Lectures on the history of the Ancient Church. Volume 2. History of the Church in the period before Constantine the Great

Volume 1 * Volume 2 * Volume 3 * Volume 4 General character of this period The Apostolic Age is a fundamental period, an age of resolving fundamental issues in their basic formulation. The post-apostolic time shares with the apostolic age this characteristic feature of the radical formulation of questions both a) in relation to the outside, and b) internal. In the first case, the church responded to both the external force of the state (martyrdom and judicial apologies) and pagan philosophy (scientific apologies, the fight against gnosis) that Christianity is an independent religion toto genere and cannot live on compromises with paganism, accept the mask of one of its many varieties. The internal questions that occupied Christian theologians of this time are distinguished by the same fundamental character: we are talking about the whole, not about details, about premises, not about conclusions. The question is: should we cancel the teaching about St. Trinity in the name of monotheism? Should we refuse to recognize Jesus Christ as God (and not only, as Arianism puts it, consubstantial with the Father)? Or, shouldn’t we reject the reality of His human nature, even His body itself, shouldn’t we recognize it as illusory (and not just, as with the Monophysites: which mental phenomena belong to φύσις and which to ὑπόστασις? where are the boundaries between these two concepts?). - But at the same time, the germs of that historical formation appear, which later receives such important significance, albeit of a negative nature - the germs of the papacy.