Three words about the creation of man in the image and likeness of God

The essay “Three Words about the Creation of Man in the Image and Likeness of God” presents the Christological and anthropological views of St. Anastasia Sinaita. His anthropology is "theocentric", "triadological" and "Christocentric". Words 1 and 2 explain the creation of man. Word 3 is an anti-Monothelitian treatise. The work emphasizes the presence in man of the image of the Holy Trinity. The monk in his reasoning proceeds from the revealed truth about the creation of man in the image and likeness of God. The indissoluble original connection with God makes it impossible to know a person without knowing God. If, by knowing God, a person knows himself, then self-knowledge is unthinkable without knowledge of God. Man was created not only in the image of the Holy Trinity, but also in the image of Christ: in the creation of Adam, God, as it were, destined “the image and imprint of His Incarnation, Nativity and Incarnation.” Man in general and his soul in particular surpass, as the image of God, even the angels. For “the latter are serving and bonded spirits, but the souls of the saints, who [were worthy to be] in the image of God, are ruling spirits.” God the Word became incarnate (i.e., became man), and did not “become an angel.” The idea of ​​deification is closely connected with the Christological interpretation of the image of God: thanks to Christ, human nature, “ascended to the throne of cherubs, is glorified by all the angelic hosts who worship him.” See also: St. Anastasius Sinaite and his creations prof. A.I. Sidorov This volume of the “Library of Fathers and Teachers of the Church” includes translations of several works by St. Anastasia of Sinaita - the holy father of the 7th century, “Three Words on the creation of man in the image and likeness of God”, the first three chapters of the “Guide” (the most important for understanding the main points of the theology of St. Anastasia), “The Word on the sixth Psalm” and “The Word about the Holy Assembly”. All these creations of a little-known ancient church thinker in Russia are striking monuments of patristic theology and precious evidence of the enduring value of Holy Tradition. The volume contains three appendices: the work “Saint Ephraim, Patriarch of Antioch His life, literary activity and his defense of the Council of Chalcedon”, a translation of the treatise by Presbyter Theodore of Raifa “Preparatory” and a short essay “Christianity as philosophy or philosophy according to Christ according to the testimony of the Greek fathers of the Church and church writers of the 2nd–7th centuries.” This volume of the “Library of Fathers and Teachers of the Church” aims to introduce the Orthodox reader to the work of a little-known holy father in today’s Russia, who, by the way, was well known in Ancient Rus' (the translation of his work “Questions and Answers” ​​forms the basis of the “Svyatoslav Collection of 1073”). The volume included “Three Words about the creation of man in the image and likeness of God,” which, despite their relatively small volume, represent the most significant facets of the worldview of St. Anastasia Sinaita. His solid polemical work, “The Guide,” is represented only by the first three chapters; such a choice is not accidental, for it is these chapters that have global ideological significance - the other chapters are of interest mainly to specialists: patrolologists and historians of the Church. Finally, “The Sermon on the Sixth Psalm” and “The Sermon on the Holy Assembly” (both translated by M.V. Nikiforov), reflecting mainly aspects of the spiritual and moral teaching of St. Anastasia, complete this small collection of his selected creations. It seemed to me expedient to add to this collection three appendices, thematically related to the work of Rev. Anastasia. The first is a work on Saint Ephraim of Antioch, which is based on a report I prepared for reading at a conference dedicated to the 1550th anniversary of the Council of Chalcedon, held at the Minsk Theological Academy. Unfortunately, a number of circumstances did not allow me to participate in this conference, but the personality and theological views of the Antiochian saint seemed so significant to me that I decided to make an independent work out of a short report. The main thing I would like to note is that St. Ephraim of Antioch, like other Orthodox theologians of the 6th century, was the undoubted predecessor of St. Anastasia, who developed a number of his ideas. The same predecessor of Sinaite was Presbyter Theodore of Raifa. More than ten years ago I was working on his treatise “Preparatory Work” (this treatise was also included in the “Svyatoslav Collection of 1073”), and the draft translation of this work lay on my desk for a long time until I processed it. The treatise of Theodore of Raifa also anticipates many significant points in the theology of St. Anastasia and is especially close to the Guide. Finally, the third appendix is ​​a report I read at the conference “Man – Culture – Society. Current problems of philosophical, political science and religious studies”, dedicated to the 60th anniversary of the re-establishment of the Faculty of Philosophy within the structure of Moscow State University. M V. Lomonosov. It is also connected (albeit in a more indirect way) with the work of Rev. Anastasia, for whom the topic of the relationship between Orthodox theology and the heritage of ancient philosophy has always been very pressing. 1. Those who wish to truly comprehend the God-created beauty of their face can see their own image and the uniqueness of their face in no other way than through some pure mirror, thanks to which they, approaching the reflected image, clearly see some of their characteristic features, reproduced [by the mirror] in their image and likeness 1 . So we, turning our gaze to the divine ray of the intelligent Sun 2, as if to some kind of mirror, clearly see there the outline, appearance and image of our nature, [created] in the image and likeness of [God]. For, it seems to me, the structure of man is difficult to explain and evokes awe, reflecting in itself many of the hidden mysteries of God. For just as it is natural for our [bodily] eyes to easily comprehend what is outside them, but they are not able to see themselves, so it is difficult for the eyes of human understanding to comprehend and contemplate the inner meaning of our creation. After all, the Creator, having completed the construction of the simple and most spiritual world of invisible forces, and after creating this material and visible world from four elements, 3 then says: “Let us make man in our image and likeness” (Gen. 1:26). And a living being creates, as if some kind of mixed world, akin to both worlds and consisting, on the one hand, of an incorporeal, immortal and incorruptible soul, and on the other, of a material and visible body formed from four elements 4. After this, the Scripture says: “And God created man, in the image of God he created him” (Gen. 1:27) 5. “God” here [Holy] Scripture, of course, calls the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit 6. On this subject, exegetes express many different opinions 7 . Some say that by [the expression] “in the image and likeness of God” is meant the commanding and autocratic [position] of man [in the world] 8 , others - that the intelligent and invisible principle of the [human] soul 9 , still others - that the incorruptible and non-sinful principle [that existed then] when Adam was born 10 , and, finally, still others claim that a prophecy is being made here about baptism 11. “And after all, even to me, as a certain monster” (1 Cor. 15:8), the idea came to me to speak out about this. And first of all, the following question is worthy of investigation: why did God not name the intelligent, immaterial, heavenly and close to Him Angels “in His image and likeness”? After all, they, to a much greater extent than man, have an autocratic and commanding [position, reigning] over the whole earth and over man himself 12. In the same way, incorruptibility, immateriality, invisibility, purity and all other praiseworthy things expressed about Adam are [much more] abundant in the spiritual and heavenly dances of incorporeal [forces] than in man. Doesn't some of the above hint at a deeper [meaning of the creation narrative] of man in [God's] image? After all, man was created not only as a certain first image and likeness of God, but also as a second, third, fourth and fifth 13, visually representing, as if in some kind of mirror and imprinted (and not natural) shadow writing 14, the mystery of the Trinitarian Deity. Man also clearly prefigures the Incarnation of God the Word – the One of the Holy Trinity. Perhaps one soul is [created] in the image of one Divinity, 15 and the combination of soul and body in us is [created] in the likeness of the Incarnation of the Word. Returning to the very beginning of the story [about the creation of man], we, starting from there, as if [drawing] from some deepest source, first of all examine the following question: why did God create the hypostases of our ancestors and ancestors (I mean Adam, Eve and the son descended from them) not in the likeness of other rational beings, that is, Angels, or did not create them equal and similar [others] animate beings? But God brought Adam into existence without cause and unborn, and made his son, the second man, born; Eve, however, was not begotten or uncaused, but by perception and procession, He brought into being in an ineffable way, descended from the essence of the uncaused Adam. And aren’t these three faces of the ancestors of all humanity, or [three] consubstantial hypostases, imprintedly created, as Methodius imagines, according to a certain image of the Holy and consubstantial Trinity: the causeless and unborn Adam is the image and image of the causeless God and Father - the Almighty and the Cause of all things, the begotten son of Adam prefigures the begotten [from the Father] Son and the Word God, and the departed Eve signifies the departed Hypostasis of the Holy Spirit 16. Therefore, God did not breathe into Eve the breath of life (Gen. 2:7), since she is an image of the Holy Spirit - breath and life, and since she had to, through the Holy Spirit, perceive God - the truly existing Breath and Life of all 17. As a result, one should know (and be surprised by this) that the unborn Adam (and likewise the departed Eve) does not have among people like [them] unborn and causeless others [people], since only Adam and Eve are true images of the unborn Father and the Holy Spirit. Scholium “The exegete, interpreting this, does not remain ignorant of the fact that Adam and Eve are comprehended [as images of] Christ and the Church.” And the begotten son [of Adam and Eve] has as brothers like him all men, also begotten sons, since he is in the image and imprinted likeness of Christ, the begotten Son 18, who was the “firstborn man among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29), [born] not of [male] seed 19. If “in the image” should not be interpreted this way, then why did not four, or two, or more hypostases of [our] ancestors arise, possessing interchangeable hypostatic properties of their own (I mean - unbornness, birth and procession), but there were [only] three of them and they are one? Therefore, now you understand that “in the image and in the imprinted likeness” [should be understood] as the Trinity in Unity, in three Hypostases. It remains for you to know what the Unit in the Trinity is. 2. How can you recognize this correctly? Listen to the words of a certain sage who turns to you and gives advice: “If you want to know God, first know yourself, from your structure, from your combination, from what is inside you. Immerse yourself in yourself and, as if in some kind of mirror, look into your soul, discern its structure and see yourself as existing in the image and likeness of God” 20. For the nameless, unknown, immortal and intelligent essence of your soul was brought into being in the image and imprinted likeness of the nameless, unknown and immortal God. After all, not a single person born from the beginning of time has known either the essence of the rational soul or the essence of God. [One can only believe that] the soul is life-giving, ordering and providential in relation to the nature of the body, consisting of four elements, [being created] in the image of God - the Provider of all creation: both the heavenly and the limited to the four ends of the earth. Therefore, we do not know the place where God dwells, but we only believe that He is everywhere; We also do not know the place where the soul lives in the body, but we only see that it exists and acts throughout the body. Your soul also possesses one more [property that appears] in the image of God, namely, it is non-essential to every [other] created nature. And the most extraordinary thing of all that is in us in the image [of God] is that the human mind is not able to comprehend either the rational foundations of the existence of God, or the same foundations of the essence of our soul, and is also not able to know how it arose and was brought into being. Scholium: “You should know that some exegetes believe that the words: “The Spirit breathes where it wills, and you hear its voice, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes” (John 3:8) refer to the soul.” As a result, [those who strive] to comprehend the soul [usually] teach incorrectly about it and, as if descending into a dark abyss, stumble over both [questions]. Some say that souls are sent into bodies from heaven; others - that souls created by God come into existence together with the body, others argue that man, being in the image of the Creator, gives birth to a soul along with [his bodily] offspring; fourth - that the soul is generated from both man and woman: as if fire arises from the impact of iron on stone. There are also those who say that the soul arises due to the short-term attraction of the body during conception, while others attribute its legal structure to the fortieth day after conception. Some represent the soul as consubstantial with the Angels, and others as alien; some raise their souls to grief, others lower them to the ground; some [believe that she lives] in the air, others - that she is in everything, like some kind of divine essence 21. Scholium: “Aristotle, considering that the soul is not pre-existent, puts it this way: “Man begets man.” We hold the same opinion.” That is why the soul, being, in the image of God, united with the body and giving life to it, remains not subject to bodily passions and bodily corruption; by nature it is invisible, incomprehensible and inexplicable both in relation to its appearance, shape, image, quality and quantity, and in relation to its existence, structure and beauty 22. Therefore, Methodius in the Symposium says that the soul has unimaginable and indescribable beauty, as a result of which hostile spirits lust and have a passion for it, for of [all] intelligent [entities] it [one] bears the most beautiful image 23. And all the incomprehensibility, inexplicability and unknownness of the soul cannot be explained otherwise than by the fact that it is truly and truly the image of the incomprehensible God 24. For which reason we, not knowing everything related to the soul, believe in its existence based on its actions on the body alone, just as we are convinced of the existence of God based on His actions regarding the visible creation 25. 3. But let's move on to the most important thing, which is "in the image and likeness" to show, according to the promise, one Godhead in the Trinity. What is this? It is clear that this is again the soul, its thinking mind and mind, which the Apostle called spirit when he exhorted us to be holy in soul, body and spirit (1 Thess. 5:23) 26. For the soul is unborn and uncaused in the impression of the unborn and uncaused God and Father, but its thinking mind, ineffably, invisible, inexplicably and dispassionately born from it, is not unborn. The mind is neither uncaused nor born, but is outgoing, penetrating everything and considering everything in the image and likeness of the All-Holy and proceeding [from the Father] Spirit, about whom it is said: “The Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God” (1 Cor. 2:10) 27. The soul is not outgoing as long as it [resides] in the body, for if it were so, then we would die overnight. But our mind is not unborn, for in such a case we would be unreasonable and like beasts. But the most unusual of [all] this unusual is that our soul is simple, our mind is single and uncomplicated, and our mind is dual, having a double birth and maintaining [at the same time] unity and indivisibility. For he is born in the heart by some incomprehensible and incorporeal birth and remains within it unknown; and he is born through the lips and then is known by everyone 28. However, at the same time, he is not separated from the soul that gave birth to him, so that we, through the two births of our mind, clearly recognize, in some image and likeness, the two births of God the Word. After all, He was invisibly, inexplicably and incomprehensibly born before [all] ages from the Father and was unknown, remaining, as if in a certain soul, with the Father until, as from a certain heart, He was immaculately and painlessly born of the Holy Virgin “according to the flesh” (Rom. 9:5) and appeared in the world, without being separated from the paternal and hidden essence of the Father who gave birth to [Him]. So in the unity of the immortal and thinking essence of our soul, as if in an image, certain three hypostatic properties were shown: the unbornness of the soul, the birthlessness of the mind and the procession of the spirit or mind. And I dare to decisively declare and say that, following this contemplation of the invisible trinity of the soul, the divine Apostle said that man is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15) 29. If this is not the case, then why was our soul not created by God two-part or four-part, but is three-part and has an inseparable and unmerged unity in the image of the Holy and consubstantial Trinity? Therefore, if it is permissible to say so, in man (especially in a righteous man) “all the fullness of the Divinity dwells” (Col. 1:19) 30, not naturally, but imprintingly and vaguely describing the image of God’s existence in the Trinity. As a result of this, external sages define the tripartite nature of our soul in another way, saying that it has a desirable, reasonable and violent [principles] 31 in order to be able to cleave to God with love through the desirable [principles], to receive knowledge and wisdom from him through the rational [principles], and through [the] violent [principles] to resist the “spirits of wickedness” (Eph. 6:12) 32 . And in these three [principles] the soul again traces its image of God. For the Triune God in three [different] ways governs and directs the three parts of [the universe] (I mean heavenly, earthly and underground) through [His] creative, providential and judgmental power. After all, God accomplishes everything, fulfilling His accomplishments in accordance with one of three ways: He either creates, or foresees, or educates. And the desirable [beginning] of the soul is in the image of the creative power of God, for it carries out [every] action; the rational [beginning] is a symbol of the providential power of God, and the violent [beginning] denotes the nurturing [power of God]. In the same way [it can be said that] desire is a peculiar property of the soul, for infants, being still only animated, even before they begin to speak, immediately experience a desire for the mother’s breast and sleep; the rational [beginning], as is obvious, is a peculiar property of the mind, and the violent [beginning] is inherent in arising in the mind, and it is the mind that is confused by those who are angry contrary to nature. If anyone wants to know why man is [a being created] in the image and likeness of God, let him carefully examine this, directing his [thought] into this kind of reserved sanctuaries of speculation, consider the structure of his nature and thinking soul, study all the main things that relate to the soul: its parts, parts of parts, the meanings and ways of its [existence], its success, union and division, uniformity and tripartiteness, unity, duality and trinity. [He needs to know] how the soul is one and at the same time accessible to consideration in certain three [parts of itself] in the image and likeness of God, being imprintably cognizable as a unit in a trinity and a trinity in a unit 33 . For that it is one in essence and not one when contemplating its parts, was wisely shown by the speaker: “I will begin to pray with the spirit, I will begin to pray with the mind; I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding” (1 Cor. 14:15) 34. 4. What most obviously teaches us about this trinity of ours, [created] in the imprinted image of God, are some of the people who, for some reason, sometimes have a soul, but do not have reason and intellect; others are abundant in soul and mind, but suffer greatly from lack of intelligence; still others have both mind and soul, but need reason. [One can also point out] the nature of babies: when they are born and emerge from darkness into the light, they immediately reveal a soul in the image of God and the Father, which is potentially thinking, containing in itself both reason and intellect in an essential way. As the body grows and prospers, the second reveals the mind, and in it - not suddenly and not unexpectedly, but gradually, vaguely and as if in the shadows - [the soul] reveals the birth in the flesh and the most perfect manifestation of the Word [of God]. Then, when the baby becomes a mature husband, the presence of mind is finally revealed. But, [someone] will say, is it possible to more reliably prove the position about the [creation] of man in the image and likeness of [God] with such an example? [I can answer such an objection]: O [unhappy] man! – Through this [example], we fully [reliably] understand the image [of existence] of God, the [way] of revelation and manifestation of [Him] in the world, as if in a certain body, and we also understand how our nature, as it grows, comprehends the mystery of the Trinity. For man, conceived from the seed of the evil one, as if in the womb of a lie, is laid “in darkness and the shadow of death” (Ps. 87:7, 106:10) 35. Then, emerging into the light of God's knowledge, like a baby at birth, he, thanks to the guidance of the law, reveals himself [already as if] animated: he cognizes God and the Father, who contains in himself the essential Word and the essential Spirit (as the soul contains reason and spirit), but does not yet, due to the great weakness of the will and his infancy, contain the revelation of the Word and the Spirit, so that, through [immature] worship of God, not to fall into polytheism 36. Then, as time passes, our worldly nature 37, like a growing child, begins to reason, taught by God and the Father, as if by a certain soul, in order to know, still vaguely and as if through unclear and tongue-tied prophetic edifications, [the first] attempt at the expression and manifestation of the hidden and inherent Word of the Father. After this tongue-tied and vague expression of the Word (I mean the sayings of Moses and the prophets) 38 the time comes when the perfect Word of God, coming, as if from some lips, from the mother’s womb of the Virgin, [is] spoken clearly and distinctly, and worldly human nature finally recognizes, thanks to the [incarnate] Word and through Him, the perfect fullness of its trinity 39 . It perceives, as if a certain mind, the Holy Spirit, which does not dwell in it from the outside, moving [before] in space, but is manifested in this nature from within it, that is, from the soul and mind, or from the Father and the Son 40. After all, the soul does not generate the intellect inherent in it in a created way, not from the outside and as if something foreign, but [gives birth] to it in an essential way from the innate and inherent hypostatic existence; it also produces the spirit of mind that is natural to it. The soul dwells in the body not as pre-existing to reason and intelligence, but coexisting with them and being consubstantial with them. Being incorporeal, the soul possesses these incorporeal members akin to it, as if it were some kind of body; not having a distinctive property, it is characterized by them, as if by certain features, and, being above [any] image and form, it is formed and takes on form thanks to them, possessing the spirit of the mind as a kind of formative breath and carrying [within itself] the mind coexisting with it as life 41. A rational and thinking soul, deprived of them, can neither exist nor be known as the image and likeness of God, since through them, [having existence in it], we are taught and instructed that the Father never existed before the Son, just as there is no rational soul outside its inherent mind; that the Son and the Father do not exist before the All-Holy Spirit, but just as in the soul simultaneously and jointly there exist both the rational soul with the mind that is in it, and the life-giving, forming and filling [its entire] spirit, so [God] is at the same time the Father, there is God the Word with the Father, there is the Son with the Father, and there is the Spirit with the Son and the Father 42. If you separate and take away reason from your soul, then your soul will become unreasonable; If you cut off the spirit from it, the soul will lose life and become dead. [Such an example is given] so that you, being in the image of God, through this image will learn that if you [dare] to deny the unity of God the Word with God the Father, then you will declare God unreasonable and bestial, and if you separate the [Holy] Spirit from God [the Father], then you will call God dead and not alive. 5. If you want [the right] to philosophize about your own image and likeness of God, philosophize in the following way: know the hidden God not from the outside, but from within yourself 43 ; find out through actually existing things and from the trinity in you the [Holy] Trinity, for this trinity, in comparison with all other testimonies of the law and Scripture, is the most undoubted and reliable 44. For this, and only for this reason, God made you such a living being, for He was concerned that the incomprehensible and difficult to explain mystery of the [Holy] Trinity would be proclaimed in the world; so that you, being in the image and likeness of God, have in yourself the image and likeness, image and examples of the Holy and consubstantial Trinity and so that, looking at your image reflected in the structure of [your] soul, you do not experience hesitation regarding the mystery of the Trinity and, falling into vanity, do not ask: “If God is a Trinity, why is He a One? If He is One, why is it said about the Trinity? If the Word is the Son, then why is it possible for the Begotten to be co-originating with the Parent? If the Spirit is from the Father, then why is He proceeding and not begotten? Whom did the Father produce first: the Son or the Spirit? If both, then isn’t fraternalism and the birth of twins observed in the Trinity? 45 How is unity of faith between the Born and the Parent possible? 46 Did the Father want or not to give birth? Who testifies that the Father, Son and Spirit are of the same essence? If God - the Word of God is a perfect Hypostasis and God - the Spirit of God is also perfect, then why can’t I say that the Mind of God is another Divine Hypostasis of God, that [His] hand is one God, and his heart is another God, that the finger or right hand, or everything else called in the Divine Scripture members of God, are also His Hypostases? And so that you would not question and reason in this way, stumbling over exactly the same thing that the heretics indulged in [empty] reasoning stumbled over, God created in you, in the image and likeness of His Trinity being, a certain imprinted consubstantial trinity, cognizable as a unit. Looking into it as into a mirror and considering it as an impression, you will undoubtedly find there everything that is piously preached regarding God. I mean the trinity of the Hypostases and the singularity of [God's] nature, affinity, co-eternity, inseparability, incomprehensibility, formlessness, uncontemplation, ungeneracy, the ability to be born, originability, creativity, providence, the ability to judge, intangibility, incorporeality, incorruptibility, indestructibility, immortality, eternity, inexplicability and [pure] spirituality [of God]. And to say briefly: you will find in your soul shadowy imprints, images and outlines of everything that is piously spoken about the Divine. That is why God said: “Let us make man in our image (and) according to our likeness” (Gen. 1:26) 47. But the heretics [in the past] and the unbelievers today did not know this and do not understand it [to this day]. After all, if they had properly examined “in the image and likeness” of man, they would not have fallen into doubt about the mystery of the Trinity [of God], would not have applied natural evidence to the One who is above nature, 48 and would not have been darkened [in mind], saying: “It is impossible for one God to be the Trinitarian Trinity.” If Arius had known [what it means] “in the image,” he would not have proclaimed the otherness of the Word [of God] to the Father, and if Macedonius had piously considered this “in the image,” he would not have called the Holy Spirit a creature. But in their blindness they did not see and did not know the pearl in the hidden depths of their being, and therefore they looked for it, wandering in the [satanic] abyss. Note also that our soul imprintably possesses the image of God not only in relation to reality [of its constituent parts], but also in relation to their names; I emphasize - imprintable, and not equally natural 49. How to understand this? Let me clarify right away: we believe that God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are indescribable. However, being unlimited and inseparable from each other, They nevertheless have their own names. And if you call the name of the Father, then undoubtedly you mean the Son. After all, when the Son is unknown, how can one call the Father [“Father”]? Likewise, if you say “Spirit,” you reveal God, since Scripture says: “God is Spirit” (John 4:24) 50. Then turn from this Holy Trinity to Her image - I mean the Trinity that exists within us - and you will see that the three names are interrelated and closely united. For when you say “a rational and thinking soul,” you clearly mean reason and mind; and when you pronounce the word “reason,” then, naturally, you discover with this word the rational soul that gave birth to it; finally, when you say “mind”, you undoubtedly reveal both the soul and the mind 51. For where does the mind come from, if not from the soul and reason? Therefore, they, having indissoluble and interconnected names, have a single, inseparable and essential effect 52. For the action of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit is one and similar, just as their power, strength, desire and will are one. After all, when the Father does something, the Son inseparably participates with Him; and when the Son or the Holy Spirit accomplishes something, the Father also inseparably contributes to Them. Neither the Son does anything spontaneously and on his own without the Father, nor the Father without the Son and the Spirit, nor the Spirit without the Father and the Son. Now turn again from the Prototype to the imprint, which is our soul, [created] in the image and likeness of God, and see in us the same single and similar action. For the soul does not do anything without the mind, the mind does nothing without the soul, and the mind does nothing on its own, without the soul and the mind, since their common power and action are of the same nature, homogeneous and interconnected, being in the image and likeness of God. 6. If you tell me that the soul by itself, without the body, also does nothing, then we have already said this before. And here she again appears to exist in the image and likeness of God, revealing her invisible powers through visible matter. However, [considering] the soul, which by nature is pure and separate from the body, we find its essence possessing a strong faculty of mental vision, very spiritual, simple, imperturbable and luminous, due to which it [in itself] can truly be and be called [created] in the image and likeness of God 54. If someone begins to ridicule what has been said, emphasizing the contradictions [in our words], since in the soul, [thought of] on a par with the Holy Trinity, three truly different hypostases are not found, then let the foolish one know that the soul was created according to the imprinted image of the Trinity, and not according to natural equality with Her 55. In addition, regarding the Godhead, I am afraid to express [the idea] that there is a spatial division there or that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are at some limited distance from each other. When turning to your image and likeness, do not ignore the fact that through your bodily word, born from your mouth, the virtue, wisdom, prudence, strength, depth and knowledge of your soul and mind are known and made publicly available, showing you by this example that you are in the image and likeness of God. For [in the same way] through the birth in the flesh of God the Word, Virtue, Strength, Knowledge, Wisdom and all the other benefits of the Father and the Holy Spirit were revealed in the world 56 . Consider what and how numerous the benefits of the word are in the world, in the impression of God the Word; [comprehend] how everything is created and founded by the Word. By the Word the Angels are brought into being, and by the Word they glorify the Creator, by the Word visible [things] arose, by the Word creation is enlightened, by the Word beings are known, by the Word laws are declared, by the Word signs are revealed, by the Word we glorify the Creator, by the Word the knowledge of God was proclaimed, through the Word we came to know God, and thanks to the Word everything is formed. And just as a silent baby remains incomprehensible to people until a word is born through his mouth, so the birth in the flesh of God the Word put an end to the foolishness of our nature, for God the Word clearly showed the creation of the Father and the Holy Spirit. Therefore, our godly soul, after liberation from the body, is not sent to serve, as Angels are sent. The latter are serving and bonded spirits, but the souls of the saints, who [were worthy to be] in the image of God, are ruling spirits. After all, if a person, after his disobedience, was “made a little lower than the Angels” (Ps. 8:6) as having become mortal, then, thanks to the hypostatic unity of God the Word with him, he was immediately much preferred to the Angels 57. For having once been in the image of God, has now become together with God, and formerly participating in the image of God has now become transmitting his image to God, 58 to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen. 1. Godfather David, seeing with his intelligent and prophetic eyes Christ as if present near him and struck by the [sublime] meaning of His Incarnation, stretching out his hands to Him, exclaims: “Thy understanding was amazed at me, strengthened, I will not be able to reach him” (Ps. 139:6) 59. Scholium: “I turned to one of the interpreters and [found him] saying that when he devoted himself to the study ((φιλολογοῦντος) of the Holy Scriptures, it was as if his intelligent eyes were suddenly opened and he saw that the entire structure of creation and everything that is in this creation outlines the image and imprint of the Incarnation of God the Word. And therefore [Apostle] Paul says about Christ, “all things were created by him and for him” (Col. 1:16)” 60. “Your mind was amazed at me” - that is, at my structure of soul and body, at my dual mixing and combination, at my human union of the invisible and visible, at my hypostatic unity of the material and the immaterial, [which occurred] in the womb. For I see You imprinted in me, as if in some kind of mirror, and I see myself in You naturally. Scholium: “Naturally” (τὸ φυσικῶς) should be understood as “truly” (ἀντὶ τοῦ ἀληϑῶς) 61. And I especially believe in this when I hear You saying in Scripture: “Let Us make man in Our image (and) according to Our likeness” (Gen. 1:26). When God created the invisible Angel, He did not say: “I will create an Angel in My own image and likeness.” And by creating a dual man, who is visible and invisible, [God] called him Your image and likeness, for man is mortal and immortal, imprinting with Your thinking and immortal soul, Christ, Your Divinity, and in [his] passionate body bearing the true image of Your Humanity, consubstantial with him. Therefore, amazed by Your way of Incarnation and condescension [to us] 62, I say: “Wonder your mind at me, be established” - comprehending myself, I am amazed at this Incarnation. How did the Ethereal One incarnate? How did the Creator become a created man? How did the Impassive become passionate and God appear material on earth? But, turning from these aporias again to myself, I cast aside all my doubts, hearing God speaking [to me]: “Let us make man in Our image (and) in Our likeness” 63 . I listen to a certain [exegete], who in the best and most exalted way interprets “in the image [of God],” who, slightly changing the words of Moses, speaks. “And Christ said: I will create man in My own image and likeness. And God created man, in His own image He created him.”64 Consequently, when I see a person created by God, and also see the divine, ineffable and life-giving breath breathed by God into that earthy and material body, then I think of this imprint [of God] as nothing other than [created] in the image, likeness and representation of Christ. For the inhalation from the mouth [of God] prefigured the existence of God the Word, and the entry [of this breath] into the dust [prefigured] His true dwelling in the flesh 65 ; I mean [destined] in the image, and not in equality with the Become immutable Man, Who has a complex, unique and indivisible Person, and also consists of both Divinity and humanity. For since this “true counsel of old” (Is. 25:1) 66, that is, the sacrament which “God ordained before the ages for our glory” (1 Cor. 2:7) 67, He intended to accomplish in the last centuries so that God the Word would come to earth and become flesh (John 1:14) 68, and also that God as man would “live with men” (Bar. 3:38 ) 69 and for many it became “a sign that can be contradicted” (Luke 2:34) 70, as Simeon says, then God, being the wise Provider, ordained in the dispensation and creation of Adam the image and imprint of His Incarnation, Nativity and Incarnation. He foreshadowed His visible and invisible, mortal and immortal dispensation, so that man, seeing himself, would cast aside all doubts and, becoming a believer, would see Christ - visible and invisible, God and at the same time man, mortal and immortal, born of the Virgin. Therefore, Methodius, abundant in wisdom, in his work “The Feast of the Virgins” says: “And God created man in the like image of His Image” 71, that is, in the image of Christ, for He is the “radiance” and “image of the hypostasis” of the Father (Heb. 1:3) 72. 2. That is why man, unlike Angels and domestic animals, was created not from one essence, but from certain two, dissimilar and other-essential things: matter and immaterial, earthly and divine, corruptible and incorruptible. And since we did not come to God, but, on the contrary, God came to us, then [from this we can conclude that] first there was the material, and then the divine [joined] the earthly. Further, since, as it is written about Adam, life came to him, brought by God into a state of deadness, immobility and frenzy, then [it can be assumed that] the life-giving breath of God was breathed into him while dead (Gen. 2:7) 73. Note: [Scripture] says that God brought to Adam the life that came out of him in a dream and in a frenzy 74; both - I mean God and Adam - were unanimous when the rib called life was taken from him. Scholia: "These words refer to Christ and the Church." Why does [Scripture] say that God “brought her to Adam” (Gen. 2:22)? Shouldn't we understand "brought" in the following way: what God took from Adam when he fell into the sleep of sin and experienced a frenzy from incorruptibility and immortality, it was He who again brought to Adam and restored in him the life that had come and arrived to him on earth? And therefore God created the body [of man] “from the earth,” and not from water or fire, that he intended to unite with the earth and come to it. And again, He formed this body from the four elements and breathed His breath into it, since the Life of God had to penetrate into [all] the four corners [of the earth]. Or, if it is allowed to piously say this: [God] made the flesh from four [elements] because after the word about the Trinity came the fourth sacrament of the Incarnation of One from the [Holy] Trinity 75, for nothing rash happens with God, since He “has created all things with wisdom” (Ps. 103:24) 76. Hence he fulfilled all creation in seven days, so that the uncreated Trinity might be revealed; for [the number] seven of the creature and the three Uncreated [Persons of the Trinity] together make up the fullness of the number ten 77 . But, returning to what preceded, we [can say] that the structure and state of man reveals [his creation] in the image and likeness of Christ, and the formation of man in the [mother’s] womb clearly indicates to us the hypostatic unity of Christ. For when a person is conceived, soul and body are combined in the mother’s womb in an ineffable and inexplicable, dual and mutually existing union and fusion. And neither the body is formed and arranged before the soul, nor the soul anticipates the body and does not preexist it 78; but the mortal and the immortal, like two foreign essences, combine, [figuratively] revealing the hypostatic unity of the two foreign essences of Christ - the immortal Divinity and His mortal humanity. If someone understands the divine saying: “Let us make man in our image (and) after our likeness” as referring to our inner and invisible man, then he is unlikely to sin [against the truth] 79 . And the words: “Behold, Adam became” - after the crime [commandments] - “as one of Us” (Gen. 3:22), clearly and unambiguously represent the bodily flesh of the Incarnation of God the Word, One of the [Holy] Trinity. It should be noted that [only] when [Adam] became material and corruptible, he was told: “as one of Us.” Those who claim that God spoke this, mocking him, deceived by the serpent, should pay attention to the fact that the voice of God is not in accordance with the advice of the serpent. For the serpent says: “You will be like gods” (Gen. 3:5), but God does not say: “Behold, you have become like gods,” but says: “Behold, Adam has become like one of Us.” If the serpent, with the words “you will be like gods,” teaches our first parents polytheism, then God addresses Adam not on behalf of the multitude, but on behalf of the one [God], and says: “He became like one of Us,” that is, as One of the Holy Trinity. If this statement were reproachful, then the reproach should have been made to both, and especially to the wife who misled Adam 80. However, one way or another, in the dispensation of the complex Adam 81 the sacrament of the Incarnation of Christ was clearly foreordained, and therefore he is called as having become one [of the Holy] Trinity. 3. Note that we do not forcibly distort the narrative [about the creation of man] even to the slightest degree, saying the following: Adam reflects and preimprints the Incarnation and bodily fleshiness of the human birth of the incorruptible and immaterial God the Word and in the fact that, instead of the incorruptible, immortal and close to immaterial body that he possessed [before the Fall], he was re-clothed by God into the present body - whiter and more passionate. This example, I mean the nakedness and clothing of Adam, shows, as it appears to the divine Gregory, that the naked and uncovered God the Word will be covered and clothed in certain miraculous and God-created, leather and flesh vestments of our nature 82 . Therefore, man was created naked and was not self-clothed like cattle and birds, which have [naturally] their inherent cover thanks to feathers, thick skin, wool and hair. And man, being [originally] naked, incorruptible and immortal, [then] was clothed in seedless garments of skin in the image and likeness of the naked Word; for God [clothed Adam] without taking away or taking away [these garments] from any cattle, but seedlessly and divinely placed him above [all other] nature. Hence, these vestments are not bestial, do not originate in an unreasonable nature, but, like man himself, were created by the hand of God 83 . After all, [thereby] the God-created and seedless flesh of God the Word is clearly and undoubtedly destined, which God [Himself] made for Him, just as Jacob created a motley robe for his own son Joseph (Gen. 37:3) 84. And if leather garments did not foreshadow the Incarnation of the naked second Adam, then why did God not dress him in fine linen garments, or [woven] from some other material? Then the myths of the Manichaeans arose, subverting this [Word of Revelation] and speaking of two principles and two opposite gods: good and evil. [According to their teaching], one [god], as good, is the creator of our incorporeal soul, and the other - [god] evil - is the creator of our body. Again, [the good god] is the creator of light, and the evil [god] is the creator of darkness; the good god found his imprint in the tree of life, and the tree of knowledge [of good and evil] is the imprint of the evil god; the good god created immortal and incorruptible man, and the evil god clothed him in leather vestments and the mortal plumpness of this flesh, making man corruptible. Thus, the evil god is the creator of the carnal birth of all our humanity and the creator of mortal [man] 85 . Such is the absurd chatter of the Manichaeans. The Church of Christ keeps away from such [fables]; she hearkens [to the verbs of Holy Scripture which affirm] that man is created in the image of God; that after transgressing [the commandments] he again heard from God: “Behold, Adam has become like one of Us” (Gen. 3:22); that, like a tenderly loving father, he was clothed by God in [leather] vestments, carefully prepared by Him as a cover [for the soul]; that Adam produced offspring, according to the blessing of God, which says: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28) 86; that [God] ordained him to be the father of the whole world; that his nature, having ascended to the throne of the Cherubim, is glorified by all the angelic hosts who worship him. And the Church, looking at the kind of blessings that Adam possessed after his crime, does not dare to say that some evil [god] is the cause and giver of such great blessings of ours. On the contrary, [she claims] that certain sacraments, divine and ineffable Dispensations were pre-imprinted in paradise, and in the fruit, and in [leather] vestments, and in the tree, and in [Adam’s] nakedness, and in a dream, and in [his] attack, and in the attack [of sinful thoughts to the first people] 87, in expulsion [of them from paradise], and in themselves names, both in appearance [of Adam and Eve], and in everything that is [narrated] there - all this turns our gaze to the Incarnation of Christ and prefigures Him. Scholium: “The solution [to the questions posed in] these chapters is found in our book on the Sixth Day” 88. And since we have shown that Adam [was created] in the image and likeness of Christ, everything that is said and done regarding Adam, with the exception of sin, is in the image of Christ 89. 4. Some argue that man was created in the image of God when the image of God the Word began to dwell in him, and he was [created] in his likeness when he rose from the dead with Christ and sat down with Him on the throne of the Cherubim, becoming co-throne with God the Father and the Holy Spirit. [Only] then, [in their opinion], are the words spoken by God truly befitting Adam: “Behold, Adam has become like one of Us” (Gen. 3:22). If a Jew 90 objects to me in this way, then I will again repeat what I said before. When God created the most honorable, truly holy, heavenly, eternal, divine and ministering ranks of the Cherubim, Seraphim and all the heavenly Powers, which were truly pure and undefiled, He did not say: “Let us make the Cherubim and Seraphim in Our image and likeness,” although the Cherubim, in comparison with the earthly man, would have been more appropriately called “in the image of God.” Scholium: “All the [Church] fathers who examined [the question] whether Angels were created in the image of God, did not find a single similar statement in all Holy Scripture.” And when [God] created the light that illuminates man and every creature, [He also] did not say: “Let us make light in our image,” although this was more fitting for light than for man. For what is more honorable than light? After all, if the light disappears, then the whole world will be perceived as a dark and soulless dead thing. Then, when [God] created the radiant and sweetest sun, filling with life every breath of animate [creatures] - people and irrational [creatures], birds and fish - it again was not called [created] in the image and likeness of God, although this seems to be more appropriate for the sun, as a life-giving [luminary], than for man. For the sun and its warmth support every animate body, while the human body does not give life or strengthen the sun. God created water in the same way; but she also, although she fills bodies, seeds and every breath with life, was not called [created] in the image of God. If you tell me that, as a result of the autocratic principle of man, 91 God said: “Let us make man in Our image (and) in Our likeness,” then I will answer you that the Angels are much more autocratic and dominant and, being closer to God than man, they care about [all] earthly [creatures]. Scholium: “After all, we find in [the Book of the Prophet] Daniel [the statement] that Angels are rulers of the nations” 92. In addition, man does not rule over the [material] elements, nor over fire, nor over waters, nor over light, nor over the sun, but only over animals alone. The [material] elements support his life, which is why [God] commanded man to eat (Gen. 1:29, 2:16). Of course, that which sustains [life] and gives life is more powerful than the body, supported and given life by the four elements. If, as discussed above, you say that man is [created] in the image and likeness of God thanks to the thinking [beginning of his] soul, then your statement will be completely correct. And indeed, for what other reason can a person be called [created] in the image of God, except because of the possession of the inhalation of God from the Divine Hypostasis Itself, which, like a certain outflow and shadow of God, imparts to the soul the rational breath of life. Neither an Angel, nor a Cherub, nor any other creature, but only one man, who was to be revealed as the true dwelling place of God, was worthy to receive this inhalation and God-given production into the light from the mouth of God. Therefore, man was clearly and undoubtedly created in the image and likeness of Christ - the second Adam 93. Therefore, to Him, I mean Christ, God brought all the animals of [different] kinds, “to see what He would call them” (Gen. 2:19) 94; and He called them cattle, sheep, wolves, kids, foxes, snakes, dogs, doves, birds of the air and eagles. He called Himself “the good shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep” (John 10:11) 95. To him be glory and power forever and ever. Amen. 3rd word, or word against monothelites 96 1. Prudent doctors, wise and knowledgeable experts [of their field], who want to acquire [knowledge] related to the healing of diseases, before making antidotes, first strive to find out those substances that remove the causes of diseases. In the same way, those who want to thoroughly and painlessly destroy and eradicate pernicious ailments and the destructive evils of heresies must first of all uncover, expose and cut off their roots, so that later, having thoroughly studied them, they can heal them in the best possible way. “Speech is not the essence, it is lower than words, and their voices are not heard. Their words went out into all the earth, and their words into the ends of the world” (Ps. 18:4–5). I mean [voices and verbs] of the fighting armies of the Persians and Romans, after which the victorious trophy of the Cross [of the Lord] was returned by King Heraclius, with the help of God, to Jerusalem 97. The scepter-bearer Heraclius, who ruled the Roman kingdom at that time, while making his campaign through the land of the Persians and Chaldeans, in Antioch 98 met with a certain Athanasius, called the patriarch of the hated hierarchy of the Jacobites, 99 who was skilled in speeches and distinguished by the malicious cunning inherent in the Syrians. And, having entered into a conversation with him regarding the belief in the two natures of Christ, the king promised that if [Athanasius] succumbs to conviction and recognizes the holy Council of Chalcedon, then [the sovereign] will immediately install him as patriarch of the holy Catholic Church 100. Athanasius, either out of hypocrisy, or for some of his own reasons, immediately recognized the Council, confessing two united natures in Christ. And when this was settled, he began to question the king regarding actions and wills: should they be considered dual or singular in Christ? The king, embarrassed by the novelty of the question (since it had never been asked before until our time), 101 wrote to Martin, Pope of Rome, and also to Sergius, Bishop of Constantinople 102. The Pope, in accordance with the Tradition of the Holy Fathers, answered him as follows: “When two natures are recognized - created and uncreated - then it is absolutely necessary that they also possess their two natural properties, I mean wills and actions. For if there is one will and one action, then there are not two natures, but one.” This is what Martin wrote 103. Sergius of Constantinople, being a Syrian by birth and, as the story goes, a descendant of the Jacobites, sent a message to Heraclius, which stated the opposite, that is, one natural desire and action in Christ was confessed 104. The king, having received messages from both, bowed to what Sergius wrote about. Athanasius joyfully received this [news], because in his cunning he understood that where one action is spoken of, one nature is fully recognized. Then Cyrus is sent by the patriarch 105 to Alexandria; there he, with the help of Theodore of Parano 106, in a similar way created a unity “based on water” 107 (which was in reality an empty matter) 108, subscribing [to the position] of a single natural action in Christ 109. And when this [unity] spread to Antioch and Alexandria, the Council of Chalcedon and the Catholic Church were plunged into great dishonor. For the Jacobites in Syria and the Theodosians in Alexandria, boasting of [their victory], said: “Not we and Chalcedon, but Chalcedon entered into communion with us, confessing one nature of Christ through one [His] action.” Having heard about this, Heraclius was ashamed [and was put in a difficult position]. On the one hand, he did not want to abolish what he himself had started, and on the other, he could not bear the shame 110. Then, considering that he was doing something great, he issued the so-called “Edict”, prohibiting the confession of one or two actions in Christ 111. Having learned about this, the supporters of the North 112 began to mock the Catholic Church in taverns and baths, saying: “The Chalcedonites, who recently reasoned in Nestorian style, sobered up and, turning to the truth, united with us, [recognizing the doctrine of] one nature of Christ through [the doctrine of] one action. Now, having recognized the first [entirely] correct, they also refused to confess one or two actions in Christ.” Hearing and seeing [all] this, the Roman Primate Martin 113 could not bear such a shameless reproach of the Church and convened a Council in Rome of many pious bishops, which, relying on patristic testimonies, proclaimed two inseparable properties of Christ, that is, His divine and human will and actions 114. Then Heraclius died, and Martin was sent into exile by the grandson of Heraclius 115. After which the deserted Amalek 116 rose up, striking us - the people of Christ. Then the first, terrible and irreparable defeat of the Roman army happened; I mean the bloodshed under Gabitha, Jermuh and Dathemon 117. They were followed by the capture and burning of the [cities] of Palestine: Caesarea [Palestinian] and Jerusalem; Then there was the loss of Egypt, the interior regions and islands, as well as the irreparable devastation and depopulation of the [entire] Roman Empire. But the rulers of the Romans did not feel [all this], and therefore they, sending for the torches of the Roman Council, cut out their tongues and cut off their hands 118. And what was God’s retribution that fell upon us for such [atrocity]? The almost complete destruction of the Roman army and fleet in Phenicia, which again led to the ruin of the entire Christian people and the devastation of the regions; and this did not stop until Martin’s persecutor died by the sword in Sicily 119. His son, Constantine the Pious 120, through the Ecumenical Council united the holy churches, confessing, in agreement with the holy fathers, the divine and human will and actions in Christ our God 121. This sacred Council, like an auspicious sacrifice (1 Pet. 7-10) and the fragrant incense of Aaron (Ex. 30: 7-10), accepted by God, stopped the destruction of our people for twenty years 122, directed the sword of enemies against each other, gave rest to the regions, made the sea favorable for sailing, prevented the taking [of Christians] into captivity and granted the entire Roman Empire a far from short-term respite, consolation and peace. 2. But all this was not understood and accepted by the madmen wandering in the darkness; mocking us in taverns and baths before girls and harlots, they declare: “Those who speak of two wills in Christ affirm one good will and the other evil, one divine and the other the devil. After all, how can we even talk about the human will in Christ when the Apostle says: “the carnal will is not subject to the law of God,” “the carnal will is enmity against God” (Rom. 8:7)” 123 and “we were once disobedient (Titus 3:3), fulfilling the desires of the flesh (Eph. 2:3), for the carnal will is death (Rom. 8:6)” 124. This is how the enemies of truth bark at us like dogs, also like “horses and horses, they have no understanding” (Ps. 31:9); they slander us, claiming that we are talking about two persons and hypostases in Christ 125, two separated and opposing free wills; as if we deny the word “Mother of God”, teach in general about the duality and separateness of Christ and proclaim two actions in him, good and evil 126. With such chatter and slander they damaged nations, split churches, confused [entire] regions, insulted the faith, inclined the priests to apostasy, misled the monastics, tarnished the rulers, outraged everyone - subjecting every city, every village and every diocese to persecution. Creating violence and all kinds of oppression that even the Arians did not bring down on the Church, they hate us with such hatred that they do not even have towards Jews, Samaritans, Manichaeans, pagans or apostates, preferring rather to enter into communication and unite with idolaters than with us, who speak of the two indivisible properties of Christ; choose to pray with the Jews rather than with us, who confess in Christ the inseparable divine and human will and actions. They do not want and cannot distinguish what is the divine and uncreated will, and what is the God-created and God-given will of our rational soul, [not knowing that] through this will [everything] good and pleasing to the divine will is realized; finally, [they do not understand] that there is a carnal, devilish and material will, which both the divine Apostle and all [Holy] Scripture condemn and reject. Scholium: “Those who are going to wisely and intelligently conduct co-inquiry with the heretics regarding the properties of Christ or regarding the [divine and human] actions and wills [of Him, should remember] that before any reasoning, a written statement of definitions should be required of them (Sorouq). Thanks to these definitions, the foolishness of heretics is easily refuted. After all, [our] holy fathers speak of two perfections in Christ, that is, that He is perfect in Divinity, and equally perfect in humanity; that He is consubstantial with the Father in Divinity and consubstantial with us in humanity. Therefore, it is necessary to demand from heretics, if, of course, they are able to do so, a definite answer to the following questions: "What is the definition of true consubstantiality? What is the definition of complete perfection? What is the definition of the rational soul and what is the irrational soul? What is the carnal will, what is the spiritual will and what is the divine will?" And if they can give these definitions according to the holy fathers, and not according to the Hellenes (πατρικῶς καὶ οὐχ ἑλληνικῶς), then they will be refuted. For in this case they will reveal the impeccable consubstantiality of God the Word with the Father, and will also present Him as an impeccable and perfect Man, proving the consubstantiality of His soul and body with ours” 127. Because [Apostle] Paul often calls sin “flesh”, saying: “Flesh and blood will not inherit the kingdom of God” (1 Cor. 15:50) 128, “those who live according to the flesh cannot please God” (Rom. 8:8) 129, “he who sows to his own flesh will of the flesh reap corruption” (Gal. 6:8) 130 and “if you live according to the flesh, then you will die" (Rom. 8:13) 131. However, he calls the flesh “sin” and not the nature of the flesh 132. That is why Christ appears [after His Resurrection], who, shaming [unbelievers], says: “Handle Me and look; for a spirit does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have” (Luke 24:39) 133. And the holy fathers define the carnal will as alien and unbecoming of Christ, and the carnal and passionate action of sin, [according to them], is not natural and God-created and is not an immaculate and impeccable natural action and will, [created] in the image and likeness of God. But those who are truly possessed by the devil, are kindled and inflamed to the point of madness by the flesh, are excited, defiled and soiled by the carnal will - they are unable to discern what is alien [to the original nature of man] and the evil will and unnatural action, and what is the God-created and God-given, rational and willing will inherent in the soul [originally], and what, finally, is its life-giving action that unites the body 134. They, like the relatives and disciples of Mani, reject the will of God-created human nature and [thus], like the Manichaeans, condemn our God-created flesh, disgrace our God-given rational desire 135, thanks to which we, rushing towards the Divine, find salvation; With their similar teaching they create enmity against the Creator. If the innate will of the soul is evil, then why does David say: “Let me confess my will to God” (Ps. 27:7)? 136 How can the soul even desire anything from the Divine if it does not have a rational desire? Or how will it think and put into action something that is best and reasonable, without having [in itself] intelligent action? Therefore, thanks to these two properties, she clearly reflects in herself that which is in the image and likeness of God 137. 3. The preceding two “Words” regarding [what it means] “in the image” were written by us with only one purpose: to show how in man, as if in some impression and image, not only two essences of Christ are predestined, but also preimprinted, as if in some vague image, two impeccable actions and two wills [of Him]. For to honor and love father, mother, brothers and relatives is characteristic of the natural and impeccable will inherent in human nature, and to abandon and abandon father, mother and brothers for the sake of God is characteristic of the truly divine, praiseworthy and supernatural will 138. So, there are two blameless wills: one will is naturally human, and the other is divine and transcends nature. Scholium: “We urge our brethren in the Lord, with great caution and prudence, to enter into disputes of words with [our] opponents regarding actions and wills, and especially with those who do not accommodate, “for not everyone has faith” (2 Thess. 3:2), as [Apostle] Paul says. We speak about two natural wills, two natural actions and the other two natural [properties] in a voice not impudent and not with an insolent face, as some fools carelessly do, but with caution and with the fear of God. After all, one can speak both piously and blasphemously about the two natures in Christ; in the same way, it is possible to speak about the wills and actions in it both correctly and incorrectly. For Diodorus and Nestorius speak of two natures of Christ, but hypostatic; Theodore of Antioch and Arius of Alexandria affirm two wills, but in the opposite sense [to Orthodoxy]; and Mani Pers speaks of two actions: one [supposedly] belonging to the good god, and the other belonging to the [god] evil. Therefore, in defending [our faith], we confuse our opponents by telling them the following: “If anyone speaks of a carnal or worldly will and [corresponding] action in Christ, opposing His Divinity, or establishes in him a will that is opposed to God’s Word, let him be condemned.” The “image of a servant” possessed all this [before the Incarnation of God]. (Phil. 2:7), [but in Christ he] obeyed and was led by the beckoning and desire of the image of the Master God the Word. And in order not to make His divine nature subject to His passions, and the Word to be slavishly subordinate to the Father, for this purpose we assimilate to each nature of Christ inseparable [properties]” 139. Therefore, when you see Jesus obeying and submitting, as [Evangelist] Luke says (Luke 2:51), to Joseph and His Mother, a child running up and clinging to Her arms and holy breast, will you have any doubts that He does and shows this thanks to the will and love [inherent] in our nature? That He reveals Himself to be perfect in everything and consubstantial with us in humanity, except sin alone, as [Apostle] Paul says (Heb. 4:15)? 140 And when He says to the Mother: “What is it for me and for you, woman?” ( John 2:4 ) and “Who are My Father and Mother? “Only he who does the will of Him who sent Me,” 141 then [the Lord] instructs us regarding the divine and supernatural will. For for our sake He did and accomplished everything, being Himself perfect in everything, exceedingly perfect and ever abiding in completeness. I think that another understanding [of what was said] is more accurate, implying that Christ fulfilled the obedience and will of the Father and carried out the commandment, command and law through the rational, willing and reflective will of the thinking soul, belonging to the “form of a servant” (Phil. 2:7) 142. And God the Word contained in unity, gave life and cultivated his own body thanks to the vital, life-giving and God-given action of the thinking soul, according to the definition and word given by Him to the rational soul: to give life, to hold in unity, to grow and move the nature of bodies. Hence it is called soul, because it animates 143 and animates the body; “to give up the spirit” means “to die,” and “to breathe in” means “to live.” We have shown that the complex man 144 brought into being by Christ, [created] in His image and likeness, is both an image of Christ’s dual nature and an image of His [double] will. Again, in man, as in a certain image and imprint, a certain double reflection of action is seen, in the image and imprint of Christ. For just as His Divinity sometimes acted in a divine manner, 145 and sometimes acted in a divine manner in heaven before the perception of the body, being an indescribable and unlimited body, so the soul, being in the image and likeness of the invisible God the Word, sometimes acts spiritually-masculine, that is, bodily-spiritually, in the image of the divinely-masculine [action] of Christ, 146, and sometimes (and most often) acts only spiritually, without the assistance of the body, in the image of the invisible God the Word, who has invisibly accomplished and is doing many things both in heaven and on earth, through His indescribable, universal and transcendental Divine action. After all, love for God is realized only by mental action, which does not use the assistance of the body. Likewise, faith is a manifestation of mental action alone. Also, hope and humility exist and are realized through the action of the soul. And, generally speaking, all necessary and spiritual virtues, the root and mother of which is purity of heart 147, are accomplished only by the thinking and rational action of our soul, which does not need the body to fulfill them. Therefore, those who are crippled, weak and immobile in the flesh can, thanks to these virtues, carried out by the action of the soul, become saints of God 148. The duality of our actions in a dream is especially clearly revealed. For then the sensations of the body seem to die and are almost inactive, and the vigilant and incessant, thinking and rational action of the soul penetrates the entire [universe] 149 . Further: when separated from the body at the time of death, how does the rational soul manifest itself, if not through its thinking, life-giving and life-giving action? 150 And how now do the souls of the righteous praise God? By what action are they enlightened by Him? How do we pray for peace? For each [of the parts of man] has a property akin to its own nature. The body, which arose from the inert, dead, motionless and insensitive earth, at death [again] becomes dead, soulless, insensitive, motionless and completely inactive, according to God's verb to Adam, it is said regarding the body: “Thou art earth, and thou shalt come to earth, like the earth from which thou wast created” (Gen. 3:19) 151. The soul did not arise from earth, air, water, fire, light, sun, cloud, or from any other created hypostasis or essence, visible or imaginable, but from the most pure, eternal, incomprehensible, inexplicable, invisible, formless, immortal, incorruptible, intangible, impervious and incorporeal nature of God. For our God-like, God-given, God-created and God-like soul was created, brought into being and gained existence thanks to the said inhalation of God; she, being life and life-giving, came as if from some Source of Life; being a radiance, it was created as if by a Treasure of Light and, like a breath from some eternal depth of incense, was born by the lips of God, came out of these lips and settled in Adam 152. I even dare to say that God the Word, the Creator of all things, has given us a rational soul; from [His] pure lips is breathed into us, from the heart of God is heartened into us, from the soul of God is inspired in us, and from the mind of God is brought to understanding in us. Scholium: “For we find in the [Holy] Scripture [sayings] concerning the heart, and the soul, and the mind, and the lips, and the hearing of God.” And since the soul originated and was born from the ever-moving God Himself, through His lips and inhalation, then it is ever-moving and, in comparison with all other creation, alone is and is called [created] in the image and likeness of God, for it possesses in itself, by grace and imprint, the properties of God’s nature. I mean incomprehensibility, invisibility, incorporeality, formlessness, purity, immortality, eternity, incorruptibility, autocracy, sinlessness, life-giving, wisdom 153, spirituality, creativeness. After all, just as God created man from the earth, so man, by grace, creates man from woman. And just as at the first creation man had a body from the earth, and a soul generated by God Himself, so now the body is formed from female clay 154 and blood, and the soul is ineffably transmitted from a man through semen, similar to a kind of inhalation. Regarding the creation of Angels, Cherubim and Seraphim it is said: “He - that is, God - spoke, and commanded, and was created” (Ps. 149:5) 155. As a man, existing in the image and likeness of God, the situation was different: God created [his] body with God’s own hands, and brought the invisible soul into existence and created it through inhalation from His completely invisible soul 156. And [Saint] Gregory [the Theologian] also believes that [God] “put” the soul into us “from Himself,” and not from what is outside of Himself 157. 4. Therefore, if the soul originated from the mouth and breath of God, then from there came all its essential properties: the rational and thinking principle, as well as the willing, acting and life-giving principle, without which it cannot be a rational soul and be recognized as such. For just as the [material] elements compose and form the body, so the soul is composed of its own properties and characteristics; is known through them and differs, like a rational soul, from irrational [creatures]. After all, man differs from dumb [creatures] in his thinking, rational, willing and painful [principles], while in everything else, and especially in his bodily [properties], he is involved, similar and consubstantial with these [creatures]. For they are from the same earth from which our body was created; they [also] move, have fierce strength 158 ; an unreasonable and unwilling soul, life, voice and breath; have flesh, blood, bones, taste sensations and everything that we have in our body; have memory, as God says to Job 159, appetite; they experience hunger, thirst, pain, and sweat. In other words, [animals] have all the bodily [properties] that we have. And only the rational, thinking and willing [principles] of our immortal soul, which originate from God, are not characteristic of them. Now consider with me the blindness and error of the heretics. They fully confess in Christ everything akin to unreasonable [creatures], that is, body, matter, corruption, taste, blood, tears, saliva, bones, secretions, blood circulation, hunger, thirst, fatigue, sweat, death and mortification, which by nature are truly alien and unworthy of God, as characteristic of animals, beasts and reptiles. And the properties of the thinking and immortal soul, which are in the image and likeness of God, originated from His pure lips and have, by grace and likeness, a certain affinity with Him - the wicked do not dare to confess these properties in Christ, [considering them] bad, although [it is thanks to them] that our entire human nature is given life and preserved 160 . For with the destruction of the vital and life-giving action of our soul, a person is immediately given over to death, since his connecting and life-giving spiritual action is separated from the body. Therefore, our soul, if we deprive it of rationality and take away its willful and desiring power, will be no different, [for example], from the unreasonable and incomprehensible soul of a horse. After all, how can she become pleasing to God if not through her leading and active movement and strength? How will she fulfill the will of God, if not through her innate and inherent will? 161 And in the [Holy] Scripture we find various designations for this [our ability]: good will, longing, desire, love and attraction 162. If it is necessary to give a few evidences [of the Holy Scriptures] on this subject, then this should not be postponed. For example, it is said: “The Lord will do the will of those who fear Him” (Ps. 145:19), “in the law of the Lord is the will of the blessed man” (Ps. 1:2), “in the same way the tree desires for the springs of water, my soul desires thee for You, O God” (Ps. 41:2), “my soul desires and dies in the courts of the Lord” (Ps. 83:3) and “I desire salvation Yours, O Lord” (Ps. 119:174). About love it is said: “I will love You, O Lord, my strength” (Ps. 17:2), “I have loved you, because the Lord will hear” (Ps. 114:1), “If I have loved Your law, O Lord” (Ps. 119:97) and “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul” (Deut. 6:5; Matt. 22:37; Mark 12:30 ; Luke 10:27 ). How can the soul love God if it does not possess an essential image within itself, the power of will, desire, love, attraction, natural and good? Possessing precisely this, [Saint] Ignatius said: “My love has been crucified” 163. But those who do not have love and attraction to God, who do not experience desire, lust and volitional aspiration towards Him, possess [rather] the will of the devil and fulfill their desires of the flesh. They refuse to confess in Christ the God-given, God-created and God-like will of our thinking and God-designed 164 soul, considering it evil, [and also refuse to confess] its life-giving, formative and God-inspired action. But without them, our thinking soul, God-given and coming from the mouth of God, can neither desire nor carry out any of the divine commandments. If our thinking soul is alien to good and God-imitating will and action, then why does God say to people: “If you are willing and listen to Me, the good of the earth is siesta” (Is. 1:19) 165. How will the soul carry out the divine will if it does not have a leading and active force? How was Adam, immediately after his creation, entrusted with cultivating and keeping the commandment (Gen. 2:16–17)? 166 “But,” [those who object to me] will say, “man has perverted [this commandment].” And the heretics will contradict us: “[He completely perverted] everything human, therefore it is neither proper nor sufficient to say that in Christ there is a human will and a human action” 167 . Not at all like that: after all, Adam changed and turned from incorruptibility to corruption not the whole [human] nature, but only the body, created from the earth and belonging to a changeable nature - it was this that underwent the change, becoming, as a result of the transgression [of the commandments], corruptible and mortal from the incorruptible and immortal. This is the [man] who, as the Gospel says (Luke 10:30), was caught by robbers and was left from their blows, if not completely dead, then barely alive 168. For the soul, created from the immortal and unchangeable essence of God through the inhalation of [Him], although it descended together [with the body from paradise] as a result of touching the tree, 169 nevertheless remained in its own incorruptibility and immortality, belonging to [created] in the image and likeness of God. Therefore, like the body, it does not need an essential transformation, but only in some kind of reasonable correction and confession, which do not require the destruction of the will - so as not to make [man] unreasonable - and also do not require the abolition of action - so as not to become, like soulless creatures, dead and inactive 170. 5. The Word of God, having come [to earth] to renew Adam, created for Himself the same soul that He initially bestowed or breathed into Adam through His inspiration - existing in the image and likeness of God the Word Himself, as the Scripture says, having being in His likeness, a will in His image, which imprints itself and action in His image, is pure, immaculate, ineffable, sinless, not in need of essential transformation, like the body and [everything] corporeal, does not require change and reconstruction of its own parts and members, does not have [along with another] will that needs to be destroyed, and does not have an action requiring abolition 171. After all, how can a soul that comes from God, exists in the image and likeness of God, is all-pure and belongs to God the Word, need essential transformation? If the soul of Adam received existence from God, through the inhalation of [Him], then the soul of Emmanuel had existence in God, was theological and participatory of God 172; she arose during hypostatic unity along with the body in the all-pure and God-inclusive womb [of the Mother of God] from Him, through Him, with Him and in Him. Therefore, if it is not daring to say that God the Word once ineffably produced and created from Himself the essence of the rational soul, then it is equally daring to say that He dwelt in Himself from the loins of the Virgin. Is it possible to blame [in anything] an essence that was originally brought into being by God, theology and possesses the most honest nature, will and action? If then she had her own powers and properties, [as if] separate from God, now, thanks to hypostatic unity, [possesses them] already united with God, being, as it were, like God and like God. Since this is the case, the foolishness of the heretics is indeed laughable. After all, they talk about the passions in Christ, similar to the passions of the bestial and changeable nature of the flesh, but they refuse to recognize the essentially unchangeable properties of His soul, which is in the image [of God]. And so that they do not think that this is said by us, relying [only] on our own reasoning and inventions, let us cite, with the help of God, evidence from the Holy Scriptures. The Divine John, imprisoned, foreseeing with spiritual eyes that he would be killed by Herod and go to hell, sent two of his disciples to ask Christ: “Are you the one who should come” - that is, go down to hell - “or should we expect something else?” (Matthew 11:3; Luke 7:19–20) 173. And [the holy Apostle] Peter in his conciliar Epistle says about Christ: “He came down and preached to the spirits in prison who were once disobedient” (1 Pet. 3:19–20) 174. The Lord Himself foretold [His] descent [into hell], saying to Job: “Have you come to the sources of the sea, have you walked in the footprints of the deep? Do the gates of death open to you with fear, and the gatekeepers of hell, seeing you, are afraid?” ( Job 38:16–17 ) 175 . How did this descent of Christ into hell, stay and preaching [of Him there] take place? After all, “no one has ever seen God” (John 1:18), and it is impossible to see [Him] 176. Again, after His death, the all-holy body of Christ was placed in a tomb on top of the earth 177. How then was hell deprived of its prey? Seeing what image the gatekeepers of hell were afraid of? It is quite obvious that the all-pure soul of the Lord and God of [our] Jesus Christ visited rational souls of the same essence as it. She, piety, came down to them; she deprived the prison of her prey; she bound the tyrant and freed the prisoners, saying to them: “Come out” (Is. 49:9) 178. As filling the space of the entire person, consisting of soul and body 179, she, being intelligent, intelligently, willingly and actively proclaims in hell, commands [there] and deprives [hell of its prey]. The thinking soul sees thinking souls, the rational soul sees rational souls, the life-giving soul sees life-giving souls, the immortal soul sees immortal souls, the active soul sees those who act, the soul that has a will sees those who will. After all, how could souls in hell perceive the preaching of the holy soul [of the Lord] except through their thinking and rational will? After all, they did not believe and were saved by force, against their will, or unintentionally, but voluntarily, consciously, contributing and participating [in this salvation] with their own will. What I have said is also confirmed by the God-bearing Gregory the Theologian, who in the Word for Holy Pascha speaks of Christ’s descent into hell: “If Christ ascends to the Cross, you too ascend with Him; if He goes down to hell, you go down with Him. Experience the mysteries there, the double descent. Does [the Lord], having appeared [there], save everyone, or only believers there?” 180 Now, you see, Gregory does not say that all souls in hell were saved, but [implies that] only those who, by their own choice and will, believed in Christ. How could they believe, apart from their free will and action? People living on earth in the flesh and gifted with a [rational] soul, Christ visited and saved through [His] flesh and soul, “purifying like with like,” as Gregory says, 181 living among visible [creatures] and addressing them with speech through visible nature. And He visited souls freed from bodies through [His] pure soul, free from the body. If the all-pure soul of the Lord is deprived of will, then it is clear that He was forced to submit to the Word of God like a dumb [being], as Apollinaris blabbers 182. And if [Christ] was deprived of will, then it is clear that [He] descended into hell like some unreasonable and senseless star or cloud; what He spoke and proclaimed [He was there], submitting to the Divine, like a kind of soulless and voiceless instrument, possessing neither an internal word 183, nor thinking, nor understanding, nor an enclosed or outgoing action 184, nor [the ability of] spatial movement inherent in souls. Finally, what action is separated from the body, leaving it dead, soulless, motionless and inactive? 185 ... having movements and active actions? What action, coming from the prison of hell, returns to one's own body? [After all, it is not divine], since the divine action, being indescribable and filling everything, does not move from place to place, does not change its location, does not leave any place and does not return to it. If the Lord's soul 186 was weak-willed and inactive in hell, then, of course, it should be considered unreasonable and ignorant. In this case, the soul of Samuel, returning from hell according to a certain Dispensation, speaking with Saul and predicting death for him and his children the next day (1 Samuel 28:11-19), will turn out to be more honorable than the soul of Christ. After all, the demon could neither know nor predict this [Saul], although some people think so 187. It’s time to quote the saying of Blessed Athanasius, who speaks about the pure soul of the Lord as follows: “Speculations regarding God the Word are still not in vain and are not useless, just like [speculations] regarding the rational soul united with Him, for [recognizing this soul] as devoid of will and desire is tantamount to [recognizing] its non-existence” 188. Haven’t you - truly inactive and unreasonable people - heard that the absence of will and desire in the thinking soul of the Lord reveals the non-existence of its Essence? Therefore, when you hear the words of this pious father or any other of the fathers, saying that Christ destroyed carnal desire or abolished human wills and that He was beyond human thoughts and carnal desires, rejecting carnal action, then know this for sure: this is not about the destruction, rejection and abolition of His will and action, which are in the image and likeness [of God] and belong to the thinking soul, which came from His pure and incorporeal lips - for in this case He will turn out to be crushing, destroying and overthrowing what was born by Him and what came from Him as bad, incongruous and hostile to Him. Finally, He will be guilty of having created, together with the soul, an evil will and an evil action. However, this cannot be. Consequently, Christ destroyed and destroyed not that will and not that action, which are in the image and likeness of God and breathed into us by the mouth of God, but the devilish will and satanic action, instilled in us by the mouth of the serpent - their Divine Scripture, the divine Apostle and the blessed fathers are often called carnal 189. 6. This very God-given will and action of ours are the only causes and workers of our salvation. After all, by the free will of [our] soul we believed, by our free will we acquire virginity, by our free will we indulge in asceticism, we sleep on the earth and perform deeds of love, by our free will we love our neighbor. Or to put it briefly: all spiritual, divine and necessary virtues, which are in the image of God, as well as divine insights, revelations and successes are carried out by the rational will and action of our soul with the assistance of God 190. We spoke about this briefly earlier, and now we will repeat it in more detail. The Lord and the Apostle pronounce two commandments, which embrace and contain every commandment and virtue. They read: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, and love your neighbor as yourself” (Mark 12:30–31; Matthew 22:37–39; Luke 10:27) 191. And both of these commandments are decided by the will and carried out by it in the soul. For love, as Dionysius says, is “a uniting and combining disposition of the soul towards what is desired” 192. In the same way, the blessings of the Lord are realized by the rational will and action of the soul. For spiritual virtue refers to [the commandment]: “Blessed are the poor in spirit” (Matthew 5:3); spiritual will and sorrow 193 are also carried out [the commandments]: “Blessed are those who mourn, blessed are the meek, blessed are the pure in heart and blessed are the peacemakers” (Matthew 5:4-9). However, not only this, but also faith, hope and love are spiritual, and not physical, virtues, as the Apostle himself says, listing them: “The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, mercy” (Gal. 5:22) and further 194. They grow in the soul thanks to the rational will and its action. And since those who deny in the Lord the properties that make up our nature are frightened, like foolish horses and mules, when they hear about the will and action inherent in the soul, we [are forced] to explain and interpret the meaning of these [properties]. The will belongs to the rational soul and, as the great Dionysius briefly said [about it], it is “the thinking and desiring ability of the soul, essentially given to the soul by God in order to be united with Him” 195. Thanks to this ability, the first man fulfilled and preserved Divine instructions, moving from spiritual will to the implementation of God's commandments. But this concerns Adam; Regarding Christ, the Son of God, it is said that He voluntarily took on “the form of a servant” (Phil. 2:7) or the essence of a servant. If such is the image and essence of a servant in Christ, then why is this “form of a servant” subject to [the will of God]? Due to what slavery, service and subjection? Is it due to the Sovereign will, action and image of God the Word? - In this case, this corresponds to the madness of Arius 196. Since by the “disobedience” of the first “man” people became sinners, when Adam did not obey the commandments of God, Christ, by His own “obedience”, made us “righteous” (Rom. 5:19) 197 in the form of a servant, fulfilling those commandments of the Master that the servant did not keep from the beginning 198. For just as the death that the slave owed, the Master compensated through the mortal image of the slave, being “obedient even to the death of the cross” (Phil. 2:8), so the disobedience to the law and will of God, the debtor of which the slave was, the Master paid and compensated in the image of the slave 199. That is why [the Lord] said: “I came down from heaven, not to do My will, but the will of the Father who sent Me (John 6:38), and to do His work for Me and to keep His commandments” 200 . This observance of the commandments and the will of the Father who sent Him, by virtue of what will, or, better, through what will did Christ fulfill it, if He did not at all possess the will of a rational soul belonging to the image of a servant? For according to the Divinity the ruling and commanding will of the Father and the Son is one. So, what will of Christ fulfilled the Divine will? After all, it is clear that the will that commands and the will that submits and obeys differ from each other. If [the Lord] served [the Father] by virtue of His Divine will, then it follows that [His] Divine nature is a slave and a servant, as the Arian fables say. We will try to explain this soon 201. The image of a mirror in the doctrine of self-knowledge was used in ancient philosophy. See, for example, “Alcibiades I” by Plato, where it says: “And just as mirrors are clearer, purer and sparkling than the mirror of the eyes, so the deity reveals itself more brilliant and pure than the best part of our soul... Therefore, peering into the deity, we use this most beautiful mirror and define human qualities in accordance with the virtue of the soul: it is in this way that we see and know ourselves” (Plato. Dialogues M., 1988, p. 218). In ancient church writing, this image is also found quite often (although it is usually used in a slightly different context than in Plato; here the Divinity is not a mirror in which the soul is reflected, but vice versa). See, in particular, St. Athanasius, who, speaking about the human soul after the Fall, notes: “Having turned aside from the path and forgetting about herself, that she was created in the image of the good God, she no longer contemplates, with the help of the powers given to her, that God the Word, according to whom she was created, but, having become outside herself, her thoughts stop on the non-existent and imagine it. And this, as it were, is a mirror in which alone she could see the Father’s image, having covered herself with a multitude of crowded lusts, no longer sees what should be intelligible to the soul, but rushes everywhere and sees only what is subject to feeling.” Then the saint says, “Therefore, when the soul puts aside all the filth of sin that has poured out on it and preserves in itself one pure image (which should be) with its enlightenment, as in a mirror, contemplates in him the image of the Father - the Word, and in the Word understands the Father, whose image is the Savior" St. Athanasius the Great. Creations in four volumes, vol. 1. M., p. 1994, p. 134, 171. This means, of course, God. Wed. at St. Gregory the Theologian. “The sun in the sensory [world] is the same as God in the mental world, said one of those not ours (τις τῶν ἀλλοτρίων - meaning Plato - A. S.). It enlightens the gaze, as God does the mind, and is most beautiful in the visible [world], as God is in the contemplated.” St. Gregory the Theologian, Archbishop of Constantinople Collection of works in 2 volumes, vol. 1. Sergiev Posad, 1994, p. 411. Text: Gregoire de Nazianze. Discourse 27–31 (Discours theologiques). Ed. par P. Gallay This is the statement of Rev. Anastasia suggests that creation took place, as it were, in two stages: first, the intelligible, or spiritual, world was created νοερώτατον τῶν ἀοράτων δυνάμεων κόσμον), and then - the sensory or material world. This idea is repeatedly found in the holy fathers. See, for example, the teaching of St. Gregory the Theologian, who, “like other church teachers, does not engage in a detailed study of the very creation of the world by God, and his cosmology contains only general and most essential indications of the order of appearance of created beings. First of all, according to his idea, God created the second lights, reflections of the first highest Light, the spirits surrounding Him - the Angels, who make up the world of rational beings (κόσμος Vinogradov N. Dogmatic teaching of Saint Gregory the Theologian. Kazan, 1887, p. 351. Among the Western Fathers, a similar idea can be traced in St. Ambrose, who believes that the Angels “once received their existence, nevertheless, the moment of their emergence in Ambrose’s view remains uncertain and even completely incomprehensible to the human mind: no matter how far our thought turns back in time, it already finds the Angels existing, they were created especially and before the visible world, since at the creation of the latter they already existed.” Adamov I. AND . St. Ambrose of Milan. Sergiev Posad, 1915, p. 299. St. is less categorical in his judgments on this matter. Gregory of Nyssa, who does not give a clear answer to the question of when exactly the creation of the Angels took place. “In the treatise “On the Life of Moses,” he makes a brief passing indication that the Angel, in its structure, is “more ancient than man”; in the “Great Catechism” he makes the same passing indication that the Angels were brought into being first of all by the visible world in general, and in the “Tale of the Sixth Day” he explains that by the world he means the world-cosmos, so that in the proper sense the Angels did not appear before the world, but were brought into existence by the same wave of the Divine will, by which world chaos appeared.” Nesmelov V. The Dogmatic System of Saint Gregory of Nisskago. Kazan, 1887, p. 310. Designating a person as τινα μικτὸν κόσμον συγγενῆ τῶν δύο κόσμων, Rev. Anastasius implies the idea of ​​“microcosm,” which was widespread in pagan antiquity, and then in ancient church writing. For example, according to St. Methodius, “Divine power creates and arranges everything that is in the world from a combination of opposites, which are the basic elements of the universe - heat and cold, moisture and dryness. Likewise, God’s Wisdom created man in the likeness of the universe, combining various elements in his being, and therefore man is a “small world,” a “microcosm,” containing within himself the constituent parts of the universe and belonging in body to earth, and in soul to heaven.” See: Archbishop Michael (Chub). Holy Hieromartyr Methodius and his theology // Theological works, collection. 11, 1973, p. 24 Closely associated with this idea in ancient Christian anthropology is the idea of ​​man as the center of the entire created world. Wed. the teaching of Theodore of Mopsuestia: he expresses his thought about the connection between human nature and all creation as follows: “God,” he says, “arranged the entire creation as if it were a single body; as a result of which everything, both visible and invisible, is called the world (κόσμος)... But since there was a difference in it between the visible and the invisible, God, in order to unite everything in one, created a person who has both a visible body, akin to the sensory world, and an invisible soul, belonging to the order of the invisible. He created it as a kind of guarantee of connection for the whole creation." But, containing within himself two natures, both spiritual and physical, through this man does not yet attract the entire creation to himself, does not yet connect it with himself. In this case, according to Theodore, he is only “a kind of guarantee of connection for the whole creation” (ὥσπερ τι φιλίας ἐνέχυρον τοῖς πᾶσι). This connection in reality should be expressed, according to Theodore, “through the service of all creation to man, through the benefit brought to him from all creation.” In a similar way, man becomes for all creatures “the focal point to which, by God’s determination, they rush. It is in this sense, Theodore thinks, that man is called the image of God.” See: Guryev P. Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia. M., p. 1890, p. 276–277. Finally, in this regard, one can cite the reasoning of one Russian dogmatist: “Man closed both chains of beings of spirits and bodies, united heaven and earth in his person, more than any other type of being, embodied and limited God, reflected Him in the abyss of insignificance, revealed His power, glory and goodness in the weakness, humiliation and suffering of the flesh. As a simultaneous and equal member of both worlds, he is a microcosm, a miniature repetition of the world in general. With his body he belongs to the earth and is subject to the laws of material nature, while in spirit he is a citizen of heaven and is subject to the general laws of the spiritual world.” Tuberovsky A. The Resurrection of Christ (The Experience of Orthodox Mystical Ideology of Dogma) Sergiev Posad, 1916, p. 182. Rev. Anastasius does not distinguish between “image” and “likeness”, unlike a number of other Church Fathers and church writers. For example, St. Basil says that we possess the “image” thanks to creation itself (τῇ κτίσει ἔχομεν), and we acquire the “likeness” by will (ἔκ προαιρέσεως κατορϑοῦμεν). In the first dispensation (ἔν τῇ πρώτῃ κατασκευῇ - probably means the state of man before the Fall) we are given to be born in the image of God, and we achieve likeness as we progress spiritually; The “image” is given to us as if in potential (δυνάμει), and the “likeness” is the “actualization” (ἐνέργεια) of it. See: Basile de Césarée. Sur l'origin de l'homme. Ed. par A Smets et M Van Esbroeck // Sources chrétiennes, No. 160. Paris, 1970, p. 206. Didyme the Blind calls similarity “the completion of the image” (εἰκόνος ὑπερβολὴν), and the image – “the beginning and threshold of similarity,” noting not only their difference, but also the dynamics of their mutual relationship / See: Didyme l’Aveugle. Sur la Genese, t. I Ed. par P. Nautin et L. Doutreleau // Sources chretiennes, No. 233. Paris, 1976, p. 148/ Rev. also speaks in a similar sense. Isidore Pelusiot: “In the beginning it is said: Let us make man in our image and likeness (Gen. 1:26), and subsequently it is said that God created man, in the image of God create him (27) without adding: in likeness, it is said so either because this expression means the same thing, or because virtue depends on will, so that what is said will have the following meaning: Let us make man in Our image, so that he according to his will, he also acquired this, in the likeness of "The Works of Saint Isidore Pelusiot, part 2. M., p. 1860, p. 150–151. The point of view of Rev. Anastasia coincides with the position of St. Gregory of Nyssa, for whom the “likeness” already exists in the originally created “image”. See: Ladner G. IN . The Philosophical Anthropology of Saint Gregory of Nyssa // Dumbarton Oaks Papers, v. 12, 1958, p. 63–64. Wed. interpretation of Genesis 1:26 by the blessed one. Augustine: “These words must be taken in the sense in which this saying is understood not in the singular, but in the plural, namely, that man was created in the image not of one Father, or one Son, or one Holy Spirit, but of the entire Trinity. And the Trinity is such that It is one God, on the other hand, and God is one in such a way that He is the Trinity.” In fact, He does not say to the Son, “Let us make man in Your image” or “in My image,” but says in the plural: in Our image and likeness; and who will dare to separate the Holy Spirit from this plurality? But since this plurality is not three Gods, but one God, then it is precisely for this reason, one must think, that Scripture further expresses itself in the singular and says: And God created man in the image of God; so [these words] should not be understood as if God the Father [created man] in the image of God, that is, His Son: otherwise how will what is said be true: in Our image, if man was created in the image of one Son? And since what God said in Our image is true, then the words God created man in the image of God mean the same as if it were said: “in His image,” which is the Trinity Itself. Works of Blessed Augustine, Bishop of Hipponia, part 7. Kyiv, 1912, p. 140–141. See also the explanation of the blessed. Theodoret: since God “created a rational living being, which after many births had to be renewed by the sacrament of holy baptism, performed through the invocation of the Holy Trinity, then, intending to create this nature that could receive this sacrament, he secretly depicted the identity of the essence and the number of Persons. For, having spoken God, he made it clear to understand the communion of the Divine nature, and by adding, let us create, he made it clear to see the number of Persons. And so on, using the word image in the singular, he showed the identity of nature: having said Ours, he depicted the number of Hypostases” Works of Blessed Theodoret, Bishop of Kirrskago, part 1. Sergiev Posad, 1905, p. 23. According to the observation of V.N. Lossky, “the thought of the holy fathers avoids limiting what is in man according to God to any one part of his being. The biblical narrative, indeed, does not clarify in any way what exactly is in man in the image of God, but speaks of his very creation as a special act, different from the creation of other creatures.” Lossky V. N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. Dogmatic theology M., 1991, p. 88–89. This is how, I think, this expression should be translated (τὸ ἀρχικὸν καὶ ἐξουσιαστικὸν τοῦ ἀνϑρώπου). Among the numerous ancient church writers who adhere to a similar point of view, one can point out, for example, Diodorus of Tarsus, who, when asked why man is the image of God, answers that this is evidenced by the commanding and autocratic position of man among other creatures (κατὰ τὸ ἀρχικόν, κατὰ τὸ ἐξουσιαστικὸν), referring to the subsequent words of Genesis 1:26 (“let them rule”) Further, he notes how God reigns over the entire created world (τῶν ὅλων), and man reigns over the creatures of the earth (τῶν ἐπὶ γῆς βασιλεύει). See: Catenae graecae in Genesim et in Exodum II. Collectio Coisliana in Genesim. Ed F. Petit // Corpus Christianorum. Series Graeca, v. 15. Turnhout, 1986, p. 68. See, for example, St. Methodius: “Souls exactly correspond to the One who gave birth and formed them, especially when they, shining with the pure beauty of likeness (with Him) and the features of that prototype, contemplating which God formed them to have an immortal and incorruptible appearance, remain so. For He is beauty unborn and incorporeal, without beginning and not involved in destruction, unchanging, not aging and not needing anything, the Light in Himself and in Himself, dwelling in an ineffable and inaccessible dwelling (1 Tim. 4:16), containing an abundance of power and creating and forming everything, created the soul in the likeness of His image. Therefore she is rational and immortal, for she, having been created in the image of the Only Begotten... has incomparable beauty.” Creations of St. Gregory the Wonderworker and St. Methodius, bishop and martyr. M. 1996, p. 74. Wed at St. Gregory of Nyssa, who, discussing the good that was for man in paradise, says: “In our nature, this good, which exceeded any concept, was to such an extent that what a person possessed, by its very exact similarity to the prototype, seemed to be a new good, taking on the image of the first. For what we now conjecture about this good is all that man had: incorruptibility and bliss, self-control and non-subordination, a carefree and unconcerned life, occupation with the divine - in order to look at the good with a pure and naked understanding from every veil. For all this gives us, in a few sayings, a conjectural understanding of the Word about the existence of the world, saying that man was created in the image of God, lived in paradise and enjoyed what was planted there, and the fruit of these plants is life, knowledge and the like.” St. Gregory of Nyssa. About the Beatitudes M., 1997, p. 40–41. Perhaps this point of view is partially reflected in the following reasoning of Blessed. Diadoche: “Holy grace through baptism assimilates to us two blessings of rebirth, of which one is infinitely superior to the other, but one it immediately bestows, for it renews us in the water itself and illuminates all the features of the soul, that is, that which is in the image, washing away every stain of our sin, but in relation to the other it waits - in order to accomplish with us exactly what is in the likeness. Therefore, when our mind begins to taste with a strong feeling the goodness of the Holy Spirit, then we should know that grace begins, as it were, to paint on that which is in the image, that which is in the likeness. For just as painters first paint the figure of a person with one paint and, gradually coloring the paint with paint, thus convey the appearance of what is being signed (ὁμοιογραφουμένου - “model.” - A.S.) even down to the hair: so the grace of God first arranges through baptism that which is in the image, to what it was when man was created." Popov K. Blessed Diadochos (5th century), Bishop of Photiki of Ancient Epirus, and his works, vol. 1 Kyiv, 1903, p. 471–472. Wed. Ps.8:6 (“Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels; thou hast crowned him with glory and honor”). Wed. interpretation (Ps. 8:6–9): “The Prophet mentions here three special benefits of God bestowed on human nature. And, firstly, he says that man was created by God so noble that he is no less than the Angels, perhaps in a little less than. Secondly, that he is honored with glory and honor above all other creatures; already created in the image of God and in the likeness, endowed with reason and free will. Thirdly, finally, that he received power and dominion over all the affairs of God, especially over animals, such as sheep and oxen, etc. Explanatory Psalter of Archbishop Irenaeus. M., 1991, p. 4243. A very interesting discussion on this subject is found in the essay “Conversations of the Soul with God,” attributed to Blessed. Augustine: “But You deign that I should be above everything that has being, because I also exist, and above everything that has being and grows, because I also exist and grow, and above everything that has being, grows and feels, because I also have being, grow and feel. You created me in such a way that I am in no way equal to the Angels, because I received from You the same mind with them to know You; but is it not equal to little, as I said, because they already have the blessed knowledge of You in vision, but I have only by hope, they are face to face, and I am a mirror in fortune-telling, they are completely, and I am in part (1 Cor. 13:12). Yours. What, then, will prevent us from being less than the Angels, whom You, Lord, crowned with a crown of hope, adorned with glory, and with glory and honor, whom You honored beyond measure, as Your own, even in everything you made equal and equal to the Angels? For the truth says this: they are equals with an angel, and the sons of God (Luke 20:36) Why then are they sons of God, when they will be equal to angels? Indeed they will be sons of God, because the Son of God became the Son of Man. And so, looking at this, I dare to say that man is not considered less than an angel, because God became a man, and not an angel.” Conversations of the soul with God. From the additions to the works of Blessed Augustine, Bishop of Ipponia, M., 1883, p. 24–25. The meaning of this statement becomes clearer from the subsequent reasoning of Rev. Anastasia Archimandrite Cyprian (Kern) summarizes the essence of these reasonings as follows: “First of all, a person secretly outlines within himself the secret of the Trinitarian Divinity. The Ancestors prefigure the St. Trinity. Adam, unborn and without a created cause, is the image of the Father, the begotten son of Adam is the image of the Word; Eve, who was not born and did not have a created cause and appeared by an ineffable procession from the essence of Adam, is the image of the Spirit. Then, to understand the second meaning “in the image” of St. Anastasius suggests delving into oneself, into the life of one’s soul, and there to discern the Trinitarian life. Soul, word and mind (or spirit) symbolically reflect, as in a kind of mirror, the intra-trinity life of the Divine. This especially justifies the symbolic-realistic worldview of St. fathers. In addition, the third meaning of “in likeness” is seen by Sinait to be no longer Trinitarian, but Christological. Here he pays tribute to his era of Christological disputes,” believing that “the union of the human soul and body symbolically reflects the “spiritual-masculine” or “physical-spiritual” union of natures in the Hypostasis of Christ.” In addition, according to Rev. Anastasia, “our soul is just as incomprehensible in its essence, invisible, inexplicable, intangible, incorruptible and immortal,” like God “This is the fourth meaning of “in the image.” Finally, the fifth meaning lies in our creativity. Man is a creator, a demiurge, in the image of God, the Creator and the Demiurge” Archimandrite Cyprian (Kern). Anthropology of St. Gregory Palamas. M., 1996, p. 208. In this phrase οὐ φυσικῇ) the term σκιαγραφίᾳ implies the meaning of a contour drawing, silhouette, outline or sketch, and therefore a person is thought of as a prep. Anastasius, most likely, as a kind of “schematic image (sketch)” of God. The “not natural” clause is also characteristic, for for a number of Church Fathers the similarity between the image and the original did not consist in the “matter” of the image, or the “nature” of the original, but in the formal, or ideal, connection between them. In this context, St. John of Damascus makes a distinction between φύσις and ϑέσις The Lord is the Image of the Father “by nature,” and man is the image of God “by position,” that is, he is not a “natural image,” see: Ladner G. IN . Der Bildbegriff bei den griechischen Vätern und der byzantinische Bilderstreit // Der Mensch als Bild Gottes Hrsg von L. Scheffezyk. Darmstadt, 1969, pp. 175–177. In patristic writing there is also another meaning of the term σκιαγραφία, understood in the sense of “prototype.” Thus, Rev. Neil interprets “in the image and likeness” in the sense that these words in Genesis 1:26–27 relate not so much to the creation of man, but to his rebirth (τῆς ἀναπλάσεως μᾶλλον ἔργον, ἤ τῆς πλάσεως ἐπιδείκνυται), which became possible thanks to the Incarnation, Death on the Cross and Ascension of the Son of God. Therefore, the “first creation” of man in the image of God was nothing more than a “type and pre-image” (σκιαγραφία δὲ καὶ προτύπωσις) of His future immortality and deification. See: ΡG 79, 1501. In a similar sense of “type” the word “shadow” (σκιὰν) is understood in Heb. 10:1 by St. John Chrysostom, saying: “As in painting, while only an outline is being made, the drawing is only a shadow, but when they put paints and make colors, then it becomes an image, such was the law.” Our Holy Father John, Archbishop of Constantinople, Chrysostom, Conversations on the Epistle of the Holy Apostle Paul to the Hebrews St. Petersburg, 1859, p. 284. Lit. “the naked soul is in the image of the naked Godhead” ϑεότητος). Compare the definition of the soul below in the Guide (II, 5). Among fragments from unknown works of St. Methodius has one that reads: “Perhaps the three ancestral heads of all humanity, these consubstantial persons, were, as Methodius also thinks, representative of some similarity of the Holy and consubstantial Trinity, namely: having no (earthly) culprit of his existence and unborn Adam represents the image and likeness of the beginningless Author of all, the Almighty God and Father, while his begotten son represented the image the begotten Son and the Word of God, and Eve who came (from him) meant the outgoing person of the Holy Spirit.” Creations of St. Gregory the Wonderworker and St. Methodius, bishop and martyr, c. 287. According to the generally accepted “typological” (prototypical) interpretation in patristic writing, Eve is a “type” or “prototype” of the Most Holy and Most Pure Mother of God (parallel to the typology of Adam and Christ). This idea appears already from the first centuries of Christianity. See Bouyer L. La trône de la Sagesse. Essai sur la signification du culte marial. Paris, 1957, b. 59, Pelikan J. The Christian Tradition A History of the Development of Doctrine, v. 1 Chicago, 1971, p. 241. It is the Mother of God that St. means. Anastasius, saying that Eve had to accept in the future, through the Holy Spirit, God (μέλλειν αὐτὴν δι’ ἁγίου πνεύματος δέξασθαι Θεόν), implicitly referring to Matthew 1:18–20 and Luke 1:35. Wed. Hebrews 2:11, 17. See the interpretation of St. John Chrysostom: “He who is so great, who is the radiance of the glory of God and the image of His being, who created the eyelids and sits at the right hand of the Father, He wanted and strived to become our brother in everything, and for this he left the Angels and the powers on high, descended to us and took on our flesh.” Our Holy Father John, Archbishop of Constantinople, Chrysostom, Conversations on the Epistle of the Holy Apostle Paul to the Hebrews St. Petersburg, 1859, p. 89. According to St. Theophan, “pointing to kinship with the Lord Savior, these words inspire hope, affirming a certain necessity of receiving what is desired. Where the Son of God became incarnate, our Savior, there it is necessary for those who have become conformed to Him to be. He is at the right hand of God, there around Him, under Him, as the head, or the firstborn brother, all those who are like Him, His brethren, will be gathered. It was not then that He became incarnate and restored human nature in Himself in order to remain individual, but in order to gather to Himself all in whom this nature would be restored, in His image and by His power. He is the firstfruits, the firstborn; after Him are all the believers, being reborn in His image.” Creations like the saints of our father Theophan the Recluse. Interpretations of the Epistles of the Apostle Paul. Epistle to the Romans. M. 1996, p. 533–534. Which of the “wise men” is quoted by Rev. Anastasy, it is impossible to establish. The origins of the formula of “knowing yourself,” widespread in antiquity and attributed to various mythical and historical figures, are lost in the darkness of the deep layers of human culture. It appears in written monuments, starting with Heraclitus, subject to many different interpretations. The theme of “knowing yourself” (in connection with the knowledge of God) is constantly heard in the works of many holy fathers and ancient church writers, whose main philosophy was: “self-knowledge leads to the knowledge of God.” See: Vladimirsky F. WITH . Anthropology and cosmology Nemesia, ep. Emessky, in their relation to ancient philosophy and patristic literature. Zhitomir, 1912, p. 226 The starting point for many discussions was the phrase in Song 1:7: “Ashte do not hang thee” (the synodal translation “If you do not know this” - deviates, unlike the Church Slavonic, from the text of the Septuagint, on which the Church Fathers relied: ἐὰν μὴ γνῶς σεαυτὴν). For details, see: Courcelle R. “Connais-toi toi-même” de Socrate a Saint Bernard Paris, 1974, p. 11–179. St. Gregory of Nyssa explains, for example, Song 1:7 as follows: “The Scripture says: lest you, O soul, endure this, be attentive to yourself. For this is a reliable repository of goods. Know how much you are honored by the Creator before other creation, it is not the sky made in the image of God, nor the moon, not the sun, not the beauty of the stars, below other things that are visible in creation: you alone have become a reflection of nature, surpassing every mind, a likeness of incorruptible beauty, an imprint of the true Divinity, a receptacle of blissful life, a reflection of the true Light, at which, looking at, you yourself will be the same as He, resembling a ray shining within you, reflecting from your purity.” Works of St. Gregory of Nyssa, part 3. M., 1862, p. 59–60. Until St. Gregory, in approximately the same spirit, interpreted the indicated passage of Holy Scripture and Origen, who believed that these words were addressed to the soul, the origins of whose beauty go back to the fact that it was created in the image of God. Therefore, it is a great evil for the soul not to know itself and its beauty (quantum mali sit animam nesciresemet ipsam nequepulchritudinem suam). Knowing oneself presupposes both knowledge of the essence of the soul, and its dispositions and actions - good and evil. However, according to Origen, there is a deeper and more difficult (albeit at the same time main) level of knowledge of the Holy Trinity and Her creations. Among the latter, the soul must know which creatures belong to rational spirits and which belong to irrational beings, it must also know whether it is progressing in knowledge, or, conversely, its ability to know is decreasing, etc. see: Origène. Commentaire sur le Cantique des Cantiques, 1.1. Ed. par L. Bresard, H. Crouzel, M. Borret // Sources chretiennes, No. 375. Paris, 1991, p. 354–378. Finally, in the recently published “Commentary on the Song of Songs” by Rev. Nile of Ancyra (in the past inaccurately identified with Nile of Sinai) there are similar arguments, the knowledge of God is the ultimate goal of knowing oneself, this knowledge is achieved primarily by the purity of the soul ((ἐκ τῆς κατὰ ψυχὴν καϑαρότης), for in its nature it has an “imitation” (μίμημα) of God’s nature, since it was created in the image of God. The “God-imitating character” of the nature of the soul is imprinted, according to Rev. Nilu, primarily in the virtues carried out by her. See: Nil d'Ancyre. Commentaire sur le Cantique des Cantiques, t. I.Ed. par M.-G Guerard // Sources chretiennes, No. 403. Paris, 1994, p. 170–174. According to the precise description of one Russian scientist, “the question of the origin of human souls occupied the minds of St. to the greatest extent. fathers and teachers of the Christian Church throughout the so-called patristic and apologetic period. It is difficult to point out at least some church writers who did not touch upon this issue and did not provide one or another solution for it. This special interest in the question of the origin of the human soul is explained, on the one hand, by those false teachings of pagan philosophers on this subject, which violated the strict system of the Christian worldview in this most important point, and by the special significance that belongs to this question due to its close connection with the basic dogmas of the Christian Church. From this or that resolution of the question of the origin of the human soul, such dogmas of the Christian religion as the dogmas of the creation of the world, the fall of our ancestors, the heredity of sin, redemption, the future afterlife, etc., receive corresponding meaning and illumination. If the soul is a simple product of the common world elements, completely alien to any higher spiritualizing principle, as the ancient pagan philosophers taught, then is the moral sanity of a person’s life and behavior appropriate, does the heredity of ancestral sin make any sense, is redemption and spiritual rebirth of a fallen person necessary, is faith in the afterlife of man possible? Of course not. All these dogmas of the Christian religion are affirmed on the Christian teaching about the origin of the human soul as their unshakable foundation, they directly follow from it and find their explanation in it. If, on the other hand, we assume that the soul of man is from a divine being in the sense of pantheistic emanationism, as other pagan philosophers argued, then again all the dogmas of Christianity about the fall, heredity, redemption, etc. themselves become redundant as having no moral and religious significance for the spiritual life of a person, since a person in this case is not just a creature, but a particle of the deity itself.” At the same time, “the deep importance of [the question] of the origin of the human soul is fully consistent with the extreme difficulty of resolving it. Not finding proper resolution either in the data of human experience or in the Holy Scripture itself, the question of the origin of the human soul has always been recognized as one of the most difficult and intractable questions in the field of biblical teaching about man. “I’m already old,” says Blessed Augustine, “and even now I don’t understand the secret of the origin of the soul, just as I didn’t understand it in my youth.” It is not without reason that some of the holy fathers of the Church classified this question as one of the mysteries completely insoluble to reason and known to God alone, about which man can only judge speculatively and speculatively.” Davydenko V. Patristic teaching on the origin of the human soul // Faith and Reason, 1907, No. 1, p. 73–74. In this case, Rev. Anastasius expresses the thought that is clearly expressed both in the Holy Scriptures and in the overwhelming majority of patristic works. For “according to the writer of Genesis, the human soul, both by its origin and by its nature, is the most special and highest being in the world, a being not earthly, but premium, or heavenly, and therefore completely different from the body, as well as from everything material and elemental.” Accordingly, “all ancient teachers, as well as Christian writers, with complete unanimity and unshakable confidence, taught about the soul as special and different from the body spiritual beginning." See: Bishop Sylvester (Malevansky). Experience of Orthodox dogmatic theology (with a historical presentation of dogmas), vol. III. Kyiv, 1898, p. 195, 217. St. Methodius says that the soul, being rational, immortal and created in the image of the Only Begotten, “has incomparable beauty. Therefore, the spirits of malice (Eph.4:12), out of unclean love for her, are plotting, trying to desecrate this godlike and desired appearance of her, as the prophet Jeremiah depicts in his denunciation of Jerusalem, you had the forehead of a harlot, you threw away shame with your lovers (Jer.3:1-3), speaking of one who gives herself up to defilement by hostile forces. These lovers are the devil and his angels, who with their interference try to tarnish and desecrate the verbal and rational beauty of our mind and want to commit adultery with every soul betrothed to the Lord.” Works of St. Gregory the Wonderworker and St. Methodius, bishop and martyr, c. 74. Wed. with the teachings of St. Gregory of Nyssa, according to which “since one of the properties seen in God’s being is the incomprehensibility of essence, then, by all necessity, the image in this has a resemblance to the Prototype” Martynov A. The teaching of St. Gregory, bishop Nyssky, about human nature // Dep. reprint from the Addendum to the publication of the works of the Holy Fathers in the Russian translation M., 1886, p. 22. In general, comparing the soul with God is a common theme in ancient Christian writing. It, for example, often sounds in the works of Lactantius, who, among other characteristics that bring the soul closer to God, especially notes its incorporeality, incomprehensibility and invisibility (incorporalis, inconprehensibilis, invisibilis). See: Perrin M. L'homme antique et chrétien L'anthropologie de Lactance 250–325 Paris, 1981, p. 273–276. Wed. reasoning of St. Vasily: “In general, accurate observation of yourself will give you sufficient guidance to the knowledge of God. For if you pay attention to yourself, you will not have the need to look for traces of the Creator in the structure of the universe, but in yourself, as if in some small world, you will see the great Wisdom of your Creator. From the incorporeality of the soul within you, understand that God is also incorporeal. Know that He is not limited to a place, because your mind does not have a special stay in any place, but is in a place only because of its connection with the body. Believe that God is invisible, knowing your own soul, because it is also incomprehensible with bodily eyes. It has neither color nor appearance, is not encompassed by any bodily feature, but is recognized only by actions.” Works like the saints of our father Basil the Great, Archbishop of Caesarea of ​​Cappadocia, part IV. M., 1993, p. 44. According to F. Titov, “the understanding by some exegetes of 1 Thess. 5:23–24 in the sense of the doctrine of the trichotomous composition of man is completely incorrect. According to the teachings of St. Ap. Paul, human nature is based on two independent substances: material (σῶμα, σάρξ = body, flesh) and spiritual (πνεῦμα = spirit). The first substance serves as the basis of material human nature, destruction and death of man, and the second, on the contrary, is the beginning of indestructibility and the source of immortal life, the ability to know, self-knowledge and free will. “Soul” - ψυχή - means in St. Ap. Paul, not a special independent substance, but only a special force, a special side of a person’s spiritual substance, his “spirit”. This aspect, if not in principle, then at least in experience, subordinates the “body” to itself and imposes on its activity a character characteristic of the “body”. That is why the expressions “spiritual” and “carnal” appear in the Epistles of St. Ap. Paul are almost equivalent; For him, a “spiritual” person thinks according to the flesh. On the contrary, “spirit,” according to the teaching of St. Ap. Paul, serves as the beginning of higher spiritual forces, which not only are not dependent on the “body”, but even have a character directly opposite to the properties of the “body”; spirit is the beginning of freedom and higher religious and moral feelings. Thus, the teaching of St. Ap. Paul about the composition of human nature is in complete agreement with the biblical teaching about the same thing: according to both teachings, man consists of spiritual and material substance, and the “soul” serves only as the beginning of the lower powers and activities of the human spirit.” Titov F. The first letter of St. Apostle Paul to the Thessalonians. Experience of isagogical-critic-exegetical research. Kyiv, 1893, p. 285–286. However, unlike the Russian exegete, Rev. Anastasius interprets the indicated passage of the Epistle of St. Paul precisely in the “trichotomous” sense. See interpretation of blessedness. Theophylact: “It is said that the spirit experiences the mysteries of God, in the sense that He delights in contemplating them. For just as the human spirit knows what is in man, so, he says, the Spirit of God knows what belongs to God.” Blessed Theophylact, Archbishop of Bulgaria, Commentary on the Epistles of St. Apostle Paul. M., 1993, p. 118. In this case, Rev. Anastasius, using the usual ambiguity of the concept of “logos” (“mind” and “word”), hints at the difference between the “inner word” and the “spoken word”, which is clearly carried out in the teaching of the Stoics (naturally, in the context of their pagan worldview). According to the Stoics, the “logos, or reason” living in us, the emanation, or “radiation” of the universal, divine Reason, constitutes, as it were, our “inner word” (λόγος ἐνδιάϑετος) as opposed to the expressed, “spoken word” (λόγος προφορικός), which symbolizes it, is a distinction that we find repeatedly subsequently not only in philosophical, but also in patristic literature (in Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria, etc.) see Trubetskoy S. N. Essays. M., p. 1994, p. 88–89. Of course, ancient church writers, taking this element of Stoic teaching, cleansed it of all “pagan impurities.” As an example of the difference between the two “logoi,” one can cite Nemesius of Emesa, who says “The internal word (ἐνδιάϑετος λόγος) is a movement of the soul that occurs in the mind - without any external expression. Hence, we often silently carry on a whole reasoning with ourselves, and also talk during dreams: it is primarily by this ability that we are all considered reasonable, and precisely not so much by the word spoken, but by the inner one. After all, those who are deaf and mute from birth, and those who have lost their voice due to some illness or passion, are no less intelligent. The spoken word (προφορικὸς λόγος) manifests itself in sound and conversation.” Nemesius, Bishop of Emesa. About human nature Translation by F.S. Vladimirsky M., 1996, p. 107–108. Later, this difference can be traced in the teaching of St. John of Damascus, see Hieromonk Panteleimon (Uspensky). Anthropology based on the works of St. John of Damascus, c. 85. Rev. Anastasius somewhat freely interprets the words of St. The Apostle's words about Christ. See interpretation. “Everything that exists, like man, was created by the Son, and therefore, if the image of God in which he was created is attributed to man in the Holy Scriptures (Gen. 1:26; 1 Cor. 11:7), then he can be called such only in a derivative sense. Actually, he is the image of the Image of God, but Jesus Christ in the true sense can be called the Image. He (God the Father - A.S.) is His Prototype.” Mukhin K. Message of St. Apostle Paul to the Colossians. Experience of isagogical-exegetical research. Kyiv, 1897, p. 127. Similar freedom of interpretation of the words of the Apostle in St. Anastasia may be explained by the fact that he refrains from the biblical (New Testament) analogy of the second Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity as the “Image” of the first Hypostasis, although this analogy, along with others, was actively used by many ancient church writers (Origen, St. Athanasius of Alexandria, etc.). See: Hanson R. R. WITH . Studies in Christian Antiquity. Edinburgh, 1985, p. 253–278. It is not without probability that such a refusal by Rev. Anastasia from this figurative analogy is connected with the fact that pro-Arian theologians of the 4th century. used it to emphasize the subordinate position of God the Word in relation to the Father. And despite the emphasis of St. Athanasius of the consubstantiality of the Word as an “Image” to the Father, a suspicious shade was probably still cast on this analogy, which explains the cautious attitude of the reverend to it. Anastasia Learn more about the use of this analogy in dogmatic disputes of the 4th century. see: Schonborn Chr. Die Christus-Ikone. Eine theologische Hinführung. Schaffhausen, 1984, pp. 17–72. “When explaining the above words, one must remember the difference between the words ϑεότης and ϑειότης The first is a derived noun from θεὸς and corresponds to the Latin deitas, and the second comes from θεῖος and is equivalent to the Latin divinitas. The first is used to designate a divine being, the Divinity in general, and the second is used to designate the qualities inherent in the Divinity. Thus, according to the Apostle, in Christ lies not one or the other of the divine properties, qualities or manifestations (θειότης), but in him dwells the fullness of the Divinity (θεότης), God Himself (Θεός)” Mukhin K. Decree. cit., p. 141. It should be noted that Rev. Anastasius speaks only about the “impressive”, or, as it were, “sketch”, reflection of this Divine Fullness in man ἀμυδρῶς πῶς τὸν ἐν Τριάδι Θεόν). The distinction between these three principles of the soul (ἐπιϑυμητικὸν, λογιστικὸν, ϑυμικόν) goes back to Plato. See, for example: Plato. Works in three volumes, vol. 3, part 1. M., p. 1971, p. 232–236. It is also adopted by ancient church theology. In particular, Clement of Alexandria says this: “The soul is characterized by three cognitive powers, the ability called reason; this is our inner man, dominating the world of phenomena, commanding the outer man and constituting the subject of God’s special providence. The second part of the soul is the one to which anger is attributed; this is animal power, a vessel of wild desires. The third force is a desirable ability, it is more diverse than Proteus - this sea spirit that accepts different views of itself, ready for all sorts of things: coquetry, passion and seduction.” Teacher The creation of the teacher of the Church Clement of Alexandria. M., p. 1996, p. 213 Rev. Maximus the Confessor, contemporary of St. Anastasia also repeatedly uses this trichotomy of the soul. Thus, interpreting the three days the people spent with the Lord in the desert, he says that they allegorically point to the three named powers of the soul. In the scholia, it is noted in this regard: “He speaks of reason, the fierce and desirable principles [of the soul]. For with reason we seek, with the desirable principle we thirst for the desired good, and with the violent principle we fight [for it].” See our translation. Works of St. Maximus the Confessor. Book II. Questions and answers to Thalassia Part 1. M., 1994, p. 121, 258. Moreover, it is necessary to note that the Church Fathers included the indicated trichotomy, dating back to ancient philosophy, into the general biblical picture of the world. According to them, “the material underlying the organic creation was substance (ὕλη), ugly in itself.” At the first stage of the organic world - the plant kingdom - the formative principle of this substance becomes the “vital force”, which manifests itself only in the form of plant and nutritional force (αὐξητική τε μόνον καὶ ϑρεπτικὴ δύναμις) At the next stage - the kingdom dumb animals - the life force also manifests itself in the form of sensual force (δύναμις), manifested as “desirable force” or “desirable principle of the soul” (τὸ ἐπϑυμητικὸν) and as “irritable force” or “furious the beginning of the soul" (τὸ ϑυμοειδὲς). Finally, in man, as the crown of creation, “reasonable power” also appears (δύναμις λογικὴ, τὸ λογικόν). Thus, “in human nature, all these three forms of manifestation of “vital force” are closely connected with each other, each of them having its own area of ​​​​activity, although leadership is characteristic of only one force - the rational force. From here, in turn, it follows that thanks to the sensual power, a person comes into contact in the structure of his nature with the kingdom of dumb animals, thanks to the nutritional force - with the plant kingdom, thanks, finally, to matter - with all the matter of the world, but, on the other hand, along with this, thanks to the rational force, he surpasses the matter of the world, and the plant kingdom, and dumb animals, because there is no rational force either in animals, or in plants, much less in inorganic matter; rational force is a feature of human nature that distinguishes it from the nature of all other creatures of the world” see Ponomarev P. Dogmatic foundations of Christian asceticism according to the works of eastern ascetic writers of the 4th century Kazan, 1899, p. 67–69. According to the interpretation of D. Bogdashevsky, “the struggle is actually with evil spirits; they, as St. says. And Chrysostom are the real culprits of evil deeds, so in the struggle of flesh and blood one must see the action of the “world holders”, who are the inaccurate beginning of evil. The Son of God came into the world to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8), the kingdom of darkness, the prince of this world (John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11) wants to overcome the kingdom of light, and one has to fight with the forces invisible, supersensible, acting both internally and through all sorts of human means or through people.” Bogdashevsky D. The Epistle of the Holy Apostle Paul to the Ephesians. Isagogical-exegetical study. Kyiv, 1904, p. 661. This passage from the indicated letter of the Apostle served as one of the foundations of patristic asceticism and, in particular, the teaching on spiritual warfare, see, for example, St. Macarius: “Most people who want to please God, due to a lack of true knowledge, are concerned only with the body. But the man of God should strive with his thoughts, his thoughts, and his inner hidden will. This is the true struggle of the soul before the face of God with invisible thoughts [inspired by] evil forces. For [the Apostle] says Our struggle is not against blood and flesh, but against the principalities, against the powers (Eph. 6:12). These spirits of evil, invisible and incorporeal, triumph over [things] visible, just as the soul, invisible and incorporeal, triumphs over fatness of the body. Therefore, there must be an invisible and incorporeal struggle and achievement in the inner man.” See our translation: Creations of the ancient ascetic fathers. M., 1997, p. 82. The originality of the teacher. Anastasia, who undoubtedly shared the basic principles of this teaching, is that he emphasizes the importance of the violent principle of the soul in this spiritual warfare (διὰ τοῦ ϑυμικοῦ) Moreover, as is clear from his further reasoning, if the violent principle is inherent in resisting the spirits of malice, then all anger and irritation towards one’s neighbors is an unnatural manifestation of this principle. In these discussions, Rev. Anastasy uses, so to speak, the “method of analogy.” According to the precise observation of A. A. Brilliantov, “the use of analogies is inevitable in theological thinking about objects of faith. But analogies by their very essence can never claim to be in full compliance with the objects they explain, and the desire to carry them out with complete consistency usually results in only extreme and incorrect conclusions. The Bible, pointing to the creation of man in the image of God, directly establishes not only the possibility, but also the obligatory nature of using the analogy of human nature in understanding the mystery of the Divine Trinity life. However, here too this application immediately encounters seemingly insurmountable difficulties. Obviously, based on the analogy of the individual human spirit and trying to rise to the concept of the Divine Spirit, one can come to the concept of nothing more than the same individual Spirit and certain moments of His personal life instead of actual Hypostases. If, in one way or another, the starting point is made of the multiplicity of individuals in whom the human nature that is identical in all people is actually manifested, then in this case the real unity of the Divine Spirit does not result, and only from the point of view of Platonic realism can an analogy of this kind be convincing.” Brilliantov A. AND . The origin of Monophysitism // Christian Reading, 1906, No. 6, p. 796–797. However, despite such difficulties, the “method of analogy” was quite often used in ancient church theology, including to express the dogma of the Holy Trinity. A striking example of this is Blessed. Augustine, who formulates the main intention of his worldview in this way: “I wish to know God and the soul. And nothing more. Yes, nothing." In an effort to achieve this, he tries “by reasoning to prove (ratione demonstrare) the most mysterious dogma of the Christian Trinity. Augustine was already moving towards this goal when... revealed and showed that the whole world, as the creation of God and the revelation of His perfections, eloquently speaks about its Triune Creator; that objects, even those standing below man, and man himself in the lower, sensory-material side of his nature, forcibly “imposes” on us the idea of ​​the Trinity of the Divine.” This is all the more true for the higher side, and in this regard, blessed. Augustine says “The Trinity, reflected in the soul of man (in anima), is the truest image of God; that is, in other words, in the rational (rationali sive intellectuali) side of the soul we must seek the image of the Creator, an image that is always inherent in its immortal nature.” See: Vereshchatsky P. AND . The teaching of Blessed Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, on the Holy Trinity Kazan, 1918, p. 182–185. The called “analogical method” is also used in modern Orthodox theology. So, N.V. Petrov finds a reflection of the Holy Trinity in the triple activity of the soul - knowledge, feeling and will, noting: “The Bible and Church Tradition contain such a teaching about the Holy Trinity that it turns out to be possible to reasonably interpret and justify by analogy with the nature of man and humanity. In an individual person, in the nature of his spirit, we find a very clearly expressed unity of being and, at the same time, a triple life activity, which is, as it were, an embryo or an unfulfilled desire for a triple personality with the unity of the being. In humanity we have a fully realized plurality of persons, but with an imperfect unity of being, because the essence of human nature in humanity lives and develops in the conditions of time and space (corporality), and therefore individual people do not own the same whole human essence, but only its products, which appear in existence in continuous continuity. Moreover, limited human nature strives to express itself in a great variety of persons. – The Absolute Spirit in full perfection possesses both the unity of being and the plurality of persons. In essence, He is completely one, like the human soul, His Faces are true personalities, like the personality of an individual person; at the same time, the all-perfect being expresses Himself in the smallest number of persons required by the nature of the spirit.” See: Petrov I. IN . About the Holy Trinity. (The experience of interpreting dogma using analogies from the material world and from the nature of humanity and man) // Orthodox Interlocutor, 1913, No. 1, p. 1–30. Interpretation of this passage 1 Cor. The Fathers of the Church are quite diverse. For example, St. John Chrysostom notes that here the Apostle means “that both the tongue should speak and the mind should remain ignorant [regarding] what was said” Our Holy Father John, Archbishop of Constantinople, Chrysostom, Conversations on the First Epistle of St. Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, part II. SPb., p. 1858, p. 261 According to the blessed one. Theodoret, “the Apostle calls the gift the spirit, and the mind the explanation of what is said. He says that he who speaks in another language, whether in psalmody, in prayer, or in teaching, must either himself be a translator for the benefit of those listening, or take someone else who is capable of this as a collaborator in the teaching.” Works of Blessed Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus, part 7. M., 1861, p. 270. Finally, according to the interpretation of Rev. Maximus of the Confessor, "singing with the spirit" means pronouncing the words of the Psalter in one tongue only (μόνον τὴν προφορὰν τῶν ψαλλομένων διὰ γλώσσης φέρει), and “singing with the mind” presupposes knowledge of the meaning of these words and joy in such contemplation. See: Maximi Confessoris Quaestiones et dubia. Edit J.H. Declerck // Corpus Christianorum Series Graeca, v. 10 Turnhout, 1982, p. 138. Rev. Anastasius gives another interpretation of the indicated place, already in a purely anthropological sense. According to the explanation of Euthymius Zigaben, “he calls the dark places of the coffin the shadow of death, expressing the same thing in different words, since darkness is also called shadow.” He also gives an interpretation of the blessed. Theodoret, who “says that this applies both to those who were in Babylon and to all human nature, for after sin everyone was subjected to disasters of all kinds. So, after the crime of the commandments, death, lamentation and tears, lamentations and sobs, widowhood and orphanhood, poverty and cruelty and other countless and unbearable disasters were allowed to fall on those living on earth, bringing darkness upon them. You see how great the evil is disobedience! It not only separated us from God, but also surrounded us with so many evils.” Explanatory Psalter by Euthymius Zigaben. (Greek philosopher and monk) M., p. 1993, p. 59–60. According to Rev. Anastasia, the development of each individual person is in a certain analogy to the religious development of humanity. The first stage of this religious development is a kind of “spiritual” stage, implying perhaps the most ancient layers of Old Testament religion. Here the revelation (discovery - φανέρωσιν) of the Word of God (Reason, Logos) and the Spirit (corresponding to the mind and mind of an individual person) does not yet occur, and if it does happen, it is only partially and covertly. For their complete discovery would lead humanity, due to the weakness of its will and consciousness (διὰ πολλὴν γνώμης ἀσϑένειαν), to polytheism (it would consider the Holy Trinity to be three gods) Therefore, initially humanity knew and revered only God the Father. Anastasius probably means the idea of ​​an eternal covenant between God and man. According to one Orthodox researcher, “in the history of mankind there is nothing more ancient and sacred, important and significant, high and deep, than the covenant of God with man. It began from the first moment of man’s birth - and will also have no end, like the eternal, unchangeable God and immortal man, created in the image and likeness of God. True, humanity already at the dawn of its history violated its covenant with God, and even after that, most of its members did not live as The people of the covenant must live. But all this only changed, so to speak, the nature of man’s communication with God, but did not completely destroy or completely abolish the covenant itself, and it could not do this, for a person cannot live without a covenant with God.” The essence of this covenant is that “God, in accordance with the high gifts with which He endowed man at creation, showed him the highest goal of life. This goal determined the direction and course of a person’s life and his entire behavior in general.” Man’s attitude “to his covenant with God from the very beginning was twofold: on the one hand, conditional, free, on the other, unconditional, necessary. That is, a person who received a certain purpose from God during creation, although he could temporarily evade it, since he had free will, however, a person could not completely eliminate the goal of his life from himself, because it was unchangeable: God’s covenant with man was “eternal.” The Fall was such a temporary deviation, but “from the point of view of the eternal covenant, the restoration of the broken covenant certainly had to occur, and from the point of view of historical reality, it was possible; man after the Fall is in need of salvation and able to be saved. But as soon as sin entered the world and a darkening of the image of God followed, turning to God would only have been possible if God Himself had condescended to man, if He Himself had re-established the covenant broken by man’s sin and restored man in it. However, this could not be done directly. Before restoring man to the first union with God, before saving him, it was necessary first to educate him for salvation, to preserve and develop the very ability for salvation and to create a need for it. Education must be a very difficult task. Its difficulty is especially evident from the fact that people are free and personal beings, to whom salvation could not be imposed, but only offered for acceptance. But the wise Educator knew what methods and means to use so that the goal of education was achieved.” See Posnov M. The idea of ​​God's covenant with the people of Israel in the Old Testament. (An experience of theological and philosophical review of the history of the Israeli people) Boguslav, 1902, p. 26–30. It is precisely this “Divine pedagogy” that the Rev. is talking about. Anastasia. So, I think, it is better to translate the expression ἡ ἡμετέρα τοῦ κόσμου φύσις, meaning the general nature of humanity, developing and growing spiritually in the course of the Economy of salvation. The second stage of the Economy of salvation and religious prosperity of mankind corresponds, according to the thought of St. Anastasia, the era of the Sinai legislation and the prophets, when the hidden Word of the Father (Logos) is spoken and revealed, although still “vaguely” (ἀμυδρῶς πως) and as if “tongue-tied”, or like the babbling of a child (διὰ τινῶν ἀσαφῶν ψελλισμάτων) In this case, Rev. Anastasius develops the idea that was clearly expressed already in the New Testament, for the Savior Himself “looked at Himself as the perfect implementation of everything that was expressed in the institutions of the Mosaic legislation - the fulfillment of all the aspirations and fortune-telling that were contained in the prophets and in the psalms, as well as in the clear messianic prophecies. In a word, the Lord looked at Himself as the implementation of the idea to which the entire Old Testament system pointed." And in general, according to the sacred writers of the New Testament, "in the Old Testament Scriptures the ideal that was realized in Christianity was unclearly outlined." See: Malov E. About the superiority of Moses over all the prophets. Biblical-exegetical study against the Jews // Orthodox Interlocutor, 1900, part II, p. 219–220. In other words, the Incarnation of God the Word, according to Rev. Anastasia, marks the third stage of the House of Salvation, which represents for man the highest point of knowledge of God and knowledge of himself. Naturally, such higher knowledge is unthinkable without moral success, which presupposes “that a Christian, as he progresses spiritually, must free himself from the direct opposition of I and not I, receive a feeling or consciousness of his inner unity with Christ, the Father and brothers in faith (John 17:23, 14:20) and thus significantly modify, apparently, the basic properties of human self-consciousness, for otherwise there is no possibility for him to become more like the Divine Trinity in essence, for which our Lord prayed.” Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky). Complete works, vol. II St. Petersburg, 1911, p. 65–66. This phrase λόγου, ἤγουν τοῦ πατρὸς καὶ τοῦ ὑιοῦ) does not at all serve as a confirmation of the Catholic Filioque, for the Rev. Anastasia is not talking about the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit, but about His manifestation to humanity. One can cite the observation of V.N. Lossky on this matter. “If the name “Holy Spirit”... Rather expresses His Divine economy rather than His personal property, then this is because the Third Hypostasis is primarily the Hypostasis of manifestation, the Person in Whom we recognize God the Trinity. It is hidden from us by the abundant manifestation of the Divine Himself. This is the personal “kenosis” of the Holy Spirit in the manifestation of His Economy, which is why it is difficult for us to perceive the image of His hypostatic existence.” Lossky V. N. In the image and likeness of M., p. 1995, p. 90 In general, according to the Orthodox point of view, “The Father communicates the existence of St. Spirit, already being the Father and having the Son; The Spirit, according to the teachings of Orthodoxy, comes from the Father, therefore, He does not come without the Son, whose birth gives the unborn the property of the Father.” Kokhomsky S. The teaching of the ancient Church on the origin of St. Spirit Historical and dogmatic essay. SPb., p. 1875, p. 26. Similar definitions of the soul are quite often found in ancient church writing. For example, St. Gregory the Theologian defines the soul as “an enlivening and moving nature (φύσις ζωτικὴ, φέρουσὰ τε)”, with which “word and mind (λόγος καὶ νοῦς) are connected συνεκράϑη)"... Meletius the Monk, insisting on the unknowability of the soul by its essence and being critical of the "empty (μάταια) reasoning of the Hellenes" about the nature of the soul, nevertheless asserts (defines) that the soul is "οὐσία ἀσώματος, λογικὴ, νοερᾶ καὶ ἀϑάνατος.” See: Vladimirsky Φ. WITH . Decree. cit., p. 342–343. These arguments by Rev. Anastasia must be accepted taking into account the above-mentioned restrictions that are imposed on any theological thinking “by analogy” (see above, note 36 {footnote beginning: “It is usually emphasized that in Christology...” Editorial of the ABC of Faith}), especially since “mind (word)” and “mind (spirit)” in a person cannot be thought of as “hypostases” like the Holy Hypostases Trinity. In this regard, it is advisable to cite the following judgment of Bishop Sylvester: “The image of the existence of the spiritual-personal existence of God, according to the teaching of Revelation, infinitely rises above the image of personal existence both in the human spirit and in all finite spirits. While every finite and limited spirit exists alone, the infinite Spirit exists in three Persons. This does not mean that the spiritual-personal essence is divided in God into three parts or three types, which form separate foundations for the three Divine Persons, existing outside and separately from one another, although possessing essentially the same Divine essence. If this were so, then there would exist in the Godhead not only three persons, understood as the most special images of the existence of His personal existence, but three separate Divine beings, similar to those that represent human or higher individual spirits, existing completely separately from each other, although at the same time possessing the same spiritual nature in their essence - and this would not be difficult for our minds to understand. But, according to the clear depiction of Revelation, the being of God is unconditionally singular and inseparable. Consequently, it is not in parts and fragments, but entirely, completely and absolutely equally possessed by all three Divine Persons. Each of the Persons differs from one another only in that It is one and not another Person, but in their essence they constitute one and the same thing, forming one and the same Divine being. In other words, the basis of the spiritual-personal Divine existence of all Persons is the same, but the image of its expression and existence in each of Them is different and so distinct and isolated that each Person, as a result of this kind of characteristics, in its relationship to another is and recognizes Itself as a special and separate Person. This is what constitutes that most sublime and most mysterious peculiarity by which, according to the teaching of Revelation, the infinite Spirit infinitely differs from all finite personal spirits.” Bishop Sylvester (Malevansky). Experience of Orthodox dogmatic theology (with a historical presentation of dogmas), T.P. Kyiv, 1892, p. 205–206. Wed. one of the theses of the “epistemology” of Blessed. Augustine, according to whom “God is not outside, but in the very, so to speak, center of our mind, but we see Him not as some reflection in our soul, but above it. Nevertheless, He is above the soul, not as heaven is above the earth, not as space, but by His nature, because He is the Creator of the soul. In order to know the Truth, you must first enter into yourself. But since human nature is changeable, one cannot dwell on it and look for Truth in it. It is necessary to rise above the soul and ascend to where the very light of reason is kindled, where the unchangeable nature sits, which is higher than the human mind and is God Himself.” Popov I. IN . The personality and teaching of St. Augustine, part II. Sergiev Posad, 1917, p. 193. In the "Guide" Rev. Anastasius outlines two types of theological reasoning and discussion, one - with the help and through the sayings of Holy Scripture (ὁ μὲν διὰ γραφικῶν ῥήσεων), and the other - with the help and through actual (real) evidence (ὁ δὲ διὰ πραγματικῶν παραστάσεων), which, in his opinion, is stronger and truer (ὅς καὶ ἰσχυρότερος καὶ ἀληϑέστερός ἐστι), for the sayings of the Scriptures can be falsified, which is what heretics and Jews do. See: Anastsii Sinaitae Viae dux, p. 8. Judging by the context, Rev. Anastasius understands by “real evidence” (or, as in this “Word”, by “really existing things”), most likely, the data of spiritual experience, the evidence of which is undoubted only in the Church and in the light of Church Tradition. Here he develops those principles that were outlined by ancient Christian writers polemicizing with the heretical “pseudognostics”; The main leitmotif of this polemic was the principle “Where there is true faith, there is true Scripture, there is its true interpretation.” But true faith is only in the Church, and therefore knowledge of the truth cannot be separated from church life. Truth is not achieved by studying the Scriptures with the intellect of an individual. True understanding of the Scriptures is not separated from the general life of the church. “In the Church there is only the correct (legitima) and careful, safe and free from blasphemy interpretation of the Scriptures and the excellent gift of love, which is more precious than knowledge and more glorious than prophecy and more excellent than all other gifts.” “Understanding the Scriptures is one of the manifestations of the Holy Spirit living in the Church, and therefore it is impossible outside the Church.” Troitsky V. Gnosticism and the Church in relation to the New Testament Sergiev Posad, 1911, p. 25–26. In the era of Rev. Anastasia, the question of the relationship between Holy Scripture and Tradition acquired particular urgency, for “the Christological heresies of the 4th–6th centuries and the series of Councils they caused raised the question of Tradition to a new point. Now the insufficiency of Holy Scripture alone in resolving dogmatic disputes and the need for this decision to turn to the entire integrity of Tradition have been fully felt. In other words, it has only now become clear where the Church’s dogmas are kept. All conciliar redefinitions were, in essence, an appeal to Tradition against the perversion of Scripture, a perversion that could not be eliminated in any other way. At the same time, a new feature of Tradition has now emerged, so to speak, its swelling, in addition to the apostolicity established in the 3rd century, they began to consult not only what the Apostles thought about the truths of the faith, but also what the ancient fathers thought.” Skaballanovich M. Preservation of dogma in the Church // Proceedings of the Kyiv Theological Academy, 1910, vol. 3, p. 43. Similar aporia of “apostates from the Church” are given by Rev. Anastasius and in the “Guide”, using here also the term ἀδελφοϑεία, which we translated as “brotherly god”. See: Anastasii Sinaitae Viae dux, p. 296. Similar superstitious questions of heretics were captured by St. Athanasius in his “First Epistle to Serapion, Bishop of Tmui,” where he notes that the heretics “in constant insistence against the truth, not from the Scriptures anymore (because they no longer find anything in the Scriptures), but from the abundance of their hearts they vomit, and also say: “If the Spirit is not a creature and not one of the Angels, but proceeds from the Father, then does it not follow that He is also the Son, that the Spirit and the Word are two brothers? And if He is the brother of the Word, then how is the Word the only begotten, or why are they not equal, but One is named after the Father, and the other after the Son? And if He is from the Father, then why is it not said that the Spirit is begotten or that He is a son, but is simply called the Holy Spirit? And if the Spirit is the Spirit of the Son, then does it not follow that the Father is the grandfather of the Spirit? Saint Athanasius the Great. Creations in four volumes, vol. III. M., p. 1994, p. 24. The word ὁμόδοξον can also be translated as “unanimity, unanimity.” The chosen version of the translation is confirmed by one saying of St. Gregory the Theologian: “we believe in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, who are of one essence and the same glory” St. Gregory the Theologian, Archbishop of Constantinople. Collection of works in 2 volumes, vol. 1. Sergiev Posad, 1994, p. 595. Wed. reasoning of St. Cyril of Alexandria, who in his “Dialogues on the Holy Trinity” says that Christian teaching considers the Divinity as one nature in three Hypostases (εἰς μίαν μὲν βλέπει ϑεότητος φύσιν, τὴν ἐν τρισὶν ὑποστάσεων); They are “conformable” and “Christmas-like” to each other (ἅι σύμμορφοι καὶ ταὐτοειδεῖς ἀλλήλαις), as if combining with each other in some sublime Beauty. According to the Scriptures, it is in the image of this sublime Beauty that we are created (πρὸς ὅ καὶ ἡμεῖς μεμορφώμεϑα), sealed by sonship through the Son (κατασφραγίσμεϑα δὲ πρὸς υἱότητα δι’ Υἱοῦ ἐν Πνεύματι). And if we assume that “sonship” is the image of the Son, and “fatherhood” is the image of the Father, then we are sons [of God] through the Son and are the image and likeness God, having been formed from the beginning according to the highest Nature. See: Cyrille d'Alexandrie. Dialogues sur la Trinité, t. II. Ed. par G.M. de Durand The principle of limiting the “rights of reason” in theology, outlined here by Rev. Anastasius, is characteristic of the theology of almost all the Fathers of the Church. Compare, for example, the teaching of St. Hilary: “As an object of knowledge proper (rational-theoretical), revealed truths represent an even greater absurdity than the theses of natural theology, but these truths have their own rationality, rising above natural reason, understandable only to the “spiritual”, “heavenly” understanding Hence, although Hilary sometimes appeals to natural reason (sensus) to justify certain dogmatic positions communis), but never makes him a judge in matters of faith. Faith, as the voluntary submission of reason to the authority of Revelation, is, according to Hilary, the main psychological form of human knowledge of God, and as a voluntary renunciation of the rights of reason, it has religious and moral value. The entire participation of the mind in the process of assimilation of the revealed Truth comes down to formal activity: without placing itself as a judge over the content of the revealed Word, the mind 1) only clarifies its meaning for itself by studying its letter and context andˆ2) clarifies the meaning of the anthropomorphic and metaphorical sayings (analogies) of Scripture, since divine truths, by necessity, are often expressed in Scripture in an adaptive way to the limitations of the human mind and speech. From the presented teaching of Hilary on the nature of human knowledge of God, his teaching on the causes of various kinds of religious errors logically follows. If the objects of religious knowledge, by their very nature, do not fit within the framework of the human mind, but must be perceived by voluntary admiration before their divinely revealed authority, then the root of religious errors lies in the evil will of man, which does not want to humble itself before the harsh and sometimes unacceptable Divine Word and often even puts into it a different meaning, more akin to its mood, and its own limited reason, thus making it the supreme judge in matters supernatural order." Orlov A. Trinitarian views of Hilary of Pictavia. Historical and dogmatic research Sergiev Posad, 1908, p. 306–307. This opposition in Rev. Anastasia (τυπικῶς – ἰσοφυῶς) has a clearly polemical connotation. In the Guide he says that the blessed fathers perceive man as an “impressive image” of Christ ἐπὶ τοῦ Χριστοῦ), wanting to show, as if in a sketch, the visible and invisible, mortal and immortal, perceptible and inaccessible to sensation in the one Person of the God-Man. The malicious children of the Monophysites, taking such statements of the holy fathers as the starting point of their reasoning; They use this analogy of the Lord with man not as an “impressive image”, but to prove their “natural equality” (εἰς ἰσότητα φυσικὴν) of them. For example, Rev. Anastasius quotes the words of Severus of Antioch: “Just as in the one nature of man one part of it is the soul, and the other the body, so in the one nature of Christ one part of it is the Divinity, and the other the body.” See: Anastasii Sinaitae Viae dux, p. 275. According to one Orthodox exegete, such definitions of St. Apostle John, as “God is light” (John 1:5), “God is love” (1 John 4:8) and “God is Spirit” (John 4:24); “The essence of expressions, of course, cannot exhaust the fullness of the Being of God, and are only means in human words to approach the contemplation of Divine perfections possible for human powers. At the same time, it is pointed out that the Spirit of God, inseparable from the Being of God, is God, and thus the concept of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is fully revealed to the Christian: “for there are three who testify in heaven, the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit: and these three are one” (1 John 5:7).” Vlastov G. Experience of studying the Gospel of St. John the Theologian, vol. 1. St. Petersburg, 1887, p. 193. Similar reasoning about the indissoluble unity of soul and mind (albeit in, so to speak, a “dichotomous aspect” in contrast to the “trichotomy” of St. Anastasius) is found in the blessed. Augustine. “In the soul there is an unchangeable thing - the mind, but since everything that is unchangeable does not pass away, then the mind does not pass away and is not separated from the soul. Reason can be understood either as an ability, or as an action, or as an object of action (i.e., in the latter case, we must understand by the name of reason the necessary and unchangeable truths that are always in the soul). That the mind, at first and second glance, is inseparable from the soul is self-evident; but it is also inseparable according to the third view: because, no matter how we look at reason, whether we consider it an accident of the soul or a substance, in any case we must recognize it as an integral part of the soul. There is no external force in the world that could separate the mind from the soul. The soul must either voluntarily renounce reason, or reason must leave it; but neither one nor the other is unthinkable; because the union of the soul with the mind is not a local connection, to which one could put a barrier, and the mind itself cannot find in itself a reason for moving away from the soul. So, if the mind is inseparable from the soul, if, as has been said, it itself is imperishable and if, finally, it communicates existence to that with which it is connected, then the soul in its existence must be imperishable" Skvortsov K. Augustine of Ipponia as a psychologist. Kyiv, 1870, p. 198–199. The doctrine of the unity of action (“energy”) of the Persons of the Holy Trinity, which Rev. Anastasius projects onto the plane of anthropology, as many Church Fathers and ancient church writers expressed. Compare, for example, St. Athanasius: “Therefore, there is a Holy and perfect Trinity, cognizable in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, having nothing alien or given from the outside, not composed of the Creator and the creature, but wholly Creating and Creating. She is similar to herself, inseparable by nature, and her action is one.” Saint Athanasius the Great. Creations in four volumes, vol. III, p. 41. Wed. also the fourth book “Against Eunomius” by St. Basil the Great (most likely written by Didymus the Blind), which says “Those who have the same actions have the same essence. But the action of the Father and the Son is one, for example, let us create man (Gen. 1:26); and also: as the Father creates, the Son also creates in the same way (John 5:19) Therefore, the essence of the Father and the Son is one.” Creations like the saints of our father Basil the Great, Archbishop of Caesarea of ​​Cappadocia, part III. M., p. 1993, p. 146. Wed. "Conciliar Epistle" of St. Sophronius of Jerusalem: “We know one beginning, one Deity, one kingdom, one power, one force, one action, one will, one desire, one dominion, one movement, which for everything that came after it serves (as a force) either creative, or providential, or supporting, or protecting; one dominion, one eternity, and everything that is in three personal Hypostases, individual and incompatible with one essence and nature.” Acts of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. IV St. Petersburg, 1996, p. 145. St. John of Damascus, contrasting the Holy Trinity with all created existence, notes that in It “community and unity are contemplated by [the] deed itself, because of the co-eternity of [the Persons] and the identity of Their being and activity and will and because of the cognitive ability, and the identity of power and strength and goodness.” Creations like the saints of our father John of Damascus. An Accurate Statement of the Orthodox Faith, p. 24. Wed. the reasoning of Lord Sylvester: “The soul, being spiritual and immortal, or, what is the same, being such a being that is as different from the body as the heavenly is different from the earthly, incorruptible from the corruptible, independent and spontaneous from the passive or instrumental, for this very reason constitutes the most important and essential thing in human nature, namely, it constitutes why man is actually a man, and not what all other earthly creatures are, although in his body, like them, he belongs to the realm of the earthly. And if so, then it is clear that we cannot and should not otherwise understand the words of the Writer of Genesis about God’s intention to create man in His own image and likeness, that is, in an image similar to Himself (Gen. 1:26), as well as about the very creation of man in the image of God (v. 27), as only in a primary or even exclusive application to the human soul, especially since the Writer of Genesis himself gives a solid basis for such an understanding. According to his image, the first-created man became a living soul, i.e. true and actual man, and with this man in the image of God, only after God breathed into his face the breath of life, or soul (Gen. 2:7). Before this moment, therefore, he was not a true man, or a man in the image of God, but was only in appearance or one purely physical man, prepared to receive into himself a true spiritual man, to which it should be added that in this position he was only one external dwelling or church in which the image of God was to be placed, or one only earthly and sensual pedestal, deliberately prepared so that on it he could worthily this image will be established.” Bishop Sylvester (Malevansky). Experience of Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. III, p. 242–243. One can cite the judgment of the Right Reverend Macarius: “God, the purest Spirit, is one in essence, but threefold in Persons: and in this regard, we can find some weak image of God, following the teachers of the Church, in the unity of our soul with the trinity of its essential powers, no matter what anyone calls them, memory, reason and will, or mind, word and spirit, or mind, will and feeling.” “God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit,” says, for example, St. Ambrose, - but not three Gods, but one God, who has three Persons, so exactly soul - mind, soul - will, soul - memory; but not three souls in one body, but one soul having three powers (dignitatis), and in these three powers our inner man by nature amazingly reflects the image of God.” “Like God in three Persons,” argues St. Demetrius of Rostov, - so the human soul is in three forces - mind, word and spirit. And as the word is from the mind, and as the spirit is from the mind, so the Son and the Holy Spirit are from the Father. Just as the mind cannot exist without word and spirit, so the Father has never been and cannot be without the Son and the Holy Spirit. And just as the mind, the word and the spirit are three different spiritual powers, but there is one soul, not three souls: so the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are three Persons of God, and not three Gods, but one God.” Archbishop Macarius. Orthodox dogmatic theology, vol. I. St. Petersburg, 1868, p. 454. Wed. teaching of St. Irenaeus of Lyon: “The cosmological principle in the concept of Logos, which dominated among the apologists, Irenaeus tries to eliminate and in its place put the ontological idea of ​​Logos as the constant self-revelation of the Divine. “No one can know the Father unless the Logos of God or His Son reveals Him.” “Through His Logos, who is His Son, through Him the Father is revealed and declared to all,” “always (semper) existing with the Father, the Son of the Father from ancient times (olim) and even from time immemorial (ab initio) always reveals the Father to the Angels, Archangels, Powers and everyone to whom He wants to reveal Himself.” Begun before the creation of the world, this self-revelation of God in the Logos continues in the creation of the world, in human history and the Incarnation. “The Logos reveals God the Father in the very creation of the world and in the formation of man.” Always present to the entire human race, He especially proclaims Himself and the Father through the law and the prophets, and, having recently become visible and tangible, He revealed His Father to all people, because the Father is the invisible of the Son, and the Son is the visible of the Father.” Spassky A. History of dogmatic movements in the era of the Ecumenical Councils (in connection with the philosophical teachings of that time). Trinitarian question. (History of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity) Sergiev Posad, 1914, p. 15–16. Rev. Anastasius, developing these thoughts of St. Irenaeus (and a number of other Church Fathers), emphasizes in such a “Christological theophany” the moment of discovery in the incarnate Word of the divine properties not only of the Father, but of the entire Holy Trinity. With the development of these thoughts, Rev. Anastasia can probably be considered a number of aspects of the teachings of St. Gregory Palamas, who, “as the head of the Athonite hesychasts, himself close to the angelic disembodied life, dares to praise man in a way that, perhaps, few of the Church Fathers. He speaks very definitely about the height of man, about the “divine” flesh, about the superiority of man over the world of Angels. Having pointed out some aspects in which Angels are superior to man, he is not afraid to talk about what elevates man above the Angels and makes him the most precious and beautiful flower of the universe.” The first thing that elevates man is creation in the image of God. “The second advantage is seen in the purpose of man, in his special dominant position in the hierarchy of the universe,” while Angels “are ministering spirits, “liturgists,” not only of the Supreme Mind, but also of people of lower dignity. And this is the only destiny given to them by God. Man, by his very nature and purpose, is called to occupy a dominant position. He is destined to reign over this world” Further, “Angels are not given the greatest ability available to man, the creative gift that makes man related to his Creator.” Finally, “the flesh of man, which through the senses is the source of creative talents and is destined in the Eternal Council to be united with the Word of God, this flesh cannot in any way serve to diminish man.” Therefore, “if it is given to a person to be higher than an Angel, then it is clear that the most perfect Flower of all humanity, the Most Pure Mother of God, becomes the Most Honest Cherub and the Most Glorious without comparison Seraphim. Thanks to the same view of the correlation between the human and the angelic, Palamas sees the most perfect ascetics of the spirit as superior to the angelic ranks. Standing in his flesh lower than the “second lights,” a person, thanks to the feat of acquiring the Holy Spirit, can surpass them and himself come closer to the Primary Source of Light, to the Superessential Nature.” See: Archimandrite Cyprian (Kern). Anthropology of St. Gregory Palamas, p. 360–367. So, I think, it’s better to translate this phrase μεταδοτικὸς τῆς ἑαυτοῦ εἰκόνος τῷ Θεῷ). Its meaning is probably that the Incarnation of God the Word made possible the deification of man, and for him, who was in the image of God, the path was opened to becoming god by grace. Thus, a person who has courageously walked this cramped and narrow path of acquiring the Kingdom of Heaven, as it were, returns (or transfers) to God the talent that was once given to him, but has already been multiplied. As one Orthodox biblical scholar notes, “in general, the messianic image in the Psalter is outlined so fully and vividly that at first glance one can see in it a pre-image of Jesus Christ. And this pre-depiction is so true to the actual image of the Messiah that one cannot help but see in this act of pre-depiction miraculous, divine assistance; and in the Messiah Jesus, in Whom this wondrous image was realized, one cannot help but see the Face of the Divine. One can even say that the image of the Messiah found in the Psalter confirms the authenticity of His gospel image, since the gospel image is essentially the same as it appears from the prophetic depiction of him in the Psalter” Bishop Nikanor (Kamensky). Image of the Messiah in the Psalter. Exegetic-critical study of the Messianic psalms with a brief outline of the doctrine of the Messiah before the prophet David Kazan, 1901, p. 254. However, understanding this passage of the Psalter in such a transformative sense is a very rare phenomenon in church writing. Usually its interpretation is maintained in a slightly different vein, see, for example, St. Athanasius: “Very many other benefits were shown to him by God, and he is not able to know them. The knowledge of this, he says, exceeds my strength and is beyond my understanding, and therefore I cannot explore it and express it in words. For everything that I have said is small and meager; it is beyond the reach of my smallness to comprehend the Divine power.” St. Athanasius the Great. Creations in four volumes, vol. IV. M., 1994, p. 410. Wed. also the remark of the exegete of modern times “Thy wisdom, thus the holy one cries out to the Lord. prophet, surprised me. In her appearances she represents a solid, high mountain, no matter how hard I try to lift it with my human thinking, I cannot do this. So the human mind is powerless against the mind of God! For how many centuries has the false mind been trying to recognize, so to speak, the all-governing Wisdom from the universe, but it stands firm, accepts worship from the right-thinking, laughing at the destruction of the wicked. In what strong impulses does the word of freethinkers rise up against her holy home, that is, the Christian Church; but God’s foundation stands firm, and the Church will survive the ascension of reason.” Ternovsky S. G . Explanation of dark sayings from the Church Psalter, set out according to the guidance of the Holy Fathers of the Church M., 1891, p. 220. The possibility cannot be ruled out that this scholium belongs to the Venerable himself. Anastasia. A similar opposition between “natural” and “impressive” is observed in the first “Word” of St. Anastasia. The thought of the reverend father can probably be summarized as follows: man, being the image of God, sees God the Word in himself as a kind of reflection in a mirror (“impressively”); and man’s “natural” vision of himself in God probably refers to the Incarnation of the Word, when He, taking on the naturally visible “form of a servant,” showed in Himself the true image of God through humanity, i.e., revealed in Himself a true Man. See the reflection on this matter by a modern Orthodox theologian: “Having become incarnate, Christ the Savior becomes the New Adam of humanity. In Himself, He restored in its entirety the image and likeness of God, lost by the primordial Adam, showing humanity during His life on earth all the sublime features and manifestations of this image in its effective likeness to God. Thus, according to St. Isaac the Syrian, “Christ initially carried out the renewal of human nature in His Hypostasis, returned and gave it the first freedom.” Pilate’s words “This is the Man,” with which he perhaps wanted to ridicule the political intrigue of the Jewish ruling class or to arouse compassion for the victim of this class among the people standing before his tribunal, were in fact words pointing to the only true Man who ever was on earth, in all the fullness and ideal sublimity of his true humanity, that is, humanity in its union with the Divine and in harmonious development of all her spiritual and physical powers.” Bishop Gury. God-created man. Experience of Orthodox theodicy of life // Theological works, collection. XII. M., 1974, p. 32–33. The juxtaposition of these two concepts (τῆς σῆς ἐνανϑρωπήσεως καὶ συγκαταβάσεως) emphasizes the “kenotic moment” of the Incarnation. However, this “kenosis” of God the Word, in turn, emphasizes the greatness of His Divine dignity. See St. Basil the Great: “For this is the greatest proof of the power that God was able to be in human nature. The power of God the Word is not so much proven by the creation of heaven, earth, sea, air, the creation of the greatest elements and everything that we can imagine of the worldly and underworld, but rather by the Economy of the Incarnation and condescension to humiliated and weak humanity.” Creations like those of our holy father Basil the Great, Archbishop of Caesarea of ​​Cappadocia. M. 1991, p. 279–280. In this case, Rev. Anastasius points out the possibility of using in theology (Christology) what is called the “anthropological paradigm” or, more precisely, “anthropological analogy”. A similar use of this analogy is found more than once in ancient church writing. See, for example, St. Gregory of Nyssa: “If you ask: how is the Divinity united with humanity? then look, first you should ask: what affinity does the soul have with the flesh? If the method of uniting your soul with your body is unknown, then, of course, you should not think that even that will become accessible to your comprehension. But just as here we are sure that the soul is something different from the body, because the flesh, separated from the soul, becomes dead and inactive, and we do not know the method of union: so there, although we recognize that the Divine nature is magnificently different from the mortal and fleeting nature, it is nevertheless inconceivable for us to understand the way in which the Divinity is united with humanity. Works of St. Gregory of Nyssa, part 4. M., 1862, p. 39. Wed. also the teaching of Nemesius: “The image of the union of the soul with the body,” according to Nemesius, “best and most closely approaches (corresponds) to the union of God the Word with man, according to which the United One remained unfused and unlimited (ἀσύγχυτος καὶ ἀπερίληπτος).” The only difference here is that “the soul, being diverse, appears to be both sympathetic to the body, due to some affinity with it, and sometimes possessing it, and being possessed by it. God the Word, Himself not changing at all from communication with the (human) soul and body, not being involved in their weaknesses, imparting to them His Divinity, becomes one with them, remaining the same as it was before the union.” This image of “compounding or mixing (ἑνώσεως ἤ κράσεως)” is wonderful and incomprehensible: “and mixes (i.e. God the Word), and remains completely unmixed, unfused, undamaged and unchangeable (ἄμικτος, ἀσύγχυτος, ἀδιάφϑορος, ἀμετάβλητος), without compassion for that with which he united, but only cooperating, not collapsing with it and not changing, but exalting it, Himself not diminished by it - remaining, moreover, unchanged and unfused (ἄτρεπτος καὶ ἀσύγχυτος), as completely uninvolved in any change.” To prove the possibility of such a connection, Nemesius cites the reasoning of the Neoplatonist Porphyry (“the opponent of Christianity”) - that “one substance can enter into the fullness (εἰς συμπλήρωσιν) of another substance and be part of the substance, remaining in its own nature... and preserving its unity.” Nemesius considers this reasoning of Porphyry, relating to the union of the soul with the body, to be completely applicable “in relation to the Word of God,” which is “truly unfused and incorporeal.” In general, our Christian philosopher is trying to prove to representatives of pagan philosophy that “the church dogma about the union of two natures in the person of the God-man is not unnatural, although supernatural, not counter-reasonable, although super-reasonable.” Vladimirsky F. WITH . Decree. cit., p. 215–216. A number of other Orthodox authors, including the 6th century theologian, also turned to “anthropological analogy”. John the Grammar of Caesarea, who actively defended the Chalcedonian redefinition from the attacks of the Monophysites, see A. Sidorov. AND . John the Grammar of Caesarea (to the characteristics of Byzantine philosophy in the 6th century) // Byzantine Temporary, vol. 49, 1988, p. 94–98. However, in the course of disputes with the Monophysites and Monothelites, who also used this analogy to prove their false teaching, church thinkers increasingly felt its inadequacy, realizing more and more deeply the significant difference between Christology and anthropology, this gradually led them to abandon the active use of the “anthropological paradigm” and search for other, more accurate analogies. A striking example of this is Rev. Maxim the Confessor. See: Uthemann K. -N. Das anthropologische Modell der hypostatischen Union Ein Beitrag zu den philosophischen Voraussetzungen und zur innerchalcedonischen Transformation eines Paradigmas It is not known which ancient Christian writer the Rev. is referring to in this case. Anastasy. But the idea that man was created in the image of God the Word, i.e., the second Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity (which in turn was the “Image of the Father” - see note 32 to the first “Word” {see footnote No. 68, beginning: “The difference between these three principles of the soul...” Editorial of the ABC of Faith}), is quite widespread in ancient church writing. The classic example here is provided by Origen, who, based on Col. 1:15, says that the human soul (“my soul” - animam meam) is created in the image of its Creator, “to be the image of the Image” (ut imago esset imaginis), i.e. the soul is created in the likeness of the First Image (ad similitudinem imaginis prioris effecta est) see: Origène. Homélies sur S Luc Ed par H. Crouzel, F. Fournier, P. Perichon // Sources chrétiennes, No. 87. Paris, 1962, p. 164–167. It should be noted that the humanity of Christ is not included by Origen in the concept of the “image of God” (accordingly, only the soul is the “image of the Image”), see Crouzel N. Origen Edinburgh, 1989, p. 93. Consequently, this idea of ​​man as the “image of the Lord” is developed by Origen (and after him by St. Athanasius and others) only in the “Trinitarian”, but not in the “Christological” aspect. Clear traces of the idea expressed by Rev. Anastasius, can be found in St. Irenaeus: “This Word was revealed when the Word of God became Man, likening Himself to man and man to Himself, so that through likeness to the Son man would become precious to the Father. For although in former times it was said that man was created in the image of God, this was not shown (by the deed itself), for the Word, in whose image man was created, was not yet visible. That's why he easily lost his likeness. When the Word of God became flesh, He confirmed both, for He truly showed the image, Himself becoming what was His image, and firmly restored the likeness, making man through the visible Word similar to the invisible Father.” St. Irenaeus of Lyons. Creations M., 1996, p. 480–481. However, St. Irenaeus, in contrast to Rev. Anastasia draws a distinction between “image” and “likeness”. This phrase (ἐν σαρκὶ σκήνωσιν) is clearly an echo of John 1:14 (ἐσκήνωσεν ἐν ἡμῖν). Wed. interpretation of St. John Chrysostom: “I am not talking about changing this unchangeable Being, but about His indwelling and dwelling (among us). The dwelling is not the same as the dwelling, but is something different; one inhabits the other, otherwise there would be no infusion - because nothing inhabits itself. I say something different in relation to nature. Through union and communication, God the Word and the flesh are one, not in the sense that there was any confusion or destruction of natures, but in the fact that some ineffable and inexpressible unity of them was formed.” Like the saints of our father John, Archbishop of Constantine, Chrysostom, Selected works of Conversations on the Gospel of John the Theologian, book. 1. M., p. 1993, p. 75–76. Blazh. Theodoret, like St. Anastasia, also correlates this passage of the “Book of the Prophet Isaiah” with the Incarnation of the Lord and, to confirm its messianic meaning, refers to a number of quotations from the New Testament, including 1 Cor. 2:7. See Théodoret de Cyr. Commentaire sur Isaie, t. II. Ed. par J.-N. Guinot // Sources chretiennes, No. 295. Paris, 1982, p. 196. Also St. John of Damascus, singing the praises of the Most Holy Theotokos and referring to Ps.86:3, says: “After all, who should we mean by the city of the invisible and indescribable God, who contains everything in His handful, if not the only one who indescribably contained the transubstantial Word of God, in a truly supernatural and supersubstantial image, about which the glorious is announced by the Lord Himself? And what could be more glorious than the perception of the ancient and true Council of God (Is. 25:l)? See also the commentary of Father Maxim Kozlov to this place: Works of St. John of Damascus Christological and polemical treatises. Words for the Feasts of the Mother of God Translation and comments by St. Maxim Kozlova, D.E. Afinogenova. M., 1997, p. 261, 323. Wed. interpretation of St. John Chrysostom: “God honors our salvation with his glory, also with his wealth, although He Himself is a treasure of goods and does not need anyone to be rich. Provide, he says, expressing God’s care for us. For those are usually considered the most caring for us and loving us, who have long been disposed to do good to us, as parents do with their children: although they give them property later, they are disposed to do this for a long time and from the very beginning. So Paul is trying here to show that God has loved us from ancient times and always, even when we did not yet exist, for if He had not loved us, He would not have destined for us wealth.” Our Holy Father John, Archbishop of Constantinople, Chrysostom, Discourses on the First Epistle of St. Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, part I. St. Petersburg, 1858, p. 109. Rev. Anastasius, sharing in principle a similar interpretation, only emphasizes that Divine Love for humanity reached its highest point in the Incarnation of the Son. According to the explanation of the Right Reverend Philaret Gumilevsky, “The Word, which existed from eternity, created the world, and shone for fallen humanity, finally appeared in the world, and precisely in the flesh. Flesh, σάρξ, the visible part instead of the whole human nature - this is how this word is used in Scripture 1 John 4:4; Matthew 24:22; 1 Timothy 3:16; became flesh, σάρξ ἐγένετο, really, and not ghostly, took upon Himself the weak human nature, even its visible side. Why is this said? There were spirits who did not confess Christ in the flesh to those who came: 1 John 4:4. It is against them that the Evangelist speaks. According to the teachings of the heavenly secret, the Word became flesh, not through such a union with the flesh as happens between an angel and a ghost, in a random way, but through the perception of the real human nature, he receives the seed of Abraham, as Paul taught: Heb. 2:16. The deity united with humanity, accepting the latter into personal unity: since all children have flesh and blood, then He also accepted it; Hebrews 2:14 This is not like turning, for example, water into wine - humanity remained humanity with its properties, and the Divinity did not lose its properties, but was only covered with weak flesh.” Archbishop Filaret (Gumilevsky). Teaching of the Evangelist John about the Word Chernigov, 1862, p. 17. The Guide expresses similar thoughts, also with reference to Var. 3, 38 the end of all [the Economy of Salvation] was when “the fullness of times had come” (Gal. 4:4) and the sacrament was accomplished, which “God ordained before the ages for our glory” (1 Cor. 2:7): He sent the Son, born of the Ever-Virgin without male seed, so that this Son would be visible on earth and “living with men” ( Var.3:38). Anastasii Sinaitae Viae dux, p. 84. According to blessed Theophylact, “the sign is the cross, which until now finds a contradiction in itself, that is, it is not accepted by the infidels. The Incarnation of the Lord is also called a sign and a wonderful sign, since God became a Man, and the Virgin became a Mother. And this sign, that is, the Incarnation of Christ, is contradicted. For some say that the body is from heaven, others that it is ghostly, and others say something else.” Blagovestnik, or Interpretation of Blessed Theophylact, Archbishop of Bulgaria, on the Holy Gospel, part 2. M., 1993, p. 27. Quote from St. Methodia is very free. See Russian translation: Works of St. Gregory the Wonderworker and St. Methodius, bishop and martyr, c. 74. Wed. interpretation of the blessed Theodorite: “Radiance comes both from fire and with fire; although fire has fire as its culprit, it is nevertheless inseparable from fire. As soon as the fire, so soon comes the radiance. Therefore, if in sensory things it is possible to be from something and to be co-existent with that from which it is, then do not doubt, says the Apostle, that God is the Word, the Only Begotten Son of God, and is born as a Son, co-existent with the One who gave birth, as the Word, which is the radiance of glory. For as soon as glory comes, so soon comes the radiance. But glory is always, therefore there is always radiance. And the radiance of one nature with fire. Consequently, the Son is one-natural with the Father... And the image of His hypostasis, that is, the Son, has an independent existence, fully showing the Father in Himself, because He bears the Father’s features. Similar to this was said by the Lord to Philip, who saw Me in the form of the Father (John 14:9). So with many names the divine Apostle showed the sincerity of birth, and consubstantiality, and co-eternity. Since the Divine transcends every mind and it is impossible to explain the truth of theology by likeness alone, preachers of the truth are forced to achieve this through many likenesses. This is how the wise John called the Son the Word. For since passion and time are associated with human birth, it was necessary to call Him the Word. And so that no one else would think that the Son is something dependent... then, of necessity, he added: God is the Word (John 1:1), and the Son’s own hypostasis, signifying, and showing a single nature, and teaching that birth is impassive and not temporary. Thus, blessed Paul called the Word the Son, showing that He, according to the personal property of the Word, is different from the Father. He called Him the Creator of the ages, teaching this that the Word is eternal, and called Him the radiance of glory, thereby meaning both co-eternity and identity of essence; He also added that It is the image of the hypostasis, teaching both one and the other, and that it has existence in Itself; and shows the Father’s features in Himself.” Works of Blessed Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus, part 7. M, 1861, p. 561–563. Rev. Anastasius suggests Adam naming his wife the name “Eve” (Gen. 3:20). According to the interpretation of St. Philaret, “at first glance, it seems that the story of giving a wife a new name, Eve, that is, life, is out of connection with the previous and subsequent story about the fall of man, and that the very name of life is not appropriate for a wife after being condemned to death. To resolve this difficulty, interpreters believe a) that Moses mentions the naming of his wife, which preceded the Fall, and wants to discover Adam’s error in this naming, or b) that Adam, condemned to death, calls his wife life as a reproach and humiliation; iˆc) that this name shows the imprudence and arrogance of the sinner, even after condemnation; orˆd) that the life with which Adam is consoled by the name of his wife is a postponement of bodily death; orˆd) that the woman is called life because of the promise given by God about her seed, which should erase the head of the serpent, who has the power of death, and became the mother of all living, like the mother of the second Adam, who is the life-giving spirit, 1 Cor. 15:45. This last guess, more than others, corresponds to the order and spirit of the narrative of Moses and is justified by examples of other names in which the forefathers concluded a confession of faith and hope, which are the names of Cain, Seth, Noah" St. Filaret of Moscow. Notes guiding a thorough understanding of the Book of Genesis, containing the translation of this Book into the Russian dialect, part 1. M., 1867, p. 71–72. The understanding of the “frenzy” ((ἔκστασις) and “sleep” of Adam among the Church Fathers is very diverse. For example, St. John Chrysostom interprets them as follows: “It was not a simple frenzy and not an ordinary dream, but since the wise and kind Creator of our nature wanted to take from Adam one of his ribs, so that he would not feel pain and then a hostile disposition towards created from his rib, so that, remembering the pain, he would not hate the animal being created, for this purpose (God), plunging (Adam) into a frenzy and, as if commanding him to be enveloped in some kind of stupor, brought such a dream upon him that he did not feel at all what was happening (to him)” Like our holy father John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, Selected creations. Conversations on the Book of Genesis, vol. 1. M., 1993, p. 120. According to the blessed. Augustine, the “frenzy” (“ecstasy”) of Adam “will be correctly understood as induced for the purpose that, with the help of this ecstasy, the mind of Adam would become, as it were, a participant in the angelic influence and, having entered the sanctuary of God, would receive an understanding of the future (Ps. 72:17) As a result, having woken up and, as if fulfilled by prophecy, he, as soon as he saw the bone brought to him, that is, his wife, He immediately said (the Apostle [Eph.5:31-32] represents these words as a great mystery): Behold now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. This woman will be called, for this life was taken from her husband. For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh (Gen. 2:23–24). Although, according to the testimony of Scripture, these words were the words of the first man, the Lord declared in the Gospel that God spoke them. Is it true, He says, that I created the male sex from time immemorial, and I created the female sex? And he said: For this reason a man will leave his father and mother, and be united to his wife, and you will both become one flesh (Matthew 19:4-5). From here we can think that due to the ecstasy that was induced on Adam, he could say these words by inspiration from above, like a prophet.” Works of Blessed Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, part 8. Kyiv, 1915, p. 165. In response to this understanding of Adam’s “ecstasy” by Blessed. Augustine was undoubtedly influenced by the ascetic tradition of secret visual experience. The influence of a similar tradition in the Greek East can be traced, for example, in St. Theoliptus, who in one of his ascetic treatises notes: when Adam kept the commandment, he lived in paradise, and then God, wanting to create Eve, “put a frenzy on Adam, and he succeeded” (Gen. 2:21). As a result of sleep, all sensory activity was inactive in Adam (ἤργησεν ὁ Ἀδὰμ ἀπὸ πάσης τῆς κατ’ αἴσϑησιν ἐνεργίας), and God He produced a wife and “brought her to Adam” (Gen. 2:22), enlightening (διεφώτισεν) Adam through her. Therefore, looking at her, he began to utter what he did not see with his eyes and did not know in his thoughts. Further, the saint, relying on this passage of Holy Scripture, develops the theory of secret visual “ecstasy” See: Theoleptus of Philadelphia. The Monastic Discourses A Critical Edition, Translation and Study by R. E. Sinkewicz. Toronto, 1992, p. 360–362. Rev. Anastasius, as is clear from the further context, understands Adam’s “frenzy” in the sense of a certain (temporary?) “exodus” from incorruption and immortality, and “sleep” in the sense of “sinful sleep.” On this occasion St. Filaret notes: “Some imagine this dream as the action of some inclination of him (Adam - A.S.) towards the sensual from the spiritual.” St. Filaret of Moscow. Decree cit., p. 48. So, I think, it is better to translate this expression ἐνὸς τῆς Τριάδος μυστήριον ἐπηδήμησαν), which probably emphasizes the connection and at the same time the “hierarchical subordination” of the doctrine of the Economy of salvation of triadology. In the “Discourse on the Psalms” attributed to St. John Chrysostom, but hardly belonging to him, this passage of the Psalter is explained as follows: “Having gone through everything that has been said and in everything revealing the great care of God, the prophet interrupts his speech with the glorification of God, saying that all the works of God are amazing, worthy of amazement and full of wisdom. It turned out that the night, sometimes condemned by the wicked, is very useful, and barren trees are useful in other respects, and the breeds of animals in many respects suitable for people... But the wisdom of God, with which God created everything, is the Lord.” Complete collection of works of St. John Chrysostom in twelve volumes, vol. 5, book. 2. M., 1996, p. 747. The symbolism of numbers, observed here in Rev. Anastasia and ultimately going back to Pythagoreanism, influenced the worldview of many ancient church writers, sometimes through Philo of Alexandria. In this regard, see the valuable observations of the Russian patrolologist I. Adamov regarding the worldview of St. Ambrose: “Numbers themselves have a deep inner meaning. In history, allegory has often been associated with elaborate symbolism of numbers. Having received its initial treatment in the Pythagorean school, this symbolism was then cultivated by the Stoics for the purpose of their allegorical explanation of Homer and mythology. Writers of the Alexandrian school also use it very widely. In the writings of Ambrose we find a detailed explanation of the following numbers: two, four, seven, eight, ten, fifteen, forty and partly three hundred and eighteen. Some of them resemble Philo. The number two in Philo’s symbolism serves as an example of sensory nature, divided and dissected into its component parts. Ambrose two also has nuneras divisus. The number four for Philo acquires significance as the number of perfection (ἀριϑμὸς τέλειος), since it serves as the source of ten, an even more perfect, all-perfect number (δεκὰδος τῆς παντελείας): what ten is in its essence (ἐντελεχεία), then four represents potentially (δυνὰμει); this is because ten is made up of all the numbers from one to four added together, with the number four here being the last and decisive. And in Ambrose, tetras is the most decent of the other numbers (omnibus numeris apta sit) and together the root and base of ten (radix quaedam decimae ac fundamentum). To do this, you need to add up all the numbers from one to four inclusive: add two to one and get three; this sum of three and the number three following after two makes six, and six combined with four makes ten. Due to its perfection, the number four is important in the structure of the world; accordingly, there are four world elements from which the whole, the four seasons, is created. In Ambrose, this number is also embodied in religious subjects and church-historical events: the complete and perfect Gospel is divided into four books; there are four mystical animals, the universe consists of four parts, from which are collected the sons of the Church, who came from the east and west, north and south. The number seven was the subject of Philo's special sympathies. This is a sacred number, occupying a completely exceptional position among other numbers within ten: the remaining numbers either give birth to a new number, but do not themselves come from another, or they themselves come from another, but do not produce a new one, or, finally, together they both come from and give birth; one, for example, generates all the other numbers of ten, but does not itself come from any of them; eight consists of two fours, but does not serve as the source of another number in ten, but four together comes from two taken twice, and, when multiplied by two, gives eight. Only one septenary (ἑβδομὰς) has neither one nor the other, nor the third property. Therefore, some philosophers likened her to the motherless victory and the Virgin who came out of the head of Zeus. Ambrose adopted exactly the same view of the nature of the septenary; He even uses the word hebdomas very often. Seven is a pure and sacred number (mundus et sacer septimus numerus); it itself is not mixed with anything and does not come from anything else; and, since it does not give birth to anything, it is rightly called a virgin (virgo), and, as completely unrelated to the maternal birth and intercourse of a woman, although it bears a female name (hebdomas), it has the male grace of sanctification (viriles habet sanctificationis gratiam). As a result of this, the septenary acquires in the eyes of Ambrose the same exceptional significance in the system of the world order that Philo attributes to it” Adamov I. St. Ambrose of Milan, c. 200–202. Scholium: “It should be noted that souls do not pre-exist bodies, as the vain Origen chatters.” At the time of Origen, there was no clearly established church opinion on the issue of the origin of the soul. St. speaks about this. Pamphilus, defending Origen: “Even if this theory (of the preexistence of souls. - A.S.) is less probable than both other theories of the origin of the soul, in any case, Origen cannot be accused of it as a heretic, because, due to the lack of accurate church teaching on this subject, some hold one, others - another, others - a third opinion about the origin of the soul, and most importantly, because Origen did not even think of passing off this theory as anything more than for my personal opinion, without at all imposing it on anyone as a dogma.” Rufinus of Aquileia speaks in approximately the same spirit. According to G. Malevansky, also in favor of Origen, one can point out that “indeed, in his time regarding the origin of the human soul there was not one, unconditionally recognized, definite church teaching (and not only in his time, but also for a long time after him), as well as the fact that Origen, considering himself in this case free to adhere to any one of the opinions that existed in his time and choosing from them, as the most probable, the opinion about the pre-existence of souls, not only does not affirm, however, this opinion as a dogma, but, always expressing himself tentatively and hesitantly, offers it only as his personal opinion, which everyone is free to check, discuss and then accept or reject, and which he himself is ready to abandon in favor of any other opinion, if it were more firmly and thoroughly stated by someone.” See: Malevansky G. Origen's dogmatic system // Proceedings of the Kyiv Theological Academy, 1870, vol. 1, p. 562–564. As a matter of fact, in the teachings of Origen there is not so much a theory of the preexistence of souls, but rather a hypothesis of the preexistence of minds (spirits). Initially, God created a world of rational spirits (the angelic world), possessing free will and constituting unity (ἑνάς), then this unity, due to the abuse of some spirits of their free will, disintegrated, and the spirits who sinned in this way “fell”, becoming souls and clothed in bodies See: Karpp N. Probleme altchristliche Anthropologie. Biblische Anthropologie und philosophishe Psychologie bei den Kirchenvatern des dritte Jahrhunert Gütersloh, 1950, S. 191–195. This hypothesis of Origen, like some of his other erroneous views in the subsequent history of the Church, was raised by the unreasonable followers of the Alexandrian theologian to the rank of “dogma” (for details, see our preface to the book: Works of Abba Evagrius Ascetic and Theological Treatises M., 1994, pp. 24–52) And thus, according to V.V. Bolotov, “Origenists appeared, from whom Origen would undoubtedly have renounced” Bolotov V. IN . Lectures on the history of the ancient Church, vol. IV. M., p. 1994, p. 386. As a result of the condemnation of this “Origenism”, the Church did not recognize the theory of “pre-existence of souls”, accepting the hypothesis of the creation of souls. Therefore, as the Right Reverend Sylvester wisely notes, it is better to adhere to this hypothesis (but not dogma) “as a hypothesis that is more in harmony with the spiritual nature of the soul, but one should only remember that the origin of human souls is a mystery known to God alone, about which our mind can only partly guess, but which it is not able to unravel, because it stands above all experience and is not clearly revealed in the word of God.” Bishop Sylvester (Malevansky). Experience of Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. III, p. 314–315. Wed. reasoning of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk: “You see a red man, angelic, from this raise your mind to the inner man, that is, the soul, and think, since the most red soul is the image and likeness of God, which God settled in such a red abode.” Schema-Archimandrite John (Maslov). Symphony based on the works of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk. M., 1996, p. 310. Interpretation by Rev. By Anastasia, Genesis 3:22 in the “Christological key” and in the aspect of the Economy of salvation seems quite unique in line with the general patristic exegesis. Usually this passage of Holy Scripture is explained in a completely different way. See, for example, St. John Chrysostom: “With these words (Scripture) wants to remind us of the deception with which the devil, through the serpent, deceived (the first people). The devil told them that if you eat it, you will be like a god (v. 5), and they, hoping to become equal to God, dared to taste it; therefore, God, wanting to admonish them, bring them to consciousness of sin and show how great their disobedience and excessive deception, says, behold, Adam was one of us. These words express a greater disgrace that can strike the criminal.” Like our holy father John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, Selected works of Conversations on the Book of Genesis, vol. 1, p. 158. The interpretation of the blessed one is maintained in a similar sense. Theodoret: “Because the devil said: You will be like gods, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:5), but whoever transgresses the commandment is given a death sentence; then the God of all spoke this as a reproach, showing the falsity of the devil’s promise.” Works of Blessed Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus, part 1. Sergiev Posad, 1905, p. 39. According to the blessed one. Augustine, here “the proud man is reminded for what reason he desired what was inspired by the serpent: you will be like gods, he says, Adam was like one of Us. These are the words of God, not so much laughing at him as frightening others so that they would not be as proud, for their sake all this is described” Works of Blessed Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, part 8, p. 246. According to Rev. Maxim, “since the devil, together with [his] advice, taught man polytheism, saying: even if you take down the tree every day, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:5), so God, as if playing along, ironizing and reproaching, to convict the person who believed the devil, says in the plural: to be one of us, [speaking out] regarding the thought of the Divine, inspired in Adam by the deception of the serpent.” Works of St. Maximus the Confessor. Book II. M., 1994, p. 135. This expression (ἔν τῇ τοῦ συνϑέτου Ἀδὰμ κατασκευῇ) implies a “complex hypostasis” of a person, consisting of soul and body, by analogy with the “complex hypostasis” of Christ, who united two natures in Himself. Orthodox authors, starting from the 6th century, actively used the expression “complex hypostasis” in contrast to the “complex nature” of the Monophysites. It is in such a polemical context that Rev. uses. Anastasius in the “Guide” the expression “one complex Hypostasis of Christ” (μίαν Χριστοῦ σύνϑετον ὑπόστασιν), believing that “one should confess in Christ two natures, inseparably united in a single complex Hypostasis.” See: Anastasii Sinaitae Viae dux, p. 90, 182. This meaning of Adam's nakedness and clothing is also pointed out by St. Gregory the Theologian and St. Gregory of Nyssa. The first says: “When, through the envy of the devil and through the seduction of the wife, to which she herself was subjected as the weakest and which she produced as skillful in persuasion (oh my weakness! For the weakness of the forefather is also my own), a man forgot the commandment given to him and was overcome by a bitter taste, then through sin he becomes an exile, removed at the same time from the tree of life, and from paradise, and from God; puts on leather vestments (perhaps the coarsest, mortal and warring flesh), for the first time knows his own shame and hides from God. However, even here something is acquired, namely death - in the suppression of sin, so that evil does not become immortal.” Saint Gregory the Theologian, Archbishop of Constantinople. Collection of works in 2 volumes, vol. 1, p. 528. The Nyssa saint notes: “When the first people touched the forbidden and naked themselves from this bliss, then the Lord places skins on the first-primeval ones (Gen. 3:21), as it seems to me, not to these skins specifically, turning the meaning of the speech (for from which slaughtered animals were skins removed and clothing invented for people?), but since any skin separated from an animal is dead, I think that after this He who heals our depravity, so that it does not remain in us forever, of course, providentially, imposed on people the opportunity to die, which was the difference of the dumb nature. For a robe is something imposed on us from the outside, serving the body for temporary use, not akin to nature. Therefore, according to a special view, deadness was transferred from the nature of the dumb to the nature created for immortality, covers its appearance, embraces the sensual part of man, but does not touch the image of God itself.” Works of St. Gregory of Nyssa, part 4, p. 29. In a similar sense, the interpretation of St. Philaret “But although it is true that the human body became crude and mortal after the Fall, it cannot be said that man was previously naked of the flesh, for his body was created before the soul, and the leather clothes given to him, at least in the proper sense, also do not mean flesh, just as the first - his own experience of clothing - fig leaves. It would also not be typical to call clothing made from waves or plant bark leather clothing; but the closest thing to understand under this name is clothing made from animal skin. since the beginning need for such clothing presupposes the beginning state of the current human bestial body, and since Moses usually describes the visible, and under the visible he concludes the contemplated, then the words: “God made Adam and his wife leather clothes,” really suggest that God gave bestial flesh to fallen people.” Saint Philaret of Moscow. Decree. cit., p. 72. However, in ancient church writing there was also opposition to such an interpretation. See, for example, Blessed. Theodorit: “Lovers of allegories call mortal flesh skins. Others argued that these vestments were made from tree bark. And I do not allow either one or the other; because one interpretation is forced, and the other is too fabulous. If the Divine Scripture says that the body was created even before the soul, then is it not fabulous to assert that, after breaking the commandment, the first parents took on mortal flesh? To go into research about where God took the skins from, and therefore to invent a new type of clothing, seems to me unnecessary. Therefore, one must be content with what is written, know that nothing is difficult for the Creator of all things, and be amazed at His boundless goodness; because He cares for those who transgressed the commandment and did not leave naked those who needed clothing.” Works of Blessed Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus, part 1, p. 39. Rev. Anastasius, as can be seen from what follows, develops a different type of interpretation (“Christological”), although he relies on St. Cappadocian fathers. This phrase by Rev. Anastasia ϑεόπλαστος, καϑὰ καὶ ὁ ἄνϑρωπος) reveals one of the essential features of his anthropology: the doctrine of the God-created nature of the whole person, including his bodily nature. Rev. Anastasius moves away from the interpretation of “robes”, which goes back to Philo of Alexandria, according to which they are “our current nature, our rough biological state, so different from the transparent heavenly physicality” Lossky V. N. Essay on the mystical theology of the Eastern Church. Dogmatic Theology, p. 247. But, departing in a particular moment from the interpretation widespread in ancient church writing, he, considering the anthropological problem from a Christological and soteriological perspective, remains in the general mainstream of the patristic tradition. For “patristic theology most definitely reveals the truth that eternal life is “the life not only of the soul, but also of the body.” Not only the “soul of a Christian” becomes “participant in the Divine nature” (κοινωνὸς ϑείας φύσεως), but also the body—a person is united with God spiritually and physically. Christ took on human flesh in order to save and immortalize the image (of God). “Through the mind God dwelt in the bodies of the saints.” Thus, not only the “soul,” but also the “body” “became the house of God.” And this is because “the Lord abides entirely with the soul in its body.” Christ took upon Himself the whole person with soul and body, which is why our salvation is accomplished by both” Zarin S. M. Asceticism according to Orthodox Christian teaching. M., p. 1996, p. 53–54. See also note. 60 to the first “Word” {see. footnote No. 96, beginning: “As one Orthodox biblical scholar notes, “in general...”. Editorial of the ABC of Faith}. Church Syrian writer of the 4th century. Aphraath the Persian Sage also refers to this passage of Scripture when speaking about the Old Testament types of the Lord. According to him, the persecuted Joseph is the image of the persecuted Jesus, Joseph was clothed by his father in a robe - and Jesus His [Heavenly] Father clothed in the body taken from the Virgin. See: Aphraate le Sage Persan Les Exposés, t. II. Ed. par M.-J. Pierre // Sources chrétiennes, No. 359. Paris, 1989, p. 819. In this paragraph, Rev. Anastasius briefly but quite correctly characterizes the heresy of Manichaeism. Its founder, the Persian Mani (216–274/277), grew up in the Judeo-Christian sect of the Elkasaites (in whose worldview a significant proportion of elements of Gnosticism was occupied), then acting as a “reformer” within it and forming his own sect: it quickly began to multiply and spread throughout the world. As a result, it was created as a Manichaean "church" (or rather, an "anti-church") with its own hierarchy and its own "order of monks" ("elect"), which had claims to become a world religion and displace Christianity. The Manichaeans developed vigorous missionary activity, had their own canon of “sacred scriptures” and created a huge number of literary works in different languages. In its worldview, Manichaeism was a syncretic religion (with a pronounced Gnostic substrate), including elements of Christianity (highly distorted), Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, etc. This religion was based on ontological dualism, i.e. recognition of two original principles of existence: God (Light) and matter (darkness). Changing its appearance (with the same fundamental principles) in various cultural and religious areas, Manichaeism attracted people with its colorful mythologism of thinking, which claimed to solve all the mysteries of world existence and human life. It most actively parasitized the body of the Christian Church in the 4th–5th centuries; in the 7th century, when the Rev. wrote. Anastasius, there were few Manichaeans in Byzantium, but soon this heresy was revived in the false teaching of the Paulicians and Bogomils. Of the numerous general works on Manichaeism, Puech H may be mentioned. -Ch. Le manicheisme. Son fondateur, sa doctrine. Paris, 1949; Polotsky H. J. Manichaismus // Der Manichaismus. Hrsg von G. Widengren. – Wege der Forschung, Bd. 168 Darmstadt, 1977, S 101–144; Decret F. Mani et la tradition manichdene. Paris, 1974, p. 42–173; Asmussen J. P. Manichaean Literature. N.Y., 1975, p. 6–36; Rudolph K. Die Gnosis. Wesen und Geschichte einer spatantiken Religion. Gottingen, 1980, S 352–379 Manichaean anthropology based on ontological dualism, sketched here by Rev. Anastasius, is found among many ancient church polemicists who debunk the charming essence of this heresy. For example, Bishop Titus of Bostria (IV century) defines the essence of this anthropology this way: the Manichaeans claim that every soul takes its source in the “destiny of the Good” (τῆς μερίδος τοῦ ἀγαϑοῦ), and the body - in matter. See: PG 18, 1085. Famous ascetic and saint of the 4th century. Serapion of Tmuite speaks similarly regarding this part of the Manichaean false teaching; we bear our body from Satan, but have our soul from God; therefore, the body, coming from an evil principle, is evil by nature (πέφυκε κακόν), and the soul is good by nature (πέφυκε καλή), originating in the original Good. See: Adam A. Texte zum Manichaismus. Berlin, 1969, S. 39. It was precisely from this heretical anthropology that Rev. Anastasy further develops his thoughts. Wed. interpretation of St. John Chrysostom: “The words: grow and multiply and fill the earth were spoken, as everyone knows, to dumb animals and reptiles; and the words: rule over it and possess it only to husband and wife. Note the love of God: even before the creation of a wife, God makes her a participant in dominion (over creatures) and honors her with blessings.” Like our holy father John Chrysostom, Archbishop of Constantinople, Selected Creations. Discourses on the Book of Genesis, vol. 1, p. 78. Archimandrite Theodore (Bukharev) gives the following interpretation of St. Philaret of Moscow (then developing his thoughts): “To whom has this blessing of God been given to grow and multiply—either the human body, which is without a soul and does not understand this blessing and cannot fulfill it, or the whole person and especially his soul?” And he himself further positively explains the idea of ​​creative blessing: “The creative word, growing and multiplying, implanted in Adam the ability to give birth to blessed children and pass on to them as an inheritance the image of God, according to which he himself was created.”... And in fact - add to this on your part - since being in the Image of God, in the Creative thought of man and the very action of his creation, is a significant difference between man and other visible creatures, since this gave the very marital union of the primordial a meaning that rises above the carnal to the spiritual, since, finally, the thought of the reproduction of people is also connected with the thought of their dominion over lower creatures, conditioned in the actual image of God, it is clear and undeniable that creative blessing means the multiplication of people with the image of God in them, established in the soul, and from it shining with its spiritual light and into the human body itself. The very image of God in man means the conformity with the Son of God, imprinted in the spirit, which must also be transformed into the body itself, and therefore the inseparable inner participation for His sake in the Father’s Divine love, communicated in the power and goodness of the Holy Spirit. So, the primordial husband and wife were given the creative blessing to give birth to children not only according to the body, but also according to their soul, to give birth not only to physical or animal life, but also to conformity with the Son of God, into the communion of God’s grace-filled life, and thus to give birth not only to their natural descendants, but also to the grace-filled children of God. Thus, in the great gift to humanity - childbirth, according to the creative dispensation, a more extraordinary gift of grace - spiritual birth - was hidden or mysteriously depicted. See: Archimandrite Theodore (Bukharev). About peacemaking. St. Petersburg, 1862, p. 81–82. This is how we understand this very vague expression of Rev. Anastasia (ἐν τῇ προσβολῇ). In ascetic writing, the term προσβολή “denotes such a representation of some object or action, corresponding to one of the vicious inclinations of human nature, which, either under the influence of external feelings, or due to its connection with the psychological work of memory and imagination, according to the laws of association, enters the sphere of human consciousness. The mental moment, denoted by the term προσβολή, in itself does not in any way express or imply the free participation of a person. The appearance in the sphere of human consciousness of impressions and ideas very often occurs against the will of a person, against his wishes, without any of his own free participation, according to the law of psychological necessity, since impressions from external objects can be distinguished by the compulsion of a purely external irresistible invasion, and ideas can constantly arise according to the laws of association, the action and manifestation of which is sometimes difficult to control by the will.” At the same time, “for the will, προσβολή is a touchstone, a reason for discovering one or another of its dispositions, good or evil qualitative certainty. It is in the inclination of a person’s will in favor of one or another motive that has appeared in consciousness - towards virtue or vice - that the actual freedom of human choice is manifested.” See: Zarin S. M. Asceticism, p. 250–253. Probably Rev. Anastasius suggests that the first people could not withstand such a temptation to “attack” on the part of the serpent and internally “self-determined” in relation to it, allowing sin to take root and grow in their souls. After all, “The writer of life, in the conversation he describes between the serpent and Eve, shows that the first moment of sin was Eve’s doubt and distrust of Divine goodness, strengthened by the proud hope of an equal relationship with God (3:5). Following internal self-determination in the direction of sin and only as a result of this self-determination, sensual arousal awakens in Eve, which was the last moment bordering on the act of sin: “and the wife saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes and desirable because it gave knowledge.” This concluded the process of self-determination towards sin: “And (Eve) took the fruit thereof and ate, and also gave it to her husband, and he ate” (3:6). If we reduce everything that has been said to a brief formula, then the definition of the essence of original sin according to its internal psychological side from the Old Testament point of view can only be this: sin is not a necessary moment of development or, more precisely, self-development of a person, but it is a product of a freely chosen decision, based on an act of free will (the formal principle of sin) and caused by distrust of God, excited by evil force, on the one hand, and the desire for self-exaltation above the boundaries established by God, on the other (the real principle of sin).” Vvedensky D. Old Testament teaching about sin. Sergiev Posad, 1901, p. 110–111. On the contrary, the Lord, the “second Adam,” decisively and irrevocably rejected such an “attack” coming from the evil one, as evidenced by the Gospel narrative (Matthew 4:1–11; Mark 1:12–13; Luke 4:1–13). Most likely, the scholium belongs to the Venerable himself. Anastasia and, perhaps, confirms his authorship in relation to the “Twelve Books on the Sixth Day” (PG 89, 851–1077), which is questioned by some patrolologists. For a discussion of this problem, see the preface by K.-X. We refer to the publication that served as the basis for our translation: Anastasii Sinaitae Sermones duo in constitutionem hominis secundum imaginem Dei necnon Opuscula adversus monotheletas Editit K.-H. Uthemann // Corpus Christianorum. Series Graeca, v. 12. Turnhout-Leuven, 1985, p CXXXIX–CL. See also: Ciavis Patrum Graecorum, v. III. Cura et studio M Geerard. Turnhout, 1979, p. 462–463 (here this work, the Greek text of which has not yet been fully published, is classified as one of the works whose authors, bearing the name Anastasius, are not precisely identified: Anastasiana incertae originis). Wed. reasoning of a modern Orthodox exegete about Gen. 3:22: “Let us pay attention to the first words of this speech of God: Behold Adam... Literally: Behold the Man! Adam the All-Begotten stands before God, uniting all of humanity within himself. And God seems to say with bitterness: Here is Adam... Here, as it were, is an expression of a sad thought that man has not justified himself before the Creator. The one who was created in the image and likeness of the Creator, the one into whom the Divine breath was blown, the one who was designed to become a partaker of the Divine nature, but degraded to the desire to predatorily obtain for himself what he was destined for from the beginning, stands before the Supreme Judge, not wanting to realize his guilt, but only complaining that life itself (Eve) inclined him to sin. given to him by the Creator. But in the light of the New Testament we see the Son of God descending into the world. He, humiliated and insulted to the extreme, crowned with thorns, stands in the form of a slave, being led by Pilate to the judgment seat of those who are so evil that they could truly be called the sons of the devil. He stands, doomed to the most shameful, most painful execution on the cross, through which he will bring salvation to Adam the All-Begotten, for the Tree of the Cross is identified with the Tree of Life, if Adam can become the New Man. And Pilate, unknown to himself, utters those prophetic words that God once uttered, seeing the righteously condemned Adam before Him: Behold, Man! (John 19:5). From then on, this Man in his spiritual superiority will become an ideal for all humanity. When the fullness of times came, God, out of His inexpressible love for humanity, sent the Only Begotten Son to earth - not to judge Adam the All-Begotten, but to save him. And He, having incarnated and become a true, but sinless man, walked on Earth the opposite path to the one that the serpent offered to man. He, being the image of God, did not want to become like God through robbery, but humbled Himself, sharing their difficult fate with people (Phil. 2:6–7). Being, like every person, an open possibility, He did not violate the commandments of the Heavenly Father, but voluntarily, preserving His human freedom in everything, fulfilled the will of His Father, being obedient even to death, the death of the cross (Phil. 2:8). Having incarnated and become human, He became the Leader of salvation, uniting man with God in Himself.” Archpriest Nikolai Ivanov. And God said... Biblical ontology and biblical anthropology. Experience in interpreting the Book of Genesis (chap. 1–5). Klin, 1997, p. 255–256. It’s unlikely that the reverend is here. Anastasius implies a real Jew, for the terms “Jew” and “Jewish-minded” (ὁ Ἰουδαῖος, Ἰουδαιόφρων) ancient church authors often designated heretics (supporters of Paul of Samosata, Arians, Nestorians) See Lampe G. W. H. A Patristic Greek Lexicon Oxford, 1978, p. 675. Judging by the above argumentation, Rev. Anastasius most likely means the extreme representatives of the Antiochian school, who then became Nestorians (although it is difficult to state this precisely). There is some analogy with the reasoning of the alleged opponent, Rev. Anastasia is represented by the anthropology of Theodore of Mopsuestia, who (without, however, making a distinction between “image” and “likeness”) believes that “in the present state of the world, none of the people can achieve the full realization of the image of God in themselves. Such realization is hampered by the mortality, moral changeability and constant inclination to sin inherent in man in his present state. They constantly create in him a discord between soul and body and thereby make him incapable of serving as a connecting center for the entire creation.” In his interpretation of Chapter 1, Art. 16. Last to Kolos. Theodore says that “due to human evil, the whole creation appeared dissolved, because the Angels and all invisible powers turned away from us for the sake of our disobedience, which we showed towards God; beyond this, we ourselves are destroyed by death, which separates the soul from the body; and hence the whole connection of creation was dissolved.” Theodore pursues this same idea in his commentary on chapter 8, p. 19th century Last to Rome “When Adam,” he says here, “having violated the commandment, became mortal, and the soul, as it seems, appeared separated from the body, and the connection of creation established through man was also interrupted, then spiritual beings were saddened by this, so that they withdrew from us, as the perpetrators of so many evils.” Even Adam, even in his primitive state before the Fall, was not capable, from Theodore’s point of view, of the full and perfect realization of the image of God in himself, because he was created mortal by God: “He consisted of an invisible, rational, immortal soul and a visible, mortal body.” The mortality of his nature had to, therefore, it was necessary to break the connection of creation established through him by God, even if he had not sinned. The complete and perfect realization of the image of God in man is possible, according to Theodore, only in the future state of the world, when an inextricable connection between soul and body is established in man and the discord between them ceases, that is, when he appears immortal, unchangeable and sinless. Since Jesus Christ has already laid the foundation for the future state of the world, appearing immortal and morally unchangeable through His resurrection, Theodore believes that for the first time the image of God is fully realized in him. Explaining the words of the Apostle: (God) “put all things in Christ in charge, both in heaven and on earth” (Eph. 1:10), he says: “God restored - or better, “headed” - in Christ everything that is in heaven and that is on earth, bringing about through Him some useful restoration and renewal of the whole creation. It was by making His body indestructible and free from passions through the resurrection and uniting this immortal body with His soul, so that separation between them became no longer possible, that God granted the bond of friendship to all creation.” “Thus, only in Jesus Christ is the image of God fully realized, and its full realization in people, according to Theodore, will be possible only in the future unchangeable state of the world.” Guryev 77. Theodore, Bishop of Mopsuestia M., 1890, p. 277–279. This expression (διὰ τὸ ἐξουσιαστικὸν τοῦ ἀνϑρώπου) most likely suggests a hidden polemic with Diodorus of Tarsus, who, interpreting Gen. 1:26, says that man is the image of God according to his superior and autocratic [position in the world]. See note. 8 to the first “Word” {see footnote No. 44, beginning: “According to the observation of V.N. Lossky,.." Editorial of the ABC of Faith}. The scholiast probably means Daniel 10. The thought of the Venerable himself. Anastasia on the Angels may have been inspired by the following reasoning of Dionysius the Areopagite: “And the name of the holy powers expresses a certain courageous and indestructible valor inherent in all their god-like actions, which, upon perception of the divine insights bestowed upon it, does not faint powerlessly, but powerfully ascends to the imitation of God, does not, out of timidity, abandon the god-like movement, but steadily looks at the super-essential Power that gives strength, becoming its force-like likeness to the extent possible and turning to It as the original force, and descends godlike on those next in rank, bestowing strength; the name of the holy powers reveals the orderliness and structure of the supramundane and rational power (ἐξουσιότητος), which is equivalent to the divine dominions and powers, ordered and tuned for divine perceptions, which does not tyrannically use its powers for the worse, but irresistibly and with decorum to the divine and itself ascends, and those who come after it, leads decently, and is likened to the Principality, who creates power, to the extent permitted, and illuminates Him, as far as the Angels are able, in the well-established ranks of his power (τῆς ἐξουσιαστικῆς δυνάμεως)" Dionysius Areopagite. About the heavenly hierarchy. St. Petersburg, 1997, p. 80–81. Wed. from Nicholas Cabasilas: “For from the beginning human nature was formed for the New Man, and the mind and desire were prepared for Him, and we received the mind in order to know Christ, and the desire to strive for Him, we have memory in order to keep Him in it, because for those who were created He was the archetype. For it is not the old that is for the New, but the New that serves as a model for the old. Although it is said that the New One was born in the likeness of the old one, but only in relation to corruption, which he began, and this one inherited, in order to destroy the weakness of nature with His own healing and so that, as Paul says, the dead thing would be consumed by the belly (2 Cor. 5:4). How, by its very nature, can the old Adam be a prototype for us, when we know that before him there was this one, with whom everything is before the eyes before existence itself, and as the oldest serves as an imitation of the second, when the last one was created in His appearance and image, but did not remain so, was striving for this, but did not achieve it? Nicholas Cabasilas, Archbishop of Thessalonica, Seven Words about life in Christ. M., 1874, p. 154–155 (in the title the author of the work, a simple layman, is incorrectly called an archbishop). As one modern Greek theologian points out, the fact that Christ did not exist historically when Adam was created makes no difference. For Holy Scripture teaches that Christ, at the level of supertemporal Divine reality, was “the firstborn of every creation” (Col. 1:15–17), being at the same time the goal of all creation, material and spiritual, its “Alpha and Omega.” Thus, Christ is not just an “event in history” and the Incarnation of God the Word is not a simple consequence of the victory of the devil over man. The unity of the Divine and human nature in Christ fulfilled the eternal will of God and was the implementation of the eternal Council of God. See: Nellas R. Deification in Christ. Orthodox Perspectives on the Nature of the Human Person. N-Y„ 1987, pp. 34–42. It is noteworthy that these words of Holy Scripture by St. Anastasius correlates with Christ, the second Adam, in Whom, as in the God-Man, the royal and sovereign position of man in the world was expressed in an extremely clear form. Usually the naming of names in Genesis 2:19–20 is associated precisely with the indicated position of man in the universe. See, for example, interpretation. “It is amazing that God Himself brings all creatures to man. It is also significant that He wants to see what man calls them, so that whatever man calls every living soul, that will be its name. This is very similar to how a loving father teaches his son to explore the world. Naming a name presupposes a person’s knowledge of the properties of living beings, for naming a name in biblical language means knowing the essence... The peculiarity of Hebrew thinking and language is that naming a name means not only knowledge of the thing being named, but also the possibility of power over it. The general meaning of this is that man is given the power to both cognize the nature around him and intelligently rule over it.” Archpriest Nikolai Ivanov. And God said... s. 194. According to Euthymius Zigaben, the Lord calls Himself the Shepherd “because with His pastoral words He gathers the sheep to the mountain monastery.” The explanatory Gospel of John, compiled according to the ancient patristic interpretations of the Byzantine, 12th century, by the learned monk Euthymius Zigaben. Kyiv, 1887, p. 166. Blessed Theophylact interprets this passage as follows: “From here you can learn the difference between a shepherd and a mercenary. The hireling does not know the sheep, which is due to the fact that he does not constantly supervise them. For if he had constantly looked, he would have known them. But a shepherd, like the Lord, knows his sheep, and therefore takes care of them, and they know Him again, because they use His supervision and out of habit recognize their Patron. Look, first He recognizes us, and then we recognize Him. And there is no other way to know God than by being known from Him (1 Cor. 13:12). For He first became assimilated to us in the flesh, becoming Man, therefore we have already become assimilated to Him, having received the gift of deification.” Blagovestnik, vol. II, p. 423. This Homily is prefaced by this subtitle, in the hand of a later copyist: “In this Homily the exegete explains the reason why he wrote the two [preceding] Homily concerning what [means] “in the image [of God].” He also explains the reason for the unrest [in the Church] concerning the actions and wills [in Christ], and then shows who is Orthodox and who is not Orthodox in dogma about these actions and wills in Christ." The Persians, during their victorious campaign, captured Jerusalem in 614, and took with them the Cross of the Lord. According to F.I. Uspensky, “the siege and capture of Jerusalem are in connection with the Jewish question of that time. From the time of Phocas, there was persecution against the Jews in the empire, which continued under Heraclius. Persian successes in Palestine and Syria aroused the hopes of the Jews and forced them to seek protection from the conquerors, under whose banners they flocked in large crowds and aroused fanaticism and irreconcilable hostility against Christians in the Persians. This explains the exceptionally bloody nature of the events that followed the fall of Jerusalem. The siege of the city lasted three weeks. When the Persians finally managed to destroy part of the wall and break into the city, they left the fate of the Christian population to the fanaticism of the Jews, who here settled scores with the Christians who oppressed them with persecution and contempt. They say that more than tens of thousands of Christians died in Jerusalem at the hands of the Jews, and up to thirty-five thousand were taken captives. The city and the church were subjected to merciless plunder, during which the conquerors were guided not only by the thirst for booty, but by feelings of revenge and religious intolerance. Christian shrines suffered in particular, before the loss of which both the captivity of Patriarch Zechariah and the destruction of the city receded into the background. Church of the Holy Sepulcher and all the buildings of St. Helena were consigned to flames, precious utensils, reverently brought here from all countries, were plundered, sacred relics were partly destroyed, partly taken by the victors. Among these latter, the loss of the Life-Giving Tree of the Cross, which was taken by the Persians and taken to Ctesiphon, was especially painful.” Uspensky F. AND . History of the Byzantine Empire VI–IX centuries. M., p. 1996, p. 426–427. The ultimately successful war with the Persians of Emperor Heraclius had one of its goals to return the Honest and Life-Giving Tree. According to the vivid description of V.V. Bolotov, “the Byzantine emperor could turn the entire Persian state into dust, but all his victories would have been only a half-victory if he had not returned the Tree of the Holy Cross from Persian captivity.” The return of the Tree took place in March 630. See Bolotov V. IN . On the history of Emperor Heraclius // Byzantine Temporary, vol. 14. 1907, p. 77, 96. According to other (Syrian) sources, the meeting took place in Hierapolis, where 12 more Monophysite bishops arrived along with Athanasius. Perhaps there were two meetings - both in Hierapolis and in Antioch. See: Sidorov A. AND . History of Monothelite disputes in the depiction of Anastasius Sinaita (Sermo III) and Pseudo-Anastasius Sinaita (Synopsis de haeresibus et synodis, 18–26) // Byzantine Temporary, vol. 50, 1989, p. 95–96. In the middle and second half of the 6th century. Monophysitism gradually but steadily broke away from Orthodoxy, turning into an independent heretical “church” with its own hierarchy. For details of this complex and controversial process, see: Frend W. N. WITH . The Rise of the Monophysite Movement Chapters in the History of the Church in the Fifth and the Sixth Centuries. Cambridge, 1972, p. 184–295. However, Monophysitism never became a single “church”; it immediately broke up into numerous rumors and heresies (“Aphthartodoketes”, “Agnoites”, “Triteites”, etc.), often at war with each other. According to the observation of V.V. Bolotov, by the first quarter of the 7th century. it managed to split into 12–13 sects. See Bolotov V. IN . Lectures on the history of the ancient Church, vol. IV. M., 1994, p. 332. In the second half of the 6th century, two trends emerged in Monophysitism (coinciding with the division into the “Paulite” and “Jacobite” parties), one – “Western” Monophysitism – still lived with the “dream of a union of churches in the sense of turning to the Monophysitism of the Greek and Roman Churches”, the other – “Eastern” Monophysitism with Semitic national-cultural overtones – was sharply separative, see Dyakonov A. P. Cyrus of Bath, Syrian church historian of the 7th century // Det. reprint from Christian Reading. St. Petersburg, 1912, p. 35. Ultimately, the second tendency prevailed, see Dyakonov A. P. John of Ephesus and his church-historical works St. Petersburg, 1908, p. 144. In other words, he recognizes the canonical authority of his “Monophysite enthronement” to the See of Antioch. It should be noted that at this department in the period 609–639. the Orthodox patriarch was absent. See...Murphy F. X. -Scherwood R. Constantinople II et Constantinople III. Paris, 1973, p. 149. Rev. Anastasius here deviates from the historical truth (or is poorly informed): the doctrine of the “single action” of Christ was actively developed by the Monophysites already in the 6th century (North of Antioch, etc.), having met resistance at the same time from Orthodox theologians, see: Sidorov A. AND . The problem of “single action” in Anastasius I of Antioch. On the issue of creating ideological prerequisites for Monothelite disputes // Byzantinoslavica, t. 50, 1989, p. 24–32. For Heraclius himself, this issue could not possibly be an “innovation”, for much earlier than the indicated meeting with Athanasius, Patriarch Sergius, Heraclius’s confidant and friend, conceived of implementing a union with the Monophysites on the basis of the doctrine of “single action”. Heraclius took an active part in the implementation of these plans of the patriarch. See: Van Dieten J. L. Geschichte der Patriarchen von Sergios I. Bis Johannes VI. (610–715) Amsterdam, 1972, S. 24–28. Yu.A. Kulakovsky describes Sergius’s church-political maneuvers during this period as follows: “Patriarch Sergius, a Syrian by origin, understood the danger for the future in the separation of the Monophysite church from the empire. Without losing hope for the political reunification of Syria with the empire, he was looking for a new way to eliminate the rift with the East, long before the brilliant victories of Heraclius over the Persians. He saw it in one dogmatic question, which had not yet been definitely resolved in theological disputes and was not raised at the Ecumenical Council. This question was raised around 600 by Egyptian theologians. Developing Cyril's definition of μία φύσις τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγου σεσαρκωμένη (the one incarnate nature of God the Word), Egyptian theologians put forward the position of the unity of energy (ἐνέργεια) in Christ... Around 616, Patriarch Sergius raised this issue, considering it unclear in the patristic writings, and established relations on this matter with some eastern bishops. Through Sergius Macaron, bishop of Arsinoe in Egypt, he made a request to the bishop of Paran in Arabia (on the Sinai Peninsula) Paul. He wrote about the same thing to a certain George, nicknamed Arsa, asking him to provide evidence to prove the unity of energy in Christ. John the Merciful learned about these relations between the patriarch and, having received his letter from George, wanted to anathematize Sergius. The Persian invasion of Egypt deprived John of the opportunity to take up this matter and definitely speak out on the essence of the issue.” Kulakovsky Yu. A . History of Byzantium, vol. III. St. Petersburg p. 1996, p. 117–118. Again the Rev. made a mistake. Anastasia. The pope at that time was Honorius (625–638), who recognized monothelitism, for which he was condemned at the VI Ecumenical Council. It was Honorius who wrote the letter to Sergius of Constantinople, enlisting his support. The patriarch succeeded in this; Two reply letters of Honorius have been preserved, which show his complete incompetence in such a delicate theological question as the problem of actions and wills in Christ. See Kreuzer G. Die Honoriusfrage im Mittelalter und in der Neuzeit Stuttgart, 1975, S 12–57. It is not known whether Rev. is quoting. Anastasius, the original message of St. Martin, but, in any case, the above phrase is fully consistent with the Orthodox Diphelitian teaching defended by him. It is noteworthy that in one Syriac text, which came from the pen of a certain Maronite immediately after the VI Ecumenical Council, this Council is condemned primarily for the fact that its definition of faith speaks of “natural wills” in Christ. See: Brock S. R. A Syriac Fragment on the Sixth Council // Oriens Christianus, v. 57, 1973, p. 65. The letter of Sergius of Constantinople, if it existed, has not been preserved. The dogmatic position of the heretical patriarch is most clearly manifested in his letter to Pope Honorius, in the spirit of “radical Alexandrian Christology.” See the analysis of this message in the works: Cardone F. Enérgheia, Thé1ema e Theokinetos nella lettera di Sergio, patriarca di Constantinopoli, a papa Onorio Primo // Orientalia Christiana Periodica, v. 51, 1985, p. 263–276; Idem. Sergio di Constantinopoli ed Onorio I nella controversia monotelita del VII secolo. Roma, 1985, p. 54–59. The essence of this position, outwardly evasive, but internally undoubtedly heretical, lies in the following words: one should confess “that one and the same Only Begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, the true God, acts both in Divinity and in humanity, and that every divinely and humanly decent action proceeds inseparably from one and the same incarnate Word and is attributed to the same one, and to confess so for the sake of the expression “one action,” although it is used by some of the holy fathers, sounds strange and outrageous in the ears of some, who assume that it is pronounced in the sense of the destruction of two natures united in Christ our God, unfused and hypostatic, which is by no means, and will not be, just as the expression “two actions” seduces many, as it is not used by any of the divine and illustrious masters Church, to follow which, moreover, would mean preferring two wills that are opposed to one another, for example, the will of God the Word, who wants to accomplish saving suffering, and the will of His humanity, which opposes His will, and thus introduce two who want the opposite of each other - which is ungodly. It is impossible for two wills opposing each other to exist together in one subject. The saving teaching of the God-bearing fathers clearly suggests that the flesh of the Lord, animated by the spirit, never made its natural movement on its own and according to its own desire, contrary to the beck of God the Word, hypostatically united with it, but made movement when, what and how much God the Word Himself wanted; speaking more clearly, just as our body is governed, adorned and ordered by our spiritual and rational soul, so in the Lord Christ His entire human mixture was always guided and in all things by the Divinity of His Word, it was moved by God, according to the word of Gregory of Nyssa.” Acts of the Ecumenical Councils, vol. IV. SPb., p. 1996, p. 174–175. According to I. Orlov’s characterization, “Sergius quite skillfully, under the guise of twists of thought, develops in the essence of the matter the purely Monothelitian principle of the unity of will in Christ. True, Sergius does not directly say that in Christ we must recognize “ἕν ϑέλημα”; but, all the same, he comes to the need to recognize this position as true in a negative way, when he asserts the impossibility of combining two wills in the person of the God-man, thinking of the two wills as nothing other than contrary to one another. That is, when introducing the term “ϑέλημα”, Sergius does not use only that formula (ἕν ϑέλημα), which, at the initiative of Honorius, became common in the language of the Monothelites, not quite fully expressing the essence of the Monothelite teaching.” In general, “Sergius’s message should be recognized as a transitional stage from moenergism to monothelitism. Sacrificing the expression “μία ἐνέργεια”, since it still sounds strange in the ears of some, Sergius moves from the concept “ἐνέργεια” to the concept “ϑέλημα”, in the calculation that it is easier to reach agreement under the form of this term.” Orlov I. Works of St. Maximus the Confessor on the disclosure of the dogmatic doctrine of two wills in Christ Historical and dogmatic research. St. Petersburg, 1888, p. 15–16. Lit. "dad"; Cyrus was previously Metropolitan of Fasid. Heraclius, who found himself in Lazika during his eastern campaign, already in 626 entered into negotiations with him regarding a union with the Monophysites. See: Bolotov V. IN . Lectures, vol. IV, p. 452. Apparently, Cyrus’s favor towards the union was the main reason for his transfer to the Alexandrian see. Theodore, Bishop of Parano, is known for being the first heretic to give a theological justification for Monothelitism. Sergius of Constantinople entered into correspondence with him even before 619. See: Elert W. Der Ausgang der altkirchlichen Christologie. Berlin, 1957, S 185–229. True, V Elert proceeds from the incorrect, in our opinion, premise about the identity of Theodore of Parano with the Orthodox theologian Theodore of Raifa (VI century), the author of an essay called “Preparation”. See: Sidorov A. AND . Theodore Raifsky and Theodore Faransky (About one of the authors of the “Svyatoslav Collection of 1073”) // The most ancient states on the territory of the USSR. Materials and research 1990. M., p. 1991, p. 135–167. The same expression (τὴν ὑδροβαφῆ ἐκείνην... ἕνωσιν), suggesting fragility, unfoundedness and denoting a union with the Egyptian Monophysites (633), is found in the “Chronography” of Theophanes the Confessor and in the “Life of the Venerable Maxim." See: Works of our holy father Maxim the Confessor, part I Sergiev Posad, 1915, p. 18. According to A.P. Lebedev, at this time in Egypt there were 5 or 6 million Monophysites for approximately 300,000 Orthodox Christians. See: Lebedev A. P. Ecumenical Councils of the 6th, 7th and 8th centuries. St. Petersburg, 1904, p. 83. The fragility of this union was to a large extent connected with the fact that Cyrus, vested with all the fullness of secular power in Egypt, unleashed real terror against the Copts (most of whom did not want to unite with the “Melkites,” i.e., Orthodox); Coptic Patriarch Benjamin I was forced to hide, a considerable number of his like-minded people were tortured and thrown into prison by order of Cyrus. Such terror soon allowed the Arabs to easily conquer Egypt, enjoying the support and sympathy of the Copts, see: Atia A. S. A History of Eastern Christianity. London, 1968, p. 77–78. Rev. Anastasius uses the consonance of the words ἔνωσιν – κένωσιν. Around the same time (c. 633), an agreement was reached with the Armenian Christians at the Council in Theodosiopolis (Karina). However, the basis of this “Karina Union” was somewhat different: it came down only to the recognition of the Council of Chalcedon by the Armenians, and the dogmatic question of the “single action” (or “single will”) of Christ was not raised here at all. This is explained by the fact that the Armenian Church at that time was not in close unity with other Monophysite movements (for example, the Syrian Jacobites), developing quite autonomously, including in dogmatic terms. See: Sidorov A. AND . “Monothelitian” union according to the testimony of the “Narrative of Armenian Affairs” // Historical and Philological Journal, Yerevan, 1988, No. 3 (122), p. 162–169. We are talking about the confession of faith (or “formula of union”) of Cyrus of Alexandria, on the basis of which the union with the Monophysites took place. This formula mixes elements of Orthodoxy and Monophysitism. The key expression here is the expression, with reference to Dionysius the Areopagite (for this expression, see below), that the One and the same Christ acts divinely and humanly through a single “God-masculine energy.” See: Meyendorff J. Imperial Unity and Christian Divisions. The Church 450–680 A.D. N-Y p. 1989, p. 347–348. The position of Heraclius was truly difficult, for the union did not satisfy either the Orthodox or the Monophysites. According to the apt remark of V.V. Bolotov, “least of all one could expect that one of the smartest emperors could stir up such unrest, which politically did not promise anything good.” Bolotov V. IN . Lectures, vol. IV, p. 439. We would also add that “political benefits and successes” in Byzantium were unthinkable outside the spiritual aspect of the life of this power, since it was a “churched state.” For it was Byzantium that “for the first time developed a system of church state, established such principles of personal and public life, created such cultural and historical ideals that, in their final practical implementation, could give humanity the notorious happiness that always attracts it. In this ideal work, in the strictly organized system of Byzantinism, lies the enormous cultural and historical merit of Byzantium, regardless of even the completeness of its practical implementation. What is mainly important are the principles and ideals that arise in a particular social environment, since they indicate how a given society moves and exists, what exactly serves as the spirit of life and everyday life in it. As long as there is an idea and an ideal, it means that there are also their bearers, which means that in society there is no absolute deadness in creating the corresponding real life from these foundations. This was the case in Byzantium." Sokolov I. AND . Lecture notes on the history of the Greek-Eastern Church, given to students of the II (LXXIV) course of the Imperial Petrograd Theological Academy in 1914–1915 academic years. year (lithograph) Petrograd, 1915, p. 56. The essential and necessary feature of this “churched state” was dogmatic “akrivia”. We are talking about the “Ektesis” of 638. The authors of this document were Patriarch Sergius (who died soon) and Abbot Pyrrhus - also the future patriarch, with whom the Rev. later. Maximus the Confessor had a public debate. See: Histoire de 1'Eglise depuis les origines jusqu'a nos jours, v. 5 Paris, 1938, p. 132. However, Rev. Anastasius does not mention that “Ektesis,” while prohibiting disputes about actions (“energies”) in Christ, puts forward the position of His “single will.” Thus, the monothelitic disputes finally entered a new phase of their development; “monenergism” was replaced by monothelitism itself. The essence of this evolution was accurately described by V.V. Bolotov “The question of one or two energies appears in history earlier than the question of one or two wills. This is explained by the fact that the latter contains more difficulties for human thought than the first; Ἐνέργεια is life in general; ϑέλησις (will) is the life of the spirit (energy in particular); ϑέλημα is the result of this energy (ϑελήσεως). Will is important in a person’s personal life next to his self-awareness. The will is the “I” addressed ad extra, while consciousness and self-consciousness are the “I” addressed to the inner man. The will, standing as the connecting link between our actions (multiplicity) and our “I” (unity), should have presented special difficulties for Christology due to the danger of its complete identification with self-consciousness, with personality.” Bolotov V. IN . Lectures, vol. IV, p. 473. Above Rev. Anastasius spoke of the “Jacobites” and “Theodosians,” pointing to the split between the Syrian and Egyptian Monophysites for purely canonical reasons. In this case, he calls the Monophysites “Severians,” emphasizing the dogmatic point - the prevailing current in Monophysitism was based on the teaching of Severus of Antioch, which systematized Monophysite dogmatics and gave it logical harmony and clarity. See: Lebon J. La christologie du monophysisme syrien // Das Konzil von Chalkedon. Geschichte und Gegenwart, Bd. I. Wurzburg, 1951, pp. 451–452. In the Christian West, "Ektesis" was rejected even before St. Martin by two popes: Severian and John IV; Ultimately, Emperor Heraclius himself abandoned it (in 640–641) shortly before his death. See: Every G. The Byzantine Patriarchate 451–1204. London, 1962, p. 62. We are talking about the Lateran Council of 649. It was attended by 105 bishops (almost all Western) and 37 Greek monks. See: Sieben N. J. Die Konzilidee der Alten Kirche Paderborn, 1979, pp. 492–501. But it was the Greek monks, among whom the leading place was occupied by St. Maximus the Confessor, were the guiding theological force at the Council and in many ways formulated its dogmatic theses with the utmost precision. See: Caspar E. Die Lateransynode von 649 // Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, Bd 51, S. 118–120; Riedinger R. Die Lateransynode von 649 und Maximus der Bekenner // Maximus Confessor Actes du Symposium sur Maxime le Confesseur. Ed. par F. Heinzer et Ch. Schonborn. Friborg, 1982, p. 111–121. Rev. Anastasy confuses the chronology somewhat. Heraclius died in 641 before the Lateran Council. The trial of Pope Martin took place under Heraclius' successor Constans II (641–648). The pope was captured by Exarch Calliope (653), forcibly brought to Constantinople, and then exiled to Chersonesus, where he died. See Lebedev A. P. Decree. cit., p. 99–101. The Orthodox Church canonized Pope Martin (April 14) “His relics were first transferred from Chersonesus to Constantinople, and then to Rome, where they are in the Church of St. Martin of Tours" Archbishop Sergius (Spassky). Complete Months of the East, vol. III, part 2, M., 1997, p. 141. Usually the year of his death is considered to be 655, but according to new information, the blessed death of the Pope Confessor falls on April 656. See Ostroqorsku G. Geschichte des byzantinischen Staates. Munchen, 1975, S. 89. With this name, borrowed from the Holy Scriptures (Exodus 17:8–16), Rev. Anastasius stands for Arabs. But he again shifts the chronology: the Arab invasions of Byzantium began back in 634, when a relatively small army of them invaded Palestine. See: Kulakovsky Yu. A . Decree cit., p. 136 ff. These battles mentioned by Rev. Anastasius, it is difficult to identify with precision, but the second most likely coincides with the Battle of Yarmouk, where the Byzantine army was defeated. “The defeat of the Christians was complete, for some drowned in the river, the other part died from the sword of the Muslims. With their victory at Yarmouk, the Arabs secured the success of their subsequent conquest of Syria.” Uspensky F. AND . Decree. cit., p. 532. Rev. Anastasius clearly hints at the condemnation and execution of St. Maxim and two Anastasievs - his students. About these events, see our preface to the book: Works of St. Maximus the Confessor Book I. M., 1993, p. 53–58. An indication of the death of Emperor Constans II at the hands of the conspirators in Syracuse in September 668. See: Ostrogorsky G. Op. cit., pp. 90–92. F.I. Uspensky characterizes this emperor as follows: “He was a man of strong will and remarkable abilities, who did not shy away from the fight and did not run from danger. But it was difficult for him, despite all the favorable circumstances of his accession to the throne, to retain his popularity in Constantinople. The military party, which had placed him on the throne as a direct descendant of Heraclius, soon cooled towards Constant, and his church policies incited the clergy and the people against him and made him very unpopular in the capital. Uspensky F. AND . Decree. cit., p. 446. Constantine IV Pogonatus (668–685), during his reign the sixth Ecumenical Council took place (680–681), which will be discussed below. The creed of this Ecumenical Council can be reduced to three essential points: 1) the two wills of Christ are not opposite; 2) the human will of the Lord voluntarily submitted to His divine will and ˆ3) like the entire human soul of Christ, His human will is deified, although its essence does not change at all. See: Murphy F. -X . -Scherwood R. Constantinople II et Constantinople III, p. 237–238. Among other heretics, Pope Honorius was condemned at the Council, and “this condemnation of Honorius was tacitly accepted by the legates. The Council here clearly highlights this as its decision, and in a letter to Pope Agathon it adds the name of Honorius to the names condemned by Pope Theodore. It is clear that the Monothelites condemned by Pope Agathon obviously include Honorius in their composition.” In general, a characteristic feature of the Council was that it “wanted to dispel the Monothelite temptation by exhausting all methods of free persuasion,” although this method was not always effective. See: Kartashev A. IN . Ecumenical Councils. M., p. 1994, p. 437–439. This phrase suggests that the writing of the third “Word” by Rev. Anastasia falls around 701. The heretics to whom Rev. refers here. Anastasius, they distort the text of the Holy Scripture: instead of τὸ φρόνημα (“thought”) they quote τὸ ϑέλημα (“will, desire”). However, it is noteworthy that Rev. Anastasius does not point out this distortion. It is possible that there was a similar discrepancy in the text of Holy Scripture that he used. It is advisable to give an interpretation of St. Feofan to this place: “Thinking” (or wisdom) carnal is a broader concept than “wanting”, containing within itself, as it were, a purposeful action. Wiseness “means the general structure of fallen man, according to which he pays all his attention to the organization of earthly well-being, believing it in the satisfaction of mental and physical needs, spoiled and perverted by passions. This is what it is busy with day and night, and this is all it knows how to arrange, without thinking about what is above the earth and what is beyond the boundaries of earthly life. His soul does not belong to God and divine things. This soul’s non-adherence to the divine is the extreme, easiest limit of enmity towards God.” Therefore, “the wisdom of the flesh expresses its enmity against God by disobedience to the law of God. Usually it is silent, as if it were not there; but as soon as the law is to be fulfilled, it manages to present the matter in such a way that the poor person in this case acts to please him against the law of God. This is the case every time, therefore, always, so that disobedience to the law of God is a distinctive feature of carnal wisdom.” Creations like the saints of our father Theophan the Recluse. Interpretation of the Epistles of the Apostle Paul, Epistle to the Romans, p. 468–469. All three quotes are combined together, the last one having the same distortion as above. A common polemical device of Monophysites who seek to identify the Orthodox with the Nestorians. This is, for example, the position of one of the leading theological minds among the Monophysites VI in Philoxenus of Mabbog, see: Halleux A. , de . Nouveaux textes inédits de Philoxene de Mabbog // Le Muséon, t. 75, 1962, b. 40–41. The basis of the dogmatic positions of the Monothelites (as well as the Monophysites), and, accordingly, the accusations thrown at them against the Orthodox, is the principle of logical non-contradiction formulated by Aristotle: “It is impossible for the same thing at the same time to be and not to be inherent in the same thing in the same respect.” Aristotle. Works in four volumes, vol. 1. M., 1976, p. 125. Applying this principle in theology, Patriarch Sergius, for example, believed that the “hypothesis” regarding the presence of two wills in Christ makes the thesis of hypostatic unity “metaphysically impossible” (subsequent Monothelites, however, reduced this “metaphysical impossibility” to “moral impossibility”), developing, in fact, the Christological premises of the heresy of Apollinaris of Laodicea. See: Léthel F. -M. Théologie de 1'agonie du Christ. La liberté humaine du Fils de Dieu et son importance sotériologique mises en luminre par saint Maxime le Confesseur. Paris, 1979, p. 41–54. Regarding Apollinaris, “even St. Gregory of Nyssa ... noted the influence of philosophy on theology" of him. He mentions the Hellenic opinions that Apollinaris “exhaled” at the end of his work in defense of his fables, although he does not indicate exactly what these Hellenic opinions consisted of. But if the philosophical positions that comprised the work of Apollinaris remained unknown, then those metaphysical and anthropological concepts that occupy central points in his system are quite clear. This is the Aristotelian doctrine of the perfect being and Plato's views on the composition of man. One of the main ideas of his system is the position that the perfect, added to the perfect, results in duality. From Aristotelian metaphysics, Apollinaris transferred this concept of a perfect being to the field of theology and, on the basis of it, rejected the fullness of human nature in Christ. “If Christ,” he says, “consists of two perfect ones, then where there is God, there is no man, and where there is man, there is no God.” The thought of uniting two perfect ones seemed monstrous to him; “if Christ consists of four parts (i.e., apparently, mind, soul, body and God the Word. - A. S.), then He is not a man, but a man-God ((ἀνϑρωπόϑεος) - that is, a fabulous, mythical creature." Therefore, “Apollinaris, understanding perfection in the sense of the integrity and completeness of being, under the influence of this Aristotelian view, could not allow the union of two perfect ones in one living person.” See. Spassky A. Historical fate of the works Apollinarius of Laodicea with a brief preliminary sketch of his life Sergiev Posad, 1895, pp. 320–321. It is most likely that this extensive scholium belongs to the Venerable himself. Anastasia. In his other work, “The Guide,” he gives a number of similar definitions. The contrast between “fatherly” and “Hellenic” is also very characteristic of St. Anastasia, who “states the fact of the excessive enthusiasm of heretics and sectarians for rational-philosophical argumentation and the awareness of the need to return to biblical and patristic principles.” Sokolov V. Completion of Byzantine Christology after Leontius of Byzantium // Orthodox Interlocutor, 1916, p. 272. Rev. Anastasius omits the verb “can” in the quotation. Wed. interpretation of St. John Chrysostom. “Here he calls evil deeds by the flesh, as in other places, when, for example, he says: you are borne in the flesh (Rom. 8:9); and one more thing: those who are in the flesh cannot please God (Rom. 8:8); so when he speaks, this is what I say... his words contain nothing more than the following: I said this so that you would know that evil deeds do not lead into the Kingdom. From the resurrection he immediately passes to the Kingdom and adds: below, corruption inherits incorruptibility, that is, evil does not inherit glory and incorruptible blessings. He often calls evil by this name; for example, whoever sows to the flesh will from the flesh reap corruption (Gal.6:8). If he had spoken about the body, and not about vicious activity, he would not have called it corruption; he nowhere calls the body corruption; for it is not corruption, but perishable.” Our Holy Father John, Archbishop of Constantinople, Chrysostom, Discourses on the First Epistle of St. Apostle Paul to the Corinthians, part II, p. 404. According to the explanation of the blessed one. Theophylact, those who have carnal wisdom cannot please God as long as they remain so; for he did not call the essence of the flesh flesh, but the rough, carnal life that makes the whole person carnal. So in the Old Testament it was said: “My Spirit shall not abide in these men, for they are flesh” (Gen. 6:3). Further, “you bear in the flesh,” that is, you do not serve the carnal life, but the spiritual one. Why didn’t he say: you bear sins? So that you know that Christ not only extinguished the torment of sin, but also made the flesh lighter and more spiritual. Just as iron, from prolonged contact of fire with it, itself becomes fire; so the flesh of those who have received the Spirit through Baptism is all made spiritual. Blessed Theophylact, Archbishop of Bulgaria, Commentary on the Epistles of St. Apostle Paul, p. 49. According to blessed Jerome, “everything we say, think, do is sown in two fields: the flesh and the spirit. If what comes from the hand, mouth and heart is good, then it is sown in the spirit and will bear abundant fruit of eternal life. And if it is bad, then it is borrowed from the field of the flesh and will infect our harvest with corruption. In other words, whoever understands the law in a carnal way expects both the promises of the flesh and what is perishable in this life. But if anyone is spiritual, he sows in the Spirit, and from the Spirit he will reap eternal life.” Works of Blessed Jerome of Stridon, part 17 Kyiv, 1903, p. 201. In this phrase of the Apostle in St. Anastasia, ζῆτε is replaced by a similar verb περιπατῆτε, which has the same meaning and is found in Rom.8:4 and 2 Cor.10:2 According to the remark of Blessed. Theodoret, “according to the flesh, then following the passions of the flesh; But the Apostle means eternal death.” Works of Blessed Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus, part 7, p. 86. Making this distinction, Rev. Anastasius, following other holy fathers, remains faithful to the spirit of the teachings of St. Apostle Paul. For, “recognizing the flesh as a powerful instrument of sin, the Apostle never gives any reason to consider the bodily principle in man to be evil in itself, essentially sinful. This frees once and for all all asceticism from any flavor of Manichaeism and Gnosticism.” Archimandrite Cyprian (Kern). Decree. cit., p. 76. According to the interpretation of St. Ambrose, in this appearance of the Lord to the disciples, not “incorporeal nature” (inm naturam) is revealed, but “the quality of the resurrected body” (resurectionis corporeae qualitatem). And we will rise bodily, for “a spiritual body is sown, a spiritual body will be raised” (1 Cor. 15:44), that is, a “fat” body (crassius) is sown, and a “subtilius” (subtilius) is raised. See: Ambroise de Milan. Traite sur l'Évangile de S. Luc, t. II. ed. par G. Tissot // Sources chretiennes, No. 52. Paris, 1958, p. 212. Rev. Anastasius implies that the risen Lord reveals, as it were, the very “nature of our flesh” (τὴν φύσιν τῆς ἡμετέρας σαρκός), that is, the original state of the bodily principle of man, as it was created by God. In this case, Rev. Anastasius distinguishes between the will not inherent in human nature (τὸ ἐπείσακτον καὶ πονερὸν ϑέλημα) with the action corresponding to it (ἡ παρὰ φύσιν ἐνέργεια), on the one hand, and the will originally given to man by God λογιστικὸν καὶ ἐπιϑυμητικὸν οὐσιῶδες ϑέλημα), manifested in action consistent with it (ἡ ζωτικὴ on the other hand. If we compare this teaching of St. Anastasia with the similar teaching of his contemporary Rev. Maxim, then both holy fathers are completely unanimous, only with St. The maxim of the first will (“unnatural”) is called “arbitrariness” or “gnomic will.” According to him, “in man the will corresponds... to nature, and not to the face.” In a conversation with Pyrrhus, Maximus gives the following four reasons for attributing will to nature: a) Will as the ability to want (τὸ ϑέλειν) is innate to man, and is not the result of the personal experience of each of us: “no one ever teaches another to want”; b) man is rational by nature, and rational nature has freedom, or - since freedom constitutes the definition of will - will (ϑέλησις), which governs nature (as opposed to irrational beings, whose principium movens is nature itself - ἐν τοῖς ἀλόγοις ἄγει μὲν ἡ φύσις); c) will, as the ability to want, is common to all people, and what is common to all characterizes the nature of indivisibles of the same kind. Finally, d) man is the image of the Divine, and God by nature has freedom; therefore, man as such by nature has freedom, or will (ϑελητικὸς ἄρα φύσει ὁ ἄνϑρωπος). Thus, everywhere, both in God and in man, the will corresponds to nature, that is, in general, will is an integral property of spiritual nature, which is why it is called natural will (φυσικὸν ϑέλημα), and human will, in addition, innate (ἔμφυτος ϑέλησις or ϑέλημα), it is invariably thought of as existing in nature and, together with other properties of nature, constitutes what is generally called τὸ ἐξούσιον. In addition, “the constant and ever-present desire for what is “inherent in nature” is in fact not only not a negation of free will..., but does not even constitute a limitation of this latter: since it is not characteristic of nature to desire anything outside of what is put in place by the Creator, then on its own, not being restrained by anything external (and this would indeed be a limitation of its freedom), it cannot desire this “Freedom (ἐξουσία), says Maxim, “is legal dominion over that, unhindered power in the use of that, free desire for that which is embedded in our nature, which is in us.” And this is true freedom, in a higher degree of perfection than man, inherent in Angels and most perfectly characteristic of God. And since each of us puts his personal desires above the demands of nature and subordinates the latter to the former, he becomes unfree, making himself a slave to his desires and passions: natural will then takes on the character of personal arbitrariness, becomes what is called γνωμικὸν ϑέλημα, or simply γνώμη.” See: Orlov I. Decree. cit., p. 119–123. One can also add that when patristic asceticism speaks of “cutting off one’s own will,” it means cutting off arbitrariness, “gnomic” or “evil” will, and not cutting off will as an essential property of the image of God in us. In this expression (τὴν νοερὰν... ἐπιϑυμίαν) to the term ἐπιϑυμία, which in patristic writing often has a negative meaning (“lust, sinful attraction, passion”), Rev. Anastasius gives a clearly positive meaning. And he again relies on the same patristic tradition, going back to the very origins of church writing. For example, in “The Shepherd of Hermas” it says “Put away from yourself all evil lust (πᾶσαν ἐπιϑυμίαν πονεράν) and put on good and holy desires (ἔνδυσαι δὲ τὴν ἐπιϑυμίαν τὴν ἀγαϑὴν καὶ σεμνὴν). For having clothed yourself with the will of good, you will hate evil and control it as you wish. Evil lust is fierce and difficult to pacify: it is terrible and crushes people with its cruelty, especially if the servant of God falls into it and is not prudent, he will suffer cruelly from it. But it crushes those people who do not have the garment of good will (ἔνδυμα τῆς ἐπιϑυμίας τῆς ἀγαϑῆς) and are immersed in the affairs of this age: it is they who are put to death.” Scriptures of the Apostolic Men Riga, 1992, p. 197. Text by Hennas. Le Pasteur Ed. par R. Joly // Sources chretiennes, No. 53. Paris, 1958, p. 198–200. Wed. also one statement by Rev. Maxim: “Whose mind is always with God, his desire develops into divine passion, and his rage is completely transformed into divine love” Works of St. Maximus the Confessor. Book I, p. 114. Rev. Anastasius in this quote replaces “Him” with “God.” You can compare him in this case with Rev. Macarius, who argues that man has autocracy and free will ἐλευϑερίαν τοῦ ἰδιου ϑελήματος) to address either good or evil He further refers to Romans 6:16 and 19; Is.1:19 and Ps.27:7, noting that the human mind has equal and equal power (ἀντίπαλος... καὶ ἰσοδύναμος) for this or that conversion. See: Makarios / Symeon. Reden und Briefen, Bd. II Hrsg von H. Berthold Berlin, 1973, S. 35–36. St. also points to the inextricable unity in man of thought and will (action, aspiration) as an essential feature of the image of God. John of Damascus: “Thinking and striving are combined in man, so that we do not endure the passions of dumb [beings] against our will, while being rational. After all, the mind, striving rationally, intellectually and autocratically, in aspiration thinks, and considers, and seeks, and consults, and distinguishes, and is tuned in by reasoning, and chooses, and rushes to action - for the rational naturally rules over the unreasonable.” Works of St. John of Damascus. Christological and polemical treatises. Words for the Feasts of the Mother of God, p. 98. Rev. In this case, Anastasius resolves the apparent antinomy of the compatibility of love and hatred towards neighbors (see: Exod. 20:12; Deut. 5:16, 19:19; Luke 18:20, Mark 10:19; Eph. 6:2, Matt. 10:37; Luke 14:26) in the aspect, so to speak, “ontological” and “Christological”, highlighting two “impeccable wills” (δύο ϑελήματος ἀδιάβλητα), one inherent in man by nature (τὸ μὲν φύσει ἀνϑρώπινον), and the other - exceeding this nature, i.e. divine (τὸ δὲ ὑπὲρ φύσιν καὶ ϑεῖον). For comparison, we can cite the interpretation of Luke 14:25–33 by St. Gregory Dvoeslov, who resolves the same apparent antinomy in the moral-ascetic aspect: “So, we are commanded to hate our neighbors and our souls. Consequently, he who loves must hate his neighbor who hates him as much as he hates himself. For we hate our soul when we argue with its effort, when we fight with its pleasure. So, it is as if through hatred it is loved, when, being despised, it is directed towards the better. This is exactly how we should express our hatred of our neighbors, so that we can both love in them what they are and hate what they do to hinder us on the path of God. We must love everyone in this world, not excluding the enemy, but on the path of God we do not need to love the enemy, even if he is a relative. For whoever strongly desires the eternal must be on the path of God, which he enters without a father, without a mother, without a wife, without children, without relatives, without himself, so that he can know God more truly, the less he remembers anyone in the matter of pleasing Him. For it means a lot when carnal passions distract the attention of the mind and obscure its insight, but we do not suffer harm from them if we keep them in a constrained position. So, we must love our neighbors; love must be extended to all those near and far, but for the sake of this love one must not deviate from the love of God.” Conversations on the Gospels and Saints of Our Father Gregory Dvoeslov, in two books, translated from Latin into Russian by Archimandrite Clement, book. 2. St. Petersburg, p. 1860, p. 250–252. But, in fact, both holy fathers are completely unanimous in resolving this antinomy, for St. Gregory Dvoeslov is also talking about overcoming the “natural will” for the sake of following the “supernatural will”, an example of which was shown by our Lord Jesus Christ. The scholium, apparently, also belongs to St. Anastasia. According to St. John Chrysostom, with words in the likeness of sin, “The Apostle inspires... that it is possible for someone in sorrow to be without sin. When he says, in the likeness of the flesh, he does not mean that Christ took on the likeness of the flesh, but that he took on the flesh. Why does he say: in likeness? Because he means sinful flesh; Christ’s flesh was similar to our flesh, by nature it was the same as ours, but in relation to sin it was not the same.” Our Holy Father John, Archbishop of Constantinople, Chrysostom, Discourses on the Epistle of the Holy Apostle Paul to the Hebrews. St. Petersburg, 1859, p. 128. Free quote. See: Matthew 12:48–50; Mark 3:33–35; Matthew 7:21, 21:31; John 4:34, 5:36 and 6:38–39. Compare the teachings of the Byzantine theologian of the 13th century. Nicephorus Blemmids, who, stating the fullness of the human nature of the Lord, emphasizes the height of His Theanthropic dignity: “Jesus Christ, having united human nature with the Divinity, chose for Himself one good thing, not only as God, but also as a man, by virtue of His human nature in itself. This nature is characterized by only one good thing, evil in it is something unnatural, and sin invades human nature as a result of man’s deviation from what is characteristic of his nature and what is good; this is also shown by the very name of sin with the word ἁμαρτία (ἁμαρτία - deviation from something, hence - error, delusion, transgression, sin) Angels are inflexible towards evil precisely because they do not deviate from the nature inherent in the premium spirits, and the latter comes from the fact that they constantly stand before the throne of the Almighty and receive the highest from Him insight. But the Lord stands above all this: His soul was completely adamant to evil, since God the Word not only dwelt in him, but was also united with Him by the highest unity. And this soul ruled over the body, while God the Word was its leader, to whom it completely obeyed, itself striving to fulfill the divine will. Therefore, the Lord, during His suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane, cried out to the Father, “Not as I will, but as You will; not My will, but Thine be done.” This was what his soul, knowing only the will of God, spoke in the Lord. Thus, although the Lord took upon Himself the form of a slave for the sake of the slaves, He was above them, since at the same time He was the Lord.” Barvinok V. AND . Nikephoros Blemmydes and his works. Kyiv, 1911, p. 153–154. So, I think, it is better to translate the expression ἐκ τοῦ ψύχειν. Wed. at St. Gregory of Nyssa: “first God, who took up dust from the earth (Gen. 2:7), created man, and then animated him by inspiration (ἐψύχωσε διὰ τοῦ ἐμφυσήματος).” Like the saints of our father Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, On the dispensation of man. Translation by V.M. Lurie St. Petersburg, 1995, p. 89. Text: ΓΡΓΟΡΙΟΥ ΝΘΣΣΗΣ ΑΠΑΝΤΑ ΕΡΓΑ, τ. 5 // ΕΛΛΗΝΕΣ ΠΑΤΕΡΕΣ ΤΗΣ ΕΚΚΛΗΣΙΑΣ, τ. 91. ΘΕΣΣΑΛΟΝΙΚΗ, 1987, σ. 200. The expression σύνϑετον ἀνϑρωπον naturally means a person consisting of soul and body. This expression (ἐνήργει ϑεανδρικῶς) goes back to Dionysius the Areopagite, who speaks of “a certain new godly action of God who became Man and lived with us” (ἀνδρωϑέντος Θεοῦ καινήν τινα τὴν ϑεανδρικήν ἐνέργειαν ἡμῖν πεπολιτευμένος). Dionysius himself sought to distance himself as much as possible from the heated and passionate debates that had already flared up in his time (the second half of the 5th century) regarding the correct understanding of the Christological problem, and therefore this expression in his words only meant that thanks to the Incarnation of the Word, the possibility of communion (μετουσία) of Divine life was again opened for people. Moreover, this communion was determined by two main points: “synergy” and human participation in church sacraments. See Hieromonk Alexander (Golitzin). ET INTROIBO AD ALTARE DEI. The Mystagogy of Dionysius Areopagita, with Special Reference to its Predecessors in the Eastern Christian Tradition. ΘΕΣΣΑΛΟΝΙΚΗ, 1994, p. 181–184. In any case, this statement of Dionysius did not at all have a clearly Monophysite or Monothelite connotation. See: Roques R. L'univers dionysien. Structures hierarchiques du monde selon le Pseudo-Denys Paris, 1983, p. 311. But subsequent Monophysites and Monothelites took it into service to substantiate their false teaching. To do this, they made an insignificant at first glance, but very significant change in the formula of Dionysius, speaking not about “some new godly action,” but about “one godly action” (μίαν ϑεανδρικὴν ἐνέργειαν) of the Lord. See: Pelikan J. The Christian Tradition. A History of the Development of Doctrine, v. 2 The Spirit of Eastern Christendom (600–1700). Chicago-London, 1977, p. 65–66. Therefore, the Orthodox Fathers of the Church had to explain the true meaning of this expression. Rev. Anastasius Sinait, for example, devoted two of his short works to this issue; Rev. Maximus the Confessor also gave an extensive interpretation on this subject, clarifying the true thought of Dionysius, who presupposes the presence of divine action and human action in the “new godly energy” of Christ. See Bellini E. Maxime interprete de Pseudo-Denys l’Areopagite Analyse de l’Ambiguum ad Thomas 5 // Maximus Confessor. Actes du Symposium sur Maxime le Confesseur. Friborg, 1982, p. 37–49. St. drew a line under the discussion of this problem. John of Damascus, who largely repeated the theses of St. Maxim and who developed them: “the great Dionysius” spoke “not about one “Godly action,” but abstractly about “new,” that is, unusual. For each of them was unusual and God-given - after all, he said this, indicating not a number, but an unusual way. After all, the Lord, having pity on his own creation, which voluntarily accepted the passion of sin, like the enemy’s sowing, took in the disease entirely in order to heal it as a whole: for “what is not accepted cannot be healed.” And what is received is saved. What suffered first, if not the mind and its rational aspiration, that is, will? This, therefore, needed healing - after all, sin is a disease of the will. If He did not accept the rational and thinking soul and its will, then He did not heal the suffering of human nature - that is why He accepted the will. He did not accept sin - after all, sin is not His creation. So, in order to expel from the soul the disease of sin planted by the enemy, for this purpose He took on the soul and its will, but did not create sin, and in order to free the body from corruption and the service of sin, He also took on the body.” Works of St. John of Damascus. Christological and polemical treatises. Words for the Feasts of the Mother of God, p. 117. Rev. Anastasius uses here the neologisms ψυχανδρικῶς and σωματοψυχῶς in the image of the similar adverb ϑεανδρικῶς. Archimandrite Cyprian notes on this occasion: “Just as in the God-man both of His natures are united and act “divinely manly,” theandric, so the union of soul and body took place according to the same plan and type—spiritual-masculine or bodily-spiritual.” Archimandrite Cyprian (Kern). Decree. cit., p. 204. Saying this, Rev. Anastasius clearly implies one of the beatitudes (Matthew 5:8). St. Gregory of Nyssa interprets it this way: “The inner man, whom the Lord calls the heart, when the rust of impurity that has appeared on his image from bad love is cleansed, will again take on the likeness of the Prototype and will be good, because the likeness of good is, without a doubt, good. Therefore, whoever sees himself sees in himself what he desires; and thus the pure in heart becomes blessed, because, looking at his own purity, he sees the Prototype in this image... For purity, dispassion, alienation from all evil is Divinity. Therefore, if this is in you, then, without a doubt, God is in you, when your thought is pure from all vice, free from passions and far from any defilement, you are blessed in your sharpness of vision; because, having purified himself, he saw what was invisible to those who were not purified, and, having removed the material darkness from the eyes of the soul, in the pure sky of the heart you clearly see a blissful sight. What exactly? Purity, holiness, simplicity and all such luminous reflections of God’s nature in which we see God” St. Gregory of Nyssa. About the bliss. M., 1997, p. 92–93. St. John Chrysostom, regarding this beatitude, notes: “Here he calls pure those who have acquired complete virtue and are not aware of any guile in themselves, or those who spend their lives in chastity, because in order to see God, we do not need anything so much as this virtue.” Like the saints of our father John, Archbishop of Constantine, Chrysostom Selected works. Interpretation of Saint Matthew the Evangelist, book. 1. M., 1993, p. 154. In this case, Rev. Anastasius, clearly highlighting the dominant position of the spiritual principle in man (his “spiritual energy”), expresses a thought fundamental to Orthodox moral theology: weakness, relaxation and mutilation of the body cannot serve as an obstacle to the realization and fulfillment by man of his highest purpose. Cf. “My power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). The history of the Orthodox Church knows many examples of such power accomplished in weakness, naturally, only under the condition of grace-filled help from above. You can, for example, point to Rev. Ambrose of Optinsky, who, while still very young, “was forced due to illness to leave the state, being recognized as incapable of obedience, and began to be listed as dependent on the monastery as a disabled person.” And yet this “disabled man” became a great old man. “It is difficult to imagine how he could, being nailed to such a suffering cross, in complete exhaustion, receive crowds of people every day and answer dozens of letters. On it the words came true: “The power of God is made perfect in weakness.” If he had not been the chosen vessel of God, through whom God himself spoke and acted, such a feat, such gigantic work could not have been accomplished by any human forces.” See: Kontsevich I. M. Optina Pustyn and its time. Sergiev Posad, 1995, p. 260–265. Lit. “goes around (goes around) everything.” Wed. Nemesius’s reasoning: “The soul is connected to the body, but not united. Indeed, that it is united - this shows sympathy, according to which a living being fully sympathizes with itself as one, and that the soul remains unfused (after the union), is obvious from the fact that in a dream, in some way separating from the body and, as it were, leaving it lying dead and only imparting life to it so that it does not perish completely, it independently manifests its activity in dreams, predicting the future and approaching the intelligible world. The same thing happens when the soul by itself contemplates something intelligible. After all, even then, as far as possible, it is abstracted from the body and exists on its own, in order to thus comprehend existence. Being incorporeal, the soul passes (penetrates) through everything, like that which is mutually destroyed by union, and at the same time remains undamaged, like that which does not merge, and preserves its own unity - and in whatever it happens - turns it to its life, without being itself turned from it. Nemesius of Emesa. About human nature. M., p. 1996, p. 65–66. In several manuscripts this is followed by the following addition to the text: “Another consideration of the same thing. All inspired Scripture (2 Tim. 3:16), the Gospel and apostolic teachings say that God, who fills everything (Eph. 1:23), is in heaven. Therefore, we know that God the Word came down from there, and we believe that He ascended again into heaven, along with [His] flesh. Therefore, if mount Divine Light is Our Father who art in heaven (Matthew 6:9), mount God the Word is Light from Light and mount, in the highest, the Holy Spirit, then, in the image of this highest Holy Trinity, we have in the more elevated places of the whole body reason, sight and breath, which are all in our head. This threefold fullness from there, as if from some high heaven, governs our corporeal world and enlightens it.” Rev. Anastasius freely quotes this passage of Holy Scripture. Regarding this condemnation of our ancestors to bodily death, A.P. Lopukhin notes: “The punishment for breaking the commandment of God was terrible; but as a merciful Father, God did not leave His sinned children without consolation and then gave them a promise, which, with the bright hope of restoring lost bliss, was supposed to support their sad spirit in the days of subsequent trials and tribulations of a sinful life. This is precisely the promise of the Seed of the woman, which was supposed to erase the head of the serpent, that is, to finally defeat the destroyer of the bliss of people and restore people to the opportunity to achieve bliss and eternal life in heaven. This was the first promise of the Savior of the world." Lopukhin A. P. Biblical history of the Old Testament. Montreal, 1986, p. 11. In this case, the reasoning of Rev. Anastasia is somewhat reminiscent of the train of thought of John Philoponus, who, “explaining his doctrine of the pre-worldly creation of disembodied spirits, simultaneously explains that the human soul received existence not together with the body, but separately from it, after its formation; when the material world was already created, the soul received its existence from the Divine “breath.” Man, as the most perfect being in the material world, was created last. Seeing the same “order of origin” in nature in general and at the present time, Philoponus, apparently, is inclined in his reasoning to the theory of generationism: initially, he says, ἄψυχον τὸ σπέρμα (“inanimate seed.” - A. S.) in the womb lives plant life (φυτικὴ ζωή), feeding and growing, then - it is formed and animate (ψυχοῦνται), forming an animal organism, which finally receives a rational soul... so that “the embryo receives (δέχεται) a rational soul in the womb.” Philoponus categorically rejects the pre-existence and transmigration of souls. Vladimirsky F. WITH . Decree. cit., p. 371–372. Usually this term (τὸ σοφιστικόν) has a negative connotation (“sophistry”), but the Rev. Anastasia, it takes on a positive meaning here. Lit. “from the earth” (ἐκ τῆς γῆς). Wed. words of St. Macrina, given to St. Gregory of Nyssa: “You, our mortal composition, created by Your hands, entrust the earth as a pledge (Σὺ δίδως παρακαταϑήκην τῇ γῇ ἡμετέραν γῇν, ἥν ταῖς σαῖς χερσὶ διεμόρφωσας), - and again you will receive what you gave, transforming our mortal and ugly into immortality and splendor.” Works of St. Gregory of Nyssa, part 8. M., 1871, p. 357. Text of Grégoire de Nysse Vie de sainte Macrine Ed. par P Maraval // Sources chrétiennes, No. 178. Paris, 1971, p. 218. In this case, Rev. Anastasius emphasizes, so to speak, the “ontological affinity” of the angelic world with other creatures, in contrast to man, who does not have such an “affinity.” Typically, these words from the Psalms generally relate to the creation of the entire world. Wed. interpretation: “Here the pronoun: Toy is said very strongly. It shows that the world is not eternal, as worldly people dream, it is composed of uninfected particles, but it is produced from nothing by the single command of God in such a beautiful order in which we see it.” Explanatory Psalter of Archbishop Irenaeus, p. 432. The thoughts expressed here by Rev. Anastasia, in a number of points go back to Philo of Alexandria, who, interpreting Genesis 2:7, says that there are two kinds of people (διττὰ ἀνϑρώπων γένη): one kind is the “man of heaven” (οὐράνιος ἄνϑρωπος), and the other is “earthly man” (ὁ δὲ γήινος). The first, being in the image of God, is completely unrelated to the earthly and corruptible essence, and the second came from formless (scattered) matter (ἐκ σποράδος ὕλης), which is called “dust”. The “heavenly man” was not “created” (“made”), but was “impressed” in the image of God (οὐ πεπλάσϑαι, κατ’ εἰκόνα δὲ Θεοῦ τετυπῶσϑαι), and “earthly” is an earthly creature, and not a product of the Master (γήινον πλάσμα, ἀλλ’ οὐ γέννημα, εἶναι τοῦ τεχνίτου). This “early man” had a mind, but it was an “earthly and corruptible mind” until God breathed into him “the power of true Life.” See: Les oeuvres de Philon d'Alexandrie, v. 2. Legum allegoriae I–III. Paris, 1962, p. 54–56. This aspect of Philo’s anthropology is somewhat clarified in another of his works: the “heavenly man”, who in the image of God is, as it were, “a certain idea, kind or seal” (ἰδὲα τις ἤ γένος ἤ σφραγίς), being intelligible, incorporeal, incorruptible by nature, not masculine and not female; “earthly man” is mortal by nature, sensual, consisting of soul and body, is an individual male or female. His body was created like this: the Master took the dust of the earth and gave it a human form (μορφὴν ἀνϑρωπίνην), but the soul came from the Father and Ruler of all, being the “spirit of God”, inspired by the blessed and happy Nature. Therefore, man is in the border region (μεϑόριον) between mortal and immortal natures. See: Les oeuvres de Philon d'Alexandrie, v. 1. De opificio mundi. Paris, 1961, p. 230–232. Of course, this Philonian anthropology in its fundamental principles was deeply alien to Christian (“theocentric” and “Christocentric” in essence), and sometimes even directly antinomic to it, as N. clearly showed. N. Glubokovsky, comparing the worldview of Philo and the teachings of St. Apostle Paul. See: Glubokovsky N. N. Annunciation of St. Apostle Paul according to his origin and essence, book. 2. St. Petersburg, 1910, p. 199–270. However, individual elements of this Philonian anthropology entered the Christian teaching about man, acquiring here a new meaning and sound. In particular, the difference between the “creation” of the soul in Genesis 1:26–27 (ἐποίησεν) and the “formation” of the body in Genesis 2:7 (ἔπλασεν), outlined by Philo, is observed in a number of ancient church writers. For example, Origen believes that “creation” refers to “our inner man, invisible, incorporeal, incorruptible and immortal” (interior homo noster est, invisibilis et incorporalis et incorruptus atque immortalis), and “education” - with “corporalis homo”, who does not possess the image of God. See: Origène. Homelies sur la Genuse. Ed. par L. Doutreleau // Sources chrétiennes, No. 7 bis. Paris, 1976, p. 56. This opinion is shared by St. Basil the Great, recognizing that “created” is said about the soul, and “formed” is said about the body. To confirm this, he also cites the words of the Psalmist (Ps. 119:73), noting that God created the “internal man,” and He formed the “external man” ἔξω). See: Basile de Césaree. Sur 1'origin de 1'homme, p. 230–232. By the way, it can be noted that such an understanding of Ps. 119:73 was by no means the only one in the ancient Church. The Catenas preserved the interpretation of one anonymous exegete, who, after mentioning the view of Origen and “certain others,” says that there is another opinion: “created” implies “the first creation” (ἐπὶ τῆς πρώτης δημιουργίας φασὶν εἰρῆσϑαι), and “formed (created)” - new birth in the bath of baptism (ἐπὶ τῆς τοῦ λουτροῦ παλγγενεσίας καὶ ἀναπλάσεως). The anonymous exegete himself believes that here we are dealing with pleonasm: God not only “created” man, like everything else, but also “formed” him, honoring him with special grace - with his own creation (τῇ αὐτουργίᾳ τιμήσας). See: La chaine palestinienne sur le Psaume 118 (Origène, Eusèbe, Didyme, Apollinaire, Athanase, Theodoret), t. 1. Ed. par M. Harl et G. Dorival // Sources chretiennes, No. 189 Paris, 1972, p. 304. Rev. Anastasius refers to the 38th “Word” of St. Gregory the Theologian Here the saint says: “The artistic Word creates a living being, in which both are brought into unity, that is, the invisible and the visible nature, creates, I say, man and, taking a body from already created matter, and putting life from Himself (which in the word of God is known under the name of the rational soul and the image of God), creates, as it were, some kind of second world - in a small, great one.” Saint Gregory the Theologian. Collection of works in 2 volumes, vol. 1, p. 527. St. Anastasius, like many Church Fathers before and after him, uses here the polysemantic and difficult-to-translate concept of ϑυμός, which goes back to the anthropology of Plato. Basically, it denotes the active principle belonging to the irrational soul (vis irascibilis), manifested in anger, rage, passion, etc. Starting with Nemesius, Plato’s thought “about the moral meaning of “anger” (ϑυμός), which - provided a person maintains a normal state and mental balance - is a “servant” or “guardian of the mind” (τὸ δορυφορικὸν τοῦ λογισμοῦ), arousing indignation towards evil and fiery zeal for good, is very characteristic of patristic and ascetic psychology. All contemporary Christian thinkers and ascetics agree that “ϑυμός”, under certain conditions, is a necessary “helper” and “ally” of reason in the matter of moral improvement of man and the achievement of his highest destiny” Vladimirsky F. WITH . Decree cit., p. 421. Rev. In this case, Anastasius emphasizes another point - that this violent principle belongs to the unreasonable soul, which is also characteristic of animals. It is difficult to establish which place in the Book of Job the Rev. refers to in this case. Anastasy. This is the reasoning of Rev. Anastasia is a development of thoughts expressed by previous church writers in polemics with Apollinarianism and Monophysitism. A special role in this controversy belonged to representatives of the Antiochian school. For example, Diodorus of Tarsus “was the first to clearly and clearly pose the problem of the human side in the Person of Jesus Christ, confessing that for the salvation of humanity it was necessary for God to accept the integral human nature, not excluding the mind. The Redeemer is a man with a rational soul; for Diodorus this was a truth beyond any doubt. It was dear to his Christian consciousness, since with its elimination soteriology lost all meaning, and the salvation of mankind turned into a fiction or, at least, turned out to be incomplete.” Fetisov N. Diodorus of Tarsus. Experience of church-historical research of his life and work Kyiv, 1915, p. 169–170. Blazh. Theodoret, polemicizing in “Eranist” already with the Monophysites, remarks. “It is said that the Word became flesh because He took on flesh and a rational soul. If God the Word had not borrowed anything (μηδὲν ἔλαβεν) from our nature, then the promises sworn by God to the patriarchs would have been untrue, the blessing of Judas would have been useless, the promise to David would have been false, and the Virgin would have been unnecessary, since she did not bring anything from our nature to the Incarnate One. The prophecies of the prophets would be unfulfilled, our preaching would be in vain, our faith would be in vain and the hope of resurrection would be in vain.” Quote from the book: Glubokovsky N. N. Blessed Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus. His life and literary activity, vol. 2. M., 1890, p. 160. However, such anti-Apollinarian polemics and the associated deep intuitions of Orthodox Christology, soteriology and anthropology were by no means limited to the activities of representatives of the Antiochian school. For example, St. Gregory the Theologian, objecting to the supporters of Apollinaris of Laodicea, directly says that true madness is trusting in a “mindless man” (Εἴ τις εἰς ἄνουν ἄνϑρωπον ἤλπικεν, ἀνόητος ὄντως ἐστὶ), since what is not perceived remains unhealed (τὸ γὰρ ἀπρόληπτον, ἀϑεράπευτον) and only that which is united with God is saved. See: Gregoire de Nazianze. Lettres théologiques Ed. par P. Gallay // Sources chrétiennes, No. 208. Paris, 1974, p. 50. Speaking in this way, Rev. Anastasius proceeds from that self-evident premise of all Christian life, which St. John of Tobolsk expressed it as follows. “Every act (deed) of a person is valued according to the ultimate goal that it is desirable to achieve. This ultimate goal determines the quality of our actions, their property, by which some actions reach a blissful end, while others lead a person to final destruction. When discussing the choice of the best goal from the many final goals in life, that is, the true and blissful, eternally joyful and contented, we will not find another better, nobler and more favorable final goal for the pursuit of our activity, except for the fulfillment of the will of God, which gradually brings us closer to God Himself and eternal bliss in His infinite Kingdom. Therefore, there are no better and more graceful actions except those that bring us closer to God and attract His mercy to us sinners; The saying of Basil the Great is true and righteous: “To willingly present oneself in all acts and deeds of the will to the guidance of God, that is, to reject one’s own self-will and accept with gratitude as everything good that God sends to us, allowed by God, is the totality and the highest degree of Christian holiness.” Iliotropion, or Conformity of the human will with the Divine will. The creation of His Eminence, Metropolitan of Tobolsk and All Siberia John Maksimovich of blessed memory. M., 1994, p. 170–171. In juxtaposing these concepts (ϑέλημα ἀγαϑόν, πόϑον, ἐπιϑυμίαν, ἀγάπην, ἔρωτα) the combination of the last two is attractive. The identification of specifically Christian “agape” (love in the highest sense of the word) and ancient “eros” (desire, sometimes sublime, and sometimes lustful) was first purposefully carried out by Origen, who in his “Commentary on the Song of Songs” notes that the expressions: God can “be desired” (i.e., one can be attracted to Him) and can “be loved” are no different from each other (non ergo interest utrum amari dicatur Deus aut diligi); therefore, just as the holy evangelist John called Him “Love” (caritatem, Greek ἀγάπη), so one can call Him “Attraction” (amorem, Greek ἐρως). To confirm this, Origen refers to the Epistle to the Romans (7:2) by St. Ignatius the God-Bearer (St. Anastasius also refers to him just below) Moreover, like St. Ignatius and Origen, correlating “eros” with God, implicitly mean Christ, that is, the incarnate Word. See: Origéne. Commentaire sur le Cantique des Cantiques, t. I.Ed. par L. Brésard, H. Crouzel, M Borret // Sources chrétiennes, No. 376. Paris, 1991, p. 116. See also commentary: Ibid., t. II // Sources chrétiennes, No. 376. Paris, 1992, p. 753–754. This identification, which presupposes a complete transformation of the ancient “eros” and, as it were, its dissolution in the Christian “agape,” was accepted by the subsequent patristic tradition. For example, St. Gregory of Nyssa, interpreting the same Old Testament book as Origen, says: “She who has folded the veil from her eyes with a clear eye looks at the indescribable beauty of the Bridegroom and as a result of this is wounded by the incorporeal and kindled arrow of fiery love; because intensified love is called fiery (ἐπιτεταμένη γὰρ ἀγάπη ἔρως λέγεται), the kind of love that no one is ashamed of when its shooting is not carnal, but, on the contrary, everyone boasts more than an ulcer, when in the depths of the heart he accepts the edge of an immaterial wish. This is what the bride did, telling the young women that she was wounded by the love I am.” Works of St. Gregory of Nyssa, part 3. M., 1862, p. 331. Text: PG 44, 1048. According to the teachings of the Saint of Nyssa, this immaterial and spiritual love for God is based “on the innate movement of our soul towards invisible Beauty.” In the nature of our soul, created in the image of God and likeness, the Creator implanted the beginnings of the highest Divine blessings; in it is reflected, imprinted, to the extent possible for us, this very highest Good. That is why our soul, distracted from sensual, passionate existence, even opposing it, strives for this spiritual Good that surpasses all minds.” Tikhomirov D. St. Gregory of Nyssa as a moralist. Ethical and historical study of Mogilev-on-Dnieper, 1886, p. 293. Finally, Dionysius the Areopagite says: “After all, to some of our clergy the name Love seems even more divine than the name Affection (ϑειότερον εἶναι τὸ τοῦ ἔρωτος ὄνομα τοῦ τῆς ἀγάπης; the translation seems to us unsuccessful, because to convey ἀγάπη as “liking” means a distortion of the meaning of this word.” After all, the divine Ignatius also writes: “My love was crucified” (Romans 7:2). And in the introductions to the Sayings you will find someone speaking about divine Wisdom: “I was in love (ἐραστὴς) with Her beauty” (Wis. 8:2). “So let us not be afraid of the name Love, and let no frightening word concerning this confuse us. For it seems to me that theologians consider the names Affection and Love to be the same, but to the divine they apply mainly the name true Love (τὸν ὄντως ἐρωτα) - because of the absurd prejudice of a certain kind of people.” Dionysius the Areopagite. About Divine names. On mystical theology, p. 122–125. According to the observation of Father Alexander (Golitsyn), for Dionysius the Areopagite, Divine Love is the “mover” of God’s Providence, and, using ancient pagan usage (“eros”), he interprets the term, which was still controversial in his time, in a purely Christian sense (in the sense of “agape”). See: Hieromonk Alexander (Golitzin). Op. cit., p. 66–68. Rev. Anastasius, like Origen and Dionysius the Areopagite, refers to the Epistle to the Romans (7:2) of St. Ignatius the God-Bearer. P. Camelo, who published the works of this holy Father, translates ἔρως as “my earthly desire” (mon desir terresre), referring to Gal.5:24 and Gal.6:14. See: Ignace d'Antioche. Polycarpe de Smyrne. Martyr de Polycarpe Ed. par P. Th. Camelot The word ϑεοχάρακτος (denoting, as it were, a soul “depicted, sealed by God”) Rev. Anastasius also uses it in the “Guide”, speaking of the “divine Isaac” as a “primitive and divinely inscribed imprint” (τύπος... πρωτότυπος καὶ ϑεοχάρακτος) of Christ. See: Anastasii Sinaitae Viae dux, p. 278. According to the interpretation of St. Vasily, “here the freedom of human nature is especially shown. For I think that this meaning agrees with everything previous. The Prophet says: if you leave the service of the killing letter, if you wear yourself out and, having become pure, finally show in practice the way of life prescribed for you, come to judgment, then there will be an abundance of both, enjoy the promised consolation, and will not become food for the punishing and destructive sword. Those who listen with low concepts are given earthly promises as a reward of obedience, and those who listen spiritually to the intention of Scripture are told about the blessings of the spiritual earth, which, according to what has been said, the blessed meek will inherit (Matthew 5:4).” Works like the saints of our father Basil the Great, Archbishop of Caesarea of ​​Cappadocia, part II. M„ 1993, pp. 59–60. According to the explanation of St. Cyril of Alexandria, this giving of the commandment has the following meaning: “Man was a reflection of the highest glory and an image of divine power on earth. But since he who had achieved such glory and sweetness, in any case, had to know that he had God as his Primate, King and Lord, so that from an excess of prosperity he would not very easily fall into the thought of liberation from the power and predominance of the One who has the power, God immediately gave him a law and, as the immediate consequence of his crimes, set a punishing threat. As long as there was one, and only one man, there was no way on earth to sin. And so that he would be under the law, a certain type of preservation of the commandment was invented for him.” Creations of our holy father Cyril of Alexandria, part 4. M., 1886, p. 12–13. St. Filaret notes in this regard: “Man is created in the image of God. A necessary and high feature of the image of God is freedom. The freedom of the creature does not exclude the possibility of doing evil, but is strengthened in good by intensified experiences of doing good, which gradually, with the assistance of grace, constitute a good habit and, finally, the moral impossibility of doing evil. From this it is clear that man, created free, necessarily had to go through the path of trials.” Saint Philaret of Moscow. Decree. cit., p. 43. The objections of the heretics that [the first] man perverted (παρετράπη) entirely “everything human” (πάντα τὰ τοῦ ἀνϑρώπου πάντως), including the natural will, can be compared to a certain extent with the teaching of the blessed Augustine on original sin. In a polemic with the Pelagians, he came to the following extreme conclusions: “Instead of the concept of freedom, Augustine puts forward in sin the concept of necessity, since after sin there was no free will, a bound will appeared, enslaved to sin. From here it becomes clear to us the strange at first glance teaching of Augustine that God imputes involuntary sins, committed out of necessity, for Augustine there are no other sins except the first sin; all sins, except the first, are committed by force, although the force may be greater or lesser; sins are committed not by free will, but either through blindness of mind, when a person does not know what righteousness requires, or through the violence of lust, by which a person is conquered even when he knows what to abstain from. True, Augustine does not deny that people commit many such sins from which they are free to abstain, but from his teaching about fallen freedom it is known that he recognized a person as free to abstain from one sin only in order to fall into another sin: he denies the freedom of man to do good and recognizes the freedom to sin, recognizes the freedom of a natural person to choose one or another from many sins, rejecting others, this means that a person is free to abstain from sins" Kremlevsky A. Original sin according to the teachings of the blessed one. Augustine of Ipponsky St. Petersburg, p. 1902, p. 97. Origen also believes that by “man” in this Gospel parable one should understand Adam or the “word” (λόγον - teaching) about man, his original life in paradise and the “descent down” (fall - καϑόδου) due to disobedience. “Robbers” are “opposite forces” (τὰς ἀντικειμένας ἐνεργείας), or demons, or false teachers who came before Christ; “blows” – disobedience and sins. Taking away a “man’s” clothes means the loss of incorruptibility, immortality and the loss of all virtue. The fact that the robbers left the “man” half-dead (ἡμιβανῆ) suggests that death captured only half of human nature, since the soul remains immortal to this day. See: Origène. Homélies sur S. Luc. Ed. par H. Crouzel, F Fournier, P. Périchon // Sources chrétiennes, No. 87. Paris, 1962, p. 520. So, I think, we can translate this phrase (εἰ καὶ τῇ προσβολῇ τοῦ ξύλου συγκατῆλϑεν). The “tree” probably refers to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The essence of the prohibition to eat from this tree, “like the essence of temptation, was expressed not in epistemological knowledge, that is, the distinction between good and evil, but in the fact that man, created in the image and likeness of God, should not eat, that is, accept evil into his soul on an equal basis with good.” Archpriest Nikolai Ivanov. And God said... s. 182–183. Here it should be recalled that “fallen man, according to the teachings of the ancient fathers, was not so damaged by his fall that no traces or inclinations of good remained in him. Although his mind became darkened and weak, he did not lose the desire to seek God and the ability to accept and understand the revelations of God. The will and heart were not so damaged in him that there was not even any desire for good left in him and no ability to do good, since the freedom to choose the best, which distinguishes him from animals acting out of sheer necessity, remained an integral property of his nature, and since the very judgment of God, dissolved by mercy, presupposes to some extent the possibility or ability remaining in him to take advantage of this divine mercy. Finally, the image of God was not so damaged in fallen man that no traces of it remained in him - he only has become darkened and lost its former luster and value.” Bishop Sylvester (Malevansky). Experience of Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, vol. III, p. 409–410. Therefore, Rev. Anastasius says that the soul, as the focus of the image of God, needs only “some kind of reasonable correction and confession” ἐξομολογήσεως), i.e. in repentance, in contrast to the body, which requires “essential transformation” (οὐσιώδης ἀνάπλάσεως). At the same time, it is necessary to recall that in the Christian West there was a slightly different perspective on this theological problem. Here “they recognized that along with the loss of primitive grace, man also lost the most important advantage of his nature - the image and likeness of God. Both were returned to him only in the sacrament of atonement, when man, in the words of Tertullian, again received the ilium Dei Spiritum, which he had once received from a breath, but then amiserat per delictum; both imago and similitude are conceived inseparably from the abiding of grace in man. Also in Ambrose, secundum imaginem Adam was ante peccatum, but when he fell, he put aside the image of the heavenly (imaginem coelestis) and put on the image of the earthly (terrestris effigiem). And in his person, every person lost the magnum illud munus, according to which the ad imaginem Dei was created, and as a result is now subject to greater punishment... These advantages lost in the fall are returned only by Christ in redemption” see: Adamov I. St. Ambrose of Milan, c. 354 However, the point of view of St. Ambrose, according to another Russian researcher, is somewhat different and does not fundamentally diverge from the views of St. Anastasia: “Under the image of God, which the first man lost as a result of his fall, St. Ambrose most often means not the very image of God in man, but that state of grace, that innocence and those virtues that the first people had in paradise.” Therefore, “since St. Ambrose distinguishes in the image of God rationality and free will from the grace-filled and virtuous state; he speaks of the complete loss of this latter and only of the darkening of the first two.” See: Prokhorov G. IN . Moral teaching of St. Ambrose, Bishop of Mediolan St. Petersburg, 1912, p. 152. Rev. Anastasius means that “carnal” or “evil” will (and its corresponding action, “energy”), which he spoke about above. Wed. teaching John Cassian the Roman: “The life of primordial man in an innocent state was characterized by complete harmony in the relationship between the constituent parts of man - body and spirit - through the subordination of the needs of the body, as a servant, to the higher needs of the spirit. The body did not oppose the spirit, and man, through the reasonable subordination of bodily aspirations to spiritual ones, lived a true human life, placing his life only in God and coordinating his will with the will of God. The current state of man is characterized by complete disorder in relation to these component parts of man, and each of them, declaring its needs, declares them as independent and, moreover, hostile to each other. It is this disorder of the relationship between the aspirations of the body and the spirit, their enmity, that Cassian expresses in the general concept of “lust” - “concupiscentia”. And this “lust” in man is twofold: flesh against the spirit (“caro concupiscit adversus spiritum”) and spirit against the flesh (“spiritus autem adversus carnem”). Moreover, “flesh”, according to Rev. John, “must be understood in the sense of “voluntas carnis,” i.e., dispositions and aspirations determined by the needs of the body, or “desideriapessima,” and by “spirit,” one must understand aspirations determined by the needs of the godlike mind or spirit—“animae desideria bona et spiritalia.” Since these opposing aspirations are in one and the same person and are expressed in his lustful ability - will, then a continuous battle is waged within the person.” See: Hieromonk Theodore (Pozdeevsky). Ascetic views of St. John Cassian the Roman Kazan, 1902, p. 102–103. According to Rev. Anastasia, this abuse and duality of wills were alien to the Lord. Rev. Anastasius designates the being (or existence - ὕπαρξιν) of the soul of Adam as ἔκϑεον, and the being (οὐσίωσιν) of the soul of Emmanuel as ἔνϑεον. Both words are difficult to translate (literally, “absorption” and “godly” being, i.e., being received from God, and being, which is being in God), and therefore are replaced by similar ones in meaning. Here there is a significant difference between the soul of Christ and the soul of Adam (as well as from the souls of other people). This is also emphasized by two other definitions of the soul of Christ: σύνϑεον καὶ ὁμόϑεον However, it should be noted that the superiority of the soul of Christ over the souls of other people by St. Anastasia does not have the character of a substantial difference. This superiority consists primarily in the fact that the soul of the Lord preserved the substantial property of the human soul in its pristine purity. Translating the word ὁμόϑεος as “divine,” we follow Archimandrite Cyprian, who showed the patristic origins of this word. Starting from St. Gregory the Theologian, it began to be used in a Christological context to designate the human nature of the Lord. St. was faithful to this patristic tradition. Gregory Palamas, for whom “by virtue of its deification, this nature is ascended by the Savior to the throne of heavenly glory. Palama emphasizes that the Savior’s flesh became part of God not only after his ascension to heaven, but also during earthly life” See: Archimandrite Cyprian. Decree. cit., p. 424–427. Rev. In this case, Anastasius narrows the meaning of this “divine participation”, applying it only to the human soul of the Lord. But in the Guide he speaks in a similar way about the humanity of Christ in general καὶ ἐνϑεος καὶ σύνϑεος), thus emphasizing the total deification of the human nature of the Lord See: Anastasii Sinaitae Viae dux, p. 291. A similar understanding of this Gospel passage is also observed among Blessed. Jerome, who draws attention to the future tense of the verb “to come” (Non ait: tu es qui venisti, sed: tu es qui venturus es), suggesting that the Lord must come somewhere else. Before his death, St. John the Baptist, as Jerome explained, seemed to ask Christ: “I, who am going to hell (ad inferna descensurus sum), want to know whether to proclaim You there to the dead, as I proclaimed You on earth, or, since it is unworthy for the Son of God to taste death, will You send someone else with this sacred mission?” See: Saint Jerdme. Commentaire sur S. Matthieu, t. I.Ed. par E Bonnard //Sources chretiennes, No. 242. Paris, 1977, p. 216. This understanding of this passage of Holy Scripture is based on eschatological ideas that go back to the most ancient layers of church writing. For example, according to St. Irenaeus of Lyon, all souls of the dead, even the righteous, after death receive a place to stay corresponding to their dignity. “Each class of souls,” says St. Lyon, “receives a worthy home even before judgment (dignam habitationem unamquamque gentem percipere etiam ante judiciuum).” These are the dwellings of all dead people, according to St. Irenaeus, are located in “the underworld of the earth (in inferioribus terrae).” Just as the Lord kept the law of the dead (legem mortuorum) in order to be the firstborn from the dead, and remained until the third day in the “underworld of the earth,” and then rose from the dead and ascended to the Father, so the souls of people, as His disciples, “will go to the invisible place appointed for them by God, and there they will remain until the resurrection (αἱ ψυχαὶ ἀπέρχονται εἰς (invisibilem) τὸν τπὸ τοῦ Θεοῦ, κἀκεῖ μέχρι τῆς ἀναστάσεως φοιτῶσι) in anticipation of Him (the Lord).” Only the souls of martyrs are excluded from this general rule. However, if the souls of the dead righteous remain in the underworld until the general resurrection of the dead, then the question is, what is the significance of Christ’s descent into hell? St. Irenaeus, eliminating the confusion thus created, argued that Christ descended into the underworld only for the purpose of “preaching His salvation (evangelizare salutem quae est ab eo)” in order to “see with my own eyes the state of those who have fallen asleep from their labors.” “The Lord,” says St. Lyons in another place, “descended into the underworld, preaching here also about His coming and declaring remission of sins to those who believe in Him (evangelizantem et illis adventum suum, remissione peccatorum existente his, qui credunt in eum),” i.e. “the righteous, the prophets and the patriarchs, whose sins He forgave (remisit peccata) as well as us.” It is clear that St. Irenaeus exhausted the entire significance of Christ’s descent into hell to the souls of the dead righteous who were there with the latter’s proclamation of the forgiveness of sins, without their immediate liberation from the bonds of hell.” See: Metropolitan Macarius (Oksiyuk). Eschatology of St. Gregory of Nyssa. Historical and dogmatic research. M., 1999, p. 56–58. This is how Rev. quotes this passage of Holy Scripture. Anastasy. It, according to one Russian exegete, is “one of the most difficult passages in the New Testament apostolic writings - a passage cited in systems of dogmatic theology as proof of the reality of the descent of the Lord Jesus Christ into hell after death,” although some of the exegetes (mainly Western - Blessed Augustine, Bede, Thomas Aquinas, etc.) denied this. The Russian biblical scholar himself comes “to the undeniable conviction that St. The Apostle Peter speaks about the descent and preaching of the Lord Jesus Christ in hell. From this it is also clear that by prison we must understand the prison of hell in the proper sense.” The question seems no less difficult: to whom did the Lord preach in hell? According to Hieromonk George, “the entire prison of hell to its lowest depths was illuminated by the radiance of the Son of God and resounded with the sounds of His preaching. But if all the sinners who were in hell were bathed in the light of Christ’s appearance and announced by His preaching, then there can be no doubt that the preaching also touched all the Old Testament righteous who languished in hell (Ps. 15:10). On the contrary, one must think that she mainly had them in mind, and if it turned out to be useless for many hardened sinners, then for the righteous it had a saving significance, opening the doors of heaven to them. In the expression that Christ preached “to those in spiritual prison,” there is no basis for spirits to mean only the souls of sinners, since the souls of the righteous were also in hell before the coming of Christ. Addition of St. The Apostle that Christ preached to the rebellious only indicates that Christ’s sermons were not devoid of the souls of the rebellious, even very rebellious and sinful people. Thus, all of hell, from the bosom of Abraham to the remotest dwellings of Gehenna, saw Christ and heard His preaching.” This “sermon of the Savior in hell was a sermon of victory and salvation, which, however, does not mean that it brought salvation and joy to all prisoners in hell: it brought salvation only to those who, during earthly life, retained the ability to be saved and had the germ of a new life. For those for whom the fire of life went out during earthly existence, it was nothing but suffering and torment.” Finally, it should be noted that “the Savior descended into hell after His death, but before His resurrection, during those three days when His body lay in the tomb, He descended with His soul revived and resurrected from separation from earthly flesh, which as a result of this separation became even closer communion and connection with the Divine.” See: Hieromonk George (Yaroshevsky). Explanation of the most difficult passages of the first letter of St. Apostle Peter // Dep. reprint from the “Tauride Diocesan Gazette”, No. 20 and 22, b.g., p. 4–10. Among the fragments of interpretation on the “Book of Job” by St. Methodius has survived alone, explaining this passage as follows: “Many descended into the abyss (hell), not to walk in it, but to remain prisoners. Jesus alone, as free (ἐλεύϑερος), walked in this abyss, where there are no traces of those who walk. For He accepted death, not being guilty of death, in order to free those subject to death, saying to the prisoners: come out, and to those in darkness: show yourself (Is. 49:9), with which the following agrees.” Creations of St. Gregory the Wonderworker and St. Methodius, bishop and martyr, c. 286. Rev. Anastasius suggests that Christ descended into hell not by His Divine nature, not as God, invisible and incomprehensible in essence. Wed. interpretation of Euthymius Zigaben: “No creature, not only corporeal, but also incorporeal, has seen God, since He is essentially invisible even to incorporeal forces, although they see Him as much as possible.” The explanatory Gospel of John, compiled according to the ancient patristic interpretations of the Byzantine, 12th century, by the learned monk Euthymius Zigaben. Kyiv, 1887, p. 15. This phrase (ἔν τῷ μνήματι ἄνω ἐπὶ γῆς ἔκειτο) indicates the well-known fact that the body of the Lord was not buried in the ground, but was laid in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. This “new tomb, which Joseph carved into the rock, was located very close to the place of execution of the Savior. No one has been laid here yet; the tomb was probably not even finished yet and represented only one chamber, when the only simple bed near its wall was supposed to serve as a temporary tomb for the brief mortal rest of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Makkavesky N. Archeology of the history of the sufferings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Kyiv, 1891, p. 224. In a similar interpretation of Is.49:9, Rev. Anastasius is completely unanimous with St. Cyril of Alexandria, who, defending the fullness of humanity of Christ against the Apollinarians, says that the soul of the Lord (divine soul - ψυχὴ δὲ ἡ ϑεία), having acquired the [wonderful] destiny of being united with God the Word, descended into hell and, using divine power and strength (ϑεοπρεπεῖ δὲ δυνάμει καὶ ἐξουσίᾳ χρωμένη), appeared to the spirits who were there, saying to them, “to those who are in chains: come out: and to those who are in darkness open up." Further St. Cyril quotes 1 Peter 3:17–18, noting that it was not the Deity of the Only Begotten, by Himself and in Itself (ὡς γυμνὴ καὶ. καϑ ἔαυτὴν) that descended into hell, for It is completely invisible. But just as [during the earthly life of the Lord] His Divine nature, together with the body, closely communicated with those living in the flesh, so She preached to the souls in hell, having on Her, like her own clothing (ἴδιον ἔχων φόρημα), a soul united with Her. See: Cyrille d'Alexandrie. Deux dialogues christologiques. Ed par G M. de Durand // Sources chrétiennes, No. 97. Paris, 1964, p. 234–236. St. Cyril only, unlike Rev. Anastasia, more strongly and sharply emphasizes the connection of the Lord’s soul with the Divine, even during the descent into hell. The interpretation is blessed. Theodorite of this place in the “Book of the Prophet Isaiah” is distinguished by a more vague and general character, not correlating with the descent of the Lord into hell: here, according to the thought of the Cyrus archpastor, it is simply prophesied about Christ: He freed people chained by their sins and illuminated them with the Light of God (τῷ φωτὶ τῆς ϑεογνωσίας) who are in darkness. See: Theodoret de Cyr. Commentaire sur Isaie, t. III. Ed par J-N. Guinot // Sources chretiennes, No. 315. Paris, 1984, p. 84. Saying this, Rev. Anastasius apparently implies that the soul of Christ in hell represented the fullness of His humanity. A fairly free reference to the 45th “Word” of St. Gregory the Theologian. Wed. Russian translation: “If He descends into hell, you too descend with Him, and learn the mysteries of Christ there: what is the Economy and what is the reason for the double condescension? Does He save everyone without exception by appearing there, or only believers?” Saint Gregory the Theologian. Collection of works in 2 volumes, vol. 1, p. 677. Reference to the 38th “Word” of St. Gregory the Theologian. See Russian translation: “The Word of God itself, eternal, invisible, incomprehensible, incorporeal, the beginning from the beginning, light from light, the source of life and immortality, the imprint of primordial Beauty, the imprint unbearable, the unchangeable image, the definition and word of the Father, comes to His image, bears flesh for the sake of flesh, unites with the rational soul for the sake of my soul, purifying like with like; done by man in everything except sin” Ibid., p. 528. Briefly speaking about the heresy of Apollinaris, Rev. Anastasius denotes its essence with the expression δίκην ἀλόγου. Apollinaris, developing his heretical Christology, proceeded, among other things, from the fact that the essence of the mind (as opposed to the essence of the flesh) consists of self-determination and free will. Hence the impossibility of recognizing two minds in Christ: Divine and human, for the Lord, by virtue of His sinlessness, could not possess a sinful human mind. As a result of this thesis, Apollinaris came to the doctrine of the presence in Christ of one nature, hypostasis, personality, will and action (“energy”). See: Raven Ch. E. Apollinarism An Essay on the Christology of the Early Chuch Cambridge, 1923, p. 182–184. Regarding this expression, see note. 31 to the first “Word” {see. footnote No. 67, beginning: “When explaining the above words, you need to remember...” Editorial of the ABC of Faith}. This is the expression of Rev. Anastasia (περιγραπτὴν ἤ ἐκπορευτικὴν ἐνέργειαν) is probably consonant with this statement of St. Gregory the Theologian, asking: “How does the soul turn in me? Does life give and itself participate in suffering? How is thought (mind – ὁ νοῦς) both enclosed within limits and indefinable (καὶ περιγραπτὸς καὶ ἀόριστος), and abides in us and bypasses everything in the speed of its aspiration and flow?” Saint Gregory the Theologian. Collection of works in 2 volumes, vol. 1, p. 405. Text: Grégoire de Nazianze. Discours 27–31 (Discours theologiques). Ed. par P. Gallay // Sources chrdtiennes, No. 250. Paris, 1978, p. 146. Rev. Anastasius, using this expression, most likely implies the dual nature of the “energy” of the soul: its “introversion” and “extroversion”. What follows is a gap in the text. Rev. Anastasius uses here the expression ἡ κυριακὴ ψυχή, which is close in meaning to another expression common in patristic writing - ὅ κυριακὸς ἄνϑρωπος. The latter was used by the Fathers of the Church to designate the human nature of the Lord Jesus Christ, and here the dominance and dominion (κυριότης) of this nature, its glorification (christologia gloriae), which is the result of the hypostatic unity of this humanity with the Divine, was often emphasized. See: Grillmeier A. Ὅ κυριακὸς ἄνϑρωπος. Eine Studie zu einer christologischen Bezeichnung der Vaterzeit // Traditio. Studies in Ancient and Medieval History, Thought and Religion, v. 33:1977, p. 1–63. In other words, the prediction of Samuel, which is discussed in the “First Book of Samuel,” could not have come, according to Rev. Anastasia, from dark power. It should be noted that the episode with the Endor ventriloquist gave rise, starting from Pseudo-Philo (Lib. Ant. Bibl. 64:1–9), to a fairly lively controversy, which was especially heated in ancient church writing. Three outstanding ancient Christian exegetes: Origen, St. Eustathius of Antioch and St. Gregory of Nyssa, dedicated special compositions to this episode. During this debate, three main points of view were expressed: 1) the ventriloquist really called Samuel’s soul from hell, 2) in the appearance of Samuel before Saul one should see a ghost, the cause of which was the devil’s instigation, andˆ3) Samuel (more precisely, his soul) truly appeared before Saul, but not thanks to the sorcery of the ventriloquist, but by the will of God. See the preface to the publication of the three named works: Origene. Eustazio. Gregorio di Nissa. La maga di Endor a cura di M. Simonetti. Firenze, 1989, p. 7–38. Rev. Anastasius, judging by his statement οἰκονομίαν καὶ λαλήσασα τῷ Σαοὺλ), adheres to the third point of view. Here he diverges, for example, from St. Gregory of Nyssa, leaning towards the second opinion: “The demon, always obedient to the sorceress, took with him other spirits to seduce the woman herself and Saul, who was seduced through her, and made the demons recognized by the ventriloquist as gods, and he himself was transformed into the appearance of the one being summoned, feignedly spoke in his voice and, as it was natural to conclude from what was visible, as if in the form of a prophecy, he uttered the expected sentence, which should have been fulfilled.” Works of St. Gregory of Nyssa, part 4. M., 1862, p. 196–197. In the surviving authentic works of St. Afanasy this phrase is missing. Similar thoughts are developed in the work of Pseudo-Athanasius “Against Apollinaris” (in the Russian translation it is listed as the work of the saint himself). Here, in particular, it says: “In vain do the Arians lie, supposing that the Savior took upon Himself only flesh, and wickedly transferring the concept of suffering to the impassive Divinity. It is in vain that you, by another thought, philosophizing like them, assert that Christ used an externally clothed, i.e., articulate image, instead of the inner man in us in Christ, the heavenly mind. How did He grieve, grieve, and pray? It is written: And Jesus was troubled in spirit (John 11:33). This is not characteristic of irrational flesh and not of the immutable Divinity, but of the soul that thinks, grieves, is embarrassed, grieves and rationally feels suffering.” Creations in four volumes, vol. III. M., p. 1994, p. 333. Wed. reasoning of one Orthodox dogmatist: “The sinful state is, when moving away from the true God, life on the principles of the flesh, and not the spirit, constant service to the base, and not the sublime, is a hovering not in the sphere of the mental (τὰ νοητὰ), as the ancient Christians expressed it, but in the sphere of the sensual (τὰ αἰσϑητά). In a sinful state, a person does not contemplate what the soul should imagine, but sees only what is subject to feeling. What dominates here is not the spirit with its highest aspirations, but the flesh with its lower inclinations, with its nest, as it were, a swarm of countless passions.” Ponomarev Π. P. About salvation. Issue I. Kazan, 1917, p. 104. This is a sinful state, entailing corruption and death, and also presupposing the complete submission of a person to the tyranny of the devil, Rev. Anastasius calls it “diabolical (carnal) desire” (τὸ διαβολικὸν ϑέλημα) and “satanic action” (σατανικὴν ἐνέργειαν). The Lord abolished them, deifying in Himself the entire totality of human nature. Wed. teaching of St. Athanasius: “Although the Word took on the flesh capable of sin, in the person of the Redeemer the Divinity had a predominant role, so that the inclination of the flesh to sin “was torn away by the Divine,” “The Lord removed the Fall from the flesh, the captive of which it was always, which is why it did not accept the Divine thought.” In contrast to the changeability of Adam, expressed in his fall, Jesus Christ as a man was unchangeable in goodness, so that the new seduction of the serpent in relation to the second Adam could not have any force” Popov I. IN . The religious ideal of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria. Sergiev Posad, 1904, p. 45. Naturally, saying this, Rev. Anastasius suggests a struggle between the “rational will” and the “carnal will.” Wed. on this subject, the reasoning of St. Theophan: a sinner is “a captive who sees himself bound hand and foot, and blithely abandons himself to the blasphemous fate of slavery. This is the main ailment, the fundamental evil that supports all mental illnesses, nourishes all sinful inclinations - the unwillingness to rebel against sin, the unwillingness to submit to the will of God. Whoever wants to free himself from the slavery of sin, to cleanse his soul from all filth, must first of all hate sin, kindle the desire to resist it, destroy opposition to God’s law and kindle the desire to walk in it - it is necessary to break the will.” Creations like the saints of our father Theophan the Recluse. Outline of Christian moral teaching, vol. I. M., 1994, p. 195. As Bishop Vasily (Bogdashevsky) notes, here “three basic concepts are distinguished: heart (leb, καρδία, διανοία), soul (nephesch, ψυχὴ) and strength (meod, ἰσχύς, δύναμις). The first indicates the origin of man in general and mainly his rational ability; the second is for feeling; third - to freedom. Love God with all the strength of your soul: direct all your thoughts to God; enlighten your senses by union with God; direct your will according to the will of God. Not equal to this commandment, but similar to it is love for our neighbors - similar, for we love our neighbor in God, love for our neighbor has its true basis in love for God.” Bishop Vasily (Bogdashevsky). Gospel of Matthew. Critical-exegetical study. Kyiv, 1915, p. 391. This statement is not found in the Areopagitica. A similar thought is found in the essay “On Divine Names”: “Whether we call Eros divine, or angelic, or physical, let us imagine Him as a kind of connecting and binding Force, prompting the higher to take care of the lower, equals to communicate with each other, and those who have fallen to the limit to turn to the best who are above.” Dionysius the Areopagite. About Divine names. On mystical theology, p. 131. By “sorrow” (σκυϑρωπότητος) here we most likely mean the “crying” that is discussed in the next “bliss”. According to Euthymius Zigaben, “He calls mourners not just those who cry, but those who cry about their sins. It is shameful and impermissible to cry about everyday matters.” Explanatory Gospel of Matthew, compiled according to ancient patristic interpretations, Byzantine, 12th century, by the learned monk Euthymius Zigaben. Kyiv, 1886, p. 56. Such “crying over sins” certainly requires an effort of rational will, in contrast to “crying over the things of life.” According to the interpretation of blessed. Jerome, “due to the negligence of the owner, the spirit abiding in a person may not have the fruits characteristic of it (suos), and vice versa: the flesh may, after mortifying its deeds, cease to sin. However, they will never move forward so much that the neglected tree of the spirit begins to bear fruits of the flesh and the cultivated tree of the flesh produces spiritual fruits.” Works of Blessed Jerome of Stridon, part 17, p. 181–182. The quotation is missing from the Areopagitica. Rev. Anastasius hints at Arian Christology (in many ways similar to the Apollinarian one, but based on different dogmatic premises), according to which God the Word did not take on the fullness of human nature, but “settled” in a “soulless body” (σῶμα ἄψυχον), replacing the human soul with Himself. See: Lorenz R. Arius judaizans? Untersuchungen zu dogmengeschichtlichen Einordnung des Arius. Göttingen, 1979, pp. 211–213. Rev. Anastasius quotes this passage of Scripture very freely. See interpretation of blessedness. Theophylact: “Here, apparently, there is an identity; but in reality there is none. Above he said (v. 18): “as one is by sin, so is one by justification,” and now he explains what the sin of one was and says that it was disobedience, through which many became sinners, that is, guilty of punishment and condemned to death; He also explains what the justification of the One, that is, Christ, consists of, and says that it is obedience even to death, and death on the cross, through which obedience death is crushed and we are freed from condemnation to it.” Blessed Theophylact, Archbishop of Bulgaria, Commentary on the Epistles of St. Apostle Paul, p. 35. The difference between Adam and Christ Rev. Anastasius designates as the difference between a “slave” (δοῦλος) and [who came] “in the form of a slave” (ἐν τῇ μορφῇ τοῦ δοὐλου) It can be assumed that “in the form of a slave” here is similar in meaning to the expression “in the likeness of flesh” sinful" (Rom. 8:3). See the remark of the blessed one on this matter. Theodorit. “The Apostle did not say: in the likeness of the flesh, but new in the likeness of the flesh of sin. For the Son of God took upon Himself human nature, but did not accept human sin. Therefore, the Apostle called what was perceived not in the likeness of the flesh, but in the likeness of the flesh of sin. For Christ, having the same nature with us, did not have the same direction of will.” Works of Blessed Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrrhus, part 7, p. 82–83. Speaking in this way about the “debt” of a person, Rev. Anastasius briefly formulates the dogma of the atoning sacrifice of the Lord, which is expounded in many different (but consonant) ways by many Fathers of the Church. For example, according to the teachings of St. Irenaeus of Lyon, “having fallen to the power of the devil, man thereby showed disobedience to God, became an enemy of God, a debtor to Him. But the debt required payment, the insult required propitiation, and this payment, this propitiation was accomplished through the suffering and death on the cross of Jesus Christ, as a manifestation of the highest obedience to God the Father, and thus the God-man covered our disobedience with His obedience and reconciled us with God.” Also, according to the teachings of Blessed Theodoret, “sin makes a person guilty before God, a child of the wrath of God, rejected and subject to an oath, therefore the suffering and death on the cross of Jesus Christ is the payment of a debt to God, a propitiatory sacrifice brought to Him for the human race, for deliverance from sin and curse.” “Lord,” says the blessed one. Theodoret, - is nailed to the cross not as punishment for (his own) sins, but to repay the debt of our nature, because it owed it by breaking the laws of the Creator. And just as, having fallen into debt, he was unable to pay the debt, the Lord Himself wisely provides for the payment of the debt and, having received the members of this nature, as if it were some kind of property, by wise and truthful dispensation he pays the debt and frees the nature.” Finally, at St. John of Damascus, this dogma is designated as follows: “In order for the New Adam to truly and completely save the old, the Word becomes a Mediator between God and people, who have incurred the wrath of God by their sins - and so, for the reconciliation of God, Christ offers Himself as an atoning sacrifice for people - in which a whole sea of ​​​​God's truth was revealed. To fulfill this goal, Christ for our sake took on the form of a slave and together with us was called a slave; being dispassionate, he enslaved himself to suffering for us. By the good pleasure of God the Father, the Only Begotten Son unabashedly humbles His inestimable height and condescends to His servants with unspeakable and incomprehensible condescension, and is obedient to the Father; by taking upon Himself our nature, He heals disobedience and serves as a model of obedience for us, without which it is impossible to be saved... But not only according to the will of the Father, but also according to His will, voluntarily. He, as a man, in Himself and through Himself subordinated His human nature to God and the Father and was obedient to the Father; He voluntarily hungered, voluntarily thirsted, voluntarily feared, voluntarily gave Himself up to death not only as God, but also as a man” see: Orfanitsky I. Historical presentation of the dogma of the atoning sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ. M. 1904, p. 21, 123, 125–126. To the literal quotation from the “Gospel of John” by Rev. Anastasius adds paraphrases from John 4:34, 5:36, 15:10, 17:4. For comparison, we can cite the thoughts of St. Cyril of Alexandria regarding John 6:38: “Although the suffering on the cross was in some respects involuntary (not desirable) for the Savior Christ, it was voluntary (desirable) for our sake and (because of) the good will (on them) of God and the Father. So, when He had to ascend to the cross, He made, obviously in the form of a prayer, the following appeal to the Father: “Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me, not as I will, but as You will” (Matthew 26:39). Since “the Word was God,” immortal and incorruptible, and life itself by nature, then, I think, it is quite obvious to everyone that He could not fear death. However, as one who has appeared in the flesh, he allows one to endure the things inherent in the flesh and fear the soon-to-be-approaching death, in order to appear as a true man. Therefore he says, “If it is possible, let this cup pass from Me.” If it is possible, he says, Father, without being subjected to death, to return life to those who have fallen under it; if death dies without My death, of course, according to the flesh, then let the cup pass by, he says. However, if this cannot happen otherwise, then not as I want, but as You want. You see how again human nature, in so far as this applies (only) to it, even in Christ Himself turns out to be exhausted. But through the Word united with it, it rises to divine boldness and passes into a courageous mood, so that it does not allow what is pleasing to its own desires, but, on the contrary, follows the divine goal and hastily rushes towards everything to which the law of the Creator calls us. And that we are speaking the truth here, you can learn from the very addition (of His words): “For the spirit, he says, is willing, but the flesh is weak.” (Matthew 26:41) Christ did not know that to be exposed to death and to feel the fear of it is least characteristic of divine dignity, why to what was said he immediately added a reason, saying that the flesh, by its very nature, is fitting and proper to be weak, while the spirit turns out to be vigorous and incapable of being harmed in any way. From here you can see how death was involuntary for Christ, due to the flesh and the ignominy of suffering, but at the same time voluntary, until the will of the Father was brought to a prosperous end for the whole world, that is, the salvation and life of all.” To this Gethsemane conflict, according to St. Cyril, the words in John 6:38 also indicate: The Lord spoke them, “teaching that His death for all was free, for the Divine Nature so desired, but involuntary, due to the suffering of the cross and since it concerned the flesh, which turns away from death.” See: Works of our holy father Cyril of Alexandria, part 13. Sergiev Posad, 1906, p. 5–6, 15. Rev. Perspective Anastasia is different and clearer, for he thinks not simply in the Christological categories “God is flesh (human nature),” but in the latter he also especially emphasizes the rational soul and its will. Rev. Anastasius develops his argument in more detail in the “Chapters against the Monothelites,” which in the edition of K.-H. Utemanna follows "Words". You might be interested in: