Holy Scripture and the Church

The Church does not have tablets on which writings would be inscribed with the Divine finger. The Church has Holy Scripture, but the One who created the Church did not write anything. Only once is it said about Christ in the Gospel of John that He, bending low, wrote, but even this time Christ wrote with a finger and wrote on the ground. Yes, maybe he didn’t write any words, but only drew with his finger towards the ground. And yet the Church has Scripture, which it calls Sacred, Divine. Christ did not write... It seems that if you reflect sufficiently on this fact, you can partially understand the very essence of Christ’s work. Other religious leaders of mankind, the founders of various schools of philosophy, usually wrote a lot and willingly, but Christ wrote nothing. Doesn't this mean that the work of Christ, in its essence, is not at all the same as the work of some philosophers, teachers, advanced representatives of the intellectual life of mankind? And the Church itself, did it really look at its Founder as one of the teachers of humanity? Did she see in His teaching the essence of His work? No, the Christian Church, with the greatest effort of its theological forces, defended the great religious truth that Christ is the Only Begotten Son of God incarnate on earth, Consubstantial with God the Father. The greatest fathers of the Church fought for this truth until they bled to death. They were adamant in their struggle for this truth. Here they did not yield to their enemies a single inch, in the literal sense, not a single iota, by which in the Greek language the sub-essential differs from the Consubstantial. “Those who call Arians Christians are in a great and extreme error,” wrote St. Athanasius the Great 1. This is how this adamant of Orthodoxy definitely thought about the impossibility of being a Christian, denying the incarnation of the Son of God, Consubstantial with God the Father. But was the incarnation of the Only Begotten Son of God really necessary only in order to write and hand over to humanity some book? Do you have to be the Only Begotten Son of God to write a book? And if the Church so insisted on the Divine dignity of its Founder, it obviously did not see the essence of His work in Scripture. The incarnation of the Son of God was necessary for the salvation of mankind, and not for writing a book. No book could or can save humanity. Christ is not a Teacher, but rather the Savior of mankind. It was necessary to revive human nature, corrupted by sin, and the beginning of this revival was laid by the very incarnation of the Son of God, and not by His teaching, not by the book of the New Testament. This truth was expressed with all decisiveness by church theologians back in the second century. As is known, starting from the middle of the second century, Marcion and his followers made a sharp distinction between the Old and New Testaments. They even taught that two Testaments originated from different gods. The New Testament, therefore, in their opinion, contains precisely a new teaching, which is directly opposite to the Old Testament teaching, and therefore abolishes it. But Christ Himself and the Apostles and the Church from the very beginning recognized the Old Testament scripture as authority. Marcion's teaching immediately met with proper rebuff from church writers. In the polemic against Marcion, theologians of the second century revealed in detail that the New Testament does not abolish the old; on the contrary, the entire New Testament has already been predicted in the Old. “The prophets knew the New Testament and proclaimed it” 2. “Read,” writes St. Irenaeus of Lyons, - more carefully the Gospel given to us by the Apostles and read more carefully the prophets, and you will find that all the activities, all the teaching and all the suffering of our Lord were predicted by them” 3. Consequently, in the sense of teaching, the New Testament does not give anything new, essentially, completely new. Those who were inclined to look at Christ more as a Teacher were, of course, somewhat embarrassed by such reasoning and the conclusions that suggested themselves from them. But the greatest theologian of the second century, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, “anointed, according to St. Epiphany of Cyprus, with the heavenly gifts of true faith and knowledge” 4, dispels this confusion. He precisely draws attention to the fact that it is not new teaching that constitutes the goal and essence of Christ’s coming. “If,” he writes, “such a thought arises in you and you say: what new did the Lord bring with His coming? Know that He brought everything new by bringing Himself and thereby renewing and revitalizing man 5 . The renewal of humanity, therefore, is the fruit of the very coming, the very incarnation of the Son of God. This thought was especially clearly expressed by St. Father in the recently discovered work “Proof of the Apostolic Preaching” (ch. 99). “Others do not attach any importance to the descent of the Son of God and the economy of His incarnation, which the apostles announced and the prophets predicted that through this the perfection of our humanity should be realized. And such should be counted among those of little faith.” So, the perfection of our humanity, according to the teachings of St. Irenaeus, must be realized precisely by the economy of the incarnation of the Son of God, and not by some teaching, not by writing some book. By his incarnation and incarnation, the Son of God, the Second Person of St. Trinity, made people partakers of the Divine nature. Having accepted humanity into the unity of His Hypostasis, the Son of God, incarnate, became the new Adam, the ancestor of the new humanity. “In the image and likeness of being corrupted by crime, having seen Jesus, He bowed down to the heavens and dwelt in the virgin womb without change, so that in it He might renew the decayed Adam” 6 . “The Son of the Most High became the son of man, so that man might become the son of God,” 7 says St. Irenaeus. In the new humanity, which is based on the incarnation of the Son of God, the unity of human nature is restored, the unity destroyed by sin. Christ Himself called this new humanity the Church. In the 16th chapter of the Gospel according to Matthew, we read about how the ap. Peter, on behalf of all the apostles, confessed the truth of the incarnation of the Only Begotten Son of God. And Christ answered Peter: “On this rock (obviously, on the incarnation, on the fact that He is the Son of the living God) I will build My Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:16-18). And while parting and saying goodbye to His disciples, Christ promised them another Comforter - the Holy Spirit, who will instruct them, will lead them to all truth and who will abide with them forever (John 14, 16-17, 15:26, 16:13). It is this Holy Spirit that is constantly spoken of in the Holy Scriptures, that He revives the Church, which is the body of Christ. The Spirit of God lives in the members of the Church (Rom. 8, 9, 11, 23, 26; 2 Tim. 1, 14, 1 Peter 4, 14). who leads them (Rom. 8:14). The Holy Spirit is the single source of all spiritual gifts with which members of the Church are endowed (1 Cor. 12:4-11). The Church and the whole as a whole and in its individual members lives, thinks and prospers in perfection, guided by the Holy Spirit. An individual person only through connection with the Church receives all the forces necessary for his moral re-creation. This is how both Holy Scripture and the reason of the Church force us to imagine the meaning and essence of the work of Christ. The work of Christ is the creation of the Church, a new humanity. Understood in this way, the work of Christ truly becomes exceptional; it immeasurably rises above all human affairs. So often now in pagan literature, in Buddhism and in the Talmud, in Babylon and in Egypt, parallels to the teachings of Christ are found. But whoever looks at Christ as the incarnate Son of God, all kinds of talk about historical “influences” on Christianity do not make the slightest sense. The essence of Christ’s work is not in teaching, and therefore it is obvious nonsense and even blasphemy to place Christ in the category of sage teachers along with Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, etc. Christ made humanity partaker of the Divine nature, poured new grace-filled forces into human nature, created the Church, and sent down the Holy Spirit. No sage man could do all this, no matter what lofty truths he preached, no matter how smart and great books he wrote. “Our unchanging Columbus of all the open Americas” (as V.S. Solovyov aptly called Leo Tolstoy) in the preface to the Geneva edition of “A Brief Exposition of the Gospel” wrote: “I look at Christianity as a teaching that gives the meaning of life... and therefore for me it makes absolutely no difference whether Jesus Christ was God or not God” (pp. 9–11). But the Church understood that to look at Christianity this way means to reduce it to complete nothingness. It is not enough to show a person the meaning of life. We need to give him strength to live. What is needed is the re-creation of man himself. Humanity is saved only by the incarnation of the Son of God and His creation - the Church. The church understanding of the work of Christ indicated in general terms should serve as the only starting point for all our reasoning about the Holy Scriptures. Christ did not write... He did not come to earth to write. The essence of His work is not teaching, not writing a book, for example, a complete course of Christian dogmatics. No, His business is not bookish. But if this is so, then what is Holy Scripture? Christ created the Church. The Church existed even when there was not a single book of the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament. After all, the books of the New Testament were written by the apostles later, within more than half a century from the beginning of the historical existence of the Church. In the books they wrote, the apostles left monuments of their oral preaching. They wrote for the already existing Church, and handed over their books to the Church for eternal edification. Obviously, the books of Holy Scripture do not constitute the essence of Christianity, because Christianity itself is not a teaching, but is precisely a new life created in humanity by the Holy Spirit on the basis of the incarnation of the Son of God. Therefore, it would not be insolence to say that a person is saved not by the Holy Scripture, as a book, but by the grace of the Holy Spirit living in the Church. The Church leads people to perfection. The Church has other ways and other means for this, besides the books of Holy Scripture. St. Irenaeus of Lyons writes: “Many tribes of barbarians who believe in Christ have their own salvation, written in their hearts by the Spirit without charter or ink, and carefully preserve the ancient tradition. Those who accepted this faith without writing are barbarians in relation to our language, but in relation to doctrine, character and way of life, according to their faith, they are very wise and please God, living in all truth, purity and wisdom” 8. To become a follower of a particular philosophical school, you need to master the philosophical works of the founder of this school. Is it enough to know the New Testament to become a Christian? Is this knowledge enough for salvation? Of course not. You can know the entire New Testament by heart, you can perfectly know all the science of the New Testament and yet be very, very far from salvation. To be saved, it is necessary to be added to the Church, as in the book of the Acts of the Apostles it is said that those who were being saved were added to the Church (Acts 2:47, 5:13–14). This was when there was no Scripture, but there was a Church and there were those being saved. Why was it necessary to join the Church? Yes, because salvation requires special grace-filled powers, and these powers can only be had by those who are involved in the life of the Church, in the life of the one and indivisible body of Christ. The gracious power of the Holy Spirit acts in the Church in many different ways: in the sacraments and sacred rites of the Church, in common prayer and common love, in church services; as the inspired Word of God, it also acts through the books of Holy Scripture. Here we come to the definition of Holy Scripture. The books of Holy Scripture are one of the means through which the grace-filled power of God acts on people in the Church. The Spirit of God animates only the body of the Church, and therefore Holy Scripture can have meaning and significance only in the Church. “We must resort to the Church and be educated in its bosom and feed on the Lord’s Scriptures. For the Church is planted as a paradise in this world. Therefore, “you can eat from every tree of paradise,” says the Spirit of God, that is, eat from every Scripture of the Lord” 9 . So, Holy Scripture is one of the manifestations of the common grace-filled life of the Church. It is church property, precious and priceless, but it is church property. The Holy Scriptures cannot be separated from the general life of the Church. Only the Church gives meaning to the existence of Scripture. Holy Scripture is not an independent quantity; it cannot be considered a law given to the Church, which it can fulfill and from which it can deviate. The Holy Scriptures appeared in the depths of the Church and for the sake of the Church. The Church owns the Scriptures and uses them for the benefit of its members. Our Orthodox churches, it seems, clearly preach about the meaning of Scripture in the Church. Our Gospel lies on the throne along with other sacred accessories of worship, along with the “spare gifts,” with the “presanctified lambs.” The “Apostle” is kept together with other liturgical books. And in the ancient Church, the Gospel was usually kept in the skeuofylakirion, approximately in our sacristy, from where it was taken out only for public reading during divine services. If Christianity were something like a philosophical school, then in our church meetings we would, of course, be engaged only in the study and interpretation of the New Testament; but we don't have that. Christianity is not a school, and the reading of the Holy Scriptures represents for us only one of the elements of public worship. In the full-flowing river of grace-filled church life, the Holy Scriptures are only one stream. Such reasoning may seem to belittle Holy Scripture. But who spoke more than Chrysostom about the benefits and greatness of St. Scriptures? Didn't he call reading Scripture a conversation with God? Was it not for him that the divine Scriptures were a spiritual meadow and a paradise of sweetness 10? But we find very remarkable reasoning in St. John Chrysostom at the beginning of the interpretation of St. Matthew the Evangelist. “Indeed, we should not have any need for the help of the Scriptures, but should lead a life so pure that instead of books the grace of the Spirit serves, and so that, just as they are covered with ink, so our hearts are written with the Spirit. But since we rejected such grace, we will use at least the second path. And that the first way was better, God showed this both in word and deed. In fact, God spoke with Noah, Abraham and his descendants, as well as with Job and Moses, not through writing, but directly, because he found their minds pure. When the entire Jewish people fell into the very depths of wickedness, then writings, tablets and instructions through them already appeared. And this happened not only with the saints in the Old Testament, but, as is known, in the new one as well. Likewise, God did not give the apostles anything written, but promised to give the grace of the Spirit instead of the scriptures. “That one,” he told them, “...will remember everything to you” (John 14:26). And so that you know that this way (of God’s communication with the saints) was much better, listen to what He says through the prophet: “I bequeath to you...a new covenant,...giving My laws in their minds, and on their hearts...I will write”, “and they will all be taught by God” (Jer. 31, 31-34 , John 6, 45). And Paul, pointing to this superiority, said that he received the law (written) “not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of the heart of flesh” (2 Cor. 3:3). But since over time some deviated from the true teaching, others from purity of life and morality, the need for written instruction arose again. Think about what folly it will be if we, who were supposed to live in such purity as to have no need for Scripture, but instead of books give our hearts to the spirit, if we, having lost such dignity and having a need for Scripture, do not use this second medicine as we should. If it is already worthy of reproach that we need Scripture and do not attract the grace of the Spirit to ourselves, then what, think, will be our guilt if we do not want to take advantage of this benefit, but despise Scripture as superfluous and unnecessary, and thus incur even greater punishment on ourselves? 11. St. John Chrysostom here defends the need to study the Holy Scriptures, but in passing he says that we really should not have any need for the Holy Scriptures, that in a pure life, instead of books, the soul is served by the grace of St. Spirit. This path of spiritual enlightenment is higher. God spoke to the patriarchs and the apostles without the help of Scripture. The need for the Holy Scriptures appeared already when some deviated from the true teaching, and others from the purity of life. Scripture is already the second medicine. It is even worthy of reproach that we need Scripture. It is clear, first of all, that St. John Chrysostom does not identify the Holy Scriptures with Christianity. He calls Scripture a guide, a medicine. Obviously, religious life can exist apart from St. Scriptures and without St. Scripture, which is only one of the benefits of this life. The life of a saving soul is nourished by the Divine Spirit, of course, in the Church. It is already the will of the Divine Spirit that He allowed the teaching of people through the Scriptures and books, especially when the soul ceased to be capable of perceiving the direct actions of the Spirit. It is very remarkable that the above reasoning of St. John Chrysostom is almost literally repeated by St. Isidore Pelusiot in a letter to Deacon Isidore. Rev. Isidore in Chrysostom’s reasoning saw a sea that surpassed the abundance of thoughts. Isidore himself was positively delighted with Chrysostom’s reasoning, although he admits that at first glance these reasoning may seem something incredible and even seductive. “You won’t believe it, maybe,” writes Rev. Isidore, - having heard, but understood well, I know that you will not only be surprised, but even begin to applaud. What is it that at first seems incredible, and then becomes not only amazing, but also worthy of applause? I will say briefly, expressing in not many syllables the sea that surpasses the abundance of thoughts.” Next, Rev. Isidore and repeats the reasoning of John Chrysostom 12. Finally, the great ascetic and great authority in matters of spiritual life and salvation, Abba Isaac the Syrian, who was the bishop of the Christ-loving city of Nineveh, testifies that for a person who has achieved perfection, at the highest levels of contemplative ascetic life, the Holy Scripture no longer has the meaning that it has for people who have not yet achieved high perfection. “Until a person accepts the Comforter, he needs the Divine Scriptures so that the remembrance of good is imprinted in his thoughts, and by constant reading the desire for good is renewed in him, and protects his soul from the subtlety of sinful ways: because he has not yet acquired the power of the Spirit, which removes the delusion that steals soul-helping remembrances and brings him closer to coldness through the distraction of the mind. But when the power of the Spirit descends into the spiritual power operating in a person, then instead of the law of the Scriptures, the commandments of the Spirit take root in the heart, and then one learns secretly from the Spirit and has no need for the aid of sensory substance. For while the heart learns from substance, error and forgetfulness immediately follow the teaching, but when the teaching is taught by the Spirit, then remembrance remains unharmed” 13. Here we can note the common idea with Chrysostom that Scripture is a guide for spiritual life. Reading Scripture renews the desire for good in the soul. But the life of the soul is not fully embraced by Scripture. This life is gracious, and grace is given to the soul, of course, not by the book of Holy Scripture, but by the Holy Spirit sent down to the Church. The above reasonings of the great Fathers of the Church may seem tempting at first glance, but if you think about them and put them into the general system of the Orthodox Church worldview, then you cannot help but agree that they contain a sea of ​​surpassing abundance of thought. In them one can see the church's assessment of the Scriptures. This could only be said by people who lived entirely in the Church and who fully assimilated the religious ideal of the Church, which consists not in a new school teaching, but in a new life of saved humanity, created by the Holy Spirit on the basis of the incarnation of the Son of God. But there is no doubt that the cited patristic opinions give an assessment of Scripture that is unusual for us. This assessment of Scripture is understandable only to one who consciously lives by a purely religious ideal. The religious ideal of the Church, the ideal of deification, which fills our worship, in modern consciousness is the lot of very few. Perhaps the saddest thing in our time is precisely the counterfeit of Christ and the Church. Christianity is looked at not as a new life of saved humanity, united in the Church, but only as the sum of some theoretical and moral principles. They now began to talk too much and too often about Christian teaching and began to forget about church life. At the same time, they began to forget that the main thing in the work of Christ is His incarnation. They began to look at Christ more as a teacher-sage, and the truth of His Sonship of God in modern religious consciousness receded into the background. After all, a teacher may not be the Son of God, the Only Begotten and Consubstantial with God the Father. Christians are now ready to call not only Arians, but even those who, like the ancient Jews, consider Christ to be an ordinary son of a Nazareth carpenter, or, at best, a brilliant religious teacher, like Buddha, Confucius and the like. In our country, Leo Tolstoy became a Christian, and not just a simple one, but a “true Christian.” Modern religious consciousness needs and understands only Christ’s teaching, but it does not need Christ the God-man and the new life brought to earth by Him and preserved in the single grace-filled organism of the Church. Christ from the throne at the right hand of God the Father in modern religious consciousness is brought down to the pulpit of the preacher. But if we have a teacher before us, then every word of his, every literary monument in which his teaching is reflected in one way or another should receive special meaning. Something similar happened with the Holy Scriptures. In itself and independently of the Church, it acquired special significance when the bright ideal of the Church faded. The Holy Scriptures became the subject of special attention and diverse study since the time of the German Reformation, that is, precisely when an individual was put in the place of the Church and the door was wide open to rationalism, which deadens all truly church life. After all, in principle, Protestantism, which has killed all church life, has acted and acts only under the banner of Holy Scripture, declaring every letter of it divinely inspired. Protestantism comes out with speeches about special respect for Scripture even now, although faith in the Divinity of Christ is no longer considered obligatory for pastors, as shown in recent years by the case of Pastor Jato - this German Tolstoy in the clothes of a pastor - and the facts of sympathy of pastors with the latest mythologists, led by Arthur Drews, who claim that Christ, as a historical figure, did not exist at all. Having lost the living Christ and truly church life, Protestants began to worship the book of the New Testament as some kind of fetish. Enter the Protestant church of extreme Protestant opinions. You will see rows of pews facing the pulpit, a pulpit and a Bible on it. In a word, if you take an icon out of any classroom or auditorium, you will get a Protestant church. For Protestants, the Gospel is like the work of Christ the teacher, which must be studied in order to be a Christian. Protestantism is trying to replace the entire deep river of grace-filled church life with one stream, taken separately and separately. From the Bible, Protestants, who rebelled against the human pope, created a “paper pope” and the last flattery was worse than the first. Apparently, the Holy Scriptures are valued more highly by those who have lost the Church, but this is only apparent. The Holy Scriptures must be looked at as one of the manifestations of grace-filled church life. But whoever is outside the Church has no life of grace at all. All the arguments of Protestants and sectarians about the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures are nothing but idle talk, which is unclear and is always very doubtful for those who argue. Living spiritual power cannot be magically attached to dead, lifeless things. There are passionate lovers, for example, of ancient icons who are religious nihilists. Do the icons of their collections remain the same as they were, ancient and revered, reverently worshiped and kissed, in ancient splendid churches? The spirit breathes where it wants. He gives life to the one body of Christ. What kind of inspiration is there outside the Church, without the Spirit of God? If the grace-filled side of Holy Scripture outside the Church is necessarily destroyed, then what remains? What remains is the Bible, books, a literary work, a literary monument. In the Church, Holy Scripture does not constitute everything, but outside the Church there is no Holy Scripture, the Word of God; only the books of Holy Scripture remain. People outside the Church very often talk about their respect for the Holy Scriptures and reproach the Church for neglecting the Scriptures. But these speeches are just self-deception and a sad misunderstanding. We can think correctly about Scripture only by starting from the idea of ​​the Church, and we can correctly use Scripture for our benefit only by living in the Church. Without the Church, without church life, Christianity itself becomes nothing, and reading literary monuments cannot replace a dead life. Having defined the essence of Holy Scripture, we can now formulate the following thesis: The Holy Scripture is one of the aspects of the common grace-filled church life and outside the Church there is no Holy Scripture, in the true sense of the word. In establishing this view of the Holy Scriptures, one should make a reservation regarding the dominant view even in our school theology, according to which the Holy Scriptures are, first of all, the source of church doctrine. It must be admitted that the question of the sources of religious doctrine is in an almost hopeless position in our resonating dogma. They usually talk about two sources of doctrine: Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition. Both of these sources are necessary, although they are often inclined to give preference to the Holy Scriptures. In polemics with sectarians and Protestants, every effort is made to prove that Holy Scripture alone is not enough, that in addition to Scripture, Holy Tradition is also needed. But if the Holy Scripture is the source of doctrine, then how can one draw from this source the doctrine contained in it? “After all, it is enough to remember Arianism and the first ecumenical council to understand that every heresy is based on Scripture. Obviously, the question arises: how to understand Scripture in order to draw true doctrine from it? It is necessary to understand it in accordance with Tradition,” they answer us. Wonderful! Which tradition should we accept? "Not contrary to Scripture." What happens? Scripture must be interpreted according to Tradition, and Tradition must be verified by Scripture. It turns out to be a logical circle, idem per idem, or, in a somewhat loose translation into Russian, a fairy tale about a white bull. The source of church doctrine is one - the Holy Spirit living in the Church, about whom Christ promised that He would lead (John 16:13) the Church to all truth. And it is not because the Church has true doctrine that it takes it from Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition, but only because it is precisely the Church of the living God, the pillar and affirmation of the truth, as guided by the Holy Spirit. We need to talk only about the Church. Together with the Church, both Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition stand or fall. A.S. wrote very well. Khomyakov in his “Experience in a Catechetical Presentation of the Doctrine of the Church”: “The Spirit of God, living in the Church, ruling it and making it wise, appears in it in many ways: in Scripture, in Tradition and in action, for the Church that creates the works of God is the same Church that preserves tradition and wrote Scripture. It is not individuals or multitudes of individuals in the Church who keep tradition and write, but the Spirit of God, living in the totality of the Church. Therefore, it is impossible and should not be sought for the foundations of Tradition either in Scripture, or in the Tradition of evidence for Scripture, or in the matter of justification for Scripture and Tradition. Neither Scripture, nor Tradition, nor deeds are incomprehensible to anyone living outside the Church. Within the Church, to those who abid and participate in the Spirit of the Church, their unity is obvious by the grace living in it” (§ 5). On this same subject one can read excellent and profound discussions in the “Epistle of the Patriarchs of the Eastern Catholic Church on the Orthodox Faith.” “We believe that the testimony of the Catholic Church is no less valid than Divine Scripture. Since the Author of both is one and the same Holy Spirit: it makes no difference whether one learns from Scripture or from the universal Church. A person who speaks for himself can sin, deceive, and be deceived; but the universal Church, since she did not and does not speak on her own, but from the Holy Spirit (whom she continually has and will have as her teacher until eternity), cannot in any way sin, nor deceive, nor be deceived; but, like Divine Scripture, it is infallible and has eternal importance... Living and studying in the Church, in which oral apostolic preaching continues successively, a person can study the dogmas of the Christian faith from the universal Church, and this is because the Church itself does not derive its dogmas from Scripture, but has them ready; If, when discussing some dogma, she cites certain passages of the Bible, then this is not to derive her dogmas, but only to confirm them, and whoever bases his faith on Scripture alone does not achieve complete faith and does not know its properties.” In full agreement with these authoritative reasoning, we can reduce everything to faith in the Church. If a person believes in the Church, the Holy Scripture receives its proper meaning for him. But whoever has not achieved full faith, who does not know its properties, who does not understand that Christianity cannot be represented otherwise than in the form of the Church, he rudely and blasphemously rejects the very faith in the Church. This is what Leo Tolstoy did, who in the preface to the “Summary of the Gospel” wrote: “The statement that the expression of such and such a dogma is a Divine expression, St. Spirit, there is the highest degree of pride and stupidity: the highest pride because nothing can be said prouder than the fact that the words I spoke were spoken through me by God himself, and the highest stupidity because nothing more stupid can be said than to say in response to a person’s assertion that God himself speaks through his lips: no, not with your lips, but with my lips, God speaks and says the exact opposite of what your God says. And yet all the councils, all the creeds, all the churches say this very thing, and from this flows and flows all the evil that has been and is being done in the world in the name of faith” 15. These harsh words of the intelligentsia “true Christian” and “great teacher” are ready to be repeated by many in one form or another. Faith in the Church is not an easy feat, and is sometimes beyond the power of our contemporaries. To live in the Church means to love in general, to live by love, and to live by love means to fight the sinful selfishness that people suffer from so much. In particular, faith in the Church is a feat of the mind, because it requires submission from one. It is especially difficult to subjugate your mind to the Church because this submission will certainly affect your whole life. In relation to the Church, the feat of the mind is also connected with the feat of the will. Let us imagine for a moment that people completely submitted to the Church. How many idols, how many gods and deities will they need to overthrow? It will no longer be the Dnieper, but the whole sea that will be needed to sink these idols. But even one feat of intelligence is not easy for someone whose mind is inflated. His Eminence Theophan the Recluse argues: “It is remarkable that wisdom calls the foolish to itself: “Whoever is foolish, let him turn aside to me” (Proverbs 9:4). Therefore, wise men have no entry into the house of wisdom or into St. Church. All cleverness must be put aside at the very entrance to this house. On the other hand, if all wisdom and knowledge are only in the house of Wisdom, then outside this house, outside the Holy. Churches, only madness, ignorance and blindness. God's wondrous institution! When entering the Church, leave your mind - and you will become truly smart; leave your amateur activities - and you will become a true activist; deny yourself - and you will become a real ruler over yourself. Oh, if only the world would understand this wisdom! But this is hidden from him. Not understanding the wisdom of God, he cries out against it, and continues to keep the foolish wise men in his blindness.” There are a lot of such “mad wise men” now, because humanity has become too “smart” and is becoming even smarter. The universal human mind is becoming more and more exaggerated. But all pride and arrogance are incompatible with the Church. Even ancient church thought noted the connection between pride and apostasy and resistance to the Church. “Heresies have happened and are happening often because of this,” writes St. Cyprian of Carthage, - that the obstinate mind has no peace in itself" 16. “Proud and disobedient people retreat from the Church or rebel against the Church” 17. It is this anti-church and anti-Christian mood that underlies the separation of Holy Scripture from the Church. The Church is denied - the Holy Scriptures are recognized. The Church is reviled - the Holy Scriptures are extolled. Our thesis that the Holy Scripture can only be in the Church and cannot be outside the Church, this thesis deserves to be dwelled on in more detail, so that the truth rises above error and misunderstanding. We left the idea of ​​the Church when discussing the very essence of Scripture; this same idea determines our attitude towards the Holy Scriptures. Only by holding firmly to the idea of ​​the Church can we repel the false speeches of those who divide the indivisible, who separate the Holy Scriptures from the Church. Now more and more often we come across similar arguments: “In the Holy Scriptures we read this and that. The Church teaches differently. This means the Church is mistaken.” All sorts of sectarians sing this monotonously to the point of nausea. They are echoed by some of those who call themselves Christians, namely those who have adopted an incomprehensible arrogant attitude towards the Church, placing themselves incomparably above it. Standing on the point of view described above regarding the sources of dogma, it is not easy to answer. Take, for example, the question of icon veneration. The sectarian will point to the prohibition of images in the Old Testament, to the words of Christ about spiritual worship. For him, icons are a contradiction. To say that icon veneration is based on tradition? But tradition must be accepted only when it does not contradict Scripture. References, for example, to the cherubim of the veil of the Old Testament church are unconvincing. Therefore, the dispute goes on endlessly and without benefit, because the missionaries themselves switch to the point of view of the sectarian, and this point of view, by its very essence, leads only to word debate, but not to the truth. Coming from the idea of ​​the Church, we have no need to argue on the basis of Scripture; For us, our faith in the Church is enough. The futility of disputes “from Scripture” was long ago recognized by Tertullian, who said that from these disputes one can only damage the stomach and brain, lose one’s voice and go mad from the blasphemy of heretics 18 . He insists that one should not appeal to Scripture; there, victory is either unreliable or completely impossible 19. A church person can safely repeat these words, because for him “it makes no difference whether he learns from Scripture or from the universal Church.” All arguments about the contradiction of the Church to the Holy Scriptures are completely false and ungodly at the very root. Holy Spirit through St. The apostles wrote the Holy Scriptures for the Church, but the same Holy Spirit, according to the false promise of the Savior, guides the Church itself into all truth. The Holy Spirit is one and indivisible, eternal and unchanging, He is the Spirit of truth. How could it happen that in the Holy Scriptures He says one thing, but in the teaching and life of the Church – another? Is it in vain that both the Apostolic Council, described in the 15th chapter of the book of the Acts of the Apostles, and all subsequent councils began their definitions with the words: “St. Spirit and us? To admit the possibility of a contradiction between the Church and the Holy Scriptures means to talk about the self-contradiction of St. Spirit, this truly means blaspheming the Holy Spirit. Only the devil can instill a blasphemous thought about the contradiction of the Holy Spirit to Himself, and one cannot but agree with the strong and harsh, but wise and fair saying of St. Vincent of Lirinsky: “When we see that some cite prophetic and apostolic sayings to refute the universal faith (they also talk about the contradiction between the Church and the Holy Scriptures), we should not doubt that the devil is speaking through their mouths” 20. I also remember the verse from the Epistle to the Hebrews: “As much as you think that the worse one will be rewarded with torment, he who... reproaches the Spirit of grace” (Heb. 10:29). If the Church and the Holy Scripture cannot be in contradiction by their very essence, then the conclusion necessarily follows: “if the teaching of the Church seems to us to contradict the Holy Scripture, then this is only a sign that we have poorly understood either the teaching of the Church, or the Holy Scripture, or both together, and therefore our business is only to try to understand both better and to understand the very agreement of the Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Church, and not to deny or condemn the teachings church in the name of his proud thoughtlessness. This is what the holy fathers of the Church did at the ecumenical councils. Heretics, for example, the Arians at the first ecumenical council, cited many passages of Holy Scripture that, in their opinion, contradicted the truth of consubstantiality, but the fathers only showed how all these passages should be understood so that they do not contradict the truth of the Church. In the same way, the sixth ecumenical council did a lot of work on the interpretation of the gospel narrative about the “Struggle of Gethsemane.” It is quite clear that for a church person no place of Holy Scripture should contradict church teaching, and church teaching, thus, is the measure of the true understanding of Scripture. The necessity of a churchly attitude towards Scripture will be revealed with particular clarity if we fully think through the greatest lie that Protestantism has inscribed on its banner, and behind it all kinds of sectarianism and, in general, human frivolity and freethinking inextricably linked with it. Protestantism in principle rejected the need for church norms for the interpretation of Scripture. I say in principle, because in fact these norms were nevertheless invented in the form of newly invented sectarian symbols. If church norms are rejected, then a person is left with Scripture, so to speak, alone, and when interpreting Scripture, everyone needs to be guided by their so-called common sense, having first placed the tiara of the infallible pope on their head. Is it safe to use your common sense when interpreting Holy Scripture? But who has not encountered the facts when the common sense of different people evaluates the same phenomena differently? When interpreting the Gospel, Tolstoy often refers to common sense. But you need to have the naivety and tenacity of this rare proud man to recognize as almost mentally abnormal all those who cannot accept and do not accept his interpretations based on common sense. But I think, and this is perhaps beyond doubt, that in such a matter as the understanding and interpretation of Holy Scripture, our mind, left to itself, cannot be at all sound. After all, whoever observes his own moral life and has the courage to tell himself the bitter truth has undoubtedly noticed how our mind sometimes bends under the pressure of passion and how it sometimes timidly, sometimes boldly and impudently justifies our weak will. Usually we more or less easily agree with each other on issues that do not affect our lives and do not concern the direction of our will. That is why so many generally accepted and indisputable truths have been established in mathematical matters. In fact, why don’t I admit that the sum of the angles of a triangle is always equal to two right angles, that the sum of squares built on the legs is always equal to the square built on the hypotenuse, as the Pythagorean theorem states? Why don't I admit these mathematical truths? After all, recognizing them does not oblige me to anything. The same can be said about other so-called scientific truths. “What is there to argue about, what is there to break spears about? Does it really matter to me whether scientists tell me that, for example, matter is built from Mendeleev’s atoms or electrons and ions; that light is a wave-like vibration of the ether or is explained by invisible and mysterious electric currents; that the sun is rushing not towards the constellation Hercules, but, let’s say, towards the constellation Cancer, Scorpio or Lyra?.. Since learned people have found that this is so, so be it. And when they say that this is not so, and everyone else repeats after them that this is not so. And nothing will change from this. This is the business of specialists, their home business” 21. But the brilliant Leibniz said very thoughtfully and wittily: “If geometry were armed against our passions and our vital interests as much as morality, we would dispute and violate it no less, despite all the evidence of Euclid and Archimedes, which would be treated as fiction and considered full of paralogisms, and Joseph Scaliger, Hobbes and others who wrote against Euclid and Archimedes would not find has so few followers as now” 22. And the Holy Scripture is precisely directed against human passions. Everything here speaks about life and about the One who said about Himself: “I am life.” This is why the mind, if left to itself, cannot remain pure or sound when interpreting the word of life. But what is instructive from all this for us on our question? Namely, that if we leave the interpretation of the Holy Scripture to each individual person, then there will be as many understandings of the word of God as there are people and how many whims they all have together, that is, there will be no Holy Scripture with a definite meaning at all. Science will also be sacrificed to arbitrariness. Science is powerless to answer the questions of life; it cannot establish any unanimity on these issues. If unanimity depended on science, it would be high time for this unanimity to be established, but we see that, thanks to science, doubts and differences of opinion are becoming no less, on the contrary, even more. An excellent illustration of how a person interprets the Holy Scriptures with his mind can be seen in that scene from Faust, where Faustus interprets the first verse of the Gospel of John. I'll take the original and open it, With true feeling, I became hungry Translate for me into native speech. (He opens the volume and gets ready.) It is written: “In the beginning was the Word.” So I became! How can I continue again? Can I give such honor to a word? If the outcome of heavy thoughts is correctly illuminated, It is written here: “In the beginning there was only the mind.” On the first line you need to strive, So that the pen does not get lost. Is it the mind of the power that created everything by moving everything? I will put: “In the beginning there was power.” But the moment my hand was about to write, I have a feeling that I won’t end up with this. Suddenly I see light! The spirit opened my eyes! And I write: “In the beginning there was a feat.” In just three minutes, as many as four interpretations of the same word changed! But wasn’t this scene from “Faust” also played out on Russian soil, in Yasnaya Polyana, where a fan of common sense (only his own!) decided, after consulting the Greek lexicon, to settle on this translation of the same Gospel text: “The beginning of everything was the understanding of life”? How bizarre interpretations of the Gospel text can sometimes be can be seen in the following example. The famous V.V. Rozanov once interpreted Matthew 16:18 this way. “You are Peter, and on this rock (desert) I will build My Church” - there is, as it were, a pre-preparatory plan that the entire Church, almost all of it, will be built on the character of a deserted, desert-dwelling existence" 23 . But in another place 24 one of Rozanov’s like-minded people (“Rtsy”) interprets the same verse differently. Why is the Church founded on Peter? Because he was married, had children, passionately loved his wife and children, and was not separated from them on his evangelistic travels. Consequently, the Church is based on the family. Isn’t it clear that how many people and how many moods they have, so many meanings will be found in the Holy Scriptures. On this topic we have authoritative and excellent discussions by Rev. Vikenty Lirinsky. “The Holy Scripture, by its very sublimity, is not understood by everyone in the same sense, but one interprets its sayings one way, another another; so almost as many heads as there are, apparently, just as many meanings can be extracted from it” 25 . “Do heretics really also use the testimony of Holy Scripture? They really do use it, and they use it unusually a lot. They, mind you, scour all the books of the divine law - the books of Moses, the books of Kings, the psalms, the Apostles, the Gospels, the prophets. Whether with their own people or with others, privately or publicly, in oral conversations or in writings, in home meetings or in public gatherings, they almost never say anything about themselves that they would not try to highlight at the same time with the words of Scripture. Take the writings of Paul of Samosata, Priscillian, Eunomius, Jovinian and other infectors, and you will see in them a myriad of evidence; You will not find almost a single page that is not tinted and colored with sayings of the New or Old Testament. They know that their fetid eruptions are unlikely to please anyone soon if they are left to evaporate in the form they are, and therefore they sprinkle them with the aroma of heavenly words, so that those who would easily despise human error will not easily turn away from the divine messages. They act like those who, wanting to soften the severity of some drink for a child, first usually smear his lips with honey, so that an inexperienced child, having sensed the sweetness, is not afraid of the bitterness. That is why the Savior proclaimed: “Take heed to yourselves from lying prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ravenous wolves” (Matthew 7:15). Who are these wolves-predators if not heretics who, with their fierce brutal inventions, constantly attack the sheepfolds of the Church and torment the flock of Christ wherever they can, and in order to sneak up more unnoticed on the simple-minded sheep, they hide their wolfish appearance, without leaving their wolfish ferocity and, like a fleece, are wrapped in the sayings of Divine Scripture, so that, feeling the softness of the wool, no one Aren't you afraid of their sharp teeth? Every time false prophets or false apostles or false teachers cite the sayings of Holy Scripture with the aim of misinterpreting them to confirm their errors, they undoubtedly imitate the crafty tricks of their leader, which he, of course, would never resort to if he did not know from experience that when it is necessary to be deceived by a dissimilar error, there is no easier way to deception than by appealing to the authority of the word God's But where is it clear, someone will say, that the devil is in the habit of using the testimony of Holy Scripture? Read the gospels. It is written there: “Then they drink Him, that is, the Lord Savior, the devil, ... and set Him on the church wing, and say to Him: If you are the Son of God, look down from below; For it is written that his angel commanded him to keep you in all your ways—they will lift you up in their arms, lest you dash your foot against a stone” (Matthew 4:5–6; Ps.90:11–12). What did the one who attacked the Lord of Majesty Himself with evidence from the Scriptures not do to the poor people? As then the head spoke to the Head, so now the members speak to the members - members, that is, the devil, to the members of Christ, treacherous to the faithful, wicked to the pious, heretics, and finally, to the Orthodox. What exactly are they saying? If, they say, you are the Son of God, cast yourself down - that is, if you want to be the son of God and inherit the kingdom of heaven, then cast yourself down, that is, throw yourself from the heights of the Church, which is also the church of God - leave its teaching and tradition. And if someone asks some heretic who inspires this in him: how can you prove, on what basis do you teach that I must leave the ancient and universal faith of the universal Church? he will immediately answer: it is written, - and will immediately present you with a thousand examples, a thousand proofs from the Law, from the psalms, from the apostles, from the prophets, so that, interpreting them in a new and bad way, he will cast the unfortunate soul from the universal ark into the pool of heresy. What, someone will say, should Orthodox people, the sons of the Mother Church, do, when the devil and his disciples use divine verbs, sayings, and promises, some of whom are false apostles, others are false prophets and false teachers, and all of them are heretics? They must certainly see that the Holy Scriptures are interpreted in accordance with the traditions of the entire Church and according to the instructions of the universal dogmatic teaching" 26 . Leave a person alone with Scripture, and Scripture will lose all definite meaning and meaning. In fact, there will only be one person left who will cover the whims and quirks of his mind with the authority of the Word of God. Without the Church and outside the Church, even if a person has a book of Holy Scripture in his hands, a state of hopeless wandering is inevitable for him. “Having become alienated from the truth,” writes St. Irenaeus about heretics - they are naturally carried away by any error, excited by it, at times thinking differently about the same objects and never having solid knowledge, wanting to be more sophists of words than students of truth. They always have an excuse to seek (the truth), but they can never find it” 27. The formidable word of Polycarp of Smyrna, a disciple of the apostle of love, who in his letter to the Philippians calls the firstborn of Satan the one who will interpret the words of the Lord according to his own lusts, becomes completely understandable (chapter 7). Not only that. Left to its own devices in relation to the Holy Scriptures, reason can go further in the matter of violence against Scripture, justifying the wise words of Clement of Alexandria: “People given over to passions violate Scripture in accordance with their wishes” 28 . And the New Testament books of the Holy Scriptures provide the widest scope for all kinds of violence against them, precisely because Christ did not write anything Himself. The founders of some philosophical schools often left behind multi-volume collections of their works, where they more or less fully and definitely expressed themselves and expounded their teachings. Anyone who wants to learn their teaching can turn to these writings. You may not understand everything in them, or you may understand them in a somewhat unique way, but still there cannot be limitless arbitrariness, because the student is bound by the true words of the author, the philosopher, being studied. This is not at all the case with Christ and his teaching. Christ himself did not write anything. Others wrote about Him, wrote many years after the end of His earthly life, even those who were not direct eyewitnesses of His deeds and listeners of His teachings wrote. From the point of view of autonomous reason, the question is not only completely appropriate, but even legitimate and completely inevitable: did the writers of the New Testament books correctly convey the teaching of Christ? Did they tell the truth about His life and miracles? Even if all the New Testament books are completely authentic, does this necessarily mean that everything written in them is completely true? The authenticity of a book must always be distinguished from its reliability. Authenticity is still far from being a constant and reliable guarantee of authenticity. An undeniably genuine report, even from an eyewitness, can often turn out to be completely false. The eyewitness may have poorly observed the event or understood it poorly. He could have gotten it wrong if he wrote from memory decades after the event. Besides, how often is a person a completely impartial narrator who merely photographs events? Does he rarely give in to the temptation to add something of his own, to describe his dream as having come true? And finally, the author may have a special goal not to convey everything necessarily as it was. All these and similar assumptions are, of course, quite understandable and natural. But if this is so, then isn’t it clear that a completely limitless opportunity opens up for the human mind to find whatever it wants in the New Testament books? You may not find what is there, and you can read between the lines what is not written in any of the existing lines. What in the Gospel really belongs to Christ and what is only passed off as Christ’s by the apostles? Which event actually corresponded to this or that gospel story? You can assume anything and “Christianity” can be created in full agreement not only with your tastes and desires, but even with your whims. But what will happen to Christ’s truth with such an attitude towards the Holy Scriptures?! After all, unfortunately, our reasoning is not just an assumption, but a conclusion from numerous and instructive historical facts. Back in the second century there were people about whom St. Irenaeus of Lyons says that they boasted, calling themselves correctors of the apostles 29 and considering themselves wiser not only than the bishops, but even the apostles 30. These are the Gnostics Valentinians. Tertullian says of them that the sayings of the Holy Scriptures were to them what sheep's clothing is to ravenous wolves 31 . It is known what kind of chaotic systems of teaching the Gnostics had with their aeons and syzygies, but with these systems, in the words of St. Irenaeus, as if in a false dream, they intruded into the Scriptures 32, where they found confirmation of all their teachings, so that without confirmation from the Scriptures they did not teach anything 33 and they themselves said that everything must be verified by the teachings of the Savior 34. How could it happen that the Gnostic systems turned out to be contained in the New Testament? Namely, that according to the teachings of the Gnostics, the teaching of Christ was presented by the apostles in the Gospel in an unclear and vague manner. Not everything in the Gospel should be understood as it is written. The so-called theory of accommodation was very widespread among the Valentinians. And according to this theory, Christ, in the external expression of His teaching, adapted to the understanding of His disciples and listeners in general; so do the apostles in their epistles. Christ taught His disciples, firstly, typologically and mystically, secondly, in parables and mysteriously, and thirdly, clearly and directly 35, moreover, one by one, those who could understand 36. From here, of course, the conclusion followed that Scripture should not be understood literally; all Scripture is like a parable or a riddle. In the words of Christ: “seek and you will find,” the Gnostics saw a direct commandment to look for the hidden mysterious meaning in Scripture. Hence the limitless allegorism in interpretation and, as a result, all the provisions of the Gnostic systems are found in Scripture. For example, in the parable of the vineyard (Matthew 20:1–16), the Gnostics found the doctrine of thirty aeons. The owner went out to hire workers at the first, third, sixth, ninth and eleventh hours. If you add up these numbers, you get thirty. This is an indication of thirty aeons. One can agree with Tertullian that such an interpretation harmed the truth no less than damaging the text 37 . A fan of an independent attitude to the Holy Scriptures, that is, outside the church, can perhaps object: “The Gnostics were free to make various absurd assumptions and indulge in allegories. Now no one will do this." In reality, not everything is so simple. After all, the Gnostics used the general scientific exegetical method of their time, which was also used by church writers 38 . The generality of the method of interpretation, however, led to significantly different results. It is not the method that is to blame, but the separation of the Holy Scriptures from the Church, which always opens up access to human arbitrariness and allows, in the words of the “Epistle of the Patriarchs,” “to play childishly with such objects that are not subject to jokes.” Nothing but harm can ever come from this unnatural division for the truth. An equally instructive historical fact can be noted in more recent times. The Gnostics of the early nineteenth century went much further than the Gnostics of the second century. Those ancient Gnostics looked for justification for their religious and philosophical systems in the New Testament; the Gnostics of the early nineteenth century set out to give "a natural history of the great prophet of Nazareth" 39 . They reasoned like this: Christ and the apostles spoke the language of simple Galilean villagers; in the Gospel all the features of the peasant’s naive worldview are visible. A simple person sees a miracle everywhere, is ready to discern the presence of some supernatural forces everywhere. The Gospel often talks about miracles, about people possessed by demons, etc. Does this mean that everything really happened like that? No, this only means that Christ’s actions seemed miraculous to the common people around Him, without actually being so. In order to understand them correctly, the Gospels must first be translated into the language of educated people of that time, and then this language must be translated into our modern language, the language of scientists. In addition, much in the Gospel can only be explained by the fact that eyewitnesses poorly observed the events and looked at them through the prism of their naive worldview. It was precisely these views that were developed by Eichhorn at the beginning of the 19th century, who also gave examples of interpretations using his own method. According to Eichhorn's recipes, a complete interpretation of the New Testament was given by Pavlus, who, with his amazing interpretations, did not leave a single miracle in the Gospel, so that it really turned out to be a natural history of the great prophet, in which it is completely impossible to recognize the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Again we see that without the authority of the Church, Holy Scripture loses any definite meaning, because self-deceived “correctors of the apostles” will immediately appear, who will “correct” each in their own way and will all contradict each other. Every era knows such “correctors.” It’s simply amazing how people still don’t realize that “correcting the apostles” is a fundamentally absurd matter, which has compromised itself countless times in history. In Protestant theology, the opposition between Christ and the apostles is the most common thing. The apostles are not trusted; They want to “correct” them, and as a result of this, Christ appears only as some kind of sought-after X. His teaching is an equation with many unknowns, which everyone solves as he pleases. If you reject the Church, if you approach the Holy Scriptures in addition to the Church, then the fact that Christ did not write will certainly lead to the destruction of the Holy Scriptures. This path from the denial of the Church to the destruction of Scripture has been and is being followed by many, but perhaps no one has described this path so openly to the point of cynicism, as Leo Tolstoy did in the preface to “A Brief Exposition of the Gospel” (Geneva edition). “The reader must remember that Jesus himself never wrote any book, like Plato, Philo or Marcus Aurelius, and never even, like Socrates, conveyed his teaching to literate and educated people, but spoke to those illiterate people whom he met in life, and that only after His death did people realize that what he said was very important and that it would not be a bad idea to write down some of what He said and did, and almost a hundred years later they began to write down what heard about Him. The reader must remember that there were a lot of such notes, that many were missing, many were very bad, and that Christians used all of them, and little by little they selected what seemed better and more intelligent to them, that in choosing these best Gospels, the churches, according to the proverb “you can’t choose a club without a crook,” had to capture a lot of crookedness in what they cut out of all the vast literature about Christ; that there are many passages in the canonical Gospels as bad as in the rejected apocryphal ones. After 1800 years of existence of these books, they lie before us in the same rough, awkward, full of nonsense, contradictions, form in which they were” 40. Hence Tolstoy’s direct conclusion: “The reader must remember that not only is it not reprehensible to remove unnecessary passages from the Gospels, to illuminate one by another, but, on the contrary, it is reprehensible and godless not to do this, but to consider a certain number of verses and letters sacred” 41 . Isn’t it obvious that as soon as Tolstoy thought about the fact that Christ did not write anything, he with some necessity came to justify the complete distortion of even the Gospel text. In fact, if we assume that unnecessary passages should be eliminated from the Gospel, then doesn’t this open up complete scope for all arbitrariness? What is needed and what is not needed? Who will determine this? Obviously, everyone has their own taste. After all, in Tolstoy himself, the Gospel beatitudes, where the meek, merciful, and pure in heart are blessed, also turned out to be unnecessary - because they were “out of place and inserted by chance” 42. People's tastes are very different, and if personal taste determines what to leave in the Gospel and what to discard, then, obviously, there will be exactly the same number of gospels as there are individual people who approach the Gospel outside the Church. Instead of a definite teaching of Christ, there will obviously be chaos and confusion of individual opinions. The second-century heretic Marcion trusted only the Apostle Paul, claiming that only he accurately and correctly understood Christ’s teaching and preserved it in purity, and the other apostles were pseudoapostoli et judaici evangelizatores 43, that is, false apostles, because they introduced elements of Judaism into Christ’s teaching. And our Tolstoy has ap. Paul ended up among the “founders of the Christian Talmud” because he, “without thoroughly understanding the teachings of Christ,” introduced the doctrine of tradition into Christianity, and this principle of tradition was the main reason for the distortion of Christian teaching and its misunderstanding 44 . It is unknown who to listen to. It seems that only one thing is clear, that, left alone with Scripture, a person will soon put himself above the apostles, begin to “correct” them and create such a teaching of Christ as his own imagination desires. If there is no Church, there will be no Scripture. The books of Scripture, words and letters will remain, but everyone will put their own meaning into them. If words and letters get in the way, you can “correct” them a little. And all this because Christ Himself did not write anything and we have His teaching only in someone else’s transmission, which the mind can always suspect of accuracy and reliability. Reflecting on the fact that Christ did not write anything, I am often ready to admit some special providence here. Thanks to this very fact, the non-church attitude towards the Holy Scriptures can be consistently brought to the point of absurdity. This has actually already been done by rationalism, which, standing on the basis of Protestantism, showed that nothing prevents one from completely distorting the Gospel and replacing it with one’s own invention. Not only that. Left to its own devices, reason will not hesitate to destroy even the books of Holy Scripture. In fact, on what does the recognition of certain books as Holy Scripture and a truly apostolic work rest? There can be only one answer to these questions: our recognition of certain books as Holy Scripture and truly apostolic work rests solely on faith in the Church and trust in church authority. The books of Holy Scripture were written by the apostles and deposited in the custody of the Church. The apostles, especially St. Paul even gave special evidence of the authenticity of their messages, providing them with their own signatures. The Church was the custodian of the original epistles and the apostolic works in general. She alone could judge the apostolic dignity of her property. The Church finally expressed in its definitions its teaching about the composition of Holy Scripture. That is why it is obligatory for us to recognize the well-known 27 books as the New Testament, because these books are recognized by the Church as the New Testament. Blazh. Augustine said: “Ego vero Evangelio non crederem, nisi me catholicae Ecclesiae commoverat auctoritas” 45. Those. “I would not believe the Gospel if the authority of the Catholic Church did not prompt me to do so.” These words of Augustine express a great truth. If there is no Church, then there is no Holy Scripture. Protestants and sectarians apparently recognize and honor the Holy Scriptures, but does not this recognition hang in the air? Let Protestants or sectarians sincerely think through the question: why do we recognize these particular books as Holy Scripture? To refer to your personal opinion means to refuse a reasonable answer. You can’t refer to science either. The question of the origin and authenticity of the books of Holy Scripture is much discussed in science. Scientific literature has been growing for centuries. Piles of books have been written. But there are no positive results. There are no results that would oblige everyone to agree with them. How can a Protestant refer to his “impartial” science if there is a hopeless dispute even about the authenticity of the gospels, especially the gospel of John! Let the Protestant decide the question of the authenticity of the pastoral letters of St. Pavel! But representatives of Protestant science will answer this question differently. Conservative scholars recognize them as authentic works of St. Pavel. Others will say that they are based only on the authentic letters of Paul; in their present form they cannot belong to him; they contain later additions. Still others declare the entire Pastoral Epistles to be a later forgery and even tendentious; they were written to justify the newly created hierarchical system around the middle of the second century, and the name of the ap. Paul is only falsely inscribed. Who to listen to? Why this scientist and not another? How many people are able to independently weigh the weight of contradictory arguments? And how many people are even able to understand the intricacies of scientific research? There is no common authority and no one knows who to listen to. It is impossible to listen to everyone together, because one is heading into the forest, the other is chasing firewood, one is rushing into the clouds, the other is moving backwards, and the third is pulling into the water. Doubt about the authenticity of the books of St. The Scriptures arose along with Protestantism itself. After all, Luther rejected the Epistle of James, calling it for some reason a message of straw. But Luther's followers went incomparably further. It is necessary, therefore, to recognize that the concept of an obligatory canon of Holy Scripture is an exclusively ecclesiastical concept, completely unthinkable outside the Church. This is a complete misunderstanding of the matter if sectarians want to talk about canonical and non-canonical books of Holy Scripture. Protestants spend a lot of time studying the history of the New Testament canon, but this history is completely destructive for the concept of the canonical outside the Church. It shows that the canon was not always and not in all churches the same. Several centuries passed before the canon was consolidated by conciliar definitions. There is nothing tempting for us here, because we believe in the Church and the definitions of the Church are equally sacred to us, whether they belong to the second, fourth, or twentieth centuries. Not so for Protestants and others who reject the truth of the Church. For them, the history of the New Testament canon shakes the very concept of the canonical. More consistent Protestants do not hide this. Adolf Jülicher, for example, concludes his sketch of the history of the New Testament canon with a very characteristic phrase. “The indisputable fact of the gradual and human Origin of the New Testament canon serves to free us from the danger that this canon can turn from a support into an oppressive yoke” 46. It can be said that on the Protestant stock exchange the value of the Holy Scriptures is very unstable, never, however, rising to its nominal value. This value is always in danger of a completely sudden decline. What if some scientist temporarily proves the inauthenticity of some New Testament book? After all, when the Tübingen school of Baur dominated, only 4–5 epistles remained from the entire New Testament. Pavel. Currently, the most prominent scientists are inclined to recognize the authenticity of most of the books of the New Testament. But suddenly some papyrus will be discovered somewhere in Egypt, which will otherwise illuminate the era, and the value of the Holy Scriptures among Protestants will rapidly plummet. The principle of an extra-church attitude towards the Holy Scripture destroys the value of the Scripture itself. All apostates from the Church, Protestants, sectarians of all kinds, talk completely in vain about their reverence for Scripture. These speeches of theirs are nothing but a misunderstanding and sometimes even hypocrisy. Isn’t it typical that all negative and often blasphemous criticism of Scripture comes from Protestants, in whose teaching the Church is replaced by Scripture, for whom Scripture is everything? I said above that for a Protestant Scripture is a fetish, an idol, a soulless idol. It seems to me that the idolater still feels that he himself made the idol. They say about our wild foreigners that after a successful hunt they please their idols in every possible way, smear their lips with the lard of a killed animal, and put the best pieces of meat in their mouths. But the hunt was unsuccessful, and they began flogging the same idol. This is how everyone who approaches it in detachment from the Church treats the Holy Scriptures. As long as Scripture does not contradict them and does not condemn them, they extol it. Otherwise, they begin to mercilessly flog their idol, tear the Scriptures into pieces, some consider them to be counterfeit, others - unnecessary. The Scripture calls St. Irenaeus of Lyons a tree of paradise, planted in the Church, but for one who is expelled from paradise, this tree can only be the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and after this knowledge he can only be convinced of the sad truth that he is naked. It is long, long time ago for all opponents of the Church to be convinced of this shameful nakedness of theirs and to ask the Church for forgiveness, just as the prodigal son asked for forgiveness from his father! After all, the absurd separation of Scripture from the Church has already yielded its deadly fruit. After all, there are Protestants who claim, teach and preach that Christ never existed in the world, that the whole gospel history is one myth. Without the Church there is neither Scripture nor Christ, because the Church is the body of Christ. Thus, on the negative side, the truth of the inextricable connection between the Church and Holy Scripture is affirmed. An extra-church attitude towards Scripture inevitably leads to absurdity and to the loss of Holy Scripture itself. Without the Church, firstly, there is no support for the interpretation of Holy Scripture and it is not Scripture that teaches man, but on the contrary, man imposes whatever content he wants on Scripture. Without the Church, secondly, any definite path to Christ and His teaching will be lost, because Christ Himself did not write anything, and the apostles can be suspected of conveying Christ’s teaching inaccurately. Without the Church, thirdly, the canon of Holy Books has no meaning, and all Protestants and sectarians answer the question: why are these particular books canonical? - can only remain unanswered or will be forced to resort to shameful “words of deceit.” The general conclusion of all our previous discussions is as follows. The Holy Scripture is the inviolable and inalienable property of the Church, as one of the manifestations of its grace-filled life. Outside the Church there is no Holy Scripture, and there cannot be. The Word of God cannot exist outside the Church; living and active, because there is no grace of St. outside the Church. Spirit. Without the Church, there cannot be Holy Scripture as a definite written monument, because there will be no reliable guidance left for the correct understanding of Scripture and nothing can guarantee its authenticity and canonical dignity. Let us also note that in affirming the thesis: outside the Church there is no Holy Scripture, we repeat the truth that church writers preached back in the second century. St. Irenaeus of Lyons said that only in the Church is there genuine observance of Scripture, without adding or subtracting, and reading Scripture without distortion 47 . According to Tertullian, the discussion should be about who the Scriptures belong to 48. Anyone who does not belong to them should not be allowed to join them 49 . The Scriptures belong to the Church; heretics are not Christians and have no right to the Christian Scriptures 50 . The Church may ask heretics: who are you? You are not mine, what are you doing with me? This is my property. I've owned it for a long time. I have a basis from the authors themselves, to whom the Scripture belongs. I am the heir of the apostles. Of course, they disinherited you forever and rejected you as strangers, as enemies 51 . The truth that we tried to substantiate is not new, but it should be repeated in the twentieth century, because now this truth, although justified many times by history, is often forgotten. St. Irenaeus of Lyons. Works translated by Rev. P. Preobrazhensky. Against heresies. IV, 9, 3. St. Petersburg, 1900, p. 338. Ibid., IV, 34, 1. Page. 414. Creations. Panarius 31, 33. Part 1. M., 1863, p. 344. St. Irenaeus of Lyons. Essays. Against heresies. IV, 34, 1. Page. 414. Service for the Nativity of Christ. Stichera on lithium. St. Irenaeus of Lyons. Essays. Against heresies. III, 10, 2. Page. 240. Right there. III, 4, 2. Pp. 225. Right there. V, 20, 2. Page. 488. See Creations. A conversation about how the reading of St. Scriptures are helpful. Ed. St. Petersburg Theological Academy. T. 3, p. 74. Creations. On Mt. conversation I. 1. Ed. St. Petersburg Theological Academy. T. 7, pp. 5–6. Creations. Book III, scripture 106. Part 2. M., 1860, pp. 158–160. Creations like those of our holy father Isaac the Syrian. Ascetic words. Word 58. Ed. 3. Sergiev Posad, 1911. Pp. 314. For more information about this, see Vladimir Troitsky. Christianity or Church?. Ed. 2. Sergiev Posad, 1912. Geneva, 1890, pp. 14–15. Creations. About the unity of the Church. Ch. 10. Ed. 2. Kiev, 1891. Part 2. p. 184. Creations. Letter 47 to Carnelius. Part 1, page 256. De praescriptione, cap. 17. Migne, P.L., t. 2, col. 35 A-B. De praescriptione, cap. 19. PL., t. 2, col. 36 A. Reminders. I, 26. Translation by Associate Professor P. Ponomarev. Kazan, 1904, p. 48. Prof. A.I. Vvedensky. The power over the minds of the so-called “philosophical responsibility”). "Christian". 1908. T. 3, p. 786. Nouveaux essais. Ed. Erdmann. Berolini, 1840, p. 214. In a world of the unclear and unresolved. Ed. 2. St. Petersburg, 1904, p. 53. Newspaper "Russia" dated June 12, 1909. Reminders. 1, 2. page 3. Reminders. 1, 25–27. pp. 45–49. St. Irenaeus of Lyons. Essays. Against heresies. III, 24, 2. Page. 313. Stromata VII, 16, 94, 4. Migne, PG., t. 9, col. 533 A. St. Irenaeus of Lyons. Essays. Against heresies. III, 1, 1. Pp. 220. Ibid., III, 2, 2. Pp. 221. De praescr. Cap. 4. Migne, P.L., t. 2, col. 18 V. St. Irenaeus of Lyons. Essays. Against heresies. I, 9, 3. Page 48. Tertull. De praescr. Sarr. 15. 39. Migne, P.L., t. 2, col. 33 A. 65 A. Epiphanius of Cyprus. Creations. Nanarii, 33.7. T. 1, p. 374. Excerpta ex scriptis Theodoti 66. Migne, PG., t. 9, col. 689 S. St. Irenaeus of Lyons. Essays. Against heresies. II, 27, 2. Page. 189. De praescr. cap 17. Migne, P.L., t. 2, col. 35 A. Read more: Vladimir Troitsky. Gnosticism and the Church in relation to the New Testament. Sergiev Posad, 1911. (equal to “Theological Bulletin”. 1911, vol. 2, p. 493 ff.). His, Essays on the History of the Dogma of the Church. Sergiev Posad, 1912, pp. 115–132. Connection and translation of the four Gospels. T. 1. Geneva, 1892. p. 10 Gospel Summary, page 9. Conjunction and Translation of the Four Gospels, p. 192. Tertull. Adv. Marc. V, 19. Gospel Summary, page 12 Contra epist. Manichaei, cap. 5, 6, Migne, PL., t. 42, col. 176 Einleitung in das Neue Testament. Tubingenn 1906. S. 517. St. Irenaeus of Lyons. Essays. Against heresies. IV, 33, 8. Page 409. De praescr. Cap. 19. Migne, P.L., t. 2, col. 36 A. De praescr. Cap. 15. Migne, P.L., t. 2, col. 33 B-34 A. De praescr. Cap. 37. Migne, P.L., t. 2, col. 61 B. De praescr. Cap. 37. Migne, P.L., t. 2, col. 61 B-C. You might be interested in: