Часть первая. О Боге в самом себе

§ 11. The incomprehensibility of the being of God with universal confidence in the existence of God The truth of God's existence. - The incomprehensibility of the being of God. – Views that affirm the complete knowability of God by the human mind. I. The first and fundamental truth of Christian doctrine and all Christian theology is the truth of the existence of God. It is fitting for one who comes to God to believe, for there is (Heb. 11:6) God, the highest and most perfect Being, Who is not far from each of us: for in Him we live, we move, and we are (Acts 17:28), and on Whom everything depends. Holy Scripture assumes this truth to be generally known and calls the one foolish who said in his heart: there is no God (Ps. 13:1). And this is understandable. The existence of God is evidenced to man by his very God-created and God-like nature, which is characterized by the idea of ​​God, as an innate attraction to living communication with Him, and the ability to directly sense His existence, feel His closeness and impact on one’s spirit when He touches the human soul and makes it know about Himself. It is this feeling of the mysterious influence of the Divine by the inner feeling of man that serves as the basis for the universal unshakable confidence in the existence of the Divine, which at all times has found and continues to find its expression in reverent veneration of the Divine, or in religion. The Christian soul, cleansed from sin and close to God, is especially susceptible to the influences of the Divine. But Christianity provides a basis for conviction in the existence of God and an external, historical one - in the appearance of God in the flesh in the person of I. Christ. II. Faith in the existence of the Divine is inseparably and directly connected with the idea of ​​Him as a Being immeasurably towering above the entire world visible and accessible to our observation and knowledge, and therefore incomprehensible in His inner being by any created mind. “That God is in His essence (that is, in Himself, in complete detachment from His manifestations in the world),” teaches the “Orthodox Confession,” “not a single creature, not only visible, but also invisible, that is, not the angels themselves, can know this, for there is absolutely no comparison between the Creator and creation” (answer to question 8). Knowledge of the being of God can only be characteristic of God Himself. According to the Savior, no one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son (Matthew 11:27). Ap. Paul says: For what is the message of man that is in man, even the spirit of man living in him; In the same way, no one knows God’s message, but the Spirit of God. For the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God (1 Cor. 2:10–11). The Word of God also indicates the reasons why it is impossible for a person to penetrate into the mystery of God’s being. To Moses, who prayed to God: show me Samago, that I may see You rationally, God, despite the extraordinary closeness of Moses to Himself, said: You cannot see My face: for no man will see My face and live (Ex. 33:13, 20). The reason, therefore, for man’s inability to directly behold the boundless greatness of the face, that is, of the being of God, is the narrowness and limitations of his nature; if a person wanted, at any cost, to know the being of God, then all his efforts would be fruitless and disastrous for him. And God promised to Moses to show not His very face, but only His back (Exodus 33:22–23; cf. Job 11:7–8: Sir.43:29–35). The New Testament revelation, asserting that no one has seen God anywhere (πώποτε - never, John 1:18), teaches: the King of kings and the Lord of lords lives in the unapproachable light, but no one has seen Him; Therefore, it is also impossible for people to see God, because He dwells in intangible light, that is, this kind of area of ​​​​being and life where the human mind is not able to penetrate, just as the vision of the eye is not able to penetrate into the inner region of sunlight. III. The direct opposite of the frank teaching about the incomprehensibility of God’s being is the view that allows for the complete knowability of God by the human mind. This view arose in pagan antiquity. A pagan who thought of himself in his gods in different states and situations of his life could say that he knew his gods as well as himself. It tried to penetrate Christianity through various kinds of false teachings and heresies (in the first centuries - Gnostic). The idea of ​​the complete comprehensibility of God was especially defended by the followers of Arius - Aetius and even more so Eunomius. In modern times, a similar view of the knowability of the Divine has been repeated by representatives of pantheistic philosophy. Even in ancient times, the Church, in the person of the fathers and teachers who fought against Eunomianism (Eunomians, who were also called Anomeans, were especially denounced by Gregory the Theologian, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, I. Chrysostom), resolutely condemned such an extreme teaching. Refuting the claim of false teachers that the immense greatness of God can be grasped by limited human thought, they found out the following. Our spirit is limited, but God is infinite; the finite can never fully embrace the infinite; the infinite would cease to be infinite if it were completely comprehended by a finite being; God, known by us in His being, would cease to be God for us. That is why comprehension of the essence of God is impossible not only for people, but also for every created rational nature. And the powers on high, even the seraphim and cherubim, do not comprehend the being of God; on the contrary, they are even more aware of His incomprehensibility than we are, just as sighted people feel the intolerance of sunlight much more than the blind. Due to its limitations, the human spirit cannot penetrate into the essence of even many finite beings and objects, it does not comprehend the essence of matter and the elements operating in nature, the essence of our soul and the image of its union with the body, all the more, therefore, the being of God is incomprehensible to it. Our limited spirit is still connected to the material body; it, like a fog, lies between us and the purely immaterial Deity and prevents the spiritual eye from receiving the rays of divine light with complete clarity; the general sinfulness of people makes them even less capable of rising to pure contemplation of the Divine. The most saints of God, who received revelations on earth, for example, the prophets and apostles, did not acquire perfect knowledge of God and expected knowledge, higher than the present, only in eternity. Finally, if for us His trust is untested and His ways are unsearchable (Rom. 11:33), His works are incomprehensible (Eccl. 3:11; 8, 17), then how much more is He unsearchable whose judgments, ways and deeds are such. § 12. The extreme of the doctrine of the complete unknowability of the Divine Dualism. – Mysticism. - Agnosticism. – The actions of God in the world and the possibility of their recognition. - Self-revelation of God. Although incomprehensible in His being, God is not, however, absolutely inaccessible to human knowledge. The view that affirms His complete incomprehensibility has always been recognized by the Church as extreme. This view appeared in pagan dualistic philosophy. In Christian antiquity, some of the Gnostics taught that God is unknowable, which is why they called him “The Unknown God”; in the 4th century, Arius separated God from the world to the point of denying the possibility of any direct relationship between God and the world. And in subsequent times this view did not disappear at all in the Christian world. Mystics have always maintained that the Divine is inaccessible to knowledge by reason, that all knowledge about Him is limited only by faith, a warm feeling of the Divine. But with particular persistence, the unknowability of the Divine and the supersensible world in general has been proven in modern times by philosophy - that direction in solving the question of knowledge, which is known under the name of agnosticism (ά - “not” and γιγνώσκω - “I know”). Agnosticism proceeds from the assumption that a person, due to his limitations, cannot know the essence of things and all his knowledge is limited only to the external side of things, as far as they are given to our senses as phenomena. In view of such limitations, a person must abandon all attempts, as completely vain and beyond his strength, to comprehend the essence of things and the entire world around him. and even more so to know God and the supersensible world in general. The extreme nature of the doctrine of the complete unknowability of the Divine is obvious to the believing consciousness. The existence of religion, which is impossible without knowledge of God, shows that the common sense of mankind has never doubted the possibility of knowledge of God. If knowing God were completely impossible for us, then the preaching of the Gospel would be in vain, and our faith would be in vain. and this would open up a direct reason for atheism. God deigned to reveal Himself in creation and providence, in the visible and godlike nature of the human soul, and especially in supernatural revelation. Therefore, a person gifted with the ability to know God can and should know Him to the best of his ability. This is his first and most sacred duty and at the same time the ineradicable need of his god-like spirit. As for the newest agnosticism, which recognizes the “unknown God” as the only true God of humanity, it proceeds from false grounds. It is possible to affirm the complete unknowability of God only from a deistic point of view, imagining Him to be in solitude, away from the world and man, having no significant relation to it (only transcendent to the world, but not immanent at the same time). The natural conclusion from such ideas is the denial of the self-revelation of God to man, and hence the possibility of knowledge of God. It is from this point of view that agnosticism stands, with its free ignorance of God and its free godlessness. But one cannot deny the possibility of knowledge of God by recognizing that God reveals Himself in the world, is immanent to it, that in the world, as Scripture says, everything is from Him, by Him and to Him (Rom. 11:37), that He is especially close to man. Agnosticism comes from the wrong foundations in its assertion of the unknowability of God and in epistemological terms. They assume that religious knowledge cannot be empirical (experiential), i.e. be based on a special sensory perception. The unconditional, agnostics argue, lies outside the realm of sensory perception, cannot give a feeling about Itself or make an impression on us, and therefore we cannot be convinced of the real existence of the Divine, much less cognize It. But the idea that there is no experimental basis in religious knowledge is a mistaken idea. Of course, it is impossible to sense the Divine with external senses, but it is possible and indeed there is an influence of the Divine on a person not only externally, mediated by nature, but also internally - on the soul, perceived by the inner sense. It is this beneficial influence of the Divine on the soul that serves as the experimental basis for the knowledge of God. Thus, the basis of the knowledge of God lies in the same way as the basis of knowledge about the finite world. The difference between one and the other is only a qualitative difference, in the nature of the experience. They can, of course, say that there is no such experience at all - those who do not have such experience and know only one experience of external knowledge. But when entire generations and generations of people testify to the existence of a special religious experience, it cannot be rejected on the basis of the assumption that only one experience of external knowledge is possible. And how can we reject, in particular, the Christian experience, when at a certain historical time, in the person of Jesus Christ, the Word Himself became flesh and dwelt in us (dwelt with us), and we saw His glory, as the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth (John 1:14)? And the Lord I. Christ Himself, when Philip turned to Him on behalf of the apostles with the request: show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us, said to him: I have been with you for so long, and have you not known Me, Philip? Seeing Me as the Father; and how do you say: show us the Father? Do you not believe, for I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me... Believe in Me, for I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me. And again: if they knew Me, they knew My Father; and from now on you knew Him and saw Him (John 14:7–11). The witnesses of the Word certify that when they proclaim Him, they proclaim what they have heard, what they have seen with their own eyes, what they have looked at and what their hands have touched (1 John 1:1-3). This testimony is confirmed by the living experience of the Christian Church for thousands of years. § 13. Methods of knowledge of God I. The natural way of knowing God. – Possibilities of reason in composing the concept of God: 1) The path of denying the properties inherent in creation. – 2) The path of causality, which requires the wisdom of God in establishing order and expediency in creation. – 3) The path of analogy, based on the fact that man was created in the image and likeness of God. – 4) The path of superiority, when the perfections attributed to God rise to an infinite level. – II. A supernatural way of knowing God, based on the direct revelation of God. There are two main and essential ways of knowing God: natural and supernatural. I. The natural way of knowing God is the knowledge of God from the natural revelation of God. God reveals Himself in visible and irrational nature. “Heaven, earth, sea, in a word - the whole world is the great and glorious book of God,” says St. Gregory the Theologian (in line 6), eloquently preaching to all people about the omnipotence, wisdom, and goodness of the Creator and Provider of everything - God. In Holy Scripture there are many majestic images of how nature proclaims the glory of its Creator revealed in it (for example, Ps. 103 and 148; in the book of Job 26, 28, 36–41). The heavens, it says, will tell the glory of God (Ps. 18:2); fill the whole earth with the glory of the Lord of hosts (Isa.6:3). The human soul, created in the image of God, endowed with immortality and the ability for limitless perfection, with innate aspirations for the Divine, for truth, goodness and beauty, can testify to man even more clearly about the existence and perfections of its Creator. Finally, the voice of God is heard and the ways of God are visible in the history of kingdoms and nations and the lives of individuals, for the history of mankind, like the life of individuals, is not a concatenation of simple accidents, but is controlled by the providence of God and is led to a specific goal (Acts 17:26; Ps. 67:4-5; Deut. 4:34-35, etc.). Observing and reflecting on the works of creation and the providence of God, a person can collect fragmented traces of divine perfections in the world and, combining them together, form from them in the depths of his spirit in some mysterious and incomprehensible way the idea of ​​​​a divine personality, giving evidence (the appearance) of invisible things (Heb. 11: 1). About the possibility of knowing God in this way, accessible to all people, St. Paul testifies this way: the rational things of God (γνωστόν τού Θεού, i.e., what can be known about God) are clearly in them (i.e., the pagans): God has shown (έφανέρωσε) to be there. For from the creation of the world His invisible being has been understood by created things, and His ever-present power and Godhead are visible (Rom. 1:19-20). The leader of a person in such knowledge is the idea of ​​the highest and most perfect Being contained in the inner being of a person, in his God-likeness, or the innate desire for the Divine and the ability to touch or directly feel Him (Acts 17:27-28), when He deigns to touch the human soul with His gracious influence, to knock on the door of the human heart (Rev. 3:20). When a person searches for traces of the Divine in the world, the innate idea of ​​God tells the human mind where these traces are visible, where they are not, what can be attributed to God, what cannot. If there were no such idea in man, the visible and finite could not lead to the thought of the invisible and infinite. The paths that the mind can follow when composing the concept of God on the basis of the self-revelation of the Divine in the world are the following: 1) the path of denial (via negationis) or exclusion from the concept of God as an infinite being, all the features of finitude and limitation noticed in the world, as inconsistent with the innate idea of ​​God (for example, Numbers 23:19). In this way, the mind can come to conclusions about God that He is infinite, eternal, immortal, etc. 2) The path of causality (via causalitatis), or conclusions from action to the first cause, when, for example, from the independence and conditionality of the world, a conclusion is made about its self-existent and unconditional cause (as in the cosmological proof of the existence of God), from expediency and order in creation to the wisdom of the Creator (in physical-teleological proof), from the connection between sin and evil, as the punishment of sin, to the justice of God, etc. 3) The path of analogy (via analogiae), consisting in the knowledge of God through the knowledge of man, created in His image and likeness, or through self-consciousness. Following this path, they draw a conclusion, for example, from the existence in our soul of the idea of ​​God as an all-perfect being, to His very existence (as in the ontological or otherwise psychological proof of the existence of God), from conscience or moral law to the existence of its culprit - God (moral proof), from the existence in our moral consciousness of the idea of ​​truth, i.e. rewards for virtue and punishments for sin - to the existence of an omnipotent and just God (ethical-teleological proof). 4) The path of excellence (via emmentiae), when the perfections attributed to God are raised to an infinite degree. Thus, a person can come, subject, however, to the mysterious divine illumination of the human heart, to the recognition in God of the properties of omniscience, omnipotence, wisdom, all-goodness, and so on. In a natural way, many of the pagan sages acquired some knowledge of God, consistent with the truth, and those who did not know God in this way, according to the apostle, are unrequited (Rom. 1:20). The natural way of knowing God has become insufficient for most people since the fall of man. History undoubtedly confirms this to us. The concepts of the Divine that people had, left to their own forces in the matter of knowledge of God, were of two kinds: folk and philosophical. Folk concepts have always been, on the one hand, extremely diverse to the point of contradiction, and on the other hand, extremely insufficient and absurd. The idea of ​​the unity of God was almost completely lost among the ancient peoples and was replaced by belief in many gods (polytheism); the glory of the incorruptible and infinite God was changed into the likeness of the corruptible image of man, and birds, and four-footed creatures, and creeping things (Rom. 1:23). The concepts of God of the pagan sages of antiquity, although to some extent were better, are still far from perfect, disagree with each other and are often sinful. They partly contained the very beliefs that the people had, and partly added new misconceptions to them. Some fell into pantheism, others into materialism, others into dualism, others into doubt about everything and even into atheism. Although the best of the sages came to the best concepts, they themselves hesitated and doubted and clearly revealed the insufficiency of their own strength in the matter of knowledge of God and the need for higher help. The newest sages boast that the mind has now been perfected and can by itself satisfactorily know God. But this is completely unfair. Only those of them philosophize better who borrow their concepts from the Christian revelation, while others, and the most famous ones, repeat the same errors, only in a new form, that were in ancient times (especially pantheism, materialism). From here it is clear how insufficient natural revelation alone is to communicate true knowledge of God to people. The main reason for this is the deep damage to human nature as a result of the Fall, the descent into sensuality to the point of being likened to senseless cattle, the darkening of the image of God in him along with the idea of ​​God inscribed in him (Rom. 1:21-25). With the Fall of man, the infection of sin in the form of phenomena of physical evil penetrated into the visible world, which ceased to be the same reflection of the glory of God as it was immediately after creation - before the Fall; Now the whole world lies in evil (1 John 5:19). Dualistic, for example, ideas about the Divine, no doubt, came from observations of two opposite orders of phenomena in the world - good and evil. Finally. With the development of evil in humanity, the voice of God in the history of nations is often drowned out by the voice of human passions. The immutability of undoubtedly true knowledge of God is granted to man only in the supernatural revelation of God. The supernatural revelation of God, preventing the human mind from deviating along the path to the truth in the matter of natural knowledge of God, at the same time imparts knowledge of such subjects to which a person could never rise on his own (for example, the secrets of the Holy Trinity, the creation of the world, the origin of evil, redemption, sanctification, the final destinies of the world and man). This revelation was given not for certain individuals or nations, but for all mankind, for God wants to be saved by all mankind and has come into the mind (knowledge) of the truth (1 Tim. 2:4). That this is precisely the revelation of the New Testament is recognized by everyone. The Savior is the Light of the world; He gave the apostles the command to preach the gospel to all languages. But even in Old Testament times, although the Jews were entrusted with the word of God (Rom. 3:2), the revelation was given not for one people, but “for all people, as necessary and saving for all” (Katikh.). The Jewish people were called to be the guardian of the given revelation, but through it the pagan peoples were also called and had the opportunity to learn the revealed truth, and those who sincerely sought it actually knew it. If, however, among the ancient peoples, with the exception of Israel, false ideas about the Divine prevailed, it was not because God was hiding from them, but because they themselves left the face of God, and their descendants died for centuries, not knowing anything about the preaching of the prophets and about the Messiah, as many millions are dying now, not knowing anything about His teaching. The granting of God's supernatural revelation to people does not eliminate the significance and need for natural knowledge of God, just as the natural moral law and conscience retain their significance even with a positive or revealed moral law. Natural knowledge of God, raising questions about the subjects of religion and not giving a satisfactory answer to them, gives birth in the soul to a thirst for higher religious knowledge and, thus, disposes people to hear and accept the revealed word of God. Natural knowledge of God is also important in the sense that it helps to assimilate the truths of revelation, providing explanations for them from internal religious experience and visible nature. The Savior, speaking, for example, about the providence of God, pointed to birds and lilies of the field (Matthew 6ff.). Ap. Paul, speaking of the resurrection of the dead, refers to the grain that is sown and dying (1 Cor. 15:36-38), thus explaining the truths of revelation with examples taken from the realm of natural revelation. § 14. Moral conditions for the knowledge of God Purity of heart (feelings and will). - Good life. - Prayer. Few of the pagans, having nature before their eyes, knowing history and delving into their souls, could know the true God. And now the world is not for everyone an open book talking about God (materialistic natural science). In the same way, not all of those who have the supernatural revelation of God actually know God. God revealed His glory to the Jews in Christ the Savior in a way that He had not revealed before, but they did not know Him. “You saw Me,” I. Christ told them, “and you hated both Me and My Father (15:24). The same thing is observed in the Christian world. It is clear from this that in order to acquire a living knowledge of God and conviction in it, the possession of certain mental abilities and rational activity alone is not enough, but special moral conditions are necessary. Religious truths all correspond to the religious and moral aspirations and demands of our nature, and therefore their assimilation is possible on this moral and practical basis. As the primary and most necessary condition for living religious knowledge, the word of God points to the need for a person’s moral preparedness to assimilate the truths of revelation, namely, purity of heart (feelings) and good direction of the will. The Wise One also said: Wisdom does not enter into an evil soul; it dwells below in a body guilty of sin (Prem Sol 1:4). The Savior Himself teaches that only the pure in heart will see God (Matthew 5:8). Ap. John says: everyone who sins has neither seen Him nor known Him (1 John 3:6). Such importance in the matter of knowledge of God of moral purity, purity of moral mood and behavior (heart - in biblical language) of a person is explained from the following. The most essential importance in the matter of knowledge of God is that the religious feeling be alive and pure in a person - the natural attraction and gravitation of the god-like human soul towards God and the ability to perceive influences from the supersensible world. But if a person’s spirit, his heart (feeling) and will are filled with attractions to the creature, which happens in a state of sinful impurity, there is no place left in him for attractions to God; religious feeling weakens and becomes dead for perceptions from the supersensible world, just as, for example, conscience, with a person’s deep moral decline, ceases to be the “voice of God” in a person. The heart has a very strong influence on the character and direction of a person’s thinking and overall behavior. From the heart, according to the Savior, come evil thoughts (Matthew 15:19; cf. Luke 6:45). This is confirmed by experience. It has been observed that “as are our inclinations, so are our opinions.” Therefore, if the heart lives a normal and healthy life, if the attraction to God and, in general, everything unconditional, good and beautiful in it is not overshadowed by passions and vices, then such a mood and direction of its will also dispose the mind to accept the corresponding worldview; on the contrary, a heart disposed in the opposite way is able to turn the mind away from accepting such a teaching, incline it to hesitation and doubt, and attract it to recognize as truth teachings that are consistent with the direction of the heart. Whoever does evil does not come to the light (John 3:20). “Vicious life,” says St. Chrysostom, - humiliates the dogmas about the resurrection, about the immortality of the soul, about judgment, and accepts a lot of opposites, fate, necessity, lack of faith in providence. The soul, mired in numerous vices, tries to invent this kind of consolation for itself, so as not to grieve at the thought that there is judgment, and that reward for good and evil awaits us” (Ha 1 Cor. Demon. VIII, 2. On Acts. Demon. XLVII, 4). In a similar way, one of the ancient apologists of Christianity (Theophilus) said: “show me your man, and I will show you my God” (To Autol. I, 2). And this is a deep truth: such is a person, such is his God, such is his faith. A person with a corrupt heart and a bad life not only turns away from the revealed truth, but is also incapable of understanding it. This is because there is nothing akin to her in him. “Like is known by like,” it was rightly said in ancient times (Empedocles). Just as all the efforts of the most active mind cannot give an idea of ​​the taste of a fruit that we have never tasted, of the smell of a flower that we have not smelled, and even less of a feeling that we have never experienced, so without approaching revelation through life and deeds, the truths of revelation will remain alien to the soul. We understand more what corresponds to the usual content of our soul, its makeup, and especially what we have experienced. So, for true knowledge of God, it is necessary, first of all, to cleanse a person from sin, liberation from passions and vices - purity of the heart (feelings and will). “We must first purify ourselves, and then talk with the Pure One,” says St. Gregory the Theologian (Sk. 20). The pagans, according to the apostle, did not know the true God because their thoughts were futile and their foolish hearts were darkened (Rom. 1:21). The unbelief of the Jews came from the hardening of their hearts (Matthew 13:15). In general, a spiritual person does not accept even the Spirit of God: for he has foolishness, and cannot understand, he strives for spiritual things (1 Cor. 2:14). But the struggle with passions, as an expression of attachment to the sensory world, is still the threshold of spiritual knowledge. For true knowledge of God, positive progress in virtue, especially in love, is also necessary. The Savior said: whoever wants to do His (God’s) will understands the teaching that is from God, or I say from Myself (John 7:17). According to Ap. John: everyone who loves... knows God: but he who does not love does not know God, for God is loving (1 John 4:7-8). On the necessity of virtue for the knowledge of God, St. Athanasius writes: “without a pure mind and without imitating the life of the saints, no one will be able to understand the words of the saints. Whoever wishes to see the light of the sun will, without a doubt, wipe and make his eye clear, bringing himself to almost the same purity with what he wishes to see, so that in this way the eye itself becomes light and sees the light of the sun... So, whoever wants to comprehend the thought of theologians must first purify and whiten the soul with life, and by likening the saints in deeds to approach them, so that, leading the same way of life as them, they will understand what is revealed to them by God" (O incarnation of God the Word, 57). Abba Dorotheos explains the meaning of love for the knowledge of God with the following comparison: “Imagine, he says, a circle on the earth. Suppose that this circle is the world, the very middle of the circle is God; and the straight lines going from the circle to the center are the paths, that is, the lives of people... So, as much as the saints enter inside the circle to the middle of it, wanting to get closer to God, so much as they enter they become closer to God and to each other, and as much as they get closer to each other, they get closer to God. Think about distance in the same way: the more you move away from each other, the more you move away from God. This is the nature of love: the more we unite with our neighbor, the more we unite with God” (Dobrotoll. II, 659). Moral purity and good life, disposing a person to accept revealed truth and making him capable of understanding it, are of great importance in the matter of knowledge of God and in the sense that they open access to his heart to the gifts of the Holy Spirit - the spirit of knowledge and understanding (Is. 11:2). Revealed truth is truth of a supernatural nature; To assimilate it, therefore, a supernatural, beneficial influence is necessary. Revelation teaches: God opens the mind to understand Scripture (Luke 24:45); He guides into all truth (John 16:13); He reveals His secrets according to His good pleasure to worthy people (Matthew 11:25–27; Luke 10:21–24). The desire for moral purity makes the soul especially receptive to grace-filled impressions, and from the grace-filled influence and insight, the knowledge of God becomes purer and more perfect. With mental and moral acceptability of the truths of revelation, diligent and constant prayer is also required from the seeker of Christian knowledge. Necessary in general, prayer is especially necessary for achieving success in the knowledge of God. The example of the Savior Himself and all God-enlightened men teaches us this. The Savior prayed to the Heavenly Father for His disciples, so that they would be sanctified by the truth (John 17:17–20). The apostles also prayed for themselves (Acts 4:29) and for the believers, so that God would enlighten them with the knowledge of the truth and allow them to grow in the knowledge of Him (Eph. 1:16–23; 3, 14–21, etc.). The psalmist cried: open (Lord) my eyes, and I will understand the wonders of Your law (Ps. 119:18). Likewise, the church, in order to acquire the knowledge of God, calls first of all to pray to God for the opening of the eyes of the mind and heart to the understanding of His word. When presenting the doctrine of God as one in essence, a disclosure of the Orthodox teaching is required: 1) about the essence of God and ii) about the unity of God in essence. § 15. The content of the doctrine of the being of God. The concept of the essential properties of God and their division The unknowability of the being of God and the possibility of knowing the manifestations of God in the world. – The concept of “essential properties” is the general properties of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. – Fullness of being and spirituality are the most general and basic signs in the concept of God. – Ontological and spiritual properties. I. God in His inner being cannot be comprehended by any limited mind. Cognizable in the being of God is that side of Him with which He manifests Himself in the world, displaying here in finite forms the infinite properties of His being. Hence, the teaching about the properties of the being of God actually constitutes the content of the teaching about the being of God. Based only on these properties, a person can form some concept of God in order to bring the incomprehensible being of God closer to his understanding. II. The properties of the being of God, otherwise - the essential properties of God (τα ούσιώδη ιδιώματα) are those properties that belong to the very being of God and distinguish it from all other beings; these properties are common to all persons of the Holy Trinity, as having a single being. The belonging of these properties to all persons of the Holy Trinity distinguishes them from the properties of the persons of God or personal (τά προσωπικά ιδιώματα), belonging to each person of the Divine separately and distinguishing them from each other. The content of the teaching about the essence of God is the teaching about the properties common to all persons of the Holy Trinity. III. God is a most perfect being, both according to the testimony of universal human religious consciousness and according to the testimony of revelation. The most perfect being, of course, also belongs to the most perfect being, that is, one that is free from the shortcomings and limitations inherent in a less perfect, limited being. The most perfect “Being” can be conceived only as unconditionally spiritual, possessing self-consciousness and freedom; material being, devoid of consciousness and freedom, is lower, less perfect than spiritual being. The boundless fullness of being (limitlessness or infinity) and spirituality are the most general and basic features in the concept of God. All other of the properties assimilated to God only more specifically determine either the thought of the existence of “Existence” (such as, for example, originality, eternity, etc.), or the spirituality of the Divine (for example, omniscience, holiness, goodness, etc.), are contained in these latter, as the particular in the general, serve as their most particular explanation. The properties of God, related to the perfections of His being in general, are usually called ontological properties of God, and the properties of God, as the most perfect Spirit, are called spiritual. § 16. God is “He.” Properties of the being of God as the most perfect “Being” God's possession of the most perfect being. – Ontological properties: Originality. Immutability. Eternity. Immeasurability and omnipresence. – Explanation of the difficulties that arise in defining these concepts. I. God has the fullness of the most perfect being. This is directly and necessarily presupposed by the idea of ​​the all-perfection of God, which powerfully compels us to imagine God as having real (real) existence, and not being only in our thoughts (real being is more perfect than non-existence or being in the possibility, in mere representation), and, moreover, the most perfect being. Revelation especially expressively points to the fullness of the most perfect being in God in calling Him by the name Sy: I am Sy (Iehovah or Iaveh, Ό ών). And he said: this is what the son said about Israel: He sent me to you (Ex. 3:14). “By this name,” explains St. Gregory the Theologian, - He (God) calls Himself, talking with Moses on the mountain, because He concentrates in Himself the entire existence, which did not begin and will not end, - “there is, as it were, a certain sea of ​​essence, indefinable and endless, extending beyond any idea of ​​time and nature” (Sl. 38 and 45). II. God, as an all-perfect “Being,” is alien to the shortcomings and limitations inherent in finite being. Finite being - all creatures and objects of the visible world - are limited both by the beginning and reason of their existence, and by the conditions of their existence: by the beginning and reason of their existence, they are all dependent on an external cause or are not original, but due to non-originality and are subject, against their will, to constant modifications; according to the conditions of their manifestation, they are all dependent on the conditions of space and time. God, as the most perfect in His being, therefore, free from all these limitations, is an original Being, independent of anyone and nothing in His existence, and therefore independent of random changes or unchangeable, and together - from all conditions of time and space, otherwise - eternal, immeasurable and omnipresent. The main properties of the being of God, as an all-perfect Being, therefore, are: 1) originality, 2) immutability, 3) eternity, 4) immeasurability and omnipresence. 1. Identity. – This is a property that means that God does not come from anything else, and does not depend on any other being for His existence, but has the cause and necessary conditions of His existence in Himself. As such a being, God, therefore, is a being that necessarily exists, that is, one that cannot but exist. For reason, this property seems so necessary in God that without it it cannot think of God. God who is not independent in being is not God. The originality of God is necessarily presupposed by the conditionality of finite existence. I am this, so God Himself defines Himself as an original being, proclaiming His name to Moses at the bush. As if an explanation of these words in the New Testament are the words: I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, says the Lord, who is and who is and who is to come, the Almighty (Rev. 1:8). The idea of ​​the uniqueness of God is especially directly and powerfully depicted in the words of the Savior: just as the Father had life in Himself, so He also gave the Son life in Himself (John 5:26). As such a being, God in Holy Scripture is depicted as giving life and breath and everything to everyone (Acts 17:25; Ps. 35:9-10). No one can give him anything, no one gives him any instruction or advice (Ex.40:13-14; Rom.11:34-35). Through St. Isaiah He says: I am; Before Me there was no other God, and after Me there will not be (43:10). 2. Immutability. - Immutability in God is such a property by which He always remains the same in His being, and in His powers and perfections, and in His definitions, not subject to any kind of change or random transitions from one state - better or worse to another - worse or better. This property is inseparably united in God with the property of His originality and is necessarily presupposed by it. Finite beings are subject to continuous change in their existence, and this is because they are not original and are dependent in their existence on external causes and conditions. In God, therefore, no random modifications in existence are conceivable, because He is independent of anyone and anything in existence. This is how revelation portrays God. He testifies of Himself: I am the Lord your God, and I do not change (Mal.3:6). Priest writers claim that with the Father of lights... there is no change or change (not a shadow of change - James 1:17; cf. Heb. 6:16–17). They reject in Him the changeability that is noticeable both in visible nature and in man. The first thought is especially clearly expressed by the Psalmist: in the beginning, O Lord, You founded the earth, and the works of Your hands are the heavens. They will perish, but You remain: and they will all promise like their garments, and they will change like their garments. You are the same, and Your summers will not fail (Ps. 101:26–28). The changeability noticeable in man is also rejected by revelation in God. Not like a man, God hesitates, but like a son of man he changes: He says, will he not do it (Num. 23:19)? Jesus Christ, according to the apostle, is the same yesterday and today, the same and forever (Heb. 13:8). Note. Regarding the immutability of God for reason, there are some difficulties that require clarification. The most important of these difficulties are the following: 1) How can we reconcile the immutability in God of the birth of the Son in Him and the procession of the Holy Spirit? The answer to this is given by St. I. Damascene. (Exposition of Faith, 1 book. 8 chapters), and its essence can be expressed as follows: God the Father, giving birth from His own essence that which is identical with Himself by nature, gives birth within His essence, and not outside, by Himself, without the need for anyone’s assistance, gives birth eternally, endlessly and unceasingly, so that the Son was always with the Father and in the Father, and therefore gives birth without damaging His immutability. Only then would He undergo a change when He gave birth to the Son in time, becoming the Father after and not being Him before, when He gave birth not by Himself, but with the assistance of the outside, and when the separation of the essence of the Son from the essence of the Father took place. Similar reasoning applies to the procession of the Holy Spirit. In an original and eternal being, this birth and generation are original and eternal, and therefore in no case can serve in Him as signs of His changeability. 2) How to reconcile the incarnation of God the Word in the person of I. Christ with the immutability of God? The answer to this bewilderment is contained in the teaching of the Church that the two natures in Jesus Christ, with the unity of hypostasis, were united not only inseparably and inseparably, but also unmerged and unchangeable or immutable (the creed of the IV Ecumenical Council), so that neither the Divinity changed into humanity, nor humanity into the Divinity, but each of the natures retained its properties, the Divinity - Its infinity, humanity - its limitations. Therefore, through the incarnation no change in the essence of God followed; it would only happen if the Divinity, as the Monophysites taught, mixed with humanity, forming from Himself and human nature one new, mixed nature. 3) How can the immutability of God be preserved when God created the world in time? This confusion is resolved this way. The creation of the world in relation to God is not something accidental, unexpected and unforeseen by God; the thought of the world existed in the mind of God from eternity, and, moreover, as the thought of the world, which was to be created in time: rational (i.e., known) from the ages of God, all His works (Acts 15:18); the power of creativity is equally eternal in God. The creation of the world, therefore, is nothing more than the realization in time of the eternal and unchanging thought of God. On the other hand, God did not produce the world from His own being, but created it through the external creative action of His will, which did not produce any change in His being. 4) Doesn’t God’s providence for the world contradict the teaching of God’s immutability? No. It is accomplished according to the eternal predestination of God (Acts 15:18; Dan.13:42; Sir.23:29). From eternity God foresaw the entire course of world events and from eternity predetermined the entire series of acts of His providential influence on the world order. Then change would have been introduced into God’s being, something new into His life, if the actions of God’s providence were not foreseen, but were a random affair, extorted from God by unforeseen circumstances. 3. Eternity. – God, as an unchangeable being, does not depend on the conditions of time, as the form of all changeable existence, or is eternal. Time is not something that exists in itself; it is only a form of finite existence, since in it constant changes occur in things, as a result of which they either appear or disappear, passing from one state to another and at each specific moment they are not what they were before. It is these changes that determine the before and after, the beginning and the end, the present, the past and the future in the successive finite being. If such constant changes did not occur in finite being, but were always equally equal to itself, then there would be no measurement of the duration of being, there would be no place for time. This is precisely the existence of the unchangeable being of God. It completely and always equally owns its being, without any increase or decrease, without any continuity or change, and therefore for It there is no beginning, no end, no past, no future, but there is only always the same, ever-present or eternal existence. On the negative side, the eternity of God, therefore, consists in the fact that for God there are no those dimensions of time that are attached to finite being (before, after, now), on the positive side - in the fact that at every supposed time He is the same, always equal to Himself. Revelation depicts the eternity of God with all separateness. “I am,” God Himself says about Himself. The internal dependence of God's eternity on His immutability is clearly expressed in the above words of the Psalmist: in the beginning You, O Lord, founded the earth... You are the same, and Your years will not fail. About the degree of duration of God's existence, adapted to our designations of time, it represents God Himself as testifying: I am the first, and I am forever (Isa. 48:12; sn. 41, 4; 44, 6). I am Alpha and Omega, the firstfruits and the end (Rev. 1:8). I am the first and the last (- 17th century). Before Me there was no other God, and after Me there will not be (Is. 43:10). The idea of ​​these sayings is that no matter where a person stretches his mind when measuring time - to the beginning or the end, he meets God everywhere, who, therefore, is above the largest dimensions of time: before even the mountains did not exist and the earth and the universe were created, from eternity to eternity you are (Ps. 89:2). Scripture presents the very image of God’s eternal existence as different from the image of finite existence and sublime above our existing dimensions of time. The psalmist speaks of Him: a thousand years are before Your eyes, O Lord, like yesterday (Ps. 89:5), and St. Peter, repeating these words, adds that one day before the Lord is like a thousand years (2 Pet 3:8). 4. Immeasurability and omnipresence. – Being above the conditions of time, God is unlimited and by no limits of space, – He is immeasurable and omnipresent. Like time, space is not something that exists independently of things, but is also a form of existence of finite things, since they are characterized by spatial definitions and relationships. A certain extent (length, width, height, depth) of finite things comes from the lack of originality in them and their dependence in existence on external conditions that establish spatial limits or boundaries of their existence. But God, as an original being and independent in anything and from nothing extraneous or external, cannot be constrained or fenced in by anything, excluded or enclosed by anything. He is a Being that stands above all spatiality or measurable extension, a Being vast, unlimited and immeasurable. Considered in relation to the world, He is an omnipresent Being, i.e. He does not reside in one particular place or at one time in one place, at another in another, but resides everywhere, always and completely. In the world, both physical and moral, there is not a single place, not a single created being, and in all these beings there is not the slightest, so to speak, partial state and action of forces where God is not present. Revelation has at all times proclaimed the immeasurability and omnipresence of the being of God. God Himself speaks about Himself in the Old Testament: Do I not fill the heavens and the earth with food? (Jer.23:24). Heaven is My throne, and earth is My footstool: what house will you build Me, and what place of My resting place? (Exodus 66:1) David confesses the omnipresence of God in these words: Where will I go from Your Spirit? and will I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I descend into hell, there you are: yet I will take my wings early (if I take the wings of the dawn), and will dwell in the last of the seas, and there Your hand will guide me, and Your right hand will hold me (Ps. 139:7-10). In the New Testament, the idea of ​​God's omnipresence is necessarily presupposed by the Savior's teaching that the worship of God in spirit and truth cannot be tied to any particular place, but must be done everywhere (John 4:21-23). The Apostle teaches that God is not far from each of us: in Him we live, we move, and we are (Acts 17:27–28), and that He is above all, and through all, and in us all (Eph. 4:6). Note. 1) How should the omnipresence of God in the world be represented? For us, confined within space, the image of God's omnipresence in the world is a mystery. However, it is self-evident that one cannot imagine it as if God is spread throughout the entire space of the world, like air or light, or that He penetrates everything with Himself, as if by some expansion or stretching of His being, as, for example, water penetrates a sponge floating in it, or that He is in different parts of the world with different parts of His being, in larger ones more, in smaller ones less. It is impossible to imagine God as omnipresent and only through the actions of His omniscience, omnipotence, and justice. Then one would have to think of God as being in some place from where He would act on all parts of the world with His mind and omnipotence. The pantheistic understanding of God's omnipresence is also incorrect - in the sense that the world is represented only by the manifestation, self-development or revelation of the Divine, so that God and the world (revelation in the external essence of God) are identical (the immanence of God to the world), while the existence of God (in pantheism God is an impersonal principle) outside and above the world (the transcendence of God to the world) is not allowed. This understanding denies the omnipresence in the sense of immeasurability and spatial unlimitedness of the divine nature. Preventing this kind of misconception about this property, the church fathers taught to understand it in such a way that God is not confined to any place, but is not excluded from any, that “He is all in all,” but “both outside and above everything,” that, therefore, He is present in the world not only by His actions and powers, but also by His very being. “You need to know,” says St. AND. Damascus, - that God has no parts, is all present everywhere and entirely, - does not remain as a part in a certain part, being divided like bodies, but is all in all and all above all." "He is a place for Himself, He fills everything and exists outside of everything" (Ex. Faith, I, ch. 13). According to St. Athanasius the Great, “God embraces everything and is not encompassed by anything; He abides in everything by His goodness and power" (hence, by His being, for in God actions cannot be separated from His being - ούσία), "and also outside of everything by His own nature" (κατά τήν ιδίαν φύσιν; Last definition. Nicene Coll. 11), i.e., by the fact that in His very being constitutes His nature (φύσις in the terminology of the Holy Father is not identical with ούσία) - being and life only within Himself, however, we must remember that with all attempts to understand the image of the omnipresence of God in the world, this property of God is especially incomprehensible to us. “That God is present everywhere,” says St. Chrysostom, - we know, but how - we do not comprehend, because we know only the sensory presence and are not given the ability to fully understand the nature of God” (On Heb. XII, 1). 2) If God is omnipresent, then how to understand those passages of Holy Scripture that speak of His special presence, for example, in heaven (Ps. 113:24), in the church (1 Kings 9:3), in man (2 Cor. 6:16), or His appearances to people in certain places? The answer to this perplexity can be the following. God is present throughout the world; there is no place in which He would not be. If places of the special presence of God are indicated, then this is said either in relation to our limitations, or because in some places there is a special manifestation of the presence of God, in accordance with the acceptability of creatures (see Cat. 1 ch.; Prov. Confess. 15). 3) Is God present in that which is contrary to His perfections in the world, for example, where dark evil plans are committed, passions and vices operate, etc.? It is impossible to think that the evil will, as it were, builds secret corners that would exclude the presence of God. And even with the most villainous plans, God is present as Preserver, Judge and Rewarder. If God were to withdraw His all-preserving and all-containing power from any being and its power, then they would immediately collapse and turn into nothing. We read from the Psalmist: even if I go down to hell, You are there; hell is a place in which physical and moral evil is most powerfully revealed and where, however, God is present. Therefore, it is impossible to imagine a single place, action or state in the physical or moral world where God is not present. The holiness of God through presence, even in vicious actions, is not at all darkened, just as, for example, light does not lose its purity at all when it passes through a polluted environment § 17. Spirituality of God's being God is Spirit - evidence of this from the Old and New Testaments. – Incorrect teaching about the God of the anthropomorphites. – Recognition of the spirituality of God by the religious and philosophical ideas of humanity, even non-Christian ones. God is the purest and most perfect personal Spirit. Revelation rejects both the grossly sensual pagan ideas about the Divine and the concept of Him as some impersonal infinite beginning, force, soul of the world, or some absolute, but not personal, not self-conscious mind, as in pantheistic teachings. I. The truth of the spirituality of the Godhead was taught in the Old Testament from the beginning. Without directly calling God anywhere the Spirit, the Old Testament revelation, nevertheless, assimilates to God everything that is included in the concept of the Spirit. Thus, God is portrayed in the Old Testament as a Being possessing the highest consciousness, intelligence and will, with all their varied properties. He learns: omniscience, wisdom, holiness, goodness, justice and other properties of spiritual and personal existence. Moses twice calls Him the God of spirits and all flesh (Num. 16:22; 27, 16), and about antediluvian humanity God Himself says: My spirit shall not abide in these men forever, for they are flesh (Gen. 6:3). True, with the images of God by the infinite Spirit, the properties of the bodily nature of man are often assimilated to God in the Old Testament. Thus, He is often depicted as having a head, face, eyes, ears, nose, mouth, arms, legs, heart, and states and actions characteristic of the human body are attributed to Him, for example, breathing, voice, touch, vision, smell, taste, etc. (so-called anthropomorphisms). But such images do not contradict the teaching of the Old Testament about God as the highest Spirit. The humanoid depiction of the properties and life in God does not at all introduce dogmatic anthropomorphism into the Old Testament teaching, similar to the anthropomorphism of pagan legends about the Divine. In the Old Testament religion, it lies not in thought, but in language, not in the very essence of the matter (that is, not in the assimilation to God of the actual ownership of the body and its members), but only in a special form or image of representation, and therefore does not damage revealed truth. The very images from beginning to end, far removed from the mythological tales about the gods of the peoples of that era, are such that they can be easily explained everywhere in a sense worthy of the most perfect being of God. But that they were required to be understood in this latter sense, this is revealed from the teaching of the Old Testament about the life of God, infinitely elevated above the life of the world, from the denial in God of the existence of bodily organs similar to the members of the human body (Job 10:4-5; Ps. 121:4; Isa. 40:28), and even more from the fact that it directly prohibits making images and worshiping an idol, or any visible likeness of God ( Ex.20:4–5; Deut.5:8–9 – second commandment). The reasons for such images of the Deity, in addition to the fact that imagery is a natural property of Hebrew speech, also lie in the fact that it is impossible for people clothed in flesh to understand and express their thoughts about spiritual objects without the use of images, types and symbols. All the more necessary was anthropomorphism for a people such as the Jews, in order to instill in them a sublime concept of God as Spirit. Note. – The images of the so-called should be distinguished from anthropomorphic images of God in Scripture. anthropopathic; These are the images of God with spiritual states characteristic of man, the assimilation by Him, for example, of joy, sadness, anger, fun, repentance, etc. Although these are also figurative expressions, they have a different meaning than anthropomorphisms. Anthropomorphisms are only signs of other concepts, spiritual, and anthropopathies are not signs, but in the proper sense of the state of the Divine Spirit, only special, consistent with the infinite nature of God, and alien to the sinfulness that is inherent in the states of the human spirit. In addition to the inability of the human language to express the idea of ​​​​the properties of the infinite Spirit without the use of humanoid expressions, anthropopathic images have the deepest basis for themselves in the fact that man is the image of God, and according to Christian teaching, the Word itself was flesh. II. In the New Testament, the doctrine of the spirituality of the Divine, as proposed for those who have grown in faith, is revealed without the previous anthropomorphisms. Here God is directly called Spirit. The Savior, in a conversation with a Samaritan woman, said: The Spirit (is) God (Πνεύμα ό Θεός); and whoever bows to Him is worthy to bow down in spirit and truth (John 4:24). The name of God by the Spirit is Πνεύμα, and the spirit, according to the Savior Himself, does not have flesh and bones (Luke 24:39), shows that God is a simple, immaterial being. Pointing to the proximity of the time when His worship will be universal (v. 21), the Savior thereby expresses that God is a Spirit unlimited by space, omnipresent, and generally infinite. Ap. Paul says: The Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, I am free (2 Cor. 3:17). By combining the thought of the Spirit with the thought of freedom, it is shown that God, according to the Apostle, is a personal, freely rational being. The same idea about God is taught in the New Testament, when He is called the Father of spirits (Heb. 12:9), reason, love and other properties that can only belong to a spiritually intelligent personal being are assimilated to Him. III. The Church, following the teaching of revelation, has always recognized the spirituality of the Divine. Church teachers of the first centuries, starting with apologists, were already resolutely armed against the crudely sensual pagan and late Jewish ideas about God, which tried to invade the environment of Christian society. The church's belief in the spirituality of the Divine was expressed with even greater certainty regarding the appearance in the 4th century. heresies of anthropomorphites (otherwise Avdian). Anthropomorphites argued that God should be represented only as being similar to man in everything, not excluding the body with all its organs and members. They thought to see the basis for such a thought in Holy Scripture, and namely: in the narrative of Moses about the creation of man in the image of God (Gen. 1:26), which, as they believed, consists not only in the soul, but also in the body, and even more so in the images of God with the members and properties of the human body. The church fathers strongly condemned such a crude concept of God and an equally unreasonable understanding of Scripture. The image of God, they admonished those who were mistaken, must be placed not in the body of a person, but in his soul, but regarding the humanoid expressions of Scripture about God, they explained the reasons for their use, and at the same time they offered the very explanation of them 14. At the same time, they showed that the teaching of the anthropomorphites is itself full of inconsistencies. They made this obvious by comparing the physicality of God assumed by the heretics with other properties of God, assimilated to Him in revelation and recognized by the anthropomorphites themselves, such as: infinity, omnipresence, immutability, indestructibility, eternity, all-perfection, etc. IV. The doctrine of God as an all-perfect personal Spirit is the only true one from the point of view of normal, sound thinking. The very concept of God’s all-perfection requires thinking in His personal spirit. Guided by the innate idea of ​​God, people of all times, no matter what stage of development they are at, usually imagine God as something higher and more perfect than which nothing can be. As an all-perfect being, God can only be thought of as possessing all the perfections that are observed in the world, of course, to the most infinite degree, for God is the beginning and cause of everything that exists and lives in the universe, and the universe, as His creation, is a manifestation of His perfections. The highest creation in the visible world is man, as a rational, personal and self-conscious being; material beings, without consciousness and intelligence, already occupy the lowest place in the ladder of being. Therefore, rising to the cause of the world, we must necessarily recognize that this cause could only be the supreme mind and, therefore, a personal God. An unreasonable, blind force cannot produce reason; consciousness cannot arise from the unconscious. On the other hand, if we exclude from the concept of God the thought of Him as the most perfect Spirit, then what remains is an unworthy of God idea of ​​Him, as a force, although omnipotent, but unreasonable, blind, purely physical, superior to which would be a person gifted with reason. Consideration of the properties of world existence in general leads the mind to the same conclusion. The regularity of world phenomena, harmony and rationality in the composition and process of development of the universe necessarily presuppose in the Being who formed the world a clear consciousness of both the entire world system and all the means and methods necessary to achieve the goal of world development. Finally, one cannot help but see confirmation of the truth about the spirituality of the Divine and in the fact that the Divinity in all religions is thought of as a personal being, although the ideas about the divine personality are not equally perfect everywhere. Such an idea of ​​God as a personal being, common to all peoples, cannot, of course, be considered only a person’s self-delusion, an idea that does not have truth at its core. § 18. Properties of the being of God as Spirit Classification of spiritual properties in accordance with the forces inherent in spiritual-personal existence: mind, will, feeling. – a) The mind of God and its properties: the omniscience of God and its objects (self-consciousness of God, knowledge of His affairs, external knowledge, such as actual and possible, necessary and accidental, past, present and future). – Divine foreknowledge; its possibility and agreement with the freedom of human action. - Wisdom of God. – b) The will of God and its properties: the highest freedom of God’s will (with explanation: God is not the author of evil). – The omnipotence of God’s will (with a note about objections to the knowledge of this property). – The holiness of God’s will. - The truth of God is legislative and rewarding. – The agreement of God’s justice with the phenomenon that the righteous often suffer, and sinners prosper. – c) The feeling or sensation of God, its properties. - God's all-bliss. – Infinite Goodness or God’s Love for creatures. – Compatibility in God with the goodness of justice. The concept of the spiritual perfections of God can be formed on the basis of observation of the nature of the human spirit, created in the image of God. The essential properties that characterize spiritual-personal existence in finite rationally free beings are: mind, will and feeling. From these same sides, of course, in accordance with the infinity of God’s nature, God can be considered as the most perfect Spirit, especially since from these same sides He, as a Spirit, is depicted in revelation. In accordance with this, the properties of God, as a spiritual being, can be divided into the properties of a) the mind of God, b) the will of God and c) the feelings or sensations of God. a) The Mind of God and its properties God has the most perfect mind. Revelation calls Him the God of minds (1 Samuel 2:3), asserts that His mind is without number (Ps. 146:5), i.e., that His mind is immeasurable. He is also, in relation to created beings, the beginning of all intelligence and knowledge (Prov. 2:6; cf. James 1:5). The mind of God is not, of course, just the ability of understanding, but is understanding or knowledge itself. In God there is depth of wisdom and understanding, that is, knowledge (Rom. 11:33). The rationality of our spirit is expressed in the fact that it cognizes itself and the reality located outside it, and, acquiring knowledge of this reality, intelligently uses its knowledge to achieve its rational goals, which is usually called wisdom. The human mind, therefore, is characterized by: knowledge and wisdom. The same properties are assimilated by revelation to the mind of God, only, of course, in the most perfect form. 1. Omniscience of God; his items. – By the property of God’s omniscience we mean not only that God knows everything, but also that He knows everything in the most perfect way. 1) The first and essential subject of the knowledge of God is the essence of God. God knows Himself most perfectly. The Son of God taught that no one knows the Son but the Father; no one knows the Father but the Son (Matthew 11:27). Here, clearly, we are talking about divine knowledge within the very essence of God or about divine self-consciousness. The apostle expresses the same thought this way: No one knows the message of God, but the Spirit of God. For the Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God (1 Cor. 2:10–11). The self-consciousness of God, in comparison with that of man, must, of course, be as much higher as the being of the infinite Spirit is higher than the finite spirit. Man does not know himself not only in his essence, he does not know the forces that express it in all its depth and completeness. This is because his life grows, his powers are revealed more and more. As it develops, so does self-awareness. Man's self-consciousness, therefore, is not complete and not always equally equal. This is not the way God knows Himself. The properties of the divine nature, and therefore His knowledge of His essence, are not subject to the limitations of time. His self-awareness must always be equal, most perfect and complete from century to century. 2) God receives by revelation the complete knowledge of His deeds at all times. The works of God, revealed externally, were accomplished in time. But the conduct of His affairs is inherent in God from eternity. He knows everything before their existence (Dan.13:42; Sir.23:29); rational (γνωστά) from eternity, all His works are God's (Acts 15:18), that is, they are not by chance, not in some unexpected, unexpected way accomplished and are being accomplished, but they all happened and are happening according to the foreknowledge of God and are contemplated by Him in the images (ideas) of His mind before they appear, just as, for example, an artist before his work appears, contemplates his image in his own spirit. 3) Finally, God knows perfectly everything external, actual and possible, necessary and contingent, past, present and future. a) God knows everything that really exists and is created by Him. He knows the order of the physical world: He himself supervises the whole of the heavenly places, knowing, even on the earth, everything that has been created, the weight of the winds and the measure of the water (Job 28:24-25), the rule given to the rain, and the path appointed for thunderous lightning (v. 26), he counts the many stars, and gives names to all of them (Ps. 147:4), knows all the birds of the air (Ps. 49:11 ). He also knows the order of the moral world: (in every place the eyes of the Lord look, both evil and good (Prov. 15:3). The needs, desires, secret prayers of man are known to Him: Lord, - exclaims the Psalmist, - all my desire is before You, and my groaning is not hidden from You (Ps. 37:10). Pain is the God of our hearts, and the whole message (1 John 3:20). b) God knows everything that has happened in the world He created. This is clearly shown by Holy Scripture when it says that God at a certain time will judge the world in righteousness (Acts 17:31), when He will bring into light the secrets of darkness, and will declare the counsels of the heart (1 Cor. 4:5) and will reward everyone according to His deeds (Rom. 2:6). c) Embraces the knowledge of God and the whole future, not only the necessary, but also everything contingent, therefore also free, not only good, but also evil. God knows all future necessities. From time immemorial He Himself, in His ideas, foresaw and provided for the laws of existence and the entire structure of world life; Therefore, He cannot help but know all this even after the structure of the world in time. But He knows not only what is necessary, but also all the contingent future, both in the physical world and in the moral world. There is no freedom in the physical world; in it everything stands in connection with necessary causes, which is why in fact there is no such pure case where something happens without any reason; This or that phenomenon seems random to us because its causes are hidden from us (sudden, for example, wind directions, the path of lightning, unexpected falls of some bodies, etc.). But the knowledge of God also embraces all these causes unknown to us, and therefore all unexpected, seemingly random, circumstances are also foreseen. Fire, hail, snow, fog, and stormy spirit, according to the Psalmist, are those who do His word (Ps. 149:8). Punitive lightning, seemingly accidentally striking a person, is actually the arrows that the wrath of God scatters on the wicked (Ps. 17:15; Wis. 5:21). God also knows all the random future in the moral world, all the actions of human freedom. The foreknowledge of future random events is indicated in Scripture as one of the distinctive signs of the true God: tell us what is to come in the end, - says St. Isaiah in addressing the false gods, - and let us know, as we are gods (Is. 41:23). The existence of such foreknowledge in the true God is proven by the numerous predictions contained in the word of God of future random actions of human freedom; many of them were spoken 100, 500, 700 and even 1000 years ago, and were justified by events, while others are being fulfilled before our eyes, for example, the Savior’s predictions about the spread of the Gospel (Matthew 24:14), the fate of Judaism (Luke 21:24), about the unshakable existence of the church (Matthew 16:18), etc. In its method and properties, God's knowledge outside of His existing reality is different from human knowledge and free from all the shortcomings and limitations of the latter. A person acquires knowledge about the external world through impressions acting on him from outside. Hence, human cognition is evolving over time. But God does not receive impressions from the outside, but knows things directly by Himself and through Himself; hence the very knowledge of God is free from the limitations of time, it is always equally complete and perfect, representing a single and eternal act of contemplation. Further, our knowledge of what exists is far from comprehensive. Not only do we not have such knowledge in the present, but even in the future it is impossible to hope that we will ever know everything. The inner, hidden essence of objects will forever remain incomprehensible to us. But God also knows the very essence of objects (Jer. 23:24), for they are all an external expression of His eternal creative ideas about them. Divine foreknowledge. Its possibility and agreement with freedom of human action. – That side of God’s omniscience, the subject of which is the future free actions of moral beings, is called God’s foreknowledge. God foresees the free actions of man, of course, not in the sense in which a prudent person can guess, expect something, or sometimes have a presentiment of something, but in the sense that he foresees and predicts them, as undoubtedly known to Him, as inevitably going to happen. How is this possible and isn’t human freedom constrained by God’s foreknowledge? Regarding the possibility of such foreknowledge, the church fathers accepted the following explanation: for God the future is the present, because for Him there is no time, and limitations - the present and the future are limitations belonging to time; all particular moments of time, divided into present, past and future, constitute only the present for God. Therefore, the future that is to follow is as known to Him as the present. Human freedom is not violated by God's foreknowledge, for knowledge is not yet a necessary determination of an action or event. “It is not because something necessarily comes true,” the ancient teachers reasoned, “that God foresees, but because He foresees that this will happen” (Augustine. On the City of God. V, 9-10; Damascene. Accurate exposition of faith. II, 30). God's foreknowledge of man's free actions can be likened to our knowledge of the actions of other people, and our knowledge does not at all restrict the freedom of other people; It is not because a person acts one way or another that we know his actions; whether we know them or not, his very actions will not change. Finally, if God, by His foreknowledge, necessarily predetermined the free actions of man, then He, by the way, would be the culprit of man’s evil actions, and such a thought, obviously, cannot be allowed. 2. The wisdom of God. – This perfection or property of the divine mind consists in the fact that God has knowledge of the most perfect goals and the best, most appropriate means for achieving goals, and the ability to apply the latter to the former, revealing all this in the affairs of His creation and providence. Wisdom is also characteristic of man. But human wisdom, as depending on various external causes and circumstances, is necessarily changeable, and is not always completely prudent and true. Divine wisdom does not depend on anything extraneous or external; it is original, just as the very being of God is original, and therefore eternal and unchangeable, and at the same time all-embracing and all-perfect. This is how revelation depicts this property of God. The actions of the wisdom of God are manifested in time, but wisdom itself is as original and eternal as the essence of God is original and eternal. Before it was created, everything was taken away to Him (Sir.23:29). Our adoption to God by Jesus Christ, according to the word of the apostle, was predestined by God before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4–5). The entire existence of the world in time is only a gradual but faithful implementation from eternity in the mind of God of the predetermined plan of the universe and the order in it. But just as there could be no imperfection in the plan created by the most perfect mind, so there could be no imperfection in its implementation. And God saw everything that He had created: and all that was good (Gen. 1:31), He Himself testified at the end of creation. The creation of the starry sky delighted the angels: when the stars were created, says God in Job, all My angels praised Me with a great voice (8:37). Priest writers unanimously express deep reverence for the Creator, looking at the wise structure of the world, or, what is the same, at its expediency. Bless my soul the Lord,” sings David, delighted by the contemplation of the wonderful works of God; – Lord my God, you are greatly magnified... for your works are magnified, O Lord; you have done all things with wisdom (Ps. 103:1, 24). Wonderful are your works, O Lord (Ps. 139:14; cf. Job 9:10; 37, 14, etc.)!.. God made the foundation of the earth with wisdom, but he prepared the heavens with understanding, repeats the wise son of David (Prov. 3:19; cf. Jer. 10:12). The manifestation of the wisdom of God is discerned by sacred writers in the structure of all individual parts of the universe and in all its kingdoms. About the wisdom of God; revealed, for example, in the creation of the vegetable kingdom, the Savior Himself testifies that Solomon in all his glory was not dressed as magnificently as each of the lilies of the field was dressed by the Creator (Matthew 6:28-30). In the destinies of the moral world, as a matter of the ineffable wisdom of God, Scripture points especially to the economy of our redemption. We preach Christ asleep, says the apostle. Paul, - for the Jews it is a temptation, but for the Greeks it is foolishness: but to those who are called both Jew and Greek, Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God (1 Cor. 1:23-24); We speak the wisdom of God, hidden in mystery, which God first presented for our glory (1 Cor. 2:7). In the way of the restoration of man, acquired by the wisdom of God, according to the prophet, mercy and truth were met, righteousness and peace were embraced (Ps. 84:11). The plan of salvation in Christ is equally wondrous. Oh, the depth of the wealth and wisdom and mind of God! lest His judgment be tested, and His ways unsearched! - exclaims the apostle after considering the plan of salvation for Jews and Gentiles (Rom. 11:33). The teaching about the wisdom of God, contained in revelation in relatively general terms, is revealed in the works of the patristic fathers in the greatest detail; Some of them devote special extensive discussions to the disclosure of that side of this property that manifested itself in the expedient structure of the world (Demons on the Six Days of Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, I. Chrysostom, etc.). Direct contemplation of the wise structure of nature and its beauty has always been the most powerful means to the knowledge of God and to the conviction of His existence, for, says the Wise One, from the greatness of the beauty of creatures the Author of their existence is comparatively known (Wis 13:5). Already the pagan sages (especially Socrates and Plato) saw evidence of the wisdom of the Artist of the world in the extraordinary order and wise structure of the world. With the expansion of the circle of knowledge about nature, there are even more ways and means for a person to be convinced of the wisdom of the Creator. b) The will of God and its properties God has the most perfect will. The Savior taught. in prayer, surrender oneself to the will of God: Our Father, Thy will be done as it is in heaven and on earth (Matthew 6:10), and He Himself, praying for the cup to pass from Him, said: neither is my will, but Thine be done (Luke 22:42). The will of God in revelation is depicted in its essence as extremely free, in its moral direction - all-holy, in strength and power - omnipotent, in relation to freely rational creatures - requiring holiness from them, and therefore punishing evil and rewarding good, or all-righteous. 1. The highest freedom of God's will. – In its essence, the will of God is the highest free will. The freedom of God's will consists in the fact that in its decisions and determinations it is completely independent of any third-party (external) motives or influences, but the foundation of its life and all its actions lies solely in itself. Such freedom can only be characteristic of an original being, such as God. Although there is also freedom in man, it never is and cannot be so complete. On the one hand, in his actions a person is dependent on the influence of external conditions, and on the other, his very freedom in his determinations cannot completely free himself from hesitation and struggle. God is independent of anything extraneous, and therefore, His will is determined only by itself, that is, it is completely and completely free. Likewise, in the free will of God there can be no struggle, no hesitation in choosing between any different impulses of His nature, because the divine nature is simple and united. This is how revelation depicts the will of God. Ap. Paul about God the Father, for example, says that He named (predestined) us as sons Jesus Christ according to the good pleasure of His will (Eph. 1:5), that He revealed to us the mystery of His will according to His good pleasure (v. 9). It is clear that here we mean the will that exists in God from eternity, and in this will, advice and decisions can only arise directly from the depths of its being and independently of anything extraneous and external that could have any influence on it (Rom. 11:34). The same thought is expressed by the Psalmist like this: Our God is in heaven and on earth, do whatever He pleases (Ps. 113:11). Revelation presents all the actions of God in the creation of the world as supremely free, and not forced by anything. He acts entirely according to the advice of His will (Eph.1:11) in matters of providence, both in the material world and in the moral world: and He creates according to His will in the power of heaven and in the settlement of the earth (Dan.4:32; cf. Job 23:13). The apostle says about the distribution of grace-filled gifts to people: but all this operates in one and the same Spirit, dividing with authority as He wills (1 Cor. 12:11). 2. The holiness of God's will. – In terms of its moral state, the will of God is the all-holy will. The holiness of God's will lies in the fact that in its aspirations it is determined and guided by ideas and thoughts about one highest good, and these aspirations always coincide with their very implementation, and do not remain only good desires. Therefore, God is pure from sin and cannot sin, loving good in creatures and hating evil. In revelation, God Himself is portrayed as saying about Himself: Be holy, for I am holy (Lev.19:2; 1Pet.1:16), and the angels are praising the Lord with songs: Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is filled with His glory (Is.6:3; fn. Rev.15:4). According to the testimony of the New Testament revelation: God is light, and in Him there is not a single darkness (John 1:5). He is not even tempted by evil (James 1:13). Therefore, in creatures He hates evil and loves good: the ways of corruption are an abomination to the Lord: but you are acceptable to Him if you are blameless in your ways (Prov. 11:20). Apparently the holiness of God was revealed on earth in the person of the incarnate only begotten Son of God. Such a state of God's freedom that she can want and do only good and cannot do evil is a manifestation of the purest freedom. This is because it is not any external force or fate, and not any law outside of God that forces God to be holy, but He Himself, solely by the advice of His will, desires and does good; wanting and doing good is a requirement of His all-perfect nature. For the human will, such a state of freedom is an ideal, to which a person can only gradually and piecemeal approach with the assistance of the grace of God. God is not the author of evil. – As an all-holy being, God cannot not only create, but also desire the existence of evil. In reality, evil exists in the physical world, and especially in the moral world. Is this consistent with the holiness of almighty God? In response to this bewilderment, the church fathers explained the following: sin, the violation of the free human will of God, should be considered evil in the proper and strict sense; what we call physical evil (crop failures, fires, storms, earthquakes and other disasters observed on earth) is not evil in itself; it is such only for sinful people; although it is truly from God, it is sent to correct people and excite them to goodness, and therefore it is good. Sins, the consequence of which is physical evil, all come from the abuse of the freedom of rational creatures, which God created good and, having granted them, no longer takes away, allowing its abuse, since moral good is actually conditioned by it. From this point of view, it is easy to explain, and indeed was explained by the church fathers, all those passages of Scripture that at first glance may show in God something incompatible with His holiness 15 . 1. Thus, there are expressions in Scripture in which God seems to be the culprit of hardness in evil, for example, the hardening of the heart of Pharaoh (Ex. 4:21; 10, 1, etc.), or the heart of the Israelites (Deut. 29: 4; Ex. 6: 9). Since, according to the testimony of the same word of God, the hardness of Pharaoh depended on himself, and the Israelites themselves did not follow the law, then the expressions; God hardened the heart of Pharaoh or the Israelites means only that God allowed the hardening of human freedom, and not that He Himself caused this hardening. This is the same meaning of similar expressions found in the New Testament, for example: God shut everyone into rebellion (Rom. 11:32), God gave them a spirit of insensibility, eyes not to see and ears not to hear (Rom. 11:8). 2. Sometimes God is presented in Scripture as if disposed to one or another bad deeds, for example, it is said: about God’s inclination of David to the vainglorious number of the people (2 Samuel 24:1), about the will of God to deceive Ahab with the spirit of lies (1 Kings 22:20-23), about the cohabitation of St. Hosea with an indecent wife (Hos. 1:2, 3:1 ). But the former is elsewhere attributed to an evil spirit (1 Chronicles 21:1). Ahab is a vision, not an actual story; his blindness, as a result of deviation from the light of God into the darkness of superstition, is depicted as the execution of God's truth. What is said about Hosea is a symbolic representation of the criminal passion of the Israelite people for the pagan gods. 3. In some places of Holy Scripture, the temptation of people, for example, Abraham, is attributed to God, and, thus, God appears to be the author of sin. But in such cases one must keep in mind what kind of temptation is attributed to God. Temptation is bringing a being into a state in which its hidden properties would be revealed in action. Temptation is possible in two ways: 1) temptation in evil, or the stimulation to action of evil inclinations hidden in a person, and 2) temptation in good, or the direction given to the principle of good acting in it in an open struggle against evil or against obstacles in good, to achieve victory and glory. The first is not from God (James 1:13), but is a consequence of being abandoned by God (2 Chronicles 32:31): it comes from our flesh, from the world, from other people, and from the devil. The second kind of temptation is from God, and, to the extent of spiritual strength, is sent for the good of man. David asked for such a temptation for himself (Ps. 25:2). I. Christ himself was tempted in every way (Heb. 4:15). Abraham's temptation in Isaac was of the same kind. 3. The omnipotence of the will of God. – The omnipotence of God’s will consists in the fact that God brings to fruition everything that pleases Him without any difficulty or obstacle, so that no outside force can restrain or hinder His actions. Holy Scripture very often speaks of the omnipotence of God. It calls God the Lord of hosts (Ps. 23:10), the God of hosts, Who has no equal in strength (– 88:9), the only mighty one (1 Tim. 6:15), the Almighty (Παντοκράτωρ – Jer. 32:18–19; 2 Cor. 6:18, etc.), from whom every verb does not fail. (Luke 1:37). Nothing is impossible for Him (Job.42:2; Matt.19:26). He can raise up children for Abraham from stones (Matthew 3:9). Preparing Abraham for the command and promise that was to come, God says about Himself: I am God Almighty (El Schaddai - Gen. 17:1). Bo outside the omnipotence of the will of God was first revealed in the creative work of everything that God was pleased to create: everything that the Lord pleased created (Ps. 113:11), and He created everything with one word: He spoke, and it was, He commanded, and it was created (Ps. 33:9). Then it is constantly revealed in the deeds of God’s never-interrupted sovereign providence for creatures, and especially in extraordinary actions performed for special purposes, such as miracles: blessed is the Lord God of Israel, who alone works miracles (Ps. 71:18; 76, 14, etc.). In particular, in the area of ​​moral order, by the omnipotence of God, without violating the freedom of people, the final and complete triumph of good over evil will be achieved, so that the Lord of the spiritual and moral kingdom will put all enemies under His feet (1 Cor. 15:25). Note. The idea of ​​the omnipotence of God was opposed in ancient times, and some objections and bewilderments are sometimes expressed even today. They say: since God cannot sin, allow lies, die, make a mortal immortal, the past - present, so that 2x2 is together and 4 and 10, etc., then He is not omnipotent. The answer to such reasoning can be the following. The omnipotence of God does not lie in doing whatever we please, but in the fact that God can carry out everything pleasing to His will: if His will does not want much that is contrary to His most perfect nature and His most perfect reason, then this does not show its weakness and powerlessness, but, on the contrary, its strength and power. In general, regarding these and similar objections, it should be noted that the omnipotence of God is not of a physical, but of a moral nature. To demand from God the activity to which He is called forth by the above objections would mean to demand that He lose His omnipotence and cease to be the supremely intelligent being that He is. 4. God's truth. – The divine will, being holy in itself, also demands holiness from rational creatures, and therefore gives them a moral law, leading those who fulfill it to holiness, and, as omnipotent, rewards for its fulfillment and punishes for violation. This property of the divine will is the highest truth or justice. The truth of God's will, thus, is manifested in two actions: in the truth that gives the law of holiness (legislative truth), and in the truth that rewards moral beings - each according to his deserts (retributive truth or justice). The apostle points to both of these actions of the will of God when he says about God that He alone is the Lawmaker and Judge, able to save and destroy (James 4:12). The will of God - all-holy - also requires holiness from people. Through Moses God said: Be holy, for I am holy (Lev 19:2); The Savior of the world also taught: Be ye perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect (Matthew 5:48; sn. 1 Pet 1:15). Demanding holiness from rationally free beings, God gave people a moral law, following which they could truly become like God. This law is twofold - internal, natural, inscribed in the very nature of man (Rom. 2:14-15), and external, positive or revealed law, dividing into the Old Testament and the New Testament. God is also a righteous Judge, rewarding for the fulfillment or violation of the law given by Him. Vengeance is mine, and I will repay, says the Lord (Deut. 32:35; Rom. 12:19; Heb. 10:30). Do not be flattered: God cannot be mocked. For if a man sows, he will also reap: as if he sows in his flesh, from the flesh he will reap corruption; But whoever sows to the spirit, from the spirit he will reap eternal life (Gal.6:7-8). For all eternity, he established such a law that truth and goodness naturally entail relative bliss, and evil and vice - torment and evil. But with the advent of sin and, in general, as a result of the abuse of the freedom of rational beings, this judgment of God's truth alone became insufficient. The need was revealed on the part of the all-holy God for special actions of His providence (the use of positive rewards and punishments) to limit evil and the triumph of good. Revelation testifies that God has indeed demonstrated and continues to demonstrate His justice in the special acts of His providence. So, as soon as the angels sinned, God did not show mercy to them, but bound them in captivity in darkness and handed them over to the judgment of the tormented to watch over (2 Peter 2:4; Jude 6 v.), - the first parents sinned, and also underwent the righteous condemnation of God (Gen. 3 ch.). The further history of mankind confirms the justice of God with indications of His numerous actions, presenting examples of punishment for wickedness and rewards for fulfilling His holy will of both entire nations and all mankind, as well as individuals, such as, for example, the global flood, the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah, the confusion of languages ​​and the dispersion of tribes, etc. The actions of God's justice are especially clearly and strikingly visible in the history of God's chosen people of Israel from its beginning to the present day. God is also just in relation to individuals: the eyes of the Lord (turned) to the righteous, and His ears to their prayer; But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil, and destroy them from the earth (1 Pet 3:12). Anyone who does good will receive it from the Lord, whether he is a slave or free (Eph. 6:8; cf. Ps. 5:12–13, 23:4–5, etc.). The courts of the righteous are blessed by Him (Prov. 3:33), and on the contrary, the curse of the Lord is on the house of the wicked (Prov. 3:33; v. 15, 25). The wrath of God remains on the wicked (John 3:36; Rom.1:18, 12:19; Eph.5:6; Ps.77, etc.). In relation to the wicked, according to the figurative expression of Scripture, our God is a consuming fire (Heb. 12:29; Deut. 4:24). As special, extraordinary manifestations of God's justice, revelation points to the mystery of redemption and the future world judgment. In the work of redemption, God, who knew no sin (I. Christ), made sin for us (made us a sacrifice for sin; 2 Cor. 5:21), for the manifestation of His righteousness, for the remission of former sins (Rom. 3:25), and the day of the world judgment of God will be the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, in which God will reward everyone according to his deeds (Rom. 2:6). Then everyone will receive what he has done with his body, either good or evil (2 Cor. 5:10). The agreement of God's justice with the phenomenon that the righteous often suffer, and sinners prosper. Since ancient times, against the justice of God, the triumph of moral evil in the person of prosperous sinners, with the humiliation of virtue in the person of the suffering and persecuted righteous, has been pointed out. And now, under the blows of seemingly undeserved disasters, there are frequent cases of murmuring against God and even falling away from faith in Him to unbelief. But in the light of the revealed teaching and the lessons given by the experiences of life, the objection raised against the justice of God will lose its force if, when judging this phenomenon, we keep in mind the following. 1) There is no complete reward on earth; therefore the righteous can often suffer and the wicked prosper. 2) The misfortunes to which the righteous are exposed, and the apparent prosperity of sinners, often depend on people, on their injustice and partiality, and in general on the action of their free will. But God, just as he generally does not restrict the freedom of his creatures, does not want to restrict it in this case either. 3) Good people, despite the hardships of their external situation, enjoy the most precious internal blessings: spiritual peace, joys and consolations from God (Rom. 14:17), and sinners. with external well-being, they have a source of torment for themselves in their very passions and iniquities (Wis 11:17), which have a disastrous effect on their soul and body. 4) When God allows the suffering of the righteous and even sends it down on pious people, He acts in truth, for there is not a righteous person on earth who has not sinned in some way (1 John 1:8; Proverbs 20:9); He does this for a good purpose, so that through disasters he can cleanse them from all sinful filth (Wis 3:6; 1Pet 1:6-7). confirm in good (Rom. 5:3–5; 2 Cor. 4:16), and, having punished temporarily here, increase their future glory (Wis 3, 4–5; 2 Cor. 8:17); on the other hand, He allows the prosperity of sinners in truth, for sinners sometimes have a lot of good in themselves; at the same time, they are prompted to repentance by the fact that God, pouring out goodness on them, does not punish them for sin (Rom. 2.4; 2 Pet 3.9). The main thing is 5) God’s justice in relation to people should not be limited by the limits of their present life, which for them is only a time of exploits and education for eternity: there is another life in which the truth of God will reward everyone according to their deserts, when the righteous will be eternally blissful, and sinners will suffer eternal punishment. c) Feeling or sensation of God. Its properties Revelation indicates in many cases the existence in God of an ability corresponding in our spiritual nature to the ability to feel (or to our heart with its functions, i.e., feelings). Thus, it is said about God that He finds people after His own heart (Acts 13:22), that in some cases He rejoices with all His heart (Jer. 32:41), and in others His heart is filled with pity (Hos. 11:8), that He loves righteousness and hates iniquity (Ps. 44:8; Prov. 11:20; Heb. 1:9). The essential properties of our sentient spirit are, on the one hand, attraction and love for our own good and a feeling of joy or bliss from the possession of this good, and on the other hand, attraction to the good of others or love for others. Both of these things are assimilated by revelation to God, of course, to the highest degree. The essential properties of God from the side of His feeling, therefore, include: 1) the all-bliss of God and 2) infinite goodness or love for creatures. 1. God's all-bliss. – This property in God is a necessary consequence of all His other properties and perfections. In God is all the fullness of being and life, original being, and life representing the most perfect unity. This, in fact, constitutes the supreme good. Hence, God in Himself has everything necessary for complete bliss; love for good in Him, therefore, invariably coincides with its very possession, and as a result of this, unchangeable all-bliss must be characteristic of Him from eternity. It is clear that such completeness of bliss cannot be characteristic of man; Although a person has an irresistible attraction to true good, the conditions necessary to satisfy this need exist not in himself, but outside of him; he is often unable to overcome obstacles to achieving good; hence the feeling of good or bliss is inevitably weakened to a greater or lesser extent and obscured by unpleasant feelings stemming from the feeling of deprivation of good or its incompleteness. Holy Scripture assimilates this property to God when it calls Him blessed (1 Tim. 1, 11; 6, 15), indicates that there is fullness of joy before Him, bliss is in His right hand forever (Ps. 15:11), that He does not require anything (Acts 17:26), i.e., He possesses bliss regardless of anyone or anything, that the righteous will also find bliss in sight of God: blessed are those who are pure in heart, for they see God (Matthew 5:8). 2. Infinite goodness or love of God for creatures. – This property or perfection of God consists in the fact that God gives His creatures as many goods and perfections as are needed for their bliss and as much as each of them can accept according to their nature and condition. Goodness, according to the teaching of revelation, constitutes, as it were, the very essence of God. “If we,” says Gregory the Theologian, “who asked: what do we honor and what do we worship? – the answer is ready: we honor love. For, according to the saying of the Holy Spirit (1 John 14:8, 16), our God is “loving” (Cl. 23). This ineffable love or goodness prompted God to create a world with rationally moral beings capable of loving Him and finding happiness in Him (Eph. 1:5, 9; John 14:23; Matt. 25:34). All providential actions God in the world are manifestations of His goodness. All the ways of the Lord are mercy (Ps. 24:10). The Lord is good to everyone, and His tender mercies are upon all His creatures (Ps. 144:9). No matter how small and insignificant a creature is, the goodness of God not only does not disdain it, but lovingly cares for its life and needs. Lord, - and not a single one of them falls to the earth, without your Father (Matt. 10:29; fn. Wis. 11:25-27). In particular, God has shown and continues to show His goodness in relation to man. In the Old Testament, God, addressing Israel, says: a woman will forget her food when she is a child, so that she will not have mercy on the offspring of her womb? Even if the woman forgets these, I will not forget you (Is. 49:15). and in the New Testament the Savior says: do not call your father to earth: for one is your Father who is in heaven (Matthew 23:9). He fatherly heeds all our prayers (Matthew 7:9-11), cares for all our needs, not excluding the bad among us, as His sun shines on the evil and on the good, and rains on the righteous and the unjust (Matthew 5:45; cf. Acts 17:25), and in general sends down every good gift and every perfect gift (James 1:17). The highest manifestation and evidence of the infinite goodness of God to us, the word of God represents the work of our redemption completed by the only begotten Son of God: God so loved the world, as He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16). So immensely great and inexpressible is the goodness of God towards created beings! This is not what love for others is possible in limited beings. In human love, no matter how disinterested it may be, there is hidden the need to increase one’s own good through increasing the good of others; the goodness of God pours out gifts to creatures not in order to increase its own good, for God is all-blessed, but in order to make them participants in bliss. And the goodness of God extends not to some limited part of the world, which constitutes the property of love of limited beings, but to the whole world, with all the creatures found in it. The mercy of man, says the son of Sirach, is on his sincere, but the mercy of the Lord is on all flesh (18:12). Compatibility in God with the goodness of justice. The infinite goodness of God, pouring out an immeasurable multitude of blessings on rationally free beings, seems to some to be irreconcilable with the justice of God, which strictly punishes sin. Some of the ancient heretics (Gnostics, especially Marcion, Manichaeans, later Paulicians and Bogomils), finding it impossible for the properties of love and justice to exist in one God, even allowed the existence of two gods: the supreme god - good, revealing himself as a loving and merciful father (New Testament), and the god subordinate to him - evil, revealing himself as a formidable and punishing judge (Old Testament). But even in modern Christian society, many express visible sympathy for the idea of ​​God only as a God of love and a readiness to exclude the property of justice from the concept of Him. Such ideas about God cannot but be considered one-sided. Of course, God is loving, but His love is just love, just as His truth is truth, animated by love: love without truth would not be true love (it would be simple sensitivity and complacency), and truth without love would not be true truth (it would turn into coldness or callousness, it would be close to cruelty). Revelation does not separate truth and love in God, but portrays God as both a loving father and a just judge, assimilating both of these properties to God and each separately (see above) and together, calling Him forgiving and punishing (Ps. 98:8; sn. 24, 8-10; 84, 11; 114, 5; 144, 7, 17; Sir.16:13; Jer. 3:11–12, etc.), preserving mercy for thousands of generations, forgiving guilt and crime and sin, but not leaving it unpunished, punishing the guilt of the fathers on the children and on the children’s children to the third and fourth generation (Ex. 34: 6–7; fn. Num. 14: 18–19). In accordance with the teaching of revelation, the ancient teachers explained that the true God must be thought of as both good and just. The goodness or love of God for people, they reasoned, has the goal of their bliss, but at its core it is love for the moral good that is revealed in people, with the possession of which only their bliss is possible. The truth of God, when it rewards goodness with bliss, is the same love for people. But even then, when “at the present time of God’s long-suffering” it deprives the sinner of certain benefits and directly punishes him for evil, it is good, for the main goal of God’s earthly punishments is so that, regardless of their example, which is intelligible to everyone else, the sinner himself should be encouraged to not sin anymore and to be completely corrected. For the Lord loves him, punishes him, punishes him like a loving father, for the good of the one being punished (Prov. 3:11-12; cf. Heb. 12:5-8). Hence the very punishments of God, the church fathers compared with the medical benefits of doctors, sometimes severe (cauterization, cutting off body parts), but coming from doctors out of a feeling of sympathy for the patient and a desire to help him. Justice of this type (real) is, therefore, aimed at our own good (it is δικαιοσύνη σωτήριος), and therefore it, as Tertullian said, “is a kind of goodness,” serves as “a fence and lamp for goodness,” or, according to the definition of the Russian saint (Metropolitan Philaret), there is “a vestment and expression of love.” But the justice of God, which is to manifest itself on the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God (justice in the proper sense - δικαιοσύνη δικαστη), when it rewards with eternal bliss, then, of course, it will appear as love, but when it deprives stubborn and bitter sinners of bliss, then not because of a lack of goodness or love in God, but because of the inability of unrepentant sinners themselves to accept the gifts of His love, because they themselves will proudly reject them. And there is nothing incompatible with God’s goodness in this; in relation to conditional existence, the goodness of God is revealed as conditional or conditioned by the faith and love of people (John 14:21–23; cf. 15, 10; Ps. 102:11, 13 and 18). § 19. The relationship between the properties attributed to the being of God and His very being. The concept of God as a general conclusion from the doctrine of the properties of God The properties of the being of God are not forms of our finite thinking about an infinite being, but are actually inherent in God; as images in our consciousness, they define the concept of God as a being different from everything known to us. I. From the stated teaching about the properties of God, one can see that the concept of them is formed by us on the basis of the perfections of God contemplated in the works of creation and providence and His revealed word, and the properties themselves are only external reflections of Him in the world. This raises the question: what is the relationship of the properties of God that we know to His very essence? Do they have objective meaning, that is, are they the real properties of God, essentially and truly existing in God Himself, or are they nothing more than forms of our finite thinking about the infinite Being, which do not contain anything corresponding to His very essence? 16. Revelation teaches that in the world, although to a weak degree, like a mirror in fortune-telling (1 Cor. 13:12), what is truly, and not ghostly, reflected is what exists in God - His ever-present power and Divinity (Rom. 1:19-20). It contains, further, many places in which God Himself, speaking on His behalf, assimilates to Himself various properties, for example: I am He, I am Holy, I am the Lord your God, and I do not change, etc. And Christ called Him Spirit, ascribed to Him self-existent, love, knowledge and other properties. To think that the words of God are empty words that do not contain anything truly belonging to His nature would be strange and unworthy of God. If God truly exists, then, of course, He is the way He revealed Himself to people in His word. According to the teaching of revelation, therefore, the properties assimilated to God should be recognized as having not a ghostly, but an objective meaning, only in God Himself, of course, existing in a higher and incomparably more perfect form than what they are in the world. From the point of view of sound thinking, which recognizes God as the Creator of the world, the properties assimilated to the being of God also cannot be represented only as products of our personal thought. If the world is God’s creation, then it is also an expression of His perfections. An action always reflects the properties of the cause that produces it. Consequently, the properties of God, cognizable through the world, cannot but have objective significance. True, the world is not the complete expression of the perfections of God; an effect is always less and lower than its cause. But from this it only follows that God is above the world and His qualities and perfections reflected by Him in the world must be attributed to Him in detachment from all finitude and imperfections, and that, in addition to what is revealed by God, there is much in Himself that He alone knows and is hidden from others, but not that these reflections do not express anything from His essence. II. If the properties of God, cognizable through the world and from the word of God, express something inherent in God in Himself, and moreover, in such a way that each of them contains something real and corresponding to its highest object, then if we formulate a concept of God on the basis of knowledge of these properties, it will also contain something corresponding to the essence of God. The totality of the stated properties of the being of God leads to precisely this concept of God: God is an infinite personal Spirit, possessing the most perfect being and life: by His being - He is original, immutable, eternal, immeasurable and omnipresent, by His spiritual properties, possessing the most perfect mind, will and feeling - He is omniscient, all-wise, all-free, all-holy, all-powerful, all-righteous, all-blessed, all-good. This concept, of course, is not a definition of the very essence of God, which is incomprehensible, and therefore, in a strict sense, indefinable; in comparison with the fullness of perfections hidden in the boundless being of God, it is even very meager and dark, but in the conditions of earthly life it sufficiently brings to our understanding the incomprehensible being of God, or that which is God Himself in Himself. II. Unity of God's Being § 20. The unity of God as a distinctive feature of the true concept of God. History of the dogma The Church's belief in the unity of God's being. – A brief history of the dogma of the unity of God. I. God is one in His being. This truth necessarily follows from the very concept of God as a being infinite in all respects and all-perfect. The highest and most perfect of all beings is possible only one. If there were others equal to Him, in that case It would cease to be the highest and most perfect of all, that is, it would cease to be God. The One God and the Infinite Being are essentially identical concepts. Therefore, the church has always recognized the dogma of the unity of God, as necessarily contained in the true concept of God, as one of the main and fundamental dogmas. In the Nicene-Constantinopolitan symbol, as in the most ancient ones, this dogma immediately follows the word “I believe.” And the Christian Church has always and rightly looked at it as the first distinctive dogma of revealed religion from all natural religions that preached polytheism, or bitheism. II. The history of the dogma of the unity of God in its most important moments is as follows. In the first times of human history, faith in one God was the property of the entire human race; all people served Him alone and worshiped Him alone. Among the first people she was the fruit of the direct revelation of God in a primitive state of innocence. Through tradition, it passed from them to subsequent generations and was preserved for more or less a long time throughout all of humanity, but was not preserved forever. The immersion of people in sensual life, the darkening of the mind and heart under the influence of passions and wickedness, not without the participation of the prince of the power of the air, led to the fact that they, understanding God, not glorified or thanked God, but... changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the corruptible image of man, and birds, and four-footed animals, and creeping things (Rom. 1:21, 23). This is how polytheism (polytheism) or paganism appeared in the human race, they believe, before the time of the calling of Abraham (Joshua 24:2), i.e., the deification of the creature instead of the Creator, which took on the most diverse forms. The best of the pagan sages realized the foolishness of pagan polytheism and rose to the thought of the unity of God; some of them even ridiculed the belief in many gods, especially at the end of the history of pre-Christian humanity. But philosophy was unable to restore faith in one God to its primitive purity; it could only destroy popular beliefs in many gods. Some of the pagan sages thought to purify popular beliefs by accepting two main principles - good and evil, such as, for example, Ormuzd and Ahriman in the religion of Zoroaster. And polytheism or bitheism was in pre-Christian times the religion of almost all of humanity for several thousand years. Faith in one God was preserved pure and intact only in the Old Testament Church, established by God in the descendants of Abraham. In New Testament times, the truth of the unity of God was not accepted and contained in its pure form by everyone. In addition to the ancient paganism, the opponents of this dogma were those heretics whose teaching was based on dualism. These were, above all others, the heretics known as Gnostics (2nd century). All of them, although they recognized the one supreme God, also admitted many lower gods, or eons that flowed from Him, and in matter they saw an independent beginning of sensual, material life and evil, independent of God; It is not the Supreme God himself, but one of the eons, who is represented by them as the creator (dimiurge) of the visible world. With the fall of Gnosticism, the Manichaeans appeared (III-IV centuries), who pursued dualism even more consistently and completely than most Gnostics. In later centuries, opponents of the dogma of the unity of God were the Paulicians (appeared in the 7th century), recognized by some as a branch of Manichaeism, then the so-called. Euchitis or Massalians (XI-XII centuries) and Bogomils (X-XIII centuries). The false teaching of the Bogomils from Bulgaria, where this heresy appeared, due to close relations between the Russian Church and the Bulgarian Church, penetrated into Russia. Nowadays dualism is the property of a few, relatively little-known sects. § 21. The teaching of revelation about the unity of God. The falsehood of polytheism and bitheism Evidence of the Old and New Testaments about the unity of God. – The inconsistency of polytheism and bitheism. I. The truth of the unity of God is proclaimed both in the revelation of the Old Testament and in the New Testament. In the Old Testament religion, the doctrine of the unity of God constitutes a dogma that primarily distinguishes this religion from the religion of all other ancient peoples. To believe in one God the Creator, to serve Him alone, not to regard pagan gods as real gods and not to worship them, was the main duty of the ancient Jew, about which Moses, the prophets and other God-enlightened men constantly and persistently reminded God’s chosen people. The first commandment of the Mosaic Law was the commandment to honor the one God: I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from the land of Egypt, from the house of work. Let there be no gods for you except Men (Ex. 20:2–3). The Lord your God, this God is, and He is not (Deut. 4:35, 39; 32, 39). Saying goodbye to the people before his death, the Old Testament legislator in these words inspired to keep this commandment firmly and forever: Hear, Israel! The Lord our God, there is one Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength. And let these words be... in your heart and in your soul. And may you punish your sons with them, and may you speak about them as you sit in the house, and walk the way, and lie down, and stand up. And I will bind it on your hand as a sign, and let it be unshakable before your eyes (a bandage over your eyes). And let me write on the prayers (on the doorposts) of your churches... Do not go after other gods, the gods of the pagans (Deut. 6:4–9, 14). In connection with the truth expressed in this commandment are all the other most important truths of the Old Testament, for example, the messianic idea, the idea of ​​a covenant between God and the people, etc. This same truth, that is, the unity of God, lay at the basis of the state, social and church system of life: the Jewish people were the society of Jehovah and no one could become a member of this society without believing in Jehovah; the king in it was to be Jehovah (theocracy); for all the people there was only one church (originally one tabernacle), and in it only Jehovah was served. Note. With the affirmation of the unity of God, in the sacred. In the books of the Old Testament, the name of God in the plural is often found - Elohim (singular - Eloah, from ul - to be strong, strong), He is also called the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob (Ex. 3: 6, 15), the God of Israel (5, 1), the God of the Hebrews (4, 22), the great God above all gods (18, 11), the God of gods and the Lord of lords ( Deut.10:17), it says about Him: who is like You in God, Lord (Ex.15:11), etc. There is no contradiction of any kind between such expressions of Old Testament Scripture about God and the clear teaching of the same Scripture about the unity of God. Thus, as for the name Elohim, this name does not contain the thought of a plurality of divine beings. If this name had ever been associated with a concept reminiscent of polytheism, then the writers of the sacred books, strict zealots of the law of Moses, would have prohibited or destroyed its use to express the thought of the one true God. Meanwhile, in fact, it was the most commonly used name of God, and is even used where the truth of the unity of God is affirmed with deliberate force, for example, in the words: so that you know that Jehovah is God (Elohim), and there is no one else besides Him (Deut. 4:36; sn. 10, 17, etc.), or: and God (Elohim) said to Moses: I am Sy (Ex. 3:14). The plural ending of this name is only a peculiar linguistic form; According to the research of Hebraic philologists, in relation to the true God it was used not to denote the idea of ​​plurality in a quantitative sense, but to signify the Divinity in general (in the same meaning as Deitas, θειότης, Gottheit, Divinity) and most closely to express the inexhaustible completeness and multiplicity of the properties of the Divine (i.e. in the sense: God is one, but He has innumerable powers), as well as to designate the highest greatness of the Being called by this name. This name is sometimes used in the Old Testament with a singular predicate (in those cases where Elohim refers to God in His true meaning). This peculiar use of this name gives grounds for the assumption that this name indicated the unity in the life of the Divine with the multitude of powers in God and the limitless fullness of His life. For those more initiated into the mysteries of faith, this feature could also reveal something deeper, more mysterious in the knowledge of the Divine - point to the mystery of the Holy Trinity (especially Gen. 1: 1, 26; 3, 22; 11, 7) 17. Jehovah is called the God of the ancestors of the Jewish people, the God of Israel. Jewish, in general, images of Him as the Lord, Provider and Savior primarily of the people of Israel also do not contain the idea that Jehovah - one not unconditionally, but conditionally, is the God of the people, having dominion only over Israel, and other nations have special rulers. These names indicate only the special relationship of Jehovah to the people of Israel and the people of God to Jehovah as a result of the economy of human salvation, according to which God chose and separated the Jewish people from among all nations and united them with Himself by the union of a special covenant. Since Israel, out of all the languages ​​of the earth, by God’s favor towards him, was a part of the Lord and His people (Deut. 32:9), His son and firstborn (Ex. 4:22), then Israel, for its part, could call Jehovah its part, especially its God, due to its closeness to Him and the power of the covenant. Finally, with regard to the comparisons of the true God with pagan gods found in the Bible, as well as such expressions in which the pagan gods are presented as living beings (for example, Exodus 12:12; Ps. 95, etc.), then when the sacred writers called the pagan gods gods, they called them so in relation to the accepted usage of words; How else could they call that which everyone called gods? The images of these gods in places, as real beings, are only personifications characteristic of poetic, living depictions. But what is sacred? the writers did not actually represent them as real gods, this is clear from their depictions of the vanity and insignificance of the pagan gods and the entire pagan cult. The New Testament revelation, teaching to believe in the trinity of the Divine, also first of all affirms the truth of the unity of God. Savior, to the question of the lawyer: which is the first of all commandments? He answered: The first of all commandments is: Hear unto Israel, the Lord your God, there is one Lord (Mark 12:28–29; cf. Deut. 6:4). In His prayer to God the Father He said: Behold, this is the eternal life, that they may know Thee the one true God, Whom the pagan polytheists did not know. (John 17:3). The apostles, naturally, proclaimed the unity of God whenever they had to convert pagan polytheists to Christ. The Apostle of the Languages ​​in Lystra (Acts 14:8-18), the Areopagus of Athens (17, 22-31), Ephesus (19, 26), denounced polytheism and taught faith in one God, showed that the God he preached, the Creator of heaven and earth, cares about everything, and therefore He alone is the true God. On various occasions the same truth was repeated by the apostles and converts. The same apostle of tongues wrote to the Corinthians on the issue of eating sacrifices to idols: an idol is nothing in the world, as there is no one but one God. Moreover, the verbs are many, either in heaven or on earth: just as they are gods and lords; but for us there is only one God, the Father, from Him are all things, and we are with Him (1 Cor. 8:4-6; cf. Rom. 3:29-30: Eph 4, 6, etc.). II. Representatives of the ancient Ecumenical Church, prompted by the errors of polytheism and bitheism, had the need to defend the truth of the unity of God also through rational considerations. Refuting false teachings, on the one hand, they presented positive evidence that the true God must be thought of as one, and on the other, they analyzed the teachings that were contrary to this dogma - polytheism and bitheism, showing their internal inconsistency. The true God must be represented as one. This is revealed, the ancient teachers explained, primarily from the very concept of God. God is the most perfect being, and the concept of unity is inseparable from the concept of the highest perfection. – God is an infinite being who fills everything with Himself, and there is only one such being possible. (Irenaeus. Prot. heresy. II, 1; Tertul. Prot. Mark. 1–3; Damascene. Accurate ex. c. I, 5). Observation of the world leads to the same conclusion. The world is one; in his life he sees constant order and harmony; everything in him is directed towards a specific goal. The creation of such a world and its management can be the action of only one mind. If creation and industry were the work of many, then if they acted discordantly, disorder would occur, and there could be no agreement in them. “Many beginnings are without beginnings,” says St. Athanasius (Sk. in pagan. 35–39). Subjecting to analysis the very teachings of the pagans about the existence of many or only two gods - good and evil, the fathers and teachers of the church explained the following. Pagan polytheism is one criminal deviation from the ancient universal faith in one God, which was the fruit of ignorance and moral depravity of people, and is so superstitious and absurd that the pagan writers, poets and philosophers themselves subject it to ridicule, while at the same time professing the unity of God (the statement of the apologists, also Clement Al. in Strom. V, 14, Augustine - O city of God IV, 13, etc.). It contains in itself inconsistencies. “If God is not one, then there is no God,” Tertullian said with power and justice, and according to St. Athanasius, both “multiple command is lack of command” and “polytheism is atheism” (Sk. in pagan. 38). Many gods are impossible. If we admit many gods, we must certainly assume that they either differ from each other in some way (for example, in goodness, strength, wisdom, in time, place, etc.), or do not differ. If they differ, then one will not have anything that belongs to the other; therefore, it will no longer be the most perfect Being, it will not be God. and if they have in common all those properties that relate to being and essence, and they have no differences, then there is no reason why they should be distinguished; then it is more correct to say that there is one God, and not many (Damascene. Accurate exposition of faith, I, 5). Against the two-theists, who assumed two co-eternal principles hostile to each other - good and evil (dualism), sound thought through the mouths of church teachers represented the following. The system of dualism is not at all necessary to explain the origin of evil, for what purpose it was invented. The appearance of moral evil in the world is a matter of created freedom, and physical evil in its essence is not evil, but is such only in relation to us and is sent or allowed by God for our own moral benefit. On the other hand, the two principles allowed by this false teaching, good and evil, are completely unthinkable and constitute one positive contradiction. As principles hostile to each other, the beginning of good and the beginning of evil must be presented as either equivalent or unequal: if they are equivalent, then their struggle would end in the destruction of good and evil in the world; and if, on the contrary, they were unequal, then the stronger would destroy the weaker, and then there would be either one good or one evil in the world. – One can also assume the existence of a third, higher principle, which would determine the location of each of these two principles and protect the inviolability of their power: but then, if they are equal to him, there will no longer be two, but three gods, but if they are subordinate to him, as the highest principle, then God is one and they remain without the right to dispose of the world (Tertul. Prot. Mark. 1-4; Athanas. Sl. in pagan. 6-7; Cyril. Jerusalem. Oglas. VI, 6; Ill. of faith, IV, 20). § 22. Divine revelation of the dogma of the Holy Trinity. Its special importance and incomprehensibility The revelation of the dogma of the Holy Trinity. - Its incomprehensibility. – Its property as fundamental in the Christian faith. Concepts about the perfections of God, who is unique in His essence, do not exhaust the entire depth of knowledge of God that is given to us in revelation. It introduces us to the deepest mystery of the life of the Divine, when it depicts God as one in essence and threefold in persons. Knowledge of this deepest secret gives a person only revelation. If a person reaches some knowledge about the properties of the divine essence and the calling of the unity of God through his own reflections, then he reaches the truth that God is one in essence and trinitarian in persons, that there is God the Father, there is God and the Son, there is God and the Holy Spirit, that “in this Holy Trinity there is nothing first and last, nothing more or less, but three hypostases are whole, co-essential with themselves and equal” (symbol. St. Athanasius), - no human mind can rise to this truth by natural forces. The dogma of the trinity of persons in God is a revealed dogma in the special and fullest meaning of the word, a properly Christian dogma. Confession of this dogma distinguishes a Christian from Jews, and from Mohammedans, and in general from all those who know only the unity of God (which the best of the pagans also confessed), but do not know the secret of the Trinitarian Divinity. In the Christian doctrine itself, this dogma is the root or fundamental dogma. Without the recognition of three persons in God, there is no place for either the doctrine of God the Redeemer or the doctrine of God the Sanctifier, so that, one can say, Christianity, both in its entirety and in each particular truth of its teaching, is based on the dogma of the Holy Trinity. Being the cornerstone dogma of Christianity, the dogma of the Holy Trinity is at the same time the most incomprehensible, and not only for people, but also for angels. The most vivid imagination and the most penetrating mind of man cannot comprehend: how is it that in God there are three persons, each of which is God, not three Gods, but one God? How do all the persons of the Holy Trinity remain completely equal to each other and at the same time so different that one of them, God the Father, is the beginning of the others, and the others are dependent on Him in being, the Son through birth, the Holy Spirit through procession? According to ordinary human ideas, such a relationship between persons is a sign of subordination of some to others. What, finally, are birth and procession in God, and what is the difference between them? All this is known only to the Spirit of God. The Spirit tests everything, even the depths of God. § 23. History of the dogma of the Holy Trinity Three periods of revelation of the dogma of the Holy Trinity: 1) Before the advent of Arianism. 2) Definition of the doctrine of the consubstantial God with the hypostasis of divine Persons - in the fight against Arianism and Doukhoborism. 3) The state of the church teaching about the Trinity in the future - after its final determination at the Second Ecumenical Council. Such separateness and clarity with which the church teaches its members the teaching of revelation about the Holy Trinity, it received in the church gradually, in connection with the false teachings that arose about it. In the history of her gradual disclosure of the dogma of the Holy Trinity, three periods can be distinguished: 1) the presentation of the dogma before the advent of Arianism, when the doctrine of the hypostasis of divine persons in the unity of the Divine was primarily revealed; 2) definition of the doctrine of consubstantiality with the hypostasis of divine persons in the fight against Arianism and Doukhoborism; 3) the state of the church teaching about the Trinity in the future, after its final determination at the Second Ecumenical Council. Period one. – The first Christians confessed the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit in the baptismal formula, in the symbols of faith, in the hymns of the Holy Trinity, liturgical hymns and martyrdom confessions of faith, but they were not included in the most particular definitions of the properties and mutual relations of the persons of the Holy Trinity. Representatives of this part of the Christians were apostolic men. In their writings, when they spoke about the Trinity, they repeated the apostolic sayings with almost literal accuracy. Others who accepted Christianity were not able to abandon the views of Judaism or pagan philosophy, and at the same time assimilate the new concept of God given by Christianity. Attempts by such Christians to reconcile their old views with new ones were resolved by the emergence of so-called heresies. Judaizers and Gnostics. The Judaizing heretics, brought up on the letter of the Law of Moses, which says: Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, did not distinguish any persons in God; They affirmed the truth of the unity of God by completely denying the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Christ the Savior, in their opinion, is not the true Son of God, and their teaching about the Holy Spirit is unknown. Gnostics, holding the views of extreme dualism on the relationship between God and the world, spirit and matter, argued that God, without losing His deity, cannot be incarnated, since matter is an evil principle; hence the incarnate Son of God cannot be God. He is nothing other than an aeon, a person of undoubtedly divine nature, but only separated from the supreme God through an outflow. At the same time, He did not only come out of the “Depth” (Βάθος), but before Him, together with Him and through Him, a whole series of the same eons emerged from the same “Depth”, so that the entire fullness (πλήρωμα) of the Deity contains from 30 to 365 different essences. The Gnostics also included the Holy Spirit among the same eons as the Son. In these fabrications of Gnostic fantasy, obviously, there is nothing even similar to the Christian teaching about the Holy Trinity. – The false teaching of the Judaizers and Gnostics was denounced by Christian apologists: St. Justin Martyr, Tatian, Athenagoras, St. Theophilus of Antioch, especially the anti-Gnostics - Irenaeus of Lyons (in the book “Protection of Heresies”) and Clement of Alexandria (in “Stromata”). In the 3rd century. a new false teaching about the Holy Trinity appeared - monarchianism, revealed in two forms: in the form of dynamic or Ebionian monarchianism and modalistic, otherwise - patripassianism. Dynamic monarchianism (its first representatives were Theodotus the tanner, Theodotus the younger or money changer and Artemon) reached its highest development with Paul of Samosat († c. 272). There is, he taught, a single divine personality. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not independent divine personalities, but only divine powers, that is, the powers of one and the same God. If Scripture apparently speaks of three persons in the Godhead, then these are only three different names attached to one and the same person. In particular, the Son, also called in Scripture the Logos and Wisdom of God, is the same in God as the mind is in man. A person would cease to be a person if his mind were taken away; so God would cease to be a person if the Logos were taken away and isolated from Him. Logos is eternal self-consciousness in God and in this sense is consubstantial (ομοούσιος) with God. This Logos also inhabited Christ, but more fully than it inhabited other people, and acted through Him in teaching and miracles. Under the influence of the divine power that dwelt in Him, “as another in another,” Christ, a simple man born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, achieved the highest holiness possible for man, and became the Son of God, but in the same improper sense in which other people are called sons of God. – As soon as the teaching of Paul of Samosata became known, all the well-known pastors of the church at that time - Dionysius Alex, Firmillian of Cappadocia, Gregory the Wonderworker, etc. - came out against it with denunciation, verbally and in writing, etc. In addition, the Orthodox teaching was opposed to it in the special “Epistle of six Orthodox bishops to Paul of Samosat”, and then at the local councils that were against him in Antioch, and he himself was deprived of his episcopal rank and excommunicated from church communion. Patripassian monarchianism also developed simultaneously with Ebionianism. Its main representatives were: Praxeus, Noetus and Sabellius of Ptolemais (in the half of the 3rd century). The teaching of Praxeus and Noetus is, in basic terms, this: there is one divine person in the strictest sense, this is God the Father. But the Savior of the world is God, and not a simple man, only not separate from the one Lord the Father, but is the Father Himself. Before His incarnation, He was revealed in the image (mode) of the unborn Father, and when He deigned to undergo birth from the Virgin, He took on the image (mode) of the Son not in humanity, but in divinity, “he himself became his own Son, and not the Son of another.” During His earthly life, He declared Himself to all who saw Him as the Son, but He did not hide from those who could contain Him that He was the Father. Hence the suffering of the Son for these heretics was the suffering of the Father. “Post tempus Pater natus, Pater passus est,” Tertullian said about them. They did not expound doctrines about the Holy Spirit. The teachings of Praxeus and Noetus found many followers, especially in Rome. It is natural, therefore, that at the very first stages of its appearance it met with a refutation: Tertullian in his essay “Against Praxeus”, St. Hippolytus - “Against the heresy of Noetus” presented their teaching as impious and unfounded, and together they contrasted it with the Orthodox teaching; with the appearance of these writings, patripassianism gradually began to weaken, but did not disappear. In a new and modified form (philosophical), it was revived already in the east. The culprit was Sabellius, a former Roman presbyter and originally a pure Patripassian. He also introduced the doctrine of the Holy Spirit into his system. – The essence of his teaching is this. God is an unconditional unity - a boundless, indivisible and self-contained “Monad”, which does not and cannot have, due to its infinity, any contact with everything that exists outside of It. From eternity She was in a state of inaction or “silence,” but then God spoke His Word or Logos and began to act; the creation of the world was the first manifestation of His activity, the work of the Logos itself. With the appearance of the world, a series of new actions and manifestations of the Divine began - in the mode of the Word or Logos. “The Unit expanded into the Trinity” - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (modes of the mode of the Word, person). In the Old Testament, God (in the mode of the Word) appeared as the Lawgiver - God the Father, in the new as the Savior - God the Son and as the Sanctifier - the Holy Spirit. There is, therefore, only a Trinity of revelations of a single divine personality, but not a Trinity of hypostases. The teachings of Sabellius were the last word of the monarchist movements of the 3rd century. It found many followers, especially in Africa, in Libya. The first and decisive denouncer of this false teaching was St. Dionysius Alex. , the preeminent bishop of the African Church. He condemned Cavellius at the Council of Alexandria (261) and wrote several epistles against him. Dionysius, bishop The Roman, who was informed of Sabellius's heresy, also condemned him at the Council of Rome (262). The most famous of the church writers of the 3rd century also greatly contributed to the fall of this heresy and of monarchianism in general with his writings. – Origen. The main error of monarchianism was the denial of the personality and eternal existence of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Accordingly, the defenders of openly ecclesiastical truth against the monarchians revealed in particular detail the truth about the actual existence and distinction of divine persons according to their personal properties. But the desire to more clearly present the trinity of God led some of them to the fact that, with the distinction of divine persons according to Their personal properties, they (from the Western teachers - Tertullian and Hippolytus, from the Eastern - Origen and Dionysius Alex.) allowed the difference between the essence of the Father and the essence of the Son and the Holy Spirit, developing the doctrine of the subordination of the Son and the Spirit to the Father not only according to their personal existence and personal relationships (i.e. n. subordinationism by hypostasis), but also by Their very essence, or the so-called. subordinationism is essentially between the persons of the Trinity. Their subordinationism consisted in the fact that, recognizing the essence of the Son and the Spirit as one-natural with the essence of the Father, they at the same time represented him as derivative from the Father, dependent on Him and, as it were, less than the essence of the Father, although located not outside the essence of the Father, but in himself. It turned out, according to their view, that the Son and the Spirit have divinity, power, power and other perfections from the Father, and do not have them in their own right, from themselves, despite the fact that the Son is lower than the Father, and the Spirit is lower than the Son. Despite some deviation from the truth in the disclosure of the dogma of the Holy Trinity by individual teachers of the church of the 3rd century, the church itself of that time believed in this dogma in a completely Orthodox manner. Evidence of this can be found in the Statement of Faith (Symbol) of St. Gregory the Wonderworker. It is like this: “There is one God, the Father of the living Word, Wisdom and Self-Existing Power, and the image of the Eternal; Perfect Parent of the Perfect, Father of the only begotten Son. There is one Lord; one from one, God from God, the image and expression of the Divinity, the active Word, the Wisdom containing the composition of all, and the Power that builds all creation; true Son of the true Father, Invisible of the Invisible, Imperishable of the Imperishable, Immortal of the Immortal, Eternal of the Eternal. And there is one Holy Spirit, proceeding from God, and appearing through the Son, that is, to people; Life in which the reason for living; Holy Source, Shrine that bestows consecration. He is God the Father, who is over everything and in everything, and God the Son, who is through everything. The Trinity is perfect, with glory and eternity and kingdom, inseparable and inseparable. Why is there in the Trinity neither created, nor auxiliary, nor added, what would not have been before and what would have entered after. Neither the Father was ever without the Son, nor the Son without the Spirit, but the Trinity is immutable, unchangeable and always the same.” Second period. – In the 4th century, with the advent of Arianism and Macedonianism, a new period opened in the disclosure of the dogma of the Holy Trinity. An essential feature of these false teachings was the idea of ​​alienation in relation to the Father of the Son and the Holy Spirit: Arianism applied it to the Son, and Macedonianism to the Holy Spirit. Accordingly, during this period, the doctrine of the consubstantiality of the persons of the Holy Trinity was mainly revealed. Arianism, having set itself the task of reconciling the teaching of revelation about the trinity of persons in God with the dogma of the unity of God, thought to achieve this by denying equality (and consubstantiality) between the persons of the Trinity in divinity through the reduction of the Son and Spirit to the number of creatures. The culprit of this heresy. by the Alexandrian presbyter Arius, however, only the doctrine of the Son of God and His relationship to the Father was revealed in this sense. The main provisions of his teaching are as follows. 1) God is one. That which distinguishes Him from all other beings and is unique to Him is His originlessness or unbornness (ό μόνος, άγέννητος). The Son is not unborn; therefore, He is not equal to His unbegotten Father, because, as begotten, He must have a beginning of His existence, while the true God is beginningless. As having a beginning, He is therefore not co-eternal with the Father. 2) The divine nature is spiritual and simple, which is why there is no division in it. Hence, if the Son has the beginning of His existence, then He was born not from the being of God the Father, but only from divine will - born by the action of the omnipotent divine will from non-existents, otherwise - created. 3) As a creation, the Son is not the Father’s own, natural Son, but the Son only by name, by adoption; He is not the true God, but God only in name, he is only a deified creation. When asked about the purpose of bringing such a Son into being, Arius answered with a dualistic opposition between God and the world. Between God and the world, according to his teaching, there is an impassable abyss, which is why He can neither create nor provide for it directly. Having desired to create the world, He first produced one being, so that through His mediation He could create everything else. From here flowed the teaching of Arius about the Holy Spirit. If the Father alone is God, and the Son is the creation through whom everything else came into being, then it is clear that the Spirit must be classified among the creatures created by the Son, and, therefore, in essence and glory He is even lower than the Son. But focusing on the doctrine of the Son of God, Arius almost did not touch upon the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. Arianism contained an internal contradiction. According to this teaching, the Son is thought of as a creator and a creature, which is incompatible. At the same time, he completely destroyed the revealed teaching about the Trinity. The heresy nevertheless began to spread rapidly. To stop it, emergency measures were required. An Ecumenical Council was convened on this occasion in Nicaea (325). The fathers of the council, in the creed compiled under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, gave a precise definition of the doctrine of the second person of the Holy Trinity, which received dogmatic and binding significance for the entire church. It is this: “we believe... in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only begotten, begotten of the Father, that is, from the essence of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not created, consubstantial with the Father (όμοούσιον τώ Πατρί), To Him all things existed, even in heaven and on earth.” At the same time, all the most important provisions of the teachings of Arius were anathematized (see the book of the Holy Apostle, the Holy Apostle, the Holy Apostle, and the Holy Father). He himself and his associates were excommunicated from the church. But the heretics did not want to submit to the Nicene creed. The heresy condemned by the council continued to spread, but had already broken up into parties. The Arians were especially opposed to introducing into the symbol the doctrine of consubstantiality (όμοούσια) of the Son of God with the Father. Quite many of the Arians, not agreeing to recognize the Son of God as consubstantial with the Father, at the same time rejected the teaching of Arius about the createdness of the Son. They recognized Him only as “subsistent” (όμοιούσιος) to the highest Deity. It was the party of the so-called. "Omiusian" or "Semi-Arian" (it was led by Eusebius of Nicomedia and Eusebius of Caesarea). Their “similar-existence” is, however, very close to “consubstantial.” Others of the Arians, who strictly adhered to the principles of Arius, began to express his teaching about the Son of God even more sharply, arguing that the nature of the Son, as a creature, is different from that of the Father, that He is in no way similar (άνόμοιος) to the Father; they are known under the names Anomeans (also Eterusians), strict Arians, and on behalf of the main exponents and defenders of their teaching - Aetius (Antioch. Deacon) and especially Eunomius (Bishop of Cyzicus) were also called Aetians and Eunomians. During the Arian disputes and in connection with Arianism, a false teaching about the Holy Spirit arose Macedonius (Bishop Constantinople), who became the head of a heretical party, which received from him its name “Macedonians” or “Dukhobors” (πνενματομάχοι). Macedonius, belonging to the Semi-Arians, taught about the Holy Spirit that the Holy Spirit is a creation (κτιστον) of the Son, that He is incomparably lower than the Father and the Son, that in relation to Them He is only a servant creature (διάκονος και υπηρέτης ), that He does not have the same glory and honor of worship with Them, and that in general He is not God and should not be called God; He is only to a certain extent superior to the angels and differs from them. As a continuation and logical conclusion of Arianism, Macedonianism was equally opposed to the Christian dogma of the Holy Trinity. Therefore, it met with the same strong opposition from the church as Arianism. The second Ecumenical Council was convened (381). In the short part of the Nicene Creed about the Holy Spirit: “we believe... and in the Holy Spirit”, the fathers of the second Ecumenical Council (among 150) introduced the following additional explanatory provisions: “The Lord, the Life-Giving One (i.e., that the Holy Spirit is not a creature), who proceeds from the Father (i.e., that He did not come into being through the Son), who is worshiped and glorified with the Father and the Son (i.e., that He is not a service being), who spoke the prophets." In the Nicene-Constantinopolitan definition of faith, a clear and precise teaching was given about the consubstantiality of the persons of the Holy Trinity in the sense of their unconditional identity and equality in essence, and at the same time the teaching about Their hypostatic differences. Under the banner of this definition of faith, in the fight against heretics, fathers and teachers of the Church, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity was revealed in the most private way. Among them, the names of the great universal teachers and saints are especially famous: Athanasius and Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory the Theologian. In the West, the most powerful and famous defender of Orthodoxy against Arianism was St. Hilary of Poatjes. Period three. – The statement of faith compiled at the first and second Ecumenical Councils, according to the definitions of the IIIrd (Right. 7) and subsequent Ecumenical Councils (VI Ecumenical Council. 1st Ave.), should not have been subject to either additions or abbreviations, and, therefore, should remain forever unchanged and inviolable, unchanged even in letter. In accordance with this, the Universal Church in all subsequent times did not make any additions to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan definition of the dogma of the Holy Trinity, nor did it subtract from it. Her main concern was the undamaged preservation of the dogma in the form that it received in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan presentation of the faith. The attitude towards the dogma of the Holy Trinity and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed remained the same in the Eastern Orthodox Church even after the division of the churches, and remains so to this day. Of the false teachings about the Holy Trinity that arose in the east after the Second Ecumenical Council, only the so-called. tritheism, or tetratheism (VI century), and tetratheism, or tetratheism (VI-V ΙΙ century). Tritheists represented the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as three special, separate persons, possessing three special and separate divine essences, just as there are three human persons who have the same, but not a single essence. The tetratheists, in addition to the three persons in the Trinity, imagined a divine essence still standing, as it were, behind them and separate from them, in which they all participate, drawing their divinity from it. In the fight against these false teachings, it was enough to simply clarify their disagreement with the doctrine of the Trinity, expressed in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed. This was the same attitude towards the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and the Niceno-Constantinopolitan definition and the Western Church in the first time after the Second Ecumenical Council. But this unanimity did not last particularly long. Since the time of the blessed one. Augustine, the opinion began to spread in the Western Church that the Holy Spirit proceeds not from the Father alone, but “from the Son” (Filioque), which gradually acquired the meaning of dogma in it, was included in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan symbol itself, and the confession of the new dogma was protected by anathema. The dogma of the Holy Trinity has been professed in such a perverted form by the Western Church to this day. In the same form it is also contained by Protestantism in all its forms, which separated from Rome, that is, Lutheranism, Reformedness and Anglicanism. Having raised to the level of dogma the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit and from the Son, not given in revelation, but arbitrarily deduced by reason from revelation, the Roman Church embarked on the path of rationalism. The same rationalistic spirit was reflected in her elevating dogmas and other private opinions. This spirit was also adopted from her by Protestantism, which deviated even further from the ancient church confession in its doctrine. But it expressed itself with particular force in Protestant sectarianism, which was the last transitional stage to strict and pure rationalism. Hence, in Christian societies that separated from Protestantism, a new series of heretical teachings about the Holy Trinity arose; all of them, however, to a greater or lesser extent only repeat what was expressed by the ancient heretics. Thus, simultaneously with the Reformation, the so-called. antitrinitarianism (its other name is unitarianism). In contrast to the ancient monarchians, who not so much rebelled against the dogma of the Holy Trinity, which had not yet received a definition, as defended the truth of the unity of God, the anti-Trinitarians of the 6th century. set the task of destroying the belief in the Holy Trinity. In the anti-Trinitarian movement of the 16th century. two streams can be distinguished. One branch of it bears the stamp of mysticism, while another branch of it rests exclusively on the principles of rational thinking. He appeared as a taxonomist of anti-trinitarian principles with a mystical tinge in the 16th century. learned Spanish physician Mikhail Servet. The Church, he reasoned, has perverted the true Teaching about the Holy Trinity, as well as Christianity in general. The teaching of Scripture about the Trinity, in his opinion, is not that there are three independent divine hypostases in God, but that God is one by nature and hypostasis, namely the Father, the Son and the Spirit are not separate persons from the Father, but only His different manifestations or modes. For his false teaching, Servetus was put on fire by Calvin (October 27, 1553). The views of anti-trinitarianism with a more strictly rational character in the system were presented by Faustus Socinus († 1604), which is why the followers of this trend are known under the name Socinians. The Socinian doctrine is often a rationalistic doctrine. A person is not obliged to believe in something that is not reconciled with his mind. The Socinians find the dogma of the Holy Trinity especially contrary to reason. Instead of the dogma of the Holy Trinity, which was rejected solely on the basis of rational considerations, they themselves proposed such a teaching. There is one God, one divine being and one divine person. This one God is precisely the Father of our Lord I. Christ. The Son of God is only the personification of the historical I. Christ, while Christ is a simple man who only happened in a special way, a sinless man. He can be called God in the same improper sense in which all believers are called sons of God in the Holy Scriptures and even by Jesus Christ Himself (John 10:34). Compared to the other sons of God, He is only primarily the beloved Son of God. Holy Spirit there is some divine breath, or force, acting in believers from God the Father through Jesus Christ. Adjacent to the teaching of the anti-Trinitarians is also the doctrine of the Trinity of the Arminians, so called by the name of Prof. theology at the University of Leiden by James Arminius (1560–1609), who laid the foundation for this sect. The Church teaching about the Trinity seemed contradictory to these sectarians in the sense that, while all the persons of the Trinity were given equality in divinity, at the same time it ascribes to the Father - culpability, to the Son - birth, and to the Holy Spirit - procession. They resolved this bewilderment by repeating the ancient subordinationism essentially between the persons of the Trinity, i.e., that the Son and the Spirit are lower than the Father in divinity and borrow their divine dignity from Him. In the 8th century, with the strengthening of rationalism in general, a new, extremely unique sect was formed in Protestantism, in connection with the distortion of all Christianity, which also distorted the doctrine of the Trinity of God - the sect of followers of Emmanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). Swedenborg considered himself an extraordinary messenger of God, called to proclaim a teaching that was higher than all former revelations, but under the form of revelation from above in the essence of the matter, he set out his own views in his writings. As with all anti-Trinitarians, the doctrine of the Trinity seemed to Swedenborg to be an extreme perversion by the church of the true teaching of Holy Scripture about God and contrary to reason. His own understanding of this dogma is as follows. There is only one God (i.e., one divine hypostasis). This one God took on a human form and a bodily shell in the image of I. Christ, subjected Himself to all temptations, entered into a struggle with the spirits of the underworld and defeated them; He also suffered death on the cross (obviously a repetition of ancient patripassianism) and through all this freed the human race from the power of hellish forces. By the Holy Spirit, in his opinion, in the Bible we mean the effect on people that the revealed word and former revelation of God Himself produced and is producing, that is, the appearance of God in the flesh in the image of I. Christ. With the emergence of the so-called idealistic philosophy, new false teachings appeared in the West in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Attempts to substantiate and understand the essence of this dogma based on the principles of one reason led to the fact that in these explanations only terms remained of the Christian dogma, into which pantheistic concepts alien to the dogma were embedded, and even the persons of the Holy Trinity were depersonalized. These are the views on the Christian Trinity of the idealistic philosophy of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and others. For Hegel, for example, the Christian Trinity is the absolute idea (eternal knowledge) in three states: the idea in itself, in its abstraction - this is the Father, the idea embodied in the external world - this is the Son and His incarnation, and the idea conscious of itself in the human spirit - the Holy Spirit. So reason alone is insufficient in the deepest mysteries of faith. All errors regarding the dogma of the Holy Trinity, both ancient and modern, stemmed from one source, namely, from the violation by reason of the boundaries that it must adhere to in relation to revelation in general. The dogma of the Trinity is the sacrament of sacraments (supra rationem), which reason must never forget. § 24. The teaching of the church about the Holy Trinity and the composition of this teaching The dogma of the Holy Trinity is set forth by the Church in all three symbols now used in it, but with the greatest completeness and separateness - in the so-called. symbol of St. Afanasy, and, exactly like this: “This Catholic faith is: that there is one God in the Trinity, and we honor the Trinity in unity, below the merging hypostases, below the dividing being. There is another hypostasis of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit. But the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one divinity, equal in glory, co-essential with majesty. Like the Father, like the Son, like the Holy Spirit... Thus: God the Father, God the Son, God and the Holy Spirit: neither are three gods, but one God... The Father is neither created nor created from anyone, nor begotten below. The Son is from the Father Himself, not created nor created, but begotten. The Holy Spirit is not created from the Father, not created, lower born, but proceeding. And in this Trinity there is nothing first or last, nothing more or less, but three hypostases are whole, co-essential and equal.” The entire doctrine of the Holy Trinity, set forth in this symbol, obviously boils down to the following three provisions: I. God is trinity, and this trinity consists in the fact that in God there are three persons or hypostases: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. II. Each person of the Trinity is God, but they are not three gods, but are one divine being. III. All the persons of the Trinity differ from each other in their personal properties. In the order of these provisions we will present the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. Father, Son, Holy Spirit are not three properties, or powers, or appearances and actions of one and the same divine Person, but three different hypostases of the Divine. When the Church teaches us to believe in the trinity of the Divinity, it indicates, first of all, the need to have living confidence in the existence of three persons in the Divinity. This means that the Father, Son and Holy Spirit should be recognized not as three properties, or powers, or appearances and actions of one and the same divine person, but as three truly different persons of the Divinity, each having its own special independence and its own special features, with which it is not confused with another person. § 25. Old Testament indications of the trinity of persons in God Indications of the plurality of Persons in the one God without indicating their number. – Indications of three Persons without naming or distinguishing Them. – Indications of the personality and deity of each of the Persons of the Holy Trinity with mention of Their very names. The truth that there are truly three persons in God is revealed to us as clearly as possible in the New Testament. However, this truth was also proclaimed in the Old Testament, although indications of it are hidden under the veil of mysterious and enigmatic turns of phrase and expressions of speech. All the Old Testament indications of this mystery can be divided into three classes. I. General indications of the plurality of persons in the one God without determining their number. These include: a) The initial words of the Genesis Writer: in the beginning God created (bara Elohim) heaven and earth. (Gen.1:1). “In this place in the Hebrew text, the word Elohim, actually Gods, expresses a certain plurality, while the phrase created shows the unity of the Creator. The guess that this expression refers to the sacrament of the Holy Trinity deserves respect” (Metropolitan Philaret). b) Sayings in which God is presented as conversing and conferring with persons who are conscious and equal to Him in divinity. These are the words of God: before the creation of man, let us create man in our image and likeness (Gen. 1:26); before the expulsion of the fallen ancestors from paradise: behold, Adam was one of Us, knowing good and evil (Gen. 3:22); before the confusion of tongues and the scattering of people in the pandemonium: Come, let us go down there and confuse their tongues, so that no one hears the voice of his neighbor (Gen. 11:7). If we do not recognize in all these expressions a hidden indication of the trinity of persons in God, then it is difficult to give a satisfactory explanation of them. The other explanations proposed cannot be considered valid. Thus, the explanation of these expressions as a remnant of the polytheism of the Jewish religion is incorrect because this religion never taught about the existence of many gods. The explanation by assumption of God's conversation with the angels cannot be recognized both because the persons with whom God confers are depicted as equal to Him (3:22), possessing creative power (1:26), which cannot be acquired by the angels, and because the creation of man and the confusion of languages ​​is acquired only by God Himself (Gen. 1:27; 11:9); Man is also called in Scripture created in the image of God, and not in any other way. An explanation from the custom of the powerful of the world to speak of themselves in the plural is not permissible because this custom appeared only since the development of the political system in the Jewish people. The assumption that God spoke this way based on the example of people who want to arouse themselves to some action is only “strange idle talk” (Vas. V. on Shest. IX demon). The opinion of the fathers and teachers of the church was precisely that the indicated places contain an indication of the council in the trinitarian being of God. II. Indications that there are exactly three persons in God, but without naming or distinguishing them. Some of the ancient teachers saw such an indication in Moses’ description of the appearance of God in the form of three strangers to Abraham: God (Iehovah) appeared to him (Abraham) at the oak of Mamre, sitting before him at the door of his canopy at noon... And (Abraham) looked with his eyes, and saw three men standing before him; and seeing, he came to meet them from the doors of his canopy, and bowed down to the ground, and said: Lord (Adonai), if you have found grace before battle, do not minimize your servant (Gen. 18: 1-3). “Abraham,” says the blessed one. Augustine, - meets three, but worships the One. Having seen the three, he understood the mystery of the Trinity, and having worshiped, as it were, the One, he confessed one God in three persons.” This theophany is understood in the same sense in some church hymns, and the oldest image of the Holy Trinity was the image of God appearing to Abraham in the form of three wanderers. This understanding of this theophany, however, was not universal among the ancient teachers. Most of them thought that the first guest of Abraham was the “Angel of Jehovah,” the Logos or Son of God, who this time deigned to take on the form of an angel, in the likeness of how He later took on human nature, while the other two were angels. Another general indication of the mystery of the Holy Trinity is given in the threefold appeal of the seraphim to God: holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts (Is. 6:3), which St. Isaiah heard when he was elected to the prophetic ministry. In itself, the threefold “holy”, of course, does not contain the thought of the trinity of God. But if we consider the same words in connection with speech and parallel passages in the New Testament, then one cannot help but see in them an indication of the trinity of God. Isaiah says that he saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and exalted (6:1), and heard the voice of the Lord, saying: whom will I send and who will go to this people - from Heb. authentic: “and who will go to Us or for Us”? Thus, Isaiah saw and heard a voice from one God, yet he must go on behalf of many. and that these many were divine persons is evidenced by St. John, when he says that Isaiah, together with the Lord, saw the glory of the Son of God (John 12:41), and the apostle. Paul, indicating that Isaiah heard the voice of the Holy Spirit, which sent him to the people of Israel (Acts 28:25, 26). It is clear from this that the threefold “holy” has an internal relationship with the three persons of the Divine. III. Indications of the personality and deity of each of the persons of the Holy Trinity, with mention of Their very names. In some of them, the second person of the Holy Trinity is indicated - the Son of God, with a distinction from the first person - God the Father, in others - the third person, the Holy Spirit, with a distinction from another divine person. 1) Indications of the hypostasis of the Son can be seen: a) in the images of the Jehovah Angel when describing the history of some theophany, b) in the teaching about the Wisdom of God, but especially c) in the promises and prophecies about the Messiah - God. a) Moses, describing the epiphanies that took place during the time of the patriarchs: Hagar, first at the spring on the way to Shur (Gen. 16:7–14), then at the oath well (Gen. 21:17–19), to Abraham, when he decided to sacrifice his son to God (Gen. 22:10–18), to Jacob in a dream before his return from home. Laban to his native land (Gen. 31:11-13) and when he fought with God (Gen. 32:24-30; cf. Hos. 4:4-6), Balaam, when he went to curse the people of Israel (Num. 22-23), as well as what happened to him in the fiery bush (Exod. 3:2-15), who is often called the Angel of Jehovah and Angel of Jehovah (Heb. Maleach-Iehovah and Maleach haelohim), and depicts Him as a divine person, ascribes to Him the power, strength and actions inherent only in God. Similar properties and divine dignity are assimilated to the person who appeared in the description of theophany: Joshua before the walls of Jericho in the form of an armed warrior (Joshua 5:13–15; 6, 1), Gideon (Judges 6:11–27), Manoah (Judgment 13), and the one who appeared is also called the Angel of Jehovah. This same Jehovah Angel appears to have entered into a covenant with the people of Israel and brought them out of Egypt (Exodus 3:2–12), saved them from the hand of the Egyptians at the Red Sea, and led them in the pillar of fire and cloud during their wanderings in the desert (Exodus 14:15–31; Num. 20:16). About this Angel, St. Isaiah, touching on the Lord’s relationship to the fate of the people of Israel, says the following: He (the Lord) was a savior for them. In all their sorrow He did not abandon them, and the Angel of His presence saved them; out of His love and His mercy He redeemed them, took them and carried them all the days of old (63:8-9). Who is this mysterious Angel-Jehovah or the Angel of His face, that is, the Angel who showed the face of the Lord Himself? To admit that this is a created spirit of service (although this opinion is accepted by the Roman Catholic Church) would be a contradiction to the text of the biblical narratives. It remains to assume that this is God Himself, but having an independent and different existence from the unmanifestly abiding Jehovah. In the books of the prophets, this Jehovah Angel is precisely portrayed as that divine person who, according to the determination of the Father and his own love for mankind, was to appear on earth as the Messiah (Zech. 12:8; 9 ch.), which is the Angel of the Covenant (Mal. 3:1), the great Angel of Council (Is. 9:6). This understanding is confirmed by the testimony of St. Paul that I. Christ accompanied the Jews when they walked from Egypt to the promised land, miraculously gave them food and drink and was tempted by some of them (1 Cor. 10: 4–9; cf. Ex. 17: 1–6; Num. 20: 2–11). In the Eastern Church, since ancient times, the opinion has been established that in the person of the Angel Jehovah the Son of God Himself was revealed and acted. b) In the Old Testament, His Wisdom (Chokmah, Σοφία) is also distinguished from the Lord and in some places is depicted as a self-conscious personality (Σοφία ύποστατική, reflecting the wisdom of God within itself and expressing it outside - in the world. In the canonical books the most complete and clear depiction Wisdom is found in the book of Proverbs (chap. 8). Here Wisdom says about herself: “The Lord had me as the beginning of his way, from the beginning, I was anointed, from the beginning, before the existence of the earth (verses 22-23). He did not create the earth, nor the fields, nor the initial grains of dust of the universe (vv. 24–26). When He prepared the heavens, I was there. When He drew a circular line across the face of the deep, when He gave the sea a charter so that the waters would not cross its boundaries, when He laid the foundations of the earth, then I was an artist with Him, and I was joyful every day, rejoicing before His face all the time” (vv. 27–30; cf. Job 28:12–28). The properties assimilated by Wisdom to Herself: pre-peaceful, but independent personal existence under Jehovah, beginningless birth from God, mediation in the creation of the world, are exactly the same as those acquired in the New Testament to the Son of God (John 1:1-3, 14), which is why almost all the ancient teachers of the church saw in such images of Wisdom a hidden teaching about God the Word 18 . c) But the clearest indications of the personality of the Son and His divine dignity are in the prophecies about the Messiah. The Lord spoke to Me, says the Messiah on His own behalf: You are My Son, I have today (now) given birth to You (Ps. 2:7). David confesses: the Lord (Iehovah) spoke to my Lord (Adonai): sit at my right hand, until I make Your enemies Your footstool... From the womb before the star I gave birth to You (in Russian translation: from the womb before the star, like dew, Thy birth was born - Ps. 109: 1, 3). Anoint You, O God (Elohim), Your God is more than Your partaker with the oil of joy (Ps. 44:8). In Isaiah, He is given the names: branch or branch of Jehovah (i.e., what grows out of the being of Jehovah, or His Son - Is. 4:2), Immanuel (7, 14) - God with us (Matt. 1:23), Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Ruler, Prince of Peace, Father of the Age to Come (Is. 9:6), showing His separation from Jehovah and divine dignity. 2) Indications of the existence of the Holy Spirit as a special hypostasis of God in the Old Testament are not so numerous and at the same time very hidden. The first such indication can be seen in the words of the writer of everyday life: the Spirit of God was carried on top of the water (Gen. 1:1); The action attributed to the Spirit of God by the word worn, is a creative action, therefore, belonging to the divine person, and not to the One who by His omnipotent word - let him call that which is not, as if it is (Rom. 4:17). The personal existence of the Spirit of God is more clearly indicated when it is said about Him that He was sent by God to the prophets for their instruction (Zechariah 7:12), so that their words were His words (2 Samuel 23:2), and most clearly in connection with the prophecies about the Messiah in Isaiah: The Lord sent Me, and His Spirit (48:16); The Spirit of the Lord is on Me, for the sake of My anointing (the Spirit of the Lord God is on Me, for the Lord has anointed Me), Me as an ambassador to preach good news to the poor, etc. (Is. 61:1; cf. Luke 4:18–21; Is. 11:2–3). Thus, the mystery of the Holy Trinity was revealed in all Old Testament times in accordance with the spiritual state of the Old Israel, their acceptability, needs and circumstances. The Jews, who understood revelation better than others, actually had knowledge of the Trinity of God. In the Old Testament, the belief in the trinity of God only did not have such a universal and obligatory meaning as it received in the New Testament. § 26. Evidence of the New Testament about the trinity of persons in God Epiphany at the baptism of our Lord Jesus Christ. - Commandment about the baptism of nations. – Testimonies about the divinity of each of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. In New Testament times, through the incarnate eternal hypostatic Word, God deigned to reveal to people the secret of the Holy Trinity in the clearest possible light. The evidence of the New Testament about the trinity of persons in God can be divided into two classes: in some of them the reality of the trinity of God and the personality of all three persons of the Godhead together are indicated, in others - the personality of one or another person in particular and his separation from other persons. I. Of the evidence of the first kind, the most important and clearest are the following. The first positive and solemn testimony about the Holy Trinity in the New Testament was at the baptism of I. Christ in the Jordan. Here the world was revealed: the Father, who spoke from heaven: This is My beloved Son (in Mark and Luke - You are My beloved Son), in whom I was well pleased, the Son, baptized by John and testified by the Father, the Spirit, who descended in the form of a dove on the Son (Matt. 3:16-17; Mark 1:10-11; Luke 3:22), - sermon about the three faces of the Divine is clear. The Church confesses this in its troparion for Epiphany. The second most important testimony is the testimony of Jesus Christ Himself in His last conversation with His disciples before His suffering on the cross (John 14–16). Comforting them in the upcoming separation from Him, He said to them: I will pray to the Father, and he will give you another Comforter, that he may be with you forever... But the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, is the Father who has flown in My name, by Him you will teach everything, and He will remember everything that I have told you (14, 16, 26). Here all three persons of the Holy Trinity are even more clearly distinguished as persons: the Son, Who speaks of Himself - I will pray..., the Father - I will beseech the Father, the Holy Spirit, Who is called another Comforter, therefore different from the Son; He will be sent by the Father, therefore he is different from the Father, sent in order to replace the Son for the apostles and teach them everything, therefore, he is the same person as the Son. But the most important evidence, which forms the basis and seed of all teaching about this deepest sacrament of faith, is in the Savior’s commandment about baptism: he taught all languages, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). The Church has always seen in these words the teaching about the mystery of the Holy Trinity. From the very beginning, she constantly performed baptism in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, as three divine persons, and in order, according to the testimony of Tertullian, to more often express the confession of the Trinity, they immersed the baptized person in water three times (Prot. Prax. 26 ch.). At the same time, she also denounced heretics who, considering the Son and the Spirit inferior to the Father or only His powers and properties, attempted to perform baptism in the name of one Father or one Son, humiliating the Holy Spirit before Him (Proverbs 49 and 50). Those who were baptized were first taught to believe in the Trinity, as three divine persons, and at baptism they had to accurately and firmly confess this faith. There is clear evidence of the actual identity of all three persons of the Godhead together and in the apostolic epistles. Yes, app. Paul writes: the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God the Father, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all (2 Cor. 13:13). All three divine persons are distinguished by their names and the desire of the believers for a special benefit from each of them 19. II. But in the New Testament there is a lot of evidence that shows in particular the personality of one or another person of the Trinity and his separation from other persons. 1. That God the Father is a person, and not some impersonal infinite principle, is clear from the fact that God, not only according to the teaching of revelation, but also according to the requirement of sound natural human thought, must be represented as nothing other than a person. It is clear that all those features in which revelation depicts the personality of the Divine most closely relate to the first person of the Holy Trinity. That is why the heretics who rejected the personality of the Son and the Holy Spirit did not reject the personality of the Father. 2. The Son of God is also a person distinct from the Father and the Holy Spirit, and not the same Father, only revealed in the image of the Son, or His power or property. He Himself taught that the Father knows Me, and I know the Father (John 10:15); I love the Father, and as the Father commands me, so do I (John 14:31); My Father works hitherto, and I work (John 5:17); Before even Abraham did not exist, I am (John 8:58, 24) and many others. etc. Such sayings clearly show that He is a person separate from the Father, having independence, power, understanding, and will. 3. With the name of the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Scripture, the New Testament also connects various abstract concepts. But there are quite a few sayings in it that show the personality of the Holy Spirit. The clearest teaching about this is contained in the Savior’s farewell conversation with his disciples (John 14–16). Already His name here, Comforter, shows that He is a person. The addition of another further enhances its meaning in this sense. Revealing in more detail the teaching about this Comforter, the Savior indicates that this Spirit will guide the apostles to all truth, remind them of everything that the Son taught, and He will not speak His own, but what He will hear from the Father, from Whom He will take the very teaching, in addition, He will announce the future (16, 13-15), and will also expose the world about sin, and about truth, and about judgment (v. 8), will glorify the Son (v. 14). All these are properties and actions that cannot be applied to one impersonal force or property of God, but must necessarily force us to recognize in the Comforter Spirit a personal being acting with self-consciousness and will. In the teaching of the apostles about the Holy Spirit, the idea of ​​His personal existence is especially clearly expressed by the apostle. Pavel. Teaching the instruction about the differences in spiritual gifts (1 Cor. 12:1-13), he clearly distinguishes from them their Dispenser - the Holy Spirit, and moreover, in such a way that he shows in the Dispenser understanding, free will and power: divisions of gifts are the same, and the same is the Spirit (there are different gifts, but the same Spirit - v. 4) ... But all this acts one and the same Spirit, dividing power to each as he pleases (v. 11). The same Holy Spirit is spoken of in Scripture that He appoints bishops (Acts 20:28), speaks through the mouth of prophets (2 Pet 1:21; Acts 1:16; 9:26). II. Divinity and Consubstantial Persons of the Holy Trinity Teaching to believe in the Father, Son and Holy Spirit as three special persons, the church teaches to confess together the deity of each person: the Father is God, the Son is God, the Holy Spirit is God, because each of them is an independent person and possessing all divine perfections. The possession by each of the persons of the Holy Trinity of the same divine dignity and the same divine perfections is their equality among themselves. Being equal and independent divine persons, They, however, are not three gods, but one God, for they have a single divine nature and possess divine perfections inseparably, otherwise they are consubstantial. God the Father is the true God. No one ever doubted this truth, even among the very heretics who rejected the divinity of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Almost every page of Scripture testifies to the deity of the Father. All the expressions that the Son of God or His apostles used about Him represent Him as God in the true sense, possessing all the fullness of the most perfect properties befitting God alone. Testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. – The teaching of the apostles about the Son of God. – The Doctrine of Hypostatic Wisdom. – Explanation of derogatory passages of Holy Scripture. – The teaching of the Church about the deity of the Son of God: Ancient creeds. Confessions of the Council Fathers. Martyr's Confessions of Faith. Scriptures of pastors and teachers of the Church. Christian revelation in the clearest terms depicts the idea that the Son of God is God, God in the proper and strict sense (metaphysical), God by nature, and not God or the Son of God in some inappropriate sense, as in Scripture sometimes people and angels are called gods and sons of God. The teaching about the divinity of the Son and His equality with the Father is also found in the instructions of the Son of God Himself - J. Christ and in St. apostles I. Christ the Savior taught about Himself as the true Son of God, as God, equal in everything to the Father. As the clearest revelation and confession of Himself as the Son of God and God on the part of I. Christ, one can especially point to the revelation He gave about Himself in a conversation regarding His healing of the paralytic at the sheep font on the Sabbath day (John 5 ch.). Healing on the Sabbath, as well as bringing the healed to their bed at the command of the Lord, seemed to the blind zealots of the Law of Moses an unforgivable violation of the law of Sabbath rest, so they decided to kill the Wonderworker. admonishing the blinded, I. Christ said: My Father is working hitherto, and I am working (v. 17). In these words, He shows His divine dignity and equality with the Father both by ascribing to Himself divine sonship and by assimilating to Himself the power to do the same as the Father does. Hearing these words, the Jews became even more indignant and sought to kill Him, and not only because He violated the Sabbath, but also because He declared His Father to be God, and created things equal to God (v. 18). In further conversation I. Christ not only does not show that the Jews misunderstood Him, but, despite the threatening danger, with particular force he confirms His thought, and precisely by the fact that a) His will is completely identical with the will of the Father: Amen, amen I say to you: the Son cannot do anything for Himself, unless He sees the Father doing it; Whatever He does, the Son also creates in the same way. The Father loves the Son, and shows Him everything that He Himself creates (vv. 19–20); b) He can also give life to the dead spiritually and physically, just like His Father: just as the Father raises the dead and gives life, so also the Son, who wills, gives life... (v. 21) The hour is coming, in which those who are in the tombs will hear the voice of the Son of God, and they will come out, having done good in the resurrection of life, and having done evil in the resurrection of life. resurrection of judgment (28–29 v.); c) He also contains life in Himself, just like the Father: just as the Father had life in Himself, so He also gave the Son life to have in Himself (v. 26). Another time, I. Christ especially clearly proposed the doctrine of His divine dignity under such circumstances. The Jews, on one of the holidays (renewal of the church), surrounded Jesus in Solomon's porch and asked Him: Who is He? In answer to them (John 10:25-39), pointing to the previously given testimony about Himself and the testimony of His works, He said: no one will snatch them (sheep) out of My hand. My Father, who gave Me (the sheep), is greater than all: and no one can snatch them from the hand of My Father. I and the Father are one (vv. 28–30). Here I. Christ directly speaks of His equality with the Father in power, and, therefore, of His deity. The Jews indignantly raised stones against Him for these words, seeing them as blasphemy. They said: this man, create God for yourself (v. 32). I. Christ, however, did not reject such an understanding of His words, but wanting to bring the lofty teaching about His person closer to their concept, he said: is it not written in your law: I am God, you are God (v. 34; cf. Ps. 82:6)? and then again proves by pointing to His deeds that He is the Son of God in the highest, most authentic sense - His connection with the Father is the closest and only: for the Father is in Me, and I am in Him (verse 38), which is why the Jews clearly saw that He was confirming the previous thought about Himself - about His deity and unity with the Father, and they tried to seize Him, but His hour had not come (7, 30). He escaped their hands. In other cases, I. Christ spoke about Himself to the Jews: before even Abraham was not, I am (John 8:56). In prayer to His Father, He cried out: and now You, Father, have glorified Me with Yourself with glory, since before You there was no peace... All Your essence is Mine, and Yours is Mine (John 17:5, 10). Assuming for Himself the glory of the true God and the same perfections as Him, the Son of God demanded for Himself the veneration due to the true God. Believe in God, and believe in Me (John 14:1). Let all honor the Son as they honor the Father (5:23). This is how the incarnate Son of God Himself, our Lord I. Christ, testified to His divinity. In His testimony about Himself, it is impossible to allow either self-delusion or self-deception - all the Gospel depictions of the life of Jesus Christ speak against this, nor, moreover, a deliberate desire to mislead others. He committed no sin, no flattery was found in His mouth (1 Pet 2:22; 1 John 3:5). He confirmed the truth of His testimony by His blood and all His works. II. The teaching of the apostles about the Son of God is the same as that of I. Christ. Everything that the Savior Himself said about Himself, they also say, with the difference that they add to this their own views, as the views of witnesses of His ministry and works. I believe in the deity of I. Christ the ap. Peter, on behalf of all the apostles, confessed before the Lord Himself, when in response to His question: Who do you say Me to be? answered: You are the Christ, the Son of the living God (ό Yίός του θεου Ζώντος - Matthew 16:14-19). In their writings, the apostles attribute to the Son of God everything that befits the one God. The deity of the Son of God is depicted in more detail by the apostles John and Paul. Teachings of the Ap. John represents the peculiarity that the Son of God is called the Word (Λόγος, i.e. “Mind - Word”) and His deity is shown both in the state of His incarnation and independently of His appearance to the world. At the beginning of his Gospel, he describes the Word in the following terms: in the beginning there was the Word, and the Word was to God (προς τόν Θεόν), and God was the Word. This (Λόγος) was from the beginning and (ην εν αρχή) to God. Everything was by Him, and without Him nothing would have happened. In that belly (ζωή, - without a member, i.e. life without restrictions) is not (sn. 5, 26), and the belly is not the light of man. And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness does not embrace it (1, 1–5). Such sublime and extraordinary features assimilated to the Word, such as: beginningless and endless existence, independent participation in creation, names - God, life, light (cf. 1 John 1: 5-7), clearly testify to the divine nature of the personal Logos. The evangelist also shows who should be understood under the name of the Word, eternal and equal to God in His divinity: the Word is the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father (ό ών εις τόν κόλπον - 1, 18), i.e. the only Son of God, born from the being of the Father, and in its depths always and inseparably existing with Him. Even after the incarnation He did not cease to be what he was before the incarnation: the Word became flesh and dwelt in us, and we saw (έθεασάμεθα - contemplated) His glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father (1, 14). – The same image of the Son of God is repeated in the epistles of John. The Son of God, just as in the Gospel, is given names: Words of life, which was not consumed (άπ αρχής), Eternal Life, Which was with the Father (προς τον Πατέρα - 1 John 1:1-2). In the Apocalypse ap. John writes about Him: His name is the Word of God (19, 13), He is Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last (22, 13; 1, 10, 17), who is and who is and who is to come, the Almighty (1, 8). Ap. Paul expressed the truth about the deity of the Son of God especially fully and variedly. According to his teaching, the Son of the Father's love is the image of the invisible God (εικών του Θεου του αοράτου), the firstborn of all creation (πρωτότοκος πάσης κιίσεως) that is, having origin through birth from the being of the Father and before creation, therefore, before time, from eternity. For by Him all things were created, both in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether they were thrones, whether they were dominions, whether they were principalities, whether they were powers: all things were created by Him and about Him. And He is before all, and all things are found in Him (εν A υτω συνέστηκε, - Col. 1:15–17). He, therefore, is a person with whom no creatures, even the highest among them, can have a comparison. His nature is not created, but divine, and He Himself is the Creator. He is God's own Son (ίδιος - Rom. 8:32), and not the Son of God by adoption or by grace. In his letter to the Jews, St. Paul writes about Him: He is the radiance of glory and the image of His hypostasis υτου) - God the Father, i.e., a reflection of the glory of the Father (Light from Light, for God is Light - 1 John 1:5), why He is the image of the hypostasis (ύπόστασις used here by the Apostle in the sense of ούσία) of Him (1, 3). Proving in more detail the deity of the Son of God, in the same epistle (chap. 1) the apostle says: to whom did he speak (i.e., God the Father) when from the angel: My Son art Thou, I have begotten Thee this day. And again: I will be His Father, and He will be My Son (Ps. 1:7; 2 Sam. 7.14). When he again introduces the Firstborn (τον πρωτότοκον) into the universe, he says: and let all the angels of God worship Him (Ps. 96:7) ... Your throne, O God, is for ever and ever, etc. (from Ps. 44: 7. 8) ... In the beginnings, O Lord, you founded the earth, and the works of Your hand are the heavens, etc. (from Ps. 102:26–28)… III. Along with images of the deity of the Son of God, in the Holy Scriptures there are sayings that show in Him a being subordinate to God. From ancient times these sayings were used by heretics who rejected the divinity of the Son and His equality with the Father, especially the Arians. But in order to correctly understand these sayings, it must be borne in mind that the Son of God is not only God, but also the Son of man, and that, as God, He has existence from the Father, and although equal to Him, in personal relationships He is the Son of the Father and occupies second place in the order of persons of the Holy Trinity, and as a man, the Redeemer, He in the days of His flesh (Heb. 5:7) voluntarily was in a state of self-abasement and could not help but be dependent on the Father. In the light of these thoughts, the expressions of Scripture of this kind are easily explained without any contradiction to the teaching about the divinity of the Son, just as the great fathers of the 4th century explained them when they exposed the errors of the Arians. Of the sayings of the Old Testament about the Son of God, the words of the hypostatic Wisdom about Himself especially require explanation: The Lord made Me the beginning of His ways for His works (Prov. 8:22). The Arians understood these words as follows: “The Lord created me as the beginning of His creatures (as the first of His creatures) to create the world.” But such an understanding does not agree with the true meaning of the biblical text: the Hebrew word (kanani, from the verb kanah), translated by the expression creating Me (in the LXX - έκτισέ Με), should have been more accurately translated from the original: “He acquired,” “acquired,” or “prepared Me,” and, therefore, does not at all express the concept of creation (which is designated in Hebrew. language with verbs bara and asah). Since it is further said that He not only created Me, but created Him into His works, it is clear that here we are not talking about bringing the Son into being, but about making or establishing the beginning of the ways in the works of God, that is, in the works of peacemaking of the One Who had existence before the age, from the beginning, before the creation of the world (23-24 art.), through a pre-time birth (25 art.). According to the meaning of the expression of the book. The parable is close to the expression of the New Testament: the firstborn of all creation (Col. 1:15). Of the sayings of the Savior Himself, the following may arouse confusion regarding the deity and equality of the Son with the Father: I go to the Father, for My Father is sick and I am not (John 14:28; cf. 10:29). But that with these words I. Christ does not deny His divine dignity, but, on the contrary, confesses it, is clear from His very comparison of Himself with the Father. Only God can compare Himself with God, the One who said: I and the Father are one (John 10:30; 8, 29); the creature cannot say: “God is greater than I,” because there can be no comparison. Consequently, if the Son calls the Father greater than Himself, then not in essence, but in hypostatic relation to the Father, as His beginning and culprit, and because He became a man, but in essence or His divinity He is equal to the Father. I ascend to My Father and your Father, and My God and your God (John 20:17). The various names “Father” and “God” are used in accordance with the dual nature in Christ: He calls God Father because God is His Father by nature (and our Father by grace); The Father became God to Him according to the economy, for He Himself became man (and to us He is Master and God by nature). Amen, amen, I say to you, the Son cannot do anything for himself unless he sees the Father doing it. Whatever He does, the Son also does likewise (John 5:19). Obviously, He who bears all His power (Heb. 1:3) cannot do anything about Himself, not because of a lack of power, but because of a personal relationship with the Father, from Whom and with Whom He has not only one being, but also one will, one action, one power; and therefore, whatever he does, he always does from the Father and with the Father, and he can do nothing only from himself. No one knows about those days or about that hour, neither the angels who are in heaven, nor the Son, only the Father (Mk 13:32; in Matthew 24 - nor the angels of heaven, only My Father is one). The Son, as God, undoubtedly knows about this day, for He Himself created the eyelids (Heb. 1:2), but ascribes ignorance to Himself, like man. He kept silent about the day and hour, indicating at the same time the signs of the approach of the time of judgment and thereby attesting to the knowledge of this secret, according to the house-building plans; knowledge not only of the time of judgment and the preliminary signs of its approach, but also of the day and hour itself is not useful for the piety of people. And in general, it is impossible to learn from Him, as from a messenger, everything that is known to Him as the Son of God. In a similar way, other perplexities about (the deity of the Son, caused by the sayings of the Savior, caused by the sayings of the Savior, are resolved, for example: to sit on My right hand and on My left, I have not given My gift, but it has been prepared for them from My Father (Matthew 20:23); I came down from heaven, not to do My will, but the will of the Father who sent Me (6, 38), all authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth (Matthew 28:18; cf. John 17:2.6), the Father has given all judgment to the Sons (John 5:22), My God, My God, Thou hast forsaken Me in all things (Matthew 27:46), etc. All this refers to the person of the Messiah, the God-man. Sayings similar to the above came from the mouths of the apostles. Ancient opponents of the doctrine of the deity of the Son of God pointed, for example, to the words of the apostle. Peter from his speech to the Jerusalem Jews on the day of Pentecost: Let all the house of Israel surely understand that God made him Lord and Christ (έποίησε), this Jesus, and him you crucified (Acts 2:36). But it is clear that here the word created does not refer to the deity of the Only Begotten, but to the image of the servant that was assumed by Him according to the economy, while the words Lord and Christ denote not essence, but dignity; The man Jesus was made Lord and Christ, and not the Son of God - Lord by nature. The apostle’s saying, therefore, should be explained not in the sense of the creation of the Son of God, but in the sense of exaltation, glorification of the humble - in the same sense in which the apostle said about Him. Paul: God has highly exalted Him, and given Him a name above every name (Phil. 2:9). In the same way, the word created does not refer to the deity of the Son, but to the economy, in the saying of another apostle (Paul - Heb. 3, 2) about I. Christ: being is faithful to Him who created (τω ποιήσαντι). Of the other sayings of the apostles about the Son of God, against the church’s belief in the deity of the Son of God, the heretics especially pointed to the names of His apostles. Paul: the firstborn of all creation (Col. 1:15) and the firstborn (Heb. 1:6), and in response to the words of the same apostle about Him: for it is fitting for Him to reign until He puts all enemies under His feet... When (God) puts all things under Him, then the Son Himself will submit to Him who put all things under Him (1 Cor. 15:25, 28; sn. Ps.101:1) ... Then he will give up the kingdom to God and the Father (v. 24): But the indicated names are appropriated to the Son of God not in the sense that He was born before creatures, as a creature, but in the fact that His birth from the Father is a birth without beginning. The Arian understanding of these names is incompatible with the assimilation in Scripture of the same Son of the name: only begotten Son of God. The words of the apostle in 1 Cor. 15:24-28 v. ancient teachers explained it this way. Christ, as God, is the Almighty and King over all, both those who believe and those who do not believe in Him. His reign according to deity will have no end (Dan.7:14; 1, 33). The surrender of the kingdom to God and the Father and the submission of the Son to Him refers to the person of I. Christ as the Redeemer of the world. IV. The truth about the deity of the Son of God met quite a few opponents as it spread throughout the world. However, the statement that the belief in the deity of the Son of God became common among the Church only since the time of the first Ecumenical Council must be recognized as false. This belief has been held by the church from the very beginning. Evidence of this is: 1. Ancient creeds used in the church before the Council of Nicaea, and the rules of faith found among the ancient teachers of the church (Irenaeus, Tertullian, Origen), also a symbol in the “Postan. ap.” (V ΙΙ, 41) and the symbol of St. Gregory the Wonderworker. In all of them, the Son is presented as a being who should be given the same divine honor as God the Father, it is said about Him that He was born of the Father before all ages and every creation, that He is His only begotten Son, the names Lord and God and creative participation in the creation of the world are assigned to Him. 2. Confessions of faith compiled at councils or on behalf of councils of church pastors before the 4th century. This is the confession of the fathers of the Council of Antioch (269) in the “Epistle to Paul of Samosata.” The element of faith about the eternal deity of the Son of God is presented in the epistle with particular detail, accuracy and certainty. “His Son (i.e., God the Father), - write the fathers of the council, - we confess and preach: begotten, only begotten, in the image of the invisible God and firstborn of every creation (Col. 1:15), by the Wisdom, Word and Power of God, God, existing from eternity, not in foreknowledge only (ού προγνωσεί) but according to essence and hypostasis (αλλ ούσία καί ύπόστασει θεού), the Son of God. Whoever says the opposite, namely, that the Son of God did not exist before the creation of the world, and argues that to recognize the Son of God as God means to admit two gods, we consider him alien to the church rule - and in this all the Catholic churches agree with us... And all the inspired Scriptures represent the Son of God as God.” This is the same confession of the pastors of the Church of Alexandria in their letter to the same heretic. 3. Martyr's confessions of faith. The Christian martyrs of the first three centuries, when admonished to renounce faith in the God-Man, responded by popularly glorifying Him as the true God. “Let me be an imitator of the sufferings of Christ my God,” wrote St. Ignatius to the Roman Christians. “I desire the Lord, the Son of the true God and Father, Jesus Christ, Him I seek” (Rom. 6). With the confession on their lips of the deity of the Son of God, the martyrs accepted their “blood baptism.” 4. Carrying out baptism “in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit”, as three persons of equal honor. – Brief hymns of the Holy Trinity. Its most ancient forms are as follows: “glory to the Father through (δια) the Son in (έν) the Holy Spirit” and “glory to the Father with (σύν) the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Basily the Great. On the Holy Spirit, ch. 25–27, 29), or: sometimes – “glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (Post. ap. VIII, 12). Such doxology was most common throughout the Christian world - both in the Eastern and Western churches. – Evening song “Quiet Light,” which the same Basil the Great calls “an ancient song” (On the Holy Spirit, Chapter 29), and other liturgical songs written by believers “from the beginning,” in which “Christ is theologically sung as the Word of God.” – Sacred images of the incarnate Son of God (for example, in the form of a fish - ίχθύς), holidays, especially the feast of theophany (θεοφάνεια), established no later than the beginning of the 2nd century, and in general all ancient Christian worship, especially the rites of the liturgy. 5. The writings of shepherds and teachers of the very first centuries of Christianity. In them we see not only the confession of the deity of the Son of God, but also experiments in the theological revelation of this dogma. Even the Arians did not dare to reject this. It is known that as soon as this heresy arose, the Orthodox pastors, refuting it, constantly pointed, among other things, to the authority of the preceding fathers, while the Arians avoided this in every possible way, limiting themselves only to an arbitrary interpretation of Scripture and rational considerations. “They are from the ancient fathers,” said their first accuser, Bishop, about the Arians. Alexander, “they don’t want to equate anyone with themselves, they can’t stand to be compared with those persons who in our adolescence were our mentors... The God-loving clarity of the ancient scriptures does not enlighten them” (Epistle to Alexander, Bishop Const.; fn. Athan. On the definition of Nik. Sob.). Finally, one cannot help but see some confirmation of the indicated beliefs of the ancient church in the understanding of the pagans and Jews of the early Christian beliefs. It is known that learned pagans (Celsus, Lucian, Porphyry, etc.) in their writings mocked Christians, among other things, for believing that God was incarnate, born, suffered and crucified. They, therefore, understood the Christians' belief in Christ to mean that they honor Christ as God. Pliny Jr. wrote imp. Trajan that Christians “are going to sing a song of praise to Christ as to God” (Abbr. C. and. V, 10). The Jews judged in the same way (see Justina, Discussion from Trif. 68 ch.). § 29. Deity of the Holy Spirit The teaching of Holy Scripture about the deity and properties of the Holy Spirit. – Refuting the opinions of opponents of the Church’s belief in the deity of the Holy Spirit. – Preservation by the Church of the belief in the deity of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the same true God as God the Father and God the Son. I. The revealed teaching about the deity of the Holy Spirit is briefly compared with the teaching about the deity of the Son of God 20. But the assertion (of the 4th century Doukhobors) that there is no teaching about the deity of the Holy Spirit in Holy Scripture is completely unfounded. Revelation shows the divinity of the Holy Spirit and His equality with the Father and the Son both by the fact that it appropriates to the Holy Spirit the name of the true God and the properties and actions of God, and by the fact that it commands to give Him the same divine veneration as the Father and the Son. The Holy Spirit is called God. Ap. Peter said to Ananias, who lied: Why would Satan fill your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit? You did not lie to man, but to God (Acts 5:3–4). Ap. Paul calls believers either the church of God (1 Cor. 3:16, 17; 2 Cor. 6:16), or the temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), and he himself explains this name by the fact that the Spirit of God lives in them: do you not know that you are the church of God, and the Spirit of God lives in you (1 Cor. 3:16)? Therefore, the Spirit, according to the word of the Apostle, is God. All divine properties and actions are attributed to the Holy Spirit. From the properties of God, for example, He assimilates: Omniscience. - Ap. says: The Spirit tests all things, even the depths of God (1 Cor. 2:10), and this shows, according to the explanation of the same apostle, that the Holy Spirit is not a created mind, but God (Rom. 11:34). The same property is assimilated to Him by the words of the Savior to the apostles: The Spirit of truth will guide you into all truth... and it will tell you what is to come (John 16:13). Omnipresence. – This property of the Holy Spirit is assumed in all those testimonies of Scripture, which say that He dwells and acts at the same time in the souls of all Christian believers scattered over the face of the earth (Rom. 8:9-16; 1 Cor. 3:16; 6, 19; 12, 7-13, etc.). Omnipotence. – Scripture indicates its manifestation primarily in the independent, sovereign distribution by the Holy Spirit of miraculous and extraordinary gifts to believers. Having enumerated these gifts, the apostle says: all this operates in one and the same Spirit, dividing power to each as he wills (1 Cor. 12:7-11). I. Christ Himself says that He worked miracles in the Spirit of God and cast out demons (Matthew 12:28). Of the divine actions, both creation is attributed to the Holy Spirit, for example, in the words of the writer of everyday life: the Spirit of God rushed on top of the waters (Gen. 1:2), and providence, especially in the kingdom of grace. Thus, He receives the appointment of shepherds of the church (Acts 20:28), remission of sins (John 20:22–23), regeneration (John 3:5; Titus 3:5), justification, sanctification, and in general all the actions of grace (1 Cor. 6:11), and such actions are divine actions. Ap. Peter also testifies that the holy men of God are enlightened by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21), and St. Paul says that all Scripture is inspired by God (2 Tim 3:16). “Why,” asks Vasily V., “is the Holy Spirit not God, when His Scripture is inspired by God?” (Prov. Eun. V)? Finally, Scripture teaches that the Holy Spirit should be given divine reverence. In the commandment about baptism, the name of the Holy Spirit stands on a par with the name of God the Father and God the Son, and through baptism we are equally obliged to confess both God the Father and the Son of God, and the Holy Spirit (Matthew 28:19). Also in apostolic greetings, the name of the Holy Spirit is presented together with the name of the Father and the Son (1 Pet 1, 2; 2 Cor. 13:13). Ap. Paul swears by the name of the Holy Spirit as well as by the name of the Son (Rom. 9:1). and an oath is one of the manifestations of serving the true God (Deut. 6:13). II. The ancient opponents of the church's belief in the deity of the Holy Spirit contrasted the given indications of Scripture on His divine nature with other evidence of the same Scripture, which supposedly suggested He was a created being and, in any case, inferior to the Father and the Son. But in fact, these testimonies do not have the meaning that the Doukhobors acquired for them. They mainly attributed the following to such evidence. 1. The beginning of the Gospel of St. John, where all Christian theology is expounded, and where, meanwhile, it is said only about two divine persons - about God the Father and His Word, but about everything else that exists it is noted that everything was by that (Word). If everything was created by the Son, the Doukhobors reasoned, then the Spirit was also created, therefore, He is not God. But “in the evangelist,” as St. answered this reasoning. Gregory the Theologian, - it is said not just everything, but everything that came to be (εν ό γέγονεν), i.e. everything that received a beginning. The Father is not the Son, nor is everything that had no beginning of being.” And since it is impossible to prove that the Spirit received the beginning of being (in time, as a creature), then, obviously, it is impossible to understand Him by the word all (Sk. 31, o theologian 5). 2. The Savior’s words about the Holy Spirit: He did not say to have from Himself, but if He heard, He should say to have (John 16:13). But hearing is only a figurative representation of that direct knowledge of the divine mysteries, which belongs to the Holy Spirit together with the Father and the Son (Matt. 11:27; 1 Cor. 2:11). 3. The placing of the Holy Spirit third in order, for example, in the commandment of baptism and in the apostolic benevolence of believers (2 Cor. 13:13). Ho, according to the remark of St. Gregory of Nyssa, “to consider order in number as a sign of some reduction or change in nature would be similar to if someone, seeing a flame divided in three lamps (and let us assume that the cause of the third flame is the first flame, which kindled the latter successively through the middle one), then began to assert that the heat in the first flame is stronger, and in the next it yields and changes into a smaller one, while the third is no longer called fire, even if it also exactly burned and shone and produced everything that is characteristic of fire” (Sk. about the Holy Spirit, 6). This order in counting the persons of the Holy Trinity has its basis in the order of revelation: first the Father was revealed, after Him the Son, after the Son the Holy Spirit. In Scripture, however, the Holy Spirit is not always placed in third place, but sometimes in first (1 Cor. 12:4–6) and second (Tit. 3:4–6; Rom. 13:30; Eph. 2:18; 1 Pet. 1:20). III. The Church, from the very beginning, has invariably supported and taught its members to confess that the Holy Spirit is the true God. Evidence of this is: 1) symbols and other beliefs of the ancient church, especially the symbol of St. Gregory the Wonderworker; 2) baptism in the name of three different divine persons, ancient forms of small doxology to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, evening hymn, which was also always offered in honor of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, confessions of martyrs who died for faith in the Trinitarian God, and finally, 3) the writings of the ancient fathers and teachers of the church. In the 4th century, at the Second Ecumenical Council, the belief of the ancient church in the deity of the Holy Spirit was confirmed by the general voice of the Ecumenical Church, and in the works of the great fathers of this century, the incompatibility with the teaching of revelation and the church’s belief in a divine, not a created Trinity, the rejection of the deity of the Holy Spirit and its relegation to a number of created beings was shown in all detail. “The Holy Trinity is not composed of different things, i.e. not from the Creator and creatures, but on the contrary, Her deity is one,” the great Athanasius admonished opponents of the dogma of the deity of the Holy Spirit. “And those who blaspheme the Spirit and claim that He is a creature... let them be put to shame, being put to shame by the next. If there is a Trinity, and faith in the Trinity, then let them say: has She always been a Trinity, or was there a time when she was not a Trinity? And if the Trinity is eternal, then the Spirit, eternally coexistent with the Word and abiding in Him, is not a creature, because there once were no creatures. If the Spirit is a creature, and creatures are from nothing, then it is clear that it was when there was not Trinity, but Duality. And who can say anything more evil than this?... Since there is always a Trinity, there is nothing created in It; therefore the Spirit is not a creature. As the Trinity has always been, so it is now; and as She is now, so the Trinity has always been and is; and in the Trinity the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit” (To Serap. 3rd). § 30. Consubstantial Persons of the Holy Trinity The persons of the Most Holy Trinity have a single and indivisible divine nature. – The meaning of the term “consubstantial”, its origin. – Revelation of God about the consubstantiality of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. – Belief of the Church. The Father, Son and Holy Spirit are not three special, separate beings, they are not three infinite or three gods, but one God. This is because They do not exist separately and independently of one another, but have a single and indivisible divine nature. The possession by each of the persons of the Trinity of the divine nature perfectly and completely consists of what in church beliefs is called consubstantial (όμοούσια) of the persons of the Holy Trinity. I. In revelation there is no word itself - consubstantial, but the thought contained in this word is presupposed by the doctrine of the unity of the essence of God, and is affirmed in other places of Scripture. Thus, in the commandment about baptism in the name - εις όνομα, being placed in the singular, although it equally refers to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, it shows that they belong to a single and indivisible divine honor, which presupposes their unity in Their divine nature and dignity. In particular, the Savior Himself repeatedly expressed the doctrine of the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father. He said: I and the Father are one (John 10:30). The Jews understood His words in such a way that He created Himself as God, that is, He spoke not about moral unity with the Father, but unity in essence. I. Christ confirmed this understanding of His words, adding to what was said: that you may understand and believe that the Father is in Me and I am in Him (v. 38). In a significant instruction to Philip, who asked Him on behalf of the apostles: show us the Father, and it is sufficient for us (John 14:8), He said: I have been with you so long, and have you not known Me, Philip? Seeing Me, the form of the Father; and how do you say: show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me (verses 9–10)? It is clear that here we are talking about the unity of the Son with the Father in essence. For the strongest imprint in the apostles of faith in His consubstantiality with the Father, He added: Believe in Me, for I am in the Father, and the Father in Me; Otherwise, for the same deeds of faith, give Mi (v. 11). Of the apostles, the apostle speaks especially clearly about the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father. John, when he writes: in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was to God, and God was the Word (John 1:1). The apostle speaks very clearly about the consubstantiality of the Holy Spirit with the true God. Paul, when he presents to us the Holy Spirit in the same relationship to God as the human spirit is to man (1 Cor. 11:11), that is, he presents Him as abiding in God and as one with Him, just as our spirit abides in us and together with the body is one man. Finally, the consubstantiality of the divine persons is confirmed in revelation by the doctrine of the personal properties of the persons of the Holy Trinity. By presenting the Son and the Holy Spirit as borrowing existence from the being of the Father, the Son through birth, and the Spirit through procession, without however separating them from the Father, revelation thereby shows the unity and identity of the nature of the Beginning, the Born and the Coming. II. The Church, while preaching the trinity of the Divine, at the same time from the beginning taught to confess the unity of the Divine in its symbols. Consequently, the idea, which is now expressed by the word “consubstantial” of the divine hypostases, was inherent in the general church consciousness from the beginning. In the 4th century, the dogma of the consubstantiality of the persons of the Holy Trinity was included in the very symbol of faith, and was revealed in more detail by the great fathers of this century. They taught us to understand the consubstantiality of the divine persons in the sense that each of the persons of the Holy Trinity possesses the divine nature completely and completely, so that it remains unconditionally one and inseparable, and not in such a way that the trinity hypostases exist as special and separate independent beings, even with the same and homogeneous essence (as there are, for example, people descended from people), nor in such a way that each of the persons of the Holy. The Trinity possessed a single divine essence in parts, that is, so that one part of this essence belonged to the Father, the other to the Son, the third to the Holy Spirit. “The Trinity is indivisible by nature,” teaches St. Athanasius, “is inseparably and onely the deity of the Holy Trinity,” and therefore the persons of the Trinity constitute “the indivisible and indecomposable Unit of the Divinity” (To Serap. 1st). According to St. Gregory B., “The Unity in the Trinity and the Trinity in the Unity worshiped,” is “a triple light contained in a single nature,” “one God, ruling the world in three Illuminations” (Sl. 25 and 31). Along with the explanation of the dogma of the consubstantiality of the Trinity hypostases, from the 4th century, the way of expressing this dogma began to be established. The First Ecumenical Council introduced into general church use the very word “consubstantial” (ομοούσια), and the church fathers, who explained the dogma, introduced the terms “being” (ούσία) and “hypostasis” (ύπόστασις), which also became the common property of theologians of later times. The word being (ούσία also φύσις, substantia, natura) came into use to designate that which is united and common in the Trinity, that is, the deity itself or the nature of God, and hypostasis (ύπόστασις, also πρόσωπον, persona) - for designations of the private (or hypostatic) characteristics of each person of the Holy Trinity. The difference in meaning between these words from the church fathers themselves is indicated very clearly by St. Basil the Great. “In the Holy Trinity,” he wrote, “some things are general, and others are special: the general is attributed to the essence, and hypostasis means the peculiarity of each person”... “Essence and hypostasis have the same difference between themselves as there is between the general and the individual, for example, between a living being in general and such and such a person.” As a hypostasis, each of us is either Peter, or Andrew, or John, etc., but essentially - ουσία - he is a person. In accordance with this, “applying what is distinctive to the general, one must confess faith as follows: the deity is general, the patronymic is special. Combining this, we must say: I believe in God the Father. And again, one must act similarly when confessing the Son, combining the particular with the general, and says: I believe in God the Son. And in a similar way, about the Holy Spirit, combining the sentence according to the same model, we should say: I believe in God the Holy Spirit, so that I may completely maintain unity by confessing the Divinity, and confess the uniqueness of persons by distinguishing the properties assigned to each person” (Ps. 38). Hence, the dominant formula for expressing the dogma of the Holy Trinity from the 4th century. became this: “in God there is one being in three hypostases.” The heretics (Arians) objected to the use of these expressions in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, especially to the inclusion of the expression “consubstantial with the Father” in the symbol: why introduce into the apostolic exposition of the faith such words as are not found in either the apostles or the prophets? They were answered: these words are not in revelation, but there are thoughts corresponding to these words, and that the use of expressions that are least likely to be distorted in their meaning, such as, for example, the word “consubstantial,” is necessary to protect the truth from distortion by heretics. III. Personal properties of the Persons of the Holy Trinity The concept of personal properties. With complete equality in divinity and the unity and identity of nature of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the persons of the consubstantial Trinity also have their own characteristics that distinguish them from each other; otherwise They would not be three, and we would inevitably confuse Them. between themselves. Since ancient times, these features have been called in the church personal properties (τά προσωπικά ίδιώματα) of God. According to the teachings of the Orthodox Church, expressed by it in its symbols, the distinctive properties of the persons of the Holy Trinity are as follows: the Father is not born from anyone and does not come from any other beginning - he is certainly without beginning, but He Himself serves as the beginning or wine according to the personal existence of the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Son - through birth from His being, the Spirit - through generation. The Son is eternally born from the Father, and the Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father. § 31. Personal property of God the Father Beginningless. - Birth of the Son. - Promulgation of the Holy Spirit. – Unity of Persons of the Holy Trinity. The first distinctive property of the Father is that He is “created from no one, nor created, nor born below,” otherwise, His originlessness or unbornness, i.e., independence in being from another beginning. Such beginninglessness belongs only to Him alone, but does not belong to the other persons of the Holy Trinity. The Son and the Spirit, although also without beginning, are not in relation to origin, but only in relation to time; Both of them have their beginning in the Father, but not in time. In revelation there is the clearest positive evidence of the unconditional originlessness of the Father in the words of the Savior: just as the Father had life in Himself, so He gave the Sons to have life in Himself (John 5:26). To God the Father, in addition to originlessness, also belongs to the patronymic in relation to the Son and the emission of the Holy Spirit. God the Father is “the Father of the living Word, Wisdom and Self-Existing Power, the perfect Parent of the Perfect One, the Father of the only begotten Son,” - the Father is not in a figurative sense (moral), in which He is called in Scripture the Father of Israel (Deut. 32:6; Is. 63, etc.), the Father of Christians (Matt. 6:9; Eph. 4:6) and all people (Matt. 11:25; Acts 17, 28–29), the Father of bounties and the God of all joy (1 Cor. 1:3), and in the strict or proper (metaphysical) sense, namely, that He is the Father of the Son by the very nature or divinity of the Son, or by the birth of the Son by Him. In revelation there are many indications of the property of the patronymic of the first hypostasis of the Holy Trinity. This includes all those passages of Scripture in which God the Father is called Father in relation to the Son. These are, for example: no one knows the Son except the Father; No one knows the Father, only the Son, and whatever the Son wills, the Son will reveal it (Matthew 11:27). God is nowhere to be seen; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, is the one who confesses (John 1:18). Let all honor the Son, as they honor the Father who sent Him (John 5:23). But this property of the Father is especially directly indicated in the words of Himself to the Son: You are My Son, I have given birth to You today (Ps. 2:7; Heb. 1:5), or: from the womb before the star I have given birth to Thee (Ps. 109:3). The clearest indication of the ability of the Father to bring forth the Holy Spirit is in the words of the Savior: The Spirit of truth proceeds from the Father (John 15:26). As for how the Father gives birth to the Son and brings forth the Holy Spirit, and what is the difference between birth and generation, this is the most incomprehensible mystery of divine life for a limited mind. “We will not agree,” says St. Gregory the Theologian, - so that the angels, not only you, understand this. Do you want me to explain to you how I was born? “As the Father who gave birth and the Son who was born know this” (Sk. 20 and 29). “And although we have been taught,” says I. Damascene, “that there is a difference between birth and procession, we do not know what this difference is, and what the birth of the Son is and the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father” (Izl. v. I, 8). It is clear, however, that birth and generation must be represented as eternal images of being in the Divine Trinity. The Father, without beginning and endlessly, gives birth to the Son and brings out the Holy Spirit. Just as the equally eternal birth and the generation take place in God together, they coincide with one another, so that one should not be placed before the other, not only chronologically, but also logically: the Son is eternally begotten with the Spirit, the Spirit is eternally co-created with the begotten Son. Some similarity of such co-origin of Them can be the human word and breath (biblical similarity, for example Ps. 32:6, often cited by ancient teachers), as well as the sun, which by one action of emitting rays produces light and heat together. It is clear, finally, that birth and birth in God must be conceived in accordance with the spirituality and simplicity of the nature of God, and, therefore, accomplished in a completely spiritual way, dispassionately, without any sensory separation or flow, without any outside assistance. Depicting God the Father as a single beginningless person in the Trinity, from Whom, as from the eternal guilty cause, the Son and the Holy Spirit have personal existence, revelation thereby shows that in God there is only one beginning of the Divinity - the Father. Among the church fathers, such a relationship between the persons of the Trinity is called unity of command (μοναρχία) of the persons of the Holy Trinity. § 32. Personal property of God the Son Birth is internal, most perfect, eternal. The personal property of God the Son is that He, without begetting or derivating from Himself another divine person, is Himself eternally and invariably born of God the Father. Scripture indicates birth or sonship, as His hypostatic difference from God the Father, by His very name - Son. However, Scripture shows more directly that the Son of God has a hypostatic existence from the Father by way of birth, and precisely by divinity. Thus, it calls Him the only begotten Son of God. Only Begotten (μονογενής - from μόνος and γένος, γίγνομαι, unigenitus) actually means the One who was only born to the Father. If God the Word is the only begotten Son - God, therefore, the Son of God in the proper sense, and not in a figurative sense, for in a figurative sense many are called sons of God, then it is clear that He was born of God the Father according to His very divinity, and was not adopted only by Him, as those who are called sons of God in an improper sense, and was born in a unique way, and not in the same way as, for example, the children of God (John 1:12), who are born water and the Spirit. And I. Christ Himself always distinguished Himself and others in their filial relationship to God. He never speaks of God “our Father”, but My Father and your Father, for example; I ascend to My Father and your Father (John 20:17), thereby indicating the difference in sonship with God between Him and people. Ap. Paul calls Him God's own Son (Rom. 8:32), and if He is the Son of God in the proper sense, then it means that He has being from the Father through birth. The same apostle calls Him the firstborn of all creation (Col. 1:5); These words show that He has both birth from eternity and is not a creature. And in the letter to the Jews he says: to whom (God) speaks when an angel: You are My Son, I have begotten You this day, and again: I will be His Father, and He will be My Son (Heb. 1:5). While affirming the truth of the origin of the Son from the Father through birth, revelation does not explain how to understand birth itself as applied to the being of God, a spiritual and unconditionally simple being. The reason is clear. This is the mystery of divine life inaccessible to human assimilation and understanding. In revelation one can only find a warning against false ideas about the divine birth. Thus, it shows that the birth of the Son is: 1. Internal birth - from the being of the Father, but without separation from the being of the Father. From the womb, that is, from the very being, before the morning star I gave birth to Thee (Ps. 109:3), the Father Himself speaks to the Son. And that the birth of the Son by the Father is a birth without separation of the One who is born from the One who gives birth, and is not the same as human birth, it is clear from the instructions of Scripture that the Son always abides in the bosom of the Father (John 1:18), that the Father is in Him and He is in the Father (John 10:38). In the creed, the mystery of such a birth is explained by the similarity of visible light: “Light from Light.” 2. A most perfect birth, such that neither the One who gave birth has lost anything or diminished in His perfections, nor the One who has been born has any shortcoming in comparison with His Father. My whole essence is Yours, and Yours is Mine (John 17:10), said the Savior. According to the expression of the same Scripture, there is a Son. complete in the complete image of God the Father, the radiance of glory and the image of His hypostasis (Heb. 1:3). 3. Eternal birth, which never began and will never end. This is presupposed by the very immutability of God’s being. This is how revelation teaches us to imagine the birth of a son. The Son is called in Scripture to be born now, before the day (Ps. 2:7; 100, 3), from the beginning from the days of the world (Mic. 5:2), being in the beginning (John 1:1), and having glory before the world was not (John 17:5, 24). The Arians, who asked the Orthodox: “When exactly did the birth of the Son follow?” beginnings,” in which “Christ is theologically glorified as the Word of God.” – St. Gregory the Theologian answered: “it followed before the very when, or, to put it somewhat more boldly, at the same time as the Father. When is Father? There was never a time when there was no Father. Consequently, there was no time when there was no Son and the Holy Spirit” (Sk. 29). As beginningless, the birth of the Son is therefore also without end. The Father “gives birth (to the Son), teaches St. I. Damascene, endlessly and incessantly. For what is without beginning is endless” (Ill. v. I, 8). § 33. Personal property of God the Holy Spirit The procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father. – Difference and inexpressibility of this difference from birth. – The use of words to express it. – The Savior’s promises and the forms of this promise. – Belief of the ancient Church. - The teaching about this, expressed in the ancient symbols of faith, conciliar decrees and in the writings of the holy fathers and teachers of the Church. The personal property of God the Holy Spirit is that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. From the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit (έκπόρευσις), through which He, as a hypostasis, has to be (τό είναι, τήν ᾿ύπαρξιν έγει), one must distinguish His temporary procession into creatures, an embassy into the world or a manifestation in world (πίμψις, εκφανσις ᾿έκλαμψις) which does not relate to the origin of the very hypostasis of the Holy Spirit, but is something temporary, transitory, and is assimilated by revelation to both the Holy Spirit and the Son (John 16:28, 29). His temporary procession is not only from the Father, but also from the Son, otherwise the Holy Spirit is sent into the world by the Father and the Son, more precisely, through the Son (δί Yίου): the Father sends the Spirit as eternally proceeding from Him, and the Son sends Him as the God-man, receiving Him from the Father and acquiring the right to do so by His merits on the cross. But the eternal and hypostatic procession of the Holy Spirit “from one Father, as the source and beginning of the Divinity” (Prov. Confession 71). Any participation of the Son in this procession, allowed by the Western Church (it is designated in Latin by procedere, processio), is excluded by the Orthodox Eastern Church. I. In Revelation, the doctrine of the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father, and the Father alone, is expressed, although in one place, but very clearly. In His last conversation with His disciples, the Savior said: when the Comforter comes (ό Παράκλητος), Him I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, Who proceeds from the Father, He testifies of Me (John 15:26). The expression: Who proceeds from the Father (ό παρά τον Πατρός εκπορεύεται) here denotes the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit, the fault of which is represented by the Father alone, and with the words: I will send Him (πίμψω) to you from the Father - temporary His embassy into the world through the intercession or mediation of the Son. That these expressions really denote different states of the Holy Spirit, and that, consequently, the eternal and hypostatic procession of the Holy Spirit from one Father, this can be seen: a) From the image of the expression of the truth revealed by the Savior. The very difference in the tense forms of the verbs: I will send and proceeds makes it clear that the Savior’s words indicate different states of the Spirit. Proceeds, - the present form of this verb, very accurately expresses an eternal, unchangeable state, just as the Savior used the verb in the present tense to designate His eternity: before even Abraham was not, I am (John 8:58). And on the contrary, the form - I will send you a temporary message is clearly shown. The Savior more than once designated such a mission in the future tense, testifying about the Father: he will give you another Comforter (John 14:16); The Father will send him in My name (-26), and about Himself: Him I will send to you from the Father (15, 26). The same can be seen from the difference in the meaning of these verbs: poslu denotes the embassy of some already existing person, and emanates - the very origin of such a person. Finally, if the word proceeds does not mean the eternal procession of the Holy Spirit. from the Father, and what is meant above by the word I will send, then in the speech of the Savior a strange identity would appear: I will send you from the Father the One who is sent by the Father. b) From the internal flow of thoughts. – The words in question were spoken by the Savior before separation from his disciples, when He wanted to console them by sending the Paraclete. The dignity of this Comforter-Paraclitus is shown to be so great and immeasurable that even the Son of God, for a temporary embassy, ​​did not have to send Him to the disciples on His own, but from the Father, Whom He promised to beg for this. Meanwhile, the Mentor who was moving away from them was a divine person, whom they confessed to be the Son of God, who came from God (Matthew 16:16; John 16:30). Naturally, such a speech should have raised the question: why doesn’t He Himself send down the Comforter of the Spirit, why does He need to beg the Father for this? The answer to this is His further words: Who proceeds from the Father; by them, therefore, it is assumed that He does not come from Himself. c) Finally, if the above words of the Savior contained the thought of the procession of the Holy Spirit not from the Father alone, but from the Father and the Son, then He would have said about the Holy Spirit: Who proceeds from Us, or who proceeds from the Father and Me. This should have been all the more true since the Savior immediately attributes the sending of the Holy Spirit to both the Father and Himself (15, 16; cf. 14, 26), and in another case he expresses himself as follows: I and the Father are one (John 10:30). Meanwhile, having attributed the sending of the Spirit to Himself and the Father, the Lord did not say the same about the procession. Why? The most natural explanation for this is that He posited a distinction between what belongs to both of them in relation to the Holy Spirit, and what belongs to the Father alone. The hypostatic production of the Spirit, therefore, belongs to the Father alone. So, according to the literal meaning of the Savior’s words, the Holy Spirit has a hypostatic existence from one Father, and precisely by the manner of procession. The Son only has participation in the Father’s mission of the Holy Spirit, that is, in that which relates to the external activity of God, and all external activity is common to the consubstantial and indivisible Trinity. II. This was also the constant teaching about the personal property of the Holy Spirit and the ancient Church. Based on the words of the Savior and also guided by the voice of the apostolic tradition, from the very beginning she taught to confess the procession of the Holy Spirit in no other way than from the Father alone. Evidence of this belief is: 1. Ancient symbols, which set out the dogma about the personal property of the Holy Spirit. The oldest of these symbols is St. Gregory the Wonderworker. The term about the Holy Spirit in it is expressed as follows: “there is one Holy Spirit, who has being from God (εκ θεού την ύπαρξιν έχον), and through the Son appeared, that is, to people.” The same is in the Niceno-Constantinograd symbol, which replaced all the previous ones. In the symbol known as St. Athanasius, also confesses the procession of the Holy Spirit from one Father. 2. Ancient Councils - all of them Ecumenical, and after them almost all Local Councils that ever touched upon this dogma. At the first Ecumenical Council of St. Leonty, bishop Caesarea, on behalf of the Council, spoke thus to the philosopher who asked for admonition; “believe in one God the Father, who inexpressibly begets the Son, and the Son begotten of Him, and the Holy Spirit, proceeding from the same Father and being proper (i.e., consubstantial) to the Son.” At the Second Ecumenical Council, the Church confessed in the very symbol of faith the procession from the Father, “with the Father and the Son we are worshiped and glorified,” that is, the Holy Spirit, consubstantial with both of them. At subsequent Ecumenical Councils this symbol was always read as it has been read hitherto in the Orthodox Church. There was no thought about adding anything to the teaching of the symbol about the Holy Trinity. This came from the conviction of the fathers of the councils that the symbol “perfectly teaches about the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit” (IV Ecumenical Council). In accordance with the teaching of the Ecumenical Councils, faith in the procession of the Holy Spirit was also professed at local councils, not only in the East, but also in the West. 3. The writings of the ancient fathers and teachers of the church. The most ancient teachers of the church, both Eastern and Western (with the exception of Blessed Augustine and his Western admirers), speaking about the hypostasis of the Holy Spirit, either directly attributed His procession to the Father alone, usually without mentioning the Son at all, or, when mentioning the Son, they clearly distinguished the relationship of the Spirit to the Father and the Son, expressing themselves this way: “The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and appears through the Son,” meaning by the latter an expression of the temporary appearance of the Holy Spirit into the world through the intercession of the Son. How decisive and common the ancient teachers were in their belief in the procession of the Holy Spirit from one Father can be shown by the confusion and correspondence that arose in the east in the 5th century regarding the use of the Holy Spirit. Cyril of Alexandria does not have enough of a definite expression about the Holy Spirit, that He is his own (ϊδιος) Son (in the IX Anaph. of Archpriest Nestorius). Blazh. Theodoret, on his own behalf and on behalf of the Asian bishops, wrote to this: “if he (Cyril) calls the Spirit proper to the Son in the sense that He is co-natural with the Son and comes from the Father, then we agree with him and recognize his saying as Orthodox; if it is that the Spirit has existence from the Son or through the Son, then we reject this saying as blasphemous and impious. For we believe in the Lord, who said; The Spirit of truth, which proceeds from the Father." Defending himself, Cyril answered (in a letter to Evoptius) that he called the Holy Spirit that way not in the sense condemned by the blessed one. Theodoret, but that “although the Holy Spirit comes from God the Father, according to the word of the Savior, it is not alien to the Son, for the Son has everything of the Father.” Blazh. Theodoret and other eastern bishops, having received such an explanation, unanimously testified: “the present Epistle of Cyril is adorned with gospel sanity: for in it our Lord I. Christ is recognized as perfect God and perfect man... and the Holy Spirit does not have being from the Son or through the Son, but proceeding from the Father, the Son’s own.” § 34. The teaching of the Roman Church about the procession of the Holy Spirit “and from the Son” and its inclusion in the creed. The attitude of the Old Catholics to this teaching The emergence of this doctrine and its defense by Roman Catholics. – Absence of the doctrine of Filioque in Holy Tradition. - The inconsistency of this teaching. – The attitude of Old Catholics to this teaching. I. The Roman Church, not satisfied with the teaching of revelation and the ancient church about the procession of the Holy Spirit from one Father, supplemented this teaching with the fact that He also proceeds from the Son (Filioque) 21. But such a teaching of Western Christians has no basis for itself either in Holy Scripture or in Holy Tradition, and in itself contains inconsistencies. I. In Scripture this teaching is not only not contained either literally or in spirit, but also clearly contradicts the clear words of the Savior about the Holy Spirit: Who proceeds from the Father. And the words of the Savior, without a doubt, are a sufficient and perfect expression of the truth. Defenders of the Filioque try to eliminate or weaken the meaning of this testimony by pointing out that the Savior did not say that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father alone and does not proceed from the Son. True, the Savior did not say that the Spirit comes from the Father alone, but this is self-evident. The message of the Spirit, which is made somewhat dependent on the Son, in the speech of the Savior is directly and decisively distinguished from His procession, which is why the silence about the procession of the Holy Spirit and from the Son can only be explained by the fact that the Son is in no sense the cause of the existence of the Holy Spirit. It is not said directly either here or in Scripture in general that the Holy Spirit does not proceed from the Son, but nowhere is it said about the Son that He is born from the Father alone and is not born or does not come from the Holy Spirit. However, silence about this does not serve as a basis for anyone to assume the origin of the Son from the Spirit. Defenders of the doctrine of the Filioque argue that in Holy Scripture there are also positive indications of the procession of the Holy Spirit and from the Son. Such instructions are seen in the words of the Savior from the same conversation about the Holy Spirit: Him I will send to you from the Father (John 15:26) ..., He will receive from Mine (16, 14) ..., everything that the Father has is Mine (16, 15), as well as in those places of Scripture in which the Holy Spirit is called the Spirit of Christ (Rom. 8:9), the Spirit of the Son (Gal. 4:6). But only through arbitrary interpretations and artificial conclusions (sophisms) can one come to the conclusion that they contain the completion, in the sense of Filioque, of the Savior’s direct and clear testimony about the procession of the Holy Spirit from one Father. Indeed, the defenders of the Filioque resort to such conclusions when explaining the indicated places. So, when explaining; I will send Him, they make the following conclusion: “if the Spirit is sent from the Son, then, therefore, it proceeds, for otherwise the Son could not have sent Him.” But such a conclusion is similar to the following: “Scripture testifies that the Son is sent from the Holy Spirit (Is. 48:16; 61, 1; Luke 4:18. 21), therefore, he is born of Him”... That is not the meaning of these words. Sending is not the same as procession. The expression of the Savior in the same conversation: from Mine, it receives, is explained as follows: “from Me, that is, from My being it receives being, otherwise it comes.” But after the expression - he will receive from Mine in the speech of the Savior, it follows: and he will tell you. It is obvious, therefore, that the Holy Spirit will receive from the Son of God, Who was already the Teacher of the apostles, what it will proclaim to them, that is, truth and teaching, as was said above (v. 13), and not being, but this does not refer to the eternal origin of the Holy Spirit, but to the external activity of God. In addition, the future form of the verb: will accept (λήψεται), and does not accept, shows that here we are not talking about the personal property of the Holy Spirit. When explaining the words: everything that the Father has, My essence, they reason like this: “The Father has the property of bringing forth the Holy Spirit, therefore, the Son also has the same property.” But if such reasoning were correct, then it would be necessary to recognize the following as correct: “The Father has the property of being unborn of no one, therefore, the Son is not begotten of anyone... The Father has the property of begetting the Son, therefore, the Son also has the property of begetting the Son.”... On the other hand, since the Son Himself said to the Father: all of Mine is Thine (John 27:10), and He has the property of being born of the Father, then do not the following conclusions follow from this: The Father has the property of being born from the Father, and equally this: the incarnation belongs to the Son, therefore, it also belongs to the Father. But since such conclusions and reasoning are extremely incongruous, the words of the Savior: all that is, the Father, is My essence, must be understood with a limitation, namely: only about what concerns the divine essence, which is common to all persons of the Holy Trinity, but not about personal properties, which are incommunicable. As for calling the Holy Spirit the Spirit of the Son, the Spirit of Christ, He is so called not because He comes from the Son, but because of his consubstantiality with Him, because He is the same Spirit who constantly rested in Christ and fulfilled Him as our Redeemer (Isa. 11:2-3), and, finally, because He is sent upon us for the sake of Christ’s merits. In general, when looking at the evidence from Scripture presented in defense of the Filioque, one cannot help but see that this doctrine was formed independently of Scripture and only the need to substantiate it on Scripture forces one to look in Scripture for evidence confirming it, and in the absence of such, to resort to clearly violent interpretations of the sayings of Scripture. With such an interpretation of Scripture, it is obviously possible to prove any idea, for example, that the Holy Spirit also comes from the apostles, for the apostles also brought forth the Spirit (Acts 8:18). This method of interpretation of Scripture by theologians of the Roman Church is applied, however, in relation not only to the Filioque, but in justifying all other deviations of the Roman Church from ancient church teaching. 2. The doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit both from the Son and in the Holy Tradition has no basis for itself. The idea that the Holy Spirit also comes from the Son appeared only from the 5th century as a private opinion of a few, and only among Western writers. The evidence presented by Westerners to confirm that the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit and from the Son is an ancient church teaching, in fact does not prove this. This is quite clearly and indisputably shown by theologians of the Eastern Church 22 . The evidence cited from the writings of the ancient fathers and teachers of the church to prove the antiquity of this teaching is partly clearly distorted and damaged, partly not so clear and definite as to irrefutably prove that the ancient fathers taught about the Holy Spirit in the same way as the Roman Church now teaches, partly is incorrectly explained, and others do not even belong to those ancient teachers who were learned (from forged or inauthentic works). Direct and authentic evidence of the procession of the Holy Spirit and from the Son is found only among Western writers, and then starting with Augustine and his admirers. Also, references to the teachings of the Councils are of little evidence. In support of the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit and from the Son, only the Councils of Toledo and others that were in Spain, which introduced the Filioque into their confessions of faith, and the Council of Aachen under Charles V. in 809 can be pointed out and are pointed out. But all these Councils are Local Councils, which were in the West alone, and, moreover, late. As for the references to the councils of Lyon (1274) and Florence (1439), at which the Greeks, along with the Latins, allegedly confessed the correctness of the Latin teaching about the Holy Spirit, then by their nature, purpose and motives, both of these councils are not Ecumenical Councils at all, and were not accepted either in their time or after by the entire Orthodox Church; They are called Ecumenical (XIV and Χ V Vs. Sob.) by Western writers completely unjustifiably. 3. Finally, the Western teaching about the Holy Spirit itself contains many inconsistencies. So, according to Patr. Photius (in his “Okr. Seq.”), introduces two principles into the Holy Trinity: one for the Son and the Holy Spirit, and the other for the Holy Spirit, and thus the unity of command is divided into dual command, thereby violating the dogma of the unity of God. At the same time, it is not visible from anywhere and does not follow why the Holy Spirit would proceed from the Son, when the Father alone is a sufficient reason for the procession of the Holy Spirit. Further, it leads to the idea of ​​the sequence in time of birth and procession in God, to the recognition that the Father initially gives birth to the Son, and the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the already born Son, therefore, after the Son. But any continuity or sequence in time in relation to the existence of divine hypostases, of course, must be rejected; such a sequence is possible and actually exists only in the manifestations or revelations to the world of the persons of the Holy Trinity. One can discern other inconsistencies in this teaching, for example, the merging of the hypostases of the Father and the Son (Sabellianism), the idea of a greater unity of the Father with the Son than of the Spirit with the Father, etc. Note: The impossibility of substantiating the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit and from the Son either on Holy Scripture or on Holy Tradition prompts defenders of this teaching to seek support for this teaching in purely rational considerations. But it is obvious that it is illegal and inappropriate to assimilate such meaning to reason as to make the very fate of the truths of faith, as dogmas, dependent on it, especially such as the dogma of the Holy Trinity. Nevertheless, the view that the dogmas of faith can also be based on purely rational considerations is reflected in the very presentation of the dogma of the Holy Trinity in the catechisms of the Roman Church 23 . II. Having distorted the universal teaching about the personal property of the Holy Spirit, the Roman Church introduced this distortion into the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed. Therefore, the eighth member of this symbol in it reads like this: “(I believe) and in the Holy Spirit, the life-giving Lord, who proceeds from the Father and the Son (qui a Patre Filioque procedit).” But such a change in the symbol cannot be justified in any way. The Roman Church did not have the right to do this even if the doctrine of the Filioque were truth and not error, for the ancient universal Church recognized this symbol as inviolable, not subject to any changes in the form of abbreviations or additions. Therefore, she herself did not make any additions to it, although reasons for this were revealed during the Ecumenical Councils, for example, at the III Ecumenical Council. Council - for inclusion in the symbol of the “Ever-Virgin and Mother of God”, at the IVth - the doctrine of two natures, at the VIth - about two wills in Christ. Moreover, of course, it is illegal to introduce into the symbol of a teaching a false opinion, a private opinion, and not the general belief of the church. The illegality of this is all the more intensified by the fact that the Roman Church is a private (local) church, and its addition is allowed in the symbol of the Universal Church. For quite a long time, the consciousness of the impermissibility of changing the symbol was not alien even to representatives of the Western Church itself. Pope Leo III, apparently, although he shared the doctrine of the Filioque, but decisively rejected the proposal of the ambassadors of the Aachen Council to add this word to the symbol. To protect the integrity of the symbol for future times, he ordered it to be cut out on two silver boards (on one in Greek, and on the other in Latin) without any addition, and placed them in the church at the tomb of the apostles Peter and Paul, as if under their protection, with the following signature: “I, Leo, laid this out of love for the Orthodox faith and for the protection of it,” Pope John VIII in a letter to Patriarch Photius even called those who first introduced this addition to the symbol as accomplices of Judas, promised to eradicate this very opinion, which was allowed out of recklessness, and asked only to give some time for this, since the opinion was already deeply rooted. The legates of John VIII at the Council of Constantinople in 879, together with the Greek bishops, pronounced an anathema against those who would dare to damage the holy symbol of faith with their additions. III. The doctrine of the Filioque was so firmly rooted in the consciousness of Western Christians that even the Old Catholics could not and still cannot completely renounce it. At the Bonn conferences (1874–1875), they recognized as true the position that “concerning the procession of the Holy Spirit there can be no other dogma than the truth contained in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan symbol: the Spirit proceeds from the Father, which is why in the Western Church the addition of Filioque to the symbol is illegal and that, therefore, this addition should be eliminated from the field of dogmatic truths.” But at the same time, Old Catholics do not recognize the fact that the view is directly opposite to the Filioque: “St. The Spirit in no sense proceeds from the Son,” represents dogmatic truth. The expression found among the church fathers: “το Πνεύμα εκπορεύεται δι Yιού,” in their opinion, seems to indicate that the ancient teachers assimilated some participation of the Son in the generation of the Holy Spirit, as a secondary reason, in the sense of some mediation in the act of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father as the beginning, cause and source of the Divinity. This, they declare, is not a dogmatic undoubted truth, but, on the other hand, the meaning of scientific probable truth (“philosophical dogma”) cannot be taken away from it. It is this position about the participation of the Son of God in the act of the procession of the Holy Spirit that they would like to retain in their religious system as a theological opinion. The Orthodox consciousness cannot agree with the views of the Old Catholics on the issue of the procession of the Holy Spirit in their entirety; it cannot recognize as having solid historical support either the assertion that in the ancient church the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit from one Father was not a dogma, nor that the ancient church allowed any mediatory participation of the Son, at least as a secondary cause, in the eternal the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father. As for the old Catholic statement that they would like to retain in their religious system the remnants of filioquistic ideas in the form of a private opinion (theologumen, philosophical dogma), then from the Orthodox point of view not all kinds of theological opinions are permissible. “A theologian, like every Christian,” says Rev. Metropolitan Macarius (in Dogmas. Theology § 4) - can have his own personal opinions, as long as these opinions agree with the essence of the dogma, which is defined by the Church, with all other dogmas and in general with the teaching of the Church and are based at least to some extent on revelation.” But the opinion of the Old Catholics about the Son of God, as the second cause or co-cause of the existence of the Holy Spirit, does not satisfy these requirements and therefore cannot be allowed, since it transfers the personal property of the Father to some extent to the Son, and does not agree with the teaching about the Father as the sole cause of the Son and the Spirit. and as constituting the deepest mystery of faith, given in revelation, the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father cannot be confirmed or developed by philosophical analysis, in the sense of supplementing the revealed teaching with the doctrine of the Filioque. § 35. The relation of the dogma of the Holy Trinity to reason The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the deepest secret of the inner life of God. – The possibility of knowing the divine revelation of this mystery. – Views that deny the dogma of the Holy Trinity. – Ways to understand this dogma through images. I. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity is the deepest secret of the inner life of God, who lives in the unapproachable light. A limited mind is not only unable to discover it on its own, but cannot fully understand and assimilate it even after its revelation by God. But this does not mean that the doctrine of the triune God is completely alien to the human mind, and therefore, if it can be accepted by the thinking mind, it is not consciously and intelligently, but by blind faith. In the mystery of the Holy Trinity there is a bright side, understandable and understandable without any contradiction to the legitimate requirements of thought. The general idea of ​​this dogma is clear and accessible to our understanding. This is the thought of the inner life of God outside of His relationship to the world, of the self-revelations of this inner divine life. God is one, but not alone - solus, sed non solitarius, as one church teacher put it. The being of one God consists of: Father, Son and Spirit. They are separate as special persons and inseparable in essence. Consequently, in the being of God there is an independent personal life independent of the world, and there are conditions for its manifestation, there are, as it were, special, different “images” of existence in the existence of God - τρόποι ᾿υπάρξεως in God, as the church fathers thoughtfully said when clarifying dogma. There is a way of being under the form of “patronymic” - this is, as it were, the focus of God’s inner life; there is a way of being under the form of “sonship” or “birth”, and a way of being under the form of “procession”. In addition to this positive meaning, the dogma of the Holy Trinity has a very important negative meaning (metaphysical). The doctrine of three persons in the Godhead eliminates the perplexities and difficulties that, apparently, the human mind inevitably encountered when resolving the question of the personality of the divine infinite Spirit. In fact, if God is a person and “alone” or one-person, then what does His inner life consist of outside of relations to the world? What has God done from eternity and what is He doing in eternity? All these and similar questions about the life of the Divine in Itself are resolved by the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, and this solution is alien to those shortcomings that are inherent in all natural attempts of the human mind to penetrate the mystery of divine life. The fruit of these attempts was usually either the recognition of divine life as a life of complete peace and immobility, i.e. deism, or, to avoid this, the recognition of the world as the eternal manifestation and self-revelation of the Divine, i.e. pantheism. The Christian teaching about the triune God, excluding the extremes of these views, contains within itself what is true in deism, i.e., the unity of God and His infinite distance from the world, His creation, but at the same time it allows for that moment of truth, which in pantheism is perverted and distorted, namely the idea of eternal fruitful life and ever-present (immanent) activity in the Divine, because every life is activity. The dogma of the Holy Trinity also has significant vital significance for a Christian believer. Making it clear that God is not an abstract supreme Power, before which one must only bow, but a living and personal most perfect Being, this dogma serves as a support for the entire Christian mood and behavior of man. For if God is the fullness of the most perfect personal life, is Love and Wisdom itself, then it means that you can open your soul before Him, just as we open it before a person, a personal being, trust in Him in all circumstances of life, as your refuge and protection (Ps. 90), not be afraid to walk under His cover and in the midst of the shadow of death (Ps. 22:4). II. The complete opposite of the stated view on the relationship of the dogma of the Holy Trinity to sound reason is the view of the most ancient and modern opponents of this dogma. To many of the ancient heretics, and in modern times to Socinians and rationalists, the dogma of the Holy Trinity seems to contain internal contradictions and contradictions to the laws of our thinking, and therefore one that cannot be accepted by the thinking mind consciously and intelligently, without the violence of human thought. But such an opinion is completely unfounded. The impossibility of conceiving the trinity of persons in the unity of being has long been pointed out as the main difficulty and contradiction to the laws of logic and mathematical axioms in the doctrine of the Trinity. They say: “one is not three, and three is not one; if there is only one true God and, at the same time, every person of the Divine is God, then such a teaching necessarily leads to either Sabellianism or tritheism: to the latter in the case when the difference between the divine persons is real, real, and to the first in the case when the difference is conceivable, ideal.” It is not difficult to see the groundlessness of such reasoning. Those who make the above objection accept the relation of being and person in the same sense for both infinite and finite nature, from which it is concluded that either the unity of nature and person in God, or three gods, must be recognized. But this is a misconception. The distinction between being and person, which our understanding necessarily posits in all finite beings, must also be found in God, but not in the same way, but only in an analogous form. In God, the distinction between being and person is consistent with the purest spirituality and unconditional simplicity of God's being. In general, the above objection would be impossible if the doctrine of the Trinity were considered as a doctrine of the mysterious life of the Infinite Spirit, to which ordinary concepts of finite being are inapplicable. Various objections are also made against the doctrine of the distinction of persons in the Godhead according to their personal properties. But all objections of this kind are based on the fact that the distinctive features of the persons of the Trinity - patronymic, sonship and procession - are thought to be similar and exist with the same restrictions as in finite beings, for example, the concept of the birth of the divine comes close to the concept of birth in the finite world, procession, since it is impossible to determine its difference from birth, is identified with birth, etc. Against the acceptance of the doctrine, for example, about the birth of the Son from the Father, they point out, that to allow birth in God means to recognize the incorporeal God as corporeal, against the eternity of birth, - that the concepts of being born and eternally born are incompatible concepts, that if, however, the Son is eternal and abides with the Father, then this means asserting that He is not the Son, but the brother of the Father, etc. Objections to the procession of the Holy Spirit are of a similar nature. Spirit, for example, the following: if the Spirit received existence from the being of another person, then one can and even must say about Him that He was born, and in this case one must admit that God the Father has two Sons, and the Spirit and the Word are two brothers (the Son, therefore, is not the only begotten), etc. This kind of reasoning and objections is extremely unreasonable and unworthy of God. What birth and procession are in God, we cannot know, although we have been taught to distinguish between them. These are only analogical terms, behind which hides the life of the Divine, unknown to us. III. The mystery of the Holy Trinity can even be partially understood and brought closer to human understanding. This is possible through similarities (analogies) from the finite world. The use of some sublime and mysterious analogical images in the teaching about the Holy Trinity can be found in Holy Scripture itself, for example, in the names of the Father - Light, the Son of God - the Wisdom of God, the Word, the Radiance of the Glory of God, the Spirit - the Breath of the Mouth of God. One of the similarities, based on these figurative expressions of Scripture about the persons of the Holy Trinity, is included in the very symbol of faith to explain the mystery of the birth of the Son, Light from Light. In Scripture (Ps. 33:6), the beginning and basis of the analogy are words and breaths, under which the Orthodox Eastern Church represents the compatibility and simultaneity of the origin of the Son and the Holy Spirit from God the Father. The most ancient teachers of the church pointed out the similarity of the mystery of the Holy Trinity both in visible nature and in the God-like human soul. Of the phenomena of visible nature, as bringing the incomprehensible mystery of faith somewhat closer to our understanding, we can point out, for example, the following: the sun, which shines and warms by the action of emitting rays, three burning lamps that shed the same light, an equilateral triangle, the fact that in the material world every body has three dimensions - latitude, longitude and depth, the time in which bodies develop or change is also composed of three necessary moments - present, past and future, and many others. etc. But all such similarities are very far from the essence of the subject, since they are borrowed from an area that has nothing to do with spiritual and personal existence. The most perfect revelation of the trinity of God is the spirit of man created in the image of God, and therefore in it one can predominantly find similarities to the trinity. Since the time of the blessed one. Augustine and following his example, we turn primarily to similarities from our personal spiritual life in order to, if possible, understand the dogma of the Trinity, revealing this similarity in one way or another. Thus, they point out, as an analogy, that in the personal human spirit, with its spiritual unity, there are three forces - reason, will and feeling. They are trying to give an explanation of the same mystery from the moral side of God’s being. God is love. Therefore, the Father has a moral necessity to demonstrate His goodness externally - he gives birth to the Son, Who is the object of His love. and since this interaction of love between the Father and the Son would deprive Them of independence in relation to one another - for love consists in the identity and fusion of the subject of the lover with the object of love - then there is a third person who brings Their lives into harmony, reconciles and unites: this is the Spirit. They present an explanation of the trinity of persons in the Divinity and by analogy with the tripartite acts of human self-consciousness. Self-awareness necessarily involves distinguishing your “I” from “you” and “he”. Similar triple acts of self-distinction must also exist in divine self-consciousness, only these acts in the Divine are no longer acts in the proper sense of the word, but persons, for in God self-consciousness and being are equal to each other and coincide. To a certain extent, all these similarities can bring the mystery of divine life closer to our minds, but only bring them closer, and by no means have the significance of significant evidence of it. But these comparisons or similarities are useful for reason only if they are used prudently, with the limitations of their correspondence with the Infinite Being, and under the indispensable condition when carrying out their subordination of reason to the church definition of dogma. For an example of such an explanation, see I. Damaskin in Tochn. exposition faith, I book. Chapter 19 See, for example, Vasily V. Demon. about the fact that God is not the culprit of evil (IV part of his work in Russian translation), Damascene Accurate. izl. faith. IV, 19–20. In ancient times the latter opinion was defended by the Arians, especially the Anomeans. Later it was repeated by some of the scholastic theologians (Abelard, P. Lombard), and is still expressed in Protestant theology today. Most of all, pantheists are armed against the assimilation by the being of God of its defining properties and qualities. Other ancient names assigned in the Old Testament to the one God to express His various properties and relationships to the world, especially to Israel: El - God mighty, strong, El Elijon - God Most High, Lord of heaven and earth, El Schaddai - Παντοκράτωρ, i.e. Almighty, Jehovah - He who is holy, ( Lev 20:3), the glorious and terrible (Deut. 28:58) name of God, proclaimed to Moses by God at the bush. Later names of God: Savaoph (Zebaoth) - God of armies (angels), King of glory, and Adonai - “our Lord”, “our Master”, which began to replace the “Tetragram” after the prohibition to pronounce it followed, i.e. the name of Jehovah. In the non-canonical books of the Old Testament, the doctrine of hypostatic Wisdom is revealed in even more detail, namely: Baruch 3, 9–38, Sirach 1, 1–10; 24, 1–13, especially Prem. Solom. 6, 22–24; 7, 21–30; 8, 1–4; 9, 1–4; 9, 9–19; 10, 1–21; 11, 1–4. In relation to the people of Israel, Wisdom assimilates the same actions (sensually perceptible phenomena to people, driving the Jews out of Egypt, leading them through the Red Sea, etc. - Sir. 24:11-13; Wis. 10, 1-21; 11, 1-4), which in historical and prophetic books are assimilated to the personality of the Angel of Jehovah. At ap. John, when mentioning in many places his messages about the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the truth of the Trinity of God is especially clearly presented in the following words: three are they that testify in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit: and these three are one (1 John 5:7). But “there are many complaints against their authenticity, and faith has no need for such foundations that are considered dubious” (Filaret, arch. black. Dogma. God. § 46; our sn. Right. Dogma. God. I vol. § 33). St. Gregory the Theologian, on this occasion, in his word on the Holy Spirit, says: “The Old Testament spoke clearly about the Father, but not so clearly about the Son; The new one - revealed the Son, only pointed to the deity of the Holy Spirit. Now (i.e., since the day of Pentecost) the Spirit lives with us, giving us the clearest knowledge of Himself.” This depended, according to St. father, from the fact that “it was unsafe, before the divinity of the Father was confessed, to clearly preach about the Son, and, before the Son was recognized, I will express myself boldly, to burden us with preaching about the Holy Spirit and expose us to the danger of losing our last strength... It was necessary for the Trinity light to illuminate those who were being enlightened with gradual additions.” The history of the emergence in the West of the dogma of the Filioque is, in its main features, as follows. The first to express this teaching was Blessed. Augustine (especially in De Trinitate), however, not entirely definitely, and most importantly - only as a personal opinion. But since Augustine enjoyed great authority in the West, his opinion about the Filioque gradually began to spread there, and at first also as a private opinion, and from the end of the 6th century. began to acquire the meaning of a general church belief and dogma. It initially acquired this meaning in Spain. Isidore, bishop, greatly contributed to its spread here with his writings. Seville. Perhaps part of the reason for accepting this teaching here was that the doctrine of the Filioque could serve as the basis for rapprochement with Orthodoxy and for the Arian-Goths to join it. At the Council of Toledo in 589 it was approved by the Orthodox bishops. In the 7th century and the very symbol of Niceno-Constantinograd began to be used at Spanish councils with the addition of Filioque. In the same century, it greatly spread in the Roman Church, but for now as a private opinion. Only from the 9th century. it began to take on the meaning of dogma in her. A contributing circumstance was the spread of the doctrine of the Filioque in France, where it penetrated in the 8th century. along with the accession of Spain. Charlemagne appeared here as the patron of this teaching and the promoter of the spread of the symbol with the insertion of the Filioque. At the Council of Aachen in 809, held to discuss this doctrine, it was recognized as true. With a request for approval of the council's resolution, ambassadors were sent on behalf of the council and the emperor to Pope Leo III. The Pope recognized the doctrine of the Filioque as also true, but resolutely refused to include the Filioque in the symbol. But the successors of Leo III, despite protests from the Eastern Church, openly expressed approval of the use of the symbol with the addition of Filioque, first outside the boundaries of the Roman Church, and at the beginning of the 11th century. (under Pope Benedict VIII) the symbol came into use with additions in Rome itself, and the confession of the new dogma was protected by anathema. Adam Zernikav, in his essay “On the Procession of the Holy Spirit”, in support of the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit from one Father and against the doctrine of the Filioque, brought up to 1000 evidence from 57 Eastern writers of the first ten centuries and 45 Western writers of the first eight centuries. For an example of such a presentation, see, for example, “Space. R.-Catholic Catechism" by D. Statsevich (Kyiv, 1889, 24 pages). The presentation of the dogma found here leads to completely rationalistic ideas about the Trinity: the personal existence of the Son and the Holy Spirit disappears. The Son appears as the Father’s self-consciousness, and the Holy Spirit as His love, that is, the idea of ​​personal existence and properties turns into a representation of the abstract qualities of self-consciousness and love in God. You might be interested in: