Chapters on Trinity

Published based on the only lifetime publication: S. Bulgakov. Chapters on Trinity. Excursion. The doctrine of hypostasis and essence in Eastern and Western theology // Proceedings of the Orthodox Theological Institute. Vol. I. Paris, 1928. pp. 31–88 (sections one to ten and excursion); S. Bulgakov. Chapters on the Trinity // Proceedings of the Orthodox Theological Institute. Vol. II. Paris, 1930. pp. 57–85 (sections eleven to thirteen). In terms of its problematics and the nature of its disclosure, the “Chapters on the Trinity” are genetically connected both with earlier works, primarily with the “Philosophy of the Name” (since, according to Bulgakov, the meaning of language is rooted in the ontological structure of the Trinity), and with the works of the so-called. "small" and especially "large" trilogies. It can even be argued that the first part of it, “The Lamb of God,” which was published as a separate edition in 1933, in a certain sense, is a logical continuation of the “Chapters,” since it is in it that a new ontological model, different from that set out in “The Never-Evening Light,” is revealed in detail, stated in the work “Hypostasis and Hypostasis” and developed in the “Chapters on the Trinity.” It should be noted that, apparently, the gap of several years in the first publication of the “Chapters” is not only external, “editorial,” but also internal, creative, in nature: sections 11 – 13, in the opinion of the publisher, were actually written later than the entire main work (including the excursion), as evidenced by their obvious anti-Catholic orientation; for the entire work as a whole, a criticism of the Aristotelian tendency in patristics, not only Western but also Eastern, is rather characteristic, with a clearly expressed ontological character of the entire work. Here the publisher found it possible not to break the entire text of the “Chapters”, placing “Excursus” after the main text of the work. A person cannot know God on his own if He Himself does not reveal Himself to him. The revelation about God, entering the mind, tears apart the fabric of its constructions, as something new for the mind, as supernatural. And yet, with illuminating grace, it is sewn into the mind, quenching its anxiety, making the mind understandable to itself, freeing it from its own aporias. 1 If in its content the teaching of revelation exceeds the own powers of reason, then, as a solution to its own questions, the elimination of its riddles, it answers it. The revelation of the supermundane Divinity to man in this sense is human, in accordance with man. In other words, the nature of the spirit and the structure of the mind, its natural problems contain the postulates of the revealed teaching about God, the possibility of its acceptance. The image of God in man, although obscured by sin and error, is the ontological basis of revelation. Anthropology is the natural basis of theology. Of course, it is unable to replace revelation, but it makes it possible to accept it. The human spirit itself contains the postulates of the trinity of the Divine, its stamp lies on it. We need to identify these postulates. A. Aporia of natural consciousness of God. A. Deity as an absolute object, pantheism or theology. A person finds himself in the world, as in some coherent completeness, a unity, which contains and substantiates the person himself. The world is the ideal-real everything, as the intelligible world of ideas - the intellectual basis of the world (Platonism), and together the real all-being, nature, always giving birth and being born - this is all contemplated as beauty, usually as a moral world order, contains everything and in everything, as wholeness or universality: outside of this all, beyond its limits - emptiness, pitch darkness. Substantia sive Deus, natura sive Deus (in Spinoza), Organism (in Aristotle) - the mechanism of causality (in materialists), the one motionless in Parmenides or the current in Heraclitus and the evolutionists, living substance (in hylozoists), nature, like the Divine, monistic in Spinoza or pluralistic in Leibniz 2, etc. And man floats and spreads out in this ocean universal life: he himself, and everything in him and outside of him is Divinity, and there is nothing outside of Divinity and besides him. However, what is it? There is not even us, just as there is no God. Everything goes out, drowns, sinks to the bottom of the ocean - smooth surface, silence and silence: neither light, nor darkness, eternal nothingness, nirvana of the unconscious. Seeking to know God in the world, we have lost ourselves, we have been sucked into the quicksand of this facelessness. We cannot include the idea of ​​the Absolute Object, or the world, in the idea of ​​God, because our cosmic experience, cosmic self-consciousness testifies in favor of this, but on this path we come to self-denial, to metaphysical suicide. This is the insurmountable aporia of naturalism or pantheism, God-consciousness as absolute objectivity: in it the ultimate nihilism of nirvana is realized, the self-consciousness of Buddhism is frozen in the convulsions of this aporia. 3 The absolute objectivity of the world turns out to be in contradiction with the subjectivity of our being. B. Divinity as an absolute subject. Our self is also inseparably united with God. With his hypostatic face, man is turned to the Divine; losing ourselves, we lose God, and in our search for God we must hold tightly to ourselves. An error was made in the balance of the world theology in that our self, which rises to its full height in defense of its violated rights, was discounted. The self is insoluble, but it is also indefinable. Any attempt to define or describe the self (as aseitas or perseitas, integritas, idependentia) 4 concerns individual aspects of the special experience of the self, a personal self-consciousness that can only be named, indicated by a verbal gesture (pronoun). I am indefinable, because it is absolute, everything exists in it, in the rays of its sun, which is the source of light and shadows, forms and colors, but therefore cannot be determined by them. Self-consciousness is therefore not provable, but only demonstrable. I am I, and nothing else, it looks into itself, it is determined by itself. It is not subject to time, because above time, it knows neither origin nor death, it is eternal and abides. Every human self is, in a certain sense, supreme and absolute: it is the eye of eternity, through which only time can be seen, in it there is an eternal day and no immersion in nirvana. (Both states of sleep and unconsciousness interrupt empirical self-awareness, but do not introduce any break in the self-identity of the self). I have everything in myself and for myself (if not in presence, then in possibility). This undermines the cosmic autonomy of pantheism, the pantheistic self-sufficiency of everything, it exists only in the I and for the I, in a sense, it itself is the I, for it is in relation to the I and therefore must be expressed in terms of the I. Such an expression for the world in terms of I, given by Fichte, is not-I: the world is not-I, since it is posited, in contrast to I, as its subject (object). A person can never renounce the self and go beyond its magic circle, because beyond it is death. For us, however, it remains an abstraction or a mystery. It does not exist for the I, the I knows everything, but does not know death and can only accept it by analogy with sleep, as a break in the I that does not violate its self-identity. This is the nature of me. However, its closest consideration leads to aporias, a) I and the world, subject and predicate, subject and object. With all the formal absoluteness of its self-consciousness, the I cannot be satisfied with itself, it rushes about in the mirror cage of its loneliness, from which it strives to break through into the world and merge with it: I-I - not-I-I... An attempt to understand the world only as a non-I (that is, in essence, also like I - its mode or variant) is not crowned with success, because it leads to nothing except a mirror image of the I in myself. There is no world in it, as a reality that lies not only in the self (as not-self, or its border), but also outside the self, behind the self. There is no object in it, but only its place in the subject is indicated, provided that this object exists. But also the object, its unconscious or extraconscious mass, remains dead and dark without the sun of the self lighting up above it. The world exists, has existence only for I and in I, as its non-I, however, not mirror, but real. How can I break through to reality, break my mirror barrier, find peace, realize non-self as some objective possibility? In this case, I becomes not only not-I, but also a certain A, the subject acquires a predicate, the subject receives a name. I am A, I have A, which exists for I. Over the abyss gaping over the absolute subject and the absolute object, a wonderful bridge is erected: there is, being, a continuous flow of existence, life. I live in the world, he lives in me and for me. The world of existence arises. Three points are designated in the development of the absolute subject: subject, object and being, subject, predicate and connective. However, there is still no connection of mutual justification between them. They are given to each other, they ask each other, but they cannot help each other. These are mysterious symbols, a cryptogram of the Divine in trinity. 5 6 Self-realization of the I, overcoming its illusory nature, leads beyond the limits of the I, and thereby makes the position of absolute subjectivity impossible. Having walked this path to the end, and on it we saw an aporia, b) Antinomy of the self in itself. But returning from non-I, from non-existence, into itself, into its bare, self-positing self, the absolute subject also encounters aporia here, runs into antinomy. As Fichte discussed, the self is not given, but self-positing; it is not a given, but an action, actus purus 7 self-positing. This is where the absoluteness of the I manifests itself, that it posits itself, gives itself, in its being does not depend on anyone and is not conditioned by anything. This is how it is seen from the act of self-positing. However, we have already found one boundary of the self, where it encounters the given and, consequently, meets the boundary of its self-positing: this is the area of ​​not-self. But the border also turns out to be within the I itself, as self-positing, as my own action, I am self-sufficient, self-closed: I am I, am I, etc. And at the same time, this self-positing of I, as I, turns out to be inexhaustive, insufficient for the I itself, self-separation and self-splitting appear in it. The I looks into the I and sees itself in itself not directly, as it may seem, but indirectly: the I recognizes itself as I only through the not-I, which is, however, this time not a predicate, not the outer boundary of the I, or the world, but the not-I, as I am, the co-I, that is, you. Without you, or co-I, without I in the other, I am not able to recognize or realize myself in my self-awareness. The I does not exist, does not realize itself, does not exist in its power as “the only one”, as Stirner considers it. 8 When pronouncing: I, we silently say: you. I am I only in relation to another I, or to you, which is, as it were, a shadow of I. But a real, opaque being does not exist without a shadow. It is of decisive importance both for philosophizing and for theology in I hear - you. This is a living miracle, a flight over the abyss, these are the wings of the soul, the kiss of the spirit, the seal of the Divine in this connection of every I with you. How can you recognize you, that is, not-I, which is also I, another I, co-I, you? how to move from I to you? This transition can be made only from myself - in the world of existence there is no you, there are only things, objects in it. You can only be known by the I, which in the I itself reveals itself, is realized in another, is mutually reflected: every I is you for another I, and vice versa, there is I for myself, there is I-you, you-I. You exist in and with I, and yet not as an object, not-I, but as not-I – I, object-subject. An absolute, self-sufficient I does not exist: it turns out that the self-positing of I includes the juxtaposition of you. The personal pronoun exists not only in the first person, but also in the second. Without you, I myself am not valid in my self-positing. However, I posits itself, and you only posit or presuppose it as its precondition. Through this it turns out to be absolutely relative. I exists self-positing, if you exist - outside-I, although the posited I exists with it. Thus, I by itself reveals the antinomy I and you: I-you-I. The direction of the I line depends not only on its own aspiration from I to I, I, etc., but is also determined by the perpendicular you. This one point has two dimensions. But this is still not enough for the realization of the I, for the completeness of its self-positing: if I needs you, then in only one mirror self-reflection this I, just like this you, the mutual I-you, is not yet sufficiently solidified: he needs not only you-I or I-you, but also you-he. Why? Because only then does it remain you, not limited to self-reflection, when the co-I passes to another you, to the co-you. But this affirmed and abiding you, which definitively testifies to the self-realization of the I, to its reality, is already in relation to the I already he or you, standing in the shadows, although capable of emerging from there at any time. I-you is an ongoing meeting in which mutual reliance on each other, mutual reflection takes place. I-you exists in this meeting, still unsteady, doubtful in its unconfirmed state. But it is abiding, calm due to the presence of also he: I-you, (i.e. another I, to which I am addressed) and he-you (another other I, to which neither the first nor the second I is directly addressed), i.e. e, neither I nor you, which is however connected with them, coexists with them and can take the place of any of them. In this sense, he is a guarantee of me and you. In the triangle I-you-he, I can occupy a point of any angle, being on one line with you, and on the other with he. So, the real subject is a certain unity, a trinity of three persons: first, second and third (the secret of the grammar of the personal pronoun). I am not the only person, but the first person, to whom the second and third are assigned. These three exhaust the self-awareness of the self, its self-positing. The closed trinity exhausts the absolute subject, although it contains the possibility of opening and self-repetition into a multitude according to the trinity scheme. This is a trinity: I, as I-you-he, is not an external juxtaposition linked by and (I and you and he), but there is a certain internal and, holding together the triple self-consciousness of I, a unity that opens in three. The genius of language is the plurality of I, expressed by the plural we, which in turn is the basis for you and they. The great mystery is we: how is the plural of I possible? In its immediate self-awareness it is united and may even seem unique; it has no doors or windows, it is an inaccessible and inhabited island. We are not only a grammatical form, but a true revelation in language and the nature of the self, which exists only in the assumption of the self. I am not alone, but collectively, not singular, but plural, and this is evidenced by the genius of language, which fearlessly inflects the personal pronoun into the plural. The absolute subject is I in unity with other I, there is I-we (the category you and they, which can only be understood in the light of we, has a similar meaning). We are ontological love in the I, which lives not only in itself, but also in you and in him, since love is precisely life in the other and by others. And yet, in the self-determination of I, this is precisely what constitutes an aporia leading to antinomy, because for I the juxtaposition of I-we and I-you (and you-he) is an antinomy. The aporia is that I, which posits itself and is in this sense an absolute action, actus purus, actually turns out to be unable to accomplish this self-position, is not its own master, because it cannot strongly co-posit you and he by the act of its self-position, but can only postulate them. T. arr. absolute self-position turns out to be conditional, that is, non-absolute: I exist for myself, since you and he exist, and their existence or non-existence does not depend on my self. My self, as a completely transparent self-positing, becomes incomprehensible, impracticable, contradictory. I bring out for I. C. Subject in relation to everything or to the world (“the only one and his property”). The absolute subject possesses the world in an absolute manner. The world is his self-disclosure. The absolute subject loves himself and contemplates himself in the world with absolute and self-sufficient love. But in this name for oneself, possession for oneself and only for oneself, lies the boundary over which our thinking of the absolute stumbles. If the absolute subject is one, then he is alone in his possession of everything. Love for oneself through one’s revelation is the ultimate metaphysical egoism, and at the same time limitation, the inability to get out of oneself, a certain ontological poverty and scarcity. Any power that recognizes itself as a congregation is richer than this monohypostatic absolute, exhausted by its absoluteness, which has nothing to do with itself, has no one to open up to and no one to love. This luciferic, selfish selfishness (which Spinoza somehow did not feel in his Deus sive natura) destroys the dignity of the absolute, makes it the toy of his egoism, even deprives him of life. You cannot love only yourself, live only in yourself and only for yourself, withdrawing into yourself, without losing your temper. When loving yourself and yours, you need to love not yourself. If you have an object of absolute love, you can love not only with personal love, but also in your own way to love not yourself, but another. Only such love is free love, knowing no boundaries. Just as I does not exist in its uniqueness, but is a shadow of a certain we, so absolute love is not given to an absolute, monohypostatic lonely subject, but requires overcoming the boundaries of metaphysical egoism. Just as the self is a function of multi-unity, conciliarity, so the absolute attitude to the world requires liberation from metaphysical uniqueness. God the despot, autocratic, selfish, exhausted in his self-isolation and having the world only to satisfy egoism, not knowing an equal in himself, is not God. Thus, the postulate of the Divine arises, which, being one, insofar as this stems from its absoluteness, would at the same time be non-one, but in itself conciliar. The concept of the absolute, as the ruler of the world, therefore also leads to aporia, because it turns out to be contradictory. It must simultaneously satisfy the requirements of unity and plurality; the first is distinguished by the absoluteness of the being. The second is the absoluteness of the image of possession. These are the postulates. 2. God as an absolute subject or person The postulates of religious consciousness can only be satisfied by revelation. Reason inevitably experiences aporias, is led to antinomies, and this testifies either to the inaccessibility of the doctrine of God to reason, to a certain fatal illusionism into which it falls (Kant), or reason can find its outcome only on the basis of revelation, which, although exceeding the capabilities of reason, explains its aporias and fulfills its postulates. It must be said that only the frank teaching about the Holy Trinity contains a solution to all the difficulties of natural knowledge of God and provides a way out of its aporias. It is a response to the postulates of reason, which, due to human likeness to God, can only rest on this teaching. Revelation is super-intelligent in the sense that it cannot be found by the forces of reason itself, on the basis of its logical constructions. But it can be given to the mind as a certain spiritual fact or religious experience, which is also suitable for the mind, although it exceeds it - not counter-reasonably, but super-reasonably. The mind strives to understand and cognize the entire universe on its own, as immanent to itself, beginning with itself and ending with itself. Here he can understand himself in the light of divine revelation. In a certain sense, all knowledge has a rational, experimental, empirical basis - the mind is only a counter and recorder of data, albeit a self-legal one. In the revealed teaching about the Holy Trinity, he also has a given for himself, which before him testifies to his relativity. But to see one’s own limit and relativity means to already commit an act of self-knowledge. Revelation testifies, first of all, to a personal God, to God as an Absolute Subject. The personality of the Divine can only be the subject of revelation. Reason is capable, through its logic, of establishing different “properties” of the Divine, if it exists, different qualities of the Divine, following from the concept of it. However, the personality of God, like Her existence, cannot be deduced from any concept, since in general personality, I, stands on the other side of concepts and definitions, as the subjects of all predicates: it is defined, but indefinable, revealed, but inexhaustible. There is no logical bridge of deduction leading from I to another I or to you; every you for I is always some kind of revelation, an experimental fact, a meeting, an emergence from oneself into another. Also, the divine I for a person can be a divine revelation, a divine condescension, by the power of which God speaks about Himself to a person, I and allows a person to say to Himself, You. The Divine Self correlates with the created, becomes on a par with the human Self, one of the I or one of the you. In disbelief, one can speak here of crude anthropomorphism in ideas about the Divine, introducing into it personal limitations and naive human-likeness (from Spinoza to Feuerbach). 9 However, this leaves unsolved the mystery of one’s own human personality, which is assumed to be understandable without any reason. In reality, the possibility of divine condescension, the meeting of the personality of the Divine with the personality of man, testifies to the real God-likeness of man, as the bearer of the hypostatic image of God. The divine I in the mouth of God addressed to man, and the human You addressed by man to God, is a direct expression of this godlikeness. God speaks to man, and man speaks to God: this is the basis for the prayerful communication of man with God, this act of divine condescension and personal revelation of God that is always carried out for man. Prayer is a meeting of a person with God face to face, as I do with I-Thou. The personal character of the Divine is inherent in most pagan, unrevealed and, in a certain sense, false religions, which, however, while religious truths are perverted and obscured by various human admixtures or “psychologisms,” also contain a reflection of God-likeness that is indelibly inherent in man. Man, being a natural icon of the Divine in his hypostatic face, does not part with it, he honors it in paganism, putting his religious experiences into a hypostatic form. However, speaking objectively, here we are really only dealing with anthropomorphisms, projections of one’s self into the realm of vague experiences of paganism. Only in revealed religion does a real meeting of God with man take place. God reveals himself to man first of all as the Absolute Subject, Personality, Existence, Jehovah. Exx. 1:4: God said to Moses: I am who I am—I am who I am. I am I, Hypostasis. I am: to her, the hypostasis, the self-revealed divine existence belongs. Ref. 20:2: I am the Lord your God; Deut. 32:39–40: You see now that it is I, and there is no God besides Me... I raise my hand to heaven and say: I live forever! The self-revelation of God as a Person, an Absolute Subject, runs through the entire Old Testament and ends in the New, where the personal divine-human self-consciousness of Christ, His divine consciousness, which is inseparably linked with God’s sonship, with an appeal to the personality of God the Father, completely reveals God as a collective personality. However, this is where the antinomies of the created self are hidden, and in the face of the Divine Subject all aporias become apparent. The created, human I recognizes itself at the same time (as Fichte clearly shows) I (absolute) and I (relative) and is exhausted by this inconsistency. As a self-positing Self, it is super-temporal and super-experiential, it is the sun, illuminating everything with its light. But like I, it is not self-sufficient, not self-founded, because it needs you, seeks justification in other I, lying outside it, and is thus confined to the non-I (in a different and more intimate way than Fichte saw this). However, other I-yous also cannot sufficiently justify the I. Each of them, also not affirming itself, sends to another, and this again to another, and thus a bad infinity is formed, for each self is like the other, just as powerless and helpless for its own self-justification, and therefore for the justification of the other. It turns out to be an endless running in place from oneself, which cannot stop; I step on a shaky board above the swamp, which, however, does not withstand its weight and itself plunges into the swamp, unless it immediately moves to another, equally shaky board, etc., and there is no exit from the swamp, there is no solid ground. The antinomy of the absolute-relative self is resolved by bad movement in bad infinity, that is, it is not resolved at all. It is obvious that our I can settle, attach itself, lean against only the Absolute Subject, which grounds itself. Only from the truly absolute Self, from God, does our self draw strength, life and being. It becomes a genuine, real self only by looking into the divine Self, cognizing it as an image, a reflection of the Divine sun. Every reflection is also the sun, albeit a created one, as a repetition of the single, absolute sun. God is the absolute Self, igniting with Himself the light of my human self. For him, it is also the absolute You, which through it affirms my self for me, for in the face of another, unconditional I, which is for me at the same time a non-self, You, receives reality and my own self. Personal self-consciousness is the great revelation in us of the Divine, I in I and you. These repetitions or reflections of the Absolute Self in their multiplicity form a hierarchy of beings, a living ladder. In the light of the self, pagan polytheism, the idea of ​​a plurality of personal divine beings, receives a special meaning and significance. It is not enough to see here helpless anthropomorphism, which multiplies the gods on the basis that the number of people is plural. No, polytheism also testifies to the deeper helplessness of the self in self-justification, forcing it to slide from one you to another. In the area of ​​absolute-relative I, our I can neither settle down nor calm down, because there are many of them. This is the possibility and, to a certain extent, even justification of polytheism within the limits of natural religious self-awareness. At least, his henotheism 10 (which differs little from monotheism) is no higher: he arbitrarily stops at one deity where a fundamental plurality of them is possible. Of the many relative selves, for some reason, but without sufficient grounds, only one is chosen, which, however, is in no way superior to the other possibilities. Polytheism is a victim of “transcendental illusion”, since it wants to quantitatively resolve qualitative difficulties, but henotheism does not even notice them and does not try to escape into illusion. Polytheism can be overcome not from the outside, but from the inside, not by henotheism, but by monotheism, the religion of the absolute Divine Person. So, religion in general begins where the human I meets the divine I, as with the Thou; or, conversely, God, the Divine Self, addresses man with you. It is a dialogue between man and God in prayer and God with man in revelation. Praying is therefore an inescapable sign of religion - where there is no prayer, there is no religion (although there may be contemplative or mystical immersion). Great, but faceless, it extinguishes the self, and therefore extinguishes religion, which always and invariably presupposes the clear light of self-consciousness, even when liberated from the boundaries of creatureliness, even during deification. When a person, becoming “god by grace,” lives a divine life, he still retains personal self-awareness, without which there is no place for love (more on that below). In this sense, religion is a personal matter that takes place only between individuals - God and man. And if every exodus from the secluded island of I to another I is logically inexplicable, then this transition from I to the divine I-Thou is a thunderous, unceasing miracle. 3. Properties of the absolute subject The question of the difference between henotheism and monotheism, as arbitrary, unproven or internally justified, justified monotheism, returns to us again. What conditions does the Absolute Subject meet, by virtue of which He can, in fact, be the beginning and basis for relative subjects? He must contain in himself those conditions that the relative subject has outside himself and seeks his justification outside himself. I don't exist without you and him; it is revealed only in you and you. It is collective in its consciousness, being individual in existence. Therefore, it needs to get out of itself and seeks its justification outside of itself. But this lack of self-sufficiency is precisely what makes it relative. In the Absolute Subject this lack of self-sufficiency and this relativity must be overcome. He himself must be everything necessary for his existence. The Absolute I must be in itself and for itself Absolute You, and Absolute He, it must be in itself and for itself also Absolute We and You. Is such an unthinkable and unknown existence feasible? Is there an Absolute Subject who is both I-Thou-He and also I-We-You? Revelation teaches about the Absolute Subject as the Trinitarian God, and this teaching is precisely the one that corresponds to the postulates revealed in our self-consciousness. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which exceeds the boundaries of existence known to us and comprehended by reason, fully responds to these postulates of personal self-consciousness. The Absolute Subject is a Trinitarian Subject, one and multiple in its trinity, realizing personal self-consciousness in the depths of the divine life of the Single Subject in all its images. Unity as Trinity, and Trinity as Unity, the trinity of the Divine Spirit is the answer to all postulates and the outcome of all aporias. This possibility is equally unrealizable either within the limits of a closed personal self-consciousness and religiously corresponding henotheism, or within the limits of an open and transcending personal self-consciousness and religiously corresponding polytheism. The first postulates a strict and closed monotheism, the second puts forward the idea of ​​Olympus, the family of gods, which expresses opposition to monotheism, along with the powerlessness to get out of the aporia of personal self-consciousness and its dialectics on its own. But both contain the postulates of the Trinity, which are fully fulfilled in the church dogma of the Trinitarian God. The properties of the dogma are such that, on the one hand, it expresses the non-hypostatic nature of the Divine (which overthrows the monohypostatic nature of henotheism, for example, in Islam, in Judaism of the anti-Christian direction), and at the same time the unity of the trinitarian God as the Absolute Subject. In the Old Testament Revelation, in the very first chapters of the book of Genesis, we come across a stunning fact: God is spoken of in the singular and in the plural, more precisely, in the singular-plural, which is a completely special merging of both into something higher, multi-unity, trinity. If we are not content with flat rationalistic interpretations, which see here only the influence of pagan polytheism, the product of religious syncretism, if we listen to the mysterious revelation of these texts, we will see here a living revelation about the Self (as well as You and He). First of all, God is spoken of here in the plural – Elohim – with a clear reference to the one God. Life 1:26: Let us make man in our image and likeness. Life 3:22: Behold Adam was as one from Us, Gen. 11:6–7: Come, let us go down and confuse their tongues; Life 18:1–3: He appeared to Abraham (the God of the oak of Mamre) and three men stood before them (further appears to be an impersonal alternation and confusion of the singular and plural). This I-We, when applied to the Face of God, reveals the secret of the nature of the Absolute Subject, in which the I is realized as a multi-unity. In the New Testament, this unity is revealed more fully and more accurately as trinity, as the Most Holy Trinity in Unity and Unity in Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All three persons of the Holy Trinity are depicted, on the one hand, as having each their own hypostatic existence - the Father and the Son throughout all the Gospels, especially John, the Father and the Son and the Comforter Spirit (in the farewell conversation of the Lord), differing in their appearance and action: in the Epiphany, in the Transfiguration of the Lord, in Pentecost. And this is abundantly evidenced in the apostolic epistles. 4. The suprareasonableness of the dogma of the Trinity Before focusing on the properties of each individual hypostasis in concreto, it is permissible to dwell on hypostasis in general, in abstracto. In a certain sense, we can say that the triplicity of the Absolute Subject, or trinity, logically precedes the definitions of individual hypostases in their specific relationship, such as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. This trinity is an initial given, which is realized and concretized in the Holy Trinity. Catholic scholastic theology has set itself a false task, which has partly infected Orthodoxy, namely to substantiate the individual hypostases in the Holy Trinity by their specific mutual differences, hypostatic relationships. Meanwhile, such a task is false, because trinitarianism is rooted in the very nature of the Absolute Subject and therefore does not require any concrete justification. The dogma of the Holy Trinity states that the one God exists in three hypostases, having an indivisible single being, and all of them are equal, and each of them is the one true God (cf. definitions of the creed of St. Athanasius). 11 Sometimes the dogma is depicted in such a sense that trinity refers to the hypostases, unity to nature. A direct consequence of this is the complete rationality of the dogma, since trinity and unity are understood in different respects. 12 – However, such an interpretation of dogma overly adapts it to rational definitions. Trinity can be understood as trinity both in relation to essence and hypostasis. The Divine Person, the Divine Subject, is not threefold (as is involuntarily allowed in such an interpretation of the dogma), but triune. The absolute hypostasis is trinitarian and united - the trinity in one; therefore the divine essence is triune and one, since it is realized in the triune subject. Otherwise, the trinity of the three would be established only through their relationship to the triune essence; in the hypostases, not trinity, but triplicity would be accepted. If we focus our attention only on the Absolute Subject, on the Trinitarian Person, then here only the equality of all three hypostases is valid, for which even the order in mutual relations does not matter: “in this Trinity the first and the last are nothing, nothing more or less: but the whole three hypostases are co-essential in themselves and equal”... If we focus our attention on the Divine nature, then here the Divine receives full power unity: “The Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one Divinity, equal glory, coexistent majesty. As is the Father, such is the Son, such is the Holy Spirit: neither are there three gods, but one God.” However, these are just different sides of the same dogma. Unity and triplicity are not placed here in different images, so as to be united without hindrance, as it were, in the common possession of a single essence by three: such joint possession of a common object by three, of course, does not establish unity, but only triplicity, triplicity, triple repetition of the same thing (i.e., it presupposes either tritheism, omiusianism, or modalism). 13 On the contrary, unity and trinity mutually intersect in three directions, with a cross, establishing trinity: the trinity of hypostases in the unity of the trinitarian Deity, equality 3=1, in one direction, and hypostasis in relation to one, not common to all (as dogma is involuntarily replaced in rationalism), but a single essence, equality 1=3, in the other direction. Three I, We in one I, and the triune I in a single nature, the problem of three in one and one in three. Here is the boundary of reason, denoted by the antinomy of the trinity. Super-reasonability, however, is not counter-reason; here the postulates of reason are satisfied, which are recognized individually, but cannot be fulfilled by the forces of reason in the aggregate, but lead to a reasonable antinomy. This is precisely the doctrine of the Holy Trinity in the face of reason. We have already found the postulates of reason: a) God is one, as a personal Spirit, has one hypostasis and one essence; b) God cannot be mono-hypostasis, for the absolute hypostasis is realized only in the fullness of I-you, and the being of God does not put up with God’s mono-hypostatic possession of his nature, with metaphysical loneliness and egoism. On the one hand, the postulate of strict monotheism, and on the other, the inconsistency of monohypostasis, leading to its denial. The dogma connects both postulates: - unity, although not loneliness, - uniqueness, but not solitude, - individuality, although not monohypostasis. It is necessary to preserve all the strength of both unity and non-loneliness, without dulling the edge of antinomy, for in antinomy is the strength of dogma, its highest rationality, which is revealed in its correspondence to the highest postulates of reason. An attempt to tip the scales to one side, to upset the balance of dogma, fatally leads to heresy. There are two poles of antinomy: monotheism, monarchianism 14 and tritheism, tritheism, which abolishes monotheism and turns the trinity into a kind of Olympus. The first, monarchianism, has existed from the first centuries of Christianity to the present day. It has numerous and varied faces. It is also expressed in subordinationism, the establishment of inequality in the Holy Trinity, resulting in the subordination of one hypostasis to another: the Father is higher than the Son, and the Son is higher than the Holy Spirit; in this way a hierarchy is obtained within the Godhead, with the Divine dignity belonging only to the Father. Or monarchianism is expressed in modalism, 15 in which the hypostases are only different and consistent, successive images of the revelation of the one-hypostatic Deity (Sabellianism). This heretical adaptation of dogma to the needs of rational understanding removes the antinomy at the cost of significant one-sidedness (which, strictly speaking, primarily means heresy - αϊρησις) in the doctrine of the Divine. The opposite pole to monarchianism (or unitarianism) in the understanding of the Holy Trinity is occupied by tritheism, which transforms the three hypostases into three separate gods. As a direct presentation of this teaching, tritheism did not enjoy influence and spread, but in a hidden form it can creep in against the will into orthodox constructions. So, it is necessary to establish with all our might the dogma of the Holy Trinity: one God in three hypostases, God the Trinity, speaking of Himself equally I and We, the Trinity is One God, and each hypostasis, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, is a perfect and true God. T. arr. a series of dynamic equalities that are inconceivable for reason, which rationally and statically are inequalities: one God is the Holy Trinity, God is the Father, God is the Son, God is the Holy Spirit. Not three Gods, but one God, however, each hypostasis, like the Holy Trinity, is the one true God, who does not decrease in individual hypostases and does not increase in three. In the face of this supra-reasonable (dynamic) equality, counter-questions disappear, as impious and thoughtless: is there a difference between the Divinity of the Holy Trinity and a separate hypostasis, for here the most or the least is inappropriate. Isn't the rational category of number introduced into the doctrine of the Holy Trinity? Isn’t the sacred tricumber a number, don’t we consider the Divinity to be it, thereby subordinating it to crudely rational definitions? What is a number? On the one hand, this is the most external, rational category for the external, formally abstract perception of the world: unit, as the basis, the primary element of each number, some unity of the object designated in consciousness. The unity of the object reflects the unity of our “transcendental consciousness”; The 16th unit is a mirror of our monohypostatic self, which, however, due to its internal self-consciousness, comes out of itself and goes to you, he, they, from I becomes we, you, they. In a word, on the basis of self-disclosure, both singularity and multiplicity are cognized. The ego has the ability to cognize not only unity, but also the relationship of uniqueness and multiplicity. It passes from one to another, to a series of unities-units: one, one, one... Through this and, which is brought in by the I and belongs to the I, a multitude is formed, like a many-unity, a number. The very emergence of number, its possibility, indicates the conciliar nature of I, described above. Number, which therefore has not a subjective-rational, but also an objective-transcendental nature, rooted in the conciliarity or plurality of our monohypostatic self, also represents the beginning of the structure of the world as a plurality headed by man. The world is, in a certain sense, a number, and moreover a human number, which in its emergence is correlated with the structure of the human self. The counting, formal, abstract number with which arithmetic deals has a specific number as its basis. There is the power of a number, the mystery of a number, its individuality. 17 Number is the principle of the structure of objective time, of becoming. 18 Number, or abstract number, is a function of a specific number. It is not the number that determines what is countable, but the number itself arises from the plurality of existence. And in its fundamental essence it is the image of the collective human self. Man is a microcosm. But is this human number applicable to the divine tricumber? Is there also a number? To the extent that the Divinity is super-worldly, transcendental to the world, It is not determined by human numbers. But to the extent that man bears within himself the image and likeness of God, and the human number is a symbol and likeness of the Divine supernumber, it finds a basis for itself in him. The Trinity is not a human number, although it is expressed in his language: such a number 1=3 or 3=1 does not exist. A person knows only its elements: 1.1.1.3, but he is not able to realize the trinity in thought otherwise than by stopping in turn on each of the terms (hence the natural bias towards unitarianism and tritheism). But, at the same time, it contains the basis of the number. It is not the Divinity that is determined by number, but number and reckoning are raised to the divine primal principle, to the Supernumber, which is revealed to man in the language of number. God, existing in the Holy Trinity, is not one as a numerical unit, but one as the negation of any number and calculation (monotheism is not henotheism). Plotinus ev 19 is not a number, but is on the other side of any number, and the unity of God excludes any possibility of calculation. (And if it is said about the unity of God in a relative sense: I am the Lord your God, let there be no gods for you other than Me, then this is an anthropomorphic definition applied to man.) The Divine trinity is not a number as a discursive polyunity. In the latter, either the unit dominates, or the indecomposable element, resisting any interpenetration, the summand, or the sum absorbing three. The divine trinity is not the sum of three terms, but their inseparable trinity and singularity: there is one God and is not counted three times, but three times one. God is holy, but also holy, holy, holy God. Here is the limit of the number, but not its beginning. The same applies to the question of ordinal numbers: first, second, third hypostases. In this calculus, the role of number in the divine trinity is most palpably felt for us. However, we speak about the order of hypostases only in relation to human weakness to embrace supra-temporal and supra-order existence. Order is associated with the discursiveness 20 of our thinking, which is unable to combine multiplicity otherwise than by either merging it into multi-unity, or dividing it into separate elements and moving from one to another, while establishing their order. An ordinal number has only a subjective, anthropomorphic meaning, counting, not numerical. In the eternal life of the Deity there is no first, second and third person, for each is first, second and third. This order arises only in the area of ​​God's revelation to man, which has its own times and terms, its first, second and third. In particular, this also includes the consistent disclosure of the three hypostases of the Divine in the Old and New Testaments. The Face of the Holy Trinity, addressed to man and revealed to him, takes on ordinal definitions in the language of human number, which, however, has a basis and justification in the sacred Trinumber, in his inner life and the image of its revelation to man. So, the use of number in the definition of the Divine does not raise any deliberate objections or doubts. If theology is fundamentally possible at all, that is, the doctrine of God in the language of human concepts and words, then it is permissible, of course, to use, in its own time and place, all the means of human concepts, not excluding numerical ones. Number, as such, category how many? exists abstractly, in abstraction from other definitions, only in logic. In reality, there is only a specific, qualitative number, that is, the numerical definition is fused with qualitative definitions. Abstract number, like abstract time and space, as an empty form of perception, generally speaking, does not exist. In the same way, the Divinity, in the teaching about which we also use numerical concepts, does not thereby become adequate to the abstract, rational number, which is a fiction of our discourse, the fruit of the inability of our mind to think concrete. But its use is legitimate insofar as it is justified by the fact that in itself it is higher than the number. 5. Trinitarian Self. Absolute divine subject As has been shown, I is revealed only in reflection to you and he, we and you, it is not self-closed, not solitary, but communal in its self-realization. However, about our created self we have to say that in the revelation of its conciliar nature it is not only revealed by going out of itself and for itself, but is also limited by it, but it is revealed that it itself exists only insofar as there is a non-self or outside-self, that is, you or he. Opening up, it recognizes its border, in the absoluteness of self-consciousness, the relativity of its existence. In the I itself, which is a certain act as self-positing, a givenness is revealed, which is no longer an act, although it enters into the self-positing of the I as its condition. In I, the contradiction between the act and the given is revealed: on the one hand, I, you, we, you are self-reliant and embraced by it, and you can, in a certain sense, say: I-you-we-you, but at the same time, I differs from you and he, they are unequal. Through this I become a given for myself. But the Absolute, Divine Self in its absoluteness cannot be limited by anything. It does not know any givenness, but must be a pure act, a continuous and completely transparent self-positing. There is no place in it for any non-self as a boundary or limit, but at the same time it should not be poorer than the relative self in revealing its conciliarity. And the absolute I is conciliar, i.e., in the act of self-positing, you, and he, and we, are necessary. But obviously, these juxtapositions are not a given for the absolute I, or a fact, or not-I, but, on the contrary, remain an act, or also I. Can there be such an I, which in its conciliarity knows you, he, we, and at the same time knows them not as not-I, but as I, in those different repetitions? Can I perform the function of not-I (you, he) for myself, remain I in not-I, be simultaneously I in you and in we? Only under this condition will the self be absolutely realized and self-positing, because conciliarity, as a condition for the reality of its self-revelation, will be united with the originality (perseitas, aseitas) of self-positing. Our created, absolute-relative self, by its inconsistency, takes us beyond ourselves because it is incomprehensible from ourselves. It postulates an absolute self, of which it is an image and a repetition. It is attached to it as its foundation, from it it becomes understandable. This postulate of our self-consciousness is precisely answered by the dogma of a single, but trinitarian subject, of the Holy Trinity, of a single Divinity in three persons. The One Deity is the Personal Spirit, the Hypostatic Subject, whose personality is revealed, realized, lives in three persons. The Divine I is You and He (and You), but You and He (and You) in it are not non-I, I-You-He (and You-We-I). I am affirmed together and simultaneously with You and He, as a trinity of I, but You and He are in I also I. Each I, in the act of its trinity, is for itself and for the other at the same time I, and You, and He (and You), and We. Of the three hypostases of the Holy Trinity, there is not a single one that does not equally possess all three images of I (as I, You, He, We), but there would be only I, or only You, or He (and You). All three Hypostases are equal, equal hypostases. In relative hypostases, personal pronouns are always distributed non-namely: I meets you (or he) against myself, which is no longer his own, but an alien, impenetrable I, and each I for another I is also an impenetrable (but only reflecting it) you. On the contrary, in the divine Person each I is completely permeable to the other, but, being I, at the same time there are both You and We. Divine hypostasis is an absolute act of self-positing, in which there is no givenness, no outside and no, the Divine Self is entirely realized in itself, it is self-sufficient in the trinity. The completeness of self-disclosure of the I requires a hypostatic trinity, a unit in the Trinity and a trinity in one, while the reality of self-positing requires the absoluteness of each of its acts, the real Trinity in real unity. It is wrong to allow open or hidden modalism in the doctrine of St. The Trinity not only in the doctrine of hypostatic differences, where it has already been discovered and rejected in the church consciousness, but also here, in the doctrine of the trinity or trinity of the Absolute Subject. The Three hypostases should not be understood only as modes or moments in the self-position of a single Self, which, thus, is the sole owner and subject of this trinity of its positions. With this understanding, what is obtained is not the Trinity in one, but only one in the Trinity, not trinity, but three unity, the triple self-position of the single Self. Such an I, strictly speaking, remains closed and secluded, lonely, it cannot say We about itself, it does not know You. The Trinity, as a Subject or Person, is truly I and We, three I and together a single I, and each I, any hypostasis of the Holy One. Trinity, there is a divine I, and We, and You. Like We, the Divine Trinity is I, revealing myself in I-Thou-He, I-We, three-I. We again have not a rational-static, but a dynamic equality: the Holy Trinity is the one true God, the Trinitarian Deity is the one personal Spirit, one in three and three in one. Here the rational law of static identity is violated: A-A, the dynamic law of equality in distinction is shown: A, B, C, A, B, C with all possible permutations. Thus, I am in each hypostasis, like God, equally, equally. In the absolute I-We, all three I do not differ, but do not merge: they are identified, but are not absorbed mutually, remaining in inseparability and non-mixing. The triangle I, which has I, you, he at its vertices, can be rotated around an axis to the right and left, and the place of its individual vertices changes, but this change in relationships does not matter: in any position it corresponds to I, as do each of its angles separately and all three in total. That. the divine Self realizes its absoluteness by revealing itself in the trinity, but without taking into itself the non-self. I settles, establishes itself as I, You, He, We, remaining I everywhere. The self becomes another to itself within itself. For the created spirit, this is only a postulate; the absolute Personality is revealed as the Self, revealing itself in the reciprocity of the Self, i.e., hypostatic love. God is Love, love not as a “property”, but the very essence. Out of love and through love one can approach the contemplation of the mysteries of God. And the trinity of the Divine can only be understood as a pre-eternal act of Love; it establishes the trinity of the Divine Subject as the pre-eternal reciprocity of Love. Our isolated, monohypostatic, egoistic self is connected with other selves by the bonds of the necessity of our existence, but even in the very conciliarity of consciousness, the self already contains the power of separation and repulsion. For my I, you are not only a co-I, but also a non-I, although you have the nature of an I, you are someone else’s I, in a sense, a counter-I. This contradictory phrase (for in general I am the most immediate for us and in no case alien) expresses our attitude towards you and he. This foreignness can melt, the barrier becomes thinner, when the “alien self” for us becomes not a stranger, but native, close, beloved: love your neighbor as yourself. However, love for a person is only a property, a state, an ability, but not the very being, which still remains self-love. Therefore, for us, the border between I and you is existentially insurmountable, although it can be overcome modally, but you always remain not-I. In the Divine, by the act of love-reciprocity, this boundary is overcome and abolished; in trinity there is another I, You are already I, and each of the three I is I not only in myself, but also in others and for others. The whole difficulty of comprehending the mystery of the trinity of the Divine for man lies not in the triple image of the self (for this triplicity, as conciliarity, 21 is accessible to both created and human self-consciousness), but in the trinity of the trinitarian self, which consists in the perfect transparency of one self for the other self, in hypostatic self-sacrifice, in expressing oneself as a self only through another, by another, with others and in another. You are loved here not only as I, but it is already I, identified with it. This self-identification of oneself with another breaks the self-isolation of the subject and at the same time makes the I self-founded, absolute. This is trinitarianism as an act of Divine love, by which the difference between I and You is simultaneously preserved and We are posited, and at the same time the opposition of I and You is removed and thereby the I is posited in an absolute, complete and substantiated manner. The Absolute Divine Subject is hypostatic Love. In the Trinity, as the Absolute Trinitarian Subject, there is no order of hypostases, which are given in a single absolute act of self-positing of the Self. Each hypostasis is the absolute I and together the absolute You and the absolute We. Here, in the hypostatic relation, there is no “origin” of hypostases from one another, but only their mutual self-positing. The trinity of the Absolute Subject, the Person, the Living God is, in a certain sense, already a priori of any theological teaching about the Holy Trinity, and about individual hypostases. It can set forth how trinitarianism is revealed, but not how it arises. In losing sight of this premise lies the main doctrinal shortcoming of Catholic theology, which acts as if this a priori trinity did not exist, as if it could and should be found and proven a posteriori, 22 from relations, and not vice versa. 6. Hypostasis and Usia, personality and being God is spirit. Spirit has personality and nature. Our hypostatic self is not limited to naked self-awareness, self-reflection: I-I-I-I…. It lives in itself, has a source of life in its depths, and its life is a constant self-disclosure of its own depth and inexhaustible possibilities. I simply does not exist without this depth, without this darkness of the night, from which images of being, its new possibilities, constantly emerge. This incomprehensible and indissoluble connection of self-consciousness and its nature or content, not amenable to any further justification, expresses the essence of the personal spirit, its character as a hypostatic essence, 23 that without which it does not exist. The I realizes itself as a cognizer: I recognize; knowledge takes place in the I, in self-consciousness. It is also willing, I want, wanting occurs in the same I in its single self-consciousness. It is also creative: I create, and this creativity of mine is a visual revelation of the depth of the self, its nature. The life of the self is its constant self-creativity and self-revelation, in which it turns out to be always old and new for itself: “your youth will be renewed like an eagle.” Living, I become (wird), and this becoming is the law of his life. The life of the self in this sense is a continuous emergence, but not from nothing or from emptiness, but from the depths of the self itself. Speaking in Aristotelian terms, in the entelechy of the self there is a constant transition from the possible - Suvapig - to the actual - ενέργεια. 24 Life is expressed in new, unrealized, or rather, unfulfilled possibilities. In them I recognize myself, develop, strengthen, grow, or, conversely, weaken and become exhausted. Death interrupts this self-creation of the I, but death for the I is beyond the limits of its vital self-consciousness, because it recognizes itself as supertemporal and eternal. Nevertheless, the temporary enters the inner life of the self and fills all its pores. Consciousness is discursive, because life itself is discursive: for it stagnation, stopping is death, it does not tolerate peace. But discursivity is at the same time relativity, incompleteness, fragmentation. So, in the being of the spirit there is a distinction between the hypostasis and its nature or essence, the subject and its content, I and mine. I have mine as my property. But this mine does not belong to him in actu, 25 but only becomes him. Therefore, for me, his own nature, mine, appears as a certain unknown, unrevealed given, as a certain it in which I am immersed, being inseparably connected with it. Something “subconscious”, pre-conscious and super-conscious is constantly present and realized in the self; the light of the self illuminates only a limited space around itself, leaving the entire area in semi-darkness. The nature of I is μή ον, 26 ​​potentiality realized in time. In this sense, we can say that I do not own my nature and property. As a given, its own nature appears for the self, not only as an act of the self, but also as a fact of the self, in all the contradictory nature of this connection. As a self-positing, the I can only be realized by its own act, i.e. in an absolute way, and se et per se: 27 but as a given, I appears to myself as a product or fact, mine comes out of the power of I, in it its own nature is present as a subconscious, only as a possibility, but not possession. The life of I in this sense is temporary qualitatively, due to its discursiveness, and it is only penetrated by individual rays of eternal life, in which I completely possesses itself and its life, just as it possesses its own self-consciousness. The inconsistency of the self, as absolute-relative, is revealed not only in its hypostatic self-determination, as both an act and a fact, self-positing and given, but also in the image of the self’s possession of its nature. As we remember, I am alone for myself, but not alone. Its nature is conciliar. It compares other selves with itself, although outside itself, and has them as its own prerequisite. What is the relationship of the self’s own life to these selves outside the selves, or to other selves, to you, he, we, you, they? It undoubtedly stands in some relation to them, simply because it cannot help but stand in some relation, since these other co-selves are given along with the self as its companions or shadows. The givenness of life, which is realized in the I and becomes mine for it, is at the same time a co-givenness, a common givenness, and for the co-I, for them, it becomes yours, ours, yours, theirs, a single common life of many. How can we more closely define this community or unity? On the one hand, this is precisely the single life of many, which is experienced by many selves in their community, in their collective unity, as one nature of all selves, life in general, and everyone in it finds themselves consubstantial, όμοούσιος. 28 If this homoousianism of all selves were not meant as something self-evident, then the one and only self for everyone would become isolated and lonely. But this would also destroy the I itself, which, due to its conciliarity, cannot remain alone; it extinguishes without relation to its co-I. I myself am my own, and so it lives in its own and as in not-its own, ours, yours, theirs. For him, life is a realized multi-unity, the consubstantiality of many, homoousianism. And yet this homoousianism has its own limit, because each self, although not alone, is unique for itself, it knows its co-selves as non-selves, separates from them, without identifying with them, for it these other selves, many non-selves, in contrast, in contrast to selves. Not being able to identify with them, it cannot forget about them, separate, truly retire. It is always given to itself along with him and is therefore forced to have with them, if not a single, then at least a common life, a similar, even identical life of many, which however is my self, and in its image every other self has as an individual, for itself and in its own way. What turns out is not a consubstantial, but a similar-essential life of many, όμοιούσιος. Homiusianism means the repetition of similar things, but without any possibility of merging this similar repetition into unity. No matter how similar two objects are, they will still forever remain two, and their similarity, which is mentally taken into account, cannot bring them closer to each other. This requires not similarity, but unity, not homousianism, but homoousianism. So, the life of the created self turns out to be contradictory and incomprehensible from itself. In the conciliar nature of the self, the postulate of homoousianism is irreducibly embedded, which is realized only as homoousianism, opposite to homoousianism and yet postulating it. – Similarity is understandable only as a reflection of plurality, but not vice versa: plurality cannot be understood on the basis of similarity. So number, set is something different and new, which is not contained in each individual unit and in their external row arrangement: 1, 1, 1, 1... but it is 1 + 1+ 1 + 1.., and this + is the connecting force of number. By virtue of it, each 1 turns out to be a co-unit of each number, lives in it, has its own qualitative definition from it, so that the number consists of units, but as a polyunity it exists independently of the units and justifies them (the opposition of Homousianism and Homousianism in the history of philosophy was expressed in Platonism and Aristotelism, which understand the general concept, then καθόλος, the first as a single, lying at the basis of all, the second as a repetition of many). 7. Hypostasis and ousia. The Person and Being of God “In the beginning, O Lord, you founded the earth, and the works of your hand are the heavens: they will perish, but you remain, and all, like a robe, will wear out, and like a garment, they will change. You are the same, and Your years will not fail” (Ps. 31:26-8), “For You are God, ineffable, unknown, incomprehensible, everlasting, and likewise” (from the Eucharistic prayer of the liturgy of St. John the Golden). Eternal life means that everything inherent in the Divine is inherent in Him, inextricably linked with his personal self-awareness. In the personal self-consciousness of even the created spirit, eternity is imprinted; I has self-consciousness as non-emerging and supertemporal. In the Absolute Spirit, in His personal self-consciousness, His vital self-determination, like eternal life, is also juxtaposed. But this also means that eternal life, inseparably fused with personal self-positing and included in it, has in itself nothing emergent, incomplete and imperfect, no potentiality, nothing meonal. Therefore, it is not a given for the Absolute Spirit in any degree and in any sense, as inherent in it and His defining nature or necessity. No, it is entirely, completely and thoroughly an act in which there is no fact, given, or product. Nature in the Godhead is His eternal life, self-determination, self-positing, actus purissimus. The Divine Person is Himself the only source of His ousia or life. Divine life is hypostatically transparent, and absolute self-consciousness does not encounter boundaries in any given reality. Hypostatic self-positing and vital, essential, vital self-determination here are a single identical act; in the life of the Divine there is nothing that is not fully relevant. Hypostasis and nature, so palpably different in the created spirit, are united in the Divinity in the divine act of absolute self-positing: He, Yahweh, I am, Whom I am. But if so, what does the patristic distinction between hypostasis and ousia mean in the Divinity? This distinction, of course, does not imply in any way their separation or even a certain opposition, as is to a certain extent the case in the created spirit, which itself knows its nature and recognizes itself in its nature, in it turning out to be a given for itself, and to a certain extent, a given. Such a distinction and in such a sense cannot exist in the Divinity, in which there is no such opposition, but there is a complete unity of self-consciousness and essence, act and fact, self-positing and self-determination, self-consciousness and self-knowledge and self-revelation. Divinity in this sense is on the other side of the opposition between hypostasis and ousia, personality and nature, self-positing and givenness, or, what is the same, freedom and necessity, act and fact. This very distinction is a matter of abstraction, of human imagination (ἐπίvoia), without which a person cannot bring the Divine Life closer to his understanding, realize his own thought about it. The positive concept of ousia, in contrast to hypostasis, is the vital self-revelation of the personality, which is not only bare self-consciousness: I am I am I... but a concrete, living, self-saturated, self-revealing being: I am, which I am, Jehovah, I am the Existing, the Living God. From this follow some further dogmatic definitions. Nature (φύσις) in the Divine differs from His hypostasis, but it cannot be separated, much less opposed to this latter. There is no nature without a hypostatic or extra-hypostatic (άνυποστατος); on the contrary, the entire life of the Divine is hypostatic (ένυπόστατος). Any dogmatic construction that does not distinguish between hypostasis and nature in the Divine is the same, and one that secretly or openly divides and contrasts is fraught with error. So, in contrast to the created spirit, which in its own nature has a given that is completely unknown to itself, in the Divinity there is no place for anything unknown, darkness, (or βυθος 29 Gnostics), no given and corresponding givenness. Nature here is completely transparent to self-consciousness and is realized by it in an absolutely exhaustive manner. If we apply Aristotelian concepts here, we will have to say that in the divine entelechy δύναμις and έντελέχεια completely coincide, and there is nothing impossible that would not be valid, and the all-seeing eye of Personal Self-Consciousness sees in everything and over everything. There is no place here for any it, for anything subconscious, for any object opposed to the subject. Such a fusion of hypostasis and nature is inaccessible to the created spirit, because it finds them in itself only in their opposition. However, for him, life consists precisely in the constant overcoming of this opposition, in the identification of act and fact, in self-creativity. Man recognizes this creative and self-created element of his spirit as the main one in himself. He overcomes the oppositions of I and non-I in the creativity of life, and this is the image of the Absolute Spirit in a created being, the breath of life that the Creator Himself breathed into His creation (Gen. 11:7). Life is self-revelation and self-creativity for the created spirit, however, not in a single eternal act, but in a temporary formation, which becomes understandable only from its supra-temporal foundation. The life of the created spirit is a ray from the single source of Life, the Living God. In the Divine, all life is hypostatic through and through, and hypostasis lives, life and self-consciousness are inseparable. 8. Consubstantial Trinity (τρεις υποστάσεις – μία φύσις) The absolute subject exists in the trinity of trinity. The Divine Self posits itself as a triune Self, in which in a single act I, and You, and We, as I, are juxtaposed. And the triune subject has its nature and carries out its life as the triune self. He lives in Himself, just as the Holy Trinity lives in Unity and Unity in Trinity. This life is one, as the life of a single subject, but it is also conciliar, for it is the life of the Triune Subject. Here complete homoousianism is realized in the sense that the Triune Subject has one life or one essence. He has it as one, but not as one, but in a conciliar, trinitarian way. This single essence does not triple or multiply. Although the triune I really is three I (of which each is for the other both You and We), these I-You do not limit each other, like not-I, but mutually penetrate each other. If we consider these definitions statically, and not dynamically, from the point of view of fact, and not of act, then there is a clear contradiction in them between triplicity and unity, the nature of three and one. However, here a living trinity is realized, which is equally characterized by unity and triplicity. The first is expressed in dogma by the definition μία φύσις, the other τρεις υποστάσεις. 30 The nature of the Divine is really one, as one Divine Self, possessing it and not leading any non-self or co-self in relation to itself. And yet trinitarianism designates the reality of three hypostases as vital centers. Each hypostasis is I, which has its own from itself, but not for itself. She does not oppose the other two as a non-self or another self, but is identified with them. This fully realizes the conciliarity of life, which represents an unfulfillable, but not irremovable postulate for the created spirit. The subordinate and relative truth of Homiusianism as applied to conciliarity is preserved only in the fact that the trinity in the dogma of the trinity must be affirmed no less than unity. Therefore, each hypostasis has its own nature for itself, and all three hypostases have it, not only in their identification, but also in differentiation, not only in unity, but also in triplicity. It is necessary to affirm trinity and unity with equal force. Dogmatically, this is expressed in such a way that the Most Holy Trinity is the one true God, but each of the hypostases is the one true God, and they are all equal and equally divine: one nature in three hypostases, and in each hypostasis the entire power of the Divine, its entire essence is fully contained. The Divine hypostases possess their nature both in Their unity and in Their distinction, and both possessions are personal. This conciliarity also has its own image of conciliarity. The one nature and life of the Divine is not the self-determination of the Three, a trinitarian unity in abstracto, in which each hypostasis, without distinction, takes the place of the other hypostasis. Such indifference or equivalence befits the hypostases as such, that is, personal self-consciousness: The Self of each hypostasis is an equally divine Self, in its trinity realized in the triune Self. And personal possession of one’s nature for each hypostasis, one in trinity and triune in one, is also identical and equally divine. However, here more specific images arise of how the Divine Persons possess Their nature. And in this concreteness, hypostatic properties or distinctive features appear, which, of course, do not at all abolish the equality of honor, the equal divinity of the hypostases, but establish qualitative relations and order (τάξις) between them. This does not refer to the trinitarian self-awareness of the Absolute Subject as such, but to His possession of His nature, to the intra-divine life. The conciliarity of the trinitarian subject is realized in the fact that it possesses a single nature in a threefold way. The hypostases are not only the personal centers of the trinitarian personality, but also different images of possessing a single nature - τρόποι της ΰπάρξεως (Vas. Vel.), From this distinction of images of possession, the concreteness of divine life and hypostatic properties and relationships result: (Vas. Vel. Er. 28:3). 31 The personal spirit realizes its nature as its life, its depth, its self-revelation. If his nature does not stand before him as some kind of opening, unfolding given (as is the case with respect to the created spirit), but there is his personal life, the fullness of his personal self-consciousness in a single personal act, then this act is simultaneously performed in three senses or meanings: the spirit is for itself both opening (from an undiscovered state of depth) and opening (in a state of revealing its depth), and opening (as accomplished self-revelation). These three acts of self-determination of the spirit form its single life. The life of the spirit is a constant self-revelation to oneself, as a threefold and triune act, which necessarily has existence in itself and for itself (or existence in itself). The one who opens (the subject) has a word about himself (the predicate), which is an expression of his own being (the connective). Silence - word - life: Father - Son - Holy Spirit. 32 The absence of relationships is tantamount to abstraction, or lack of concreteness in the understanding of the Absolute; on the contrary, in its concrete form the absolute is conceived as the order of absolutely existing relations in the depths of the Absolute, as its spiritual nature or structure. 9. The Holy Trinity as love 33 Love is not a property, but the essence of God; the substantial relationship of the Triune Subject is love, as reciprocity and mutual renunciation, as sacrificial love. For to express oneself only in another, to express oneself only in another, to be realized only in another, to create only in another and for another - this is the sacred ring of sacrificial love. Here is a sacrifice of oneself and one’s own: one’s self is expressed in other selves. But this sacrifice, by its own power, gives the absolute fullness of life: the Absolute Subject has itself in an absolute image. He is free from all boundaries (not-self) within his personality and is free in the fullness of his life. It is enough for a moment to contrast the most luminous trinity with the monohypostasis of the absolute, which would have everything for itself. He could not have it otherwise than as some given thing or object, therefore, not-I, which would belong to him, as his content, but would not be himself, therefore, would limit him from within. On the other hand, he would have it alone, for himself, and everywhere he would be confronted by the border of not-I, the emptiness in which he would be suffocating from loneliness and isolation. T. arr. It is clear that the idea of ​​absolute monohypostasis leads to obvious hopelessness, and only trinitarianism, in which life is self-giving and self-finding, liberates from them. That. nature in the trinitarian deity is a single life as a single triple act, the self-positing of the self through the other self, the love of God for himself as another. This self-positing in one respect gives the trinitarian unity of the Absolute Subject, in another it gives its same natural nature. The Holy Trinity is the essential pre-eternal act of reciprocity in self-denying love, which finds what is given in mutual giving (if this somewhat vulgarized word could be applied here, then we can say that substantial reciprocity is genuine, ontological altruism). The deity lives, i.e. It reveals itself to itself in self-knowledge and in self-inspiration, in self-love - as a Trinitarian Subject, in which each hypostasis expresses itself not through itself, but through other hypostases, and in this it has its only expression. Our self is inherent in a certain ontological egoism: its very existence is connected with this self-positing and self-affirmation: I - I, although it is knocking at the other I, already hears and knows about its presence, and therefore about its non-absoluteness, unlimitedness. The Divine I, in the act of self-positing as I, comes out of itself and self-posits in another I, and thereby removes all difference and reveals itself as absolute. 35 But such self-positing of oneself in another and through another is Love as an effective act, the ontology of love. God is love, and like Love, He is the Holy Trinity. Love is the affirmation of oneself and one’s own, not by self-affirmation, but by self-giving; self-positing through self-denial is the highest power and the highest bliss of love. And if the cross is a symbol of sacrificial love in general, then the Holy Trinity is the power of the cross of mutual self-denial in the depths of the Trinitarian Subject. And the Holy Cross is a symbol not only of our salvation, but also of the life of the Holy Trinity itself. From here it is clear that the place and the veneration that is given to the Cross and the power of the Cross in Christian piety (the cross is said in the canon of the Holy Cross that it is “the image of God, significant to the world”, “the incomprehensible sign of the Trinity”, “The cross is three-part, for the Trinity bears the trinitarian image”). Cross mutual exhaustion and cross mutual replenishment expresses the life of the Trinitarian Deity both in relation to hypostatic self-consciousness and natural self-revelation. The point of intersection is the point of these points. In it they are united, each retaining its own place, because without this condition the point of intersection at which they are identified into some dynamic unity would not exist. Image of the cross, vol. Indeed, there is a “Trinity trinitarian image.” This is some direct symbol, a direct icon of trinitarianism. Hence the universality of its distribution and its power, similar to the power of the Name of God. In this way we baptize, sanctifying; its sanctifying power acts even without words. And in man, in his bodily image, the cross is inscribed, as a sign of the Holy Trinity, in whose image he was created. The cross is the image of God-Love, and therefore of divine love for the world - it is an instrument of its salvation. 36 10. Analogies of the Trinity in nature and man The Trinity of the Divine goes beyond the limits of human experience due to the monohypostasis of man. The egoistic isolation of the human self can melt into Divine love only in a grace-filled, supernatural order - by the power of deification: “Let us come and make our abode with him” (John 14:23), the Lord promised, and this indwelling of the Holy Trinity means a gracious resolution from the bonds of monohypostasis through the communion of the divine trinity life and overcoming human limitations, “eternal life”, the beginning of which we can already know now in gracious forebodings and anticipations. In the theology of the Holy Trinity, however, the question arises of how we can bring this dogma closer to our consciousness. From what has been said above, only one answer follows: through self-knowledge of one’s God-like spirit, through those postulates of self-consciousness, although not fulfilled by oneself, but at the same time irreducible from it, which are inherent in it before any experience, and the answer to these postulates is the doctrine of the Trinity. “Conciliarity of consciousness” is the basic fact of transcendental consciousness, which makes the self-position of a separate self (and with it separate experience) contradictory and unrealizable for us. But it becomes understandable and even necessary in the light of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Through the postulates of self-consciousness, our spirit proceeds from itself and for itself towards revelations about its Prototype. And in connection with these postulates, which are the wings of the spirit, transcendental possibilities for it, the experience of love and the path of love are comprehended, which alone leads beyond the boundaries of monohypostasis. The Holy Trinity is the intelligent sun, which stands in the sky of our soul and with its light makes it visible to itself: “in Your light we will see the light” of our own soul. “Let Your brightness be marked upon us, so that in it we will see an unapproachable light.” These postulates of the Trinity, which exist in our self-consciousness, are sharply different from the likenings, comparisons, and analogies that theologians diligently seek in order to bring the incomprehensible mystery of the Trinitarian state closer to our consciousness. The number of such comparisons can, perhaps, be multiplied, but about all of them it must be said that they are completely irrelevant and do not contain any explanation of the trinity of the Divine, just as in general the phenomena of the spiritual world cannot be understood through the phenomena of the physical world. Even worse, perhaps, are the following comparisons: “every body has three dimensions: latitude, longitude and depth; time is made up of past, present and future; in the spiritual world, that all truth presupposes the presence of three conditions: free action, law, and the consent of free action and law.” (Macarius, I. 209). These comparisons include the general harsh sentence pronounced upon them by St. Gregory the Theologian. 39 Much more dangerous are comparisons borrowed from psychology. Here there is a mixture of the mental and the spiritual. There may be no more spirituality in the phenomena of psychological life than in the phenomena of the physical world, despite the fact that they also have an internal character. Therefore, it is false and dangerous to embark on the path of psychological comprehension of the Holy Trinity, to psychologize the dogma of the Trinity. However, rationalism is irresistibly drawn towards the path of dogmatic psychologism. This is how he defined himself in Catholic scholasticism, which represents a sharply expressed psychologism and anthropomorphism in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. 40 She was directed on this path by the largest representative of Western theology, and in some respects its ancestor, St. Augustine in his treatise De Trinitate. 41 This remarkable treatise generally turned out to be fatal in some respects for Latin theology. Augustine openly seeks the key to understanding the Holy Trinity in the psychological make-up of man, in the relationship of his spiritual forces. The human spirit is depicted by him as the mind, the knowledge with which he knows himself, and the love with which he loves himself and his knowledge (mens et notita, qua se novit, et amor, quo se notitamque suam diligit). The difference between memory, reason and love or will (memoria, intelligentia et dilectio sive volutans) has a similar meaning. Books IX and X of De Trinitate are devoted to these psychological analogies. Based on the absolutely correct idea that trinitatem in homine, qui imago Dei sit, quandam inesse, Augustine makes this incorrect psychological analogy. According to her, thought, knowledge, and the love with which she loves herself and her knowledge, aequalia inter se et unius ostendentur essentiae, He proves that if I love something, tria sunt: ​​ego et quod amo et ipse amor. Non enim amo amorem nisi amantem amem: nam non est amor, ubi nihil amatur. Tria ergo sunt: ​​amans et quod amatur et amor. Qujdsi non amem nisi me ipsum? nonne quo erunt: quod amo et amor? amans enim quod amatur, hoc idem est, quando se ipse amat: sicut amare et amari, eadem nonne idipsum est, cum se quisque amat? (L. IX. Cap. 2, 2). Mens igitur cum amat se ipsum, quo quaedam ostendit, mentem et amorem. To these two is added a third, when thought knows itself through itself, which is the basis of love, nam se non se novit, non se amat. Augustine turns the found simile from different sides, showing that tria unim et aequalia, eadem substantilater esse ac relavate dici, esse inseparabilia, unius essentiae, singula in se ipsis et inivicem tota in totus. 42 It is not easy to penetrate into the exact meaning of Augustine's analogies. They have the common property that they take as their basis certain activities or abilities of the human soul, which through abstractions are transformed either into essences or into persons, almost personified. Mens, cogito, amor: mens 44 in this trinity there is either spirit, subject, subject, or mental power. With the first understanding, of course, the spirit cannot be compared with its activities - cogito et amor; with the second, it relates to the cogito as a general ability for the particular implementation of this same ability, the potential for an act, i.e., in essence, no different from it. In the same way, memoria et intelligentia differ from each other, like two images of the same ability: intelligentia is the realized ability of memoria, or, conversely, memoria is the result of intelligentia, so that they can be placed in direct and reverse order. Even more perplexing is the use of amor in Augustine, which he puts as the third between the one who loves and what is loved, amare et amari. However, in love, as an activity of the soul, there is precisely no this third; it is a verbal abstraction to describe activity, which is completely exhausted by amare et amari (therefore, Augustine’s statement that in love and for oneself there are two: the lover and love itself is also incorrect). Even more strange and incorrect is his identification of charitas sive voluntas 45 (one of the fatal ones for Western theology): as psychological states, will and love are completely different abilities, and the will, not without reason, can be placed ahead of mens, as its primary source (which is what is done in voluntaristic metaphysics and psychology). And then the triads of St. Augustine are turned upside down. However, it is hardly even necessary to insist on the approximate and inaccurate nature of those comparisons that St. Augustine makes, when he himself reveals their insufficiency in the XV book of De Trinitate. The properties of the mind, self-knowledge and self-love are inherent in man, but they are not the essence of this man himself, his face, meanwhile the Holy Trinity, by which the image is indicated here, is God himself (p. 7, p. 11). Likewise, memory, intellect and love belong to the face, but are not the face itself. About them we can say that one person has them, but does not have these three. On the contrary, in illius vero summae simplicitate naturae quae Deus est, quamvis unus sit Deus, tres tamen personae sunt Pater et Filis et Spiritus Sanctus (p. XXII, 42). 46 Further, Augustine points out that if in the human spirit memory, intellect and love constitute, although mutually complementary, but also mutually distinct abilities, then in the Holy Trinity they are all inherent in each of the three hypostases separately and in totality (VII, 12). Anselm of Canterbury, following Augustine, considers the Son as self-knowledge, and the Holy Spirit as the self-love of the Highest spirit. Psychologizing, anthropomorphic theology receives its classical expression from Thomas Aquinas, whose views remain fundamental for all Catholic theology to this day (with his open or reborn Augustinianism). Knowledge and will in the final spirit turn, argues Thomas Aqu., to the external world and are reflected inward, into its being. Likewise in the Divinity, in which this exists in the most perfect prototype: in it there is activity and accomplishment related to external things, and an immanent procession (processio), the birth of the Son and the coming out of the Holy Spirit. These two processiones in God are determined by two functions of the spirit, knowledge and will (intellectus et voluntas, which of course, without further ado, is equated to love). Summa Theologiae, qu. XXVII, art III distinguishes two kinds of processiones in the Divinity: processio intellectus – verbum, et processio voluntas, sc. processio amoris. Secundum quam amatum est in amante: sicut per conceptionem Verbi res dicta vel intellecta est in intelligente. Unde et praeter processionem Verbi ponitur alia processio in divinis, quae est processio amoris. 49 This view, with a few exceptions, has become common to all scholastics, who agree in understanding birth and generation as immanent acts of knowledge and will in God. 50 The manuals of Catholic theology expressly state that there are only two processes - processiones - in God, because there are two faculties: reason and will, ex numero facultatum in Deo im'manenter operantium. Intellectus et voluntas sunt principia proxima divinarum processionum. 51 52 This axiom has become the starting point for modern, sometimes sophisticated theology. 53 With this psychological formulation of the question, its metabasix eix alio genox occurs, 54 p.p. we are no longer talking about trinitarianism as such, but about the properties of its images. Knowledge and will turn out to be hypostatic by the Son and the Holy Spirit. What is being explained, therefore, is not trinitarianism as such, but the properties and meaning of individual hypostases, and, of course, this explanation cannot be considered satisfactory. First of all, as already indicated, the third place of the will is unjustified, which, as the first will, should belong to the first place. Secondly, either Sabellianism or subordination is introduced here; the first hypostasis has the second and third as its attributes or properties (just as substance in Spinoza’s system has the attribute of thinking or extension), and their hypostatic equivalence turns out to be unjustified. Connected with this teaching is another teaching about hypostases as relationships in the Divine, namely relationships of origin (see excursus). 55 56 11. ST. THE TRINITY AS A TRIPLE RELATIONSHIP The substantial act of divine life is love, and divine love is specifically trinitarian: the Father. Son and Holy Spirit. Trinity must be understood, first of all, as a triune act, as a threefold relationship. All definitions of hypostases are such threefold relationships. The human mind, due to its discursiveness, which forces it to decompose the triple act into dual relations, and then to compose the Holy Trinity from ones and twos, is not able to have the intuition of trinity, which it involuntarily replaces and simplifies. However, he must be aware of this limitation of his, which closes the triple dimension from him. All definitions of persons Pres. Trinity must be understood as threefold. Therefore, fatherhood expresses the relationship of the first hypostasis not only to the second, but also to the third, and also to itself (αγγεννησια): The Father is Father not only for the Son Whom He begets, but also for the Holy Spirit, Who, although not the Son, nevertheless proceeds from the Father; his relationship to both the Son and the Holy Spirit is determined precisely by fatherhood. It consists not only in the birth of the Son, to whom it is usually completely equated, but also in the coming forth of the Holy Spirit. The First Hypostasis is the Father not only for the only begotten Son, but also for the Holy Spirit produced by him, who, however, is not his Son. It should not be understood that the Father, above and beyond fatherhood, is also Προβολευξ, 57 the Producer of the Holy Spirit, personally combining both of these properties: patemitas et spiratio activa, 58 and only the poverty of human language forces one to resort here to one name: Father. No, paternity is one and inseparable in both manifestations. The formula of the Holy Trinity: in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit - knows only the Father, but in addition does not know the “Creator”, προβολευς (an auxiliary concept of theology). The Lord also said about the Holy Spirit: who proceeds from the Father (John 15:26), and does not say: from the Maker. The Holy Trinity is pre-eternally existing and revealing paternity, as a threefold act of mutual love. God is love, and the Holy Trinity is the Trinitarian act of love, as one life. This one life, nature, being, is realized in a triune hypostatic act. Loving each other mutually, the Three Hypostases perform a single act of love, revealing their own essence in it. The Most Holy Trinity must be understood as a triune act of reciprocity, in which a single life is revealed by the power of hypostatic love, and not as a “system of origins”, as it is in Catholic doctrine, but as a single relationship in mutually revealing hypostatic love. “Origin” in the Holy Trinity is only one of the images of this reciprocity, by no means the only one. Divine life is realized as a single act of trinitarian mutual revelation. This mutual revelation is a hypostatic act of love that denies itself and realizes itself in and through another. There is the Revealer and the Revealed, but this mutual revelation is not a simple reflective mutual position of one through the other, but is an act of mutual love. Birth and procession are acts of inner love, in which the Father gives birth to the Son, and the Son is born from the Father, and this birth is the same in both senses - it is an act of mutual love. Birth and procession are acts of inner love, in which the one life of the Divine, that is, Love, is expressed. The same life, or nature, or essence, exists in three ways in personal revelation. The three Hypostases here are no longer simply three hypostatic centers, mutually equal and indistinguishable, but in a single united act receiving their hypostatic definitions: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. “Descent” does not exhaust this triune relationship: the Son is born from the Father, but He exists as the Son and for the Holy Spirit; The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father, but as the emanating Spirit he also exists for the Son; The Father is not only the Father for the begotten Son, but also for the outgoing Holy Spirit. The question of “origins” has received a completely inappropriate place as the only hypostasis-forming principle, while origin is only one of the moments of hypostatic relationships, which presupposes other moments next to it. Doctrinal apriorism, which establishes the law according to which hypostatic being is equivalent to origin, is completely arbitrary and, in addition, does not take into account the fact that the relationship of direct origin exists only between two: the Father and the Son, the Father and the Holy Spirit (even with filioque 61 this relationship remains between the Father and the Son in their unity and the Holy Spirit), while all hypostatic mutual determinations are necessarily tripartite by virtue of trinity of the Godhead. Therefore, relations of origin are only one of the elements of this integral complex. (Therefore, for a Catholic, the relationship between the Son as such, outside the filioque, and the Holy Spirit is not only a relationship of origin). To reduce hypostatic being only to relations of origin means to impoverish and distort the completeness of the threefold mutual determination. In general, the question of “origin” in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity requires special clarification in view of the abuse of this concept. The hypostases are equivalent and equal. Consequently, there can be no talk of any origin in the sense of emergence. Origin can only be understood as an image of the relationship of hypostases, in the sense of an act, and not a fact, the pre-eternal emergence of one from the other, but not emergence. Here it is necessary to eliminate one misunderstanding that can result from an insufficiently thoughtful attitude to terminology. The fact is that among the Holy Fathers, the Father himself, being without beginning and guiltless, is usually called the culprit, the beginning, the cause, αίτία, causa, and the hypostases arising from him are caused αίτίατάι, causatae (Catholics in the dogma filioque even distinguish between pricipium principatum and pricipium inprincipatum). Causality in a relationship means origin, principle, subject. The opening principle, which posits in its revelation being the opener and the revealed, is the first culprit, guiltless, unborn, beginningless. In the sense of divine eternity and originality, all this can be repeated about the entire Holy Trinity and about each hypostasis, which is the true God. But in intra-Trinity relations there is necessarily a beginning αίτiα and its revelation. (Otherwise, it would be necessary to introduce indifference into the understanding of the Holy Trinity, due to which all the hypostases indifferently alternate in relationships, therefore, without any mutual correlation, but this obviously degrades the Divinity, for it introduces amorphism into its life, the absence of genuine, concrete unity.) If divine life is the self-revelation of the Divine, then it is necessary that the Revealed, subject or subject, be only one, in relation to which there are its Openers. This is, in a strict sense, not so much causality as interdependence, and at the same time mutual difference. The hypostases are equal in the sense of equality, but different in the manner of realizing the one divine fullness. To be innocent and guilty, αναίτιος or αιτιατος, means to differ not in dignity, but only in the way of being. All three hypostases have and realize one life, but in different ways in a triune relationship. Understanding the Holy Trinity as a sum of origins decomposes It into two acts or composes It from two acts or duals. Such an understanding has no place in patristic writing, where, on the contrary, another principle is put forward with particular force: the comprehension of the Holy Trinity not as a system of origins, but as unity of command. The unity of command of the Holy Trinity is the general and favorite thought of St. fathers: St. Athanasius the Great, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Maximus the Confessor, St. John of Damascus 63 in different words expresses the general idea: “one principle, and not two principles in the Divinity, hence unity of command in the proper sense.” St. Athanasius the Great: “one God - the Holy Trinity, including the Son and the Holy Spirit refer to one cause.” According to St. Gregory the Theologian (or. 29, n. 1) “the nature of the three is one - God, and unity is the father, ενωσις about Πατήρ, from which and to which others are reduced” (cf. og. 42, n. 15). From this truth, a deviation towards subordionalism, predetermined by Origen, is possible, 64 statement hypostases into an unequal, hierarchical relationship, belittling them in comparison with the hypostasis of the Father. Avoiding this deviation, one must firmly stand on the principle of equality of hypostases, which is not contradicted by unity of command. The principle of unity of command, in the light of which the entire Holy Trinity is the self-revelation of one divine principle, namely the Father, in three hypostases, establishes the connection of the entire Holy Trinity as a triune act. This act is not exhausted by the relationships of origin, for the second and third hypostases are related to each other on a different basis, different from mutual origin, such a connecting principle for them is the common origin from the Father and his different image. The entire trinity receives its single center in the Father. He is the self-revealing Divinity, which reveals itself through the birth of the Son and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. In Him the order of hypostases begins (of course, not in time, but in essence); in Him the Hypostases that reveal Him, the Son and the Spirit, have their origin. He Himself only reveals itself, but does not open it. In this sense, God the Father is often called simply God, as if God in the primary sense of Θεος, sometimes even self-God, first-God, αυτο-Θεος, πρώτο Θεος, Deus princeps. This beginning of monarchy or unity of command in the Divine must be sacredly preserved, as the biblical and patristic basis of the teaching about the Holy Trinity. The Catholics retreated from it in a hidden form (for which St. Photius reproached them), for they shifted the center of gravity in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, replacing the firm and clear doctrine of unity of command with the doctrine of two processions in the Divinity. It is unity of command that makes all hypostatic relationships a single tripartite act, connects and grounds them. An understanding of the trinity based on unity of command is completely different from an understanding based on a system of relationships or origins. The Trinity, as the sum of two pairs of relations, is not a trinity, which is the unity of three in one, the revelation of one through the second and third. In the definition of the Holy Trinity there is a necessary and - que, but Catholics put it in the wrong place. It should not be in the doctrine of the origin of the Holy Spirit a patre filioque, but in the doctrine of the origin from the Father filii et spiritus sancti, 65 or in the doctrine of the revelation of the Father through two. The Holy Trinity as unity of command is the revealing Father. The entire fullness of the Divinity exists in the Father, therefore the same divine fullness exists in the hypostases that reveal Him - the Son and the Holy Spirit. In the Holy Trinity there is no process, self-formation, into which Her teaching about the Trinity as a system of relationships and origins turns. According to the latter teaching, God arises, albeit pre-eternally, in His processiones; God becomes himself here only as a result of occurrences. On the contrary, under unity of command, the entire fullness of the Divinity is contained in the Father and is transmitted completely by Him, or rather, is preserved completely in the Son and in the Holy Spirit. The special place of the Father, as the first hypostasis in the Holy Trinity, is connected with this meaning of Her as the opening principle. This does not violate the equality of honor and equal divinity of all hypostases, but establishes a difference between them. Sometimes the Word of God expresses this difference in words that seem to mean inequality and give rise to subordinationism. These are the words of the Savior: “My Father is painful to me” (John 14:28), which gave rise to Arianism. However, the word "more" can be interpreted not in the sense of denying equality, but in relation to mutual revelation: the Father is revealed in the Son, but not vice versa. As St. says Basil the Great, “the word pain in no way expresses superiority in essence... it must be understood in the sense of beginning and guilt” (III, 48). But in this sense, only about the Father can it be said that He is sick, but it cannot be said about either the Son or the Holy Spirit, both in their relationship to the Father and in their mutual relationships. The principle of unity of command ensures the understanding of the Holy Trinity as a trinity; on the contrary, the principle of the system of relations dissects It or introduces a process, albeit into eternal relations, that is, it introduces hidden subordinationism. According to the Catholic understanding, the Father first gives birth to the Son and only together with Him wills the Holy Spirit, therefore, here there are before and after, two acts, two self-determinations, not connected with each other. Consequently, there is no identity of the Divine nature of the Hypostases, for the Father alone cannot be related to the Holy Spirit, just like the Son alone. But the Holy Spirit is also deprived of a direct relationship with the Father and the Son separately. Due to such complexity of relationships, they cannot be considered as equally honorable and equally divine, and therefore the Holy Trinity is not a consubstantial trinity, but some metaphysically complex formation. In order to avoid this complexity, which turns the trinity into a process of becoming in the Divine, and to preserve the trinity, it is necessary to ensure that the same nature or essence in its simplicity is possessed by all three hypostases. This is possible precisely with unity of command. The Father makes His nature and life the property of the Son and the Holy Spirit. The unity of command of the Father is the unity of nature, equal honesty, equal divinity - sin. The Father is the foundation of the Most Holy. The Trinity within Herself in a specific act. He communicates His nature or essence, and it is not communicated through the Father and the Son, as some kind of impersonal substance in which hypostases only arise. The unity of the Father therefore affirms the personal character of the Trinitarian act and eliminates the possibility of hidden impersonalism. Unity of command makes the Holy Trinity what it is, a Trinitarian act of God-love. God is love and by the power of this Holy Trinity. God-love loves Himself with trinitarian love: the love of the Father for the Son and the Holy Spirit, then the love of the Son for the Father and the Holy Spirit and the love of the Holy Spirit for the Father and the Son. For Catholic doctrine, God is an absolute system of relation, an absolute relation, only substance, nature, it is not relative; hypostases are relationships and correlations. As a result, there will be a peculiar difficulty (clearly revealed by Schell’s doctrine) in understanding the Divine hypostases and, in general, the personality of God, which is lost in this general relativity. On the contrary, unity of command puts a limit to this hypostatic relativism in that it affirms the unique Personality of the Father and with it the correlative personalities of the Son and the Holy Spirit, and in this trinity reveals a conciliar, i.e., an absolute, self-contained personality. The Personality of God is Love, i.e., realized catholicity, trinity, and the life of God is Love, i.e., the unified life of the Three as One, or the One as Three. Personality and personalities in God are not relationships, but the Absolute Subject, hypostatically revealed in three correlative centers, co-absolute. This “absolute relation” is a relation in the absolute, and not in the impersonal, but in the personal Spirit. For Catholic doctrine (Schell), the emergence of relationships through origin is the self-justification of the Divine, and the idea of ​​causality and necessity is introduced into this understanding. God, argues Schell, is causa sui; this does not mean blind chance and arbitrariness, or denial of causality, but self-causality and self-foundation; God is necessary for himself or proves himself as a “logical necessity” in the second hypostasis, through self-knowledge, and as a “moral necessity” of self-end in the third hypostasis, through will. This turns God into a metaphysical principle, self-subordinate to the need for self-justification. But the concept of necessity in any sense is inappropriate and impious in relation to the Divine. It is uncaused in the sense not of “blind chance” or arbitrariness, but of freedom or overcoming causality, in a positive and not a negative sense: self-foundation in actu, 66 self-existence or self-justification removes the opposites of freedom and necessity. Relative love is relative, precisely to the extent that it proves and justifies itself, but absolute Love has nothing outside itself. God loves Himself in the Holy Trinity, and this intra-Trinitarian act of love contains within itself its own freedom and its own purpose. The monohypostatic absolute, if such a thing can be conceived, would have to show itself to someone, to itself or to creation, or to justify itself in itself, to justify its rights. Proof and goal-setting are the work and task of any isolated, egoistic existence. It is abolished in love. Schell (and, in essence, the entire Catholic doctrine) understands the Holy Trinity as the self-foundation of the Divine through knowledge and will: through knowledge, God is proven for Himself in His logical necessity and through this becomes causa sui in a logical sense, through will God arises for Himself in ethical necessity, as His own end. This concept, following Eckhart, Boehme and Hegel, 67 understands the Divinity as a dialectic, a process in which each subsequent stage of development, corresponding to a hypostasis, more fully realizes God. Gott wird 68 in the ternary processSt. Here the personal nature of this “self-justification” remains in the shadows, but the “content” of this personal act receives predominant importance. The Hegelian teaching about the Trinity, as a dialectic in the Divine, about the dialectical process of the Divine itself, in its basic idea coincides with the Catholic teaching about the Holy Trinity, as origins and relationships. It is necessary to completely reject the very idea of ​​self-justification of the Divine, which necessarily leads to dialectical modalism. The absolute personality knows no self-foundation; it is above reason and purpose. She does not need proof of her truth, for she is the truth itself, she does not need self-justification, for she is life in holiness and beauty. This is God in His nature, one in all hypostases; He is revealed hypostatically, but is not grounded. The basis of any justification (in truth) and justification (in holiness) is that which is itself free, above justification or proof and justification, and to this, on the other side of causality and expediency, the underlying principle does not apply the categories of cause and purpose, even with the prefix “self”: self-causality and self-worth. Causality and internal expediency are not applicable to the Divinity, which is spirit and, like spirit, is freedom. This means that the life of the Divine is not some kind of dialectical “it”, not a dialectical process, but a personal act of self-positing. It is true and vital because it is personal and absolute, that is, it is Love. It is Truth and it is Life, for it is personality. Knowledge and will always have before them some ignorance and unfulfillment. God knows, for He knows; God does not want, for he lives an unconditional life; God does not think, for there is wisdom. God does not ground himself, for he reveals himself. The second Hypostasis is not knowledge, but the Word of God: the Word speaks itself, reveals itself, but does not know. It is not knowledge and is knowledge only for created, limited being. A word about oneself, self-speaking, is not an act of cognition. The third Hypostasis is life in itself, that is, holiness and beauty, but here there is nothing to want, there is no place for will, which always presupposes the absence of something. Will in this sense is a sign of weakness, incompleteness. So. arr. the fact that the Son is the Word does not mean that the knowledge of God is accomplished in Him, which would not be accomplished outside of Him. And the fact that the Holy Spirit is a life-giving Spirit does not mean that the life of the Divine is only realized in Him. Each Hypostasis has all the divine essence, and wisdom, and life, no more and no less than the other. This is precisely what the dogma of consubstantiality and equal divinity of all hypostases means. And the difference in hypostatic definitions does not relate to content and essence, but entirely to the image of personal possession of it. God has Himself, reveals Himself to Himself in a personal act. And therefore, in distinguishing hypostases, one must place a logical emphasis not on content or nature, but on personality: the Word, not as knowledge of God by oneself, but the divine hypostasis, a personal act of self-revelation; and the Holy Spirit not as the will of Himself, but as a personal act of accomplished self-revelation of life. That is, in other words, in none of his definitions does God become an object for himself or a given-givenness, an object of knowledge and will. He remains a Person everywhere, for whom His essence has a completely transparent, personal character. Not the synthesis of knowledge and will, into which rationalistic anthropomorphism turns it, but the Trinitarian Subject revealing itself, living trinitarianism, i.e. Love. Only she remains when knowledge is abolished and faith ceases, for only she expresses the essence of the Trinitarian God. Thus, we repeat once again, Augustine’s application of knowledge and will to the Divine is anthropomorphism, and its psychological analogies are the primary source of psychologisms and perversions in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. But let us return to the original topic: the Holy Trinity as Love is revealed only under the unity of command of the Father’s hypostasis, in which the three hypostases, as the triple subject of divine love, are present in their triplicity, without breaking up into dyads and created relationships. Trinity, as the revelation of conciliarity, I am, so to speak, a priori trinity, which is specifically fulfilled in interhypostatic relations, and not vice versa - it is not these relations that are a priopi, generating trinity. Of course, this logical distinction is feasible only through mental abstraction, but it is feasible from the correct perspective. And this presence of three persons, as such, is realized only with unity of command, but disappears with dual command or lack of command in the Holy Trinity. 13. Trinitarianism and consubstantiality God, existing in three hypostases, has one nature, consubstantial. This is the dogma. What is the relationship between trinity and consubstantiality? There may be two false deviations here: one towards the dissection of the indivisible Trinity and its transformation into a society of three, each having the same, but not the same nature (homiusianism and tritheism together), and the other - towards the transformation of the Holy Trinity into a quaternity, 69 70 with three persons jointly possessing some fourth essence (quaternitas, tetradism of Gilbert de la Porre, 71 of whose teachings were condemned by Reims cathedral of 1147). 72 73 Sometimes the fathers use the expression that the Son is born “from the essence of the Father” (this definition appeared even at the First Ecumenical Council: της ουσία του Πατρος, 74 but it was eliminated in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan symbol). However, this means to reject only the created origin of the Son by the will of the Father, and to establish His essential birth. The same thought in the Nicene-Constantinople symbol is expressed in the words: light from light, true God from true God. First of all, the question must be posed: the hypostases in the Holy. Does the Trinity come from hypostasis, namely the Father, or from essence, or from their inseparability? First, the second possibility must be removed, that hypostases can arise from an essence or in an essence taken apart from the hypostasis. In this form, however, no one expresses this thought. However, it undoubtedly represents the hidden and implied basis of the Catholic teaching on persons as relationships. The Catholic principle - omnia in divinis sunt unum, ubi non obviat relationis oppositio 75 - implies this pre-hypostatic or supra-hypostatic unity, in and from which the hypostases arise. This same thing is introduced in a more subtle and disguised form by the teaching about the presence of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son. Moreover, it is assumed that there is a certain fund of divine substance, deitas (an impious and ambiguous expression that is sometimes used by Catholic theologians), which is spent in this way: from its fullness, the Father first spends the power of generation, by which the Son is born, and the remaining unspent substance is transferred to Him, including the vis sparitiva. 76 77 With this unspent part of the fund, the Father and the Son, who jointly own it, exhaust together the Holy Spirit, who receives the already spent fund without vis sparitiva and without vis generative, and therefore does not give birth or exhaust. This idea receives different expressions among Catholic theologians. 78 79 This reasoning generally introduces undoubted subordinationism, not from the side of the hypostases, but from their natural properties: The Father has substance + visgenerativa. The Son is substance + one vis spirativa, the Holy Spirit is simply one substance without any power of processionis. We repeat, in Catholic dogmatics the existence of a divine essence existing along with or in addition to the hypostases is openly denied (cf. pros. 4 of the Lateran Sob. 1215, Denzinger 432) and, however, in fact, the existence of such a substantial fund, i.e. quaternitas, is imagined here by the doctrine of filioque. 80 Any difference in the nature of different hypostases, which is introduced by the filioque teaching with its two-story structure of Father and Father-Son, the Holy Spirit, introduces the principle of essence or nature, which exists to a certain extent independently of the hypostases. But this directly contradicts the dogma: the single essence of the three hypostases, tauton kat ousian (Greg, Naz. or. 30, 20; or. 31). Therefore, no difference in the nature of the three hypostases, at least in relation to the possession of powers, can be allowed. Personal differences do not relate to the identical essence, but to the image of its possession; they are limited to personal relationships, ιυιαξον των υυποστασεων, – κοινον της ουσίας (Bas. Mag. ep. 210, 15), they do not exist in essence, although not apart from it. With this very idea in mind, Photius in his treatise De mystagogia Sp. Sti., perhaps with some verbal imprecision, put forward his thesis (p. 15): υποστασεως, Pater quidquid ex se ut ex causa producit, ratione personae, non autem ratione naturae producit. 81 Against this thought, Catholic criticism (Gergenreter) breaks into the open door, proving that there is neither ουσία ανυπόστατος, nor υποστασίς ανούσιος, nor impersonal essence, nor personality essenceless. It is unlikely that such an educated theologian as Photius would need this teaching from the works of the Greek fathers, known to him. Photius’s thought is that in understanding the hypostases one must proceed not from the difference in nature - Deus or deitas (which the filioquists inevitably do) but from the difference in the hypostases. Photius’s thought is that given the unity and identity of the nature of all three hypostases, one cannot essentially look for the source of the differences between the hypostases; one must understand the emergence of the hypostases differently, not from nature, although not without nature. This maxim eliminates the possibility of those logical leaps from ουσία to υποστασις, which are always made in Catholic relativism, especially in filioquism (and in this sense, Photius’s blow was aimed at the very point). It is curious that Photius's thought was confirmed at the Lateran Council of 1215, where it was established that distinctiones sunt in personis et unitas in natura (Denz. 432). 82 This poses the most general and fundamental question that needs to be clarified: this question, as we have already mentioned, arose back in the 13th century in connection with the teaching of Peter Lombard; the latter, in his Sententiae 83, by the way, posed such a question; An Pater genius divinam essentiam, vel ipsa Filium, an essentia geniut essentiam, vel ipsa nec genita est? 84 This is a question about the origin of the hypostases in the Holy Trinity, or, what is the same, about causality, guilt in the Divinity. This origin can be understood in the sense of origin: the Father, being in possession of the Divine essence, gives birth to the Son from it, and, therefore, gives birth to His essence, and further brings forth the Holy Spirit, also with His essence. That. it turns out to be a society of three or a family; this leads to Omiusian tritheism and a distortion of dogma. How can one preserve the identity of essence, homoousianism? Peter L. answered this question in the sense that the divine essence in itself is neither born nor begotten, for which Joachim was accused of quaternity. The 4th Lateran Council took the side of Peter L., which gave, although insufficient, a generally correct resolution of the issue. The resolution of the Council unsuccessfully calls the Divine essence quaedan summa res, which is in truth the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, set ilia res non est generans, neque genita, nec procedens, sed est Pater qui generat et Filius qui gignitur, et S. S-s, qui procedit. Licet igitur alius sit Pater alius Filius, alius S. S-s, non tamen aliud... Patet ergo quid sine alia diminutione Filius nascendo substantiam Patris accepit, et ita Pater et Filius habent eandem substantiam: et sic eadem res est Pater et Filius, nes non et S, S-s. 85 86 With all the inaccuracy and rudeness of the terminology of barbaric Latin, one can grasp here the basic idea that the substance or essence of God does not exist as a given, it is some kind of fund, Deitas, but is completely dissolved with hypostasis, exists only as a hypostatic act; therefore, substance is not generans, but Pater est generans, it is non genita – Filius gignitur... 87, etc. Therefore, it is simply not necessary to talk about essence in opposition to hypostases: the hypostatic act permeates the essence to the bottom. Therefore, the Divine personality can only “originate” directly from the Divine personality, because otherwise there is nothing for it to come from (and to resort to complex constructions: Patre Filioque, in which they do not differ, means to contradict this maxim, to retreat into personalism). But in all three hypostases there is not a different essence, but a single and identical, single divine life. Therefore, the further definition of the Lateran Council is incorrect: Pater ab aeterno generando Filium suam substantiam ei dedit (and the reference to John 10:29 is unsuccessful). 88 This can be understood in such a way that substance is also generative, or that it is some given thing that can be given and accepted, and this leads inevitably to omiusianism, to self-repetition in the Divine. Therefore, there can be no talk of any transfer of essence in this triune personal act. It is inappropriate to talk about transfers where there is direct identity. The divine personality is conciliar, as absolute it is realized trihypostatically, as the triune Self, equally real both in triplicity and in unity. Trinity, understood in this direction, is the realization of personality. But it can also be understood in another direction, as the realization of the Divine essence and life. The Absolute Spirit lives out its essence or life in a trinitarian way, not as a given, but as an act, and the property of an act is to be both personal and substantial. This unity, the complete permeation of the depths of the spirit with personal self-consciousness, is unusual for the created spirit, which is characterized by a certain distinction between personality and essence, consciousness and subconscious, although this is constantly overcome in the creativity of life. The absolute fusion of personality and essence in the Divine, which are separated only in thought (επίνοια), should form the basis of the doctrine of consubstantiality or the identity of the divine life of the three hypostases. If it is sometimes said that the Son is born from the essence of the Father, and the Holy Spirit is not born from the essence of the Father, but proceeds, 89 then this is only in the sense of denying any difference in their nature, but not at all in the sense of parallel existence, as repetitions of each other. On the contrary, the three hypostases differ “not in essence, but in the distinctive property of each hypostasis”, having “a single, simple essence in three perfect hypostases,” therefore “they are mutually in each other” and have “the identity of their essence.” 90 They are three ways of life of the One Trinitarian Person. God the Father has His essence, lives out His absolute life in an absolutely personal way. This means that He reveals to Himself His own essence by a personal act of love, giving birth to the Son, and realizes His essence by a personal act of love - the coming out of the Holy Spirit. He lives His life in and through Others, but this is His personal, and therefore Trinitarian revelation. That. It cannot be said that the Father gives birth and brings forth from His essence, for there is no essence in contrast to personal self-revelation and personal life. This essence is a personal act of self-consciousness through birth and production. In this sense it is true that the substance itself is non gignit, non gignitur, non spirat, non spiratur, but only Pater qui generat et spirat.” 91 In the same way, there are other hypostases, which, as personal centers, are completely equal in honor. God the Son lives out his divine life. His essence, as one who opens (actively) the Father or as one who is born of Him and receives the Holy Spirit. His birth does not change anything in the fact that He remains a Perfect Person, who has His essence, identical and one with the other hypostases, although in its own special way; also the Holy Spirit. This identity of the divine essence is realized in three hypostases, which, differing in the image of their self-consciousness, as the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, have a single life and essence, so that “each of them is one with the other no less than with itself.” 92 One life is a substantial act of love - God is Love. So, how should we answer the question that arose in the West in the 12th-13th centuries? and decided at the 4th Lateran Council, precisely about this: is the Son born from the personality or from the essence of the Father? It is necessary to eliminate the question itself as incorrect and only confusing, because such an “either-or”, as well as “both-and”, simply does not exist, and the question cannot be answered. All three hypostases in the Holy Trinity are mutually revealed through each other, and thus mutually reveal to each other the one Divine essence - but in a hypostatic way. The idea of ​​any essence existing above or below or behind the hypostases and forming their impersonal basis must be rejected as not corresponding to the concept of the absolute spirit. (Therefore, it is only possible in an improper, inaccurate sense to speak about the birth of the Son and the coming out of the Holy Spirit from the essence of the Father, only to reject the idea of ​​​​their origin from the non-existent, that is, about their createdness, as is common among the fathers.). When affirming the consubstantiality of the Holy Trinity, the principle of unity of command, “which constitutes the equivalence of unity,” receives special significance. Therefore, continues Gregory the Theologian, “the unit, which began to move into duality, stopped at trinity, and this is with us the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” 93 The unity of the divine essence or life is established by the unity of the original principle. The Father is the primal essence, which is revealed in the Son and the Holy Spirit, who are connected in hypostatic origin with the Father. In this (but only in this) sense, we can say that the Father is that divine life or essence that is revealed and lives in the Son and the Holy Spirit, from whom they have their origin. To waver or limit this principle means to introduce confusion into the understanding of the question of hypostases and essence. With the unity of command of the Father, which consists in the fact that from Him comes the Son and the Holy Spirit, the first through birth, the second through procession, the entire life of the Holy Trinity receives a completely personal character, and the very possibility of making oppositions: personality or essence disappears, for personality is essence and, conversely, essence is a personal principle, and a single essence necessarily exists threefold in the Trinitarian act. But it is enough to shake this unity of command, and in the understanding of St. The Trinity or chaos is introduced if we assume that each of the hypostases occurs indifferently from any other (however, it seems that no one has made such an assumption yet), or dualism is introduced. In this case, two imprecise principles are allowed (as Patriarch Photius rightly pointed out in his first argument): the Father and then the Father and the Son. In this case, the Holy Trinity is no longer a living self-revelation of a single trinitarian subject, but a system of relations. But here, on the other hand, the separation of nature and hypostasis is allowed, to such an extent that their distinction and opposition is possible. Namely, the Father and the Son together exhaust the Holy Spirit not in that in which they are different, that is, in their hypostatic opposition, but in that in which they are identical and united, that is, obviously, in the essence that still remains above their personal self-determination, i.e., some of their common givenness. This, undoubtedly, destroys the doctrine of the relationship of personality to essence in the Divine (moreover, in contradiction with the decree of the 4th Lateran Council, see above). And the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it turns out not to be a personal act, which can only be a product from a Person, that is, from the Father, but an impersonal event in the lives of two. Even Catholic doctrine recognizes that two, as two, cannot exhaust the Holy Spirit. But if two cannot do this in separateness, then they equally cannot accomplish it in that in which they find themselves united, and, therefore, impersonally. Otherwise, we would have to invent a new dual hypostasis of the Father-Son and quadruple the trinity. Therefore, it is necessary once again to affirm the patristic principle of unity of command in the Holy Trinity, which excludes the false path of theology with the introduction of impersonalism. Attempts to look behind the personality in order to see the substance behind it are inappropriate here. It is true that in the Divine there is no hypostasis without essence, ανούσιος, just as there is no essence without hypostasis, ανυπόστατος, but in the Divine they are completely united and inseparable, and differ only in conditional human abstraction. 94 95 The essence is completely transparent to the individual. Therefore, the Catholic a Patre Filioque cannot designate some kind of extra-personal or super-personal being in which the Father and the Son, differing in various ways, are not at the same time different. It follows from this that there cannot be any substantial que 96 between the Father and the Son, except for the general unity of the Holy Trinity. And the idea that the Father transfers to the Son the deliberate ability to bring forth the Holy Spirit does not correspond to the Divine trinity. 97 98 The three hypostases, as personal centers, exist in themselves separately outside of any que, and at the same time they are consubstantial and inseparable, and the entire Holy Trinity is the unity of command of the Father, as an imprecise first cause, the first culprit. And in this (but precisely in this and only in this) sense we can say that the entire Holy Trinity is the Father, revealing Himself in the Son and the Holy Spirit. This is expressed in the text: My Father is greater than I (John 14:28), moreover, in a solemn speech about departing to the Father. This is painful, does not limit the equality of honor and equidivinity of the hypostases, but firmly establishes their relationship as initial and outgoing, opening and revealing (and this relationship runs like a red thread through the entire Gospel of John, where the relationship between the Father and the Son is spoken of). 99 This boliy precisely means the unity of command of the Father, as the basis of the divine trinity. Excursion. The doctrine of hypostasis and essence in Eastern and Western theology In the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, two sides are distinguished: the doctrine of one nature, φυσις or essence, ουσία, Divinity and the three hypostases. The first side does not cause any special difficulties; all difficulties are concentrated on the second. The personal nature of the Godhead is firmly established in the Word of God and in church tradition. God the Father says about Himself: I, God the Son says about Himself: I, and about the Comforter Spirit: He. The entire Holy Trinity in unity speaks about Itself: I and We. This personalism of the revealed teaching about God, which excludes in advance the impersonalistic concept, represents the basis of the patristic teaching about St. The Trinity, which tries to express dogma in the language of religious philosophy, in metaphysical concepts, is given a logical concept. An attempt at such a translation of church dogma into the language of the religious philosophy of his time is the teaching of the Cappadocians and St. John of Damascus about the Holy Trinity, which played a huge historical role in the development of dogma. A similar attempt is represented by the scholastic doctrine of the Holy Trinity, which received its most complete expression in the doctrine of Thomas Aquinas. 100 Both concepts are based on contemporary philosophy, from where they borrow the corresponding logical categories. Such a philosophy for the Eastern Fathers of the Church is Platonism, Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism, but it is predominantly Aristotelianism, while in Western scholasticism it even predominates to an exceptional degree. The veil of ancient philosophy clearly lies on the patristic formulations of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and if one does not see this veil, it is difficult to correctly understand its content. Ancient philosophy retains an undying force in Christian theology, but it also has its limits. In any case, it is nothing more than a means for patristic theology, and it would be wrong to value this shell itself along with the grain, without distinguishing the historical form from the content. Ancient philosophy, even in its highest achievements, does not know the problem of personality as such, philosophically does not notice the self-conscious self, is not “surprised” by it. She knows and is interested in personality not as I am, but rather as the concrete individuality in which this I is clothed. We can say that she knows the person not in personal self-consciousness, not in the form of a first-person pronoun, but only as he or it, an object or thing, not a subject, but a predicate. But personality, although it has a predicative definition, is not exhausted by it and is not even established. Ancient philosophy asks about personality not who, but what or what. The list of Aristotelian categories, which St. reproduces in his Dialectics. John of Damascus, does not contain the categories of personality at all: 1) substance, 2) quantity, 3) relation, 4) quality, 5) time, 6) place, 7) position, 8) state, 9) action, 10) suffering. The property of ancient philosophy is thinghood or objectivity, objectivity, but not subjectivity. Kant imagined himself to be a philosophical Copernicus on the grounds that he discovered the world of transcendental forms of knowledge, while antiquity fixed its eyes on the world of objects, without noticing the observer himself. Of course, in practice, I enters so much into our life and into our thought that it is always imagined in our judgments and cannot even be thought out. This is how it happens in ancient and even more so in patristic philosophy, which is marked by the spirit of biblical personalism and Christian theism. But it is one thing to use without noticing, and another to subject it to critical observation; this is the task and creative work of philosophy. And although ancient patristic philosophy almost always distinguishes where it is about the individual, as a person, and where as an object, the philosophical means of ancient and patristic philosophy give it the opportunity to understand the personality only as a special thing or individual, ατομον. She knows personality only in the light of the opposition between the general and the particular. It is known that the understanding of the general το καθολοv, or, in Plato's language, ideas, was a central point in the problems of both Platonism and Aristotelianism. For Plato, ideas, the general, have genuine existence, but the particular, diverse, thing-like is δοξα 101 with an admixture of non-existence, apparent, accidental, subjective. For Aristotle, true being has only concreteness, in which alone the general exists (therefore, in Aristotle’s terminology, the specific is πρώτη ουσία, and the general δεύτερα ουσία). But what is most important is that despite this disagreement, the common feature was preserved that the main and determining thing in metaphysics is this opposition between the general and the particular, but not the personal and the impersonal. Therefore, a person is considered as any concrete or individual, and an individual is not only a person, but also this mountain, and this diamond. The individual is the particular in which the general exists. It can be a substance or "hypostasis" if it exists in itself, and it can be accidental if it depends on συμβεβηκος, 102 or accident. Undoubtedly, a person in his existence is an individual, a concrete thing, something special. Empirically, each human person is a qualified specimen of the human race; in this sense, there is an individual. However, it is not the other way around: not every individual is a person. Everything that exists has common, generic features, and individual, special ones (συμβεβηκος), and in this sense, Mont Blanc Mountain, the Volga River, etc. are individual. Personality as such is not at all covered by this opposition. Meanwhile, this is the only category for establishing hypostatic existence, which is entirely equated with the individual. We see this clearly in St. Basil the Great in letter 236 (228) to Amphilochius, where the definition of hypostasis and essence is given: “Both essence and hypostasis have the same difference between themselves as there is between the general and the individual το κοινον προς το καθ έκαστον) for example, between a living being (ξοων) and such and such a person.” From a letter to Gregory’s brother (38): “Some names, used about many and numerically different objects, have a certain general meaning; such, for example, is the name man... Other names have a particular meaning, by which is meant not the commonality of nature in the signified, but the outline of an object according to its distinctive property, which does not have the slightest commonality with a homogeneous object; such, for example, is the name Paul or Timothy... Therefore, we affirm this: what is named is actually expressed by the expression hypostasis... Hypostasis is not an indefinite concept of essence, which does not stop at anything by the commonality of what is designated, but a concept that depicts and outlines the general and indefinite in some object with visible distinctive properties.” (This relationship is clarified by the example of Job’s definition: 1) be a person, general indefinite, 2) a certain, peculiarity, 3) country, place, name). From letter 214 (206) to Terentius Komit: “Essence has the same relation to hypostasis as the general has to the particular. For each of us, both according to the general concept of essence, is involved in being, and according to our properties there is such and such a person.” So the difference between hypostasis or personality completely coincides with the difference between the general and the particular. And that's all. We will see below how these categories are applied to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. We find nothing else in St. John of Damascus, in whose writings Eastern theology receives a general expression. And in his philosophical work on Dialectics, which represents the popularization of Aristotelianism, as well as in the “Accurate Exposition of the Orthodox Faith,” we find the same Aristotelian doctrine of essence and hypostasis, as in St. Vasily Vel. According to John of Damascus, hypostasis is a substance (ουσια. υποκειμεον) with accidents, συμβεβηκος, which actually form the individualizing principle. Dialectics, ch. V, on sound: “inseparable accidents are called distinctiveness (χαρακτηιστικον ιδίωμα), for these differences constitute a hypostasis, or individual” (Aristotelianism, already anticipating the teaching of Thomas Aquinas). “The two hypostases cannot but differ from each other in accidents, since they differ from each other in number. It should be noted that the characteristic properties of this accident characterize the hypostasis” (chap. XXX). Quite in the spirit of Aristotle it is said (chap. XLII) that “in themselves there are only one hypostasis or individual. They contemplate both substance and essential differences, and types, and accidents. Moreover, simple substance is contemplated equally in all hypostases, animate and inanimate, rational and irrational, mortal and immortal.” "St. fathers with the names: hypostasis, person, individual mean the same thing: namely, that which, consisting of substances and accidents, exists in itself and independently, differs in number and expresses a known individual, for example. Peter, Paul, a certain horse” (sic! Chapter XLIII). 103 In the works On Heresies (No. 83) St. John of Damascus sets out the teaching of the Church in the following words: “they believe that nature is the general definition of the existence of things of the same essence, for example, the definition of every person as a rational animal, mortal, exhibiting intelligence and understanding, for no person in this respect differs (from another). Nature and nature are considered one and the same; hypostasis, i.e., person, is the name given to the independent existence of each nature or, so to speak, a description composed of such features by which objects of the same nature, individuals, differ from each other.” “These the teachers of the church called hypostases, as well as persons.” Also in “Exact Ill. Rights, faith", book. III, ch. IV: “essence, like a genus, is the general, and hypostasis is the particular. However, it is particular not because it has one part of nature and does not have another, but it is private in number, as one of the indivisibles that are part of a whole series... individuals do not differ from each other in essence, but in accidental accessories that constitute distinctive properties... So, we can say that the concept of hypostasis in ancient and Greek thought is predominantly physical: 107 it also extends to inanimate objects (a torch, a tree, a house, a pile of stones, an individual in general - ατομον) it arises not in relation to the self-conscious and in this sense hypostatic personal spirit, but in relation to objects in which a common principle is specified, a nature that never manifests itself outside such specifications. If nature is denoted by A, its real, hypostatic existence will be expressed in sums (more precisely, clots): (A+a), (A+b), (A+c), etc. Since nature is not always ενυποστατος, and ανυπόστατος does not exist, then we can say that the genus, or nature itself, exists only in an abstraction of human thought that identifies a common term from all these quantities. With this essentially Aristotelian understanding of the relationship between genus and species, there is no place for consubstantiality, ομουσια, but only sub-existence, ομοιυσια, which is established by abstracting thought. From this it is already clear what difficulties the scheme leads to in problems of anthropology and theology. St. Basil the Great teaches: “What concept have you acquired in the difference between essence and hypostasis in us, transfer it to divine dogmas and you will not sin” (cf. 38). “Essence has the same relation to hypostasis as the general has to the particular, for each of us, both according to the general concept of essence, is involved in being, and according to our properties there is such and such a person. Also in God the concept of essence is general. Hypostasis is conceptualized in the distinctive property of fatherhood or sonship or sanctifying power (cf. 214). “Therefore, we confess one essence in the Divinity, and we do not define the concept of being differently, but hypostasis in particular, so that our thoughts about the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are unified and clear. For if we do not represent the distinctive characteristics of each Person, namely: Fatherhood, Sonship and Holiness, and confess God under the general concept of nature, then it is impossible for us to sensibly present the doctrine of faith. Therefore, adding the distinctive to the general, one must confess faith as follows: the Divinity is general, the patronymic is special. Combining this, we must say: I believe in God the Father. And again we must act similarly when confessing the Son, combining the particular with the general, and saying: I believe in God the Son. And in a similar way, about the Holy Spirit, combining the sentence in the same image, we should say: I believe in God the Holy Spirit, so that I may completely maintain unity by confessing the Divinity, and confess the distinctiveness of Persons by distinguishing the properties assigned to each Person” (cf. 236). “The distinctive sign of the hypostatic Holy Spirit is that through the Son and with the Son it is known and has existence from the Father... The Son... Having alone shone forth from the unborn Light, by its distinctive features has nothing in common with the Father or the Holy Spirit, but alone is known by the mentioned signs. And this God above all, alone above all, has that primary sign of his hypostasis, that He is the Father, and His existence is not due to any guilt” (cf. 38). “Each Face appears to us distinctly according to its own characteristics.” “Our Word revealed both the common and the distinctive in the Holy Trinity: the concept of community is raised to essence, hypostasis is the distinctive feature of each person.” 109 Also at St. John of Damascus we read: “the three holy hypostases differ from each other only by their hypostatic properties, separately distinguished not by their essence, but by their distinctive properties” (T. Ill. of the Rules of Faith, 1, IV). Thought of St. Fathers is completely clear and convincing with regard to the concrete distinction between the three hypostases. But at the same time it revolves in the field of impersonalistic concepts, the personal nature of hypostases, regarding which they know only gnwrismata, the distinctive features are for it a fact that it dogmatically accepts, without however giving it a place in its theological constructions. Moreover, it does not include in them the consubstantiality of the Holy Trinity, the divine trinity. It goes without saying that St. the fathers with the greatest strength confess the truth of the unity and consubstantiality of the Trinitarian God: (Greg. Naz. Oral. XXXIII, 16). However, this statement among them has only a dogmatic character and is based on church teaching, but is not accommodated by their own schemes (which not only do not give room to this teaching, but to a certain extent do not correspond to it). At St. Basil the Great, to prove the divine trinity, instead of theological deduction, we have only comparisons, which, of course, do not have logical persuasiveness: the trinity of God is explained by an analogy with a rainbow, in which the hypostatic properties shine in different colors with the unity of the light ray. Saint John of Damascus, in order to maintain the trinity, resorts to such an interpretation of the distinction of hypostatic persons, in which it loses its reality: “each of the hypostases is one with the other no less than with itself; for the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit are one in all things, except ungeneracy, birth and procession; not divided by thought, for we know one God, but we notice in thought differences only in properties, that is, patronymic, sonship, descent” (Kr. ex. rights, faith, I, VIII). The scheme of the relationship of hypostasis to nature as the particular to the general, based on hypostatic differences, consistently carried out, could lead to tritheism and homoousianism, sub-existence, instead of homoousianism, but of course, St. fathers are not coming. 110 The “physical”, objective nature of the hypostasis makes this concept completely inapplicable in order to generally grasp the concept of personality as such. At most, it deals with the property of personality, its sign and manifestation, which reveals or accompanies the personality, but is not itself. The concept of hypostasis, as given in patristic Aristotelianism, is impersonal, although its main task is precisely to capture the hypostasis as a person. One can also say that in it personality and individuality are completely identified, while the latter in itself does not yet contain personality at all. An individual can be anything: a diamond, a house, a river, a country, a dog, a horse, etc., and yet not have an individual at all. To define a person only on the basis of a personal property is what is called in logic ignoratia elenchi. Personalities differ from each other primarily as such, simply as different selves, and only behind this difference and on its basis are distinctive features established. The main feature of ancient thought is that it passes by the individual without noticing him. This impersonalism of hers has the consequence of the general insufficiency of the means of patristic philosophy for the doctrine of the Trinity. The revealed teaching about the personal and, moreover, trinitarian Deity, borrowed from revelation, is set forth in it with all purity and firmness, so much so that the teaching of the Cappadocians became the norm of church teaching. However, those religious and philosophical categories that are used in it on the basis of ancient philosophy now have only historical significance. The category of hypostatic or individual - ατομον - being, when applied to the distinction between genus and species, has the consequence that it fragments and multiplies the genus and abolishes it, transforming the unity of the genus into a logical abstraction, and instead of plurality and consubstantiality, substituting multitude, collective, similar beings. The very concept of the general, that of καθολου, which is repeated in many ways, reveals an insoluble riddle here. Plato taught: there is only the general, the genus, and there is no individual; Aristotle objects: there is only the individual, but the general is thought. The unity of the human race in Adam is an insoluble riddle; the unity of the human race in Christ, the new Adam, and, consequently, the possibility of the redemption of all humanity in him also becomes incomprehensible if both Adam and Christ are only an individual, one of many. In the same way, the Holy Trinity in these categories is conceived as three persons, distinguished only on the basis of hypostatic characteristics; It is as little possible to unite them into a trinity as it is possible to unite human multitudes into unity. Hypostases exist not because there are hypostatic properties, but these properties appear as an expression of the existence of self-existent hypostases. In other words, there is no kind of supra-hypostatic or even non-hypostatic being in which hypostases arise along with distinctive properties, and they supposedly are these very properties or relationships, as scholastic theology directly teaches. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity must proceed from the fact of trinity, as the conciliarity of the self in an absolute, self-sufficient subject, and not deduce the hypostases from signs or intra-divine relationships, as both Eastern theology, represented by the Cappadocians, and Western theology, represented by the blessed one, have embarked on this path. Augustine, followed by scholasticism. The Absolute Subject, the conciliar, trinitarian self, is already in itself a certain absolute correlation in the absolute. It cannot but be trinitarian, before and apart from any signs. And it has a certain self-existence, even when abstracted from these signs (it goes without saying, this abstraction can only be produced in the thought of επίνοια). In this sense, we can express the trinitarian axiom: all hypostases are equal and indifferent in their equal hypostasis, and hypostatic features do not play a decisive role in this hypostatic self-determination. Three suns uniting into one sun: each sun is the same sun as the other, does not exist separately from the others and, however, expresses itself as a trinitarian sun. The dogma of trinity contains, first of all, precisely such a teaching, and only in its development is added the further teaching about hypostases, as also distinguished from each other by hypostatic characteristics. Each person is individual and different from others, has his own “hypostatic characteristics,” although in the empirical existence of a person they do not express eternal metaphysical relations, but only an image of spatial and temporal existence. However, it is a mistake to think that it is individuality that grounds personality. In order to have individuality, as a set of personal characteristics, one must first of all personally exist, and the hypostatic being of a person logically and ontologically precedes the specific quality of his being, just as the subject precedes the predicate, it is that substrate υποκείμενον, the trunk of a tree with its branches and leaves. And as hypostases they can be directly said to be identical: each human self enters into the multi-unity of the all-human self (you, he, we, you) in the image of the trinity of the Divine Person. And the personal relationship, the recognition of the human hypostasis in a person, relates, first of all, to this identical self, to which individuality grows to such an extent that practically I and the individual are inseparable. However, the relationship of the divine hypostases in the Divine Subject would be abstract and incomplete if it were limited and exhausted by their identity and the resulting indifference. This would be so if the life of hypostases was exhausted by their pure subjectivity, hypostatic self-determination as such. But this self-determination is accomplished not only in the relation of I to I in the depths of the I itself, but also in its relation to its own nature, in trinitarian life. And it is this relationship that specifically individualizes the hypostases, as τροποι της υπαρξεως, as images of one divine life: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. It establishes personal properties and relationships. You only need to beware of one mistake: transferring personal properties into the predicate, making differences from them in life itself, in the nature of the Divine, because this life and nature remain one, and hypostatic differences do not affect this unity of nature and life. Neither one nor the other concept of causality is obviously applicable to the eternal nature of the Divine, and if it is said that the Father is the cause αίτια of the other two hypostases (along with other images: πηγη - source, etc.), then this expression should not be understood, of course, in the exact philosophical sense: it has a figurative meaning for defining special mutually hypostatic relationships. And another expression has the same meaning: the origin of hypostases. As coequal, they, of course, do not occur, and this expression in a poor and insufficient human language only indicates the special nature of these relationships. Aristotelianism, which manifested itself in the teaching of the Eastern Fathers, did not receive further development here and even contributed to the establishment of the biblical teaching about the trinitarian nature of the Divine, which was indirectly reinforced through Christological disputes, and especially the Chalcedonian dogma, where one hypostasis of the Logos in its originality correlates with two natures in Christ. Subsequently, the development of the doctrine of the Trinity in the east, since it was in connection with Christology, stopped. It resumed - not directly, but indirectly, in connection with pneumatology, starting from the 10th century, with the treatise of Patr. Photius De Spiritus Sancti mystagogia, with a question about the filioque. These disputes last in Byzantine literature until the 15th century, until the fall of Constantinople. They contain valuable instructions regarding the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Arr., in the original definition, the Divine here does not have a personal character. Catholic theology comes from essence, from some faceless it, unum, and in this it is impersonalistic. Personality in the Divine, precisely three hypostases, arise in this essence as immanent divine relations. The reality of these relations is conditioned by their substantiality, as modes of substance (so to speak, although Catholic theology itself does not express it that way), so that only this one substance is known, and these modes exist for the discriminating mind: S. Theol. 1.qu. 21. 28 a. 2 p.: relatio realiter existens in Deo est idem essentiale secundum rem, et non differt nisi secundum intelligentiae rationem, prout in relationem importatur respectus ad suum oppositium, qui non importatur in nomine essentiale. Pater ergo quod in Deo non est aliud esse relationis et essentiale, sed unum et idem. 114 So, in understanding hypostases as relationships in the absolute, the originality and self-foundation of the self-positing I is eliminated, and it is a mode of the absolute. The doctrine of hypostases as relationships, and only as relationships, is one of the darkest and most difficult in Catholic theology. “It is necessary that there be real difference in God, but not in relation to the absolute, i.e. This equation of relationship with a person, which has acquired the power of centuries-old hypnosis in Catholic theology, is striking in its arbitrariness. Why is relation or distinction necessarily a person, a hypostasis? And in this relationship, where is the source of new self-consciousness, i.e., hypostasis, rooted? Indeed, according to this logic, the hypostasis of the Divine, which is outside this differentiation, hypostatic, supra- or extra-hypostatic (something like the Unconscious, i.e. completely non-hypostatic in Hartmann), is rooted in the differentiating power of the discriminating relation. 121 Personality arises in the Divine as a result of its immanent relationships, as a mode, etc., does not constitute the original, absolute beginning of the spirit, without which it does not exist. This relativization of the personality, its reduction to the symptoms of the absolute means metaphysical Sabellianism, and even something worse, because the latter was not impersonalism. Thus, we obtain the following formula, which equally destroys both the trinity and the trinity of the Divine: propter hoc quod in divinis est una essentia, dicitur Deus unus; proprer hoc autem quod tres sut personae, dicitur deus trinus. 122 123 128 129 This deduction or this equality has no force or persuasiveness. You can say anything about them: these are modes in the Absolute, attributes that have all the power of its reality, but not personalities. 130 If the Divinity in its absolute essence is conceived only as absolute nature, φυσις, a predicate without a subject, deitas, then it is vain to look for this subject, personal self-consciousness, in its own attributes. The divine personality is not a relation to which rationalistic scholasticism reduces it, belittling it; it is as primitive and absolute as the divine nature. 131 132 The entire theology of hypostases as relationships is false. And this basic error of Catholic theology leads it to further violence. According to Catholic doctrine, hypostases are established not by all relations, but only by relations of origin (relationis originis), and of these only by relations in opposition. 133 134 Only here there is a real difference, and not an ideal one (distinctio rationis rationatae). On this basis, only three relationships: paternity, sonship and passive sibling constitute three hypostases: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. If you trust the logic of this teaching about relationships as the basis of hypostatic differences, one cannot help but be surprised at the arbitrariness and inconsistency of such a limitation, dictated, of course, by church dogma. Firstly, why does active and passive birth give two different hypostases, and not one corresponding to it? and if active and passive birth establishes two hypostases, then why does this not happen with spiratio activa and passiva, where only one side, spiratio passiva, is established? 135 There is no and cannot be an answer to this on the basis of the doctrine of hypostatic relationships. Also, it cannot be answered to another question, namely, why are only relations of origin, and, moreover, in opposition, establishing hypostasis, and other relations do not have this property? This arbitrariness is especially obvious in the teaching about the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and from the Son. One of the decisive arguments in favor of this teaching is that if there were no relatio originis, a relationship of origin, between the Son and the Spirit, then these hypostases would not differ from each other; therefore, the origin of the Spirit from the Father alone is not capable of distinguishing Him from the Son. This last consideration is completely untenable even from the point of view of the theory of relations. Why does the hypostasis, having arisen in one place, through its relationship to the Father, not retain its existence in relation to the Spirit, since they are united by a single essence? Moreover, in order to establish a real distinction between the Spirit and the Father and the Son, it would be necessary for the Spirit to proceed from the Father and to proceed from the Son separately, as a result of which a doubling of the third hypostasis would result. Catholics, of course, do not take this path. They teach about the procession of the Spirit from the Father and the Son (filioque) as from one beginning, not in that in which they differ, but in that in which they are one (i.e. in essence?). But in this case, the strict consistency of the theory of the emergence of hypostases from relations of origin, from the opposition of two principles, must necessarily lead to the fact that in the spiratio there arises not only one hypostasis, but two: along with the Spirit, from the spiratio activa a special, new, or complex hypostasis of the Spirator, the Father and the Son, the Father, must also arise. Catholic doctrine never makes this conclusion, because it would directly contradict church dogma. The Spirit is distinguished from both the Father and the Son, although He does not come from either one or the other, according to Catholic teaching, for in the production of the Spirit from the Father and the Son, both of them are not individually distinguished. This means that it is possible for hypostases to exist for each other and not on the basis of origin. The scheme of the origin of hypostases from relationships has a common philosophical source in ancient impersonalism, which is completely insufficient to serve as a philosophical means for expressing trinity, while it is dogmatic in stubborn filioquism, for which this scheme was specifically found to support. The very idea of ​​the origin of the Spirit from the Father and the Son - not in their hypostatic distinction, but in their unity and indifference - is also essentially impersonalistic. The Divinity, with this understanding, is something, quaedam res, a certain one in which relationships arise and intersect in different directions, sometimes along one line (Father - Son), sometimes along another line (Father - Son - Spirit), and the very possibility of thinking about the Father testifies to this impersonalism. This leads to another consequence of this impersonalistic relativism in the understanding of hypostases. If the hypostases are nothing more than relationships that exist only ad invicem, 136 then a trinity cannot in any way emerge from them, but only two hypostatic pairs (dyads) remain: Father and Son (I), Father and Holy Spirit (II), which cannot be further summed up. In fact, from the relationship generatio activa and passiva, 137 or, what is the same, pateritas and filiatio, the Father arises for the Son and the Son for the Father, but this emergence is completely not correlated with the Holy Spirit, for which, that is, neither the Father nor the Son in their relationship and the distinction that arises from this simply does not exist. In the same way, according to Catholic filioquism, there is no direct relationship with the Holy Spirit either in the Father or in the Son, as such, because for the Holy Spirit they exist in their essential unity, and not in hypostatic distinction. In other words, the line of distinguishing the third hypostasis from the totality of the first two lies on a different plane than the mutual distinction between the first and second hypostases. And if we reject this basic impersonalistic premise of Catholic theology in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, then the filioque in its Catholic interpretation also falls, for this doctrine developed and was developed primarily as a means for filioquism, and only for this is it needed. Outside of it, it becomes a mental uselessness even for Catholic theology. The axiom: in divinis omnia sunt unum, ubi non obstat relationis oppositio, is incorrect and should be replaced by the opposite: in Deo omnia sunt trinum, et haec est causa relationis oppositionis. 139 Another axiom is also incorrect, namely relatio oppositorum multiplicate trinitatem, and it should be said the other way around: trinitas multiplicate reiationes. 140 This destroys the basis for the theology of “origins,” processiones, which is the Catholic doctrine of the Holy Trinity. 141 This leads to another general conclusion that is of paramount dogmatic importance. If the hypostasis of the Divine is threefold, if His trinity is only a revelation of the conciliar nature of the Self, the realization of an absolute, self-sufficient and self-closed Subject, then all relationships of hypostases should be understood not as paired, dual relationships, but as tripartite relationships. In the trinitarian Godhead everything is threefold. Each hypostasis, existing in itself and for itself in an irrespective, absolute manner, exists at the same time and in relation to the other two - in a certain absolute relationship that corresponds to the nature of the Conciliar Self, the Absolute Subject. Only on the basis of this absolute relationship, rooted in the existence of the Personality as such, do relative relationships arise that belong to the concrete life of the consubstantial Deity, where the three hypostases are not just I-I-I, in equal power, equivalence and indifference, but also specifically: Father, Son, Holy Spirit. And each of these specific definitions establishes an intra-trinity relationship. Aporia (from the Greek - difficulty, misunderstanding) is an insoluble problem associated with the usual contradiction between the totality of sensory data and their mental analysis, within the framework of Kantianism - a contradiction into which the mind falls, trying to go beyond the fania of the immanent, given in experience. According to Kant, the nature of aporia is the antinomies of pure reason - statements in which the concepts of the absolute, applicable exclusively to the noumenal world, the world of things in themselves, are applied to the world of experience, in which only the transitory, finite, non-absolute is present. In this context, Bulgakov has in mind primarily the Kantian interpretation of antinomies; in general, the Kantian doctrine of the inaccessibility of the noumenal world to pure reason had a huge influence on the formation of Bulgakov’s philosophical system; it can be argued that almost this entire system was created precisely as an argument in the polemic against Kant. According to the teachings of Parmenides, the one, or sphairos (sphere), “has not arisen, is not destroyed, is integral, unique, motionless and endless,” “it is all together, one, continuous,” “needs nothing” (B 8, 4–5, 5–6, 33 according to Diels Kranz, trans. A. V. Lebedev). Sphairos is comprehended “by the way of truth”, while existing existence is the “world of opinion” - a mixture of being and non-being. Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 540 - c. 480 BC) - the entire philosophical system of Heraclitus is based on the primacy of the “one” over the “many”: only “one” is true and real, which is “this Cosmos” and at the same time the only true God. The concepts of Parmenides and Heraclitus have much in common; Bulgakov contrasts them to each other, based on the fact that the sphairos of Parmenides is motionless, and the name of Heraclitus in the historical and philosophical tradition is associated with the expression παντα ρει - “everything flows,” interpreted in the spirit of the development of the Cosmos. Hylozoism - from Greek. υλη - matter and ξωη - life - a philosophical term introduced in 1678. Nirvana (lit. - extinction) - the central concept of Buddhism, denotes the ultimate goal of human existence - liberation from rebirth. Unlike all European concepts of salvation, it does not mean the maximum disclosure of the personal potential of the Self, but, on the contrary, the disclosure of its real non-existence; not the overcoming of the world, the transformation of creation, but its “sublation”; the opposition of “life” and “death,” “extension” and “thinking” turns out to be incorrect in this case, however, among European (and Russian) interpretations of this concept, there is almost always the idea of ​​the immanence of the Absolute to human consciousness in the concept of Nirvana and in Buddhism in general. Aseitas (lat.) – “being from oneself”; a term of medieval scholasticism that defines God as absolute independence, thanks to himself perfection; perseitas – from per se (lat.) – “thanks to yourself”; integritas (lat.) – “impeccability, impeccability, safety; totality, integrity"; independentia (lat.) – “independence”, non-origin from something. Die Tragödie der Philosophie – in 1925 it was supposed to be published in the Prague publishing house “Flame”; publication did not take place, but two years later the work was published in a German translation (by A. Kressling): S. Bulgakow. Die Tragödie der Philosophie. Darmstadt, 1927. The work was partially published in Russian: S. Bulgakov. On the nature of thought // Bulletin of the RSHD. 1971. No. 101–102. pp. 87–104; S. Bulgakov. Philosophical meaning of the Trinity // Questions of Philosophy. 1989. No. 12. pp. 87–96. Full publication of the Russian original in: S. N. Bulgakov. Works: In 2 volumes. T. I. M., 1993 (Supplement to the journal “Questions of Philosophy”). See my Die Tragodie der Philisophie about this. 1927. Darmstadt. Actus purus, also actus purissimus (Latin) – here: “the purest action, the pure act.” Max Stirner - in the book “The One and His Property” (1844) Stirner literally “turns inside out” (W. Windelband) the Fichtean doctrine of the absolute Self, arguing that the only reality, reality, as opposed to the abstractness of generic concepts (including “humanity”, “spirit”, “idea”, generally “other”) is the single existence of the specific personality of the individual (in this case, the Stirner), constructing the world in her imagination and will. This is indicated by sacred times and periods: seven weeks in the prophet Daniel, three times fourteen generations of the genealogy of Jesus and other numbers and times in the Bible. εν (Greek) - “one” - the central concept of the philosophy of Plato and - later - Plotinus. Plotinus (III century AD) - the main content of his philosophizing is the interpretation of Plato’s doctrine of the One (and, above all, its versions set out in the dialogues “Timaeus” and “Parmenides”). According to Plotinus, the One is not a being, nor a kind of being; it precedes what exists, but at the same time it is co-inherent in everything that exists, conceivable and existing, being the principle of everything. Unlike many other Platonists, Plotinus interprets the One as Good and Light, which made it possible to further use his teaching within the framework of theological constructs (the so-called theological Neoplatonism, primarily in the theology of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite). The category of number in Plotinus (as well as in Plato) appears as an intermediate step between the One and the Mind - the second moment of the Triad as the principle of mental categoricality. Discursiveness (lat. discursus) is a multi-sense term, the main meanings of which are movement, circulation; military maneuver; growth, branching; conversation, conversation. In medieval theological Latin, a derivative of this term is used - discursivus - rational, based on inferences, and not on experimental data. This last meaning is retained by this concept right up to the rationalistic philosophy of the 17th -19th centuries - discursivity is understood as a limited sphere of the rational, an instrumental area of ​​activity of the intellect (but not the mind). Sobornost is one of the most important categories of Russian philosophy, starting with the Slavophiles. Introduced by A. S. Khomyakov, for whom the church council is a symbol of “unity in plurality” - a symbol of the synthesis of freedom and unity. Various interpretations of the concept of “conciliarity” are associated with the phenomenon of community, or choral principle (in K. S. Aksakov), with the concept of unity (“the one exists not at the expense of all or not to the detriment of them, but for the benefit of all” - Vl. Solovyov); For the Eurasians - opponents of Bulgakov in the 1920s - the peculiarly interpreted concept of conciliarity serves as the basis for self-identity and opposition to the West. Bulgakov’s (following Florensky) inclusion of the philosophical category of conciliarity into the very fabric of the theological narrative signifies a rethinking of the church concept of “catholicity,” which is impossible without an analysis of intra-Trinitarian terminology. According to Aristotle, pure possibility - things are matter, potency; form, or entelechy, eilos, morphe, “whatness” - or essence, essentia), is the implementation of this potency. Bulgakov often uses not so much the Aristotelian as the Humboldtian interpretation of Greek concepts: since for Bulgakov one of the main forms of theophany is the sphere of the Trinity as the First Proposition, the philosopher uses the teaching of W. Humboldt (German philosopher and philologist of the 19th century) about language as an activity (ενεργεια), and not about the product of activity (εργον). In actu (lat.) – “in action, in reality.” μή ον (Greek) – “non-existence” as a lack or absence of being; in Plato’s philosophy – matter as the “receiver and nurse” of ideas. Following Solovyov, who interpreted μη ον in “Philosophical Principles of Integral Knowledge” as a pure possibility or potential of being, Bulgakov uses this concept primarily to substantiate his sophiological construction, distinguishing it from the term ουκ ον - absolute non-existence of the Christian ontological model. (Greek) - “the difference between hypostases is the difference between images of possession.” St. Basil the Great (c. 329–379) is a Greek Father of the Church, a representative of the Cappadocian theological school. The main works are the treatise “Against Eunomius” in three books, dedicated to the defense of the Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity; “On the Holy Spirit”, “Monastic Rules”, as well as conversations, sermons (homilies) and letters. The central problem of St. Basil - the problem of the consubstantiality of the hypostases of the Trinity. τροποι της υπαμξως ητοην σχεσεως ονοματα (Greek) – “naming (definition) is an image (way) of possessing an essence (cf. Letter to Gregory brother (letter 38, alias 43; to Amphilochius, letter 236). There is an obvious typo in the first publication: chapter 8 is followed by chapter 19. Amor unitivus amborum (lat.). - “love that unites both.” Ignoratio elenchi (lat.) – “ignorance of argument”; a situation in which, when constructing a logically correct argument, something is either proven that cannot be proven, does not need proof, or is not the subject of the argument, or something that should or can be refuted is not refuted. Tertium compartionis (lat.) – criterion of comparison, the common basis of two compared objects (lit.: “third term of comparison”). “No matter what I consider in my loving mind, no matter where I look for similarities for this, I would not find anything to which God’s nature could be applied. If some similarity is found, then much more slips away, leaving me down with what was chosen for comparison... Finally, I concluded that it was best to abandon all images and shadows, as deceptive and far from reaching the truth” (Homily 31). Unfortunately, Orthodox theology is easily infected with the rationalism and psychonalism of Catholic theology. Here is a typical example: “the Holy Trinity is reflected in us: a) in the three components of our being: spirit, soul and body, b) in the three main forces of our spiritual nature: mind, will and feelings” (M. Macarius, c. p. 1. 211). “De Trinitate” (“On the Trinity”) – treatise by Bl. Augustine (354–430), one of the four “teachers of the Catholic Church” (later Thomas Aquinas will be recognized as the fifth “teacher of the Church”). This treatise contains a substantiation of the trinitarian structure of the human personality, isomorphic to the Personality of the Creator. St. Athanasius the Great (Athanasius of Alexandria, c. 293–373), Bishop of Alexandria since 326, Father of the Church. The main works are considered to be “The Word against the Gentiles”, “The Word on the Incarnation of the Word”, and especially the so-called. “Apologies”: “Apology against the Arians”, “Apology to King Constantius” and “Apology about his flight during the attack of Syrian”. The greatest merit of St. Athanasius as a theologian is his active participation in the development of the Nicene-Constantinople Creed and in the struggle against Arianism. St. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 332–394) - Greek Father of the Church, together with his elder brother St. Basil the Great and Gregory the Theologian (Gregory of Nazianzus) formed the basis of the Cappadocian circle. As for other Neoniceans, for St. Gregory of Nyssa was extremely relevant to the problems of trinitarian terminology, as well as the problems of exegesis and the doctrine of the Divine Names. The main works are polemical works against Eunomius and Appolinarius, commentaries on the Six Days, the Greater Catechism, etc. St. Maximus the Confessor (580–662) is the father of the Church. John of Damascus, expressed, in particular, in the doctrine of the “first” and “second essence”, which he used to correctly interpret the two natures in Christ. Origen of Alexandria (182–254?) – Greek church writer. Main works: “On Principles”, “On Prayer”, “Against Celsus”, exegetical works. The basis of Origen's theological system is an attempt to merge the ancient philosophical tradition, primarily Greek Neoplatonism, with the intuitions of Revelation. Despite the fact that Origen's constructions had a great influence on the subsequent development of Orthodox theological thought, he was condemned as a heretic and anathematized at the local council of Constantinople in 553. Filii el spiritus sancti (Latin) – “Son and Holy Spirit.” In actu (lat.) – actual, in action, in reality. Of great interest is his concept of three “world states” of universal history - the era of the Father (Old Testament), the Son (New Testament) and the Holy Spirit (according to Joachim, should begin in 1260), when the Church of Peter, focused on power and the acquisition of worldly goods, should be replaced by the Church of John, based on the spirit of freedom, love and peace. The historiosophical concept of Joachim of Floria had a great influence on the philosophy of history of Vl. Solovyov and representatives of the “new religious consciousness” of the early 20th century. (Berdyaev, Merezhkovsky, etc.). Peter of Lombardy (c. 1100–1160) - medieval theologian, representative of the scholastic school. The main work is “Four Books of Sentences”. Gilbert of Norretan (c. 1076-1154) - medieval theologian and philosopher, representative of the Chartres school (after the death of Bernard of Chartres - Chancellor of the School (1126-1137), from 1142 - Bishop of Poitiers. Main works - "The Book of the Six Principles" and commentaries on Boethius. In the definition of this cathedral, divinitas sit Deus et Deus divinitas. Divinitas sit Deus et Deus divinitas (lat.) – “divinity as God and God’s divinity.” Ratramnus – processio (Russian, Danish) – “Ratramnus speaks directly about (the one Divinity of the Father and the Son), from which the Holy Spirit emanates... John the Theologian argued that (the essence of the Father and the Son is the first, from which the Holy Spirit emanates, the first spiritual leaders. Sometimes this thought is expressed more carefully - not the Divinity, but God, | According to the Theologian, the Holy Spirit occurs because there is a Father, or because there is God. In the first case, the Holy Spirit would be the Son, which contradicts Revelation, in the latter it also comes from the Son, because there is no designation for the formed power, thanks to which the Father is God, and the Son is also God (Hergentreter, cit., p. 478). He proceeds from himself. Undoubtedly, the fundamental argument of Thomas Aquinas (Summa Theology. Vol. I, question 36, part 4, objection 1) has the same character.” What follows is a not entirely accurate quotation from the Summa Theologiae, in which the passage in question is as follows: “It is affirmed that the Father and the Son are not the one foundation of the Holy Spirit, but that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son together, since they are one; but this is not the unity of nature, since then for the Holy Spirit there would be one way of origin - from Himself, since he is of the same nature with them. However, they (i.e., the hypostases of the Father and the Son. - Note comm.) are united by a single force. It is clear that a single force does not come from two subjects. Thus, the Holy Spirit comes from the Father and the Son, taking into account the difference between one and the other.” From Bulgakov: If we carefully consider spiritual energy, the Holy Spirit comes from the Father and the Son, since they are a single and energetic breath, which is designated as nature in possession. And it is not appropriate for a single force to be in dual opposition, since it has a single nature). Not generans, but Pater est generans, she is non genita – Filius gignitur (Russian, Lat.) – “not born, but the Father gives birth, she is not born - the Son is born.” Pater ab aeterno generando Fiiium quam substantiam ei dedit (and the reference to John 10:29 (Latin, Russian) is unsuccessful - “From eternity the Father begets the Son by transferring his essence. John 10:30": “I and the Father are one.” St. John of Damascus. T. Izl. Rights of Faith, I, 8. Non gignit, non gignitur, non spirat, non spiratur, but only Pater qui general et spirat (Latin) - “does not give birth, is not born, does not bring forth, does not bring forth, but only the Father, who gives birth and guides the spirit.” St. Gregory the Theologian, "Words", 29. ουχ εξ ουσίας τον Πατρος (Greek) – “from the essence of the Father.” Que (Latin) – a particle or conjunction, most often translated as “and”, “a, but”, “namely”, “or”. The use of this adversative conjunction in the indicated context instead of the unifying conjunction “et” - “and” shows that we are talking about the ontological difference between the Father and the Son instead of ontological unity. Spiritus Sanctus - opposites (Russian, Latin) - “The Holy Spirit is eternal from the Father and the Son, and has its own self-existence from the Father and at the same time from the Son... And since everything that is the Father, that passes on to the Father-born Son, that happens, is the Father, insofar as the Holy Spirit comes from the Son, since the Son is co-eternal with the Father Danz, 691. A false point of view on the relationship between hypostasis and essence is also expressed in another formula of the Florentine Council, in the Decree to the Jacobites, where we read: Moreover, the three hypostases are one God and not three Gods: because the Trinity is one substance, one essence, one nature, one divinity, one infinity, one eternity, all are one, except for the hypostatic relations (D. 703). The formula “Trinity is one substance instead of: three is one substance” is not accurate and is not even directly correct, otherwise the idea of ​​a certain trans-hypostatic givenness that constitutes the common property of the three is disguisedly introduced... And it is precisely this understanding that is supported by what follows, where the idea that all are one is already directly introduced, where there is no relation of opposition.” Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) – major works: Summa Theologica and Summa Contra Pagans, also called Summa Philosophia. The teaching of St. Thomas on essence, formulated in Books I and II of the Summa Philosophia and in Book I of the Summa Theology, is generally based on the antithesis of the potential, incompleteness open to change, and the actual principle of order and clarity, which goes back to Aristotle (“pure potentiality” (matter) and “pure actuality” (God) constitute the two poles of being), and on the Aristotelian distinction between the first and second essence, interpreted as accident and substance. This interpretation subsequently becomes dominant not only in the doctrine of the Catholic Church, but also becomes commonplace in the philosophy of the New Time (Descartes, Spinoza). δοξα (Greek, plural δοξαι), opinion is the most important category of ancient Greek philosophy, introduced by the founder of the Eleatic school, Parmenides. In Parmenides’ system, the “world of doxa” - “the opinions of mortals, in which there is no true certainty” (B1, 30) is contrasted with the “world of truth” (Αλητεία), which is the identity of being and thinking, the thinking of beings (about beings). It should be noted, however, that the world of truth and the world of opinion are not different from each other in fact: they are one and the same world, but only with a different subject of its perception - a perfect divine or an imperfect human. Unlike the eternal and motionless world of truth, the world of doxa is in the process of constant formation, being a mixture of being and non-being, truth and lies, and is directly connected with the sphere of language, which calls the one Existing by many names. The constructions of Parmenides had a huge influence on the development of philosophy in general and on the teachings of Plato, who introduced the distinction between the world of ideas and the world of formation, in particular. This is substantia (Russian, Greek, Latin) - “The Latin scholastic Boethius expresses this distinction as follows: there is an essential in the universal, and at the same time there is a force that truly exists only in the individual and the particular. (Min, Latin series, vol. 44, Boethius, vol. 2, 1, “On God and the dual nature of Christ,” column 1344) 1. Boethius owns the definition of hypostasis accepted by scholasticism: a person is an individual substance of a rational nature” (translated by T, Yu. Borodai). Boethius (c. 480–524) – main works: “Commentary on Porphyry”, “Consolation of Philosophy”, “Book of the Trinity”, etc. Boethius’s constructions had a huge influence on the formation of Latin patristics and scholasticism. The same idea could be confirmed in the history of Christology, in particular the Chalcedonian dogma, which, as is known, consists in the recognition of two natures in Christ: divine and human, with a single divine hypostasis of the Logos. The concept of hypostasis that Eastern theology had at its disposal does not make it possible to present this dogma at all. St. John of Damascus, summing up Eastern patristics, speaks of the “complex” hypostasis of Christ, as uniting the hypostatic characteristics of two natures (Cr. Ill., pr. v., book III, part VII). υπαρζις does not depend on τροπος της υπαρξεος (Greek) - “the very (essence of personality) does not depend (on the image of hypostases).” The axiom causa aequal effectum is valid only under the condition: rebus sic stantibus - Latin quotations are not exact, it is necessary: ​​“the axiom causa acquat eflecta (“the cause is adequate to the effects,” i.e., “everything is predetermined”) is valid only under the condition of rebus dictantibusf (“according to the demand of things,” i.e., as reality requires).” In the Divine, omnia sunt unum, ubi non obviat reiationis oppositio, and sola relatio multipiicat trinitatem (Russian, Latin) - “in the Divine, everything is one, where hypostatic relations are not opposed, and only the relation multiplies the trinity.” S. Theol. – et idem (lat.) – “the real hypostatic relation that exists in God, is the second essential nature or the second mental relation, is found in the relation introduced from the point of view of the hypostatic difference, but not included in the names of the essence. Therefore, the Father, which is in God, is not only hypostatic difference and essence, but both.” Hypostasis is defined as relative: S. Thom. Aqu. Summa theol. p 1: Quae. XXVIII, art. III: oportet quod in Deo sit realisdistinctio, non quidem secundum rem absolutam, quae est essentia, inqua est Summa unitas simplicitas, sed secundum rem relatiwam. Hypostasis is defined as relative: St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, section I, question 28, part 3: It is necessary that in God a real distinction be posited, not as a second absolute nature, which is essence, but as a Sum of simple unities, as a second relative nature. Relatio autem in divinis non est sicut accidens inhaerens in subjeeto, sed est ipsa divina essentia: unde est subsistens, sicut essentia divina subsistit. Sicut ergo Deitas est Deus, ita paternitas divina est Deus Pater, qui est persona divina. Persona igitur divina significant relationem ut subsistentiam. Qu. XXIX, art. IV. Relatio – Qu. XXIX, art. IV (lat.) – “Thus, the relations in the Divinity itself are not accidents contained in the subject, but are the divine essence itself: that is self-existence, therefore, the divine essence self-exists. Thus, therefore, the Divinity is God, and the paternal divinity is God the Father, who is also the divine hypostasis. So, the divine hypostasis is designated through relation and self-existence. – Question. 29, part 4.” Qu. XXX art. II; plures personae sunt plures relations subsistens ab invicem realiter dislinctae. Realis autem distinctio inter relationes divinas non est nici oppositions rciativae. Ergo oportet duas relationes divinas oppositas ad duas personas pertinere. Paterninas ergo et filiatio, cum sint oppositae relstiones, ad duas personas ex necessitate pertinent. Paternitas ergo subsistens est persona Patris; et filitatio subsistens est persona Fiii. In the same Heinrich (l, p.199) we find such a judgment that in God “personality and being are not really different, but only ratione rationata... both are actually identical... God is an absolute being, and it has rationem absoluti... but not the same being has relationem relativorum,” “The Divine being, taken absolutely (secundum esse absolutum), is not designated by a person or hypostasis" (197). In the same Heinrich - hypostasis (Russian, Lat.) - “In the same Heinrich (vol. I, p. 199) we find the following judgment that in God “personality and being are not really different, but only mentally..., both are actually identical... God is an absolute being, and it has an absolute relation..., but not the same being has a relative relation.” “The “divine being,” taken absolutely (the second is absolute), is not designated by person or hypostasis (197).” S. Theol., q. 28, art. Ill: oporet quod sit realis distinctio, non quidem secundum rem absolutam, quae est essentia, in qua est summa unitas et simplicitas, sed secundum rem relativam. Ibid. q. 29 an. IV rclatio autem in divinis non est sicut accidens inpaerents in subjecto, sed est ipsa divina essentia; unde est subsistens, sicut essentia divina subsistit- Sicut ergo Oeitas est Deus, ita paternitas divina rst Deus fbter, qui est persona divina, Persona igitur divina significat relationem ut subsistentiam. Ibid. q. 30 art. II: Plures personae sunt plures relationes subsistenles ad invicem realiter distinctae. Realis enim distinctio inter relationes divinas non est nisi oppositiones relativae. Ergo oportet duas relationes oppositas ad duas personas persipere. Paternitas ergo et filitatio, cum sint oppositae relations, ad duas personas ex necessitate pertinent. Paternitas ergo subsistens est persona Patris, et filiatios subsistens est persona filii. S. Theol. – relativam (lat.) – see note. 80. Ibid. q. 29 art. IVsubsistentia (lat.) – see note. Ibid. q. 30 art. II – persona filii (lat.) – see, note 82.