There is no Christianity without the Church

Gradual dimming of faith in the Church “I believe in one holy, catholic and apostolic Church.” Thus, in the ninth article of the Creed, every Orthodox Christian confesses his faith in the great truth of the Church. But it is hardly possible to point out another member of the Creed, which would be so little perceived by the heart of a person reading the Creed with his lips, as precisely the ninth, where the truth of the Church is expressed. This is partly understandable. After all, it is in the ninth article of the Creed that a person confesses his connection with the visible society of the followers of Christ, and thus, already in these short words of confession, he makes a promise to agree with all the truths taught by the Church, which is the guardian of Christ’s teaching, and in his life to obey all those laws by which the Church achieves the goal of its existence and by which it, as a society living on earth, is governed. Therefore, I think we will not be wrong if we express the idea that the truth of the Church, above all others, concerns the very life of every Christian and determines not only his belief, but also his very life. To recognize the Church does not mean dreaming only about Christ, but living like a Christian, following the path of love and self-denial. Faith in the Church requires feat both from the mind and from the will of a person. And that is why the truth of the Church is contrary to those principles of life that have long and imperceptibly crept into the consciousness and worldview of even Russian Orthodox society, predominantly, of course, the so-called intelligent and educated society. Since the sad times of Peter I for the Church, the milestones of Russian society have become detached from church folk life and began to live, rather, a common life with all other European nations, but not with the Russian one. Submitting to Western influence in all areas of life, Russian society could not avoid the influence of Western confessions on the structure of its religious worldview. And it is not for nothing that the faithful son of the Orthodox Church and the Holy Motherland, A. S. Khomyakov, called these confessions “heresies against the dogma of the essence of the Church, against her faith in herself,” and it was not in vain that he considered the denial of the Church the most characteristic feature of both Catholicism and Protestantism. The truth of the Church was greatly distorted in the West after Rome fell away from the Church, and the Kingdom of God there began to resemble the kingdom of the earth. Latinism, with its earthly accounts of good deeds, with its mercenary attitude towards God, with its counterfeit salvation, has darkened the Christian idea of ​​the Church in the minds of its members. Latinism gave birth to a completely legitimate, although very rebellious child in the person of Protestantism. Protestantism was not just a protest of the genuine ancient church Christian consciousness against those distortions of the truth that were allowed by the medieval papacy, as Protestant theologians are often inclined to imagine. No, Protestantism was a protest of one thought against another; he did not restore ancient Christianity, but replaced one distortion of Christianity with another, and there was a new lie worse than the first. Protestantism said the last word of papism and drew the final logical conclusion from it. Truth and salvation are given to love, that is, to the Church - such is the church consciousness. Latinism, having fallen away from the Church, betrayed this consciousness and proclaimed: the truth is given to an individual person in the person of the pope - albeit to one pope, but still to one person, without the Church - and the pope is in charge of the salvation of all. Protestantism only objected: “Why is the truth given only to the pope?” and added: “Truth and salvation are open to every individual, regardless of the Church.” Each individual person was promoted by him to be an infallible pope. Protestantism put the papal tiara on every German professor and, with its countless number of popes, completely destroyed the idea of ​​the Church, replaced faith with the reason of the individual, and replaced salvation in the Church with dreamy confidence in salvation through Christ without the Church, with selfish isolation from everyone. For a Protestant, truth is only what he likes, what he himself considers to be true. In practice, of course, from the very beginning, Protestants, in a roundabout way, by smuggling, so to speak, introduced some elements of the dogma of the Church, recognizing some authorities, at least in the field of doctrine. Being essentially church anarchism, pure Protestantism, like any anarchism, turned out to be completely unrealizable in practice and thereby testified to us the immutable truth that the human soul is ecclesiastical in nature. However, Protestantism was very much to the liking of human selfishness and self-will of all kinds. Selfishness and self-will received a kind of sanctification and blessing in Protestantism, which was and is now reflected in the endless pressure and fragmentation, first of all, of Protestantism itself. It was Protestantism that openly proclaimed this greatest lie: you can be a Christian without recognizing any Church. By binding its members, however, to certain obligatory authorities and church rules, Protestantism thereby becomes entangled in a hopeless contradiction: it itself freed the individual from the Church and itself sets some limits to this freedom. Hence the constant revolt of Protestants against those few and pitiful remnants of churchliness that are still preserved by the official representatives of their confession. It is quite clear that it is Protestantism that most corresponds to the general mood established in the West. There, in the West, they achieved greater improvement in external life, and people became proud of these successes, loved themselves to the point of oblivion, both God and their neighbors. Sinful selfishness and contempt for one's neighbor are preached in both fashionable philosophy and fiction. How can a proud European accept the teaching about the Church, when in order to accept this teaching, one must first of all renounce selfishness and self-will, submit to the Church and learn to love people, humbly placing oneself lower than others? In our contemporary religious life in Russian society there is a direct influence of Protestantism. All of our Russian rationalistic sectarianism took its ideological roots in Protestantism, from which it directly descends. After all, where do various sectarian missionaries come to us from, if not from Protestant countries? Therefore, almost all points of disagreement between sectarians and the Orthodox Church come down precisely to the denial of the Church in the name of imaginary “Evangelical Christianity.” But even regardless of the false teachings of Protestantism, many people come to deny the Church, adopting in general the Western European worldview, which developed outside the Church and is completely alien and even hostile to the spirit of the Church. Western European selfishness is penetrating us more and more. Our literature, which used to be a conductor of love and moral revival, especially in the immortal works of the great Dostoevsky, and in recent years, for example, in the person of Gorky, Andreev and the like, has bowed its knees to the Western European Baal of proud self-love and self-adoration. When in Orthodox society love is replaced by pride and self-love, when pride receives the honorable name of noble, although the holy fathers of the Church speak of self-love and pride only as demonic, when self-denial is replaced by self-affirmation and humble obedience by proud self-will, then, of course, the bright truth of the Church, inextricably linked with virtues directly opposite to these vices, is shrouded in a thick fog. For many years now, Russian people have lost the habit of thinking in a churchly way; gradually they even lost the thought of the Church as the new life of Christ. There was once a good time when I. T. Pososhkov bequeathed to his son: “I firmly bequeath and conjure you, my son, that with all your strength you hold fast to the holy Eastern Church, like your own mother... and remove all opponents of the holy Church from yourself and do not have any friendly communication with them, since they are God’s enemies.” 1 What clarity and definiteness of thought! According to Pososhkov, an opponent of the Church is certainly an enemy of God. Many people have now lost such clarity of thought, and little by little the most terrible counterfeit of the faith of Christ has been created in our days. It was this faith that was looked upon only as a teaching that could be accepted with one mind. Christianity, in the sense of church life, reborn by Christ the Savior of mankind, has almost been completely forgotten. Counterfeiting the Church with Christianity Christ Himself said that He would create the Church, but do they really talk about the Church now? No, now they prefer to talk about Christianity, and Christianity is considered as some kind of philosophical or moral teaching. Christianity sounds like neo-Kantianism or Nietzscheanism! This counterfeit of the Church by Christianity, like a subtle poison, penetrates into the consciousness of even church society. It is a subtle poison, because it is hidden under the flowery shell of loud speeches about the shortcomings of “historical Christianity” (that is, the Church?), about its supposed inconsistency with some kind of “pure”, “evangelical” Christianity. The Gospel and Christ are contrasted with the Church, which for some reason is called “historical”, as if there is or ever was another, “non-historical” Church! Truly, here Satan took the form of an angel of light. He pretends that he wants to cleanse the truth of Christ from human untruth. At the same time, we involuntarily recall the wise saying of St. Vincent of Lirinsky: “When we see that some cite apostolic or prophetic sayings to refute the universal faith, we should not doubt that the devil is speaking through their mouths; and in order to sneak up on simple-minded sheep more unnoticed, they hide their wolfish appearance, without abandoning the wolf’s ferocity, and, like a fleece, they wrap themselves in the sayings of Divine Scripture, so that, feeling the softness of the wool, no one will be afraid of their sharp teeth” 2. This is the characteristic of a proud and selfish person: he talks about everything boldly and self-confidently, although in essence he does not understand what he claims. This is especially clear in matters of faith. Everyone here wants to be teachers, apostles and prophets. Here they are not embarrassed even by their complete ignorance. In other areas, people who know nothing prefer to at least remain silent. But in matters of faith, now those who understand and understand the least about these matters do most of the talking and preaching. After all, it’s still up. Paul said that whoever has departed from sincere love, from a good conscience and unfeigned faith, “he wanders into empty talk, desiring to be a teacher of the law, but not understanding what he is saying or what he is affirming” (1 Tim. 1:5-7). In all this modern idle talk, a sad misunderstanding especially often slips through, which can be called the separation of Christianity from the Church. That is why people begin to talk too self-confidently about matters of faith, because they admit the possibility of the existence of some kind of Christianity not only independent of the Church, but even hostile to the Church. They believe that one can be a Christian and at the same time be at enmity with the Church. Now they have completely different attitudes towards the Church and Christianity. People who think little about God and eternity still consider it a duty of decency, at least in words, to speak of Christianity with respect. We have not yet reached the point of complete and open contempt for Christianity, open hostility towards it. This limit was reached only by a few “possessed by the devil” (Acts 10:38), the most “advanced” (if, of course, counting towards hell) renegades. Ordinary “philistines,” we repeat, usually speak about Christianity with some respect. “Christianity - oh, this, of course, is a high and great teaching. Who can argue against this? This is how they speak about Christianity. But at the same time, it is considered a sign of good manners to be in some kind of, often unconscious, hostility towards everything churchly. In the souls of many of our contemporaries, respect for Christianity and disdain for the Church somehow coexist. At least everyone is not embarrassed to call themselves Christians, but they don’t even want to hear about the Church and are ashamed to reveal their churchliness in any way. People who, according to the metrics, sound like “Orthodox religions,” with some incomprehensible gloating point to the real, and more often imaginary, shortcomings of church life, do not grieve over these shortcomings according to the commandment of the Apostle: “If one member suffers, all the members suffer with it” (1 Cor. 12:26), but they gloat. In our so-called “progressive” press there are many people who earn their livelihood exclusively by almost slandering church institutions, representatives of the church hierarchy. Slander against everything church has now become for some simply a profitable trade. But even those who consider themselves real Christians rush to believe this deliberate lie without any doubt. It happens to unkind people that when they hear something bad about their enemies, they rush to believe all this bad stuff, fearing that this bad thing turns out to be untrue. Exactly the same thing can be observed in the attitude of some people towards the Church. For them, the church is like an enemy, about which it is always so pleasant for a sinful person to hear bad things. Here again we see how widespread the separation of Christianity from the Church is now: they consider themselves Christians, but do not want to hear anything good about the Church. But would anything like this be possible if the idea of ​​the Church were clear, if it were not replaced by other, completely incomprehensible and uncertain values? Is it possible to imagine that in the apostolic age the Christian Church would be subjected to any reproaches from the pagans for excommunicating unfit members, for example, heretics? But in the first centuries, excommunication was the most common measure of church discipline, and everyone considered this measure to be completely legal and very useful. Why is this so? And precisely because at that time the Church appeared as a bright and definite value, precisely the Church, and not just some kind of Christianity. Then there was no room left for the absurd idea that Christianity is one thing, and the Church is another, that Christianity is possible apart from the Church. Then hostility against the Church was also hostility against Christianity. Hostility against the Church in the name of supposedly some kind of Christianity is an exceptional phenomenon of our sad days. When Christianity appeared in the eyes of the world as the Church, then this “world” itself clearly understood and involuntarily recognized that the Church and Christianity are one and the same. Sometimes it seems as if our entire Church is scattered, as if in some kind of confusion. You don’t know who is ours, who is from our adversaries. A kind of anarchy reigns in the minds. Too many “teachers” have appeared. There is strife in the church body (1 Cor. 12:25). In the ancient Church the bishop taught from a high place; Now the one who says about himself that he is only “in the vestibule,” even only “near the church walls,” nevertheless considers himself to have the right to teach the entire Church along with the hierarchy. They learn about church affairs and form opinions about them from “public sheets” that are clearly hostile to the Church (as Metropolitan Philaret called the newspapers), where church issues are written either by disrobed priests and all kinds of church renegades, or in general by embittered and “insolent scoffers” (2 Pet. 3:3), people who have nothing to do with the Church. The situation is sad! It is this sad situation of our time that should prompt everyone who values ​​faith and eternal life to check the basic error of our contemporary prejudice, which separates Christianity from the Church. With the guidance of the Word of God and the patristic writings, one should think through this important question in all its depth: is Christianity possible without the Church? The Church as a reflection of the unity of Persons in the Trinity The life of Christ the Savior is presented to the reader by St. The Gospel contains many great moments that fill the soul with some special feeling of greatness. But perhaps it was precisely the greatest moment in the life of all mankind, when the Lord Jesus Christ in the darkness of the southern night, under the overhanging arches of green trees, through which it was as if the sky itself was looking at the sinful earth with twinkling bright stars, in His high priestly prayer exclaimed: “Holy Father! Keep them in Your name, those whom You have given Me, so that they may be one, just as We are... I pray not only for them, but also for those who believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one - As You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, so that they may be one in Us” (John 17:11, 20-21). Special attention should be paid to these words of Christ. They clearly define the essence of all Christianity: Christianity is not some abstract teaching that is accepted by the mind and contained by everyone separately. No, Christianity is a common life in which individuals are so united with each other that their unity can be likened to the unity of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. After all, Christ does not pray only for His teaching to be preserved, for it to spread throughout the entire universe. He prays for the vital unity of all who believe in Him. Christ prays to His Heavenly Father for the establishment, or, better to say, for the restoration on earth of the natural unity of all humanity. Humanity was created one (Acts 17:26). “In people,” writes St. Basil the Great, - there would be no division, no strife, no war if sin had not cut the nature...” And “this is the main thing in the saving economy in the flesh - to bring human nature into unity with itself and with the Savior and, having destroyed the evil section, restore the primitive unity, just as the best doctor, with healing treatments, reunites a body that has been torn into many parts.” 3. It is this unity of human personalities - not only the apostles, but all those who believe in Christ according to their word - that forms the Church. Among earthly objects there was not a single one with which the new society of saved people could be compared. There is no unity on earth with which church unity can be compared. Such unity was found only in heaven. In heaven, the incomparable love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit unites three Persons into a single Being, so that there are no longer three Gods, but One God living a triune life. People are also called to the same love, which could unite many into one, for which Christ prayed to the Heavenly Father: “Let the love with which You loved Me be in them” (John 17:26). In the above words of Christ, the truth of the Church is placed in the closest connection with the mystery of the Holy Trinity. People who have entered the Church and loved each other are like the three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity, whose love unites Them into a single Being. The Church is, as it were, the consubstantial essence of all persons, created by their common love for each other. This very idea in the above words of the high priestly prayer of Christ the Savior is seen by many of the most famous fathers and teachers of the Church: St. Cyprian of Carthage, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose of Milan, Hilary of Pictavia, Cyril of Alexandria, Blessed. Augustine and St. John Cassian. Let us allow ourselves to give brief judgments of a few of this great and glorious host of fathers. So, even Saint Cyprian of Carthage wrote to Magnus: “The Lord, instilling in us that unity comes from Divine power, affirms and says: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30) and, directing his church to such unity, adds: “And there will be one flock and one Shepherd” (John 10:16). 4 And in his essay “On the Lord’s Prayer,” he says: “Not content with redeeming us with His blood, He (the Lord) also asked for us! And in asking, look, what desire He had: that we too may remain in that very unity in which the Father and the Son are one.” 5 And here is what St. Cyril of Alexandria writes: “As an example and image of undivided love, harmony and unity, conceived in unanimity, Christ, taking the essential unity that the Father has with Him, and He, on His part, with the Father, wants to unite in some way and us with each other, obviously, just like the Holy and Consubstantial Trinity, so that the whole body of the Church, ascending in Christ through intercourse and union of two peoples into a new, perfect one. The image of Divine unity and the essential triumph of the Holy Trinity, as well as the most perfect interpenetration, must be reflected in the unity of like-mindedness and unanimity of believers.” Saint Cyril also shows “the natural unity by which we are connected with each other and all of us with God, perhaps not without physical unity.” 6. The whole earthly work of Christ should therefore be considered not as teaching alone. Christ did not come to earth just to tell people a few new truths; no, He came to create a completely “new life” for humanity, i.e. Church (Matthew 16:18). This new human society, according to the thoughts of its Creator Himself, is significantly different from any other connections of people into different societies. Christ Himself often called His Church the Kingdom of God and said that “the Kingdom is not of the world” (John 18:36), i.e. its character is not of the world, not worldly, it is not like political, earthly kingdoms. The idea of ​​the Church as a new perfect society, in contrast to the public, for example, the state, is very deeply and beautifully expressed in the kontakion on the day of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, when the Church remembers and celebrates its beginning. “When the tongues came together, the Most High divided the tongues; And when we distribute tongues of fire, we call upon all to unite and glorify the All-Holy Spirit.” Here the founding of the Church is placed in parallel with the pandemonium of Babylon and the confusion of languages. It was then, during the pandemonium, that God, the Most High, descended, confused the languages ​​and divided the nations (Gen. 11:1–9). The biblical story about the “pandemonium of Babylon” has a very deep meaning. Just before this story, the Bible reports the first successes of sinful humanity in the field of culture and civil society; Before the pandemonium, people began to create stone cities. And so the Lord “confused” the languages ​​of those living on the earth, so that they ceased to understand each other and were scattered throughout the earth. In this “pandemonium of Babylon” a certain type of civil or state community is given, based on human truth alone, on law. Our Russian philosopher V.S. Solovyov defined law this way: “Right is a compulsory requirement for the implementation of a certain minimum good or order that does not allow certain manifestations of evil.” But even if we accept this definition of right, it obviously still never coincides with Christian love. Law concerns external relations and passes by the essence. A society created on human rights will never be able to merge people into one. Unity is destroyed by selfishness, egoism, but law does not destroy egoism; on the contrary, it only affirms it, protecting it from attacks from the egoism of other people. The purpose of a state based on law is to create, as far as possible, an order in which the egoism of each of its members would find satisfaction without at the same time violating the interests of another. There can be only one way to create such an order - some limitation of the selfishness of individual members of society. This is an insoluble contradiction of law: it affirms egoism, but it also limits it. Therefore, a society based on human law always carries within itself the seeds of its own decay, for it protects selfishness, which constantly corrodes and destroys all unity. The fate of the Tower of Babel is the fate of a legal society; in this society, a “confusion of languages” must often occur, when people cease to understand each other, although they speak the same language. Legal order often gives way to terrible disorder. This kind of legal, purely earthly society is opposed to Christian society - the Church. “When the tongues of fire are released, they call everything together to unite.” Christ creates the Church not to protect human selfishness, but to completely destroy it. The basis of church unity is not based on legal principles protecting personal egoism, but on love, the opposite of egoism. In His farewell conversation, Christ told the disciples: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, so do you love one another; By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34–35). It is this new foundation of church unity that creates not a mechanical external unification of temporarily fragmented individuals, but an organic unity. Christ himself likens church unity to the organic unity of a tree and its branches (John 15:1–2). But the apostle speaks in particular detail about the organic indivisible unity of the Church. Paul. The Church is compared to a tree by St. Paul (Rom. 11:17–24), but most often St. Paul calls the Church a “body” 7 . The very name of the Church “body” indicates its unity; two bodies cannot be connected to each other. But what does the image of the “body” attached to the Church mean? The image of the “body” in application to the Church is perfectly revealed by the apostle himself. Paul. Many, i.e. all who enter the Church constitute one body in Christ, and individually are members of one another (Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 12:27). “The body is one, but has many members, and all the members of one body, although there are many of them, constitute one body... The body is not made of one member, but of many. If the leg says: I do not belong to the body because I am not a hand, then is it really because it does not belong to the body? If the ear says: I do not belong to the body, because I am not an eye, then does it really not belong to the body?.. God arranged the members, each one in the body, as He pleased (1 Cor. 12:12-18). “As in one body we have many members, but all the members do not have the same function” (Rom. 12:4). “The eye cannot say to the hand: I don’t need you; or likewise the head to the feet: I don’t need you... God proportioned the body, instilling greater respect for the less perfect, so that there would be no division in the body, and all members would equally care for each other. Therefore, if one member suffers, all members suffer with it; if one member is glorified, all members rejoice with it” (1 Cor. 12:21, 24–26, 28. Compare Rom. 12:6–9). But how is it possible to realize such a unity of people in the Church, in the church community? After all, the natural sinful state of man is more consistent with the creation of only a legal society, because sin is self-affirmation or selfishness, which is protected by civil law. Indeed, for a person, as long as he protects his sinful state, perfect unity will be an empty dream that is not destined to come true in reality. But here everything is precisely resolved by the truth of the Church. Christ did not teach only about unity, about the Church, but created the Church. Christ gave the commandment: “Love one another” (John 13:34), but this commandment alone is completely insufficient. This commandment, like any other commandment, cannot create anything by itself if a person does not have the strength to implement it. And if Christianity were limited to only one teaching about love, it would be useless, because in existing human nature, distorted by sin, there is no strength to implement this teaching. The Old Testament and even the pagans spoke about love, but this is not enough. Reason recognizes that the commandment of love is good, but man constantly encounters another law in himself, which contradicts the “law of the mind” and captivates him to the “law of sin” (Rom. 7:22–23). To be a good person, it is not enough just to distinguish between what is good and what is bad. Do we doubt that sinning is bad? Why do we still sin, knowing this? Because it’s one thing to know, and another thing to live. Whoever observes the movements of his soul knows well how sins and passions fight the mind and how often they defeat it. The mind bends under the pressure of passions; sin, like a fog, closes the sun of truth from us, binding all the good forces of our soul. A soul conscious of the power of sin is always ready to say with King Manasseh: “I am bound with many iron cords so that I cannot lift up my head” (2 Chronicles 36:23) Can the teaching of love alone help us in such a sad state? But this is the strength and significance of the work of Christ, that it is not limited to teaching alone. Humanity has been given new strength, and therefore a new church unity becomes possible for it. These powers were given, first of all, so that, in the incarnation of the Son of God, humanity would be most closely united with God. In the Church, the unity of man with Christ always and unchangeably continues. This unity is the source of spiritual life, and without unity with Christ there is spiritual death. What is this unity? Christ said: “I am the living bread that came down from heaven; whoever eats this bread will live forever; But the bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world... Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the Flesh of the Son of Man and drink His Blood, you will not have life in you. He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. He who eats My Flesh and drinks My Blood abides in Me” (John 6:51–56). The Sacrament of Communion is where unity with Christ is and, therefore, the source of spiritual life. The Sacrament of Communion connects people with God and thereby unites them with each other. That is why Communion, primarily, is the source of church life. The meaning of the Sacrament of Communion is its churchliness. Outside of church unity there is no Communion. It is very significant that in patristic writing, church unity is placed in inextricable connection with the sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ. Already Saint Ignatius the God-Bearer writes to the Philadelphians: “Try to have one Eucharist, for there is one flesh of our Lord Jesus Christ and one cup for the unity of His Blood, one altar” (chapter 4). The same St. Ignatius also emphasizes the ecclesiastical nature of the Eucharist: “No one should do anything pertaining to the Church without a bishop. Only that Eucharist should be considered true, which is celebrated by the bishop or by those to whom he himself grants it. Where there is a bishop, there must be a people, just as: where Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church” (“To the Smyrnae,” ch. 8). “Many grains,” writes St. Cyprian of Carthage, - collected, ground and kneaded together, form one bread; so in Christ, who is the heavenly bread, we see one body in which our multitude is bound and united.” 8 The patristic teaching on the ecclesiastical nature of the Eucharist and its significance for salvation is especially deeply and detailed revealed by the saints. Cyril of Alexandria, whose words we will quote: “The Only Begotten determined some exquisite, with the wisdom befitting Him and the advice of the Father, a way for us ourselves to converge and mingle in unity with God and with each other, although each separating from the other with souls and bodies into a special personality - precisely this way: in one body, obviously His own, blessing those who believe in Him through the mysterious the sacrament (Eucharist) makes them co-corporeal both with Himself and with each other. Who, indeed, could separate and tear away from their natural union with each other those who, through one holy body, are united in unity with Christ? After all, if we all partake of one bread, then we are all one body (1 Cor. 10:17), for Christ cannot be divided. Therefore, the Church is called the body of Christ, and we are individual members, according to the understanding of St. Paul (1 Cor. 12:27). All of us, through the holy Body, were united with one Christ as having received Him, one and inseparable, in our bodies; to Him, more than to ourselves, we must consider our members to belong.” 9 . “Not only by mood, consisting in spiritual disposition, will Christ abide in us, as He says (John 6:56), but also by communion, of course, natural. Just as if someone, having united one wax with another and melted it on fire, makes something single out of both, so through the communion of the Body of Christ and the Precious Blood, He Himself is in us and we, for our part, are united in Him. For otherwise it would have been impossible for something that had undergone corruption to become capable of life, if it had not been physically united with the body of Him who is life by nature, that is, the Only Begotten.” 10. Thus, according to the teaching of Christ and the gospel of the Holy Fathers, true life is possible only with close natural or, as they say, real unity with Christ in the sacrament of the Eucharist, but this unity with Christ also creates the unity of people with each other, that is, a single body of the Church is created. Consequently, the Christian life is ecclesiastical in its very essence. The Holy Spirit leads to unity There is another source of new life for humanity, namely church life - the Holy Spirit. Christ himself said that whoever was not born of water and the Spirit cannot enter the Kingdom of God (John 3:3) - one must be born of the Spirit (John 3:6–8). And when ap. Paul talks about the unity of people in the Church, he always talks about the Holy Spirit as the source of this unity. The Church for the Apostle is not only “one body,” but also “one Spirit.” 11 And here what is meant is not only unanimity, but also the one Spirit of God permeating the whole body, as the holy fathers and teachers of the Church testify. “What is the unity of the Spirit?” - asks St. John Chrysostom answers: “Just as in the body the spirit embraces everything and imparts some kind of unity to the diversity that comes from the diversity of bodily members, so it is here. But the spirit is also given in order to unite people who are different from each other in origin and way of thinking.” 12 “With these words (“one Spirit”) he wanted to encourage mutual agreement, as if to say: since you received one Spirit and drank from the same source, there should be no discord between you.” 13 Blessed Theodoret: “You have all been granted the same grace; a single source pours out various streams. You received the Spirit as one, you form one body.” 14 Blessed Jerome: “One body in the sense of the body of Christ, which is the Church; and one Holy Spirit is one, namely, the dispenser and sanctifier of all.” 15 Blessed Theophylact of Bulgaria: “Just as in the body the spirit is the beginning that connects and unites everything, although the members are different, so in believers there is the Holy Spirit, which unites everyone, although we differ from each other in gender, morals and occupations.” 16 According to the Apostle, all church life is a manifestation of love, every virtue is an action of the gift of the Spirit. The same Spirit produces everything. People, in the words of the ap. Peter, are only “builders of manifold grace” (1 Pet. 4:10). The Spirit of God, penetrating the entire body of the Church, giving all members of this body various spiritual gifts, makes new life possible for humanity. It is he who unites everyone into one body and unites precisely by pouring love into the heart, which in the natural state of a person cannot be the basis of his life and his relationships with other people. “Love comes from God” is the saying of St. John (1 John 4:7) can be called the general theme of a whole series of apostolic discussions. Love is called God's. 17 The love of Christ embraces the members of the Church (2 Cor. 5:14). The Lord directs the hearts of all into the love of God (2 Thess. 3:5). “The love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5). Love is the fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22). God saved us by the renewal of the Holy Spirit, “whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior” ( Titus 3:5–6 ). Christians are led by the Spirit of God (Rom. 8:14). Thus, the Holy Spirit living in the Church gives each member the strength to be a new creation and to be guided by love in their lives. Teachings of the Ap. Paul about the Church is inextricably linked with his teaching about love as the beginning of the Christian life. This connection is little noticed by modern interpretative scholars, but it is pointed out by the Holy Fathers of the Church. Yes, blessed one. Theodoret says about the apostolic comparison of the Church with the body: “This use is fitting for the teaching of love.” 18 And St. John Chrysostom, interpreting the words “one body” (1 Cor. 12:12), says: “Paul demands from us such love that would bind us together, making us inseparable from each other, and such perfect unity, as if we were members of one body, because only such love produces great good.” 19 Reading the epistles of St. Paul, you can notice that he usually speaks about the Church and love side by side, and this, of course, is because, according to the teaching of the Apostle, the Church and love are connected with each other. All Christian virtue for the Apostle is based on the truth of the Church. Thus, in the last chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, the Apostle speaks in detail about Christian morality. This speech begins with the 9th verse of the 12th chapter (Rom. 12:9), and in the five previous verses (Rom. 12:4-8) the Apostle briefly outlined the teaching about the Church spoken in the 12th chapter, and then immediately follows the New Testament song of love (Rom. 12:10-21). Something similar can be seen in the letters to the Ephesians and Colossians. Christians are a new creation What follows from all that has been said? The work of Christ is not just one teaching. His work is to create unity in the human race. The work of Christ is the creation of a “new creation”, i.e. Churches. In the Church, the living Spirit of God gives strength for the implementation of Christian teaching in life, and since this is a teaching about love, its implementation again creates unity, for love is a connecting principle, not a dividing one. The growth of the Church is at the same time the growth of its individual members. The New Testament Scriptures indicate to us that the purpose of the Church is to provide spiritual guidance for the perfection of man. Spiritual gifts and all ministries in general exist in the Church, according to St. Paul, for the “perfection of the saints”, that is, the moral rebirth of Christians (Eph. 4:12), “until we all come into the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Eph. 4:13). And then the Apostle depicts the way in which regenerated humanity reaches the measure of the full stature of Christ: “from whom the whole body, which is composed and joined together through all kinds of mutually fastening ties, with each member working to its own measure, receives increase for the building up of itself in love” (Eph. 4:16). Without going into a detailed analysis of the Greek text 20, we will only say what thought the Apostle wants to express. 21 The entire body of the Church is constantly united more and more through the reception of the gracious gifts of the Holy Spirit, acting in each in a special way, and thus the body of the Church achieves perfection in all its members. The ever-increasing growth of the church body is determined by the participation of individual members in common love, because only with love, with union with the Church, is the very perception of the gifts of the Holy Spirit possible. This is how the quoted words of St. are understood. Apostle St. John Chrysostom 22, blessed. Theodoret 23, Rev. John Domaskin 24 and Blessed. Theophylact 25. Rev. Theophan the Recluse: “The Christian faith unites the faithful with Christ and, thus, of all forms one harmonious body. Christ creates this body, communicating Himself and the Spirit of grace to everyone, giving them effectively, tangibly, so that this Spirit of grace, descending on everyone, makes him what he should be in the body of the Church of Christ. The Body of Christ, harmoniously united by such a gift of the Spirit, grows in itself to the extent that each member meets its purpose or acts for the good of the Church with all the fullness of the gift of grace received.” 26 From the above teaching of the apostle. Paul, it is clear that, according to the New Testament teaching, the perfection of the human personality is determined by its belonging to the Church as a living organism that grows under the grace-filled influence of the Holy Spirit. If the connection with the body of the Church is severed, then the individual, having become isolated and withdrawn in his selfishness, will be deprived of the gracious influence of the Holy Spirit living in the Church. “In fact, if the hand happened to separate from the body, the spirit flowing out of the brain, looking for a continuation and not finding it there, does not break away from the body and does not transfer to the removed hand, but if it does not find it there, then it is not communicated to it. The same thing happens here if we are not connected by love. So, if we want to receive the Spirit from the Head, let us be in union with each other. There are two kinds of separation from the Church: one when we grow cold in love, and the other when we dare to do something unworthy in relation to this body of the Church. In both cases we are separated from the whole.” 27 It is clear that St. John Chrysostom considers any separation from the Church to be a deprivation of the grace of the Holy Spirit. “Everything that has only been separated from the vital principle cannot, with the loss of its saving essence, live and breathe a special life.” 28 “Separate the sun's ray from its beginning - unity will not allow a separate light to exist; break off a branch from a tree - what is broken off will lose its ability to grow; separate the stream from its source - the separated will dry up. The Church, illuminated by the light of the Lord, spreads its rays throughout the world; but the light spreading everywhere is one, and the unity of the body remains inseparable. She spreads her branches laden with fruits throughout the earth; its abundant streams flow into distant space; despite all this, there remains one head, one beginning, one mother, rich in the success of fruitfulness.” 29 These animated and tenderly poetic words clearly express the idea that an individual, even an individual Christian community, is alive insofar as it lives the life of Christ, insofar as it is united with the entire universal Church. To isolate oneself, to withdraw into oneself, is for an individual or even for a Local Church what is for a ray to be separated from the sun, for a stream to be separated from a source, for a branch to be separated from a trunk. Spiritual life can only exist through an organic connection with the universal Church; If this connection is broken, Christian life will certainly dry up. We hope that it has been sufficiently shown that the idea of ​​the Church in the New Testament teaching has a very significant meaning. Christianity does not have in mind the interests of reason alone; it teaches only about the salvation of man. Therefore, there are no purely theoretical positions in Christianity. Dogmatic truths have moral significance, and Christian morality is based on dogmas. But it is the Church that is the very point at which doctrine turns into moral teaching, Christian dogma turns into Christian life. The Church gives life and fulfillment to Christian teaching. Outside the Church and without the Church, Christian life is impossible. Only in the Church can a person live, develop and be saved, just as in any other organism individual members never grow and develop separately from each other, but always only in inextricable connection with the whole organism. Without the Church there is no Christianity; only Christian teaching remains, which by itself cannot “renew fallen Adam.” Realizing unity in the Apostolic Church If we now turn from the revelation of the New Testament teaching about the Church to the initial history of Christianity, we will see that it was the idea of ​​the Church that was the main idea of ​​the Christian worldview, and it was it that created reality. Christians recognized themselves, first of all, as the Church, and Christian society, preferably over all other names, called itself the Church. The word Church already appears 110 times in the New Testament. The word “Christianity,” like many other words ending with “-stvo,” is not known in the New Testament. After the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples and apostles of Christ, the Church came into being as a visible society with spiritual mutual relations of its members. After all, at first there was no detailed teaching scheme. The faith of Christ was contained in a few very general provisions. There was nothing to learn about Christianity. There was little need for agreement on any theoretical positions. What did it mean to be a Christian at that time? Nowadays, you can hear many different answers to this question, something like this: to be a Christian means to recognize the teachings of Christ, to try to fulfill His commandments. This is, of course, the best answer yet. But early Christianity answered this question completely differently. From the very first pages of its history, Christianity appears before us in the form of a like-minded and unanimous community. There were no Christians outside of this community. To believe in Christ, to become a Christian, meant “to join the Church,” as it is repeatedly expressed in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, where we read: “The Lord added daily those who were being saved to the Church” (Acts 2:47, 5:13–14). Every new believer was like a branch grafted into the single tree of church life. And here is the most typical example, as it were, an illustration of precisely this kind of joining the Church. The persecutor Saul, who breathed reproach and violence against the disciples of the Lord, miraculously became a follower of Christ on the way to Damascus. Here before us is a special revelation of God to man. However, in Damascus, the Lord sent Ananias to Saul, who baptized him, after which Saul was in Damascus with his disciples for several days; then Saul, having arrived in Jerusalem, tries to join the disciples and after Barnabas informs the Apostles about him, he stays with them. Thus, even the future great Apostle, whom even in the vision of Ananias the Lord calls “the chosen vessel” (Acts 9:15), immediately after his conversion joins the Church as a visible society. Here it is especially clearly shown that the Lord does not want to know His servants outside the Church. 30 It is clear why St. ap. Paul speaks so persistently in his epistles about the Church: he does not create a doctrine about the Church, and even at his very conversion he met the Church as a fact. Even before his conversion, Saul knew precisely the Church, and not anything else. He himself later recalls: “You have heard about my former way of life in Judaism, that I cruelly persecuted the Church of God and devastated it” (Gal. 1:13). Saul did not persecute the followers of any teaching, but precisely the Church as a value defined even for “outsiders.” The multitude of believers, we read in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, “had one heart and one soul” (Acts 4:32). And it is very remarkable that in the 4th century, when revealing the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, some holy fathers pointed as an example to the early Christian Church, where plurality was unity. And to what extent the early Christian community was sharply defined, this is perfectly demonstrated by one verse of the book of Acts, which is somehow not noticed: “Of all the strangers... no one dared to pester them” (Acts 5:13). Thus, on the one hand, conversion to Christianity is thought of as joining the Church, and on the other hand, no one from outsiders dared to enter them. Isn’t it clear that at the very first time, when the Lord’s direct disciples were alive, Christianity was, precisely, a visible society - the Church, it was not only a teaching, but was life itself? Christianity, ecclesiastical in its very essence, has in fact always been precisely the Church, i.e. a visible society with its own specific organization. The Lord was pleased to give His Church precisely a hierarchical organization. The hierarchical structure of the Church was created by the holy apostles. 31 Protestant scholarship argues a lot against this church truth, but in order to dispute the apostolic origin of the hierarchy, Protestants have to deny the authenticity of the pastoral Epistles of the Apostle Paul, i.e. undermine the authority of Holy Scripture, and thereby cut off the branch on which Protestantism itself rests. It is enough to read the book of the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles of St. Paul to Timothy and Titus, in order to be convinced of the apostolic establishment of the hierarchy in the Church. Paul and Barnabas, at the very founding of the churches, ordained elders in each church (Acts 14:23). Titu ap. Paul commands to appoint “elders in all the cities” (Titus 1:5). “The Holy Spirit appointed bishops to shepherd the Church of the Lord and God, which He purchased with His blood” (Acts 20:28). That is why, back in the first century (about 97), the Roman Bishop Clement, in a special letter to the Corinthians, proves the need for obedience to the hierarchy by the fact that the hierarchy in the Church was forever established by the apostles themselves. By the way, Clement writes: “The apostles preached the gospel to us from the Lord Jesus Christ; Jesus Christ was sent from God. So, Christ is from God, and the apostles are from Christ - both were in order according to the will of God. Having accepted the command, the apostles, completely convinced by the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ and confirmed in faith by the word of God, went out with the fullness of the Holy Spirit, preaching the coming Kingdom of God. Preaching in cities and villages, they appointed their firstborn, after testing them in the spirit, as bishops and deacons for future believers” (chapter 42). “Our apostles knew through the Lord that there would be contention about the episcopal dignity. For this very reason, having received perfect foreknowledge, they appointed those named above and made a law, so that when they rested, other proven men would accept their ministry” (chapter 44). Just two decades later, St. Hieromartyr Ignatius the God-Bearer, on his way to Rome to suffer, writes letters to various churches and urges everywhere to submit to the hierarchy. “Do nothing without bishops and elders. Do not think that anything commendable will come of you if you do it on your own,” writes St. Ignatius to the Magnesians (ch. 7:2). “Whoever does anything without the knowledge of the bishop serves the devil,” he writes to the laity (chap. 9:1). “Whoever reveres himself more than a bishop is completely lost,” writes St. Ignatius to his disciple Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna (chapter 5:2). Without hierarchy, according to the teachings of St. Ignatius, there is no Church (Epistle to the Trallians, ch. 3:1). “Those who are God's and Jesus Christ's are with the bishop,” we read in the letter to the Philadelphians (chap. 3:2). It is absolutely clear how from the very beginning the Church thought of itself as hierarchically structured and looked at the hierarchy as a divinely established body of its governance. The activity of this body was expressed in the performance of grace-filled sacred rites, in the teaching of the faith, and in church discipline. Church life is different in different centuries. The activities of the hierarchy also change, but the principle of the hierarchical structure of the Church always remains the same and unchanged. Finally, I think we would be making a great omission if we did not cite at least some of the judgments of ancient church writers on the question that interests us: is Christianity possible without the Church? Let us dwell on the views of only two writers who worked hard to clarify the teachings about the Church: St. Cyprian of Carthage and Blessed. Augustine. To be a Christian means to belong to the Church According to the judgment of St. Cyprian, to be a Christian means to belong to the visible Church and to submit to the hierarchy established in it by God. The Church is the realization of the love of Christ, and any separation from the Church is precisely a violation of love. Both heretics and schismatics sin against love. This is the main idea of ​​Cyprian’s treatise “On the Unity of the Church”; the same thought is constantly repeated in the letters of St. father: “Christ gave us peace; He commanded us to be agreeable and of one mind; commanded to inviolably and firmly preserve the union of affection and love. He who has violated the love of Christ by treacherous disagreement will not belong to Christ: he who does not have love does not have God. Those who do not desire to be unanimous in the Church of God cannot remain with God.” 32 Heretics and schismatics have no love, i.e. fundamental Christian virtue, and therefore they are Christians only in name. “A heretic or schismatic does not preserve either the unity of the Church or brotherly love, 33 and acts against the love of Christ.” 34 “Marcian, uniting with Novatian, became an opponent of mercy and love.” 35 “It is known about heretics that they have abandoned the love and unity of the Catholic Church.” 36 “What kind of unity does he maintain, what kind of love does he preserve, or what kind of love does he think about, who, giving in to the impulses of discord, dissects the Church, destroys the faith, disturbs the world, uproots love, desecrates the sacrament?” 37 St. Cyprian even expresses the following thought: outside the Church there can be no Christian teaching, not only Christian life. Only in the Church there is pure faith. 38 Cyprian calls the Church “the truth.” 39 The unity of faith cannot be separated from the unity of the Church. 40 There is one truth, just as there is one Church. 41 Anyone who does not adhere to the unity of the Church cannot think that he maintains the faith. 42 Any separation from the Church is certainly associated with a distortion of the faith. “The enemy invented heresies and schisms in order to overthrow faith, pervert the truth, and dissolve unity. His servants proclaim treachery under the pretext of faith, the Antichrist under the name of Christ, and cover up lies with plausibility in order to destroy the truth with subtle cunning.” 43 “Just as the devil is not Christ, although he deceives in His name, so one who does not abide in the truth of His Gospel and faith cannot be considered a Christian.” 44 “The heretic dissects the Church” 45, “he arms himself against the Church, a traitor in relation to faith, in relation to piety - a blasphemer, a disobedient slave, a lawless son, an enemy brother.” 46 “If we consider the faith of those who believe outside the Church, it turns out that all heretics have a completely different faith; even, strictly speaking, they have only fanaticism, blasphemy and debate, hostile to holiness and truth.” 47 To be outside the Church and remain a Christian, according to the conviction of St. Cyprian, impossible. Outside the Church - outside the camp of Christ. 48 Those who have departed from the Church and act against the Church are antichrists and pagans. 49 Here, for example, is what St. writes. Cyprian to Antonian about Novatian: “You wished, most beloved brother, that I would write to you regarding Novatian, what heresy he led. Know that, first of all, we should not be curious about what he teaches when he teaches outside the Church. Whoever and whatever he may be, he is not a Christian, just as he is not in the Church of Christ.” 50 “How can one be with Christ who is not with the bride of Christ, who is not in His Church?” 51 Finally, in the treatise “On the Unity of the Church,” we read the famous words: “He who can no longer have God as a father does not have the Church as a mother.” 52 St. Cyprian completely refuses to call “Christians” to everyone outside the Church, as if repeating the decisive exclamation of his teacher Tertullian: “Heretics cannot be Christians!” It is therefore understandable that St. When Cyprian was received into the Church, he again baptized even the Novatians, although they were only schismatics. For Cyprian, the baptism of schismatics upon admission to the Church was not re-baptism, but was precisely baptism. “We affirm,” wrote St. Cyprian Quintus - that we do not rebaptize those who come from there, but we baptize (non rebaptizari apud nos sed baptizari); for they receive nothing where there is nothing.” 53 Baptism outside the Church is only “empty and unclean immersion (sordida et rpotana tinctio).” 54 “People are not washed there, but only become more defiled; Sins are not cleansed, but only aggravated. Such a birth produces children not of God, but of the devil.” 55. Cyprian's idea about the invalidity of any baptism outside the Church and about the need to baptize again all those turning to the Church was confirmed in 256 by the Local Council of the Carthage Church, which was chaired by Cyprian himself. In his final words, as if summing up all the church’s reasoning, St. Cyprian says: “Heretics must be baptized with the only baptism in the Church, so that they can become friends from opponents and Christians from antichrists.” 56 The stated views of St. Cyprian, which, obviously, was shared by the entire Council of Carthage, clearly and very definitely indicate that in the third century they did not even allow the thought that some kind of Christianity was possible without the Church. Then they clearly taught and definitely said that he who has apostatized from the Church is no longer a Christian and is deprived of the grace of the Holy Spirit, which is why he is deprived of hope of salvation. The same idea was clearly expressed by St. Basil the Great in his letter to Bishop Amphilochius. St. Basil says that those who have departed from the Church and through schism no longer have the grace of the Holy Spirit on them. Outside the Church there is no priesthood and the grace of the Holy Spirit cannot be imparted. These thoughts of St. Basil of Christ was approved by the Church at the Sixth Ecumenical Council (rule 2) and the Seventh (rule 1) as an immutable truth. Message of St. Basil to Amphilochius was recognized as canonical, which is why it is still included in the Book of Rules. Blazh. Augustine admits that Christian teaching, understood theoretically, can be preserved outside the Church. The truth remains the truth, even if it is expressed by an evil person. After all, the demons also confessed Christ in the same way as the apostle. Peter. 57 Gold is undoubtedly good, and it remains gold among robbers, although it serves them for evil purposes. 58 Christ once told his disciples: “Whoever is not against you is for you” (Luke 9:49–50). From this we can see that those who stand outside the Church are not against the Church in some matters and have something of the Church’s wealth. 59 The Athenians honored the unknown God (Acts 17:23), and the ap. James testifies that demons also believe (James 2:19), and they, of course, are outside the Church. 60 In his writings against the Donatists, Blessed. Augustine proves in detail and justifies the reality of schismatic baptism. But if the true teaching can be preserved outside the Church, if even the sacraments performed in separation from the Church are valid, then is the Church absolutely necessary? Is salvation also impossible outside the Church? Doesn't the blessed one separate? Augustine Christianity from the Church? Doesn't he admit the possibility of Christianity without the Church? To these questions, Blessed. Augustine gives a negative answer. Christian life leading to salvation, blessed. Augustine ascribes only to the Church, and outside the Church this life cannot exist. All that those who have separated from the Church retain from the Church’s wealth brings them absolutely no benefit, but only harm. 61 Why is this so? And therefore, the blessed one answers. Augustine, all those who are separated from the Church do not have love. Christ indicated a sign by which His disciples can be recognized. This sign is not Christian teaching, not even a sacrament, but only love. “By this,” He said to His disciples, “they will know you that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). The sacraments will not save if the person receiving them does not have love. The Apostle says: “If I know all mysteries (sacramenta) ... and do not have love, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13:2). 62 Caiaphas also prophesied, but was condemned. 63 Separation from the Church itself is the greatest sin, which shows that schismatics have no love. 64 One who is reborn in baptism, but is not united with the Church, does not benefit from baptism, because he does not have love; - Baptism begins to be saving for him only when he has united with the Church. 65 The grace of baptism cannot cleanse from the sins of one who does not belong to the Church; its action is, as it were, paralyzed by the persistence of a schismatic heart in evil, i.e. in schism. 66 The fact that forgiven sins return to a person in schism was clearly demonstrated by the Lord in the parable in which the master forgave the slave ten thousand talents. When that slave did not take pity on his comrade, who owed him only one hundred denarii, the master ordered that everything that the slave owed him be paid back. Just as that slave only temporarily received forgiveness of his debt, so the one who is baptized outside the Church is also only temporarily freed from his sins, since even after baptism he remains outside the Church. 67 It is not because schismatics are deprived of hope of salvation that their baptism is not valid, but only because they are outside the Church and in hostility to it. 68 The grace of the Holy Spirit can only be received and preserved by those who are united in love with the Church. 69 He who is separated from the Church has no love. He who does not love the unity of the Church 70 does not have the love of God; in vain he says that he has Christ’s love. 71 Love can only be preserved through unity with the Church, 72 because the Holy Spirit animates only the body of the Church. 73 There can be no legal and sufficient reason to separate from the Church; whoever is separated from the Church does not have the Holy Spirit, 74 just as a member cut off from the body does not have the spirit of life, although it retains its former form for some time. 75 Therefore, all those who have separated from the Church, while they oppose it, cannot be good; even though their behavior seemed commendable, their very separation makes them evil. 76. Thus, according to the teachings of Blessed. Augustine, the Church is a narrower concept than Christianity, understood in the sense of theoretical provisions alone. While remaining outside the Church, one can be in agreement with these theoretical positions; For unity with the Church, it is also necessary to have consent of the will (consensio voluntatum). 77 But it is obvious that without this latter, only theoretical agreement with Christian teaching is completely useless, and there is no salvation outside the Church. In life, Christianity completely coincides with the Church. Views of St. Cyprian and Blessed Augustine, apparently, are somewhat different, but they both come to exactly the same conclusion: extra ecclesiam nulla salus - there is no salvation outside the Church! What saves people is their love, which is the grace of the New Testament. 78 It is impossible to preserve love outside the Church, 79 because there you cannot receive the Holy Spirit. 80 So, what did we find among representatives of church thought of the 3rd-5th centuries? We found exactly the same thing that we came to before, considering the New Testament teaching about the Church and the facts of the initial history of Christianity. Christianity and the Church do not coincide with each other only when by Christianity we understand the sum of some theoretical provisions that do not bind anyone to anything. But such an understanding of Christianity can only be called demonic. Then demons should also be recognized as Christians, who also believe and only tremble because of this. Knowing the system of Christian dogma and agreeing with the dogmas does not mean being a true Christian. A slave who knows the will of his master and does not fulfill it will be beaten a lot and, of course, fairly. “Christianity is not about silent conviction, but about the greatness of the deed,” as Saint Ignatius the God-Bearer says. 81 It is not only those who distort the fundamental truths of Christianity who lose hope of salvation; anyone who separates themselves from the Church, from the common life of one integral organism of the body of Christ, is deprived of this hope. If a person fell away from the Church or was excommunicated from it, he perished, he died for God and eternity. Also St. Ignatius the God-Bearer wrote to the Philadelphians: “Whoever follows the one who introduces a schism will not inherit the Kingdom of God” (chapter 3). No, Christ is not only a great teacher; He is the Savior of the world, who gave new strength to humanity, who renewed humanity. We do not only have teaching from Christ our Savior, but life. If we understand Christianity as a new life not according to the elements of the world, which knows only the principles of egoism and selfishness, but according to Christ, with His teaching and example of self-denial and love, then Christianity will completely and necessarily coincide with the Church. To be a Christian means to belong to the Church, for Christianity exists precisely in the Church, and outside the Church there is no Christian life and there cannot be. Christianity is inseparable from the Church Finally, one only needs to look closely at the Creed to understand how important the idea of ​​the Church is. Indeed, in the Creed almost all the members were introduced after various heretics appeared who distorted this or that truth. Therefore, the entire Creed can be called polemical. Its history shows how its content was replenished in the fight against certain heresies. It’s not at all the same with the ninth member of the Church. From the very beginning, this member was in the Creed, where it was included even regardless of the appearance of any false teachings. After all, at that time there were no Protestants and sectarians dreaming of some kind of churchless Christianity. It is clear that the idea of ​​the Church was at the forefront of Christian beliefs from the very beginning. From the very beginning, Christians constituted the Church and believed in its salvation, and we can consider the truth that Christianity is inseparable from the Church to be given by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. So, we must admit the truth: Christianity is completely inseparable from the Church, and without the Church Christianity is impossible. The need to recognize this truth will become especially obvious to us if we compare it with the opposite error, if we look at what the separation of Christianity from the Church leads to. In fact, opposing the Gospel to the Church and replacing the Church with the vague concept of Christianity brings the most disastrous results. Christian life is drying up, it turns out to be only one more teaching in the endless series of teachings, ancient and new, and the teaching is very vague, because without the Church the possibility opens up for a countless number of its understandings, the most arbitrary and even contradictory to each other. In this respect Christianity is in a worse position than the prominent schools of philosophy. In fact, the founders of philosophical schools left behind books of their works, left more or less clearly stated teachings, expressed themselves more or less fully, so there is no limitless scope for various arbitrary interpretations of their teachings. The Lord Jesus Christ did not leave His teachings in writing. He didn't write anything. Therefore, there is nothing easier than to reinterpret the teachings of Christ according to your own taste and create “Christianity,” presenting your own errors under this name. The sacred books of the New Testament were written not by the bookish apostles, but by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Church has a true interpretation of the Gospel and the Epistles of the Apostles. Holy Scripture is incomprehensible outside the Church But in all centuries there have been, as St. calls them. Irenaeus of Lyons, “correctors of the apostles” 82, who considered themselves superior to the apostles, these “Galilean fishermen.” Well, is it fitting for a highly educated European of the 20th century to take on faith everything said by some “fishermen?” Therefore, many even free themselves from trusting the apostles and want to interpret Christ’s teaching, guided only by their own considerations. After all, Leo Tolstoy directly stated that the ap. Paul did not understand well the teachings of Christ 83; Therefore, Tolstoy considered himself superior to the ap. Pavel. And one can be amazed at how far people go in their “interpretation” of Christianity. Whatever they want, they immediately find it all in the Gospel. It turns out that every idle dream and even malicious thought can be covered, if desired, with the teaching of the Gospel. Isn’t it wonderful that all apostates from the Church constantly talk about their respect for the Holy Scriptures and, at the same time, very soon move on to distorting even the books of Scripture themselves! As soon as people leave the Church, they immediately begin to interpret Scripture in their own way, and everyone interprets it differently. Christ prayed to God the Father for the unity of all who believe in Him, the apostles exhorted them to be like-minded, and spoke about the unity of faith. It turns out that without the Church no unity is possible. Once again there should be a Babylonian “confusion of languages.” In the Church, the faith of the millennium remains the same, always equal to itself. But for those who have apostatized from the Church, it changes almost daily. New heretics and sectarians are constantly appearing, and each of their teachers preaches differently. It is clear that without the Church, first of all, the teaching of Christ disappears and is replaced by short-lived human wisdom. No, the faith of Christ becomes clear and definite for a person only when he unfeignedly believes in the Church; Only then is the bead of this faith pure, only then is it not mixed with a heap of dirty garbage of all kinds of willful opinions and judgments. The ap. spoke about all this. Paul, when the Church of the living God was called “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). Thus, in separation from the Church, even Christian teaching turns out to be something very vague, elusive, constantly changing at will. Outside the Church, faith in the Divinity of Christ is lost But the counterfeit of the Church by Christianity leads to another terrible counterfeit - the counterfeit of Christ the God-Man by the man Jesus of Nazareth. Just as faith in the Church is inextricably linked with the recognition of the Divinity of Christ the Savior, so the denial of the Church leads to the denial of the incarnation of the Son of God, the denial of the Divinity of Jesus Christ. After all, in order to give any teaching, there is no need to necessarily be a God-man. The divine dignity of Christ is necessary only for those who see in Him the Savior, who infused new strength into human nature and founded the Church. In fact, isn’t this indissoluble connection between the truth of the Church and the Truth of His Sonship of God already visible from the words of Jesus Christ Himself? Simon Peter said: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Then Jesus said to him: “And I say to you: you are Peter, and on this rock (i.e. on the truth of the Incarnation, which Peter confessed) I will build My Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:18). The ancient Church defended with particular effort this truth of the consubstantiality of the incarnate Son of God with God the Father, because it longed for a real renewal of the human being, the re-creation of the “new creation,” i.e. Churches. The unshakable faith that the Son of God, the second Person of the Holy Trinity, descended to earth, became man, revealed to people the secrets of the Kingdom of God, founded His Church on earth, suffered for the sins of the human race and, having defeated death, rose from the dead, opening the way for people to become like God and deify not only in the soul, but also in the body - this faith lay as the internal motive at the basis of all dogmatic movements IV century. 84 Why was the struggle against Arianism so intense? Why did the Arians meet with such decisive resistance that St. Athanasius the Great, this pillar of the Church of Christ, refused to give them the name “Christians”? After all, the Arians recognized the teachings of Christ, even considered Him to be the incarnate Son of God, but they did not consider this Son of God equal and consubstantial with God the Father. But this is what St. writes. Athanasius the Great: “Those who call Arians Christians are in a great and extreme error, as they have not read the Scriptures and do not know Christianity and the Christian faith at all. Truly, this means the same thing as calling Caiaphas a Christian, and classifying Judas the traitor among the apostles; to assert that those who asked Barabbas, and not the Savior, did nothing wrong; to prove that Hymenaeus and Alexander are well-meaning people, and the Apostle lies against them. But a Christian cannot listen to this patiently; and whoever dares to say this, no one will assume that he is of sound mind.” 85 To a modern, less-religious person, all the dogmatic disputes of the 4th century seem incomprehensible and seemingly meaningless. But “this was a struggle between two extremely opposing views of Christ: the mystical-religious, in which He was the source of life, salvation, immortality and deification, 86 and the rationalistic, where Christ was presented only as a divine Teacher and a normal example for His followers. The dispute was, in essence, about whether in the future Christianity will remain a religion, with all the totality of its bright beliefs and mystical hopes, or whether it will collapse and turn into a simple philosophy with a religious tint, of which there were many at that time. That is why questions about the Divinity of the Son of God, which affected the most intimate side of the believing soul, were discussed in squares and markets.” 87 It can be said that even then the Church defended the consubstantiality of its Founder with God the Father; The Arians, people of a rationalistic view, denied the consubstantiality of the incarnate Son of God, looking at Him as the founder of a school, who did not necessarily need to be a perfect God. The desire to be a “new creation,” “renewed by nature,” in other words, the Church of the living God, requires recognizing the full Divinity of Christ. “God became man, so that man could become god,” “The Son of God became the son of man, so that the sons of men could become sons of God,” this is how the meaning of the Incarnation of St. Irenaeus of Lyons and Athanasius the Great. 88 According to the teaching of these great Church Fathers, salvation is impossible without the incarnation and incarnation of the true God. “If a person had not united with God, he could not have become a participant in incorruption,” says St. Irenaeus. 89 “If the Son were a creature, then man would still remain mortal, not united with God,” writes St. Afanasy. 90 The divine services of our Orthodox Church are full of the same thoughts. Here are examples from just one service for the Nativity of Christ: “Today God came to earth, and man ascended to heaven” 91; “In the image and likeness, having been corrupted by crime, seeing Jesus bow down to heaven and dwell in the virgin womb without change, so that in it he would renew the decayed Adam” 92 ; “Let all creation rejoice and play, for Christ has come to renew us and save our souls” 93 ; “Having been decayed by crime, having been in the image of God, all the corruption that exists, the best fallen away of divine life, is again renewed by the wise Creator” 94 ; “Having received the desire of God for the coming of the redness of Christ, people, having been honored, are now consoled by the rebirth” 95 ; “To restore and glorify human fallen nature has clearly come” 96 - these are the words of St. The Church puts into the mouth the born Lord. The Orthodox Church is the bearer of the idea of ​​the real salvation of man, his complete rebirth, renewal, re-creation and deification, which man cannot achieve on his own, no matter how much he philosophizes. The Church, in order to be precisely the Church - a society of renewed humanity, requires the incarnation of the Son of God, and therefore for church people who have perceived the full height of the religious ideal of St. Church, Jesus Christ has always been and is the Son of God, consubstantial with God the Father. “Others,” writes St. Irenaeus, - they 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.” 97 During the time of St. Irenaeus, some false scientists claimed that the whole work of Christ consisted in the fact that He gave a new law instead of the old one, which He abolished. St. Irenaeus, on the contrary, argues that it was not a new law, not a new teaching that was the goal of Christ’s coming, but precisely the restoration of the fallen human being. “If you,” he writes, “have the following thought: “What new did the Lord bring with His coming?”, then know that He brought everything new by the fact that He brought Himself and thereby renewed and revived man.” 98 If someone denies the Church with its religious ideal, then Christ for him, naturally, becomes only in the category of sage teachers, next to Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Lao Tzu and others. Moreover, Christ turns out to be far from an independent teacher. Helpful science points to many different sources, even Babylonian legends and myths, from which the teachings of Christ were allegedly borrowed. Christ is likened to a bad scholar who composes his own work, not always successfully compiling from various other people’s books. The enemies of Christianity gloatingly point to these results of “scientific” research and declare that, in essence, Jesus the Nazarene did not give any new teachings. He, they say, only repeated what was said before Him and what, they say, they would have known without Him. But for someone who believes in the Church, all these speeches about various “influences” on Christianity do not make the slightest sense, because the essence of the work of Christ, as it is said, is not only in teaching, but also in salvation. “God sent... His only begotten Son, that we might have life through Him” (1 John 4:9, cf. 1 John 5:13). Even though in the teachings of earthly sages there are insights of truth close to Christianity, but Christ, the Son of God, created the Church, sent down the Holy Spirit and thereby laid the foundation for a new life, which no sage from the human race could do. It was precisely for the creation of the Church that the descent to earth of the Son of God and His death on the cross was necessary. And therefore, everyone who separates Christianity from the Church sooner or later comes to the blasphemy of denying Christ the God-man and comes precisely because when they deny the Church, the God-manhood of Christ becomes unnecessary for them. The tragedy of churchless Christianity Quite a few people have divorced among us who dream of some kind of churchless Christianity. These people seem to constantly have an anarchic system of thinking; They are either not capable, or more often, they are simply too lazy to think through their thoughts to the end. But, not to mention the most obvious contradictions of this churchless Christianity, one can always see that there is absolutely no grace-filled Christian life, grace-filled inspiration, or enthusiasm in it. When people take the Gospel, forgetting that the Church gave it to them, for them it is like the Koran dropped from heaven by Allah. When they somehow manage to look through the teachings about the Church in the Gospel, then all that remains of all Christianity is one teaching, just as powerless to recreate life and man as any other teaching. Our ancestors Adam and Eve wanted to become “like gods” without God, relying on the magical power of a beautiful apple. Likewise, many of our contemporaries dream of being saved without the Church and without the God-Man, although with the Gospel. They hope in the book of the Gospel just as Adam and Eve hoped for the apple of paradise. But the book turns out to be unable to give them new life. People who deny the Church constantly talk about “Evangelical principles”, about the Gospel teaching, but Christianity as life is completely alien to them. In its churchless form, Christianity is just a sound, sometimes sentimental, but always caricatured and lifeless. It was these people, denying the Church, who made Christianity, in the words of V.S. Solovyov, “deadly boring.” “When the building of the Church is destroyed, and an edifying sermon stands on a bare, poorly leveled site, it turns out sad and even terrible,” said David Strauss. Protestant false teaching is also disgraced by similar lifelessness. What have Protestants achieved by darkening the idea of ​​the Church with their philosophies? We have achieved only disunity, and the most hopeless disunion. Protestantism is constantly fragmenting into sects. There is no Protestant church life, but there is some kind of “barely alive” life of individual sects and communities. Protestantism killed the general church life for which the Lord Jesus Christ prayed in the High Priestly Prayer. In fact, the extreme orthodoxies of Protestantism are much closer to Orthodox Christians than to rationalist Protestants, who have nothing in common with Christianity except the name arbitrarily and without any reason assigned to themselves, fortunately they are not brought to trial for this. What kind of unity is possible between them? What kind of common life can they have? We are not saying all this on our own behalf. In moments of frankness, the Protestants themselves say the same thing, even more sharply. “The country,” writes one of them, “which was the cradle of the Reformation, becomes the grave of the Reformed faith. The Protestant faith is dying. All recent works on Germany, as well as all personal observations, agree on this.” 99 “Isn’t it noticeable in our theology that its representatives have lost everything positive?” - asks another. 100 Even sadder are the words of the third: “The vitality of Protestantism is exhausted in the confusion of dogmatic schools, theological discord, church strife... The Reformation is forgotten or despised; the word of God, for which the fathers died, is doubted; Protestantism is fragmented, weak, powerless.” 101 And the Orthodox researcher of Lutheranism ends his work with this bleak conclusion: “Left to themselves, to their subjective reason and faith, the Lutherans boldly followed the wrong path. An autonomous and autodictative personality perverted Christianity, perverted the most symbolic doctrine, placing Lutheranism on the brink of destruction. The authorities of the first reformers are more and more rejected in Lutheranism, the community of beliefs is more and more destroyed, and Lutheranism is coming closer and closer to its spiritual death.” 102 Recently, many phenomena have occurred in Protestantism that have revealed the destructiveness and falsity of the separation of Christianity from the Church made by Protestantism. Among the pastors there appeared those who not only did not preach Christ crucified to their parishioners, but even denied the very existence of a personal God (Yato). Others openly expressed sympathy for one of the malicious enemies of Christianity (Dreus), who, hiding behind science, argued that Christ never lived on earth at all, and that, therefore, all the Gospels are just fables. Many people here tend to call Protestants Christians. It is difficult to assume about such people that they are of sound mind (see above the words of St. Athanasius the Great). After all, it is now clear to everyone that, having lost the Church, Protestants also lose Christ the God-Man. At present, Protestants already openly admit that in Germany no more than a third of pastors recognize the Divinity of Christ. What is this if not spiritual death? For “he who does not have the Son of God,” according to the word of the Apostle, “does not have life!” (1 John 5:12) Once upon a time in Moscow there was a lot of noise with the World Christian Student Union. Various missionaries of this union, various Mr. Mottas and Misses Rouss, came to the center of Russian Orthodox shrines and preached in English to the Russian students. It was said that the union is non-confessional; it represents freedom for every Christian religion. Religions are united in a union “on a federal basis.” Consequently, the possibility of some kind of common Christianity, independent of the Church, is assumed. But precisely because of this, the union is something stillborn. Is there any Christian life in this “union”? If there is, it is the most pathetic. Imagine a “congress” of Christian student organizations, which was attended by “delegates of federally united confessional factions”, a “congress”, with its “resolutions”, “wishes” and so on. If some kind of unity occurs, then how utterly inferior it is to genuine church Orthodox life! Only for someone who wanders “in a country far away” not only from holy Orthodoxy, but also from all faith, only for that person can a barely living life in unity on some “federal principles” seem like some kind of revelation, a joy for an empty soul. What a blessing, in comparison with these glimpses of life, is the fullness of Orthodox conciliar life! When you hear about the reports and arguments of the World Christian Student Union, your heart is filled with sadness and bitterness. So many thirsty for God, so many sincere people thirsting for life are “perishing in hunger”, “fed from the horns” of some overseas student union! Do they really not know how one can have an abundance of bread in the house of the Heavenly Father, in the Orthodox Church? You just need to forget all “federal principles”, freely surrender to full obedience to the Orthodox Church and cleave to the fullness of church life, the life of the body of Christ. There have been cases when frivolous people decided to create a world religion in an armchair way, sending out millions of appeals with an invitation to unite in this “common religion”, the draft of which was attached to the appeals. But this project was drawn up in the most general terms: a Catholic and a Protestant, a Mohammedan and a Jew could subscribe to it with equal convenience. And, of course, if all people agreed with this project, it would not at all unite them among themselves. General abstract provisions would not oblige anyone to anything, people would remain the same, no one would receive any salvation. The idea of ​​uniting people on the basis of any teaching is completely insane; this requires a special supernatural power, which the one holy, catholic Church of Christ possesses. With regard to all these and similar phenomena of our modern life, it is quite easy to answer the question: on what soil could they appear and what is their meaning? The basis for them is precisely that the true Christian Orthodox ideal of the Church turned out to be too high for many of our contemporaries. Christ came to earth to renew human nature. For this renewal He created the Church. The update is not done without difficulty. Here, according to the Apostle, it is necessary to fight until there is blood (Heb. 12:4), to fight, of course, with sin. But people have fallen in love with their sinful nature, they have fallen in love with sin and do not want to part with it. Now people are so ossified in their selfishness that the Orthodox ideal of the Church seems to them some kind of violence against the individual, an incomprehensible and unnecessary despotism. The Orthodox ideal of the Church requires from everyone a great deal of selfless humility and love in general, and therefore for the love-poor hearts of our contemporaries, for whom their sinful self-love is most precious, this ideal seems an unbearable burden. How can this be? Oh, humanity knows very well what to do in such cases! When some ideal seems too heavy to bear, it is replaced with something more similar, the ideal itself is belittled, distorting its essence, but sometimes leaving its former name. After all, how many have now given up on the ideal of love(!) They say that building a social life on the basis of love is a completely unrealizable dream, which it is better to abandon in advance, so that it doesn’t get worse later. Moreover, passion for the ideal of church life, even religious life in general, is downright called harmful; it seems to slow down the progress of social life. Leaving love, as unsuitable in public life, only for the “private” needs of man, they turned all their attention exclusively to the right, with which they think to heal all social ills. Along with this, virtue is generally replaced by observance of order and external decency. Gold is expensive, and to replace it they invented gilding, and to replace the missing virtue they invented decency. They do exactly the same with the ideal of the Church, which requires complete unity of souls and hearts. The Church is replaced by Christianity - a completely, as we have already said, indefinite value. Conscience sometimes remains calm: after all, “Christianity” is a decent name! And without the Church, you can substitute whatever you like under this name. Here one cannot help but notice the crafty action of the murderer, the ancient serpent. Demons take on the image of an angel of light because their own appearance is disgusting to humans. It is not so easy to persuade a person to complete atheism and blasphemy. The devil knows this, and therefore he takes a roundabout route, suggesting only to separate Christianity from the Church in full confidence that without the Church people will still reach atheism, lose salvation and will be in his power after death. The devil, even now, as during the temptation of Christ in the desert, resorts to the help of the Scriptures to prove the possibility of the separation of Christianity from the Church. But the trouble of our time is that no one wants to sincerely admit their spiritual poverty, the hardening of their hearts to the point that the ideal of the Church has become difficult and even incomprehensible. No, having replaced gold with copper, they do not want to attribute any value to gold itself. Now they are attacking the Church with bitterness and denying the very idea of ​​the Church, hypocritically hiding behind loud and stereotyped, boring phrases about “personal freedom”, about the “individual refraction” of Christianity, about the religion of freedom and spirit. Christ's ideal of a single church society (“that they may all be one, as We are one” (John 17:22)) turns out to be degraded and disfigured, and therefore it loses its vital significance. Churchless Christianity, some kind of “evangelical” Christianity, various worldwide Christian student unions - all this is nothing more than a belittlement and distortion of Christ’s idea of ​​the Church, which kills all truly Christian grace-filled church life. St. Irenaeus of Lyons did not allow the possibility of separating Christian truth from the Church. “We should not,” he wrote, “look for the truth from others, which is easy to obtain from the Church, for the apostles, like a rich man in a treasury, completely collected into it everything that relates to the truth, so that everyone who wishes takes from it the drink of life. She is, precisely, the door of life, and all others are thieves and robbers.” Forgetting this truth has always led everyone only to error. About the apostates of his time, St. Irenaeus writes: “They do not feed for life from their mother’s breasts, do not use the purest source that comes from the body of Christ, but dig themselves broken wells from earthly ditches and drink rotten water from the mud, moving away from the faith of the Church, so as not to be converted, and rejecting the Spirit, so as not to come to their senses. Having become alienated from the truth, heretics are rightfully carried away by every error that is agitated by them, from time to time thinking about the same subjects and never having a firm opinion, wanting to be more sophists of words than students of truth” 103. The same sad fate of “wandering” befalls apostates from the Church even now. That is why there are so many different, very bizarre “searches” in our time, because the truth of the Church has been forgotten. In the apostolic age, those who were being saved were added to the Church, and “out of all the strangers, no one dared to come to them” (Acts 5:13). Then there was no opportunity for the question: where is the Church? It was a clear and definite value, sharply separated from everything non-church. Now between the Church and the “world” there is some kind of intermediate environment. Now there is no clear division: Church and non-Church. There is also some kind of vague Christianity, and not even Christianity, but a general abstract religion. The light of the Church has been darkened by these unclear concepts of Christianity and religion, and all seekers see it poorly, which is why the “search” so often turns into “wandering.” And hence in our days there is such an abundance of “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7). A kind of sport of “God-seeking” has opened up, so to speak; “God-seeking” itself became the goal. After all, it is possible to think about many of our “God-seekers” that if their quests were crowned with success, they would feel extremely unhappy and would immediately begin to engage in “God-making” with the same zeal. Indeed, in the search for God, many in our time actually made a “name” for themselves. And I remember the harsh verdict of His Grace Bishop Michael (Gribanovsky) on all searches in general: “That is why they are searching because they are left without principles; and while the best ones are looking for, the worst ones take advantage of the hustle and bustle and cheat without any twinge of conscience. And what kind of conscience is there if no one knows what is truth, what is good, what is evil!” 104 Intermediate concepts of religion and Christianity only alienate many people from the truth, because for those who sincerely seek God they are a kind of ordeal. Many people take the path of these quests and ordeals, but not everyone successfully completes it. A significant part still “goes through ordeals” without finding blissful peace for themselves. Finally, in this sphere, so to speak, of half-light, half-truth, in this sphere of the unspoken and uncertain, in this “world of the unclear and unresolved,” the soul itself shrinks, becomes flabby, poorly susceptible to grace-filled inspiration. Such a soul will try to “search” even when it finds it. A sad type of “religious loafers” is being created, as F. M. Dostoevsky called him. The noted state of affairs imposes a special responsibility on all church people in our time. Church people are much to blame for the fact that they clearly indicate to all “seekers” and poorly illuminate by their example the final path of quest. And this point is not an abstract concept of Christianity, but precisely the Church of the living God. One can judge from the example of many people who have gone through the tedious path of quest to the end that complete peace comes only when a person believes in the Church, when he accepts with his whole being the idea of ​​the Church in such a way that for him the separation of Christianity from the Church will be unthinkable. Then the “feeling of church life” really begins. A person feels that he is a branch of the great, ever-blooming and ever-youngest tree of the Church. He recognizes himself not as a follower of any school, but as a member of the body of Christ, with whom he has a common life and from whom he receives this life. Because only the one who believes in the Church, who is guided by the statutes of the Church to evaluate the phenomena of life and in the direction of his personal life, who finally “felt the church life within himself,” he and only he is on the right path. Much that previously seemed vague and tempting will become undoubted and clear. It is especially dear that in times of general vacillation, hesitation from side to side, from right to left and from left to right, every church person feels how he is standing on an unshakable age-old rock, how firmly he is under his feet. The Holy Spirit still breathes in the Church today The Spirit of God lives in the Church. This is not a dry and empty dogmatic position, preserved only out of respect for antiquity. No, this is precisely “truth, experientially cognizable” by everyone who has been imbued with church consciousness and church life. The grace-filled life of the Church cannot even be the subject of dry scientific study; it can be studied by an experienced person. About the life of grace, clearly felt, human language can always speak only vaguely and darkly. Only those who have it know about Church life; for him it does not require proof, but for those who do not have it, it is almost unprovable. Therefore, for a member of the Church, it should be the task of his entire life to constantly, more and more, unite with the life of the Church, and at the same time, preach specifically about the Church to others, without replacing it with Christianity, without replacing it with dry and abstract teaching. There should be no concession made here. There is no Christianity, no Christ, no grace, no truth, no life, no salvation - there is nothing without the Church, and everything exists only in the one Church! Too often they now talk about the lack of life in the Church, about the “revitalization” of the Church. We find it difficult to understand all these speeches and are very inclined to recognize them as completely meaningless. Life in the Church can never dry up, for until the end of the age the Holy Spirit abides in it (John 14:16). And there is life in the Church. Only churchless people do not notice this life. The life of the Spirit of God is incomprehensible to spiritual man; it even seems to him foolishness, for it is accessible only to spiritual man. We, people of a spiritual mindset, are rarely given a sense of church life. Meanwhile, even now people, simple in heart and pious in life, constantly live by this feeling of grace-filled church life. You especially feel this church atmosphere, this church breath in monasteries. This is where you become convinced of the power and reality of God’s grace living in the Church! You marvel and thank God when you see that church life really regenerates a person, makes him a “new creature.” Here the mind is enlightened, high, pure views are created, the heart is softened by love, and joy descends on the soul. Those who have apostatized from the Church, proud of their enlightenment, are, in fact, incomparably lower and ruder than the simpleton monk living the church life. No, in our opinion, we do not need to talk about the lack of life in the Church, but only about the lack of church consciousness in us. Many live the church life without even clearly realizing it. And even if we consciously live the church life, we preach little about the good of this life. We usually argue with outsiders about Christian truths, forgetting about church life. Teaching, theory, dogma in our eyes seem to stand above church life. We, too, are sometimes capable of replacing the Church with Christianity, and life with abstract teaching. Our trouble is that we ourselves value our Church and the great good of church life little. We do not confess our faith in the Church boldly, clearly and definitely. Believing in the Church, we constantly seem to apologize for the fact that we (still) believe in it. We read the ninth article of the Creed without much joy and even with a guilty look. A church person is now often greeted with the exclamation of Turgenev’s prose poem: “Do you still believe? Yes, you are a completely retarded person!” And how many have so much courage to boldly confess: “Yes, I believe in the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church, I belong to the holy Orthodox Church, and therefore I am the most advanced person, for in the Church that new life for which the Son of God came to the sinful earth is only possible; Only in the Church can one come to the measure of the full stature of Christ, - therefore, only in the Church is true progress, true salvation possible!” Isn’t it more common to answer the question: “Are you not one of Christ’s disciples?” Are we ready to groan and swear: “I don’t know the man”? Therefore, the urgent need of the present time can be considered an open confession of the immutable truth that Christ created the Church and that it is completely absurd to separate Christianity from the Church and talk about some kind of Christianity other than the holy Orthodox Church of Christ. This truth, we think, will illuminate for many the final point of their painful quest, will show it to them not in lifeless teaching, even if it is the Gospel, but in church life, where they will truly be freed “from the snare of the devil, who has ensnared them in his will” (2 Tim. 2:26). This truth will help us recognize church life and “gather the scattered” children of the church, so that they will all be one, as the Lord Jesus Christ prayed before His suffering. Look how the poor bird struggles as it flies in the strong wind! How uneven is her flight! Either it flies up, then it flips it down, then it moves a little forward, then again it takes it far back. This is how man is carried about by the winds of false teachings. But just as a bird calms down in its nest in the dense branches of a tree and looks peacefully from its shelter at the storm rushing by, so a person finds peace when he resorts to the Church. From his quiet refuge he looks at the fierce storm “near the church walls”, grieves for the unfortunate people who are caught by this storm outside the Church and hesitate to take refuge under its gracious shelter, and prays to the Lord: “Unite them with your holy catholic and apostolic Church, so that they too may glorify with us the most honorable and magnificent name in the Trinity of the glorified God.” Father's will. Edition edited by E.M. Prilezhaeva. St. Petersburg. 1893. pp. 3, 6. "Reminders," I, 25–26. Kazan 1904, pp. 47, 48. Ascetic statutes, ch. XVIII. Creations, part 5 ed. 4. Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra 1902, pp. 359, 360. Letter 62. Creations, ed. 2 Kyiv. 1891, part 1, pp. 363–364 About the Lord's Prayer. Creations, part 2, pp. 221, 217. Interpretation in Hebrew John, book. 11, ch. 11. Creations, ed. Moscow Spirit. Acad., part 15, Sergiev Posad 1912, pp. 105–112 passim. Only recently did Metropolitan Anthony (Khrapovitsky) draw the attention of theological science to this idea. Rome. 12:4, 5; 1 Cor. 6:15; 10:17; 12:13, 27; Ephesus 1:23; 4:4, 12, 16, 25; 5:23, 30; Col. 1:18, 24; 2:19; 3:15. Letter 63 to Cilius, ch. 13 Creations, part 1, page 397. Interpretation on the Gospel of John, book. 11, ch. 11. Creations, part 15, Sergiev Posad 1912, pp. 109–110. Interpretation on the Gospel of John, book. 10, ch. 2. Creations part 14 Sergievsky Posad 1909, p. 324. See 1 Cor. 12:11, 13 . Ephesus 4:3–4, 7, etc. On the Epistle to the Ephesians, discourse 9. Creations, ed. St. Petersburg Theological Academy, vol. 11, p. 86. On the Epistle to the Ephesians, discourse 11. Creations, vol. 11, p. 96. Creations part 7. Moscow 1861, p. 434. Creations, ed. Kyiv Spirit, Academy of books. 17, p. 297. Interpretation on the last in Kazan 1867, p.123. Let us give another interpretation of the Orthodox theologian Prof. Bogdashevsky (later Bishop Vasily). “...The unity of the Spirit is the unity that the Spirit makes or produces—it is the unity that dwells in the Church, from the Spirit of God.” Message of St. ap. Paul to the Ephesians. Kiev 1904, p. 505. 1John 2:5, 3:17, 4:9; Rome. 5:6; compare 1 Cor. 13:15; 2Sol. 3:5. On the last to Eph., conversation 11, 1. Creations, vol. 11, p. 96. For a detailed interpretation of this verse, see Prof. Bogdashevsky, cit. cit., pp. 557–565, as well as in Iv. Mansvetova. New Testament teaching about the Church. Moscow 1879, pp. 143–160. “He (the Apostle) expressed his thoughts rather unclearly because he wanted to express everything suddenly,” says St. John Chrysostom. On the last to Ephesus. demon 11, 3. Creations, vol. 11, p. 100. On the last to Ephesus. demon 11, 3. Creations, vol. 11, pp. 100–101. In epist Ephesios. Migne, P. G., t. 95, clo. 844 A. Interpretation on the last to Ephesus. Kazan 1881, p. 132. Interpreter of the last St. Ap. Paul to Ephesians, ed. 2. Moscow 1883, p. 307. St. John Chrysostom. On the last to Ephesus. demon 11, 3. Creations part 11, pp. 100–102. St. Cyprian Carth. On the unity of the Church, ch. 5. Creations part 2, p. 180. 29.St. Cyprian Karf. On the unity of the Church, ch. 5. Creations part 2, p. 180. Comp. Metropolitan. Antonia, Collected Works, vol. 2, p. 16. For a detailed proof of this truth, see the book. prof. V. N. Myshtsina. The structure of the Christian Church in the first two centuries. Sergiev Posad 1909, pp. 144–155. 299 pp. On the unity of the Church, ch. 14. Creations part 2, pp. 188, 189. Letter 43 to Antonian. Creations part 1, page 236. Letter 59 to Stefan. Creations part 1, page 330. Letter 62 to Magnus. Creations part 1, page 360. Letter 55 to Stephen. Creations part 1, page 312. Letter 62 to Magnus. Creations part 1, page 361. On the unity of the Church, ch. XV. Creations, part 2, page 190. See also On the Lord's Prayer, ch. XXIV, part 2, pp. 217–218. Letter 43 to Antonian. Creations part 1, page 239. Letter 62 to Magnus. Creations part 1, page 371. Letter 58 to Quintus. Creations part 1, pp. 326–327. Letter 61 to Pompey. Creations part 1, p. 353. Letter 57 to Januarius. Creations part 1, page 326. Letter 56 to Quintus. Creations, part 1, p. 326. On the unity of the Church, ch. 23. Creations part 2, p. 197. On the unity of the Church, ch. 4, Creations part 2, pp. 179–180. On the unity of the Church, ch. 3. Creations part 2, p. 178. On the unity of the Church, ch. 14. Creations part 2, p. 189. Ibid., p. 190. Compar. Letter 60 to Yubayan. Creations part 1, page 334. On the unity of the Church, ch. 17. Creations part 2, pp. 191–192. Letter 60 to Yubayan. Creations part 1, pp. 334–335. Letter 40 to Cornelius. Creations part 1, page 205. Letter 62 to Magnus. Creations part 1, pp. 360–361. Cyprian refers here to Luke. 11, 23; Matt. 18:17 ; John 2:18. See also letter 57 to Januarius. Creations part 1, pp. 324–325. Letter 61 to Pompey. Creations part 1, page 351. Letter 43. Creations, part 1, page 234. Letter 42 to Cornelius. Creations part 1, page 212. Habere jam non potest Deum patrem, qui Ecclesiam non habet matrem. On the unity of the Church, ch. VI. Creations part 2, p. 181. Compar. Ch. XVII, page 191: one can imagine that he is with Christ who acts against the priests of Christ, separating himself from communion with His clergy and people. Letter 58, ch. I. Creations part 1, p. 325. Letter 58 to Quintus, ch. I. Works, part 1, p. 326. Letter 61 to Pompey, ch. II. Creations part 1, page 351. On the unity of the Church, ch. 11. Creations part 2, pp. 185–186. Comp. Letter 60 to Yubayan. Creations part 1, page 346. Migne, P.L. t. 3, col. 1077–1078. Matt. 16:16; 8:29. Mark. I, 24. Onion. 8:28. Contra litteras Petiliani 3:34, 39. Migne, P.L. t. 43, col. 68. Contra Cresconium. I. 22, 27. Migne, P.L. t. 43, col. 460 De baptismo I, 7, 9. Migne, P.L. t. 43, col. 115. Contra Cressonium. I, 29, 34. Migne, P.L. t. 43, col. 463–464. De baptismo, I, 2, 3. Migne, P.L. t. 43, col. 110. Contra Cressonium. 1:22, 27; IV, 21, 26. Migne, P.L. t. 43, col. 460, 563. In I Ioan. tract. 5, 7. Migne, P.L. t. 35, col. 2015. De baptismo, I, 9,12. Migne, P.L. t. 43, col. 116. De baptismo, I, 10, 14. Migne, P.L. t. 43, col. 117–118. De baptismo, I, 12, 18. Migne, P.L. t. 43, col. 119. De baptismo, I, 12, 19, 20; I, 13, 21. Migne, P.L. t. 43, col. 119, 120, 121. De baptsmo, I, 15, 23. Migne, P.L. t. 43, col. 121. Contra Cresconium II, 14, 17. Migne, P.L. t. 43, col. 477. De baptismo, III, 16, 21. Migne, P.L. t. 43, col. 148. Epist. 61, 2. Migne, PL. t. 43, col. Migne, P.L. t. 33, col. 229. Contra litteras Petiliani 2:77, 172. De baptismo IV, 17, 24. Migne, PL. t. 43, col. 312, 169. Epist. 185, 10, 46. Migne, P.L. t. 33, col. 813. Serm. 268, 2. Migne, P.L. t. 38, col. 1232. Contra Cresconium, II, 12, 15; II, 13, 16; II, 14, 17. Migne, P.L. t. 43, col. 476, 477. Epist. 185, 9, 42. Migne, P.L. t. 33, col. 811. Epist. 208, 6. Epist. 185, 9, 42. Migne, P.L. t. 33, col. 952, 811. Contra epist. Parmaeniani, II, 3, 6. Migne, P.L. t. 43, col. 54. De baptismo, IV, 17, 24. Migne, P.L. t. 43, col. 170. Quest. in heptat. 5, 15. Migne, P.L. t. 34, col. 755. Contra litteras Petiliani, II, 77, 172. Migne, P.L. t. 43, col. 312. De baptismo, 3:16, 21. Migne, P.L. t. 43, col. 148. Against heresies, book. 3, ch. 1, paragraph 1. See the preface to the Geneva edition. "The Gospels Briefly Explained." See prof. A. A. Spassky. History of dogmatic movements in the era of ecumenical councils. Sergiev Posad 1906, p. 651. Prof. Spassky. Quote Op. page 200. See prof. I. V. Popov. The idea of ​​deification in the ancient Eastern Church. Moscow 1909. His own. The religious ideal of St. Athanasius of Alexandria. Holy Trinity Lavra of Sergius 1904. Compare. prof. Spassky. Quote Op. pp. 198–199. Against heresies, book. 3, ch. 18:7. Word 2 against the Arians, ch. 69. Service for the Nativity of Christ, 2nd stichera at litia. On the stichera, stichera on "Glory". Canon of Cosmas, canto 1, troparion 1. Compar. of the same canon, 2nd Troparion of the 3rd Canto: “giving the Divine nature with the communion of the bitter flesh.” Canon of John, canto 9, troparion 2. Compar. of the same canon, 2nd troparion of the 7th canto: “carry the wealth of deification.” Irm. 4th song: “the renewal of the human race, the prophet Habakkuk, singing of old, foretells... the word of people for renewal.” Irmos of the 9th song of the canon at Compline of the forefeast. Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, Chapter 99. Against heresies, book. 4, ch. 34, para. 1. Hohoff. Die Revolution seit dem sechszehnten Jahrhundert. Freburg in Breisgau 1887. S. 150. Kattenbusch. Von Schleirmacher zu Ritschl. Giessen 1893. S. 5. Der Catholic. 1889. Bd. 2. SS. 400–401. N. Terentyev. Lutheran confessional system according to the symbolic books of Lutheranism. Kazan 1910, p. 460. Against heresies, book. 3, ch. 4:1. Against heresies, book. 3, ch. 24:1–2. Letters from His Eminence Michael, the late Bishop of Tauride. Simferopol 1910, p. 178. You might be interested in: