Most Rev. The Virgin, by the exceptional grace of the Holy Spirit, was placed in a very special relationship with original sin. This attitude is not complete freedom from original sin (which would mean freedom from human nature, i.e. docetism), but it consists in overcoming some of its significant consequences, in particular in overcoming gender, which we have in non-family conception. Conception and birth in humans are associated with gender, in other words, bisexual, therefore presupposing a father and a mother. But thereby it is poisoned by sinful lust and is guilty of death. (“Aphrodite and Hades are one and the same,” the Greeks knew this). Every life that begins “in lawlessness,” in passion, in the ecstasy of the flesh, is mortal. And this law does not know a single exception, and even according to Catholic dogma, the conception of the Most Holy One is not such. Virgos. And Her parents gave Her only mortal life. But She herself is holy to such an extent and purified by the grace-filled influence of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, starting from Her conception throughout Her entire life, which in Her is completely paralyzed, does not receive any development and expression of the life of the sex. And this highest, imaginable, utmost human holiness and purity turned out to be such that the Annunciation became possible. The Virgin Mary appeared as a vessel worthy to receive the Holy Spirit, who by His influx made Her at the same time the Ever-Virgin and the Mother, the new Eve. She gives birth in the image of the virgin conception, predicted to the first parents before the Fall. The Holy Spirit gives Her the power of Ever-Virginity, and to that extent, indeed, She is removed from the power of original sin, however, not at Her conception, but precisely at the Annunciation. And in fact, it is wicked to allow the birth of the Lord to be touched in any way by sin, even in its most remote consequences. For him, the sinless state of man in paradise before the Fall had to be completely restored. This restoration was accomplished by the Holy Spirit. in Mary, however, not mechanically or automatically, apart from Herself, before Her birth, but with the participation of Her freedom, personal achievement, faith, Her perfect surrender of Herself to the will of God: behold, the servant of the Lord. So, it is necessary to conclude that in the image of the virgin, unfamilyd conception in the Virgin Mary, the original human nature of Eve before the Fall is restored. But at the same time, there is a significant difference that makes this conception exceptional, unique, namely, that it takes place without a husband, without a father, only from one Mother. Reproduction was entrusted by God to the human couple Adam and Eve, not in their individuality, but in their totality; Thus, birth, being conceived from the father, takes place in the mother. Only Adam in his origin bypassed this common destiny: instead of his mother he receives the earth - Adam, and instead of his father - the living God who created him and breathed into him the living soul: “Adam is God’s” (Luke 3:38). And in this sense, Adam conceives the race of sons of God - men, although, unlike the Only Begotten Son of God, these are the created sons of God. Therefore, we have to ask: why does the Ever-Virgin conceive without a man? Of course, one should not ask about the very image of performing a miracle, but one can ask about its ontological basis. The reason for this lies in the fact that the Virgin conceives not only the first person emerging into existence, but the pre-eternally begotten Only Begotten Son, the Second Hypostasis of the Holy One. Trinity. The son of Mary has an Eternal Father, and therefore does not have a human father. The Birth of Christ from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary does not mean that the Holy Spirit took the place of the father here and, as it were, appeared as the father of the Child. But the Holy Spirit Himself, as the Third Hypostasis, emanating from the Father to the Son, in Himself and in Himself, together with His overshadowing, brings the Son, in Himself His name, as born of the Father. The Holy Spirit, overshadowing the Mother, brings from the Father the Born Son - this is a manless, familyless conception. The eternally begotten one is conceived spiritually in Mary through the power of the overshadowing of Her by the Holy Spirit. In sexual conception and birth, the true essence of spiritual motherhood is obscured, which is love for the conceived, not yet born, but already being born, free, loving giving of oneself, going out of oneself into another, life simultaneously in oneself and in another. We have some reflection of true motherhood in spiritual creativity. The mother gives her flesh because she already loves the child being born and has the will to give birth to him. And in this sacrificial self-giving lies the bliss of maternal love. In the modern state of man, it manifests itself not as a spiritual act, but as a phenomenon corresponding to the physiology of motherhood, moreover, characteristic not only of the human, but also of the animal world. In essence, motherhood is the will to incarnate an already conceived, but not yet born, fetus. As a spiritual-physical act, it is performed in the spirit and carried out in the body. This would be the case during the reproduction of Adam and Eve in the absence of sin, and this would be the case again in Mary, by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit, freed from the consequences of original sin, the debility of sex. Those properties of the spirit-bearing body of the ancestors were returned to the body of Mary, due to which it was an obedient instrument of the spirit, and did not oppose it and did not impose its own law on it. Therefore, it is a mistake to think that the conception of the Divine Infant is simply the influence of the Holy Spirit on the body of Mary, so to speak, a physiological miracle, in the abolition of the laws of nature: here “the statutes of nature are overcome,” precisely in the abolition of the limitations of the sinful nature. The action of the Holy Spirit was expressed in the fact that in Her spirit Mary felt Herself to be the Mother of the Only Begotten Son of God, born in Her through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, inseparable from Him. And Her body was imparted that spiritual plasticity, by virtue of which it became capable of carrying out the movement of the spirit. And therefore, when Mary felt Herself as a Mother in Her spirit, She conceived also physically, for first there is a spiritual, and then a physical conception, and not vice versa, as is the case today. “Behold the handmaid of the Lord, let it be done to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). This “let it be” is not just a passive admiration for an accomplished fact, but its loving acceptance of life, it is an inflamed love for the Born and the will to Motherhood. This answer is not only an expression of consent or submission, but testifies to the birth that has already taken place in the spirit of Mary: at that moment, speaking these words, She became the Mother of the Lord, although this birth took place only after the expiration of the period of bodily pregnancy. As righteous Elizabeth testifies of Her in the Holy Spirit, “blessed is she who believed, because what was spoken to her by the Lord will be fulfilled” (Luke 1:45). Belief here is already accomplished, the direct consequence of which is “a familyless conception, an unspeakable Christmas, a husbandless Mother, an incorruptible Fruit.” And to Elizabeth’s greeting, with all her immeasurable humility, Mary, however, responds: “For I have looked (the action that has already taken place) on the humility of His servant, for from now on all generations will bless Me, because the Mighty One has done (the same) greatness for Me, and holy is His Name" (Luke 1:48-49). She knows about what has happened in Her and over Her and testifies to this as a fact that has come true already at the very first moment of its occurrence. This means that Mary not only outwardly, obeying her body to the omnipotent word of the Creator and submitting her will to this omnipotence, but inwardly became the Mother of the Lord at the mysterious moment of the Annunciation, and therefore appeared as Her in the Nativity of Christ. In Her, a change took place, incomprehensible to the human and even the angelic mind, of Her entire human being, which from human became the Mother of God. For the God-Mother Being is no longer a human being, although it is inseparably connected with him, belongs to him, just as the human being of the God-Man belongs to him. Mary is not the God-man, for in Her the created human nature with the created hypostasis was preserved, and the one God-man is the Lord Jesus Christ, with two natures, divine and human, having a single Divine Hypostasis, while Mary has a human hypostasis. But Mary is no longer just a person, as She was before the Annunciation, She is the Mother of God. This means that She received the Holy Spirit and became inseparable with Him, and therefore the Only Begotten Son also dwelt in Her with Him, as Her Son. The Son is pre-eternally born from the Father, and this birth cannot be timed. Mary became the Mother of God in time, just as the entire existence of the human race flows in time. However, this Motherhood of God, which began in time, was pre-established from eternity, already has an eternal nature, and was accomplished for all times and for eternity. In this respect, the Mother of God is completely similar to the God-manhood of the Savior. And it also took place in time, in which the entire life of the created world and man flows, but has power in eternity, for the Son of God, who ascended into heaven, sits in His flesh at the right hand of the Father. And His Mother, resurrected by Him, was ascended to heaven. All the philosophical and theological difficulties that arise in understanding this transition from time directly into eternity arise in exactly the same way in relation to both. So, Mary is no longer a person, but the Mother of God, although she remains a person, not only in Her nature, but also in Her hypostasis. She is not a God-man, Who does not tend to have a human hypostasis. But the Motherhood of God is inseparably connected with the birth of God: where there is a Son, there the Mother cannot be eliminated. Motherhood belongs to the incarnation of God, which, once realized in a temporary act, retains all its power in this sense from eternity. It is realized at all times as the state of an adoring creature, like a ladder of deification. Another way of expressing this same idea is that although only the Second Hypostasis, the Son, had to incarnate and become human, this incarnation is inseparably connected with the personal infusion of the Holy Spirit into a human being, into the Ever-Virgin. Thus, his human hypostasis and nature is not abolished in this being, but is filled with divine life. This human Being, becoming spirit-bearing, but not being a God-man, is divine, as the perfect dwelling of the Holy Spirit. A more complete infusion of the Holy Spirit into creation, into a person or an angel, than that which took place in the Mother of God, cannot be imagined. Mary is therefore the perfect manifestation of the Third Hypostasis; in creation, Her human face reflects the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit, for it is transparent to Him. The hypostatic revelation of the Son took place in the Incarnation, in Christ Jesus. The hypostatic revelation of the Father is possible and exists only in the Son and through the Son in the Holy Spirit. The hypostatic revelation of the Holy Spirit has taken place, is taking place and will be completed in full in the next century, in the kingdom of the Holy Spirit, through Mary, the Queen of Heaven, the Mother of God. She is the Spiritual Man in heaven, sitting at the right hand of the God-man. Therefore, expecting a new, Third, Testament with a personal revelation of the Third Hypostasis is absurd and impious, for in a possible and appropriate form this revelation of the Third Hypostasis has already taken place in the Mother of God. In Her is the personal revelation of the Holy Spirit revealed in creation. Therefore, the degrees in the revelation of the Holy Spirit are essentially and necessarily the essence of the degrees in the appearance of the Mother of God to the world, which has not been completed and completely belongs only to the future age. The coming of Christ in glory will also be the appearance in the glory of the Mother of God; together with the revelation of the Second Hypostasis, the Third will also be revealed. Therefore, the resurrection, ascension and heavenly glorification of the Mother of God becomes absolutely necessary and understandable. The Mother is inseparable from Her birth, and where the Son is, there it is fitting for the Mother to be. They are inseparable, just as the Second and Third Hypostases, eternally originating from the Father, are inseparable. 50 On the path of Her ascent to full and perfect spirituality, to the spiritualization of her entire being, and not just individual powers and abilities, and, moreover, to a full and final degree, the Mother of God, like the God-Man, had to go through many trials, suffering and death. The Lord, by His perfect obedience to the will of the Father, completely sanctified and deified His human nature. Likewise, the Most Pure Virgin, in order to fully and completely surrender to the Spirit of God living in Her and to find one life with Him and in Him, had to accomplish the feat of her entire life, filled with the most difficult trials, so that the hour of Her glorious Dormition would come. On this same path, among other events, there was the descent of the Holy Spirit, the baptism of the Spirit and fire, along with all the apostles. One can see in this some inconsistency and contradiction with what is said about the spirituality of Mary: how can the church of God, the companion of the Holy Spirit, need a new descent of the Holy Spirit, just as Pentecost after the Annunciation is possible for the Ever-Virgin? And yet, to see a contradiction in this would be just as wrong as in the fact that the Holy Spirit, eternally resting on the Son and inseparable with Him, nevertheless descends on Him at baptism in the form of a dove in order to sanctify His human being. The descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles was also baptism, which extended to the Mother of God, as the highest of the entire apostolic face and the primate of the entire human race. This in no way weakens the fact that at the Annunciation there was a hypostatic influx of the Holy Spirit onto the Virgin Mary. This influx did not eliminate either the possibility or the need for Her ever greater and more complete self-giving, the penetration of Her human being by Her. And on this path of growth at Pentecost, deliberate gifts of the Holy Spirit were sent to Mary in order to finally free Her from the burden of original sin through baptism, to impart the power of Her redemption to the human being. And the completeness of this maturation of the human being before the heavenly infusion was completed at the time of the Dormition, which is therefore the triumph of human holiness, spirituality and purity, the glorification of human nature. The Mother of God is the glory of men, the glory of the world. At the Annunciation, the Mother of God became the Ever-Virgin and was thus freed from the burden of sex, the main, but not the only, consequence of original sin. She could therefore impart to the Christ born of Her the flesh of the New Adam, not burdened by sex, ever-virgin (see above). But the other main consequence of original sin remained unresolved in Her: death. She gave Her Son a Body, although not subject to death, due to freedom from the burden of sex and the absence of sin, but nevertheless capable of accepting death. The latter was defeated by the Divinity of Christ, resurrected and in Himself resurrecting all humanity. This power of redemption, victory over death and bodily resurrection, was communicated by Him to the Mother of God, who Herself did not have this power, which is confirmed by Her death. Therefore, She calls Her Son and Her Savior - not because of personal sin, which She did not have, but because of hereditary sin - the mortal weakness of nature. The Mother is redeemed and saved by the Son, because only the complete unity of the Divine-human nature in Jesus Christ is capable of healing and restoring man to his original state of immortality. At the baptism of the Lord Himself, by the descent of the Holy Spirit, His human nature was sanctified and those of His infirmities that could remain in it due to His human origin, no matter how sinless it was, were eliminated. Like the Virgin Mary, Pentecost was the final sanctification of Her human nature from all consequences and remnants of original sin and the communication to Her of the redemptive power of Christ. Her personal Pentecost or Annunciation was fulfilled here, or rather, revealed as a world Pentecost, the foundation of the earthly Church by the descent of the Holy Spirit. For the apostles, Mary, who was present, was the invisible center, the true ladder between earth and heaven. The meaning of Pentecost was different for Her and for the apostles. She is, as the primate of all creation and superior to all, the personal embodiment of the Church: the head of the apostles, the focus of the entire created world. This Her significance for the Church leads us to new aspects in the teaching about the Mother of God. In patristic writing, the Mother of God is called ήΘεόπαις, daughter of God 51, the Mother of God. This naming can be understood, first of all, in the general sense that of all the sons of men who become children of God, the Mother of God is the first and most chosen Daughter, named from time immemorial, according to the word of St. Gregory Palamas. She alone unites (μεθόριον) created and uncreated nature 52. From this thought, however, must be removed that incorrect interpretation which, by bringing the Mother of God too close to the Only Begotten Son of God, introduces Her through this into the God-bearing depths of the Holy Trinity: namely, according to this understanding, the Father, in addition to the Son, has a Daughter on whom the Holy Spirit rests, and He also acquires daughterhood in relation to the Father. In this case, the relationship between the Son and the Holy Spirit. also understood as brother and sister. Such a teaching (not alien, however, to some Eastern theologians) must be rejected as perverting the very concept of fatherhood in the Holy Trinity and abolishing the “only begottenness” of the Son. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit, although connected with paternity (“coming from the Father”), is not birth 53, therefore, it is not daughterhood. The latter generally does not have a special, independent place for itself in birth, but should be considered as a simple variety of it, for in Christ Jesus “there is neither male nor female”: “for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:28), “for you are all sons of God, one in nature in Christ Jesus” (3:26), “And the little ones received Him, and gave them the province of children To be of God, who believe in His Name: who was not born of blood, nor of carnal lust, nor of manly lust, but was born of God” (John 1:12-13). The birth from God into the sons of God, thus, takes place only in Christ, the only begotten Son of God, the only Savior and Redeemer without distinction of human sex. Since the Mother of God also partook of redemption, and She accepts the sonship of God in Her Son, whom She Herself calls “My God and Savior” (Luke 1:47). So, there is no question of daughterhood of God in relation to the divine birth from the Father; it can entirely relate only to the human image of the Mother of God. Here we must return again to the thought that the fullness of the image of God in man is expressed not in one, but in two, in Adam and Eve, in the son and daughter of God. And for the completeness of its restoration, the participation in it of not only the New Adam, but also the new Eve (one of the constant names of the Mother of God) is required. The Savior, the performer of the redemptive work, is only the New Adam, as the head of the Church (Eph. 5:22–32, I Cor. II, 3). But the path of the “one sinless” New Adam must be shared with Him by the immaculate “new Eve”, and in both heaven and earth the fullness of the human image shines forth, as the image of God, and the power of redemption is revealed. In the person of the Mother of God, sonship with God is realized for the entire female part of the human race, which in human speech can also be called daughterhood of God. And in this presence before the Father in His humanity, the Mother of God is sometimes called by the name of the sister-bride (in the Song of Songs, see below). In Catholic theology, this attitude often takes on an exaggerated and one-sided character, under the influence of the dogma of 1854 54. The Virgin Mother, the Mother of God, is also blessed in sacred chants as the Unbrided Bride, that is, as if the Ever-Bride. In other words, ever-virginity is connected with the state of both the mother and the bride and, obviously, is not in conflict with it. We find such expressions in St. Ephraim the Syrian 55, at St. John of Damascus 56 and others 57 In iconography, the Mother of God is not always depicted with the Child, as a Mother, but also simply as a Virgin: such, for example, is the icon of Tenderness, before which the Rev. prayed. Seraphim, the Unbreakable Wall, etc. These images express the idea not so much of the Mother of God as of the Bride of God. This also corresponds to the fact that in iconography, and in church songs, and in patristic writing, rapprochements are made, almost identifying the Bride from the Song of Songs 58 and the Mother of God (this includes places: 1.8-16; 2.2.10, 3.6.4; 4.3-9; also the entire second half of the Theotokos psalm 44:1016; hence usually prokemenas for the Mother of God service and the text are taken when removing a particle from the Mother of God prosphora at the proskomedia). Finally, the interpreters also include the image of a woman clothed with the sun: Rev. 12:1–6. To this we must also add that sometimes in the Word of God no distinction is made between the bride and the wife, for example. Open 19.7; 22.17. So. arr., the Church applies such different definitions to Mary as Mother and Bride as the personal embodiment of the Church. These definitions are incompatible, of course, if they are translated into the language of sex and sexual relations, but this incompatibility is eliminated in spiritual relations. The Mother of God, as the receptacle of the Holy Spirit, carries the Logos within herself, she conceives and gives birth to Him, she is the Mother of God. But as a created, human being, as the primate of the human race, She is the servant of the Lord. As the Church, She belongs to the Logos, to Christ, as the Bridegroom of the Church, as the Head of the Church, and She loves Him with the love of the Ever-Bride. The Song of Songs is also a song about Mary and about the Logos, as well as about every soul seeking the heavenly Bridegroom and uniting with Him. The Virgin Mary, the Mother of God and the Bride of God is the image of every soul in its relationship to the Logos, in its churching: the soul loves and seeks and finds Christ and unites with Him and gives birth to Him in itself, and this motherhood and disbelief are united inseparably, one is impossible without the other 59. The beloved is called the groom in the Song of Songs: “my sister bride” (Song 4:9,10), and this does not refer to a physical relationship, which does not exist (8:1 – 2). The Logos becoming human becomes the Brother of the entire human race, which He Himself taught to prayerfully call upon the Heavenly Father in the Lord’s Prayer, therefore humans are His brothers and sisters. (“I will tell Your name to My brethren, in the midst of the church I will sing praises to You.” Ps. 21:23, Heb. 2:12. Wed. John 20:17: “Go to My brothers and tell them.”) Thus, it turns out that the Mother of God contains such relationships of love that are in fallen humanity, living not an integral life, but a life of half-heartedness and fragmentation turn out to be incompatible. But all these definitions are, at the same time, definitions of the Church. The Church is the Body of Christ. In a broad sense this means that it is inspired by Christ and surrenders to Him as obedient, loving and inseparably united with Him. The Mother of God, having no other life in Her than Christ’s, is His Body both in the general and in the special sense. She gives Him Her own body, having Him in Her womb and giving birth to Him as the fruit of Her womb: the unity of Christ with the Church, as His Body, has a very clear expression here. But the Mother of God, being the Mother of Christ, is therefore also the Mother of the entire human race adopted by Her on the cross in the person of St. John, and through this, in Her and with Her, the entire human race becomes not only His “brothers,” but also His Body. Further, the Church is the Bride or wife of the Logos, since marriage takes place “in Christ and in the Church.” The bride and wife spiritually are one and the same relationship, taken only in two different, but interconnected aspects: seeking and finding, striving and achieving, thirst and quenching. The relationship between Christ and the Church in the relevant texts (Eph. 5, etc.) and especially in the Song of Songs is depicted as love and the bliss of love, replacing the languor of seeking. Love is the union of two lives into one life, a common life, a new life, this is revelation and bliss, and the torments of love that are experienced when for some reason this unity is not realized (the beloved’s search for her beloved in the city squares, Song 3:1 - 3, 5, 6 -7). In this light, the meaning and power of the Song of Songs and the entire significance of this mysterious hymn of love specifically for the New Testament teaching about the Church become clear, for truly this Old Testament Song constitutes the most New Testament part of the entire canon 60. Mary, as the personal dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, is truly the personal head of the Church, the heart of the Church, the Head of which is Christ. Overshadowed by the Holy Spirit, She becomes the Mother of God, gives birth to the Logos, and this Motherhood of God, in Her and with Her, is the property of the entire Church, and the Logos born of the Virgin is also born in the souls of the faithful, for every church soul is involved in the Mother of God of the Mother Church, the Mother of God 61. So, what is said about the Church is also said about Mary. It would be wrong to say in a general form that Mary is the Church, and, however, we can say that the Church is represented by Mary, to the extent that in Her person all the properties of the Church are united, in a personal and, moreover, the highest, ultimate incarnation. For if the Church lives and moves by the power and gifts of the Holy Spirit, then He dwells in Her; if the Church imagines Christ in Her children and, as it were, gives birth to Him in them, then in the Mother of God He was born and became man as His Hypostasis. That which is the Church constitutes the very essence of Mary, who is both the receptacle of the Holy Spirit, and the Mother of God, and the Bride of God. The Mother of God is symbolized by the blueness of church vestments and the azure of heaven. This azure is the singing of the creature to the Lord and about the Lord, glory and glorification. The Mother of God is an exalted, glorified, deified creature: the darkness of created non-existence was overcome and illuminated by the Divine Sophia and shone in her accepting, feminine blueness. And if the fullness of creation, its truth and beauty, its intellectual glory is the Divine Sophia, like the revelation of St. Trinity, then we have to repeat the same in application to the Mother of God. Our Lady is Sophia to the utmost degree. She is the fullness of Sophia in creation and in this sense the created Sophia. The words of the Lord at the end of His speech about the Forerunner: “Wisdom was justified (Σοφία) from her children” (Matthew 11:19), first of all, refer specifically to the Mother of God. Sophia is the foundation, pillar and affirmation of the truth, the fulfillment of which is the Mother of God, and in this sense She is, as it were, a personal expression of Sophia in creation, a personal image of the earthly Church. The Divine Sophia is the eternal self-revelation of the Most Holy One. Trinity, Glory of God, Divine world of eternal essences, Divine Everything, Revelation of the Father in the Only Begotten Son and in the Holy Spirit. The Father shows Himself in the Son and proceeds to Him by the Holy Spirit; The Word of God, filled with the Holy Spirit, contains everything: “all things came to be, and without Him nothing came to be.” The Word of God determines the ideal content of the eternal Idea, the Thought of God, the Holy Spirit. It gives life, makes it tangible, and invests it with beauty. Therefore, Wisdom is the Logos in ideal content, however, this does not mean that Her essence is exhausted by ideal content alone, for She is also the Holy Spirit in her existence, She is the living concrete perceptibility of this ideal content, beauty, the Glory of God: the mental images of Truth in Her are images of Beauty. “The Lord reigns, He is clothed with beauty.” This divine world of the Glory of God is the basis, and together the ultimate goal of the universe, the world was created by the Wisdom of God, and for her sake 62 it is created Wisdom and in the fullness of time must be imagined in the image of the Divine Sophia 63 . This is what the biblical, mainly Old Testament, teaching about Wisdom comes down to (see excursion 2 at the end of the book). Wisdom is the Church, pre-eternal in heaven, having growth and development in creation, the earthly Church. The churching of the world is its penetration by Wisdom. The basis of churching is the incarnation of God: Christ, God's Power and Wisdom, became Man, and in Him the Sophian unity of the divine and created world was established. However, the fullness of Sophian revelation includes the appearance not only of the Son, but also of the Holy Spirit, and, on the other hand, the incarnation of the Logos presupposes a corresponding enlightenment of human nature, the triumph of the Sophian principle in it. This is the triumph of the earthly appearance of Sophia in man, and together with the revelation of the Holy Spirit we have in the Mother of God, who abides inseparably with Her Son. The completeness of Sophia’s image in the created world or in humanity is Christ with the Mother of God, as is depicted on our ordinary icons of the Mother of God, most clearly in the image of the Sign. But in essence, every icon of the Mother of God, in its deepest meaning, is a Sophia icon. In the Mother of God, heavenly and created Wisdom, the Holy Spirit living in Her, were united with the created human hypostasis. Her flesh became completely spiritual and transparent to heaven, in Her the purpose of the creation of the world was fulfilled, She is its justification, purpose and meaning, She is, this is the meaning, the Glory of the world. In Her the revelation of the Son, born of Her, and the Holy One are united. The Spirit, by whose power this birth takes place, with the created nature in which it takes place. Therefore, the Mother of God essentially belongs to this world, and at the same time rises above it, surpasses it, she is created Wisdom, glorified and crowned in heaven as the Queen of Heaven. The meaning of the Dormition of the Mother of God is revealed here in a new light... The glorified Mary, the Queen of Heaven, is a creature, but no longer a creature, for she has contained within Herself the fullness of the life of God, in Her God is already “all in all,” for Her there is no longer any further development or perfection, as it has power for all creation, angelic and human. This is eternal life, if not of the Divine Himself, then in the Divine, in the immeasurable abyss of the ocean of absoluteness. The creation here became completely transparent to the Creator. But at the same time, the Mother of God did not cease to preserve created nature, did not separate from the world, which She glorified with Herself and in Herself. She is the world, for she remains in unity with it: “in the Dormition you did not forsake the world, O Mother of God,” sings the Church. This is evidenced by all the appearances of the Mother of God to the saints, and Her Protection over the world, and Her miraculous icons, and the whole sea of ​​church prayers, constantly flowing to Her in firm faith and hope, that there is no human being who would have a more loving and responsive heart than the all-sung Mother, the holy Intercessor of the Christian race. This idea of ​​Sophia’s veneration of the Mother of God, which crowns Orthodox theology about Her like a dome, was approved by the Russian Orthodox Church, liturgically linking the celebration of Sophia with the remembrance of the Mother of God, in contrast to the Byzantine Church, where the Christological aspect in sophiology was highlighted, and Sophia’s holidays were combined with the Lord’s (Nativity of Christ, Resurrection). Both have their indisputable basis; sometimes both merge to the point of indistinguishability. The Incarnation is inextricably linked with the Mother of God, one implies the other, and therefore the Lord's feasts, hidden or open, also imply the Mother of God. Moreover, in some this connection appears so clearly that it even seems difficult how to understand, for example, such a holiday as the Nativity of Christ or Candlemas. In one case, the heavenly, uncreated Sophia is emphasized, and in the other, Sophia in creation, the Mother of God. This, in turn, corresponds to the predominant allocation of one or another of the hypostases revealed in Sophia, the Logos or the Holy Spirit: the first corresponds to Christ-Sophia, the second to the Mother of God as Sophia. Accordingly, there is a difference in shades in the understanding of the text of Prem. Sol. 9:1: “Wisdom created for herself a house and established seven pillars,” which is read as a proverb on the feasts of the Mother of God. In the Christosophical interpretation, this will mean: Wisdom - Christ created for himself (in the act of peacemaking) a home - the Body, the Church with the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit and the seven sacraments. In the Theotokos-Sophia interpretation, the same text will mean: Wisdom - the Holy Spirit 64 created for herself (in the act of incarnation) a house - the Mother of God and established seven pillars (this corresponds to the Kiev image of St. Sophia, where she is depicted as a seven-pillar church with the Mother of God in the center 65). Russian Orthodoxy loved predominantly the second, the Theotokos-Sophia, interpretation, and therefore the feast of Sophia became the Theotokos here: it is connected either with the Nativity of the Mother of God or with Her Dormition (by analogy with the celebration on the day of Nativity or the Resurrection of Christ). In the north, in Moscow and Novgorod, the celebration of the Dormition has become prevalent, which is why the favorite churches here in honor of the Dormition of the Mother of God are, in essence, by design, Sophia churches 66, such as, for example, Moscow. Assumption Cathedral). We have liturgical evidence of such a Theotokos-Sophian understanding in the “service of Sophia of the Wisdom of God, which is sung in Great Novgorod” on August 15, 67. This instructive service, a more detailed analysis of which is not included in our task, is the service of the Dormition of the Mother of God, at the same time attributed to “Sophia eminent, the Wisdom of God” and accordingly supplemented and complicated by the stichera and canons dedicated to Her. Here, in a number of chants, the rapprochement of Sophia with the Mother of God is expressed. The Mother of God is a universal prayer book and intercessor: “Pray for all Thy Son and our God.” She is the personified prayer of the Church. Why and in what sense does She acquire this deliberate task - to be the High Priest as the Intercessor of the Church, in commemoration of which She receives (on the feast day and in the icon of the Intercession of the Most Holy Theotokos) the bishop's omophorion? Here we approach the mystery of our redemption, and from a new, extraordinary side. Christ is the High Priest and Mediator of the New Testament (Hebrews), “according to the order of Melchisidek.” He offered God a sacrifice that abolished all sacrifices, His Body, Himself. He is a sacrifice and a priest, “offering and being offered” (lit. St. John Chrysostom). He passed through the heavens and carried glorified human flesh into heaven. His sacrifice has redemptive significance both in the sense that it gives us remission of sins, and in the fact that by His incarnation and resurrection new life was given to the human race in the New Adam and death was defeated. In the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ our redemption was accomplished, i.e. a general, objective basis was laid for it, it became a given. However, this has not yet fulfilled its task for the creature, its fulfillment. It took the descent of the Holy Spirit on the apostles, and in their person on all people, in order for the New Testament Church to be founded as a realized redemption, as an ark of salvation. Thus, although the salvation of mankind was accomplished once and for all in some absolute way by Golgotha and the Resurrection of the Son of God, however, salvation, the assimilation of salvation by creatureliness and created freedom, is accomplished by the Holy Spirit. And this manifests the participation of the Holy Spirit in the salvation of mankind, which became possible only after the completion of the redemptive work of Christ, after His ascension (as He said to His disciples: “You are not here, but I will go; I am going, the Comforter will not come to you; if I go, I will send Him to you.” The descent of the Holy Spirit and His dwelling in people and creatures creates the Church on the rock of Christ, and in this sense it is rightly said that the Church is the Holy Spirit, and those saved in it are saved by the Holy Spirit. The Mother of God, as a personal revelation of the Holy Spirit, is the heart of the Church, her personal expression, as it were, the Primate of the Church. Of course, this judgment must be understood not quantitatively, that is, not in the sense that the Church, as the totality of believers, all or many, is the Mother of God - such a judgment would be directly incorrect - but qualitatively or dynamically: that which constitutes the essence and power of the Church is contained to a perfect degree in the Mother of God through the Holy Spirit. As the Church in Her personal realization, the Mother of God is above all sin. She is a completely deified and saved creation. The Mother of God is no longer saved, for Her unconditional salvation was accomplished by the influx of the Holy Spirit. She is not saved, but saves. This is where the special participation of the Holy Spirit, and then of the Mother of God, in our salvation is revealed, not as a savior, for there is only one Savior of the entire human race and Herself, the One about whom She speaks as “about God and My Savior,” but as an Intercessor and prayer book for the human race. The meaning of the Mother of God in this regard is twofold: on the one hand, as a person, She represents and in Herself the entire created world, the entire human race, every human soul. Nature dwells with Her and in Her in the sky (natura naturata inseparably from n. naturans) and through Her testifies about itself, about its created weakness and its surface of divine existence. On the other hand, in Her all creation prays to God with a prayer made by the Holy Spirit Himself, “who intercedes for us with groanings that cannot be expressed” (Rom. 8:26). Every prayer of a weak and sinful person is powerless and limited, since it belongs to him, but when done in the Spirit, perfected in a churchly manner, it acquires church wings, which make it the prayer of the Church and lift it to the very throne of God. And then its power, strength and authenticity no longer have anything to do with its created limitations. But insofar as it is church prayer, and in it the personal, outgrowing itself, grows into the universal, it necessarily becomes the prayer of the Mother of God, who, according to the testimony of church hymns, unceasingly prays to Her Son for everyone and everything. No prayer of ours, not only directed directly to Her, but also addressed directly to God, does not escape Her, but becomes Her own prayer, praying in Her and by Her. Our words are both crude and imprecise in expressing this ontological dynamism: everything ecclesiastical in the Church does not exist separately and separately and is not composed of individual components, like an aggregate or a simple sum. But there is a certain dynamic sum, where one thing is multiplied by everything, uniting with it, intertwining with it, like sound in music, and this unity of prayer, this soul of prayer belongs to She who in general is the soul of the Church, the spirit-bearing, glorified Mary, the Mother of God. The Mother of God does not need prayer for herself, for she has everything in her deification. As the glory of God and the glory of the world, as the revealed love of God for the world and the manifested love of the world for God, She glorifies God with Her prayer. Her own prayer is doxology, that is, love that is eternally fulfilled, flaming, triumphant in perfect joy—God’s love for Himself in His creation. But the Mother of God, as the head and primate of the world and all creation, also has an improper prayer, which, however, due to the indicated relationship is also Her own prayer, is the prayer of all creation. She gives wings to this prayer, lifting it to the Throne of God, She gives strength to this prayer, She is the Intercessor, high-priestly raising her hands over the world (“oranta”) to God and overshadowing the world with her omophorion. The Mother of God is the praying Church Herself in personal embodiment, and in this sense She is the universal Mother, intercessor and representative. She is personal, embodied mercy and pity for the world, in its created limitations and sinful perversity. Being already absolutely free from this limitation and the power of sin, She is the gilded pinnacle of this very world, for She belongs to it. The saints and the prayers of the saints are a bright cloud surrounding this peak and approaching it. However, the highest saints and even the angelic world are separated from the Mother of God not only by Her perfect holiness, but also by the perfect overcoming of created limitations in Her, Her deification: Her own grace-filled life is the hypostatic life of the Holy Spirit, who has dwelt in Her, and at the same time, Her improper life is the life of the entire created world to which She belongs. This is Her mediatorial significance: She brings to Her Son, the Savior of the world, the world saved by Him, through Her and in Her its salvation is accomplished, and outside of Her and apart from Her nothing in the world is accomplished. She gave flesh to Her Son, and She is this God-bearing and God-bearing flesh, through which the flesh of the world is brought to Him for salvation. In humility before the will of God, she spiritually sacrificed the life of her Son to God and, standing at the cross, silently continued to say what was said once, but forever: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord” 68. We must take the last step on this path, recognizing that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all flesh is not accomplished without the participation of the Mother of God, who was therefore present at Pentecost. For Her central place in the Church eliminates the possibility of anything in the life of the Church being accomplished not through Her and apart from Her. And Her significance as the abode of the Holy Spirit means that the action of the Holy Spirit in creation is also Her co-action. From here it becomes clear that the amazing fact that the vast majority of miraculous and revealed icons are Mother of God icons, and many phenomena of the heavenly world to the saints of God are Mother of God phenomena. In the Mother of God the ecclesiastical nature of the Church and the power of churching are concentrated, and those who contain this power within themselves become especially close to the Mother of God, from “Her kind,” as She herself deigned to say about the wondrous Seraphim, honored with so many of Her appearances. And this is why veneration of the Mother of God is a measure of churchliness. The Church is the Holy Spirit, the life-giving one, and the revelation of the Holy Spirit gives understanding and veneration to the Queen who is Most High of heaven and earth. From Her natural nature flows Her Sophia meaning as the guardian of all creation, the Queen of heaven and earth. This corresponds to such names as mistress of the seas, wranglers of bread, fragrant flowers, guardians of cities and kingdoms, guardians of the plant world. In general, there is no creation that would not be subject to heaven and earth to the Queen. And in this sense - but, of course, only in this - She can be called the Soul of creation, more precisely, the soul of the soul: for man, like Adam, as the lord of creation, is the soul of the world, the Mother of God is the soul of the human race, like a merciful heart, like a mother’s mercy and pity, not judging, but only grieving and forgiving everything, the Mother of God appears at the Last Judgment, where She, according to the iconographic testimony of the Church, prays to the King for the human race and intercedes for sinners before Him who came to save sinners. What does this representation mean, how to understand it? Is it appropriate before Him who gave Himself for the salvation of many and accomplished this salvation with His blood? Here is the mystery and antinomy of redemption. It could only be accomplished by the power of Christ, and yet Christ, as God and together the Son of Man, to whom the Father gave all judgment, at His Last Judgment judges with righteous judgment, and before the righteous judgment of God no flesh will be justified, and all are subject to condemnation. And judgment was given by God the Father to the Son precisely because “as the Son of man is” (John 5:27). The humanity of the Son is in the eyes of the Father the basis for Him to judge men. This basis is that by His incarnation the New Adam saved the human race and appeared as the true Man in all people (as this is revealed at the Last Judgment). He shared a common destiny with humanity, and He resurrects it on the last day. But the God-man judges as a King, with the indefatigable judgment of divine truth, before which no one can resist, no creature. “Behold, He does not trust His saints, and the heavens are unclean in His sight” (Job 15:15), “and He sees faults in His angels” (4:18). “And do not enter into judgment with Your servant (cries the psalmist), for no one living will be justified before You” (Ps. 142:2). And in the court of truth, who will be acquitted? The judgment of truth may say: “go away from Me, curse, into eternal fire.” He who in His humiliation does not quench the smoking flax and does not crush the bruised reed, judges and condemns forever according to the judgment of God's righteousness. But this truth is antinomically associated with mercy, and God’s judgment is inextricably linked with the petition of weakness, “have mercy on me, Lord, for I am not only weak, but also Your creation” (mol. to Holy Communion 70). And this condescension to weakness, which determines the very nature of the creature summoned from non-existence, this personality of forgiveness, as if contrary to justice, is shown at the Last Judgment by the Mother of God, begging the Son for mercy on sinners. The humanity of the God-man, who appears here at the Last Judgment as God, the Divine Judge, replacing the Father, is represented here by the Mother of God, Who gave Him this humanity, in Her and through Her, here He is “the Son of Man.” It is precisely the fact that the Mother of God Herself belongs to the created world, is connected with it by ontological unity, albeit in a deified state, that gives Her the boldness to perform this intercession at a terrible hour for all creation. In the Last Judgment, the dual nature of the God-Man, inseparably and inextricably combined from the divine and the human, is here presented, without being divided, as if bihypostatic, for the Divine Hypostasis of the Logos creates the divine judgment of the Father, wears out the last definition of the entire Holy Trinity to creatures, while His humanity is hypostatically represented here in the person of His Mother. The representation of Mary at the Last Judgment, in itself so mysterious, also points to a further mystery hidden here about what is the participation of the Third Hypostasis, the Holy Spirit, in this final judgment, as well as beyond it. There are no direct indications about this in church teaching, but indirect ones are connected with the general teaching about the transformation of the world, the creation of a new heaven and a new earth, the Heavenly Jerusalem descending to earth, and all this, of course, is accomplished by the power and action of the Holy Spirit. And this truth of God condemns the sinful world to fire: “The day of the Lord will come, like a thief in the night, when the heavens pass by with a noise, and the elements that are burned will be destroyed, and the earth and the works on it will be burned up” (2 Peter 3:10). But God’s mercy testifies: “the heavens are new and the earth is new according to his promise, and truth lives in them” (3:13). This truth and the judgment of righteousness are entrusted by the Father to the Son of Man, the Word of God, who is the Truth of the world, revealing its sin. Mercy and healing of the ulcers of the world are entrusted to the Holy Spirit, who gives life to every soul. The Mother of God at the Last Judgment reveals not only the humanity of the Son, but also the hypostatic revelation of the Holy Spirit through the human hypostasis of Mary. In Mary, the Mother of God, the participation of the Holy Spirit is revealed both at the Judgment itself, which determines the outcome of the world process, and beyond it in creation, in the final transformation of the world, which is already glorified at its peak, the Queen of heaven and earth. And the word that the Mother of God Herself sang about Herself in Her song is fulfilled at all times, but will be finally fulfilled at the Last Judgment of Christ: for look on the humility of Your servant, for from now on all your kindred will please Me. “Oh, the depth of the wealth and wisdom and understanding of God! How His judgment has not been tested and His ways have not been explored! For from Him, and in Him, and in Him are all things! To him be glory forever. “Amen.” (Rom. 11:33, 36). Most Holy Theotokos, save us! Excursion I. About the Glory of God in the Old Testament The entire Old Testament speaks about the Mother of God and Her family, both in general and in particular, starting with the very creation of the world, which, according to the interpretation of St. John of Damascus, foreshadowed the birth of St. Virgos 71. She is a new earth and sky, created in place of the old ones, defiled by sin. She is paradise and the wife promised by God in paradise, whose seed will erase the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15). She is Noah's ark of salvation and the ladder seen in Jacob's dream. She is the Burning Bush, seen by Moses, and the Red Sea, in which Israel was saved. It is the tabernacle and the church, both as a whole and in parts, the Ark of the Covenant, and the stash, and the tablet, and the censer, and Aaron’s rod. She is the Gedeonovo fleece. She is the Queen of Psalm (Ps. 44) and the bride of the Song of Songs (St. John of Damascus in his homily for the Nativity of the Virgin). She is the Virgin prophesied by the prophet Isaiah (7.4), and the closed gates seen by St. Ezekiel (44.1 – 4). She is an insectless mountain, seen by the prophet. Daniel, and the mountain of shaded thickets, seen by the prophet. Avvakum. These prototypes and prophecies, attested in their relation to the Mother of God in church songs and patristic writing, do not pose any particular difficulty for understanding. But there is one group of prophetic visions that require interpretation, namely the appearance of the Glory of God, which also applies to the Mother of God, and it is necessary to reveal the mysterious meaning that these massive images of the Glory of God have in the Old Testament. In our opinion, this revelation is possible only in connection with the general teaching about Divine Wisdom. The Glory of God is Sophia, or, to use the expressions of St. Gregory Palamas, already accepted in Orthodoxy, the Glory of God is the energy of the energies of God, which are the only ones accessible to creation, with the complete inaccessibility (“transcendence”) of the very being of God. One way or another, every revelation of God is given in connection with the Incarnation, and from it the Mother of God principle cannot be eliminated. This is precisely what we intend to isolate and trace. The first appearance of the Glory of God is described in Ex. 16:7, 10: “and in the morning you will see the Glory of God... they looked around in the desert, and behold, the Glory of the Lord appeared in a cloud.” In this first phenomenon there is already one feature that is most often repeated in further doxophany, phenomena of Glory, namely Her appearance in the cloud. The cloud has the meaning of a certain environment that simultaneously closes and opens for weak eyes the presence of God within this cloud. But in this very meaning, the prototype of the Mother of God and, of course, the Church in the appearance of the cloud - such, for example, is the pillar of fire and cloud that led Israel in the desert. 72 So, already the first appearance of the Glory of God speaks about the Glory of man, about the Mother of God. (Apparently, in a number of places where it is simply said: “and the Glory of God appeared” Lev. 9:6, 23; Numbers - 14:10; 16:19,42; 20:6 - of course the appearance of a cloud; this is directly stated only in Numbers 16:42.) The cloud appears during both consecrations of places of worship: first the tabernacle (Exod. 40:34–35: “And the cloud covered the tabernacle of meeting, and the Glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And Moses could not enter into the tabernacle of meeting, because a cloud covered it, and the Glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle”), and then Solomon’s temple (1 Kings 8, 10, 11: “when the priests came out of the sanctuary, a cloud filled the house of the Lord. And the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the Glory of the Lord filled the church of the Lord”; cf. 2 Chron. 5.13 – 14). In this regard, we must also understand Numbers 9.15–23, which speaks of the cloud standing over the tabernacle during stops and about its movements during transitions. The tabernacle and the church in themselves are prototypes of the Mother of God, but the tabernacle-church, overshadowed by the cloud of the Glory of God, is already a double sign of Her; She is the receptacle of the Glory of God, but She is also glorified; She is the container of the incontainable God, but She is also deified. In a word, here, where the Glory of God is spoken of, it is undoubtedly spoken of the Mother of God. Let us now turn to the theophany to Moses, which was also a manifestation of the Glory of God. The very entry of Moses onto Mount Sinai is connected with the appearance of a cloud: “And Moses went up into the mountain, and the cloud covered the mountain. And the Glory of the Lord overshadowed Mount Sinai; and the cloud covered it for six days, and on the seventh day (the Lord) called to Moses out of the midst of the cloud. The sight of the Glory of the Lord on the top of the mountain was before the eyes of the children of Israel, like giving fire. Moses entered the middle of the cloud and ascended the mountain; and Moses was on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights” (Ex. 24:16 – 18). Here two revelations of the Glory of God are united: through the incarnation - the Mother of God, the cloud, and through the manifestation of God - the consuming fire, and both of them are inseparably united, for without the cloud cover the sight of the giving fire would be unbearable for human eyes; man cannot see the face of God and remain alive (Ex. 33:20). The revelation of the Glory of God in an image accessible to a human being is associated with the Theotokos principle. “Is it not because,” exclaims one of the fathers (St. Methodius of Patara), “Moses hesitated for a long time on the mountain that he had to study the unknown secrets of the Mother of God?” 73 “Moses said, Show me Your Glory. And the Lord said: I will bring all My Glory before you, and I will proclaim My Name before you; and I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have mercy on whom I will have pity; and then He said: You must not see My face, for man cannot see Me and live” (33, 18 – 20). These words of the Lord are a direct explanation and completion of the previous ones. They contain an indication that the vision of the Glory of God is not a vision of the Face of the Lord, doxophany is not theophany. It is a kind of revelation of God accessible and transferable by man, but not a vision of the Face of God, the essence of God. This is also confirmed by the testimony of St. John, referring, of course, to Moses: “No one has ever seen God.” (10. 1.18, 1. 10, 4.12. Compare also 1 Tim. 6.16). In the further words of the Lord, this conclusion is expressed in anthropomorphic images: “the Lord said: this is my place: stand on this rock. When My Glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock and cover you with My hand until I pass by. And when I remove My hand, you will see Me from behind, but My face will not be visible” (33:21 – 23). The deliberate and seemingly exaggerated anthropomorphism and massiveness of these images conceals rather than reveals the mystery of God’s action in man, who receives only what is possible from God. But this further emphasizes the difference established above, and in a certain sense, the opposition between the very hypostatic being of God, the “Face of God,” and His Glory. In 34:5-6 the very appearance of the Glory is described in the following terms: “And the Lord descended in the cloud and stood there near him and proclaimed the Name of Jehovah, and the Lord passed before him and cried: The Lord, the Lord, a God gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in kindness and truth.” Two features are striking here. Firstly, the appearance of Glory here is depicted as the descent of God in a cloud, which is, as we already know, one of the Old Testament images of the Mother of God: the appearance of Glory here is the motherhood of God and the incarnation of God. Glory is the Mother of God, in whom the Lord descends, from whom the Lord is born through the influx of the Holy Spirit, there is the Mother of God Sophia. But at the same time, the Name of Jehovah is proclaimed, which is the Word that reveals, says, names the Father. This proclamation of the Name also speaks of the incarnation of God, but expressed no longer in relation to the receptive, Divine Mother principle, but to the incarnate Logos Himself. The glory of God is here in this meaning the God-man, Christosophia. In this combination, the text about the Glory of God mysteriously contains the verbal icon of the Mother of God, the Mother with the Child, the Cloud and the Name (the very name also indicates the incarnation of God: “God loving and merciful”). So, the first appearance of the Glory of God to St. to the Prophet Moses contains the mystery of the Mother of God and the mystery of the Incarnation, which was shown by God before its fulfillment in time, by the power of its eternal destiny. A further feature of the story, namely, that “the face of Moses began to shine with rays because God spoke to him” (34.29), indicates the divine power inherent in the manifestation of the Glory of God, and 34.34 directly says that “Moses entered before the Face of the Lord to speak with Him,” and this affirms, so to speak, the divine authenticity of this phenomenon, i.e., that for Moses in the measure of his human possibility, the vision of Glory was an entry into the Face of God, although in essence it was not His vision. At the same time, the glorification of Moses is related to the Tabor sowing, in which Moses also participated: this is the light of the Glory of God, which the Lord showed to His disciples on Tabor. The manifestation of the Glory of God was, according to what has been said, a manifestation of Wisdom at the same time both in the Christological and theotokos aspects, and this makes Moses, the seer of God, the chosen mystical seer of the Incarnation, which corresponds to his place in the history of the Church as the establisher of the law and, in this sense, the founder of the Old Testament Church. In the law, liturgical and ritual, it was secretly promised - as the “canopy of the law” - the coming into the world of grace, the incarnation of the Son of God from the Virgin Mary, and the entire ritual law, the church and sacrifices are explained in this sense in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Therefore, the prophet of God Moses, to whom God revealed His Name and made him a seer of God, a friend and interlocutor of God, was given extraordinary revelations about the Mother of God, which become available in the light of the achievements and revelations of the New Testament. Moses wore a veil over his face, because weak human eyes could not bear its radiance, the reflection of the Glory of God. But in the New Testament, God became incarnate and “lived with men,” and “we saw His glory as the only begotten of the Father, filled with grace and truth” (John 1:14). And this same veil, according to the explanation of St. Paul (2 Cor. 3:13-16), also lies on the hearts of Israel, for it is removed only by Christ, so that the eyes “do not look at the end of what is passing.” But for Christians this veil has been removed, and it is clear how filled Moses, the seer of God, was with the knowledge of the Mother of God, 74 who is typified and prepared by all Old Testament piety. Of the revelations about the Mother of God to Moses, in addition to the appearance of the Glory of God, the first theophany to him, the Burning Bush, which is invariably explained by the Church as the image of the Holy Virgin, deserves exceptional attention. Therefore, there is a special icon of the Most Holy. Virgin, called the Burning Bush (an image of the Mother of God with cosmic symbols in the center of a quadrangular star inscribed in a smart sky filled with angels; at the corners of the quadrangle are four animals from the vision of Ezekiel and the Apocalypse, corresponding to the four Evangelists; there is, however, under the same name an image of the Mother of God surrounded by fire, like the bush seen by Moses). Ref. 3:2: “And the angel of the Lord appeared to him (Moses) in a flame of fire from the midst of a thorn bush. And he saw that the thorn bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed.” The Angel of the Lord here, as in other cases of theophany (for example, Gen. 18.69, Numbers 22.31, 5.1, Judges 2.1 - 4), is used with apparent indifference instead of God Himself (cf. the speech of the first martyr Stephen, Acts 7.30 - 35). The general patristic understanding sees here, in any case, a certain anticipation of the incarnation and sometimes brings the angel closer to the Son of God, sometimes sees the manifestation of the triune God (a hint of the trinity is seen in the threefold naming of God: “The God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob” Ex. 3:6). The appearance of the angel in the bush must be understood in comparison with the vision of the Glory of God. Just as in the latter, while it is impossible to see God Himself, “the Face of God,” Moses, nevertheless, is worthy to see His Glory, so here Moses “turn away your face: for it is good to look upon God” (3:6). And, however, with this fear of looking at God, he endures a conversation with His Angel, in other words, he accepts the theophany that is feasible for him, which, more precisely, is doxophany, the appearance of the Divine Sophia in the form of the incarnation anticipated by God. There are two moments of this sophiophany: on the one hand, the Burning Bush itself, a bush engulfed in fire, flaming and not burning, “holy land” (Ex. 3:5) is the Mother of God, overshadowed by the Holy Spirit; on the other hand, the appearance of the Angel of God in a flame of fire from the midst of a thorn bush (3:2) is “the Lord Himself, calling to Moses from the midst of the bush” (3:4), the Son of God incarnate. Therefore, this vision is the filial icon of the Mother of God, seen by the prophet Moses, an image of the incarnation of God, in which the fire of the Divine penetrates and adores the created nature, without burning it, and the Divine Sophia unites with the created, which is why it has two images of appearance, in Christ and the Mother of God. In other words, the vision of the Burning Bush given to Moses is essentially identical with the vision of the Glory of God that he asked from God. There is one feature that confirms and reveals this rapprochement: we saw that the appearance of Glory was associated with the proclamation of the Name of God (Ex. 33:19, 34:5, 6). But here, in the appearance of the Bush, the proclamation of the Name requested by Moses also occurs (3:13). And God from the burning bush reveals to him His Name, great and terrible, which was surrounded by great reverence in Old Testament piety 76 . This Name of God - Jehovah, Yahweh, is usually revered as the Old Testament revelation of the Divinity and refers to the hypostatic identity of the Divine: I am who I am, I am. In this sense, this Name can also refer to the entire Holy Trinity, in the unit of existence, to the triune hypostatic God. However, the Holy Trinity is named, has His Name, in the Son, He is the Name of the Father (as in the Lord’s Prayer: Our Father - the First Hypostasis, hallowed be Thy Name - the Second Hypostasis). The Name of the Father revealed to Moses: He, ὁ ών, is also the Name of the Son. And this in the New Testament is directly testified by Himself: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, says the Lord, who is and who is and who is to come, the Almighty” (Rev. 1:8, cf. 1:10, 2:8). The direct relationship of this text to the Logos may be disputed, although from the context and parallels it clearly follows that the name ό ών refers to Christ, along with the names that indisputably belong to Him: Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. This is the same interpretation of the text of Rev. 1.8 is also confirmed by iconography, where the image of the Savior as the Logos, the Eternal Youth is usually inscribed with the Greek ὁ ών, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Jehovah. Thus, the connection of the Name with theophany, the pronunciation of the Name from the midst of the thorny flaming bush directly speaks of the incarnation of the second Person of the Holy Trinity from the Virgin Mary, and the New Testament, the divine-human Name of Jehovah is the sweetest Name Jesus (and is this not the reason that before the coming of Christ the reading of the Name of Jehovah is lost and forgotten?). The appearance of God to Moses on Mount Horeb marks the beginning of a new era of worship of God, which continues until John the Baptist, preparatory, educational and subordinate; it opens with the vision of the Mother of God in Kupina, and Her appearance in the world and the incarnation of God that takes place through it ends and is exhausted. This exclusive knowledge of the mystery of the incarnation by Moses is confirmed (in addition to his direct prophecy about the Prophet: Deut. 18:15–19) in the fact that Moses, together with Elijah, appear near the Lord himself on the Mount of Transfiguration, and their special penetration into the mystery of redemption is revealed: “appearing in glory, they spoke of His exodus, which He was about to accomplish in Jerusalem” (Luke 9:31). Next to Moses here is the prophet Elijah, as the seer of the mystery of redemption. Here one is inevitably reminded of the epiphany that this great zealot of true worship received during the days of great trials for faith. “And the Lord said to him: Go out and stand on the mountain before the Lord. And behold, the Lord will pass by, and a great and strong wind will rend the mountains and break in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord will not be in the wind. After the wind there is an earthquake, but the Lord is not in the earthquake. After the earthquake there is fire, but the Lord is not on fire. After the fire there is a breath of quiet wind (in the breath of cold there is tonka).” The mysterious meaning of this epiphany is revealed through comparison with the epiphany to Moses, with whom Elijah was present on Mount Tabor, as the secret place of redemption and epiphany. The appearance of God in natural phenomena - not in menacing and stunning ones, which would seem to be more consistent with the fiery zeal of Elijah and all his service, but in meek and caressing ones - corresponds to God's condescension, the humiliation of the Lord in His incarnation. And the very breath of the quiet wind, with this understanding, receives the same meaning as the cloud for Moses, and also applies to the Mother of God, as a living medium between God and people, bearing the incontainable God. This interpretation finds its main support precisely in the place that was given to Elijah together with Moses on the Mount of Transfiguration (as well as in the indication of the Lord that the Forerunner, whose entire ministry is connected with the coming of the Savior to earth, comes in the spirit and power of Elijah, is Elijah, who should come: Matthew 11:14, 17:11 - 12, Mark 9:12, Luke 1 - 17). The Prophet Isaiah, to whom was the second appearance of the Glory of God, is an Old Testament evangelist who prophesied about the incarnation of God, and he also had prophetic knowledge about the Mother of God. He, the only one of the prophets, has a direct prophecy about the birth of Emmanuel from the Virgin (Is. 7). The Church also sees Her image in the “light cloud” on which the Lord is coming to Egypt (Is. 19:1). It is also contained in the vision of the Glory of God, to which we turn: ch. 6.1 – 7. “In the year of the death of King Hoshea, I saw the Lord Adonai sitting on a throne, high and exalted, and the borders of his robe (in the LXX translation: and His Glory; in glory, trans.: fill the house of His Glory) filled the whole church” (6.1). This discrepancy between the LXX translation and the Masoretic text is decisive. “No one has seen God anywhere,” and if it is said that Isaiah “saw God,” then this obviously refers to the vision not of God Himself, but of His Glory, as it is said directly by the Evangelist John: “Isaiah... saw His Glory... τήν 6όξαν αύτού and spoke about Him” (10. 12:41); according to the Apostle Paul, he heard the Holy Spirit (Acts 28:25). From a comparison of these indications it follows that in the vision of Glory Isaiah was given a triple revelation of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the entire Holy Trinity, as is also clear from the threefold cry of the seraphim: “holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts, the whole earth is full of His Glory!” (6.3). (This is also indicated in the use of pronouns: “whom shall I send? and who will go for Us?” 6:8). This vision of Glory, in comparison with Moses', differs in that the revelation of the trinity appears much more clearly in it. Moreover, here the manifestation of Glory, addressed both to the divine world and to the created world, refers not only to the Glory of God, but also to the Glory of the world, to the Mother of God. The Church, in particular, interprets tongs with a burning coal, in the hands of a seraphim, as an image of the Mother of God receiving the fire of the Divine 77. But according to the main meaning, the vision of the Mother of God is that high and exalted throne on which Christ sits 78. She is the most glorious without comparison, the Seraphim, who, covering their faces and legs with their wings, flying around the throne, cry out to the Holy Trinity: “holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts,” but in relation to the Mother of God: “the whole earth is full of Your Glory.” For She is that earth which is the receptacle of the Glory of God, the filled Glory of the world. This is the Mother of God meaning of Isaiah’s vision. Now we must move on to the third and last Old Testament vision of Glory, the most mysterious, namely the prophet Ezekiel. The prophet knew the revelation of the Mother of God, primarily in the form of the closed eastern gates, through which no one can pass except the Lord (Ezek. 44: 1-4). The Church, choosing this passage for the Mother of God paremia, thereby interprets this vision as applied to the Mother of God. And the entire second part of the book of the prophet Ezekiel (chap. 40-48), relating to the structure of the church and sacrifices, mysteriously refers to the Mother of God, typified by the church and the tabernacle. But the Glory of God is a special revelation given by the prophet. Ezekiel and him stand out from all the prophets. Through a vision of Glory, Ezekiel is called to prophetic service (chap. 1-2), and it accompanies him throughout his entire path. Ezekiel himself does not define Glory anywhere, he speaks of it in massive religious images, as a phenomenon taking place in a certain place and time, moving, coming and going (chap. 3,1213,23, 8,4,9,3; 10,4; 12,22; 11,22–3,43,2–5). The appearance of Glory is no longer associated with the church, as it was under Moses and Solomon (Exodus 16:10; 1 Kings 8:11; 2 Chronicles 5:14). It also differs from the essence of God, “the Face of God,” for it is said about it: “such was the vision of the likeness of the Glory of the Lord” (Ezek. 2:1), and it is not identified with the Lord Himself, speaking to the prophet (2:1–3), although the revelation of God is associated with this phenomenon. It is not our task to provide a detailed explanation of the mysterious vision of Ezekiel’s “chariot” (chapter I), which can hardly be interpreted in all its features within the limits of the present century. But it is all the more important to note some of its features. From the middle of the fire, “the likeness of four animals” was visible, and “their appearance was like that of a man” (1:5), “The likeness of their faces was the face of a man and the face of a lion on the right side of all four, and on the left side - the face of a calf for all four, the face of an eagle for all four” (1:10). (The same vision is repeated in the Apocalypse: 4.7.) These animals correspond to the symbols of the four Evangelists, who depict the Man Christ as a man, a calf, a lion and an eagle. Man combines the strength and wisdom and meekness of the animal world, for he is a cosmic being, a microcosm. These mysterious symbols of the Four Gospels, relating to different images of Christ’s ministry, also contain a mysterious indication of man’s relationship to the pre-human world and its transformation, enlightenment and humanization in man. In a word, the four-animal Four Gospels contain a mysterious revelation about man as an anthropocosmos, about his leadership of the entire created world, it is testified that all creation is in a certain sense - Man - (just as the content of the Mosaic Six Days, ending with the creation of man, is in essence a story about his creation). Ezekiel’s vision is, at the same time, a revelation about the heavenly and eternal nature of man, about the “heavenly man” (and in this sense there is, as it were, an explanation of the words of Proverbs 8:31 about the Wisdom of God: “and my joy is in the sons of men”): in the Glory of God there is the image of man created in the image of God. However, it should be pointed out that the appearance of a person is also attributed here to the cherubim (10:20), who bear the throne of the Lord over the vault extending above them (1:22, 26), and however they do not belong to the human, but to the angelic world. To this we can answer that the cherubim are not attributed here with the fullness of human, and in general cosmic nature, they are “the likeness of four animals”, they have an appearance “like a person” (1.5). The nature of the spiritual, angelic world remains different from that of the human world. Nevertheless, angels are characterized by a service attitude towards this world, and therefore a certain ontological affinity and relationship with it: in order to serve a person, you need to have his likeness (this relationship is imprinted in the doctrine of a personal guardian angel inherent in every person, as his heavenly image). In other words, the Glory of the heavenly world is correlative to the Glory of the human world and - in this sense - human, hence the animality and humanity of the highest ranks of angels, on which the Lord rests, “sitting on cherubim.” This idea about the heavenly image of man, the reflection of which also lies on the angelic world, receives new confirmation in further details of the vision: above the vault above their heads there was the likeness of a throne, and “above the likeness of the throne there was as it were the likeness of a man above on it” (1:26). This likeness of a man on the throne directly testifies to the heavenly pre-eternity of the human image, visible not only in the created spiritual world of the cherubim bearing the throne, but also on the throne itself (this is an analogy to Daniel’s vision of the Son of Man, 7.9, 13 - 14; cf. Rev. ch. 4 - 5). The Church sees in the human likeness seated on the throne the image of the incarnation of the Son of God 79 . However, this vision, which existed before the incarnation, testifies to the pre-eternity of the human image in heaven, by the power of which the creation of man was possible and, as his new creation, the incarnation of God. If we understand the vision only in relation to the incarnation of God and see in it only a prophecy about Christ, then in this case we inevitably come to the conclusion that human created nature, glorified in Him, also participates in the Glory of God. And the Glory of God embraces both the eternal world and the Divine Sophia created in its image, in their ontological unity, revealed in the Son of Man. But the revelation of Sophia - the Glory of God - inherently contains the Mother of God principle, which is why the vision of Ezekiel, like that of Moses and Isaiah, also applies to the Mother of God. “The Throne of the Cherubim is the Virgin,” the most honorable Cherub and the most glorious without comparison Seraphim, is indicated in the vision of the throne with Him sitting on it, and the whole wonderful chariot signifies the Holy One. The Virgin, who in church songs is called “the chariot of the intelligent Sun”, “the fiery chariot of the Word”. (This theotokos character of Ezekiel’s vision is also confirmed by the vision of the rainbow, which also appeared to Noah after the flood and signifies the Church and the Blessed Virgin: 1.28.) So, Ezekiel’s vision, which contains an insight into the mystery of the incarnation, also contains an insight into the Mother of God as the Glory of the World 80. This suggests a comparison of the vision of Ezekiel with the teaching about the Wisdom of God in Prov. Sol. 8 and Prem. Sol. 7.22 – 30; 8, 10 – 12; Prem. Sire. 1.24. And in general, the Glory of God is only another image of the Wisdom of God. Like Sophia, Glory has two faces: Christ-Sophia and Mother of God-Sophia, divine and created. The prophecy of the Incarnation contains simultaneously Christ and the Mother of God, the Glory of God and the Glory of the world, the appearance of the Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. This is the Mother of God and Sophia meaning of the vision of the Glory of God revealed to Ezekiel: God in creation and creation in God, the adored creature. In this regard, it is only possible to understand the peculiarity of Ezekiel’s doxophany, that the Glory of God comes and goes, enters the church and leaves the church, in a word, as if it has an earthly history, enters into interaction with the human race. This is completely incomprehensible in relation to the eternal Glory of God, existing before the creation of the world (John 17:5), but is quite applicable to the Glory that is revealed in creation and therefore has history. This is the history of the Old Testament Church, which is primarily meant by the prophet. Ezekiel, that is, before the Mother of God, as well as the New Testament after Her and with Her. In Her Herself the history of the world and the Church internally ends, for it finds its fulfillment. She is the already accomplished Glory of creation, created Sophia. However, in the human world, the history of the Church continues until the end of this century. The miraculous icon of the Mother of God and Her merciful appearances to the saints are New Testament likenesses of the Glory seen by Ezekiel as approaching and moving away from the church, appearing or hiding from people. So, all three doxophnias also include the revelation of the Mother of God as the Glory of the world and the Throne of God. The manifestations of the Glory of God are, to a certain extent, prototypes and prophecies of the future, predictions of future events. However, this temporary fulfillment does not exhaust their meaning, for in the temporal everything that exists from eternity is revealed, and in God everything temporal is eternal. In time, the Son of God was incarnate and ascended into heaven with His most pure Flesh, but for eternity He remains the God-Man, sitting on the throne of Glory, as He was seen by the prophet. Ezekiel. Here is an antinomy for reason, which is unable to unite the temporal and the eternal, and the sweet mystery of faith: what is temporary for us is eternal in God. But what applies to the incarnation, to the Son, also applies to the Author of the incarnation, the Ever-Virgin. Her life begins and proceeds in time. Only from a certain, certain time does she become the Mother of God, and as if for the first time, the power and grace of the Mother of God enters the world. And, however, for God, the Mother of God exists from eternity, as it was given to comprehend it in the manifestations of Glory to the holy prophets of God. The creation of the world, which takes place in time, like the whole life of creation, exists in God in an eternal way, and the heart of creation and its glory is the Mother of God. And if, according to the wise words of Tertullian, “God, when he formed every feature of Adam’s body from clay, thought about Christ, who would one day be a man,” 81 then by creating Eve, the Lord created the church of the body of the coming Mother of God. Just as there is a place in heaven for the God-man, ascended and sitting at the right hand of the Father, from eternity, for there is no change in God, so the place of the Mother of God in heaven, sitting at the right hand of the Son, is pre-prepared from eternity as the basis for the creation of the world, the world was created for the sake of the Mother of God, as Her receptacle. Nothing can be thought in the world that is absolutely accidental or something that might or might not have happened, and even more so this ungodly thought is inappropriate in relation to the Mother of God. Usually the Incarnation is associated with redemption from sin and, therefore, subordinates it to the Fall. This concept implicite, hidden, includes the idea that the appearance of the Mother of God is connected with the fall of the ancestors, for without it it would be unnecessary, and therefore becomes accidental. Such a thought is completely subverted by the biblical narrative about the manifestations of the Glory of God, which relate to God himself, and not to man, and reveal the divine world. And in this world, an irreducible place belongs to the Incarnation and the Mother of God. These phenomena constitute, as it were, a heavenly prologue to the New Testament. They testify to the Mother of God as the eternal Glory of the world, visible in God earlier than the Virgin Mary appeared in the history of mankind. Just as the Lord in His Glory sits on the cherubim and is sung by the seraphim, the second, but still created lights, so the Throne of Him who sits in the likeness of the human image is a glorified creation, the Mother of God, the most honorable Cherub and the most glorious without comparison Seraphim. She, together with the angelic hosts, has a share in the Divine Glory as “the former all-bright Church of God” 82. This does not mean in any way and in no sense that the Mother of God entered into the bowels of the Holy Trinity as a special, fourth, hypostasis (which is a bias sometimes outlined in Catholic theology), just as the “second lights” of angels do not enter these bowels. But, without entering the Holy Trinity, the Mother of God, through grace, as the One of Grace, participates in divine life by the power of Her perfect deification. She is the Wisdom in creation, and in Her the fullness of the Divine trinity is revealed. She lives the life of the Holy Trinity and is the first of the created hypostases, the beloved Daughter of God and at the same time the Mother of the entire human race. She is the Glory of the world, the Burning Bush, created nature, burning and not being consumed in the divine flame of the Holy and Life-Giving Trinity. Excursion II. Old Testament teaching about the Wisdom of God In the Old Testament, the doctrine of Wisdom (Σοφία, chokma) is set forth in one of the canonical books, namely the Proverbs of Solomon, and in two non-canonical ones: the Wisdom of Solomon and the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach (You can also add Job here, ch. 28.12 - 28.). In the book of Proverbs, ch. I-IX, an entire theological teaching about Wisdom is set forth (moreover, the book itself among early Christian writers bore the name ή πανάρετος σοφΰχ - all-good Wisdom, as well as the book of Jesus son of Sirach; other names: ή σοφὴβίβλος or ή παιδαγωγικὴ Σοφία, in the Talmud - “book of wisdom”). The word Wisdom is used here, undoubtedly, in a double sense: in the metaphysical and moral-practical, denoting either a certain intelligent essence, or a human quality, or Wisdom itself, or a particularity with it or its affairs. Both shades of meaning, of course, are interconnected and mutually determined, and, however, in some cases they can be isolated and differ, like Wisdom and simply wisdom. Wisdom is undoubtedly spoken of in the following texts: 1.7, 9.10 – the beginning of wisdom is the fear of the Lord; fools only despise wisdom and instruction. 2.6 – The Lord gives wisdom; 2:10 – when wisdom enters your heart (glory, trans.: your thought) and knowledge (v. p.: the feeling of your soul), it will be pleasant to your soul. 3:13 – blessed is the man who has acquired wisdom, and the man who has acquired understanding! (see below, 3.14 – 18). 4.5 – acquire wisdom, acquire understanding; 4:7 – the main thing is wisdom: acquire wisdom and acquire understanding with all your possessions. 5.1 - son! listen to my wisdom. 7.4 – say to wisdom: “You are my sister!”, and call understanding your own. There are cases when the meaning of the expression “wisdom” is double and can be interpreted in either direction. Here we include the first speech on behalf of wisdom: 1.20–33 - “Wisdom proclaims in the street,” etc. Based on the content of this speech, there is no need to see here a direct indication of Divine Wisdom itself and it is more natural to understand the wise, bearers of wisdom and preachers (Old Testament prophets and teachers), although the first, metaphysical interpretation is not excluded. The same duality is distinguished by the text 19–20 - “The Lord founded the earth with Wisdom, established the heavens with reason, with His Wisdom (v. p.: in His feeling) the abysses were opened and the clouds sprinkled with dew.” Here, both a descriptive interpretation (instead of: wisely, wisely) and an ontological one, in connection with the content of Chapter 8, are equally appropriate. Wisdom certainly receives ontological significance in her second speech, ch. VIII, in its second half. The first half of 8.4–21 differs little from the moral and practical teaching of chapters 1.22–33. But, starting from 8:22, suddenly a sharp transition of thought is made, and speech begins not about wisdom, but about Wisdom as a superworldly beginning. Let us quote this passage from the Russian text, indicating discrepancies. 22. The Lord had me as the beginning of His path, before His creatures, from time immemorial (glory, p.: The Lord created me as the beginning of His ways in His works) (“Had” corresponds to the Greek reading ἑκτήσατο, “created” – ἔκτισε; at this point Glory, and Russian texts represent two different editions. According to According to the reading of the Slavs, the text, which is also the most ancient, Wisdom was created; according to the Russian reading, corresponding to a more precise text, nothing is said here about its origin, but only testifies to its existence 83. 23. From the ages I have been anointed, προκέχρισμα (Symmachus), from the beginning, before the existence of the earth (glory, i.e.: before the ages was the foundation of me - ἐθφελίωσε με, in the beginning, before you created the earth 84. 24. I was born (v. p.: gives birth to me) when the abysses did not yet exist, when there were no springs of abundant water 85 . 25. I was born before the mountains were erected, before the hills. 26. When He created neither the earth, nor the fields, nor the initial specks of dust of the universe (glory, p.: The Lord made the uninhabited countries and the inhabited ends of the heavens). 27. When He prepared the heavens, I (was) there. When He drew a circular line across the face of the abyss, 28. When I strengthened the clouds above, when I strengthened the sources of the deep, 29. When he gave the sea a charter so that the waters would not cross its borders, when he laid the foundations of the earth: 30. Then I was an artist with Him (absent in glory, trans.) and was a joy every day, rejoicing in His face all the time. 31. Rejoicing in His earthly circle, and my joy was with the sons of men (sl. p.: always rejoicing having completed the universe, and rejoicing over the sons of men). Then, from 8:32 to the end of the chapter - 8:36, the talk about Wisdom stops, and again it talks about the wisdom that the sons of men acquire. As we see, Wisdom is here defined as a beginning that exists before the creation of the world and is laid down by God as its foundation 86 . Its origin from God, as well as its relationship to God, is described in vague terms, which is why different interpretations are possible. According to one interpretation, Wisdom was created and is the created principle of the universe, as if an instrument in the hands of God, or a created mediator between God and the world (in this interpretation, these texts were very convenient for the concept of Arianism). However, this interpretation rests only on one of the versions of the text 8.22, preserved in our Slavic translation: The Lord created me. But this reading is not currently considered to correspond to the exact meaning (not created, but had). This Arian idea does not fit into any Orthodox teaching, and it must be rejected unconditionally. However, it is a mistake to see here any definite teaching about the origin of Wisdom in this series of expressions: had me, I am anointed, I was born (called into being), I was. These descriptive expressions contain the general idea that Wisdom is supremely peaceful with God and that it is a peace-making principle. But it would be an abuse of the text to assert that a definite doctrine is established here about the origin of Wisdom only through birth and on this basis to understand here the hidden doctrine of the birth of the Son from the Father (this interpretation is also hindered by the use of the feminine expression - chokmah, σοφία, Wisdom, which does not correspond to the Son). Also, in this text there are no grounds forcing one to understand by Wisdom the Second Hypostasis, the Son of God, although such an interpretation, which was originally Arian in origin, became widespread in patristic writing (see Excursion III). Mainly based on 1 Cor. 1:24 Christ is usually referred to in it as “God’s power and God’s wisdom,” however, this rule is not without exceptions, and very important ones at that: among the two most ancient writers, Wisdom, Sophia, is called not the Second, but the Third Hypostasis, the Holy Spirit, namely in St. Theophilus of Antioch 87, St. Irenaeus 88, ep. Lionsky. Before dwelling on any of our own conclusions, with all the controversy and ambiguity of this issue even in patristic writing, we must seek an interpretation of this passage on the basis of the very Word of God through a comparison of the teaching about Wisdom in the book of the Wisdom of Solomon and the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach. True, both books are non-canonical (“deuterocanonical”, as Catholics put it), but the authority of even the non-canonical books found in the Bible is so great that this interpretation must be accepted first of all 89. So, what teaching about Wisdom do we have, first of all, in the book of the Wisdom of Solomon, which is, as it were, a commentary on Proverbs, ch. VIII: 22–35 The Book of the Wisdom of Solomon (ή πανάρετος, ή θεία σοφία among the Greek fathers, ἠ σοφίαΣαλομῶνος among the Alexandrian) in the doctrine of Wisdom is partly different, partly approaches the corresponding the teaching of Proverbs. The first difference is that the author of Wisdom speaks not only about Wisdom itself, but also about the spirit of Wisdom: 1:5 - “the holy spirit of Wisdom” (glory, p.: holy spirit of punishment), “the humane spirit of Wisdom” (1:7). (In the next verse, in context in connection with the teaching about the spirit of Wisdom, it also says this: “The Spirit of the Lord fills the universe and, as all-encompassing, knows every word” 1:8.) Chapter 7 continues this teaching about the spirit of Wisdom: “I knew everything, both hidden and visible, for Wisdom, the artist of everything, taught me (ή γὰρ πάντων τεχνίτης). For in it 90 there is a spirit subtle, easily mobile, bright, pure, harmless, benevolent, quick, irresistible, beneficent, loving, firm, unshakable, calm, beginningless, all-seeing and penetrating all intelligent, pure and subtle souls” (7.22 - 23). (The number of epithets is 21 = 3X7, the product of two perfect numbers, according to commentators, was chosen deliberately.) The author of the Book of Wisdom “prayed, and reason was given to me, I cried, and the spirit of Wisdom came upon me” (7.7). In this regard, we think, we should understand the text: “Who would have known Your will if You had not bestowed Wisdom (σοφίαν, without a member, therefore, without a specific interpretation) and had not sent down Your Holy Spirit from above.” (9 – 17) 91 . Along with this teaching about the spirit of Wisdom, the author also speaks about Wisdom itself, and no obvious distinction is made between it and its spirit. So in the same chapter 7 the text of Art. 22–23, without any transition, continues in this way: “for Wisdom is more mobile than any movement, and in its purity passes through and penetrates everything. She is the breath of the power of God and the pure outpouring of the Glory of the Almighty (τῆς τοῦ Παντοκράτοροςδόξης). She is a reflection of eternal light and a pure mirror of God’s action - τῆς τοῦ θεοῦἐνεργείας - the image of His goodness. She is alone, but she can do everything and, remaining in herself, renews everything and, passing from generation to generation into holy souls, prepares the friends of God and the prophets, for God loves nothing except the one who lives with Wisdom” (7:24-28). All these expressions testify, undoubtedly, to the ontological understanding of Wisdom as a certain intelligent essence revealed in Divine revelation, but they do not make it possible to attribute it entirely, so to speak, to the realm of the Second Hypostasis or to directly equate it with It (as is understood by other interpreters). If this is favored by such expressions as “the reflection of eternal light” (reminiscent of “light from light” in the Creed) or “the pure outpouring of the glory of the Almighty” (cf. Heb. 1:3 - “who is the radiance of glory and the image of His hypostasis”), then the words: “passing from generation to generation into holy souls, he prepares the friends of God and the prophets” (v. 27) can be attributed with great grounds for the gracious action of the Holy Spirit (“who spoke the prophets” in the Creed). The following texts are even more opposed to such a hypostatic interpretation - in the sense of designating any one - Second or even Third Hypostasis: “I loved her (Wisdom) from my youth and wished to take her as my bride and became a lover of her beauty. She glorifies her nobility by having cohabitation with God. She is the mystery of the knowledge of God - μύστις γὰρ ἐστι τῆς τοῦ θεοῦ ἐπιστήμης” (8.2 – 4). “Therefore, I decided to accept her into cohabitation with me, knowing that she would be an adviser to me for good and a consolation in my work and sorrows” (8.9. Cf. further 8.10 - 18). “God of the fathers and Lord of mercy, who created all things by Thy Word, ἐν λόγω σου, - and by Thy Wisdom formed man, καὶ τή σοφία σουκατασκευάσας ἄνθρωπον, so that he would rule over the creatures You created and rule the world holy and just, and carry out judgment in the righteousness of the soul 92. Grant to me the Wisdom that sits before Your throne - δός μοι τὴν τῶν θρόνων πάρεδραν σοφίαν - and do not cast me away from Your servants... even if one were perfect among the sons of men, without Your Wisdom - he will be recognized as nothing” (9.4, 6). “With You is Wisdom, καὶ μετάσου ή σοφία, which knows Your works and was present - παρούσα when You created the world, and knows what is pleasing in Your sight and what is right according to Your commandments: send it down from the holy heavens and from send her down from the throne of Your glory, so that she may assist me in my labors.” These texts (especially the underlined passages) in our eyes are incompatible with the understanding of Wisdom as the Second Hypostasis, because neither the desire to take her as a bride or accept her into cohabitation, nor the prayer for bestowing and sending her from the height of the Throne of God’s glory to man can in any way be attributed to Her, 93 and this prayer refers specifically to Wisdom, which knows the works of God and was present when God created the world. In general, it is clear that here we are talking about the revelation of God in the world through His action (ἐνεργεία, 7:26), about the divine fundamental principle of the world or about the basis of the world in God, about the power that preserves and directs the world in man and through man, about the mind to which a person becomes conformed or not conformed, can pray for it, being more or less sophian, but not about one specific divine Hypostases, and in particular not about the Second. On the contrary, according to the book of the Wisdom of Solomon, it is rather necessary, firstly, to distinguish between Wisdom and the spirit of Wisdom, as a revelation of the same essence, and secondly, to combine Wisdom not only with the Word, but also with the Holy Spirit, omnipresent and fulfilling everything, as well as God the Father, to whom, undoubtedly, the prayer for the sending down of Wisdom is addressed. In a word, we have to conclude that Wisdom is the divine principle in which and through which all Three (and not just one) Hypostases are revealed in unity and distinction, the consubstantial, life-giving and inseparable Trinity, God the Father, God the Son and God the Spirit of St. Sophia is one life, one essence, one content of the life of all the Most Holy. Trinity, and in relation to the world and man (more precisely, to the world-man) it is the divine world, its basis or idea in God, the world in God before its creation (earlier, of course, not in the chronological sense, but ontological). In the created world, Wisdom is not only a world-creating, but also a world-preserving force, acting in man through the sophia inherent in him by virtue of the image of God. This side of the Divine Sophia is revealed with the greatest clarity precisely in the book of the Wisdom of Solomon, in chapters 10–12. Here the history of man, more precisely, the history of the economy of salvation, and even more precisely, the history of the Church in the history of the human race, is depicted as the work of Sophia, as the creation and preservation of the sophia of man, starting from his very creation. “She preserved the primeval father of the world, who was created alone, and saved him from his own fall” (10:1). It is remarkable that the primordial Adam is called here the father of the world ...πατέρα κόσμου, which indicates his central significance for the whole world precisely because of his sophia. “Wisdom again saved the drowned earth”... she, among the nations mixed in the unanimity of evil, “found the righteous and kept him blameless before God... She saved the righteous during the destruction of the wicked” (8:4-6 et seq.). “She freed the holy people and the immaculate seed from the nations that oppressed them, entered the soul of the servant of the Lord and resisted the terrible kings with wonders and signs. She rewarded the saints for their labors and led them along a wondrous path; and during the day it was their cover, and at night it was starlight. She led them through the Red Sea and led them through great waters” (10:15–18–ff.). Chapters 11–12 describe how Wisdom “made good their affairs by the hand of the holy prophet during the wandering in the desert and after it.” The most remarkable feature is that Wisdom is obviously credited with those deeds that are spoken of in the books of Moses and historical books as being done by God Himself (and “His Angel”). And even within the 11th chapter, the author, with seeming and meaningful indifference, replaces the pronoun “she” with “You,” i.e., having begun to talk about the deeds of Wisdom, he continues to talk about the deeds of God, as if equating the Wisdom of God and the Lord Himself. “You bypass everyone because you can do anything, and you cover up people’s sins for the sake of repentance. You love everything that exists and do not disdain anything that you have created, for you would not have created it if you had not willed it, or how it would have been preserved that which was not called by You. But You spare everything, because everything is Yours, soul-loving Lord. Your imperishable spirit abides in everything” (11:24 – 27, 12:1). The entire 12th chapter continues the presentation of the work of Wisdom and in this sense directly adjoins chapters 10 and 11. One cannot, of course, see this alternation as an accident; on the contrary, one must discern the hidden theological meaning and indication here. It is also impossible to get rid of this issue by simply equating the Wisdom of the Second Hypostasis and accepting that it is precisely She who is spoken of in Chapters 10–11. There is no basis for this equation, just as there is no basis for the corresponding parallels from the Pentateuch. On what basis, in fact, is it possible to think that Jehovah of the book of Genesis or Exodus is precisely the Logos, and not a consubstantial Trinity, having one Wisdom and acting with it and speaking to people? In any case, in dogmatics it stands firmly and indisputably that the world was created not by any one Person of the Holy Trinity, but with the participation of all Three Hypostases: the Father spoke with His Word and completed it with the Holy Spirit. Also, providential activity, as it is depicted here, is inherent in the entire Holy Trinity. Therefore, in the indicated alternation of names - Wisdom and God - we see new confirmation that Wisdom is not only the Second Hypostasis, as is clear from all of the above, and is not at all a divine hypostasis, but is characteristic of the entire Holy Trinity and all Three Hypostases, is God in his self-revelation and revelation to the world. It, to use the expression of Palamite disputes, is “energy” in relation to the world, the action of God in creation. And the energy of God, according to the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas, cannot be confined to any one Person of the Holy Trinity, but can refer to all of them individually and to the Holy Trinity as a whole. At the same time, if we remember the main idea of Palamas’s theology about the energies of God, namely, that “energy is God” (although not vice versa: one cannot assume that God is energy, for an unknown, transcendental essence belongs to Him), then it becomes clear by analogy why and in what sense Wisdom is spoken of with apparent indifference, either “Wisdom” or “God,” for Wisdom is God in the world, not in essence and not in hypostatic existence, but according to vital revelation 94. Based on the considered chapters 10–12, we receive a vivid commentary for understanding the Savior’s words about Wisdom in both presentations: and Wisdom was justified from her works (Matthew 11:19) and from all her children (Luke 7:35). These chapters explain the “justification” of Wisdom in the human race through those who sought it and contained it in the Old Testament Church. John the Baptist, about whom these words were spoken, thereby becomes one of these righteous people, surpassing them in righteousness, and thereby in his sophistry. New commentary on Proverbs 8.22 ff. are chapters 1 and 24 of the book of the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach. “All Wisdom, πᾶσα σοφία, is with the Lord - παρὰ τοῦκυρίου, and remains with Him forever” (1:1) - this is how Sirach begins, indicating that he wants to talk about the eternal, universal Wisdom, and not about a human property: abiding character Wisdom, while at the same time distinguishing it from God, with whom it resides—these are its main features. “First of all, wisdom came into existence (actually: created, έκτίσθη) and is more intelligent than the wisdom of the ages” 95. “One is the wise one - σοφὸς, very terrible, sitting on His throne. The Lord Himself produced it, έκτισεν, and saw it and measured it and poured it out on all His works and on all flesh according to His gift, and especially bestowed it on those who loved Him” (1:1 – 10). In this text it is not easy to find an indication of hypostatic Wisdom, as the Second Person of the Holy Trinity: the opposition “The Wise” - and “Wisdom” in this case would have to be attributed to the First and Second Persons of the Holy Trinity. Trinity, Father and Son, while the text clearly makes a contrast between the Lord sitting on the throne (which, of course, equally applies to the Son), and between Wisdom, which God has as the Wise One, but is not identified with it, as would be the case if She were the Second Hypostasis (not to mention the fact that this understanding does not correspond to the expression έκτισε - produced). Therefore, 1:10 should be understood in the same sense as the teaching of the Wisdom of Solomon. In the further content of the 1st chapter, the son of Sirach moves on to a more related practical teaching on the acquisition of wisdom: “love of the Lord is glorious wisdom” (14), “the beginning of wisdom is to fear God” (15), “the fullness of wisdom is to fear the Lord” (16), “the crown of wisdom is the fear of the Lord” (18), “the root of wisdom is to fear Gentlemen" (20). In chapter 24 p. Sirakhov again returns to the teaching of Wisdom, this chapter has a special title Αἴνεσις σοφίας - praise of Sophia. 1. “Wisdom will glorify her soul, ψυχὴναὐτὴς, and will be praised among her people. 2. In the church of the Most High he will open his mouth and be praised before His army. 3. I came out of the mouth of the Most High and covered the earth like a cloud; 4. I set the tabernacle and my throne on the pillar of the cloud; 5. I alone walked around the circle of heaven and in every nation and tribe I had dominion; 6. Between all of them (peoples and tribes) I sought peace, and in whose inheritance I should settle. 7. Then the Creator of all commanded me and He who made me (ὀ κτίσας με) showed me a resting place and said: 9. Settle in Jacob and take up the inheritance in Israel. 10. Before the ages from the beginning He made me -ἔκτισέν με, - and I will not come to an end forever.” (The continuation of this speech, verses 14 - 36, is a praise of wisdom and expresses its relation to the law of Moses.) Texts p. Sirach testify to Wisdom as a peace-making principle, but are not at all inclined to see in it the Second Hypostasis. Rather, even the characterization of Wisdom here speaks of the action in her and through her of the grace-filled power of the Holy Spirit 96 operating in the Church (in particular in the Old Testament Church). Also here, a distinction is established between the Lord, who produced or has Wisdom, and Wisdom itself, as the divine principle existing with God and inseparable from God, but not identified with His hypostases. So, those commentaries on Proverbs, which are found, although in non-canonical books, but nevertheless included in the Bible and highly revered by the Church, not only do not confirm the widespread patristic interpretation of the text about Wisdom, that here the hypostatic Word of God is meant, but, it must be said frankly, they are incompatible with it. And if it were necessary to choose between two testimonies based on their relative weight, then preference would have to be given to the non-canonical books of the Bible. But, fortunately, such a choice does not have to be made, for patristic judgments are sufficiently explained from their origin in the struggle against Arianism and, being clearly colored by this struggle, are sufficiently revealed in their historical conditionality and relativity. They do not contain a direct, positive disclosure of the doctrine of Wisdom, but only a polemic with Arianism, and, however, in this polemic, St. Athanasius the Great (see next, excursion) outlines the features of both sides of the teaching about Wisdom, namely about the pre-eternal and created. Moreover, the latter, we believe, generally favors the interpretation that we accept on biblical and general theological grounds. As part of the church tradition, it is necessary to note the data of iconographic and liturgical theology, which are definitely not conducive to the understanding of Wisdom as the Second Hypostasis: neither the fiery angel sitting on the throne and having a separate image of Christ above her, nor the Mother of God on the icons of Sophia leave the possibility of understanding the Second Hypostasis in Sophia. The same must be said about the content of the service of Sophia, the Wisdom of God, in which she draws closer either to Christ or to the Mother of God, as the bearer of the Holy Spirit, but without completely identifying with either One or the Other and at the same time, of course, not for a single moment acquiring the character of a special Hypostasis and without turning the Holy Trinity into a quaternity - let this blasphemy not happen! For now, we have left without consideration chapter IX of Proverbs, which also expounds the doctrine of Wisdom. 97 This text is remarkable in that it is read as one of three proverbs (namely the third) on all the feasts of the Mother of God and is thus interpreted as applied to the Mother of God. Here is the text: “Wisdom built herself a house and established seven pillars. Slaughter your sacrificial offering and dissolve the wine in your cup and prepare your meal. He sent his servants, convening with high preaching to the cup, speaking,” etc. (9:1-3). The House of Wisdom, which is spoken of here, is clearly the Mother of God, and in a more expanded sense, the Church in general. Seven pillars corresponding to the seven lamps of the Apocalypse (Rev. 1:12,13; 4:5 “which are the seven spirits of God”), and then seven seals, seven trumpets, seven bowls. In general, the mysterious number seven, indicating completeness, can also refer to the number 7 of the church sacraments (if it does not have another mysterious meaning, now unknown), just as the slaughter of a sacrifice and the dissolution of wine can indicate the divine Eucharist. The main question of exegesis here is how to understand the words: “Wisdom made herself a house.” Obviously, their meaning depends on the already given meaning that is substituted for the word Wisdom. The house created by Wisdom, in any interpretation, points to the Mother of God, as is clearly evident from the Theotokos character of this paremia. If we adhere to the understanding of Wisdom as the Second Hypostasis, then we get the following meaning: the Word of God Jesus Christ created a house for Himself, that is, His Mother. It is obvious what difficulties such an interpretation leads to. Why and in what sense is it correct to say that it was the Word who created His Mother? If we understand this in the general sense that “all things were” by the Word, and among this every creation is the Mother of God, then, firstly, this general meaning alone is not enough for this deliberate indication of the creation of the house of Wisdom. Secondly, it would be inaccurate to say in general about the creation of the world or man that it was created by the Word alone, for the entire Holy Spirit participates in it. Trinity - Father, as “Creator of heaven and earth,” as the First Principle; Son, “to whom everything was”; and the Holy Spirit, who gives life and accomplishes everything. On the other hand, in particular, the preparation of a “house” for Wisdom in the Mother of God was accomplished by the Holy Spirit sent by the Father, and only as a result of the influx of the Holy Spirit does the hypostatic Word born from Her dwell in Her: “The Holy Spirit will come upon You, and the Power of the Most High (Word) will overshadow You” (Luke 1:35). And least of all direct participation in preparing a “home” for Himself belongs to the Word. This is what the Gospel story about the Annunciation teaches us, which is directly contradicted by the interpretation of Proverbs. 9 . in relation to the Second Hypostasis 98. If we equate Wisdom in Proverbs. 9 of the Third Hypostasis, for which, in any case, there are more reasons than for the Second, then it would follow that the content of the actions of Wisdom in some cases relates primarily to the Second Hypostasis, while in other cases to the Third, and therefore it is dogmatically incorrect to equate it with any one of the divine Hypostases 99 . But, as we have tried to show, in general the idea of ​​such an equation cannot be exegetically supported. Wisdom is not the Divine Hypostasis at all, it is the life, action, revelation, “energy” of the Divine, worshiped in the Holy Trinity and revealed to creation, either in His pre-divine unity and consubstantiality, or in the trinity of Persons. Moreover, on the basis of intra-Trinitarian relationships, the Father reveals Himself in the Son by the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the Wisdom of God in relation to the differentiation of the Hypostases appears either as the action of the Son, or directly as the Son in creation (which is why He is then called: “God’s power and wisdom”), then as the Holy Spirit, “Spirit of wisdom” (Is. 11:2), (which is therefore called Wisdom by some church writers), living in the Church. And further - in the same sense - Wisdom also applies to those of her children in whom she was “justified” from her deeds, i.e. first of all to the Most Pure One, and then to the first of the forerunners of Christ born of a woman, and then to the world of angels and men, the glorified creation, the City of God, the new heaven and earth, in which truth lives, the revelation of the Holy Trinity in creation, about which the Church sings: “thou hast created all Wisdom” (ps. 103.24). In the New Testament, the most important place about the Wisdom of God is in the speech of the Savior about John the Baptist, which ends with the following words: and Wisdom was justified - ἡ Σοφία, her division (Matthew 11:19) - and from all her children (Luke 7:35), and the expression "wisdom" must be clearly understood in connection with the Old Testament teaching about Wisdom, stated above 100. For other cases of the ontological meaning of this expression, see Luke. 11.49 and 1 Cor. 1.24 (although not undisputed). In all other cases, “wisdom” undoubtedly means only a property in relation to God or people. These include: Matt. 13.54, Mark. 6.2, Lk. 2.52, 2 Peter. 3.15, Rom. 11:33, 1 Cor. 1,17, 19, 20, 21, 30; Ephesus 1.8, 3.10 , Col. 1.9, 28, 2.3, 3.16, Rev. 5.12, 7.12. Excursion III. The Teaching of the Wisdom of God by St. Athanasius the Great and other Fathers of the Church Arianism raised a twofold question; it was nourished by two sources of doubt. The first related to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the second to the doctrine of God as the Creator of the world. In the first respect, Arianism is essentially anti-Trinitarian. It thinks of God as one-hypostatic, and the thought of a trinitarian God seems alien and unacceptable to it. Actually, only the Father is God, and the Son and the Holy Spirit represent His powers, the degrees of His revelation. – This is the trinity of Neoplatonism with its gradual gradation: One – Mind – Soul, but not equal and equally divine trinities. Arianism thinks of God as one in the sense of a one-hypostatic monad: The one-hypostasis and monadity of the Divine is its starting premise. The doctrine of the creation of the Son and His origin in time from the non-existent is only a direct conclusion from this premise. And since the struggle of St. Athanasia was directed in defense and affirmation of the doctrine of the Trinitarian God, and in particular, about the pre-eternal birth of the Son from the essence of the Father; the dispute, which had a Christological theme as its immediate subject, essentially related to the doctrine of the Trinity. Proving the pre-eternity of the Son, St. Athanasius overthrew monohypostasis and affirmed the trinity of the Divinity. And this was the main line around which the battle was fought, ending with the Nicene victory of Orthodoxy. All the decrees of Nicea, expressed both in positive and negative form, both in the Creed and in the anathematisms, relate to the question of the trinity of the Divinity, and affirm this fundamental dogma. And it is precisely this that is affirmed by the formula ὁμοούσιος, this Nicene banner of Orthodoxy: the consubstantial Three Hypostases - not likeness, not difference, not repetition, not sameness, but unity, togetherness and compatibility. Victory over Arianism of St. Athanasius saved the Church from damage in its most basic and essential teaching. The other side of the question posed in Arianism was connected with the first, and even followed from it. It was about God's relationship to the world. How can one imagine this relationship without belittling the Divine in its absoluteness and without belittling the world in its originality? This question in Greek speculation arose already in Platonism, and here it received preliminary resolution in the doctrine of the demiurge, as a mediator between God and the world, a servant of God during the creation of the world (Timaeus). This formulation of the question was also accepted by Philo, who applied it to Jewish theology and interpretation of the Old Testament. Here it turned into the doctrine of λόγος ἐνδιάθετος, the inner word of God, His immanent wisdom and power, and λόγος προφορικός, the manifested, instrumental word, wisdom in the creation of the world. The same formulation of the question was accepted by Arius and Asterius 101. The difficulties in determining God's relationship to the world, especially with an abstract understanding of Him as a monad, a one-hypostatic Divinity, are not invented, they really exist, and they are great. The philosophical genius of Hellenism revealed here the natural dialectic of the question. Indeed, if we assume that God and the world are directly related to each other, the fundamental difference between them is lost. God in His solitude in this case needs the world as His friend (if not as a friend), strives to get out of this solitude and overcome it with creation. He Himself is incomplete, unrealized for Himself without creation, for individual, egoistic knowledge of Himself or self-revelation does not saturate, does not give absoluteness and self-sufficiency. The One-Hypostatic God needs the World for Himself, and therefore the world is a necessary element in the divine life. God before creation is not the same as after creation, but on the other hand, the world becomes God, since it enters into the inner life of the Divine. Thus, the sinister colors of pantheism and theocosmism appear on the teaching of monohypostatic theism. At the same time, the world, placed in a direct and immediate relationship with God, is unable to endure this relationship without losing its originality. No one has seen God anywhere, a person cannot see God without dying, and to Moses, God’s friend, only the “back of God,” the “Glory of God,” was revealed. Meanwhile, here inevitably God and the world stand face to face without any mediation, the scorching fire, not tempered by anything, and the dry straw of the world, not protected by anything, the Absolute, losing its absoluteness due to the lack of its own inner life, and the relative, exhausting in the embrace of the Absolute. The monohypostatic absolute subject is a power that has no manifestation in itself and needs to create the world; it is open arms that are empty and in need of creation, and the world is a victim of the hunger of the Absolute, doomed to burn in His fire. As long as we are not talking about a personal God, not about an absolute Subject, the faceless deity, as the divine totality of the forces of the world, simply dissolves in the world in the twilight of pantheism (or, what is the same, atheism). But once the absolute Subject, the living God, the worldly and transcendent, is conceived, then within the limits of monohypostasis the situation becomes hopeless, and the cosmological problem cannot be solved. From here naturally flows the desire to seek a means, an attempt to place between God and the world some kind of super-creature, shielding the world from God and burning in scorching fire. This super-creature, which is neither God nor the world, but something in between - μεταξύ - is the demiurge through whom God created the world. From here, quite logically, Arius develops the doctrine of a mediator between God and the world, which, united with the church teaching about Jesus Christ, develops into a kind of heretical Christology. However, the Arian teaching about God and the world and the need for special mediation and its possibility is internally contradictory, and this was shown by St. Afanasy Vel. A mediation between God and the world, as some kind of middle position, is unthinkable and impossible. The mediator himself requires a new mediator and so ad infinitum - no matter how much we multiply the number of steps of the ladder, it still cannot reach heaven, bring the creature into direct contact with the Divine. The thought of a mediator is impossible, it is in some way or a round square. However, the problem was correctly felt, and the disclosure of true Christian teaching on this issue became necessary. But still, a direct answer to the question about the true nature of the relationship between God and the world, Creator and creation was never given. At the Council of Nicaea, this question, apparently, was not discussed from this angle, at least, in its resolutions there are no traces of such a discussion. All forces were concentrated around the decisive question of the Holy Trinity, with the correct resolution of which this question was also predetermined. Moreover, we do not find a completely clear formulation of it in St. Athanasius, who bore this titanic struggle for Orthodoxy on his shoulders. Here we find in him incompleteness, inaccuracies, incomplete teachings, although the general direction of his thought has been sufficiently determined. The victory of Orthodoxy, Homosianism, faith in the Trinitarian God over the teaching of the monadic unity of the Divine changes the entire formulation of the question of God’s relationship to the world. It is no longer possible to say about the trinitarian God what inevitably has to be said about the one-hypostatic monad, which needs the world: the life of the trinitarian Godhead, as Love, as pre-eternal reciprocity and self-revelation, is absolutely self-sufficient and complete, it does not need anyone or anything and cannot have any replenishment. The Trinitarian God lives in Himself, that is, in the Holy Trinity, and this Life is the pre-eternally realized Fullness. Therefore, the world is not needed for God Himself, and it is not able to give any replenishment to Completeness. The world is entirely a creation of the generous and generous love of God, a love that gives and does not accept anything. God is needed for the world, as its foundation and goal, but not vice versa. The trinity overcomes the solitude of the Absolute subject, his loneliness, for the sake of victory over which the monohypostatic God is supposedly forced to create the world. The Trinitarian God is one in His trinity, but not alone... The creation of the world for the sake of man, created in the image of God, is only a repetition established by the generosity of love, of course, in created life, of the Prototype, His self-repetition, as it were, which for Him does not and cannot contain anything new. If one can put it this way, the divine need for self-revelation is completely satisfied by trinitarianism, and the creation of the world is only an outpouring from the fullness of the divine ocean of love. Love is essentially insatiable, and therefore divine trinitarian love longs to expand into creation, pouring out into non-existence, creating the world - and in this insatiability of love lies the basis of peace. However, in its divine life this love is completely saturated, for God has someone to love and to whom to reveal himself in himself, he is absolutely self-loving and self-discovered, and this eternity does not know any change or transformation. God has Himself in an absolute way, as a Person, by virtue of His Trinity, as a being, by virtue of His divine essence, as a consubstantial Trinity - in the inseparability of His Personality and essence. The life of God is pre-eternal self-revelation, unconditional in its trinitarian image - as the Word of the Father, imprinted by the Holy Spirit, and in content, as the one eternal Wisdom of the Father, tested by the Holy Spirit, as the one life of the Holy Trinity, as the Glory of God. This is God’s attitude towards the world: it is not necessary for God, but its possibility is given in Him. There still remains the question of the world's relationship to God. Is this question completely eliminated by the doctrine of the Trinitarian God as the Creator of the world? Or do they still require an explanation of the bewilderment and questioning of the Arianists, albeit in a different formulation: is it possible for a direct, immediate relationship between God and the world, the Creator and creation, and the Absolute and the relative? Is there and can there be some kind of mediation between God and the world, μεταξύ, the need for which is not eliminated even with the trinity of the Divine? Indeed, if only we understand God’s creation of the world as a direct action of God, as if outside the boundaries of His own existence, as the creation of something new, which has not previously existed and does not exist in God, we inevitably thereby erase the line between the Creator and the creature: this means that before creation, when God had not yet created the world, He did not have it with Himself, which means that He also received it in some kind of replenishment, which means that the world is in some sense special the area of revelation of the Divine, necessary for Himself, which means that God is not absolute completeness, which means that God Himself did not know the world before His creation, and it was a self-revelation for Himself. All these bewilderments should have received a feasible explanation, and they find it in the works of St. Afanasy, although, according to his direct tasks, it is not yet final. This is where the question arises about Wisdom, as the eternal foundation of the world in God, as the eternal world, the created image of which, a projection in time, is the created world. The world was created by God through the Word 102 - this idea is tirelessly developed by St. Athanasius (the participation of the Holy Spirit in creation, as final, life-giving, is also implied by him, but remains outside his dogmatic attention, absorbed in the question of the Logos). But, of course, the role of the Logos is not instrumental, as Arius thought; the Logos is not the instrument of creation, but its truth, content, its everything. In the Holy Trinity, the Logos reveals the Father, there is the spoken Word of Divine Life, its content, and it is accepted by the Holy Spirit resting on the Word. The Word speaks Itself, reveals Itself not in the creation of the world, but It speaks Itself pre-eternally and, as Athanasius says, “it was not for His sake that the Word of God received being, on the contrary, we are for His sake” (sl. pr. Ar. II: 31), for “For God to create the second, but the first is to give birth” (II: 2), therefore the Logos is the Son, and not a creature and not a mediator. So. arr., in order to disclose problems to St. Athanasius, and with him before the entire dogmatic consciousness of the Church, the following problem inevitably and naturally arose, which was not visible to Arius, due to the limitations and perversion of his general point of view: how should we understand the relationship between the eternal Logos, the Son of God, and creation? Creation might not have existed at all, “if it had pleased God not to create creatures” (11:31), and at the same time “it would have been impossible for creatures to receive existence without the Word” (ib). Obviously, it is necessary to establish a direct relationship between the Word begotten by the Father and the Word at creation. It is said about Him: “The Father, as if by hand, made everything with the Word and does nothing without Him,” “The Divine Word is creative and constructive, It is God’s will” (ib.), “everything is created by the Word and Wisdom, in which the Father’s will is contained” (ib.). St. Athanasius defends both sets of truths with equal energy: on the one hand, the Word is the pre-eternally begotten Son of God, and not at all a creature created to be a mediator in creation, and on the other, God creates everything with His Word, which is the Wisdom of God. Both of these thoughts, of course, easily and naturally agree with each other in the general teaching about God: it is clear that the pre-eternal Logos is also the revelation of the Divinity in creation. But they are not understood in the same way in the teaching about the world and its relationship to God. Is there a world of some created Logos, existing in the image and likeness of the pre-eternal Logos? We must also remember that, absorbed in Christological themes, St. Athanasius ignores the participation of the Holy Spirit in peacemaking, which, according to the general patristic teaching, is accomplished by the entire Holy Trinity with the corresponding participation of all Three of Her Persons. As a result of this, the very formulation of the question of Logos in creation by St. Afanasia receives one-sidedness. Nevertheless, a problem arose for him, and he, even against his will, came across it in the teaching about the Wisdom of God. The occasion here was the difficult exegesis of the text of Proverbs. 8:22, which was interpreted by the Arians in their favor: The Lord created me. St. Athanasius endlessly returns to his apologetic interpretation of this text, and both he and his opponents do not doubt for a minute to attribute it directly to the Logos. (To the extent that the controversy rests simply on an incorrect translation - έκτισε “created”, where ἐκτήσατο “had” (r.p.) should stand, it all rests on a misunderstanding, but it still gives rise to an important issue.) First, let us establish the very interpretation of the text by St. Afanasia. St. Athanasius reads Prov. 8.22 like this: κύριος ἔκτισέ με ἀρχὴν ὀδῶν αὑτοῦ εὶς ἔργα αὑτοῦ (LXX) – dominus creavit she initium viarum suarum in opera sua (vulg.), The Lord created me to be the beginning of His ways of doing 103. A common interpretation among the fathers relates this text to the Logos mainly on the basis of 1 Cor. 1:24, where Christ is called God's Power and Wisdom (although, on the contrary, Is. 9:2 speaks of the Spirit of the Lord as the Spirit of Wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and strength, knowledge and piety). From church writers St. Theophilus and St. Irenaeus refers to the naming of Sophia as the Holy Spirit (see previous excursion). General thought of St. Athanasius, that “The Lord created me” is said “accurately” (II: 44), and therefore needs interpretation. The main idea of ​​the exegesis of St. Athanasius is that “created” refers not to the primordial Wisdom, but to its created embodiment, and the further “give birth to me” to Wisdom itself. Therefore, “created” indicates “not the essence of the Godhead and the Word, and not His eternal origin from the Father, but His humanity and economy” (11:45,11:46,47). “The Word speaks specifically about Itself: He created Me when He put on created flesh. Being the Son and the Father, having God as His own birth, now, however, He calls the Father Lord, not because the Son is a slave, but because He took upon Himself the form of a slave” (11:50, cf. 51). Here the reference is “not to the beginning of being, not to the created essence of the Son, but to the renewal which, through His goodness, is accomplished in us... the dispensation of works which He accomplished in the flesh” (11:53, 55, 62, 66, 74). The proof of the correctness of this exegesis by St. Athanasius sees in the simultaneous use of the words “created” and “gives birth to Me” (11:60). The difference between Wisdom as created (created) and born of the Holy. Athanasius believes in its two aspects: as a foundation and as an imprint. “Just as through Wisdom the Father creates and founds the earth so that it may be unshakable and abiding, so Wisdom itself is founded in us, so that it may become the firstfruits and founder of the new creation in us and our renewal (II: 73). This thought of St. Athanasius develops in more detail in the following terms: “Although the only-begotten and imprecise Wisdom of God creates and builds everything, for it is said: Thou hast created all things by Wisdom, and the earth is filled with Thy creation (Psalm 103:24), however, so that what was created not only had being, but also good-being, God was pleased that His Wisdom would descend to to creatures, so that in all creatures in general and in every people a certain imprint and likeness of her image is laid, and so that what is brought into being turns out to be a wise and worthy deed of God. For, just as our word is the image of the true Word - the Son of God, so again the image of the true Wisdom of God is the wisdom revealed in us, in which, having the power of knowledge and thinking, we become receptive to creative Wisdom and through it we come to the state of knowing Her Father. For it is said: whoever has the Son in him also has the Father (1 John 2:23). Those who accept Me, accept Him who sent Me (Matthew 10:40). since in us and in all deeds there is such an imprint of the created Wisdom, then the true and creative Wisdom, taking upon Herself what belongs to Her imprint, rightly says about Himself: The Lord created me for His works. Whatever the wisdom that is within us would say, the Lord Himself calls it His own. He, as the Creator, is uncreated, however, because of His created Image in deeds, He says this as if about Himself. And as the Lord Himself said: those who accept you, accept Me (Matthew 10:40), because we have His imprint in us, so, not being among those who are created, since His image and imprint are created in deeds, as if He Himself were this Image, He says: The Lord made me the beginning of His ways for His work. The imprint of Wisdom is placed in deeds, so that the world may know in Wisdom its creator, the Word, and through the Word, the Father. And this is what Paul said: He showed the things of God in them; for God showed them to eat. For from the creation of the World, the invisible things have been provided for by His creatures, which are visible (Rom. 1:19, 20). Therefore, the Word in essence is not a creature, but what is said in Proverbs refers to the Wisdom that exists in us, and the text of Sirach (1:10) called (11:78): I pour out (wisdom) on all My works, with all flesh according to My gift and give to those who love Him - is interpreted as follows: “such an outpouring is a sign of the essence of not Wisdom, imprecise and only-begotten, but wisdom expressed into the world. For in the World there is no Wisdom that builds, but one that is built up in works, by which the heavens declare the Glory of God, and the firmament proclaims His handiwork (Ps. 18:2). But if people absorb this wisdom within themselves, then they will come to know the true Wisdom of God, they will know that they are truly created in the image of God” (11:49). He compares this to the inscription of the name of the king's son on every building of his father's city under construction. And the city, according to him, will be built reliably, and by its name, of course, “not its own created essence, but its own image imprinted in the name.” Therefore, the words: The Lord created me into works mean “My image is in them, and to such an extent did I descend in the work of creation,” this is how Wisdom responds (ib). Imprecise Wisdom is creative and constructive, and Her imprint is introduced into action as an image of an image. The Word calls it the beginning of paths, so that such wisdom becomes a certain beginning and, as it were, the beginnings of the knowledge of God. He says: first of all is the foundation of me, and above all things are unshakable and forever remain established in the image of this wisdom” (11:80). Wisdom seems to say this about herself: “everything came into existence by me and through me. since it is necessary to introduce wisdom in deeds, then, although in essence I was with the Father, however, out of condescension towards creatures, I imprinted my image in deeds in relation to them, so that the whole world would be one body, not in discord, but in agreement with itself” (11:81). And this same Wisdom, which initially revealed itself and His Father through His image in creatures (by which it is called created), subsequently became Wisdom itself, i.e. the Word, “the flesh was” (ib). (In a similar way, Pres. 8:22 is interpreted by St. Gilarius: “here the Divine and human sides are distinguished, and “creation” refers to the human body, which Divine Wisdom received from the womb of the Virgin, moreover, in such a way that it was created by God: De trin. XII, 32, 37,42.) Interpretation of St. Athanasius 8:22 is essentially apologetic in nature. It is directed entirely against the Arians, who attributed the text to the Son in order to prove His creatureliness. Without challenging the Arian exegesis of this passage on its merits (which would also be quite possible), St. Athanasius tries to defend himself against their interpretation of the text, to the extent that it was given a one-sided meaning, predetermined by Arianism. Reluctantly, as if against their will, St. Basil the Great, and St. Gregory the Theologian. In the first we read (Prot. Evn. book. V, creation. III, 140) on the words: “The Lord created Me” (Wis. 8:22): “If He who came in the flesh says: I am the way, and He said: no one will come to the Father except by Me (John 14:6), then He Himself said 104: The Lord made Me the beginning of His ways. But also about birth the words are used: creation and creature, for example: I created man by God (Gen. 4:1) and also: create sons and daughters (Gen. 5:4), and David says: create in me a pure heart, O God (Ps. 50:12), asking not to give another heart, but to cleanse the one I had. It is also called “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17) not because another creation comes into existence, but because those who are enlightened are prepared for better things. If the Father created the Son for works, then He created Him not for His own sake, but for the sake of works. But what happens for the sake of another, and not for one’s own sake, is either part of that for which it happens, or less than it. Therefore, the Savior will either be purely a creature or less than a creature. So, it is necessary to understand this passage about His humanity.” Consequently, in this case, a new thought is obtained about primordial humanity as Wisdom at the beginning of the ways of God, i.e. either about heavenly humanity, but then also uncreated, or about created things before creation. This ambiguity remains unresolved, and the thought remains unspoken. However, St. Basil himself does not insist on his interpretation, but continues: “And another could say that Solomon also said this about that wisdom, which the Apostle mentioned, saying: for in the wisdom of God there is no understanding of the world of the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:21).” This idea remains unclear, but obviously refers to wisdom as a property. Further St. Vasily continues: “Moreover, the one who said this is not a prophet, but a tributary. And parables are images of something other than what they say. If it is God the Son who says: The Lord created Me, then it would be better for Him to say: the Father created Me, for nowhere did He call Him His Lord, but everywhere Father. Therefore, the word: begot (Proverbs 8:25) must be applied to God the Son, and the word: created - to Him who took upon Himself the form of a slave. However, in all these expressions we do not mean two, not God in particular and man in particular (for there was One), but only by concept we separate the nature of each.” Still, it remains unclear how one could say: having created at the beginning of the ways, before His creatures, from time immemorial, about humanity, “the image of a servant,” that is, about creation? This difficulty, initially created, as we have seen, by a verbal misunderstanding or outright error in translation, led St. Basil the Great, following Athanasius, from considering the problem on its merits to apologetics. St. Gregory the Theologian (f. 30, fourth on theology, second on God the Son) also deals with this text for the sake of polemics: “the first and especially ready saying for them is the following: Proverbs. 8.22. How to answer this? We will not blame Solomon, nor reject the former for his last fall (these words are not entirely clear), nor will we interpret that wisdom is represented here as speaking, that is, that knowledge - that artistic mind according to which everything was created. For Scripture often personifies many, even soulless, things, for example: the sea speaks this and that (Isa. 23:4) and the abyss speaks in me (Job 28:14), also the heavens are represented as telling the glory of God (Ps. 18:1), and something is commanded to the sword (Zech. 13:7), mountains and hills are asked about the reasons for leaping (Ps. 113.6). But let us not answer in this way, although some among us have presented this as something solid.” That. essentially St. Gregory the Theologian does not consider the Arian interpretation of the text to be the only possible one and only concedes for the sake of polemics: “on the contrary, let us assume that these are the words of the Savior Himself - the true Wisdom, and consider them a little more carefully. Which creature does not have a cause? Deity. For no one will tell us the reason of God, otherwise it would be more original than God Himself. But what is the reason why God accepts humanity for our sake? So that we can be saved. For what other reason could there be? So, since here we find both the word “created” and another clear saying: give birth to me (8.25), the explanation is simple. What is said with the addition of a reason will be attributed to humanity, and what is said simply, without the addition of a reason, will be attributed to the Divine. But isn’t the word “created” said with the addition of a reason? For Solomon says: He made me the beginning of His ways for His works. But the works of His hands are truth and judgment (Ps. 110:7), for which He is anointed by the Divine, so this anointing refers to humanity. But the word gives birth to me is used without adding a reason, otherwise indicate what is added to it. So, who will argue that Wisdom is called a creation after a second birth and born after a first and more incomprehensible birth? That. St. Gregory here accepts the distinction of St. Athanasius, however, like St. Vasily, without giving him clarifications and without eliminating misunderstandings and difficulties. The main difficulty, which exists equally for all three in this exegesis, is that it admits creation before creation, humanity before the creation of the world, for it is precisely the initial position here that says: the Lord created wisdom before His creatures. But at the same time, in the teaching of St. Athanasius appears in connection with this characteristic and fruitful distinction between the eternal Wisdom and the created Wisdom inscribed in the world, and text 8.22, in his opinion, speaks of both. In this case, a new question arises about this Wisdom, and in fact St. Athanasius sets forth here the doctrine of Sophia as the Prototype of creation (this is how Metropolitan Macarius understands this text: Dogma of God. 1, § 38, 366, who speaks here, referring to the Fathers of the Church, in particular, John Dam. and St. Dionysius Areop., about prototypes (πρωτότυπα) and plans (παραδείγματα) of things in God). Thus, the center of gravity in interpretation is transferred from the hypostatic Logos to the Wisdom of God, revealed through Him in the Holy Spirit. As St. Gregory: “What was the thought of God occupied with before the Almighty, reigning in the emptiness of centuries, created the universe and adorned it with forms? She contemplated the longed-for luminosity of Her goodness, the equal and equally perfect luminosity of the three-dimensional Divinity, as this is known to the only Divinity and to whom God has revealed it. The World-Giving Mind also considered in His great mental representations the images He himself composed of the world, which was produced later, but for God even then was real” (Word 4). This pre-eternal world, the luminosity of the triscendent Divinity, is the foundation of the created world, and it is about this, this Wisdom of God, that Proverbs speaks. This world, in creation from nothing, becomes a created world, remaining self-identical on an ontological basis. Therefore, we can speak of the creation of the world as a future incarnation of God, as St. Afanasy. However, it should be noted that the understanding of Wisdom as the Word of God speaking about itself, apart from direct difficulties, is not at all caused by necessity and, as St. Gregory, it is not at all the only possible thing. If you read this chapter and the next one, then, except for 8:21-31, it does not even fit in with the idea of ​​a speaking Son, but is more naturally understood as a teaching of wisdom, and therefore wise. The desire to apply this interpretation to 9.1 also encounters direct difficulties, for one has to interpret it in such a way that the Logos created a body or Mother for Himself. Meanwhile, this is no longer accurate, as in the general sense, that the creation of man was clearly the work of the entire Most Holy. Trinity, and in particular the preparation of the Mother of God by the descent of the Holy Spirit: this results in a clear narrowing and distortion of the meaning (and such an interpretation, now sometimes put forward, is not found among the Holy Fathers). From another article, text 8.22 words. to the same extent as the Logos, it can also be attributed to the Holy Spirit, the spirit of Wisdom and reason, counsel and strength, knowledge and piety (Isa. 11:2), which is so consistent with the general content of chapters 8 and 9. The expression “gives birth” does not interfere with this. it is used along with other expressions: I was anointed, I was an artist, I rejoiced before Him. The last two expressions correspond to a much greater extent to the Third Hypostasis than to the Second. This cannot also be set aside by the general consideration that the world was created by the Word, as St. primarily insists on this in his polemics with the Arians. Athanasius, for whom questions about the Holy Spirit are naturally not a priority, remain in the shadows. The world was created by all the Most Holy. The Trinity, the Father through the Son in the Spirit, and at the beginning the participation of the Holy Spirit is indicated: and the Spirit was carried on the top of the abyss (Gen. 1:2), by the Word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the Spirit of His mouth all their power (Ps. 32:6). But the Arian formulation of the question of Wisdom is by no means the only possible one, and the Church Fathers also consider the Arian interpretation of the text on Wisdom as if against their will and reluctantly, without, however, replacing this formulation of the question with their own. Interpretation of Wisdom in relation to the hypostasis of St. The Spirit is more preferable in 9.1, which deals with the foundation of the Church or the preparation of the Mother of God. However, this interpretation is just as insufficient and one-sided as the first, although it can be defended along with it. The most natural thing seems to us to be the exegesis of this passage in relation to the Wisdom of God, as the revelation of the entire Holy Trinity, the Father in the Son through the Holy Spirit. And with this interpretation, the meaning is as follows: 22. “The Lord had Me” refers either to the entire Holy Trinity, possessing Wisdom, and in that παραδείγματα of the world, the world before its creation, or, in another sense, it can mean: the Lord (Father) had the Son - the Word in the beginning (cf. John: 1:1), but already 23 from the words I am anointed refers to the Holy Spirit resting on the Son (“anointing”: the Spirit of the Lord is on Me: He anointed Me - Isa. 61:1; Luke 4:18). 24, 25: I was born - again about the Word, 27 - “when He prepared the heavens, I was there” - “The Spirit of God was carried on the top of the waters” Gen. 1.2; 30 – I was an artist (“the good” of creation - Gen. 1) and “joy” (the actual area of ​​the Holy Spirit) are said about the Holy Spirit. Thus, the meaning of this wonderful text is much more complex than it was understood in the Arian era, in the initial period of Christological debate, when the question of the Holy Spirit had not yet become the focus of attention 105. A number of St. Fathers have a teaching about the eternal prototypes (παραδείγματα) of creation in God, which expresses the cosmological aspect of the teaching about the Wisdom of God. And, first of all, in Dionysius the Areopagite: “prototypes, we say, are in God as essential and holistically (ἑναίως) pre-existing foundations (λόγους), which theology calls predestination (προορισμούς)”, “good and divine wills of God, determinative for existing and creative, according to which the Most Essential both predetermined and brought forth all that exists, predetermined and produced" 106 . In a commentary to this passage, St. Maximus the Confessor (coinciding with Pachymer here) notes: “he calls the essential in God and holistically existing foundations of what exists, namely predestination, prototypes” 107 . St. Gregory of Nyssa 108 says: “I believe that before studying what is written, one should take into account the word that in the divine nature, strength is accompanied by desire, and desire becomes the measure of God’s power; desire is wisdom, σοφία; It is characteristic of wisdom to know everything, how each could have happened in its own way; knowledge also has power.” Similar thoughts are also repeatedly found in the works of St. Augustine 109. It is curious that similar thoughts are found even in Tertullian (Adv. Pracheash, sar. 5,6,7) 110. The teaching of St. Dionysius the Areopagite and St. We also find Maximus the Confessor about παρα&είγματα in St. John of Damascus in his “defensive words against those who reject St. icons." “There are also in God images and plans of what will be accomplished by Him, i.e. His eternal and ever unchanging counsel.” “These images and plans are predestination,” says St. Dionysius... for in His light everything is inscribed, predetermined by Him and unchangeably existing before their existence. Likewise, if someone wants to build a house, he first draws it in his mind and draws up its appearance” (1, X). “The second type of image is the thought in God of what He will create, that is, His eternal council, which always remains equal to itself, for the Divinity is unchangeable, and His council is without beginning, in which it was decided before the ages, so at the time appointed by Him, it will be fulfilled. For images and examples of what will be done by Him are the thought of each of these objects, and they are called by St. Dionysius’s predestinations, since in His advice there is inscribed and depicted that which is predetermined by Him and will undoubtedly be fulfilled before its existence” (III, XIX). Although these judgments are not accompanied by reference to the texts of Proverbs. VIII and Prem.Sol., but essentially they are one of the possible (although not exhaustive) commentaries on these mysterious texts about the Wisdom of God. In its internal meaning, the teaching of St. Gregory Palamas about divine energies, however, establishing this connection would require special research that goes beyond the scope of this excursion. Origen, recognizing the exceptional purity of Mary and Her grace at the Annunciation, attributes to Her, however, oscillations between complete faith and human doubts and, in the sense of the latter, interprets “a weapon into the soul” as a “sword of unbelief.” Even without external foundations in the Gospel and contrary to the Gospel narrative, which knows Mary standing unshakably at the cross, Origen ascribes to Her that She was “offended” about Jesus along with the apostles. (Hom. in Luc. XVII, vol. III, 952, R. G. XIII p. 1845). This strange opinion, which did not find any special rejection and at the 5th Council of Constantinople in 543, with the general condemnation of Origen’s deviations, on the contrary, turned out to be tenacious. It was shared even by St. Basil the Great, who also interpreted the “sword” as doubt (Epist. 260.9, R. G., vol. XXXII, 968), and Chrysostom (in psalm 13). Chrysostom speaks of vanity during the miracle in Cana of Galilee (In Ioan. hom. XXI, 2, - R. Gr., vol. LIX 130); he calls the appearance of the Mother and brothers during the sermon of Jesus “useless vanity” in order to show before the people their influence over Him. (Hom. 44 in Math., I, VII, 467). Wed. also St. Hilarii In p.s. CXVIII, 12, R. L. IX, 523 A; Pseudo-Grig. Nys. de occursu Domini. R. G. X LVI, 1176, Pseudo-Chrysost. in Ps XIII, 4, R. G. LV, 55; Pseudo-Augustini; Quest. ex N. T. LXXIII, R. L. XXXV, 2267, 8, st. Cyrilli Alex., In Ioan. 1. XII, R. G.LXXIV, 661. On the contrary, the recognition of Mary as free from sin appears already in St. Epiphany (against Marcion, haer. 42, 352), in St. Gregory Naz., testifying that Mary, both body and soul, was purified by the Spirit. St. (Or. in Chr. nat. But the first to speak about the sinlessness of Mary (370) was St. Ephraim the Syrian: “You, Lord, and Your Mother, You alone are completely holy in every respect, for in You, Lord, there is no spot, and Your Mary has no blemish” (Carm. nisib. 27, 8). In another place he calls Mary innocent, like Eve before St. Ambrose, having collected all the relevant texts, gives a general picture of the sinlessness of Mary (Expos, in Luc. 1. II), “Virgin, free from all sin by grace” (Common, on 118 ps. Art.), and the “weapon” is interpreted in the light of Heb. Blessed Augustine According to the Catholic view, the souls of sinless but unbaptized infants have their own special place in the afterlife (external limbo). Orthodoxy is silent about this, as well as in general about the afterlife fate of all unbaptized people. This whole issue is connected with the doctrine of preaching in hell. St. John of Damascus. An accurate presentation of the Orthodox Church. faith, book III, ch. II. “The Holy Spirit descended on the Pure Virgin and further purified Her. Pure in her own state of body and spirit, she became purest from the creative omnipotent action performed in Her by the life-giving, cleansing, renewing, changing, transforming His vessels by the Spirit of God. The Pure Virgin became the Most Pure, alien to all filth, thought and felt, and became a grace-pure, Spirit-bearing, divine Virgin” (Bishop Ignatius Brianchaninov. Exposition of the teaching of the Orthodox Church about the Mother of God. Works. 3rd ed., vol. IV, p. 364). The bishop's further judgments are difficult to reconcile with this judgment. Ignatius that “the old man was revealed and acted in the Mother of God, eternal death and sin, implanted in human nature, could not help but manifest itself” (407). However, these inaccurate and unfortunate expressions, in which the author sees, moreover, “the exact and true teaching of the Orthodox Church about the Mother of God,” refer only to the presence of original sin and its consequences, but not to personal sins, which he, apparently, excludes. One can think so based on what he said on the same page 407: after the Annunciation, “Her virginity was sealed by the Spirit: She, who had hitherto kept Herself aloof from every thought and sensation of voluptuousness, became impregnable to these thoughts and sensations.” And in another place: “The Mother of God did not taste or know the struggle with carnal desires. Before lust acted in Her, the Holy Spirit descended on Her, imprinted Her purity, and bestowed upon Her spiritual pleasure” (423). Birth Bogor. On State WHO. verse: “Today God rests on reasonable thrones, a holy throne on earth has been prepared for himself, having established the heavens with wisdom, a heaven animated by love for mankind... Anna gives birth to a young woman, chosen from all generations to be the dwelling place of all, the king and creator of Christ God. – Nalit, art.: Proclaimed Queen of all, God’s abode. To the verse of the article: By the angelic saying, the most pure fruit of Joachim and Anna of the righteous came forth today, the Virgin, the heaven and throne of God, and the companion of purity... behold, the hedgehog is born before the womb of the foreseen Mother of our God, a vessel of virginity. Canon of Andrew, paragraph I: Holy of holies, in the holy sanctuary the child is entrusted to be raised in the hands of angels. P.Z.: having been brought up in the Holy of Holies, the Virgin, the Most Pure Mother of God, appeared above all creation. P. 6: the holy of holies, Thy chaste parents, pure, entrusted Thee in the church of the Lord to be raised honestly and prepared to be His Mother... We sing Thy holy Nativity (cf. also kontakion), we honor Thy immaculate conception, the Bride of the God-Called and the Virgin. P. 7: O womb (of Anna), which contains God’s village! O womb that bore the widest heavens; the holy throne, the mental belly of the sacred. P. 9.: Worthy, O Mother of God, You inherited Your purity of Christmas through the promise... We worship Your shrouds, O Mother of God. - To praise. Art. About the parents of the Mother of God: About a wondrous miracle, the source of life is born from the barren, and the grace of fertility begins brightly. Rejoice, Joachim, having been the parent of the Mother of God: there is no other, like you, the earthly parent, more pleasing to God... the pillar of chastity is animated and a bright friend, shining with grace, Anna, the blessed one, has appeared, giving birth to truly virginity, divine prosperity.” AP service John the Theologian 26 Sep. Canon of the Theotokos, paragraph I: “as red, as all good, as undefiled in those on earth, God has chosen.” Enter. in the chronology At m. vech. Art. on G.V.: “The holy dwelling in the saints is worthily introduced... Let the door of the God-pleasing church be opened: for the church of all the King and the throne today with glory will be received inside, Joachim will erect it, sanctifying it to the Lord.” To the verse, v.: “The doors of heaven receive the Virgin into the Holy of Holies, the undefiled Tabernacle of God Almighty. Virgin worlds, accept the pure Virgin, brightly sanctified, into the holy of holies, as the Bride of God the All-Tsar. Art. on G. Voz: “Today the church is animated by the holy glory of Christ our God, one in women, blessed and pure, brought into the lawful church... The holy and immaculate one is brought into the holy of holies by the holy spirit... After your birth, O Lady of God, you came to the church of the Lord to be brought up into the holy of holies, as you were sanctified. Then Gabriel was sent quickly to You, most blameless, bringing You food. The whole heavenly one was surprised to see the Holy Spirit indwelling you. In the same way, most pure and undefiled, glorified in heaven and on earth, Mother of God, save our race...” - On the lit., stichera: “behold... the holy one who was in the dwelling was consecrated to the church today and an immaculate offering is brought... today the God-known church, the Mother of God, is brought to the church of the Lord... come, all the faithful, let us praise the one immaculate, from the prophets preached and brought to the church in the past, called the Mother, and in recent years appearing as the Mother of God.” To the verse, v.: “Heaven and earth rejoice, the intelligent heaven that is to come sees, the one honest and immaculate virgin has ascended into the divine house... Anna, the divine grace revealed, from grace given to the pure ever-virgin, brings with joy to the church of God.” Sedalen: “before conception, pure, who sanctified Him to God, and being born on earth, you now brought a gift to Him, fulfilling your fatherly promise. In the divine Church, as there is a divine church, you were given away from pure infancy with holy lights, and you appeared as a friend of the inaccessible and divine light.” Sedal. according to Polyel: “Let David the hymn-writer rejoice, and let Joachim and Anna rejoice, for the holy fruit has come from them, Mary, the luminous divine light.” Canon, paragraph 5: “Oh, more than the mind of Your wonders, O all-pure one. Your Christmas is strange, the image of your return is strange, your bride of God is strange and glorious, everything is indescribable to man.” P. 8: “Anna sometimes brings the most pure church to the house of God...” P. 9.: “O pure Mother of God, your miracle flies with the power of words: for the body in you means more than the word, the flow of sin is unpleasant.” On the highway v.: “Let the door of the church pleasing to God be opened. The church of all the king and thrones is now received inside with glory, Joachim is erecting it, consecrating it to the Lord.” Week St. forefathers: art. on G.V: Today, in commemoration of our forefathers, let us pray to Christ the Savior, who magnified them in all languages... and from them showed us the life of power, the only inexperienced and pure virgin Mary.” Troparion: “By faith you justified the forefathers, from the tongue of the shadow you gave birth to the church and boast in holy glory, for from their seed there is a blessed fruit, who without a seed gave birth to you.” Annunciation: Art. at the station (words of the Archangel) “whom God hath loved from everlasting, will have a habitation.” From the service on December 9: The Conception of St. Anna, when to conceive the Most Rev. Mother of God. Verse, on State. Voz.”: “Who from the waterless stone flows forth water into your womb, Anno, bestows upon the Ever-Virgin Lady, from whom the water of salvation desires to come forth... The prophetic utterances are now being fulfilled, the mountain of saints is being erected in the wombs, the divine ladder is being planted, the great throne of the kings is being prepared, the place of God is being adorned, the burning bush begins vegetate, the peacemaker of the saints is already running out, the barrenness of the river of God-wise Anna, we will please you with faith.” Sedalen: “The new heaven is being built in the womb of Anna, and by the command of God the All-Worker, the non-evening Sun will shine from it, illuminating the whole world with the rays of the Divine, with the abundance of goodness, the only lover of mankind.” Canon, paragraph I: “The book, which the prophet prophesied, is sealed by the divine spirit in its falsehoods, Anna, stinks to everyone: even now all the writings are revealed, those who vegetate today will be magnified. “In the womb the divine and saving Church is contained and built in the mother’s womb, a ladder is planted, leading all men to the highest, and let its conceptions triumph by faith.” P. 8.: “Earth, the creator of the earth, the holy scepter, the new belly, the stump of manna in the wombs of the mother, who gave birth to this, begins to vegetate.” P. 9: “Anna the God-Wise, who conceived the life-receiving source, now receive joy, the holy church inside in your womb is received with the light of truth, glorifying the creator.” Art. to the praise: “Even before the age, ineffably from God, the divine and terrible Mysteries preached to the earth, the firstfruits of faith appeared, the pure God-child conception, by which the work of darkness and passion foretells the end. - Come joyfully today, every rank and age of man, with the angelic faces we brightly celebrate the glorious conception of the Mother of God: the patriarch of the king is the mother of all; the prophets who preached to all, the forefathers from you, the Mother of God, the elders of the Godfathers, the Godfathers of the Mother of God, the virgins ever born, faith is the root of faith, the priesthood of the all-holy Church of God, the saints of all the linden trees of your assembly, the angelic host who gave birth to the ruler of all creation and the Savior of our souls.” A summary of them can be found in any history of dogma by Schwane, Loofs, Seeberg, etc. Open 12, 7–9: and there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels rebelled against the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought (against them), but did not stand, and there was no longer a place for them in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that ancient serpent, called the devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world, he was cast out to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. This very thought is expressed in the Wisdom of Solomon (chap. 7.1-3), where some mistakenly find a trace of the teaching about reincarnation: “and I (said on behalf of Solomon) am a mortal man, like all the descendants of the primordial, the firstborn. And I, in my mother’s womb, was formed into flesh at the time of nine months, condensed in blood from the seed of my husband and pleasure combined with sleep. And when I was born, I began to breathe the common air and fell to the same earth, the first voice I found crying, the same with everyone.” The peculiarity of this text is that it contrasts the pre-temporal, eternal existence of the self with its earthly birth. The prayer of the 4th prohibition in the sequence about the catechumens directly speaks of slavery to the devil, “the work of the enemy,” to which the baptized person, even a newborn, is guilty. The priest blows on him three times with the words: “cast out from him every evil and unclean spirit hidden and nesting in his heart.” “You need to know that neither the Jews nor the divine Scripture had a custom to trace the genealogy of women, but there was a law that no tribe should take wives from another tribe (Num. 36:7). Joseph, coming from the tribe of David and being righteous, would not have become illegally engaged to the Holy Virgin if She had not come from the same tribe. Therefore, it was enough to show the origin of Joseph alone” (John of Damascus, book IV, chapter 14). Bellarmine: non magis differt status hominis post lapsum Adae a statu eiusdem in puris naturalibus, quam differt spoliatus a nudo, neque deterior est humana natura, si culpam originalem detrahas, neque magis ignorantia et caritate laborat, quam esset et laboraret in puris naturalibus condita. Proinde corruptio naturae non ex alicuius doni naturalis carentia, neque ex alicuius malae quantitatis accessu, sed ex sola doni super-naturalis ob Adae peccatum amissione profluxit (De gr. primi hom. 5) In the Epistle to the Romans (3.23) St. Paul gives a brief but completely comprehensive formula for the meaning of original sin for man: all have sinned (ἠμαρτον - one-time action - aorist) and are deprived (ὐστεροῦνται - praesens) of the Glory of God (τής δὸξης τού Θεού). The glory of God here is sophia, inherent in man by virtue of his creation in the image of God: man is created Sophia. Through the power of sin, the image of God is eclipsed in a person, and, ceasing to be Sophia in condition, he is thereby deprived of the tactile manifestation of the Glory of God. He ceases to be himself, loses the norm of his own being. This is the answer to the consideration of Catholic theologians in defense of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, which is often expressed: if the Virgin Mary was not protected at her very conception from any attack of original sin, then She should have found herself, albeit for a brief moment, under the authority of the “prince of this world,” which is obviously unacceptable. To this it should be answered that the power of the “prince of this world” is exercised only through personal sinfulness, which has its basis in the weakness of nature. If the Mother of God never had personal sin, thereby She remained free from the “prince of this world.” The mortality of man, along with the illnesses and infirmities of the body, was determined by God himself as a consequence of sin, and the guilt of death does not yet mean submission to the “prince of this world.” A person who is redeemed and assimilates the power of redemption in baptism is freed from the captivity of the “prince of this world,” who is expelled from the “newly sealed warrior of Christ” (prohibition, they say), and, however, remains guilty of death according to the general sentence of God: “you are from earth and you will go back to earth.” The idea of ​​the participation of the Mother of God in redemption is sometimes exaggerated in Catholic literature to such an extent that She finds herself in the work of salvation along with and on an equal basis with Her Son. For examples, see the book by Archpriest, which retains its significance. Alexandra Lebedeva: The difference between the Eastern and Western Churches in the teaching about the Holy One. Virgin Mary. Polemic-dogmatic study. Warsaw, 1881. The author’s main idea of ​​the relativity of the personal sinlessness of the Mother of God, however, with Her assimilation of original sin, is completely close to what we are setting out. Wed. pp. 18, 136, 137, 138, 198, 231, 268, 300, 302, 350, 399. “Predestined in the eternal and foreknowing council of God, represented and foreshadowed in various images and words of the prophets by the Holy Spirit, She at a predetermined time grew from the root of David” (St. John of Damascus, op. cit., book IV, chapter XIV, p. 314). In essence, this is exactly the point of view held by a number of medieval Catholic theologians: Paschasius Radbertus, Anselm, Petrus Lombardus, Bernard, Bonaventure, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, Schwane. Dogmengeschichte, Bd. 3, § 94. Article Immaculée Conception in Dict. de Theol. cathol. Wetzers u. Welte's Kirchenlexikon IV Bd. 456: Unbefleckte Empfagnniss. Scheeben. Handbuch der katol. Dogmatik, Bd. II, § 203; page 660. 1 Scheeben. Dogmatik (Scheeben, Manual of Catholic Dogmatics, vol. II), II, 216. The mortality of a person, both regarding the possibility and necessity of his death, is a consequence of the structure of his nature, a natural attribute of his body, as a corpus animale; it therefore has a root in nature itself, and not just in sin (!!), as if through it it was first founded.” On the contrary, God only restrained it while man abstained from sin. The same is true with the possibility and necessity of illness-related disorders of this life, illnesses of birth, as well as excitability and susceptibility to sensuality and sexual lust (ib 218–24). Human concupiscibilitas, passing into activa concupiscentia, constitutes, although not a special gift of God (Pelagians), but Mangel und Uebel der Natur, like mortality and death. It is not from God, who forsakes them bloss bestehen und entstehen just like death and sin, but on the basis of the “constitution” of human nature.” (Next., still from God?) (225). “Die geistige Seele hat von Natur nicht nur die Kraft das animalische Leben des Körpers vollkommen zu vergeistigen und zu durchherrschen oder die infirmitas camis aufzuheben und sich von der Notwendigkeit sie zu dulden, zu befreien. Auch fbr ihr geistiges Leben selbst ergiebt sich aus der Verbindung mit dem corruptibeln und passi-beln Körper eine gewisse von Haus aus ihr anhaftende Unvollkommenheit und Schwäche, oder eine infirmitas mentis” (ib. 227) This is clear, for example, from the condemned Catholic. Church propositio 21: humanae naturae sublimatio et exaltatio in consortium divinae naturae debita fuit integritati primae conditionis, et proinde naturalis dicenda est et non supematuralis A veritate catholica eos aberrasse asserimus, qui docent Dei sapientiam et bonitatcm cxegissc, ut homini gratiam sanctificantem a concupiscentia aut immortalitatem corporis conferret; vel qui assertant immunitatem a conscupiscentia necessarie pertinere ad ipsius hominis ideam seu naturam; deniquc qui dona Adamo collata propterca solum supematuralia vocanda esse dicunt, quod homini a Deo creante et non ab homine sibi ipsi collata sunt (Simar Lehrbuch der Dogmatik, 86, 89, pp. 390–1,409). Compare, for example, John of Damascus. Krat. izl. Orthodox faith, book. 2, ch. 26 and 27, also in the Orthodox confession of the Eastern Catholic Church: “although the human will was damaged by original sin, but for all that, even now it is in the will of everyone to be good or a child of God or evil and the son of the devil” (right, confession, part I, question 27) In the message of the East. Patriarchs we read: “every fallen person has the nature with which he was created, and a natural force that is free, living and active, as a result of which by nature he can choose and do good, run away and turn away from evil” (Arkh. Sylwester. Experience of rights, dogma, theology, vol. III. Kyiv, pp. 448–50). Of the church writers, Tertullian (De anima, p. 27), Rufinus (in Jerome adversus Rufin, p. 2, paragraph 8 ff.) and St. speak out for the birth of souls. Macarius V. (word 30, 8 no. I: “earthly parents give birth to children from their own nature, both their bodies and souls”). On the contrary, the majority is for the creation of the soul: Clement Alex. (Strom. IV, 26, VI, 16), St. Athanasius V. (against Apollin. book. I, part 4, contra Gent. 1, St. Gregory the Theologian, Ephraim the Syrian, I. Chrysostom, Cyril Alex., Gilarius, Ambrose Mediol., Blessed Jerome. Blessed. Augustine occupied a vacillating position and in the end admitted his powerlessness to give a satisfactory answer to this question. In the dispute between Augustine and By the Pelagians, the latter naturally inclined to the hypothesis of creationism, as more consistent with their doctrine of the absence of fundamental corruption in human nature. On the contrary, Augustine, in his defense of the doctrine of original sin, was forced to lean more towards the side of traditionism. In the end, Augustine admitted that ego adhuc inter utrosque ambigo et moveor, aliquando sic, aliquando autem. sic) (Degen. 1. 10, p. 2). Following Augustine were his disciple Fulgentius, as well as Pope Gregory V., Eucharius and Isidore. With the passage of time in the West. Creationism triumphed in the Church during the period of scholasticism, Thomas Aquinas and others. P. Benedict XII condemned the teaching of the Armenians, which denied it (Enchir. 218, paragraph 533). See the presentation of the issue in Scheeben's dogma. In addition, Kleutgen. Die Philosophie der Vorzeit. Munster. 1863. Bd. II. Stoeke. Die speculative Lehre vom Menschen und ihre, II Bd. Würzburg, 1859. Klee.Katholische Dogmatik. II Bd. Of the Orthodox, for the most complete outline, see Arch. Sylvester "Orthodox Experience" dogma, theology", vol. III. Apollinaris distinguishes three parts of man: νοῦς, ψυχή and σῶμα, and the Logos accepted only the flesh, interceding with Himself the human spirit. Apollinaris is also inclined towards generationism, believing that souls will be born from souls, as bodies from bodies. On the general issue of dicho- and trichotomism, the opinions of the fathers generally differ, although the majority are on the side of trichotomism: Justin the Philosopher and Clement Alex speak of both dicho- and trichotomy; Irenaeus and Tertullian – about dichotomy. Athanasius V., also fluctuates between both, like St. Ephraim the Syrian; hotel, soul and spirit say St. Basil the Great, Gregory Nis., Epiphanius, Ambrose, Augustine, Cyril Al. and others. Chrysostom, Nemesius, and John of Damascus speak dichotomously. After Apollinaris, dichotomy is sometimes considered one of the dogmas of Orthodoxy. Here is an analogy with the Eucharistic sacrifice, offered once, but repeated many times in the liturgy, with the sacrificial Lamb, one and yet always slain again, always divisible and not fragmented: the multiple repetition merges into a single divine act of a single accomplishment. “The soul is given from God when the body is formed and becomes capable of receiving it, and when it enters, it spreads throughout the whole body, like fire in a red-hot iron” (Orthodox Confession of the Eastern Church, issue 28). Here the Christological question is significant and even decisive: how should we understand the Incarnation of God, to what principle does the Logos in the God-Man correspond? Blazh. Augustine expresses himself about the origin of the soul of Christ: unde Adam quam de Adam (De Gen. 10.18, 33), i.e., indefinitely, and the question of whether the soul of Christ comes from Mary, along with the body, or was created by God (in accordance with strict creationism), and the traces, Mary gave only flesh, remained open, and the rejection of the error of Apollinaris, according to which the Logos replaced precisely the soul and spirit, does not give guidelines. According to the conciliatory formula 111 Universal. Council 433, according to the Antiochian symbol, it is also impossible to confidently determine the teaching of the Church. Here it was said: Θεὸντέλειονκαὶἀνθρωποντέλειονέκψυχῆςλογικὴςκαὶσώματος. Here the following is accepted. trichotomous view, and the being of Christ consists of "a perfect God and a perfect Man, consisting of a rational soul and body." What is the origin of this intelligent soul, there is no indication. But it seems consistent with the spirit of the entire Old Testament and Gospel. genealogy, that the rational soul of Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, who is His Mother in the full sense of the word, like any human mother who gives birth to a person carnally. From the akathist to the Dormition of the Theotokos: “Rejoice, Her most luminous soul dwells in the highest, all-bright Zion, Rejoice, Her incorruptible body and soul there together are glorified—rejoice in the entry into the throne city of the Almighty Himself, Rejoice, having ascended to the beautiful paradise of the Supreme Planter,” (Ikos 8). “At least the Lord saved the world, which is all of them, from the earthly for the sake of choosing You to be His Mother... and raising You with Himself to abide in eternal glory and to reign with Himself, having no end” (Kontakion 10). With particular prominence, the idea of ​​​​the resurrection of the Mother of God and Her ascension in the body to heaven is expressed in the sequence of the burial of the Mother of God, performed in the Gethsemane monastery. Praises, or sacred following at the holy repose of our Most Pure Lady Theotokos and Ever-Virgin Mary. Stichera on Gosp. call (from the Jerusalem Sequence):.. This is the blessed Saturday, this is the divine day of repose, on which the Mother of the being of the life rests from the life, looking at death, having been sabbathed and reposed in the flesh, and having ascended into heaven by the power from Her of the incarnate Christ God, and with Him forever and ever and giving us eternal life, with with love to those who honor Her holy Dormition. When from the world, the life of existence, which gave birth to the life of all, the Son of God in the flesh, was taken from the earth and ascended into the divine, pure heavenly entrances, then it was miraculously fulfilled when the Holy Spirit cried out: “Who is this who now ascends from the desert, all of us cry out in fear: Glory to your ascension, O beloved one.” On “God is the Lord”: “When you descended to death, the immortal Mother of the belly, then hell was surprised and terribly horrified: when I saw you appear in heaven, Mariam, from the grave I cried out to all the powers of heaven: life-giving Mother of our belly, glory to you.” Praise from article one: “Your honorable body, O Virgin, did not see corruption even in the tomb: but with your body you passed from earth to heaven. Now heaven has gloriously received the Queen of the Universe and rejoices, reigning in vain with God. God of Glory, Your Son, Pure One, with glory like a Mother, accepts You and places You at Your right hand. Oh, unspeakable joys! Oh, crazy honors! Miriam reigns with Jesus His Son in heaven and on earth. You, who have acquired the Spirit of God, in You the Bride of God dwells, seeing lifelessness and our spirit becomes impoverished. You also accepted burial, O Virgin, like a mortal, but, like the Mother of God, you rose by the omnipotent Spirit of God. The God-receiving body, even if it moves into the tomb, but is not accustomed to dwelling in the tomb, rises up by divine power. The poor, incorporeal one of old fell from the heavens: the flesh-bearing Virgin Mariam now miraculously appears above the heavens.” “Come near my Father, my neighbor, having risen from the earth. Come, My red one, and enjoy the beauty of Your Son and Creator. Come, My Mother, to divine joy and kingdom. Come, Mary, where we worship there is the Father, the Son and the Spirit. What now will I bring to You in heaven, My God, other than the soul and body of the Blessed One? ….you see the belt and understand, the Virgin is risen from the grave. ...the time of sobbing is over, do not cry, but cry out the resurrection of the Virgin. ...that you think alive with the dead, for you are risen like God Having given birth to the Giver of Life, you passed on to ageless life: you gave joy to the Virgin in sorrow as a disciple, the Virgin who rose from the grave, like the Lord.” In the Akathist of the Dormition of St. We read from the Mother of God: Kontakion 3: “(Thomas) came to see the one who presented herself, in her mind ascended into heaven with her body, and believing about this, she cried out: Alleluia.” Ikos 7: “Rejoice, Thou who, after Thy burial, made Thomas more abundant by the power of God; Rejoice, through him you have assured your transmigration into heaven with the flesh...” Ikos 8: Rejoice, Her most holy soul dwells in the highest, all-bright Zion; Rejoice, you who have entered the throne city of the Almighty Himself, Rejoice, you who have ascended to the beautiful paradise of the Planter Himself. Rejoice, brought into the city founded from the all-luminous stones, Rejoice, brought into the enclosure of the stench of the powers above. Rejoice, taken above the heavens into the fragrance of God, Rejoice, venerable above all immaterial minds...” Kontakion 10: “... (the Lord) has ascended, having come from nowhere, to heaven from the earth, and brought You with Himself to abide in eternal glory and to reign with Himself, having no end...” Ikos 10: “... the Creator of heaven and earth is from You Having passed through the flesh, Most Pure One, in spirit and body you have passed into heaven, to the nearest intercession for all...” And the Mother of God herself, in Her humility, however, spoke about Herself: “... for the Mighty One has done great things for Me” (Luke 2:49). As the Mother of the King of those who reign, She herself already becomes involved in royalty. Prayer to the Most Holy Theotokos (Priest prayer book, 259). Service of the Dormition of the Mother of God, canon, paragraph 4, tr. 1. Wed. my essay “On the veneration of St. relics in Orthodoxy" (handwritten). When the stars were created, all My angels praised them with a great voice” (Job 38:3). This is indirectly evidenced by the third of three Old Testament proverbs, always celebrated on the feasts of the Mother of God (the first is taken from Genesis 28, 10-17 - about Jacob’s vision of the ladder; the second from Ezekiel’s prophecy about the closed gates 43:47 - 49, 2-14; the third from Proverbs 9:1-21). Text ch. 9, 2: “Wisdom created a house for herself, and established seven pillars” - thus, the Church applies to the Mother of God, who is such a house or receptacle of Wisdom, in other words, She Herself is the embodiment of Wisdom, she is also the Church established on seven pillars. An attempt was made to interpret this text in relation to Christ the Wisdom, but, not to mention the fact that this contradicts its direct application by the Church to the Mother of God, this also leads to inconsistencies in the interpretation of the text. Namely: if we accept that Wisdom is the Logos, Christ, then it turns out that the Logos, the Second Hypostasis, created a body for Himself or prepared a Mother. But this constitutes a direct contradiction to the Annunciation, according to which the Mother of God is associated with the influx of the Holy Spirit: “The Holy Spirit will come upon You, and the power of the Most High will overshadow You.” Therefore, it is more natural in this text to coincide the action of Wisdom with the manifestation in the world of the Third Hypostasis, the Holy Spirit, and this also corresponds to the continuation of the text, which clearly refers to the Church and the grace-filled gifts of the Holy Spirit: “and establish the seven pillars, sacrifice your sacrificial offering, and dissolve your wine in your cup, and prepare your meal” (9, 12). If we use a comparison from the history of dogmas to explain the idea of ​​the Mother of God as the Spirit-Bearer, then we can apply here the concept of adoption, some internal assimilation, the fusion of the created and Divine hypostases. Adoptionism as applied to Christology was condemned by the West. Church in the 9th century in Spain, because it contained the doctrine not of a single Divine Hypostasis of Christ, but of two hypostases, divine and human, which then merge into a single divine Hypostasis on the basis of adoption. It is obvious that here the church teaching about Christ, proclaimed at the 4th and subsequent Ecumenical Councils, is damaged. However, when applied to the personality of the Mother of God and in Her relation to the Holy Spirit, the idea of ​​adoption, Her complete and complete sanctification, can have its legitimate application, alien to the Christological heresy. The blessing or deification of a person by the action of the Holy Spirit can be generally thought of as an adoption, a more or less complete penetration of human nature by the divine, their vital union. It has different degrees, but the “most honorable Cherub” has this unity with the Holy Spirit to a degree that exceeds all measure, which is why She is the Spirit-Bearer in the proper sense. The Western Church has a definition regarding this from the XI Council of Toledo (675): nec tarmen Spiritus sanctus Pater esse credendus est Filii, pro eo quod Maria eodem Sancto Spiritu obumbrante concepit: ne duos patres Filii videamur asserere, quod utique nefas est dici (Denzinger, Enchiridion, 281). This opinion is also supported in Catholic dogmatics (for example, Pesch. Praelectiones dogmaticae, Friburgi 1900, t. IV612, p. 303: Sp-sS. Nullomododicidebet pater Christi). However, there are exceptions - Dubosc de Pesquidoux. L'immaculee conception, histoire d'un dogme, Tours. 1898.1.1, 941: Marie tient egalement au Saint Esprit en tant qu’epouse virginale (!!!): obumbrabit tibi – dit l’Evangile... they even talk about noces divines que l’ange pronongait. However, such bad taste is the work of only individual writers. 1 The words of the Archangel Mary: “The Holy Spirit will come upon You, and the power of the Highest will overshadow You” (Luke 2:35), are usually interpreted by St. John of Damascus: An exact exposition of the Orthodox Church. faith, book III, ch. 2 (and in addition to St. Athanasius V., St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Cyprian, St. Hilary) - in the sense that the “power of the Most High” is the Logos, indwelling the Mother of God through the influx of the Holy Spirit, which is why the Annunciation is also the Conception of God. In the apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews, the words are put into the mouth of Jesus Christ: “My Mother the Holy Spirit” (ή μήτηρ μοθ avuyv πνεύμα) (in Origen In. Io. II, 12. In. Jerem. XV, 4, Migne P. Gr.t. XIII, soe. 4–33. Hieronymus VII, 5–7, Migne lat. XXV, p. 1221. In Jes. xl., 23. (Edgar Hennecke. Neutestamentliche Apokryphen, 2 Aufl. Tubingen, 1924, p. 54, no. 2). In his first sermon in Constantinople, Nestorius exclaims: “You ask whether Mary can be called the Mother of God? But does God have a mother? Then we should also accept paganism, which speaks of the mothers of the gods... No, Mary did not give birth to God, creation did not give birth to the Creator, but to man, who is the instrument of the Divine, the Holy Spirit did not put in the Logos, but He created the church in which He should dwell.” “I honor this garment for Her sake, who hid in Her and was inseparable from Her... He who was formed in the womb of Mary was not God himself, but God accepted him (assumpsit) and for the sake of the one who accepts, the accepted is called God” (W. Marius Merintor, ed. Garnier - Migne, p. 757 squ.). Hefele. Conciliengeschichte, 2. A., II, 152–3. Schwane. Dogmengeschichte, II, 322–3. In a similar way, the birth of a person is generally represented in crude creationism, adopted in Catholicism through the dogma of the immaculate conception: the soul is poured by God into the embryo when it reaches sufficient development, and thus inhabits the body, like a house, or is clothed with it like clothing. Therefore, from the hasty dogma of the immaculate conception of the Mother of God in Christology, Nestorianism inevitably follows: and in due time the soul of the Logos is “poured into the body of Christ prepared by Mary,” and Mary turns out to be not the Mother of God, but the Mother of Christ. Catholic dogmatics did not know how to tie ends meet here. We find this expression applied to the Mother of God in Bishop. Ignatius Brianchaninova, c. Op. 394: “She became... a Spirit-bearing, divine Virgin.” In the sacred hymns the Son of God is called born of the Father without a mother, and, of course, we do not think here of deviating from the norm of church teaching. The birth of the Son takes place from the Father and the Third Hypostasis does not participate in it, which already presupposes the Begotten. But, giving birth, the Father comes to the One born in the Holy Spirit, maternally embraces and gives life to Him. Therefore, from the Father not only sonship, but also motherhood, which, although not involved in birth, nevertheless participates in what has already been born, and contains it from eternity. One Catholic writer, S. Thomas de Villeneuve, has a successful definition: “if man is created as a microcosm, then Mary is microcosmus Ecclesiae (Terrien. La Mere de Dieu, I, 313). : “The Mother of God is the mother of the damp earth, and in this is great joy for man.” - Dostoevsky. Creations of St. John Chrysostom, vol. XI, 1, p. 166, vol. IV, 1, p. 134, vol. I, 1, p. 308, vol. IV, 2, p. 797. How did the angels multiply? Were they created by God in their entirety or did they multiply from their ancestors? There is no answer, but both assumptions are equally possible. The expression ὰειπαρθένος, Ever-Virgin, is already found in St. Athanasius the Great: oratio II contra Arian LXX. R. G. XXVI, 296 c.; also in Didymus the Blind, I, XXVII, R. G. 404C, in St. Epiphany, in the 2nd and 6th apothematism of the V Ecumenical Council, etc. Many people speak about the Ever-Virgin Mother of God, see, for example, in the words of St. John of Damascus, Music. in native. V. V. Mariae, Mg. R. G. 127, col. 966, home in Dormit. V.V.M., 724. That is why the Church reveres the feat of free virginity so highly, as the struggle on the cross with lustful nature for intact human nature with freedom from sex. In the Revelation of St. John (14:3-5) we read: “they sing, as it were, a new song before the throne... and no one could learn this song except these 144,000 redeemed from the earth. These are the ones who have not defiled themselves with women, for they are virgins, these are the ones who follow the Lamb wherever He goes. They are redeemed from among men, as the firstborn to God and to the Lamb.” The famous Catholic dogmatist Scheeben (Dogmatik III, 506–7) tries to define the place of Mary in dark but sometimes bold expressions: “Mary is, together with Christ, in such an exceptional degree the image and likeness of God that the Church does not find it difficult to attribute to Her the sayings of the Holy Father. Scriptures about the Wisdom of God. She participates in the gioria et virtus of the divine hypostases, has the communicatio idiomatum divinarum in such a unique form as none of the creatures. Of course, one cannot call Her Dea or persona divina or even diva. Her divine property is always expressed differently; holy, glorious, heavenly Virgin. In Her Divine Sonship lies a specific reflex of divine daughterhood (!!), eternal wisdom in relation to God the Father.” Further it is said about the applicability of the expression Daughter of God, sapientia to the Holy Spirit as filia Dei, Ruach, caritas Dei, filia Patris et sponsa et soror Filii, in relation to humanity Mater spiritualis the primordial of all creation. (All this would require development and disclosure.) At St. Andrew of Crete, at St. Tarasiya Patr. Constant, (in words on the Introduction to the Church. Migne R. G. t. 98. p. 1488). Jacob the monk of the 11th century. in the word for Birthday. Bogor. (Migne R. G. t. 127, p. 573), etc. Note. in Dormit. Deiparae, R. G. t. 151, p. 468, 472. Wed. my “chapters on trinity” (handwritten). Here is an example of a judgment from the latest “Mariology”. (Temen. La Mere de Dieu et la mere des hommes d'apres les peres et la Theologie, 1st r., 1.1,194): “la bien-heureuse Vierge est la Fille du Pere, sa fille premiere-nee, sa fille unique, comme Jesus est son fils unique; unigenita; unigenitus” – “II est le Fils de Dieu par excellence, le Fils unique, unigenitus; eile est la fille perpetuelle de Dieu. II est le premier nee, primogenitus, eile est aris lui la pre-miere-nee, primogenita” (197–8). Despite all these exaggerations, inaccuracies and ambiguities, the author, however, considers it “blasphemie et folie” to equate the birth of the Son and the Mother, for “tout ce qu-elle est, eile Test non par la nature, mais par le privilege souverainement gratuit” (168). Wed. from A. Lebedev. Various East and Zap. Churches in the teaching about the Most Holy. Virgo, 269. At St. Ephraim the Syrian, opera II (Syriaco-latina) 429 sermo in Nativit. Deip, b. 279, we find the following address to the Son, put into the mouth of the Virgin: “I am Your sister, since We both have David as an ancestor; also a mother, since I conceived You, Your wife, according to the Gift of holiness You gave Me.” St. John of Damascus in his sermon on Christmas Day. God . (Migne, t. 96, p. 672): “Oh, daughter - θυγάτριον... dwelling in the chambers of the Holy Spirit and kept in chastity as the bride of God and mother by the nature of God.” Вhomil. IIinnativ. B.VMariae, ib. col. 693: “Rejoice, named sister of a beautiful brother and beloved... Rejoice, bride, whose bridegroom is the Holy Spirit and the groom is Christ... Rejoice, wedding chamber, adorned with the beauties of virginity, according to what was said in the Song. (5:1): I have come into my garden, my sister the bride.” Among the domestic ones, we will cite in the words of Stefan Yavorsky, Metropolitan of Ryazan from the book Stone of Faith. “God the Father is the daughter, God the Mother, God the Holy Spirit is the bride” (the latter is clearly under Catholic influence. The Greatness of the Most Holy Theotokos and the Ever-Virgin Mary. Moscow, 1845. p. 356). We find the most decisive rapprochement between the bride from the Song of Songs and the Mother of God in St. Ambrose of Milan in De Institutione virginis et S. Mariae virginitate perpetua, Migne. R.L.t. XVI, 305–6: “Who is a neighbor, if not She who draws near to Christ, to whom the Word says: “Arise, come, my neighbor, my beautiful, for the winter has already passed” (Song. 2, 10–21) (3). Also in another place he adds: “Into your dove eyes under your curls” (4:1): because she is all spiritual and simple as a dove, in the form of which John saw the descending Holy Spirit, sees the spiritual and knows the mysteries that he sees (4). See sar. 87, 88, 89 and col. 327 at St. John of Damascus in hom.IIinnativ. V. V. Mariae is widely applied to the Mother of God text of the Canticle: 1,11,12; 4,13,14; 7.1; 4,9,7; 1.2; 3.6; 7.5, 6. Wed. comparison of texts relating to the Mother of God in the Song of Songs in the book “Tales of the Earthly Life of the Mother of God” (Athos ed.) pp. 9–11. One must beware of relating the Mother of God as the Bride of God not with Christ, but with the Holy Spirit, who in such a case is considered as the father of the son being born. This false bias, characteristic of Catholic theology, sometimes penetrates into Orthodox theology. A striking example of this, in addition to the already cited passage from the Stone of Faith by M. Stefan Yavorsky, is also found in St. Demetrius of Rostov in the Word on the Day of the Intercession of the Theotokos: it is said here about Her that “in one person Her three special rites of God’s work were revealed; a special order of service to God the Father, a special order to God the Son, a special order to God the Holy Spirit: for God the Father became Daughters, and to Her he says: Hear, O Daughters, and see (Ps. 44:12), to God the Son as a Mother, to God the Holy Spirit as an unconvinced Maiden” (Greatness of the Most Rev. Bogor., 246). We encounter a similar thought in the book: “Tales of the Earthly Life of the Mother of God,” ed. 7th, Moscow, 1897, p. 9: “She is called a bride in relation to the Holy Spirit, and She is designated unbride in relation to people, as unmarried, unmarried.” In this regard, one remarkable feature in the church use of the Song of Songs becomes clear: it is never read at divine services - one must think because all of it, like the whole life of the Church, is the ongoing Song of Songs. And at the same time, church services are saturated with it, its images have become the most intimate and familiar in church use. Wed. my “Non-Evening Light”. Moscow, 1917, department about Sofia; also the essay “Hypostasis or hypostasis” in the collection in honor of P. B. Struve. This thought about the pre-eternal and created Wisdom of God constitutes the main theme of the theology of St. Afanasia Vel. about this subject (cf. special excursion about this teaching of St. Athanasius Vel.). Wisdom is the name given to the Holy Spirit from church writers by St. Theophilus (Ad Autolicum, 2, 10. Enchiridion patristicum, 74) and in St. Irenea (Adv. haeres., 4, 20, 1. Enchir. 93). The content of this ancient icon, local to the ancient Russian Kiev-Sophia Cathedral, is remarkable and extremely significant. It is assumed that this image was originally taken from the Justinian Church, but when it was painted is unknown. In any case, this is the most sacred emblem, transmitted by the aging Byzantium to young Russia as a dogmatic gift, covenant and testament. This icon has a certain Theotokos-Sophia content. It depicts the Mother of God standing in a tunic with a veil on her head under a canopy supported by seven pillars. Her arms and hands are outstretched; Her feet are planted on the crescent moon lying on a cloud; on Her chest, as in the icons of the Sign, is the Eternal Child, blessing with his right hand and holding an orb in his left. On the cornice of the canopy there is an inscription (in Greek); “wisdom created for herself a house and created seven pillars,” and under it: ή Σοφία. At the top of the canopy, in the middle, the Holy Spirit is depicted surrounded by rays in the form of a dove; a little higher, also in the radiance of the rays, God the Father is depicted, having an orb on his left hand, and blessing with his right hand, from His lips come the words: “I established Her feet.” This main part of the composition has a clearly expressed Father-Sophia meaning. The Most Pure One is depicted here as the eternal Mother of God, having the Son-Emmanuel on her Persians, as the unity of the birth of God and motherhood of God, and the Holy Spirit rests on Her, overshadowing the Mother of God, and above everything rises the image of the Father, giving birth to the incarnate Son and exhausting the Holy Spirit and revealing himself in both hypostases. The inscriptions that clearly refer to the Wisdom of God, and together to the Mother of God, leave no doubt about the Theotokos-Sophian interpretation (so the interpretation of them by some theologians exclusively in the Christosophical sense is clearly not applicable here, namely, that “Wisdom - Christ - created for himself a house - the Mother of God or the house of the Holy Spirit": the house is created by the Father, as the First Principle, giving birth to the Son and exhausting the Mother of God principle of the Holy Spirit). All further symbolism of this icon develops the motif of the sevenfold, as an image of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit inherent in the Church and the Mother of God, and refers to this. arr., to the Mother of God, as the bearer of the Holy Spirit. It depicts 7 angels, 7 prophets, 7 pillars, 7 steps with 7 inscriptions, 7 emblems and inscriptions on pillars, of which the same number is found in each. Seven archangels in the clouds hold in their hands each sign of their service: on the right, Michael holds a flaming sword, Uriel - lightning, Raphael - the alabaster of peace; on the left, Gabriel holds a lily flower, Selafiel holds a rosary, Jehudiel holds a crown, Barachiel holds a bunch of flowers. Under the clouds with a crescent moon, the foot of the Mother of God, a pulpit with 7 steps, on each one inscribed, in ascending order from below, one of the following words: “faith, hope, love, purity, humility, goodness, glory (a host of Christian virtues, crowned with glory - sophia). On the very first step it is also written: “her ascension was seven.” On the steps of the pulpit in front of the Mother of God, on both sides stand the prophets, the Old Testament bearers of the Holy Spirit, “the prophets speaking.” On the right, on the 4th step from the top, stands Moses with tablets on which is inscribed: “Rejoice, tablet of God, in it is written the Word of God with the finger of the Father” - as if in a deliberate refutation of theologians who want to see Proverbs in the text. Sol. 9, Wisdom - Christ, who created the Church of the Mother of God. Following Moses in descending order are: Aaron with a vegetated rod, and on the last step with Moses stands Isaiah with a charter hanging from his left shoulder, on which are the words: “Behold the Virgin shall receive with child,” etc. Behind him, in descending order, on special steps, are the prophets: Jeremiah with a scroll, Ezekiel with his enemies shut up, and Daniel with a stone in his hands. On all the seven pillars supporting the canopy, there are in circles emblematic images taken from the Apocalypse, with explanations and their words from the same prophetic book. On the first pillar from the right hand of the Mother of God there are seven combs with the inscription: “gift of advice”, then the words: “on a single stone there are seven combs.” On the second pillar is depicted a seven-candlestick candlestick, above which is the inscription: “gift of reason,” and then: “I saw the golden candlestick and the seven candlestick on top of it.” On the far right pillar there is a book with 7 seals attached to it and with the words at the top: “gift of wisdom,” and behind them the inscription: “I have seen the book sealed with seven seals.” On the nearest pillar of the Mother of God there are 7 trumpets, above which there is the inscription: “gift of fortress” and below: “seven trumpets for the fall of Jericho.” On the next, fifth, pillar is the right hand with 7 stars and with the inscription: “gift of vision” and then: “in the hand of the right hand there are seven stars.” On the sixth pillar are 7 smoking incense burners with the words at the top: “gift of piety” and behind them: “seven golden phials full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints.” On the last pillar there are depicted 7 streams of lightning with the caption: “the gift of the fear of God” and then: “the voice of seven thunders spoke.” (Benefits of the Mother of God to the Christian race through Her Holy Icons. 2nd edition St. Petersburg, 1905, pp. 672 – 5). According to this symbolism, the Mother of God is depicted here as the embodiment of the Church with all the gifts of the Holy Spirit, as the unity of earthly and heavenly Sophia, as the Glory of the world. The oldest Russian cathedrals in Kyiv and Novgorod were dedicated to Sophia, the Wisdom of God; in this dedication one can see an imitation of the churches of Greece, and there were many such churches of Sophia in the Greek East: in Thessaloniki there was St. Sophia, in Constantinople, Trebizond, Khersoies Tauride, Nicosia (on the island of Cyprus), Sophia of Bulgaria. Respect for this ancient tradition was transferred to us in Russia, and the custom of dedicating churches to St. Sophia became widespread among us: in addition to Kyiv and Novgorod, churches of St. Sophia are known in Vologda (1568), Tobolsk, Moscow, Grodno and Polotsk. It can be assumed that some of the most ancient churches dedicated to the Mother of God, for example, in honor of Her Nativity and Assumption, also have a close relationship in concept to the churches of St. Sophia... This last circumstance, perhaps, is the reason why we have many Assumption Cathedrals in Russia: in Rostov, Zvenigorod, Vladimir, Moscow, Yaroslavl, Ryazan, Kostroma, Astrakhan, Vologda, Rybinsk, Tobolsk, Vilna" (A. Nikolsky. Sophia the Wisdom of God. St. Petersburg, 1905. Addenda 34). Published by St. P. Florensky according to the manuscript available in Moscow. Church of St. Sophia on Sofiyka, and republished in Belgrade by a circle of theological students (lithograph.). In general, it represents the completion of the service of the Assumption (accordingly somewhat shortened) with special stichera and a canon in honor of Sophia. In many cases Sophia is directly equated with Christ, but in others with the Mother of God. Let us give examples of the latter. Troparion: “The greatness and ineffable wisdom of God is the power. The eminent Sophia, the most venerable church, the fiery throne of Christ our God: the Word of God dwelt in Thee ineffably, and flesh became invisible... and as a child-loving and merciful Queen, look upon Thy people.” (This and other prayers, originally also published in the Moscow Church. Ved. 1889, No. 35, are reprinted in a collection of prayers read before holy icons at prayer services, at all-night vigils, compiled from akathists and church services approved by the spirits, censorship and the Holy Synod by Archpriest A. Stavrovsky. St. Petersburg, Synodal Printing House 1909) Kontakion: “As Orthodox people, we see the miraculous icon of the Wisdom of God, His Most Pure Mother of God: for this shines like a ray of light in the most holy church of God and gladdens the hearts of those who come with faith and look with fear and reverence at this most pure icon, thinking in our hearts that truly the Mother of God is our hope faithful, we see and worship Her fiery imagination, as Her true and immaculate virginity at Christmas and after Christmas...” Ikos: “Confirm my good mind and thoughts, O God the Father Almighty: for I dare to sing praises to the world’s intercessor, the Immaculate Virgin Bride. You named her virgin soul Your divine Church and incarnation for the sake of Your Word Sophia the Wisdom of God, and in that name You commanded the king Justinian to create a church, and to the divine Cyril the philosopher in the appearance of the chosen Maiden, the name Sophia, that is, You bestowed the Wisdom of God, the image of the face I depicted as fire-like Thou art, from Her, from Thy Divinity, that is, Thy only begotten Son, scorching our bodily passions... For this sake, let us all cry out, for She is truly the Wisdom of God, the companion and canopy of heaven, and the giver of all good things...” Canon, n. 8, troparion 3: “The mental grape is the church of Sophia, the Wisdom of God, that is, the womb of the Most Holy Mother of God, from which the Divine One came forth, kindling the corruptible passions of our souls...” Wed. also: A. Nikolsky. Sophia the Wisdom of God. Novgorod edition of the icon and the service of St. Sophia (ed. St. Petersburg, Archaeological Institute) St. Petersburg, 1905. The author, based on an analysis of the service of St. Sophia, comes to the conclusion that its compiler “either understands by the Wisdom of God the incarnate Word, then the Mother of God, and in the troparion “The Greatness and Inexpressible Wisdom of God the power” By the wisdom of God, of course, both Jesus Christ and the Mother of God” (10). At the same time, the author notes: “the writer did not form a clear and distinct concept of St. Sophia” (ib.) The duality in the interpretation of Wisdom, which in one case is taken as the Divine revelation in creation in general, and in the other is directly equated with the Second Hypostasis, is also characteristically manifested in the canon of the great quartet. Here are some examples: clause I, tr. 1: “the all-guilty and bestowing immeasurable Wisdom of God created a church for Himself from the pure, unskilled Mother: in the church, for He clothed His body, Christ our God was gloriously glorified.” The meaning here is double: the all-guilty and giving life is the power of both the Word and the Holy Spirit, acting in creation, and the creation of the church in the Mother, in which Christ is clothed, is also attributed to it (according to Prov. Sol. 9:1). Also from Proverbs. 9, images are also taken from the 3rd irmos, where it speaks again about Wisdom in a general sense: “let us hear all the faithful, convening with high preaching the uncreated and natural Wisdom of God, crying out: taste and understand that I am good (in the next translation there is “Christ”, but this is an erroneous translation of the word Χρηστός, which is clearly mixed with Χριστός), cry: gloriously glorified is Christ our God!” Tr has the same meaning. 2 cantos 9 (also on the theme of Proverbs 8,22 ff.): “The Father, before the ages, co-worker Wisdom begets Me, the firstfruits of the ways, created into works now carried out in secret. The word is uncreated by nature, the voices have been appropriated, which we now ask for” (obvious ambiguity in the translation). On the contrary, in other cases Wisdom is given a clearly Christosophical meaning. Here are examples: P. I, tr. 2: “Through the secret guidance of His friends He prepares a soul-saving table, but the wisdom of God truly dissolves the cup of immortality for the faithful: let us approach piously and cry out: gloriously glorified is Christ our God!” P. 5, tr. I: “holding the unpossessed and high water in the air, bridling the abyss and challenging the seas, God’s Wisdom pours water into the laver, and the Lord washes the feet of the slaves.” Similar examples of double meaning are found in other church chants. At St. Dmitry of Rostov, we find the following passage (ts. p. 251): “Flow to Her, O priestesses: as She is also a divine Priest or Priestess, when She offered Her Son, the Immaculate Lamb, on the altar of the cross for the whole world as a sacrifice to the Lord.” Michelangelo wanted to depict this face of the King and Judge, so different from the image of the meek and humble-hearted Teacher, in his painting of the Last Judgment. The antinomy of truth and mercy in the destinies of mankind is expressed vividly by the inspired teacher of antinomian theology, Apostle. Paul in connection with the question of the fate of Jewry: “For God shut all into rebellion, that He may have mercy on all” (Rom. 11:12). These types and prophecies have been listed more than once in the relevant writings. See, for example, the excellent comparison in The Majesty of the Blessed Virgin Mary, pp. 8–68. Rejoice, pillar of fire, leading humanity into the higher life (Akathist to the Mother of God). “Light-like cloud... truly the Blessed One has appeared” (October 5, ch. can. I. Prov. p. 9 Bogor.). The Greatness of the Most Rev. Mother of God, 31. This is confirmed in church hymns: “the bush and fire showed a miracle to the blessed Moses: look for the end in the passing of times, in the pure Maiden, I will see the speech” (canon on the Annunciation, paragraph 9, tr. 4). “Moses understood in the bush the great mystery of Thy Nativity, Holy Virgin” (Akath. Bogomat. p. 8, tv. 2.). From the numerous liturgical material related here, we will cite only the well-known “dogmatist” of the 2nd tone: “The canopy of the law has passed away, grace having come: just as a bush was not scorched without burning, so the Virgin gave birth and the Virgin remained; instead of a pillar of fire, the righteous sun rose, instead of Moses, Christ is the salvation of our souls.” It is noteworthy that some texts (1 Sam. 4.4, Lev. 16.2) say that God Himself appears above the lid of the Ark of the Covenant among the images of cherubim, but 2 Sam. 6:2 we read: “the ark of God, on which is named the name of the Lord of hosts, sitting on the cherubim.” The naming of a name is tantamount to the presence of God - this idea is generally characteristic of the Old Testament, where the church of God is usually called “the church of the Name of the Lord” (see, for example, 1 Kings 8). Octoechos, ch. 7, channel Nikol. Miracle paragraph 3, Theotokos, ch. 2nd channel God. p.irm.; can. Shit. 5 p., troparion 3:2. “We glorify the Throne of God’s Word, O Mother of God, on it, as the man God appeared, and the speed of the Cherubim exceeded” (Oct. Chapter 2, canon. Bogor. p. 5. Wed. Oct. ch. 6, canon John the Baptist, p. 3, Bogor., 2 ch. St. Nicholas, p. 6 Bogor.). “Thou art a prophet of God, O wondrous Ezekiel, Thou didst proclaim the incarnation of the Lord to all, this Lamb and Creator of the Son of God appearing unto the ages” (Cond. prophet). We find a general indication of the Theotokos meaning of the appearance of Glory to the Prophet Ezekiel among the holy fathers in St. Andrew of Crete: Selected words of the holy fathers in honor and glory of the Blessed Virgin Mary. Moscow, ed. 4th, 1896, pp. 53–4. De resurrectione carnis (“On the resurrection of the flesh”), VI. Migne, R. lat., I, 208. Octoechos, ch. 7, Wednesday morning, canon two, paragraph 8, tr. 3. The English translation reads this verse: Jahweh formed me as the beginning of his creation, The first of his works, in day of yore. (Internat, crit. Comm. The Proverbs) by G. Thaw, b. 172. In the primeval time was I fashioned In the beginning, at the origin of the earth. 9.24 – When there were depths was I brought in to being No fountains full of water. The image of Wisdom in the book of Job 28 approaches the same understanding, only in less defined terms: “When He assigned weight to the wind and arranged the water according to measure, when He appointed a rule for the rain and a thunderous path for the lightning: then He saw her and revealed her; prepared it and tested it again” (25–27). Ad Autolicum 2, 10: οὖτος οὖν, ὢν Πνευμα δεοῦ καὶ αρχὴ, καὶ σοφία, καὶ δύναμις Ύψίστου, κατήρχετο εἰςτούς προφήτας - this same one, being the Spirit of God, and the beginning and the Wisdom and the power of the Most High, descended into the prophets.” Advers. haer 4, 20.1: Adest enim ei semper Verbum et Sapientia, Filius et Spiritus - “He (the Father) always has the Word and Wisdom, the Son and the Spirit.” At St. John of Damascus (Accurate exposition of rights, faith, book I, VIII) The Holy Spirit is called “the source of wisdom, life and sanctification.” The difference between the authority of canonical and non-canonical books is generally difficult to define, and in certain cases it is actually even directly eliminated by the Church, which selects excerpts from both for liturgical and parimical use (in particular, from the Wisdom of Solom.). This difference was generally greatly exaggerated by Protestants, who at one time practically eliminated them from the Bible. In Orthodoxy there is no doctrinal equalization in the authority of both, which exists in Catholicism, especially with Trident. Council, but in practice this distinction is almost never made, except in doubtful cases. In Russian lane for some reason there was an inaccuracy: she is a spirit. Seeing in this text an indication of the Holy Trinity in Her three Hypostases seems strained to us, firstly, due to the very structure of the phrase in the Greek language: βουλὴν and σοφίαν are used without a member, which would be hardly possible if the divine hypostases were meant here. Secondly, there is no basis in the will to see the Father’s hypostasis without falling into anthropomorphism. Our interpretation boils down to the fact that “Thy will” refers to the will of God for us, to the right path of salvation, which people learn to walk through Wisdom, through the influx of the Holy Spirit (the relationship between Wisdom and the Holy Spirit, outlined in the book of Wisdom, is explained in the text). The further continuation of the text speaks in favor of this understanding: “and so the ways of those living on earth were straightened, and people learned what was pleasing to You, and were saved by Wisdom” (7.18–29). Let us note that in this verse, the Word and Wisdom are by no means identified with each other, but are distinguished, although not opposed. It is in this sense that the Church speaks of wisdom in the “prayer singing at the beginning of the teaching of the youths”, in the petitions at the Great Litany: “to give them the wisdom that sits before His throne and plant it in their hearts, so that he may teach them what is acceptable before Him, let us pray to the Lord.” Here, obviously, we are not talking about the Second Hypostasis, although we are talking about wisdom in the ontological sense. On the contrary, in further petitions, wisdom is spoken of as a property: “for them to excel in Wisdom and age to the glory of God... for them to be Wisdom and a virtuous life... joy and consolation”... etc. The exclamation often repeated in the church: “Wisdom” has a similar meaning, which appeals to the wisdom of those praying (before dismissal) or draws attention to the special significance of what follows (before reading proverbs, the Apostle or the Gospel, even just the prokeme). It is instructive, by the way, to compare ch. 10 – 12 Wisdom of Solomon and ch. 44–50 Wisdom of Jesus son of Sirach (so-called ὔμνος τῶν πατέρων - praise of the fathers). Here the deeds, for example, of Moses and others are praised, about which in the first book it is said that they were inspired by Wisdom, in the second - directly by God. 1.5 Russian transl.: “the source of wisdom is the word of the Most High and its procession is the eternal commandments” is missing in some publications, for example, in The old Testament in Greek according to the septuagint, ed. by N.V. Swete. Compare, in particular, the texts: “I came out of the mouth of the Most High” and the psalm: “By the Word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the Spirit of His mouth all their power” (Ps. 32:6), and by “Spirit of the mouth” we usually mean the Holy Spirit. Here, in this incidental excursion, caused only by the needs of a special presentation, we consider ourselves to have the right to limit ourselves only to these negative results, not about what Sophia is, but about what she is not. We consider the positive teaching on this issue to be an as yet unresolved task of Orthodox theology. It is called here to develop the Orthodox teaching about the energies of God in their difference from the hypostatic being of God, associated with the name of St. Gregory Palamas. The author made a strong attempt to express this theology in the essay “Hypostasis and Hypostasis” (in a collection in honor of P. B. Struve - there is also a German translation), to which those interested are referred. We consider it appropriate, however, to add that it does not give a new teaching at all, but only makes an attempt to comprehend the fact of veneration of the Divine Sophia that already exists in church tradition and offers some interpretation of this fact. Consequently, a new dogma is not established, but only a theology is proposed about a dogmatic fact already existing in the Church. And the one who denies the question itself takes upon himself the courage to deny this fact, and therefore the onus probandi of such a denial of church tradition falls on him in the first place. “Indeed, after the Holy Virgin expressed Her consent, according to the word of the Lord, announced by the Angel, the Holy Spirit descended on Her, cleansed Her and gave Her the power to both accept the Divinity of the Word and give birth. Then He overshadowed Her, as it were, the Divine seed, the Son of God, the hypostatic Wisdom and Power of the Most High God, consubstantial with the Father, and from Her immaculate and purest blood He formed for Himself the firstfruits of our composition - flesh, animated by a thinking and rational soul - not through fertilization by seed, but creatively through the Holy Spirit” (St. John of Damascus. Exact edition of faith. III, II). The Reverend also philosophizes in agreement with him. Theophan the Recluse: “Look how the Son of God became incarnate from the Blessed Virgin? The Holy Spirit found and incarnated Him. Isn't God the Son of God? Didn't everything happen to Him? Doesn't He carry everything with the word of His power? Meanwhile, when He was about to be incarnate, the Holy Spirit wove flesh for Him from the most pure blood of the Most Holy Theotokos. Couldn’t He have done this Himself? Could; but the Trinitarian God thus pleased, and the Son Himself became incarnate, so that the body for Him would be completed by the Holy Spirit.” etc. (Bishop Theophan the Recluse. Letters to various persons on various subjects of faith and life, 2nd ed. M., p. 153.) The iconographic interpretation of the text of Proverbs 9.1 is instructive, which is given in one of the most ancient icons, “Wisdom created a house for herself” (Likhachev. Russian Iconography, No. 266). In a conventional iconographic style, here is a landscape with seven separate rocks (4 on the right above and 3 on the left below), corresponding to 7 pillars, with an image of a throne on it; above him - on the left in the medallion is Christ, and above the rock-pillars in the medallion is the Mother of God with the Child, and above are seven small medallions with symbolic images of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit (and corresponding inscriptions: spirit of wisdom, spirit of reason, etc.). The general meaning of this Sophia-iconographic theology is clear: Wisdom is in its manifestation both Christ and the Mother of God, and the Logos and the Holy Spirit with His gifts, the Church as the Body of Christ, blessed by the Holy Spirit. In any case, the content of this icon does not fit into the framework of a simple theological scheme: Wisdom = Logos. The exegesis of this text will be given in a special work on the Forerunner: Friend of the Bridegroom. “God, having desired to create created nature, saw that it could not accept upon itself the unmoderable hand of the Father and the Father’s creative power, therefore initially He alone produces and creates the One only and calls Him the Son and the Word, so that through Him everything else could come into being. (Arius, Eusebius Asterius)" (Prot. Arian. 11, 24). St. Athanasius rightly points out to this that “since the Word is possible, it is necessary for all nature to have the same possibility, or, since it is impossible for nature, for the Word not to have this possibility... and during His creation, of all necessity, a medium was needed”... otherwise “it will be impossible for creation to come into being” (11, 26). However, it is hardly fair to object to this ontological argument by citing the fact that, “affirming this like this, the weakness that was prepared is shown, namely: that He alone does not have the strength to create the universe, but invents a tool for himself like a woodworker or a shipbuilder, who is not able to work anything without an ax or a saw” (11, 26). “Why does God, wanting to create us, look for a mediator, as if His will is not enough to create what is pleasing to Him?.. If His will alone is sufficient to create everything, then again the need for a mediator according to your teaching is unnecessary” (11, 29). But the same arguments could be used from the opposite side to object to Athanasius’s own teaching about the creation of the world by the Word. We are talking, of course, not about limiting the omnipotence of God, but about the ontological incompatibility of God and the world without mediation (otherwise, with similar arguments, one could deny the omnipotence of God by the fact that He does not have all the features associated with creatureliness and limitation). “The Father, as with His hand, made everything through the Word and does nothing without Him” (Contra ag. 11:31). “God’s Word is constructive and creative, It is the Father’s will” (ib.). “Whatever is pleasing to God and intended by Him is immediately brought into being and accomplished by the Word” (Ibid). Eusebius (De eccl. theol. III. 2, Migne R. gr. XXIV, 987) was the first to draw attention to the different readings of this text, and in the Hebrew text there is no direct indication of creatureliness, and some Greek manuscripts contain: ἐκτήσατο. The blessed one says the same thing. Jerome (Ep. 139. Comm. in Is. 26.13). Therefore he put in the Vulgate: possedit me (instead of creavit). In Russian translation, syn. ed.: “The Lord had me as the beginning of his ways” (see previous excursion). This statement, exaggerated in its essence, represents an excessive concession to Arian exegesis, especially if one reads the entire 8th chapter from the beginning; the initial words of Wisdom cannot be revered as the words of the Son. The thought of the blessed one also applies to Athanasius’ distinction between Hypostatic and Incarnate Wisdom. Augustine De trinitate, lib. I, p. 24. Secundum formam Dei dictum est Ante omnes colles genuit me (Prov. 8,25), id est, ante omnes creaturarum altitudines; et Ante luciferum genui te (Ps. 109:). id est, ante omnia tempora et temporalia: secundum formam autem servi dictum est Dominus creavit me in principio viarum suarum (Prov. 8,22) (Prov. 8:22)"]. Augustine (de trin, L. VII, with I (III) considers the question whether the Son alone is Wisdom, and comes to a negative conclusion: Ergo et Pater ipse sapientia est: et ita dicitur Filius sapientia Patris, quomodo di- citur lumen Patris; id est, ut quemadmodum lumen de lumine, et utrumque unum lumen; sic intelligatur sapientia de sapientia, et utrumque una sapientia: ergo et una essentia; quia hoc est ibi esse quod sapere. hoc est essentiae ipsum esse. Et quia in illa simplicitate non est aliud sapere quam esse, eadem ibi sapientia est quae essentia (cap. I). eo Verbum quo sapientia: Verbum enim relative, sapientia essentialiter intelligitur: id dici accipia et Filius et imago... Unde Pater et Filius simul una sapientia, quia una essentia, et singillatim sapientia de sapientia, sicut essentia de essentia... Uterque simul una sapientia et una essentia, ubi hoc est esse quod sapere (p. II) Why is the Son primarily called Wisdom? Sapientia ergo Filius de Sapientia Patre, sicut lumen de lumine, et Deus de Deo, ut et singulus Pater lumen, et singulus Filius lumen; et singulus Pater Deus et singulus Filius Deus: ergo et singulus Pater sapientia, et singulus Filius sapientia. Et sicut utrumque simul unum lumen, et unus Deus, sic utrumque una sapientia. Sed Filius factus est nobis sapientia a Deo et justificatio (1 Cop. 1:30), quia temporaliter nos ad eos convertimus, id est ex aliquo tempore, ut cum illo maneamus in aetemum. Et ipse quodam tempore Verbum caro factum est et habitavit in nobis (p. III). (T.O. The naming of the Son by Wisdom is associated with the fact of the incarnation). Propreterea igitur cum pronuntiatur in Scripturis aut enarratur aliquid de sapientia, sivedicente ipsa sive cum de illa dicitur, Filius nobis potissimum insinuatur. But just as Wisdom is Father and Son, so is the Holy Spirit, as true God: Lumen ergo Pater, lumen ergo Filius, lumen Sp. s-s; et simul non tres sapientiae, sed una sapientia: et quia hoc est ibi esse quod sapere, una essentia Pater, et Filius, et Spiritus Sanctus As follows from the above texts, the teaching of Blessed. Augustine cannot be reduced to a direct equation of wisdom with the Second Hypostasis; on the contrary, he considers it in relation to the entire Holy Trinity, not only the Son, but also the Father and the Holy Spirit. Dionys, de divin. nomin., sar. 5, §IX, Mg. s. Gr. t. 3, col. 824. Wed. comments on this passage by Corderius and Pachymera (pp. 844–8). Migne, b. gr. t. IV, col. 442. Wed. F. A. Staudenmaier. Die Lehre von der Idee (Die Philosophie des Christentums oder Metaphysik der heiligen Schrift),1-er Band. Giessen. 1840. R. 321–4. St. Greg. Nys. in Apol. in. Hexaem, Mg. R. Gr., t. 44, col. 68–9. Tract. I'm in loan. Mg. s. lat., t. 34–5, col. 1387.Lib. de divers quaest LXXXIII, qu. 46. ​​Mg. t. 40, col. 30. Nam ut primum Deus ea voluit quae cum Sophiae ratione et sermone disposue rat intra se, in substantias et species suas edere, ipsum primum protulit sermonem, habentem in se individuas suas Rationem et Sophiam; ut per ipsum fierent universa, per quem erant cogitata atque disposita, immo et facta jam, quantum in Dei sensu. Hoc enim eis deerat, ut quoque in suis speciebus atque substantiis cognoscerentur et tenerentur. Tunc igitur etiam ipse sermo speciem et omatum suum sumit, sonum et vocem, cum dicit Deus: fiat lux etc.