На путях догмы 243 (После семи Вселенских Соборов)

When it is necessary to draw the dogmatic face of Orthodoxy, it is defined first of all as the Church of the Seven Ecumenical Councils. This definition, of course, by no means exhausts the entire dogma of Orthodoxy, but it expresses its attitude to the most basic question of the Christian faith: “...whom do the nations say that I am?” (Luke 9:18). There is a living and miraculous image of Christ, captured in the Four Gospels, and there is his dogmatic prophecy, divinely outlined in the definitions of the seven Ecumenical Councils. They establish a sacred boundary and an immutable basis for the church's theology in matters of Christology. It is a mistake to understand the Councils as some kind of sacred oracles, each pronouncing its own definition. On the contrary, the Councils must be understood in their connection as a single complex value, and its individual parts are not at all equivalent, although they are included in the general dogmatic meaning. Thus, the Second Council is not equivalent to the First, the Third, and especially the Fifth, Fourth or Sixth, and its special place belongs to the Seventh Council. If we compare the content of their dogmatic definitions, then the definitions of some of them have a primary meaning, like those of Nicea or Chalcedon, while others are only historically instrumental, auxiliary, like Cyril’s anathematisms of the Council of Ephesus or, even more so, the rejection of the “three chapters” at the Fifth Council. Who will now, in fact, measure their Orthodoxy by their attitude to the teachings of even Willow of Ephesus! It is necessary to clearly distinguish in the conciliar definitions themselves (not only canonical, but even dogmatic) what belongs to the historical moment in all its dialectical one-sidedness (this applies, of course, most of all to the Third and especially the Fifth Ecumenical Councils) and what is κτῆμα εἰς ἀεί (eternal heritage (Greek) - Ed.), transparent dogmatic crystals that have universal, super-historical significance. Such, of course, are the Nicene definition of the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father (όμοούσιος), the Chalcedonian-Constantinople definition of the unity of hypostasis with the inseparability and non-fusion of two natures and wills. Historically, dogmas crystallized from the theology of the era with its problematics, being answers to these questions. Therefore, they cannot be understood in isolation from theology, which in turn is connected with the philosophy of the era. The word of the Apostle Paul: “...it is fitting for differences of opinion to exist among you, so that those who are most skillful may be revealed” (1 Cor. 11:19) - expresses the historical formation of dogmas from the questioning of perplexed, hesitant, checking, doubting, drilling theological thought, which is not characterized by immobility and hibernation. Considered from the human side, the work of the seven Ecumenical Councils was the greatest effort and feat of theology, unparalleled in its kind in the history of the Church. However, there is a fundamental difference between dogma, as crystallized dogmatic truth, and theology, as the general atmosphere of thought in which it is deposited. Dogma is the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, while theology is the work of human thought, enlightened by faith and grace. Dogmatic development is carried out by the creativity of theologians, among whom are the fathers and teachers of the Church, and there are heretics condemned by it. Both theologically equally participate in the common task of dogmatic creativity and usually even mutually determine each other in its dialectical process. From this point of view, both are equally theologians who have varying degrees of theological talent and acuity of thought. It is absurd and erroneous to imagine the matter in such a way that some - namely, the teachers of the Church - possessed the gift of theological clairvoyance, which is why their creations are sometimes actually equated almost with dogmas and even the Word of God, while others, heretics, acquire only an evil will to resist the truth. One should clearly distinguish the ecclesiastical authority of the Church Fathers from their theological significance and not replace purely theological argumentation with supposedly infallible texts from patristic writing. This goes without saying in church historical science, but it is often forgotten and in fact even rejected in dogma, which, however, is just as guilty of historical truth as history. Dogmas arise not from a comparison of infallible patristic texts, which infallibility in fact belongs solely and exclusively to the Word of God, but from the entire theology of the era with its aporias and problematics. And historically, the dogma of the Ecumenical Councils arises in the process of theological overcoming of aporias and dialectical oppositions that emerge in the mental realization of the basic facts of the Christian faith, all of which are reduced to a single and comprehensive Gospel truth: Christ is the Son of God - the Son of Man. To unite what is incompatible, to bring together what is distant, to reconcile what is contradictory, to understand this unity and, as it were, the identification of God and Man in the God-man - such is this difficulty for the theological mind, such is this, in theology called Christological, a problem that theological thought could not avoid, and even if it had been silenced by the Orthodox, it would still have been exacerbated heretical. Yes, that’s actually what happened. The two names of both heretics condemned by the Church signify milestones in the development of the Christological problem: Presbyter Arius and Bishop Apollinaris. The question of the first refers to the Divine nature of the Lord, the second – to His God-manhood. Arius’s doubt regarding the equidivinity of the Son, which continues the teaching of the Ebionites, Paul of Samosata, in a certain sense dynamic monarchists, naturally and inevitably arose on the way to assimilate the Trinity dogma, which represents the implied basis for the entire Gospel gospel, but contradicts equally the abstract Jewish monotheism, and, on the other hand, the no less abstract theism of Aristotle, as well as the Stoic pantheism, neoplatonic emanatism, in general all the traditions of Hellenic wisdom: temptation for the Hellenes, madness for the Jews. How is and is it possible for the equidivinity of the Three Hypostases to be possible in the face of reason, as well as according to the data of the Word of God? Arius's anti-Trinitarian doubt, even if it was not overcome speculatively, was weakened by the heavenly thunder of the Nicene ὁμοούσιος, which victory was enshrined in the dogmatic formulations of Cappadocian theology. The deadening Arian doubt actually enriched the Church with the indestructible fence of the Nicene Symbol. Arian doubt, however, also had another edge, a cosmological one: the question was how to understand the relationship of God to the world He created, or the absolute to the relative, the eternal to the temporal, the Creator to creation? And is not some kind of mediation postulated here between God and creation? This question at one time remained truly unanswered in theology, and therefore was not answered in dogma, as it remains even to this day. But he returns to us again, on the one hand, in the pantheistic deviations of philosophy, and on the other, in sophiological problems and constructions within the framework of church dogma. Each era is capable of achieving only a limited feat, and for the Athanasian age the Nicene victory over those who denied the oneness of the Son of God with the Father was enough for it to be limited in dogmatic creativity, leaving the problems of sophiological cosmology to the centuries to come. But already overcoming the Arian doubt about the consubstantiality of the Father and the Son necessarily entailed a further disclosure of the Christological problem: if Christ is truly the consubstantial Son of God, then in what sense is He also the Son of Man? What do the divine words of the Evangelist-Theologian mean: “...The Word became flesh” (John 1:14)? All of this proper Christological problematic is fully contained in the teaching of Bishop Apollinaris (the younger) of Laodicea, who, being branded a heretic, at the same time is perhaps the most subtle and acute theologian of the entire Christological era, who left his mark on the most essential thing - namely, in the problematic of God-manhood. Apollinaris, largely misunderstood by his contemporaries and, perhaps, himself did not find adequate expression for his thought, is the true founder of Christological theology. Later theologians who continue his work define themselves in relation to him; his teaching occupies a key position here. Its main motive is the desire to understand the possibility and image of the union of the Divine and human nature in Christ and express it in theological concepts. He proceeds from the negative axiom, later confirmed by the Church, that in its fullness human and Divine nature cannot be united, and therefore they can only intertwine with each other as if separate parts. He understood this connection in such a way that the human body and soul, the “animate body,” are actually united with the Logos as Spirit (πνεῦμα). If Apollinaris is properly understood here, then in essence he anticipates the Chalcedonian dogma, which also affirms the Logos’ perception of human nature without its own hypostasis, which is the Logos itself for both natures. This basic idea is complicated in him by a number of other motives, some of them extremely valuable, such as about heavenly man and God-manhood, and some misunderstood, such as the idea that humanity can overcome mutability in itself only at the cost of losing freedom, through its instrumental subordination to the unchanging (ἄτρεπτος) Logos. The idea of ​​God-manhood in this rudimentary form, as it was expressed by Apollinaris, which, moreover, remained ununderstood even to the point of amazingness, frightened his contemporaries with its paradoxicality. However, it has already confronted thought with the problem of the unthinkable union of two natures, regarding which hitherto they were satisfied with the vague and incomprehensible concept of “perception of the flesh.” Now a most difficult and painful problem has arisen: what does this perception of human flesh by God mean, how to understand its basis and consequences? From Apollinaris, who exposed the problem of the duality of natures and the unity of the hypostasis in Christ in all its severity, comes the Christological dialectic in its two antithetical, mutually conjugate, and in its one-sidedness mutually exclusive principles - unity and duality, as in thesis and antithesis. We have the thesis in the Alexandrian school of genetic theology, which proceeds from the unity of the God-man, and the antithesis in the Antiochian school, which focuses on the beginning of duality in Him. Among the first we have, as the great founder, Saint Cyril of Alexandria, and the genetic tendencies of his theology - already with heretical biases - continue in the motley spectrum of Monophysitism. The latter are represented by a brilliant galaxy of Antiochian theologians, from Theodore of Tire to Blessed Theodoret, continued in essence by the theologians of Dithelitism - Saint Patriarch Sophronius and Saint Maximus the Confessor. This theological opposition corresponds to the doctrinal coloring of the Ecumenical Councils, the Third and Fifth - with a decisive predominance of Alexandrian tendencies, the Fourth and Sixth - with a predominance of Antiochian ones. At the same time, both sides equally deny Apollinarianism, and one side, the Alexandrian, is invariably suspected of it and justified in it, while the second, the Antiochian, invariably repels from it, and in fact both of them are equally, although in a different sense, imprinted by its spirit, since they move in the mainstream of its problematics. Namely, both sides ask the same question from Apollinaris: how is it possible, how was it accomplished, what did the union of two natures in Christ lead to? St. Cyril, who establishes the Alexandrian tradition, starts from the idea of ​​absorbing genotism or genetic mixture. At the same time, in Saint Cyril himself it is necessary to distinguish, as it were, two faces: the father of the Church, who, obeying, as it were, some ecclesiastical instinct, invariably keeps within the boundaries of Orthodoxy, although not always justified by his own theology, and the theologian, a representative of the Alexandrian school, on whom all its dialectical one-sidedness and limitations gravitate, overcome often only by inconsistency. According to Saint Cyril, Christ is one, composed of (ἐκ) two natures. Although their difference is not eliminated through their unity, only ἐν θεωρίᾳ μόνη remains (in one contemplation (Greek) - Ed.), and it is not allowed to be distinguished in more than just contemplation. The incarnate Logos is not divided, but combines both natures together and, as it were, mixes (ἀνακιρνᾶς) some with other properties of natures (hence the direct path to both Eutyches and the North). This genetic tendency is crowned with the pseudo-Athanasian, in reality Apollinarian formula μία φύσις τοῦ Θεοῦ Λόγου σεσαρκομένη (one nature of God the Word incarnate (Greek) - Approx. ed.), which Saint Cyril accepted into leadership. It is characterized not only by the general Monophysite “flavor”, but also by its ambiguity, stemming from the terminological, and further theological, non-distinction between nature and the person-hypostasis. The theology of Saint Cyril both arose and developed polemically, and therefore dialectically in opposition to Antioch: unity was asserted here against division, but how to combine the closest unity of human and Divine nature with the preservation of the originality of the latter and vice versa? The Gospel image of the Son of God - the Son of Man - appeared before the theology of St. Cyril as an unanswerable problem with which Blessed Theodoret, one might say, theologically tortured his opponent. How can the Gethsemane struggle and exhaustion on the cross, hunger and thirst, ignorance and exhaustion, suffering and death on the cross be attributed to God? For Antiochian theology, the answer was clear - all this is characteristic of man in the God-man, but for genetic understanding such, of course, imaginary overcoming was not so easy. All that remained was to escape into the realm of “oikonomia,” which thereby became a theological asylum ignorantiae (shelter of ignorance (lat.) – Ed.). Under the protection of oikonomia, it was possible, as a theological answer, to combine obvious contradictions and incompatibilities: “...to attribute exhaustion to God the Word, who does not know transformation or suffering, means to conclude and say something about man according to the economic union with the flesh. Although He became a man, the essence of the sacrament in no way harms His nature. He remained the same as He was, even giving himself to humanity for the salvation and life of the world... we do not diminish His Divine nature and the glory of the world... we do not diminish His Divine nature and glory for the sake of His humanity, nor do we deny the dispensation,” etc. It is not difficult to see that if this and similar sayings, which are found in abundance in the works of St. Cyril, are stripped of their verbosity, then they contain an obvious and undisguised logical contradiction: he truly became human, but did not change, remains what he was, but is exhausted on the cross and under. When we move from this abstract consideration to the concrete, if, for example, the question of Christ’s knowledge or ignorance of the day of the Second Coming is closely raised, then the inconsistency of thought already takes on a slant towards docetism: “... He Himself knows in essence, as the Wisdom of God, but is placed under the level of ignorant humanity, economically accomplishes what is characteristic of others”; “He does not distance himself from appearing ignorant, for this becomes a man,” etc. To allow such manifestations of humanity for the species means to open the door wide to both Monophysitism and Docetism, in comparison with which even direct Apollinarianism is preferable, and this is not an accidental misunderstanding, but the main aporia of genetic theology, not overcome and not yet truly even realized within the actual limits of one thesis. Therefore, it is completely legitimate and inevitable that a dialectical opposition to it arises - an antithesis, in the image of Antiochene theology, which was stylized by opponents as “Nestorianism” in the dogmatic struggle, although in fact it never existed in such a stylized form. Antioch in Christology expresses the problematic of the duality of natures in Christ and the image of their union. It equally starts from both Apollinarianism, in which it sees a compromise and indecisive abolition of humanity in Christ through its damage and belittlement, and from Cyril’s henotism, in which it sees the absorption of humanity by the Divine. A special source of inspiration for Antiochian theology is the pathos of biblicalism, characteristic of its exegetical style: it constantly contemplated the Gospel image of Christ in all its concreteness and considered itself guilty of theology, proceeding not from theological abstract concepts, but from the Gospel. To defend human nature in all its undiminished originality becomes the main theological task of Antioch, from which arises the need to theologically substantiate and defend the duality, non-fusion and non-absorption of natures, to separate them from each other along a certain ontological line. Such a facet is a special hypostasis inherent not only in divine, but also in human nature. This idea, of course, disgusts us, but we must not forget how primitive and clumsy the theological means of the era were in general. The duality of natures has turned into a duality of persons, and the very concepts of nature and hypostasis are like mowers and kitchen knives as surgical instruments. It is known at what high price they paid for their tendency: the duality of natures turned into a duality of persons. They did not know how and did not want to separate nature from hypostasis and allow the absence of an independent human hypostasis in the human nature of Christ. For them, her lack of selflessness was tantamount to a lack of true originality. Therefore, the only open way for them was to recognize a complex hypostasis, obtained through free moral agreement and the hierarchical relationship of both hypostases characteristic of both natures, συνάφεια - combination. It must be said, however, that the Antiochians never dwelled on the duality of hypostases as the final statement; on the contrary, it postulated for them a special hypostasis of unity as the result of some moral achievement. Perhaps, with the greatest completeness, although in silent language, this postulate was expressed by Nestorius in his dying “Heraclides,” written in the obscurity of exile. Of course, theologically, this postulate is also impossible to fulfill and remains unfulfilled, however, to the same extent as the main postulate of Alexandrianism about the preservation of the duality of natures in their unity remained unfulfilled. Theologically, both sides turned out to be equally right and wrong, like thesis and antithesis, still awaiting a theological synthesis. The Antiochians did not know that the main postulate of their theology could be fulfilled in a different way than the one that seemed to them as the only one, exactly as it was implemented by the Church: human nature does not actually remain selfless. She also has a hypostasis for herself, but this is not a special hypostasis, but the Divine hypostasis of the Logos. In His God-manhood He hypostasizes not only His Divine, but also His human nature, and is, as it were, a double-hypostasis of the one God-man. It is this answer that is most anticipated in the Heraclidean hypostasis of unity - it is not without reason that Nestorius of exile, free from polemical bitterness (his opponent, St. Cyril at that time was already in the grave), welcomes the message of Pope Leo the Great and thereby merges his theology into the Chalcedonian mainstream. Both disputing sides in the Christological dialectic remained unreconciled and unsurpassed, and could not be reconciled on the plane of antithetics - the direct opposition of thesis and antithesis. Both sides cited biblical texts in their defense, both were equally right and wrong, albeit in different ways. The theological twist remained unresolved. The external destinies of both schools were different and somehow little corresponded to their actual influence. The theology of Saint Cyril, glorified by the Church as σφραγὶς τῶν πατέρω (seal of the Fathers (Church) (lat.) – Ed. ), was recognized as the guiding norm of church teaching, and was referred to equally by both its supporters and opponents (especially characteristic in Chalcedon), but its theological school had a real continuation only in Monophysitism. The Antiochian school seemed to suffer defeat after defeat: it was anathematized at the Council of Cyril in Ephesus in the person of Nestorius and was condemned and cursed in the person of three of its representatives (Theodore of Mopsuet, Willow of Edessa and Blessed Theodoret) and their “three heads.” And yet its actual influence was much more vital and significant than that of Alexandria: after Cyril’s victory in Ephesus, Antioch triumphed over its main opponent - St. Cyril, who capitulated theologically in the union letter to John of Antioch in 433. After the “robber” Council of Dioscorus, where the triumph of Alexandrianism was given in the ugly form of Eutychianism, Antioch again gained real predominance in Chalcedon. Banned at the V Ecumenical Council, its tendencies found a new, albeit modified form, dominance at the VI Ecumenical Council. But in essence, both schools, having played their historical role, equally disappeared from the scene after the Council of Chalcedon, outlived their usefulness, having lost their raison d'être (meaning of existence (French) - Ed.). However, was there a theological overcoming of them here, or just a dogmatic, doctrinal one? Was a theological victory won by one or another of the schools, doctrinally resolving the issue and by this decision abolishing the other school? An impartial study must say that this was not the case: both schools stand opposite each other in antithetical opposition, like “yes” and “no,” both right and both wrong in their dialectical polarity. There cannot be a bifurcation of natures with the unity of hypostasis in the God-man, says the thesis of Alexandrianism; There cannot be a duality of natures without a duality of hypostases, for each nature is presupposed to have its own hypostasis, says the antithesis of Antioch. Is there a way out of this antithetical, is a synthesis possible that would surpass it and, in a certain sense, “remove” it (aufgehoben, in Hegelian terms)? Or is such a synthesis generally impossible, and we have here the ultimate antinomy for reason, which is rationally expressed simply in a logical contradiction, that is, leads to absurdity, as rationalism gloatingly asserts? No theological synthesis was found, both schools outlived their usefulness, one - bowing under the weight of the anathemas of the V Ecumenical Council, the other - under the burden of its Monophysite interpretation, they simply ceased to actually exist, leaving the search for synthesis to future times along with their problematics. However, what was not given to theological synthesis, in a certain sense, through the heads of theologians, was revealed, in anticipation of future achievements of theology, to the divine instinct of truth, to the inspiration of the fathers of the IV Ecumenical Council of Chalcedon. His definition was a dogmatic synthesis of both schools: without theology and with royal fearlessness, he said his yes, and therefore his no, to each of the opposing statements, antinomically combining them in one and the same definition, and the fathers of the Council simultaneously glorified St. Cyril, and the Patriarch of Antioch Flavian, and Pope Leo the Great as like-minded people. The Gordian knot of Christology was cut, although not untied. In the hands of providence, the sword that cut the Gordian knot was the dogmatic letter of Pope Leo the Great to Flavian, which, together with the union letter of St. Cyril in 433, where, as is known, the head of the Alexandrian school himself, although against his will, Antioch, formed the basis of the Chalcedonian definition. This message of the great hierarch, shining with style, antithetics, lapidary, represents the glory of the Roman throne and marks a turn towards the Chalcedonian definition. Here the idea of ​​the duality of natures with the unity of hypostasis is already expressed, which constitutes his main achievement and actually combines the statements of both opposing schools. However, anyone who expects to find here a theological synthesis, an outcome from Christological dialectics with the overcoming of its antithetics, will not actually find it. Pope Leo himself is generally outside of Eastern theology and, with Latin straightforwardness and a certain dogmatic inexperience, decrees without proving. Therefore, despite all the enormous significance of the message for the history of dogma, it does not mean a movement of theological thought. A doctrinal definition is sought by groping, by some religious (in particular, soteriological) evidence, which has not yet become theological evidence. “To do justice to our condition, an intact nature was united with a nature susceptible to suffering, and, what was required for our salvation, the same mediator between God and man, the man Jesus Christ, could die in one and could not die in the other. So, in the integral and perfect nature of true man, God was born, all in His, all in ours,” “with the preservation of the properties of one and the other nature and essence,” however, “with the unity of the person conceivable in one and the other nature, namely the face of God and man,” Dei et hominis una persona. What was the subject of painful age-old tension and inextricable difficulty for theology is here fearlessly, in massive images, formulated in all its antithetical nakedness, and this antinomy was embedded in the very definition of the Council of Chalcedon. The Chalcedonian formula “one and the same Christ in two natures,” “while preserving the proper properties of each of them,” “uniting into one person and into one hypostasis, not divided into two persons,” is not a theological, but a dogmatic synthesis, although essentially prepared by the entire previous development of Christology. It is remarkable that in the external history of its origin one can find features of chance: it even arose, as it were, against the will of the fathers of the Council, who preferred to remain with the messages of St. Cyril and Pope Leo and only under pressure from the imperial power drew up a new definition. Practical Rome - and not the speculative East - together with the imperial power directly stimulated this new dogmatic definition, which appeared, as it were, against the will and consciousness of its immediate creators, among whom the Alexandrians, not the Antiochians, predominated numerically. It was a dogmatic miracle, so far exceeding the natural capabilities of the dogmatic consciousness of the era that the dogma remains not contained by it, as this clearly follows from subsequent history, in particular from the Monophysite opposition to it. But the spirit breathes where it wants, and Providence chooses different paths for its purposes. However, the Chalcedonian definition was a dogmatic order, which was beyond the power of those who still continued to theologize. Combining in one formula Alexandrian henotism with Antiochene diphysitism in the most difficult question of the relationship of both natures in Christ, Divine and human, the Council responded only with a negative, not a positive definition, a fourfold non: indivisibly - unmerged, invariably - inseparably, thus including the antinomy in the very heart of the dogmatic definition. The result was a kind of Columbus egg of dogma, which needed to be established in balance at the edge of antinomy. This godly definition represents only a fence of thought, but not the thought itself, which can only be given by a positive definition. The Chalcedonian dogma is not only the highest norm of dogma by which the church consciousness must measure itself, but it is also given to human thought as the ultimate problem of theological comprehension. Providence wished that this dogma arose not from theology, but as if above theology, the various schools of which were only a pretext for it, it rises as a religious symbol for all centuries, and it belongs to our time no less, and even more, than the era of its origin. Nevertheless, historically it is the interacting diagonal of two intersecting perpendiculars and is in fact the victory of Antioch over Alexandrianism after the short-lived triumph of the latter in Ephesus. And this victory was not weakened by the belated triumph of Alexandrianism, which was given to it by Emperor Justinian at the V Ecumenical Council, because the forbidden and athematized Antioch again triumphs at the VI Ecumenical Council, while the true ecumenical cause of the V Ecumenical Council was only the solemn confirmation of the Fourth. The VI Ecumenical Council, which made a determination about two wills and two natures in Christ, just as inseparably, unmerged, invariably, inextricably united, essentially gives a more partial expression of the Chalcedonian definition: if in the latter the presence of two natures is stated as a given or fact, then here they are revealed in action as actuality. After the Council of Chalcedon, the tension in theological thought generally wanes, and, in particular, the VI Ecumenical Council (not to mention the Fifth) is much less prepared theologically, 244 and the controversy between the Monothelites and the Orthodox (Patriarch Sophronius, St. Maximus the Confessor) is largely scholastic and terminological, with the most basic concepts of will and energy remaining undefined. However, the main idea of ​​the dogma is Chalcedonian, and to that extent here we have a new victory of Antioch. In any case, the decisive battle for the truth of Orthodoxy was already given in Chalcedon, and the Constantinople triumph of the VI Council is largely a consequence of the Chalcedonian victory. 245 The Chalcedonian dogma was and remains the main fortress of Christological dogmatics. Therefore, all the polemics and doubts of other faiths and heterodoxy are directed in this direction; the attitude towards Chalcedon expresses the nature of the theological worldview and, at the same time, the degree of its Orthodoxy. So, to Christ’s question: “Who do you say that I am?”, to which Peter responded with a confession of his religious faith: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God,” Orthodoxy gives a dogmatic answer with the Chalcedonian formula: one Divine hypostasis in two natures, inseparably, inextricably, invariably and inextricably united. Both answers, both faith and dogma, are, of course, identical in content, with the only difference being that the first comes from the fullness of the believing heart, the second from the reflecting mind. The first belongs to the religious self-evidence of direct inspiration (“it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you, but My Father who art in heaven”), while the second translates it into the language of self-reporting thought; it is characterized by dogmatic self-evidence. However, the difference in the expression of truth goes even further: the first is expressed in a universal human language, accessible to everyone, while the second is expressed theologically, for theologians, or at least for theologians, in the language of the era, and in a certain sense requires commentary or translation. In fact, expressions are used here that have a conditional, terminological meaning; thought itself is clothed in them and, to a certain extent, is closed by them. In particular, it is assumed here that the basic concepts: hypostasis, person, essence, nature, used in Christological disputes and used in the Christological disputes of Chalcedon, are understandable to everyone and their meaning was self-evident and unchangeable, at least for its era. Historical reality here also testifies to the opposite: namely, there was the greatest inaccuracy and even difference in the understanding and use of these basic terms throughout the entire Christological era, starting from Nicaea and ending with the post-Chalcedonian disputes. It is strange to say, but the rejection of the Chalcedonian dogma by the Monophysites, as scientific research now believes, rested most of all on terminological misunderstandings. Even for its time, the same formula received different meanings, depending on one or another understanding of the terms. Therefore, oddly enough, the apology of the Chalcedonian dogma turned out to be largely terminological. In particular, this was how the Orthodox apologist and founder of Eastern scholasticism, Leontius of Byzantium, led it (along with his contemporary and founder of Western scholasticism, Boethius). Both of them explain, so to speak, ex professo (openly, directly (lat.) - Ed.) terminological expressions: nature and hypostasis and the resulting meaning of the formula: one hypostasis - two natures, which were used as self-explanatory, but in fact gave rise to countless misunderstandings. The scholastic epigones of the Christological era become translators, deciphering the dark and controversial meaning of the language of dogma. What was this code? In what language were these expressions, so inaccurate in themselves, like hypostasis and nature, spoken? This code is taken from the philosophy of Aristotle (mainly from his “Metaphysics”), and this language is generally characteristic of ancient philosophy in its two main and powerful channels - Platonism and Aristotelism. Both hypostasis and nature in the language of the Councils have the meaning that they have in Aristotle. What does this mean? In Christian dogmatics, these expressions are used exclusively in relation to the spiritual world and to the relationship between God and man, but in ancient philosophy they generally refer to the entire area of ​​the natural world, in which spiritual and soulless, living and dead entities are united without distinction. As Leontius says, and Damascene echoes him, the concept of essence (which is also nature) embraces “God, and Angel, and man, and animal, and plant.” This is a general abstract category for expressing all types of being. However, according to Aristotle, an abstract essence exists no other way than by being clothed in concreteness through the addition of some individualizing feature - an accident (συμβεβηκός): not a stone in general, but granite, limestone, diamond and the like, not a person in general, but Peter, Ivan, or a black man, a mulatto, etc. True existence belongs only to concrete essences, which are why Aristotle gives the name: first essence (πρώτη οὐσία), for example Peter the Great, Alexander the Great, and general nature: man, or Russian, or stone, or spirit, is only an abstraction of the concrete, the second essence (in this terminology one can feel the sharpening of the disagreement between Plato and Aristotle about universals or ideas). So, hypostasis is only a sign, property, accident, and essence is a certain aggregate of properties that forms a certain whole. From this definition it already follows for Leontius of Byzantium the main ontological axiom: there is no nature without hypostasis. This only means that everything in nature is concrete, clothed with individualizing characteristics. According to the definition of Leontius of Byzantium, “the nature of the hypostasis includes the concept of accidents, whether they will be separable or inseparable. Hypostasis is characterized by figure, color, size, time, place, parents, way of life and in general everything that relates to this, while the properties of nature belong to what relates to the essence itself.” Therefore, individuals or ἄτομον are characterized by independent existence in themselves (καθ’ ἑαυτόν), which also differs in number. In this same physical concept of hypostasis, quite unexpectedly, sometimes the person πρόσωπον is included as equivalent (and in the Chalcedonian definition). But this concept of a person, already moving into the spiritual realm, was never deepened and did not receive its explanation in antiquity, which was generally alien to the philosophical concept of personality, other than as an atom - an individual. However, here the dead Aristotelian scheme is theologically clothed with the living Gospel image, so that it itself begins to come to life and be warmed by it, without essentially changing at all. Leontius of Byzantium invented for the needs of theology, along with the simple and clear, although meager concept of the Aristotelian “first essence”, which combines nature with an individual attribute or hypostasis, also the concept of a complex nature, in which two different natures, coexisting, are individualized in one hypostatic attribute common to both, or, in his expression, are hypostasized in it. This turns out to be another second floor of ontologically complex existence. The concept of hypostasis is subject to logical criticism at the main point: on what basis are two different natures recognized in a single concretely hypostasized being, and not one, which embraces the totality of the characteristics of imaginary two natures? Here there is a clear abuse of the concept of nature, completely unjustifiable from it itself. But this auxiliary logical construction is for Leontius of Byzantium a bridge to the logical acceptance of the Chalcedonian dogma, which through it is interpreted as follows: although there is no non-hypostatic nature, and in the presence of two natures in Christ, human nature remains as if non-hypostatic, but in fact it is hypostasized into the hypostasis of the Divine nature. In this way, the desired result is achieved: both natures turn out to be hypostatic, and one nature has its own hypostasis, while the other is only hypostasized into this hypostasis that is alien to it. It is not difficult to see the logical arbitrariness of this conclusion, which rests entirely on the assumption that both united natures, even in this complexity, still retain their separateness and originality. But this is precisely what needs to be proven here. Monophysites more consistently came to the conclusion that both natures exist in their duality only before union, and after it they form, albeit complex, but a single nature. Thus, what does the Chalcedonian formula mean in the interpretation of Leontius of Byzantium and John of Damascus: two natures and one hypostasis? This means that one individual characteristic or property, namely sonship or birth from the Father, belongs to two different sets of characteristics or natures. If the Chalcedonian formula itself gives (in the words of the English theologian Bruce) only the anatomy of dogma, then Leontius of Byzantium algebraizes it (A B + C), and this, of course, does not reveal, but rather closes the essence of dogma. And even formally the question can be posed here: why is A the common attribute for B and C, and not some N? And, on the other hand, why is A connected with B and C? But besides these formal perplexities, we ask ourselves already in essence of this method: is this formally Aristotelian understanding of the basic Christian dogma, which is given to us by Leontius of Byzantium, acceptable for us? For us, is the union of two natures with one hypostasis a mechanical union of properties, analogous to any other union, and in this sense a material category in which the special character of the spirit living in different natures is not at all grasped? We can only answer this question with an emphatic and categorical no. For us, the concept of personal spirit is necessary; we think in the categories of personality, where antiquity, like patristic thought, has only the category of a thing. We are not talking about algebra or even just anatomy, but about a single personality living a dual life, Divine and human. Why and how can the Divine hypostasis of the Logos, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, simultaneously be a hypostasis and a human one, in which there is not a formal, but a real, internal basis for this? In a word, we are faced with the full-scale problem of the divine-human personality and divine-human life, that is, the problem of divine-humanity, the living image of which we have in the Gospel. Despite all the inadequacy of the logical categories of antiquity for expressing the doctrine of the God-manhood of the Logos, the living reality of the Gospel forces the expansion of these material categories: thus, already in the Chalcedonian dogma itself it speaks of hypostasis or person, just as in theology the question is raised about the Gospel image of Christ, about the concrete, personal life of the God-man. We already know that in the antithetics of Alexandrianism and Antiochianism, the question always arose about distinguishing both natures in the Gospel image of Christ and about attributing some manifestations of the life of Christ to the Divine nature, others to the human nature, and others even to some “middle” category. The usual scheme of this distinction was defined in such a way that the share of human nature included humiliation, the other - miracles and glorification: “one shines with miracles, the other is subject to humiliation” (message of Pope Leo the Great). “It is human nature to hunger, thirst, get tired and sleep. But to feed five thousand with five loaves, but to give living water to a Samaritan woman, but to walk with feet that do not submerge on the surface of the sea, but to cause the rising waves to subside, to rebuke the storm, is, without a doubt, characteristic of God. And, not to say too much, it is not natural for the same nature to cry with a feeling of pity for a dead friend and with a powerful word to call him again from the four-day grave; or hang on a tree and, turning the light into night, make all the elements tremble” (ibid.). These words of Pope Leo the Great express the usual view that prevails in patristics up to and including Saint John of Damascus. Prayer was also part of human nature, unless it was understood as being performed only for show. It is not difficult to see that, with one hand subscribing to the Chalcedonian dogma about the one-hypostatic and two-nature life of the God-man, with the other, in fact, this unity of the God-man with the inseparability and non-fusion of natures is here rejected, being replaced by their alternation throughout life and even in individual actions (he shed tears - according to human nature, called on the life of Lazarus - according to the Divine). Through this, Nestorianism again creeps in, dividing natures, which is what the Monophysites accused the Chalcedonians of. But both separation and alternation can only apply to God and Man, but not to the one God-man, in whom both natures are inseparably and unmergedly present in every act of His life. However, in addition to the concrete understanding of the Gospel image, the question of the vital relationship of both natures in Christ arises from Leontius of Byzantium, and then from St. John of Damascus and in a more abstract form, namely about mutual communication (κοινωνία or ἀντίδωσις τῶν ίδιομάτων) of natural properties – communicatio idiomatum, a doctrine that has occupied an important place in dogmatics. A general question is posed here: what is the possible influence of the divine nature on the human and the human on the divine? The first part of this question is resolved easily and safely: the Divine nature imparts to man supernatural, grace-filled properties, giving him the power to surpass himself, and this penetration of the Divine into human life is called deification (θέωσις). But what will be the reverse influence of human nature on the Divine, which is also postulated by this teaching? This question essentially remains unanswered (Damascenes only says that one nature is “not deprived of participation in the other”) due to the lack of dogmatic data, and through this again, unresolved Nestorianism or Docetism, that is, pre-Chalcedonian antithetics, creeps in again. The same idea about communicatio idiomatum finds expression in the doctrine of a single, in the words of Dionysius the Areopagite, godly (θεανδρική) energy. This extremely important idea, which contains the grain of the ultimate dogmatic generalization in the field of Christology, initially appeared in Monophysite circles, and its edge was directed against the Chalcedonian doctrine of the duality of natures in the direction of their mixing union. Sanctioned by the authoritative name of pseudo-Dionysius, it, through Leontius of Byzantium and St. John of Damascus, became the property of Orthodox dogmatics. This extremely difficult and complex thought was literally just dropped by pseudo-Dionysius in a letter to the monk Guy in the following words: “He (Christ) was not a man, just as he was not a non-man, being among people above man, but being above man (remained) truly man. And in general, doing the Divine as God, and the human not as a man, but as God incarnate, showed us a certain godly energy.” As you can see, nothing new is actually said here, except for the words feandric or divine-human energy. But there are living creative words that have the power of life in themselves, already contain a whole theology, and the word feandric, divine-human belongs to their number: a single two-natural life. Neither Leontius of Byzantium nor Saint John of Damascus essentially takes a new step in the development of this thought. At the same time, they do not see to what extent it is incompatible with the idea of ​​​​the alternation of natures and with their understanding of miracles, and suffering, and prayer, and exhaustion in the Lord. In general, this teaching already goes beyond the boundaries of patristic theology with its frozen physical categories, although it is silently implied as a silent questioning in all of its constructions, in particular in the Monothelite and Diphysite disputes and even in the very definition of the VI Ecumenical Council about two wills and two energies. If there are two of them, how are they coordinated with each other? The Chalcedonian fourfold not is also applied to them: indivisibly - unmerged, invariably - inseparably. This, so to speak, ensures the originality of the human element as a special will or energy in the God-man. However, a negative definition is not enough here; it is also necessary to establish their positive relationship. In his own way, Saint John of Damascus tries to do this, who establishes that if the One who wants is one, then the object of the desire is one (a premise from which a rather Monothelite conclusion seems to follow). This relationship most closely boils down to the fact that the Divine will allows the human will to want what is characteristic of it. “The flesh takes part in the actions of the Divinity of the Word, because the Divine actions were performed through the body, as if through an instrument, and also because one was active.” (The recognition of the instrumentality of the body, of course, hardly corresponds to the general meaning of the dogma, which affirms just the opposite, namely, the originality of both natures, in particular the human one.) In the dogmatic definition of the VI Council, this relationship of two wills is expressed in the fact that “the human will (in Christ) yields, does not contradict or oppose, but follows and submits” to the Divine, so that “His human will, being deified, does not was destroyed, but was preserved,” “both natures produce theirs in communication with another.” Here the hierarchical primacy of the Divine will over the human is established, so to speak, while at the same time preserving the created human will along with the Divine. However, here the simple union of two natures having one common hypostasis, which in the Chalcedonian dogma is possible thanks to a unique material understanding of nature and hypostasis, becomes more difficult due to the fact that obvious actuality is inherent here in both the subject and the predicate, and the will and wills. Two wills cannot be as straightforwardly juxtaposed as two natures, and cannot be united by formal en-hypostasis. Being hierarchically different, they still need constant internal unity, the truly godly action of the one God-man with one life and action, although it arises from the combination of two wills. We, of course, do not think here to shake the dogmatic meaning of the definition of the VI Council, but we state that it already directly rests on the problem of theanthropic unity, feandric energy. This is the initial, and at the same time final, problem that includes the whole of Christology - the God-man and God-manhood, which Apollinaris posed to himself. In other words, the dogmatic definition of the VI Council remains internally unfinished; it postulates its further dogmatic disclosure by a definition not only of duality, but also of the dual unity of wills, which is barely outlined in it. The VII Ecumenical Council still remains. The divine instinct of truth operating in him led him to the godly affirmation of the icon and icon veneration. However, what constituted its dogmatic basis remained without a dogmatic definition. Meanwhile, here in reality one of the problems of the dogma of God-manhood as a kind of unity in duality has already been exposed, namely the power of the image of God in man, and at the same time the image of the human in the Divine, the unity of the God-man image. The VII Ecumenical Council is a symbolic sign pointing towards the future. The work of the Ecumenical Councils is interrupted without exhausting its problematics, until the time when the spirit of the Spirit of God will again call to life the dead bones lying on the field of age-old seething struggle. One cannot think that further dogmatic questioning even in the field of Christology after the Ecumenical Councils has become unnecessary and impossible; on the contrary, they exist and compel further dogmatic creativity. The continuation of the dogmatic creativity of the era of the seven Ecumenical Councils should be a living connection between them and modernity. The God-wise definitions of the Ecumenical Councils as a whole are some kind of sacred dogmatic myths or massive symbols that always need, so to speak, a new dogmatic disclosure or translation into the theological language of our time. We can no longer perceive them exactly as they were given to our contemporaries, in the philosophical and dogmatic language of antiquity. Of course, this ancient form is not accidental; it was providentially predetermined as the most appropriate for dogmatic symbolism (just as it was not by chance that the Hellenic genius in philosophy and art was given the opportunity to leave its mark on the history of Christian dogma and cult). But it is fatally and inevitably not modern. Modern philosophy and psychology perceive the basic concepts completely differently: hypostasis and nature, for them they dissolve with the life of the personal spirit, with its depth and basis, and it is completely impossible for us to remain in the field of physical and material understanding of these concepts, with which the patristic era was satisfied. We could not do this even if we wanted, but this is unnecessary and even false: each historical era has its own thought and its own language. As long as the usual formulas are perceived internally with indifference (which is death for faith) or remain only the property of history, which loves them precisely for this archaic nature, they do not need a theological translation into the language of modern thought. But as soon as theological inquisitiveness and religious thought awaken, they are translated in one way or another, and this is the creative work of the theology of the era. This in no way shakes or diminishes their authority and even divine inspiration. The calling of our time is New Chalcedonian theology, which would resurrect for us, and together continue the work of the seven Ecumenical Councils in the fullness of their problematics, the latter being summarized in one, truly Chalcedonian, problem - God-manhood. The Son of God is the Son of Man in the unity of His theanthropic life, or godly energy, in the true communion of properties, agreement and union of wills - this remains the dogmatic problem of Christology for our days. To the four Chalcedonian nots, she must find and formulate the basic dogmatic yes, which was never theologically found in the Alexandrian-Antiochian dialectic. We must honor the work of the seven Ecumenical Councils, but it is better to express this veneration not by rhetorical and usually exaggerated praise, but by the fact itself, that is, by intensified and in-depth penetration into their work - problems and achievements, and the feasible continuation of this gigantic work. Church tradition is alive and living, that is, creatively continuing and developing both in terms of its understanding and further disclosure. It is necessary to distinguish between formal, rational and dead preservation from the genuine preservation of Tradition. Water does not flow under a lying stone, and the dogmatic definitions of the Ecumenical Councils should not turn for us into such a stone that exists only to hit the heads of the infidels with it. This is the seventh constellation in the spiritual sky, along which we must direct our own path. Meanwhile, theology, enchanted by the intense creativity of the era of the seven Ecumenical Councils, made for itself a kind of dogmatic pillow on which it militantly fell asleep in a pose of defiant orthodoxy. In particular, in the field of Christology we observe the same stagnation, and above all in the East, where the internal impoverishment of creative thought is intensified by the external tragic fate of the Byzantine Empire, similar to the current fate of our homeland. But the same stagnation is observed in this area and in the West, with all the dogmatic “development” and scholastic flowering of Catholicism. The subject of the dogmatic definitions of Western Councils after the church division is anything but Christology, which is considered exhausted. A certain dogmatic movement arose here only with the Reformation, which to a certain extent awakened Christological thought after a thousand-year sleep. New problems and new ideas arise, despite their one-sidedness. However, these ideas born in Protestantism remain without an echo in church theology, and in addition, they freeze in Protestantism itself under the influence of the deadening rationalism of modern times. The religious consciousness of the modern era calls for a dogmatic awakening, and it must choose as its point of departure the dogmatic teaching of the seven Councils, which are headed by two: Nicaea and Chalcedon. Our time needs Nicene-Chalcedonian theology, the dogmatic teaching about the God-man in His God-manhood, about the Son of God, who is also the Son of Man, came down from Heaven and became flesh, but also sat down in the flesh at the right hand of the Father. This is the very next creative task of our era in the field of Christology, on the paths of dogma, after the seven Ecumenical Councils. Actual speech at the Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris in 1932. – Documentation and full disclosure of the thoughts expressed here are given in the study “Dialectics of the idea of ​​God-manhood in the patristic era.” Published by “The Path”... No. 37. February 1933. P.3–35 – Note. edit The same must be said regarding the VII Council on the issue of icons. The canon of the VII Ecumenical Council on the veneration of icons is also in a certain relation to the Chalcedonian definition, for dogmatically here we are talking about a single Theanthropic face, characteristic of a single hypostasis of two natures, about the image of God in man and the human image in God.