Lectures on the history of the Ancient Church. Volume 3. History of the Church during the period of the Ecumenical Councils (I. Church and State. II. Church system)

Volume 1 * Volume 2 * Volume 3 * Volume 4 General character of this period With the beginning of this period, we enter into a system of church life in general very close to that which exists to this day. The sphere of action, the everyday side of church life of the previous period in its details is not entirely imaginable for us: the Church of the Martyrs, a society persecuted, denied, legally unrecognized and nevertheless living a life that presupposes significant publicity of discoveries, represents a phenomenon too peculiar, extraordinary. The interest that subsequent church history arouses is of a different kind - not so much aesthetic as practically positive. Church life in the present period takes on a normal character and fits more easily into the forms of representation developed by everyday experience. This period mediates - not only chronologically - between the later church history and its most ancient period. The unusually energetic church life vividly resembles the previous period; but it develops under such external relations as are common to the present period and subsequent ones. This combination of new forms and ancient content and power had significant consequences on almost all points of church life. For the first time during this period, the question of the relationship between church and state appeared in a more natural formulation. During these 6 centuries, these relations took on forms that, with minor changes, have persisted to this day in most of the Christian world. Even those relations that exist as an exception in a few Christian states have their precedents in some, albeit isolated, phenomena of this period. The relationship of the church to the pagan world outside the borders of the Roman Empire in the present period takes on the missionary character that they retain to this day: the slow influence of mass on mass, the gradual penetration of Christians into the environment of the pagan population is replaced by the external, mostly accidental influence on the pagan world of a few free or unwilling emissaries of the Christian world - the result of which is not the strengthening of the existing church, but the beginnings of a new, branch one. The internal relations of Christian society in general are taking such firm shape that only their detailed development remains for the future. The main points of hierarchical relations, laity and clergy, lower clergy to bishop, the internal ramifications of the episcopate itself remain unchanged. The forms of cathedral government, the position of the official and official clergy, relative to the members of the hierarchy, are outlined quite clearly. The history of theological thought constitutes the most brilliant page, and in one aspect it also constitutes a specific characteristic of this period. This point in church life in these centuries is the center towards which all the vital forces of the Christian church gravitate. Theological thought develops here in all its beauty and power. In the energy of its manifestations, in the unusual - for our time - in its breadth and depth of interest that theological thought arouses in various strata of society - one can feel the immediacy of the connection between this period and the previous one, when people lived by their religious convictions and knew how to stand for them to the point of selflessness. In the minds of the greatest representatives of the church of our period, heroic steadfastness for Orthodoxy was a natural replacement for the heroism of the confessors of the previous period. The struggle against various abnormal discoveries of theological thought, going on in an unbroken chain over several centuries, is resolved with results so valuable in dogmatic terms that even conservative Protestantism does not dispute their high significance. The solution to the essential questions of Christianity about the Trinity, incarnation, grace in the present period is given in such formulas, against which modern theology of a critical shade could raise rather sharp objections, but could not offer anything more integral in their place, or even give a happy experience of resolving the perplexities raised by them. Along with and together with the revelation of the content of Christianity at the councils, individual theological thought also develops with remarkable power. The Greek Church of this period puts forward a whole galaxy of such deep and subtle theologians that other periods would be proud if they could count even a few of them. The Latin Church also in this period reaches the climax of its theological productivity, producing the most profound of its theologians and the most versatile of its scholars. The liturgical order towards the end of this period - at least in the Greek church - reaches its completion, and subsequent history adds nothing more than a few touches to this area. Moral life during this period developed new forms of ascetic feat, unknown in the ancient church, which subsequently remained unchanged in the east, developing in all their diversity in the west. The general moral level of Christian life of this period is moving closer to subsequent ones - the result of the same general conditions for its discovery; its extensiveness does not develop without compromising its intensity. Finally, if you pay attention to the phenomena of a negative order, then from this side the history of this period has made undoubted success. The subsequent period is characterized by the division of the Western and Eastern churches and the unusually rapid and strong development of the papacy. But the division of churches already in the present period is outlined not only in its possibility, not only in the favorable conditions and reasons that produced it - these reasons existed before Christianity itself - no, it was already given in its very discovery: the Greek and Latin churches had already experienced 35 years (484-519) in a formal gap between themselves, in fact they could be convinced of the possibility of the existence of one without the other. Likewise, the papacy in our period not only arose, but also achieved, although imperceptibly, quite significant growth. Nicholas I, who opens the next period of church history, had quite solid precedents for himself; and this was, in the way of his thoughts and actions, a completely medieval pope.