On questions of homiletics

Contents Preface Introduction. A brief outline of the history of homiletics § I § II § III § IV § V § VI Chapter one. What should a preacher be like? § I § II § III § IV § V § VI § VII § VIII § IX Chapter two. The Subject of Christian Preaching § I § II § III § III § V § VI § VII § VIII § IX § X Chapter Three. Modernity and nationality of preaching § I § II § III § IV § V § VI Chapter four. The external side of preaching in connection with the question: is preaching an art? § I § II § III § IV § V § VI § VII § VIII § IX Chapter Five. Preaching as a living word § I § II § III Yuryevsky A. Homiletics, or the science of pastoral preaching of the Word of God Recently there has been a strong persecution against homiletics. It is decisively recognized as empty and useless science. If we carefully think about this attitude to homiletics, the question involuntarily arises: can the established content of homiletics, for the sake of which its very existence as a science is rejected, be recognized as normal, fully meeting the needs of the science of preaching and therefore irreplaceable? Based on a conscientious investigation of the case, this question should be answered in the negative. The usual content of homiletics, indeed, cannot have any practical application to the work of preaching and must be recognized as the legacy of outdated scholasticism; but such content is not connected with the essence of the science of preaching the word of God: until now, homiletics has not touched on some of these issues that should occupy the first place in it and, on the contrary, has either paid too much attention to issues that are inappropriate in it, or has not considered the issues subject to it from those aspects from which they are essential for the science of Christian preaching, and not in the direction in which their solution should provide valuable content for it. Therefore, to deny the right of homiletics to exist because of its established content turns out to be, at least, premature. Meanwhile, modern preaching practice, in some respects far ahead of traditional homiletics and becoming superior to it, represents in many other respects great abnormalities - with the exception, of course, of the few best representatives of preaching - abnormalities, as a result of which the preaching of our time is ineffective and is not even listened to by the pilgrims, who usually leave the church as soon as the preacher appears at the pulpit with his notebook. Our preachers complain about this so much and so often!.. Where can we expect salvation from? To what area should we include, at least, discussions about measures to improve church preaching? Where would it be appropriate to resolve questions that arise from the needs of preaching practice - where, besides homiletics? Is it not, therefore, that the practice of preaching itself creates an important meaning for homiletics, which it did not have until now, but which it should receive immediately, as soon as it deals with the questions put forward by the practice of preaching itself, which have to give it valuable content? So, one cannot fail to recognize a comprehensive and thorough discussion of the proper content of homiletics, an indication of those questions that should give content to it, and the direction in which they should be developed - one cannot but recognize such a discussion as very modern and in any case more useful than frivolous mockery of this science. Our articles brought to the attention of theologians and preachers have as their task a critical review of the content of homiletics... The author is unable to give a comprehensive and, to a desirable extent, thorough discussion of the chosen subject - he does not promise this. He offers his essays as an experience, having no other motive for publishing them other than the desire to invite others, stronger in mind and knowledge, to discuss the same subject.... Introduction. Brief history of homiletics Speech is a natural means of detecting thoughts and feelings; Moreover, it is a free means of persuasion, the action of will on will. In the first sense, speech in Latin was called semo, and in the second sense - oratio (Cicer. Orator, p. XIX) 1. As a means of persuasion, speech from ancient times to the present day has been highly valued by cultured people. In classical antiquity, almost every public figure was an orator and, conversely, oratorical fame most likely led to high public positions. It is difficult for us to imagine what kind of power the classical orator enjoyed over the crowd: he truly controlled the feelings and desires of the people at his will. Therefore, the speaker's pulpit most of all attracted ambitious people. According to the high importance of oratory, rhetoric was a favorite subject of study from ancient times until recent times, although it did not always stand at the same height. Classical rhetoric, which was usually taught by the most famous orators, was the most perfect science of its kind. She developed and led her students with a full consciousness of the purpose of oratory and the means at the disposal of the speaker. Classical rhetoric clearly saw in oratory an art sui generis - one of the types of verbal art - with the specific purpose of convincing. The purpose of all art, we know, is to influence feelings; and oratory, as one of the types of verbal art, aims to act on feelings. Oratory speech differs from other types of verbal art in that it aims to act through feeling on the will; and oratorical speech can achieve this goal because it affects listeners not only with the word itself, but also with the whole impression of the speaker’s living personality. Be that as it may, classical rhetoric clearly recognized the purpose of oratory to be action through the mind and feeling on the will; She just as clearly recognized oratory as an art. It is interesting in this case to know what difference she established between philosophical and oratorical speech. The philosopher speaks in order to teach, and not to captivate (docendi causa, non capiendi); his speech has a calming, rather than stimulating effect on the senses (sedare animos malunt, quam incitare); she is quiet, calm, alien to any decoration and sophistication, she is least likely to arouse any strong and stormy feelings; the image of such speech is a pure, bashful girl (casta, verecunda, virgo incorrupta quodammodo). On the contrary, the speaker, according to the definition of classical rhetoric, must teach, please and persuade (Id. p. XXI; Quint. Instit. orat. lib. III, p. 5) and more precisely, teach and please in order to persuade; the speaker must mainly act on the heart (Gic. Brut. p. LXXX: permovere atque incitare animos - inflammare animos audientium); The goal of the orator is for his listener to be moved by strong feelings according to his desire (Orat. p. XXXVIII). For this, the oratorical speech itself must be fiery (nec umquam is, qui audiret, in сenderetur, nisi ardens ad eum perveniret oratio. Ibid.). II classical rhetoric paints with vivid features the image of artistic oratory. The speaker must live primarily from the heart (pectus est, quod disertos facit. Quint. Instit. orat. lib. LX, p. 7); The art of oratory consists in the ability to express one’s feelings in such a way that they are transmitted to listeners, inclining them to a certain action. Hence, classical rhetoric put eloquence in close connection with psychology, demanded from the speaker knowledge of the inclinations of his listeners, the ability to adapt to their state of mind - the speaker must “notice which soul, from what speeches and for what reason, is either convinced or not convinced” (Plato Phaedrus, 271, V; in translation by Karpov, part 2, ed. 2. p. 101); hence she made certain demands on the personality of the speaker - she demanded that the speaker, in his mental and moral character, deserve the trust of the listeners (Aristot. Ar. rhetor. lib. I, p. 2), she even said: nemo orator nisi vir bonus (Quint. Inst. orat. lib. XII, p. 10). But classical rhetoric paid its primary attention to everything that the speaker did to the ears and eyes of the listeners during a speech, and she looked at all this exclusively from an artistic point of view. She demanded that the speaker’s speech be artistic both in terms of form and musicality of structure; she paid strict attention to voice and pronunciation and made the success of oratory more dependent on pronunciation than on content (Id. LXI, p. 3): she believed, finally, eloquence not in one word, but together in the “action” of the speaker (est enim actio quasi corporis quaedam eloquentia) and considered his movements, posture and facial expression very important for the success of the speaker (Cic. Orat. XVII. XVIII). In classical antiquity, in addition to the eloquence of the scientist and the oratorical proper, the eloquence of the sophists was also known. This was the skill of proving something of which the speaker himself was not convinced - to prove indifferently for and against; it was purely verbal skill - resourcefulness of thought, ability to speak, play with words. The sophists applied such skill to the most abstract philosophical propositions. Their goal was not so much to convince as to please (Cicer. Orat. p. XIX: non tam persuadere, quam delectare). Classical oratory passed on to Christians. It undoubtedly influenced the famous preachers of Christian antiquity. During medieval scholasticism, rhetoric also took on a scholastic appearance. What is scholastic rhetoric? This is the same classical rhetoric with the replacement of the artistic spirit of oratory with the mechanical use of artificial, conventional techniques. With such a replacement, art ceases to be such and turns into dexterity, or dead artificiality. We can observe the same in the field of other arts, for example. in painting. At the same time, scholasticism has essentially a lot in common with ancient sophistry - here we encounter the same tension of abstract thinking itself; this character of scholasticism was also reflected in scholastic rhetoric. Scholastic rhetoric was based on the view that the eloquence of an orator consists in observing the most specific rules, in the use of conventional techniques. The speaker was prescribed certain movements of the hands and head, a certain position of the body, and certain modulations of the voice. Mainly, these were rules regarding the disclosure of a given topic and regarding the form of speech, these were conventional techniques for constructing sentences and presenting evidence. Rhetoric had the goal of developing the ability and dexterity to reveal each given topic, to prove any position - to reveal and prove it pleasantly for the listeners. For this purpose, rules were given and techniques were indicated regardless of any possible content. Not only that; scholastic rhetoric not only developed the form of speech and logical methods for revealing the topic and proving propositions, but it set itself the task of providing content for speech about any subject - of course, abstract content; she provided a supply of commonplaces, words and phrases; she gave rules about invention, research and selection of thoughts. During medieval scholasticism, homiletics was only a department of rhetoric - it was scholastic homiletics. Scholastic homiletics (like rhetoric) came to us from the West through Catholic Poland, first to the southwest, then to the northeast. The first Russian homiletics, “Science is a way to destroy Kazan” by Ioannikiy Golyatovsky, was scholastic homiletics. This science consists of two parts - theoretical and practical. The first part is an answer to the question: what to say? where to get the content? The content of the sermon is primarily indicated in its parts: theme, exordium, proposition, narration, conclusion. Detailed instructions are given on the composition of each part of the sermon. Exordium, also conclusion, can be “created from the similarity of something like a butt.” An exordium can also be made by attributing weakness to oneself or expressing bewilderment at what one is going to talk about. You can break down the topic into logical parts and talk about each separately in a narration. If you speak on a saint’s day, praise his life, suffering, miracles. Detailed instructions are given on the contents of the exordium and conclusion in order to engage listeners. Among the sources of preaching beyond the Bible and patristic works are histories and chronicles, books about animals, birds, reptiles, etc. In the second part of the science we are considering, instructions are given on how to use preachers’ own sermons of Ioannikiy Golyatovsky - it should be noted that his science is an appendix to the collection of his sermons. These instructions are as follows: a sermon written for St. George, one might say on St. Day. Demetrius or St. Procopy - you just need to change the name; with the same minor changes, a sermon written on one of the Lord's or Theotokos' feasts can be delivered on the day of some saint. Can a preacher take an exordium from Golyatovsky’s sermon and attach his own narrative to it or vice versa. You can make up a whole sermon from one part of a sermon. “Who will test how he can create a great cauldron for the most part”? The author of science answers this question as follows: “if that part of the Kazan is required to be ampleficare (amplificare?), expanded, required to be given butts, similarities, maxims, figures, then a small part will become a great Kazan” (II, 131). From this brief summary of the brief science of Ioannikiy Golyatovsky, it is obvious that for him preaching was not a living word, but a dead sound, not an organism, but a mechanism. You cannot change the hair color, nose size, or move the head from one body to another on a living body, but all this can be done with dolls. The author looks at sermons like lifeless dolls. A work of art, like an organism, also does not tolerate such violent changes; but in the science we are considering, art is replaced by convention, mechanicalness. It is curious that even the form of speech is considered here as a means of inventing content, or as a method of covering up vacuity. The general lifelessness and therefore aimlessness of the sermon is covered up by artificial methods of enticing listeners. Homiletics of Ioannikios Golyatovsky was published in 1659. Soon after, scholastic homiletics appeared in northeastern Russia. We will not follow either this first appearance of her in Moscow Rus', or her further fate in Russia; We will not dwell on the services that Feofan Prokopovich rendered to Russian homiletics, nor on those famous preachers who rose above the level of the contemporary theory of homiletics, such as St. Dimitry Rostovsky, - we just want to introduce the reader to the type of scholastic homiletics, how it took root here in Russia. To do this, we will not look at the works of Feofan Prokopovich, not the Guide to the Russian oratorio Ambrose, not the Tractatus de concionum dispositionibus formandis Anastasius Bratanovsky, which can be found in the book by Y.K. Amphitheater Readings on Church Literature or Homiletics, Part I, pp. 35–48; but consider the Guide to Church Eloquence, which Y.K. Amphitheater is not presented. True, it is not a Russian work, but “Russian translators added a lot of their own to it” (ib. p. 49); it was widely used among us and had several editions; it represents a more or less developed type of scholastic homiletics and it is not by chance that it is called by Y.K. Amphitheater’s “our classical” homiletics (Part II, p. 23). In this Guide, after preliminary concepts about eloquence, as the gift of teaching, pleasing and touching, about oratory and its types, about rhetoric and its division, the first part sets out a discussion about invention, which means the search and selection of thoughts (Chapter 1), evidence (Chapter 2) and arguments (Chapter 3). The chapter on evidence reveals an easy way to find different types of evidence, which consists in the use of rhetorical places - internal (definition, calculation of parts, cause and effect, comparison, difference, contrast and circumstances of place and time) and external (evidence from Holy Scripture, tradition and from the Holy Fathers). The chapter on arguments gives instructions on how to select evidence and draw conclusions in order to more easily assure and convince listeners (types of arguments; hypothesis, dilemma, example, induction, enthymeme). In order to succeed in preaching, you need to be a good logician. Part two is about the arrangement of parts of the word, about the attack (chapter 1), in which the speaker gains the favor of the listeners, about the proposal and division of matter (five sources of division: materiality, action, causes, circumstances and properties of the subject), about narration (chapter 2), about confirmation (chapter 3: about the property, connection and order of evidence, etc.), about passions (chapter 4), which the preacher must arouse in listeners, about the conclusion (chapter 5), about oratorical decency (chapter 6), about greetings (chapter 7), about types of sermon; about dogmatic words, conversations, short teachings and catechetical teaching. Part three is about expression (elocutio), otherwise about the decoration of the word, about purity of language (chap. 1), clarity (chap. 2), elegance (chap. 3), about strong and lofty thoughts (chap. 4), about simple, high and moderate style (chap. 5), about figures (chap. 6) – about tropes, metaphor, allegory, hyperbole, periphrasis, etc., about imitation (chapter 7). Part four - three chapters on oratory: about memory (about what needs to be learned by heart), voice and body movements. This is the content of the Guide to Church Eloquence. What are its advantages? To fully evaluate it, it would be necessary to compare it with classical rhetoric, traces of which are very noticeable in it, and to determine whether it maintains the spirit of classical rhetoric along with the letter. It apparently retained only the letter from the ancient art of oratory. But we want to evaluate it outside of this relationship to the art of oratory. Does scholastic homiletics, as it exists in itself, correspond to the goals of Christian preaching? This question must be answered in the negative. The basis of scholastic homiletics is the view that the tasks and success of preaching lie entirely in the word and precisely in its formal-logical side - in the power of expression. Meanwhile, according to the teachings of the Apostle Paul, Christian preaching is not in passionate or convincing (παθητικο ĩ ς) words of human wisdom, but in the manifestation of the spirit and power (1 Cor. II, 4). The goal of Christian preaching is the manifestation of the life of Christ in the listeners (2 Tim. I, 10); she is the word of life (Phil. II, 16). A sermon is the word of life because it is a specific gospel, namely the gospel of Christ Jesus, and it has a specific content. Classical eloquence had no specific content. True, Cicero demanded knowledge of philosophy from the orator (positum sit in primis, sine philosophia non posse effici eloquentem. Orator p. IV); but we must remember that at that time, as now, as always, there was no generally accepted philosophy, it did not provide a generally accepted worldview, generally binding rules of morality; therefore, the speaker from philosophy could not bear the content for his speeches, but received only mental development from its study (non ut in ea omnia sint, sed ut sic adjuvet, ut palaestva histrionem. Ib.). The speeches of the speakers did not have a common subject of instruction, general content, but took it from particular cases, with the goal of giving not a general direction to the life of the listeners, but to determine for them a course of action in one or another particular case of social life. Such is secular eloquence in general. A completely different thing needs to be said about preaching: it has only one subject for itself - the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, it has only one goal for itself - to communicate His teaching to the listeners. It is His gospel that alone can and does give life to the world. This certainty of general content constitutes the first sign of preaching. But Christian preaching is the word of life not only in the sense that it is the word to life, i.e. generates life in listeners, but also in the sense that it is a word from life, i.e. it comes from the Christian life of the preacher himself. A sermon differs from all types of speech in that in it the word acts on the listeners together with the personality of the preacher and precisely his moral character. A learned essay and a poetic work fully achieve their goal, even if the reader has never seen the author and has no idea about him. Oratory speech achieves its goal only if it is pronounced by the speaker himself, if the listener sees and hears him. The same goes for preaching, but with this significant difference from oratorical speech: in the orator, his external appearance affects the listeners, and in the preacher, his moral appearance affects the listeners. One listener of the sermon, which moved everyone to tears, when asked why he was not crying, they say, answered: “I am not from this parish.” With this story, they usually think to ridicule the listener. In fact, such an answer gives a great lesson to the preacher. The evangelist of Christ must teach not only by word, but also by his life; he must first fulfill the teachings of Christ himself, he must be a witness to this teaching, he must be connected with the listeners by bonds of love, he must be one of the listeners. Finally, preaching is the word of life in the sense that it is a living word. It is a living word because in it the word of God is applied to the state of the listeners and is made contemporary for them, understandable to everyone. It is a living word and from the outside, like living oral, heartfelt speech, alien to any artificiality. These are the essential features of a sermon, the disclosure of which should constitute the essential content of homiletics. Meanwhile, scholastic homiletics does not affect a single essential feature of preaching, does not answer any of the essential questions of the science of Christian preaching, and therefore should be recognized as completely pointless and unnecessary. We have compared classical rhetoric and medieval scholastic homiletics with the true nature of Christian preaching. In this way, we have taken a very convenient point for reviewing later homiletics, since the later history of homiletics consists of the gradual liberation of homiletics from the shackles of scholasticism, but this liberation is not accomplished in one direction towards the true nature of Christian preaching, but in a double direction - on the one hand, towards the true nature of Christian preaching, and on the other hand, towards the artistry of oratory. To characterize later homiletics means answering three questions: to what extent does it give room to 1) the depiction of the true nature of Christian preaching, 2) the lifeless rules of scholastic homiletics, and 3) the art of oratory. We will not outline the history of the liberation of Russian homiletics from the yoke of scholasticism, but we will consider in these three respects Readings on Church Literature, or Homiletics by Y.K. Amphiteatrov, which appeared in print in 1846. The history of Russian homiletics has never had anything like this work before. When you move from our ancient homiletics to this truly classic work, you feel yourself entering an area that is in some respects completely new: this is the warmth and penetration of the patristic spirit. The work of Y.K. differs from previous homiletics. Amphitheater and in content. The entire first part of his Homiletics deals with the question of the matter of ecclesiastical conversation; The significant first section of the second part treats the internal character of the sermon... Amfitheatrov’s readings on church literature, representing a phenomenon in the history of Russian homiletics, in some respects, new, at the same time were not replaced in later times by equal work on homiletics. Since that time, we have had Notes on Conversational Theology, or Homiletics, compiled by Archimandrite. Athanasius, Guide to Church Conversation, or Homiletics by Archpriest. Favorova, Brief homiletics prot. Potorzhinsky and Experience of a complete course of homiletics by M. Chepik; all these homiletics are completely dependent on the Homiletics of J.K. Amphitheater. Notes of Archimandrite Athanasius represent only a reduction of two parts of Amphitheater’s Readings “with some changes, however” (and with the addition of a third part about particular types of church conversation - this third part is then no longer absent in other of the named homiletics). The rest of the named homiletics (the best of them is the homiletics of Archpriest Potorzhinsky) are to some extent independent in presentation, differing from each other only in presentation, without giving almost a single new thought in comparison with Amphiteatrov’s work and without differing from each other in this regard. However, even this such an insignificant amount of independence serves not for the better, but for the worse, and precisely in the sense of a return to scholastic rhetoric: in the most recent homiletics this return is more noticeable. Thus, Homiletics J.K. Amphitheater remains the new best homiletics to this day, and therefore we will consider it in the above three respects, turning in some cases to other later homiletics. We will consider our newest homiletics with the sole purpose of determining the normal content of the science of Christian preaching; consideration of the available content of homiletics will only be a means to achieving this goal. Therefore, a critical analysis of Amphiteatrov’s Homiletics will not form a special section in our articles, but will be included in parts in the very presentation of the content of homiletics. When presenting the content of homiletics, we will follow this plan. On those issues of homiletics that are not touched upon at all in our later homiletics, we will simply try to present the proper content of homiletics; those of the proper questions of homiletics, which are answered by the named authors, we examine critically; We will discuss everything that was transferred from classical rhetoric into Amphitheater’s Homiletics in the form of solving the question of the relationship of Christian preaching to the art of oratory, or whether Christian preaching is an art; Finally, we note that in our newest homiletics, scholasticism has been preserved and therefore is subject to complete exclusion from homiletics. But before we begin to execute the plan we have outlined, we consider it necessary to make a few brief comments about Western homiletics of later times. In general, later Western homiletics, both Catholic and Protestant, have a classical-rhetorical character and give the widest place to the views and rules of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. This is the Theorie der geistlichen Beredsamkeit (1877) of the Catholic Jungmann. If he places psychological principles as the basis of spiritual eloquence, then he does this in quite the same sense as the classical teachers of rhetoric; if he talks about the personality of the preacher, then in this respect he does not deviate in the least from classical rhetoric; in questions about the purpose of spiritual eloquence, about the disclosure of the topic, he applies the rules of classical rhetoric to Christian preaching. Let's say more about Protestant homiletics. Luther's classically educated predecessors and collaborators could do no more with scholastic homiletics than remake it according to the model of classical rhetoric. In the person of Spener, Protestant homiletics made an impulse towards freedom from all technica et oratoria praecepta and turned to the simplicity and warmth of the Gospel preaching 3. However, this was a short-lived impulse and Protestant homiletics after that not only with complete certainty and consistency maintains the classical artistic view of spiritual oratory 4, but also falls under the new slavery of rationalistic philosophy, and requires strict logic and methodicality from preaching. So, on the one hand, classical rhetoric, on the other hand, rationalist philosophy - these are the influences under which later Protestant homiletics were developed. In particular, Protestant homiletics of the nineteenth century, in relation to the basic view of the essence, tasks and purpose of preaching, falls into two directions: one is rhetorical, the other is cultic. The first direction is headed by Temerin (Die Beredsamkeit eine Tugend oder Grundlinien einer syst. Rhetorik - 1 Ausg. 1814, 2 Ausg. 1837). The title and basic views of his homiletics are borrowed from Quintilian (Inst. orat. II, 20: rhetorica vera – virtus est). In his opinion, the purpose of the sermon is through theoretical teaching, and namely the disclosure of the ideas of duty, goodness and happiness, to influence the moral life of listeners. The homiletics of Nitzsch, Vinet and many others belong to this direction. etc. By calling this direction rhetorical, they want to point out that the sermon, according to this view, has the goal, like oratory, to influence the will of the listeners (der rhetorisch teleologische Standpunkt); but at the same time, this name indicates that homiletics of this trend attach exceptional importance in preaching to its formal-logical side (die einseitig rhetorische Fassung) and in this they fundamentally believe that this is a significant shortcoming of homiletics of this kind 5 . The second direction originates from Schleiermacher; Palmer and Harnack hold it. Krauss, Bassermann, Oestersee, Schweizer (not entirely consistently), etc. In their opinion, preaching is only part of the divine service, and worship is entirely an art (der kultisch-ästhetische Standpunkt). But this is not the essence of the trend under consideration - after all, oratory is an art; but the fact is that, according to this view, art in general and worship in particular have the sole task of expressing feelings 6 ; therefore, the preacher is, if not exclusively, then primarily an exponent of those feelings that his believing listeners experience. The named homiletics do not recognize the right of the preacher to convince his listeners (durch seine Argumente uns zu überreden, durch sein Pathos uns zu rühren - Palmer); they demand that his personality remain hidden (Schweizer). To put it differently, they completely separate church preaching from missionary preaching in terms of purpose and character and recognize only praiseworthy speeches (Festrede) as appropriate and timely before the community of believers (Gemeindepredigt). It is easy to see that homiletics of this trend do not completely correspond to the essence of Christian preaching. When comparing the two named areas of Protestant homiletics, the first must admit the advantage that it gives a place in homiletics to the doctrine of the personality of the preacher. However, in reality, many of the latest homiletics touch on this subject only in passing - ganz flüchtig, in the words of Christlieb 8 - and present it exclusively from a rhetorical point of view. It should also be noted that the author of the book Homiletik und Psychologie (1897), Dürselen, which requires psychological foundations for preaching and connection with counseling pastoral activities, adheres to the second direction. The rhetorical direction of Protestant homiletics must also recognize the advantage that it has more incentives to deal with the issue of matter, or the subject of church preaching. In general, this point is carefully developed in Protestant homiletics. On methodological issues and in the doctrine of the external side of preaching, Western homiletics, until very recent times, took the point of view of scholastic homiletics. Stockmeyer (Homiletik, 1895) expresses with absolute certainty the idea that the preacher, in order to introduce listeners to eternal life, must give the content given in the word of God a homiletical form (S. 2). In these departments, Western homiletics lovingly deals with scholastic questions; she looks at the sermon only as a literary work. Finally, it should be noted that later German homiletics amaze the reader with the extreme dryness of their presentation: in them the main attention is drawn to the plan of science, to its relationship to other theological sciences, to formal definitions, to the classification of the various opinions of homiletics on each issue. The homiletics of Stockmeir and Christlieb, already mentioned by us, suffer from this presentation. Chapter one. What should a preacher be like? Among all types of human speech, preaching occupies a completely exceptional position as the word of life. The preacher teaches his listeners the true life, i.e. he not only reveals to them what is true and right as opposed to false, but also shows them what real spiritual life consists of, in contrast to external, temporary, illusory life - and not only shows, but also teaches them to live this real life. But life, namely real inner life, cannot be taught by a word in its detachment from life, but can only be taught by life and only by a word that comes from life. The inseparable attitude towards the life of the preacher himself constitutes the first element of the preaching word. Here life comes first and then the word, as a living thing. In this respect, a sermon can be compared with oratory; but the essential difference between them is that in the orator the personality acts on the listeners through art, external appearance, in him the action of the personality is only the image, or form, or the external side of speech. And the moral demands of classical rhetoric did not go beyond the limits of the art of psychological action on the heart and were entirely limited to what the speaker should appear to listeners. On the contrary, in a Christian preacher, his inner real life, his inner feat, comes first. This is not art, but spiritual life itself. Therefore, to consider the sermon in isolation from the spiritual life of the preacher means to misunderstand the sermon. The first question of homiletics, its cornerstone, is the question of what kind of preacher should be. In revealing the idea of ​​the dependence of the success of preaching on the moral qualities and personal life of the preacher, we must follow from the general to the specific and from the psychologically preceding to the later. We must begin with what a preacher must be like before he begins to preach the Word of God, which he must have in common with every true Christian. All Christians are commanded to glorify God with their lives and good deeds (Matt. V, 16) 9. The preacher who performs the “ministry of the word” is not free from this duty. Christ Himself, our only teacher (Matthew XXIII, 8), did not set out for the ministry of the gospel before defeating temptation (Matthew IV, 17). And He not only taught, but did and taught (Acts I, 1). According to His instruction (Matt. V, 19) the apostles acted (1 Cor. IV, 16; IX, 26. 27; XI, 1; Philip. III. 17. 2 Thess. III, 7-10), commanding in turn their successors, the shepherds of the church, to do the same (1 Pet. V, 3; 1 Tim. IV, 12; Titus, II, 7). In this regard, it is very instructive to dwell on the ways in which Christianity penetrated into the environment of paganism: it was preached not by one word of the evangelists of Christ, but by the life of all Christians. St. testifies to this. Justin the Philosopher in 1 Apol. Ch. 16. “The Lord Jesus Christ,” he writes, exhorted us with patience and meekness to lead everyone away from shameful deeds and addiction to evil. I can show this in many of our people who changed from being arrogant and fierce, having been defeated either because they had seen enough of the severity of the lives of their neighbors (Christians), or because they saw in their companions wonderful patience in enduring insults, or from experience they learned the morals of those people with whom they came into contact on business.” Church teachers left numerous instructions in the same direction. St. John Chrysostom, who made many wonderful remarks about preaching in the 4th and 5th words about the priesthood, in the first of them writes among other things: “the main goal of the teaching is to lead those taught by both deeds and words to that blessed life that Christ prescribed - and each of these two parts (i.e. deeds and words) has a need for the other, so that the building is complete.” Also blessed. Augustine writes: “no matter how sublime our preaching may be, in actual victory over the listeners the life of the preacher always has more weight and power than his word” (Christian Science, book IV, LIX). St. gives many similar instructions. Gregory the Great in the Pastoral Rule, where we read: “every preacher should teach more by deeds than by words” (Part III, XLII), etc. Our well-known domestic book on the positions of parish elders separately treats teaching in word and teaching in deed. Only the word of a preacher who himself lives the way he teaches others to live can be sincere, and sincerity is a necessary condition for the action of the word on the will of the listeners. A good life, in addition to serving as a good example for the listeners of the preaching word, has a special meaning for the preacher himself, which gives him spiritual experience. The teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ had an extraordinary effect on the people (John VII, 46), because He Himself was a witness to His teaching (VIII, 18). True, He did not speak from Himself, He did and spoke as the Father taught Him (VIII, 28; XIV, 10), spoke the truth that He heard from the Father (VIII, 40); but hearing from the Father was not, on His part, an external perception of the truth, a rational cognition, but was an experienced possession of the truth, an internal experience of it. He lived the life of the Heavenly Father (X, 30) and therefore the truth that He heard from the Father abided in Him (Eph. IV, 21; John XIV, 6). He knew from experience, He saw and heard from the Father what he spoke about (III, il. 32). This exclusive relationship of Christ Jesus to God the Father gave His preaching the peculiarity that He was precisely a witness of the truth. He did not deduce the truth from any data or premises, as philosophers do, He did not prove it with logical arguments - no, He only testified to what he saw and what he heard from the Father (John III, 11-32) 10. Also, the apostles were actually witnesses to the truth that they preached. And their position among the listeners was special: they were eyewitnesses of the life, deeds, suffering and resurrection of Christ (Acts I, 21.22; 2 Pet. I, 16) and hearers of His words; they were authorized by Himself to testify about Him (John XV, 26.27; Acts I, 8). This was their great advantage. They appeared before the listeners as eyewitnesses of the divine life that appeared in Christ. The apostle writes about what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, about the Word of life (for life has appeared, and we have seen and testify, and we proclaim to you this eternal life, which was with the Father and was revealed to us), - what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you, so that you also may have fellowship with us; and our fellowship is with the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ (1 John 1:1-3). And the successors of the apostles in the matter of Christian preaching must also be witnesses of the divine truth, which they received according to tradition from Christ and the apostles. It is precisely this testimony of Christian truth that the preacher is tasked with. The ability to testify to it, and not anything else and, in particular, not scholarship, even theological, lies the basis of the preaching vocation (cf. Acts I, 21:22). But how does this opportunity itself acquire for him? Obviously, not by the special historical conditions in which the apostles were placed, but by psychological conditions accessible to him - spiritual experience. Before acting as an evangelist of Christ, a Christian must himself experience the truth revealed by Christ and preached by the apostles, and be experimentally convinced that following Christ really brings the benefits promised by the Savior; he must, through actual experience, partake of that spiritual life that flows from Christ, become inwardly akin to Christ, and receive into himself from His Holy Spirit. This spiritual experience in the language of the Word of God is called anointing from the Holy Spirit and seems not to be an exclusive feature of the preacher, but characteristic of every true Christian (1 John 20:27). The preacher must possess it predominantly, otherwise he can impart to his listeners only knowledge of words, and not the truth itself. “Whoever talks about the spiritual without having tasted it himself, writes Ev. Macarius the Great (Philokalia, vol. 1, ed. 8, p. 220), he is likened to a man who, when the heat of the day sets in, walks through an empty field and, languishing with thirst, describes a source flowing with water, depicting himself as drinking, while his lips and tongue are dry from their scorching thirst... So, if they are talking about perfection, about joy or about dispassion, not who felt in themselves their effectiveness and confirmation of them; then in reality not everything happens as they say. It’s another thing to talk about bread and meals, and another thing to eat and take in the nutritional value of bread and be strengthened with all your limbs. It’s another thing to talk in words about the sweet drink itself, and another thing to go and draw from the source itself and be satisfied with tasting the sweet drink. So it is in the spiritual; It’s another thing to explain to oneself what has been said with knowledge and mind alone, and another thing is to essentially, in fact, with certainty, have in the inner man and mind the treasure of grace, inspiration and action of the Holy Spirit. Those who utter only words dream and become puffed up with their minds.” The spiritual experience of the preacher gives rise to trust in his word in his listeners: they feel that they are hearing a person they can rely on, who testifies to what he has “seen and heard.” How great is the desire in a person to find authority in the field of truth, to such a decisive importance in the matter of persuasiveness of the preaching word is this trust generated in the listeners by the spiritual experience of the preacher. A good life and spiritual experience are not the duties of the preacher exclusively, but are required of every true Christian, although the concept of spiritual experience is already closer and more characteristic of preaching activity. But we must go even further in this direction; we must now talk about what constitutes a specific sign of a true preacher from the first steps of his activity. This is a special calling of the evangelist of Christ. By the calling of a preacher one should understand both “the word of God to him” (Luke III, 2) and one’s own inner attraction. The true evangelist of Christ is the one who is called to this service by God, who is sent from Him. How to preach if they are not sent? asks the Apostle Paul (Rom. X, 15). The heralds of God's will, the Old Testament prophets, each performed their service according to a special calling of God, for prophecy was never pronounced according to the will of man, but holy men of God spoke it, being moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. I, 21). Our Lord Jesus Christ Himself did not assign glory to Himself (Heb. V, 5) to be a proclaimer of the will of God, but He was sent for this purpose from God, He was a teacher who came from God and His teaching was the teaching of Him who sent Him (Luke Ι V, 43; John III, 2. 34; V ΙΙ, 16; VIII 28. 29; XIV, 24). The apostles, as their very name shows, were messengers of Christ for the work of preaching, they were chosen by him to the gospel of God (Luke IX, 2; X, 3; John XVII, 18; Rom. I, 1 and many others). The calling of God meets or gives rise in a true preacher an inner attraction to the “ministry of the word” of God. You have drawn me, O Lord, exclaims the ancient prophet, and I am drawn away. You are stronger than me and have overcome; and every day I am in ridicule, everyone mocks me... And I thought: I will not remind of Him, and I will no longer speak in His name; but it was in my heart, as it were, a burning fire, locked up in my bones, and I grew weary, holding it, and could not (Jer. XX, 7.9). Our Lord Jesus Christ considered the work of evangelism to be as natural for Himself as everything that is embedded in our nature from birth is natural in us: For this purpose I was born, He said to Pilate, and for this purpose I came into the world, to testify to the truth (John XVIII: 37). He compared his inner calling to proclaim the will of God with the natural needs for food and drink and doing the will of the Father with nutrition. After talking with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, He said to His disciples, who were going out to buy food: I have food that you do not know. My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to complete His work (John IV, 32.34). Also, the apostles preached the word of God not under compulsion, but willingly: if I, writes the apostle. Paul, if I preach the gospel, I have nothing to boast about, because this is my necessary duty, and woe to me if I do not preach the gospel! For if I do this voluntarily, I will have a reward; and if involuntary, then I perform only the ministry entrusted to me (1 Cor. IX. 16. 17; cf. 1 Pet. V. 2). According to the established order in the Church of Christ, the evangelists of the word of God are the shepherds, to whom, in the sacrament of hierarchical ordination, God’s blessing is given for the work of evangelism, “the grace of the teaching word” 11. The pastors of the church need to remember that the continuity of hierarchical ordination in relation to the “ministry of the word®” has a deeper meaning than a simple blessing from hierarchical authority. The Christian “ministry of the word” has its foundation in God and originates from the Lord Jesus Christ himself. In His person the Word, which was with God, became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth (John I, 1.14), teaching us in a language understandable to us. The teaching of Christian preachers should not be divorced from this Word of God: in order to be the gospel of Christ, it must be a proclamation of this divine Word, it must be the fulfillment of the commandment of Christ and be based on the authority that is given to preachers in this commandment: go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you; and behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age (Matthew ΧΧ VII Ι, 19.20). A message from Jesus Christ Himself or His Church to continue His work, to proclaim His word is such a necessary condition for Christian preaching that without it there cannot be a true preacher. He who does not recognize himself as a messenger of Christ is not a Christian preacher; whoever does not hear His calling voice, kindling an inner fire and captivating, is an impostor in the field of Christ. Then the pastors of the church must remember that the “word of God” must meet in their hearts an inner attraction, an inner disposition towards the cause of Christ. I remind you, wrote the Apostle Paul to his beloved disciple Timothy, to warm up the gift of God, which is in you through my ordination (2 Tim. 1:6). If the external word of God to a person does not meet with an internal response in him, then the same thing happens with the word of God as with grain that fell on rocky places. A calling is very important for a preacher and cannot be replaced by anything. It surrounds the preacher with an aura of sacred dignity and gives him fearlessness. To be a messenger of God, to recognize oneself as a herald of the divine word, means to have within oneself a strength that cannot be crushed by any obstacles, that overcomes ridicule, persecution, contempt, expulsion, insults, beatings, imprisonment, that fears neither power, nor learning, nor the superstitions of the crowd. Sending the prophet Ezekiel to the Jewish people - to a rebellious people with a hardened face and a hard heart, the Lord said to him: but you, son of man, do not be afraid of them, and do not be afraid of their speech, if they become thistles and thorns for you and you live among the scorpions: do not be afraid of their speech, and do not be afraid of their face, for they are a rebellious house... the whole house of Israel with a strong forehead and with a cruel heart. Behold, I have made your face strong against their face, and your forehead strong against their forehead. I have made your forehead like a diamond that is stronger than stone, do not be afraid of them, and do not be afraid in their presence, for they are a rebellious house (Ezekiel II, 3-6; III, 7-9). – The apostles, according to the word of Christ, were not afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul (Matt. X, 28), enduring beatings and imprisonments for the gospel of Christ, they rejoiced that they were worthy to accept dishonor for the name of the Lord Jesus. And every day in the church and from house to house they did not cease teaching and preaching the gospel about Jesus Christ (Acts V, 41.42). The Apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesians: Pray for me, that the word may be given to me to openly and boldly proclaim with my mouth the mystery of the gospel, for which I am on mission in prison, so that I may preach boldly as I ought (VI, 18-20). Calling in connection with spiritual experience gives the preacher energy, perseverance and vigilance in the ministry of the word. The uncalled preacher does not find the energy to express what he knows - he knows only from books; the exact opposite happens to a preacher who has experienced Christ’s truth and is called to the ministry of the word. He speaks freely, willingly, with passion. The apostle’s testament to his disciple: preach the word, insist in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke, exhort with all long-suffering and edification (2 Tim. IV. 2 cf. Acts XV, 36: 1 Thess. C, 12: IV. 1; 1 Tim. IV. 16) - can be understood and fulfilled only for the one who commits the gospel of Christ with an internal disposition, voluntarily. What a difference there is between this vigilance commanded by the Apostle and that coldness of uncalled preachers who choose the times for the gospel of Christ! St. Gregory the Dvoeslov, in explaining why the prophet Jeremiah shied away from the “position of a preacher,” writes: “Jeremiah, trying through a contemplative life to become more and more established in the love of God, wanted to evade this position; he feared that by accepting the position of preaching ministry he would lose the fruits of silent contemplation.” According to the meaning of these words, preaching activity introduces that peculiarity into the personal moral life of the preacher, that the latter is applied to the listeners, for their benefit. In any case, this means that the personal moral life of the preacher must be open to his listeners and must act on them. The life of a preacher should be predominantly a good life, predominantly expressed in good deeds and precisely in relation to the listeners, to their needs. Our Lord Jesus Christ taught, as the listeners themselves admitted, as one who had authority, and not as the scribes (Mp. 1, 22 and par.). What gave Him such power over his listeners? His good deeds. The people were amazed at the combination of wisdom and deeds in Him: what kind of wisdom was given to Him and how such miracles were performed by His hands (Mp. VI, 2; Mt. XIII. 54)? The deeds of Jesus Christ were such that everyone was extremely amazed and said: He does everything well, and makes the deaf hear, and the dumb speak (Mr. VII: 37), - all the people rejoiced over all His glorious deeds (Luke XIII: 17). The apostles received from the Lord Jesus Christ the commandment not only to teach, but also to do deeds worthy of the messengers of God (Luke IX, 12 and par.). According to this commandment, everywhere they combined the gospel of the word with works of charity, healed the sick, and cast out unclean spirits. Their benefactions made them pleasing to their listeners, so that there was great joy in the city to which they came (Acts VIII, 8). The people listened to their words and believed their teaching, because they saw the works done by their hands (Acts VIII, 6; XIII, 12 and many others). The apostles acted on the conviction that the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power (1 Cor. IV, 20: 1 Thess. I, 5 cf. Rom. XV, 25; Gal. II, 10). As the Lord Jesus Christ acted, as His holy apostles acted, so should subsequent preachers of the word of Christ act. But since they no longer usually possess the gift of miracles, they must do good by natural means. The evangelist of Christ must be in the closest relationship with his listeners: he must take their needs and sufferings close to his heart, so that they become accustomed to seeing him compassionate wherever sorrow befalls any of them. In this case, the preacher’s voice will not be alien to them, but familiar; they will listen not only to his words, but they will see before them a living person close to them, he will speak to them with his heart, and they will listen to him with their hearts. St. talks well about this subject. Gregory Dvoeslov: “one cannot approve, he writes, of those pastors who devote their studies exclusively to spiritual subjects, so that the external needs of the flock do not seem to exist for them... The flock, not seeing in them sympathy for their needs, remain in turn indifferent to them, neglecting for the most part their pastoral instructions, although useful in their essence, but having a weak effect on their hearts, which are little prepared for this and are not attracted by the satisfaction of urgent needs. Hearing from their lips the denunciations of their ignorance and their misdeeds, but not seeing sympathetic compassion for their weaknesses and the needs of this life, they are reluctant to listen to their spiritual conversations, and even less to carry out what is instilled in them. For those in need of material goods, the lessons of such a teacher are invalid who does not give them a helping hand in the needs they endure and does not attract them to himself with mercy. The seed of the word of God easily penetrates into their hearts, grows and bears fruit only when the preacher waters and waters it with compassionate mercy towards them” (Prov. Past. I, 7), etc. The love of the evangelist of Christ for his listeners should be revealed not only in good deeds, but also in his complete self-denial. By saying this, we not only do not go beyond the limits of preaching activity, but we come to what is most essential in this activity 12. In fact, what is the final goal of Christian evangelism? The manifestation of life in the listeners (2 Tim. I, 10) - true, eternal, divine life. But obviously, the human word can produce life only if it acts not in verbal or literary detachment from the life and inner activity of the speaker, but as an instrument of the living influence of one person on another, as a means of living communication between persons connected by “personal” feelings. In this sense, the same word in the mouths of different people should produce different effects on listeners; in this case, it is not only what is said that is important, but also by whom it is said. Only he who has life in himself can produce life in another; there cannot be in the effect what is not given in the cause. And this is not enough. Just as life in another can only be produced by one who has life in himself, so the work of life itself cannot be a purely verbal or literary action, but must be the living influence of one person on another, a vital deed. Our Lord Jesus Christ by His word gave us eternal life, as He Himself said: Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word and believes in him who sent Me has eternal life (John V, 24). Why does His word become the beginning of true life in us? Because He from Whom this word comes has true life in Himself: just as the Father has life in Himself, so He gave to the Son to have life in Himself (John V, 24). Therefore, the Lord Jesus Christ was not only a teacher, but was also a life-giver: He conveyed His life to people listening to His word - He gave us true food that endures to life, He Himself became for us the true heavenly bread. He gave Himself to us, His flesh and blood (John VI, 27.33.85.51.53–58). How did He convey His life to us? This was a matter of life on His part - it was a matter of self-denial, death. In order for people called by Christ from darkness to light to have life in themselves, He laid down His life for them: I came, He said, so that they might have life and have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep (John X, 10. 11); He gave His flesh for the life of the world (John VI, 51). Here we enter the region of the deepest mystery of the transfer of life from one to another, the mystery of spiritual birth. We approach it through the image of natural birth. A grain thrown into the ground must first rot and die in order to bear fruit. Death is the beginning of life - not just one life of the one who dies, but many lives that are born from the death of one. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; and if he dies, he will bear much fruit (John XII, 24). This is the basis for the rebirth of man. In the field of spiritual life, the life-productive significance of death is manifested in a twofold relationship: in relation to the dying person himself and in relation to other people. In the first respect, the mortification of carnal, visible life through faith in the invisible and divine life becomes the source of eternal, true life: he who loves his soul will destroy it; but he who hates his life in this world will keep it to eternal life (John XII. 25). We must always bear in our body the death of the Lord Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body (2 Cor. IV, 10; Rom. VIII, 13). In the second respect, the suffering and death of one person who has life in himself - his suffering and death for others becomes a source of life for them: the death of one for others makes from his life the grain, or the embryo of the life of others. So, first of all, Jesus Christ Himself, Who is the living bread that came down from heaven, became our bread through the death He suffered for us: He gave His flesh for the life of the world, He laid down His soul for the sheep. Spiritual birth is quite similar to physical birth through suffering: here, too, there are real pains of birth, not only in a metaphorical sense; but it differs from physical birth in that the main active force in it is love. It precisely expresses the fullness of life, transmitted to others; it is the basis of self-denial; she is the only cause that vivifies death; she is the very sprout breaking through to the light from the darkness of death. Without love in this case there is nothing, love is everything. And the death of Christ for us was the result of love - divine love (John III, 16), the love of Himself: there is no greater love than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends (John XV, 13). Just as the blood of Adam flows in our veins, so our spiritual life is the manifestation in us of the life of Christ: spiritually we live by Christ (John VI, 57 and many others). And just as organic life can only be continuous and only that person really lives who is not separated for thousands of years from the life of Adam by death (after all, every father who dies in his time produces children during his lifetime); Likewise, only the one (Christian) who, over the course of centuries, is united with Christ through the succession of His continuously continuing life is spiritually alive. The unquenchable fire of Vesta serves as a good image of the continuity of Christian life: even if this fire goes out at least once, the fire can be rekindled, but it is no longer the same one that was ignited by the ancestors many years ago. Likewise, spiritual life goes on continuously through centuries and is transmitted through as many spiritual births as there are spiritual children born in Christianity. From here it is clear what the calling is and how great the importance of Christian evangelists is: they serve the cause of the spiritual birth of the children of Christ, the cause of the continuous transmission of the life of Christ, His love. Such were the apostles. They were sent by Christ as witnesses of His teaching (John XV, 27); but their service to the world was not only verbal, but was vital: just as they not only heard the teaching from Christ, but were loved by Him and through this became partakers of His eternal life (John XV, XVI, XVII), so they themselves were to serve the manifestation in the world of the love of Christ and His eternal life. Christ, writes St. Paul, revealed life and incorruption through the gospel, for which I was appointed preacher and apostle and teacher (2 Tim. I, 10). That is why the gospel to which the apostles were called was necessarily combined for them with suffering, with the pangs of birth and even death of fruit-bearing grain. For the gospel, writes the same apostle, I suffer even to the point of being bound, like an evildoer; I endure all things for the sake of the elect, so that they too may receive salvation in Christ Jesus with eternal glory (2 Tim. I, 9:10). We, he writes to the Thessalonians, out of zeal for you, wanted to convey to you not only the gospel of God, but also our souls, because you have become kind to us (1 Thess. II, 8). The apostles call their disciples children because they are united with their listeners by bonds of spiritual birth. I ask you, the same apostle writes to Philemon, about my son Onesimus, whom I gave birth to in my bonds (v. 10), etc. This apostle in unusually touching terms and repeatedly describes the suffering of spiritual childbirth. To us, he writes to the Corinthians, to us, the last messengers, God destined to be, as it were, sentenced to death; because we have become a disgrace to the world, to angels and men. We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ; We are weak, but you are strong; you are in glory, and we are in dishonor... we are like rubbish for the world, like dust trampled upon by everyone to this day. I do not write this for your understanding, but I admonish you as my beloved children... I have begotten you in Christ Jesus with the gospel (I Cor. IV: 9-15). The same in 2 Cor. IV, 5–12 and especially art. 12: death is at work in us, but life is in you cp. VI, 3–10; XII, 15; XIII, 9: we rejoice when we are weak and you are strong; Gal. IV, 19: my children, for whom I am again in the throes of birth, until Christ is depicted in you, etc. It is easy to understand that the apostles were united with their disciples by the deepest love. First of all, it was the love of Christ with which the apostles went out to preach, which formed the basis of their gospel. God is the witness, writes the apostle. Paul to the Philippians that I love you all with the love of Jesus Christ (I, 8). But then the sufferings of the gospel, which they endured for the sake of the chosen and taught, made those for whom they suffered and died dear to them. Indeed, just as for the grain that died and gave fruit, this fruit is everything, in it is the life of the dead grain, so for the apostles, who conveyed to their listeners the gospel of Christ along with their souls (1 Thess. II, 8), with their lives, everything dear was hidden in their spiritual children - in them was their joy, their life, their glory, their praise. For me, writes Ap. John, there is no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in the truth (3 John I, 4). You, writes the ap. Paul to the Corinthians, - you are a letter of Christ, through our ministry written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of flesh of the heart (2 Cor. III, 3). Our lips are open to you, Corinthians, our hearts are enlarged. You are not cramped in us (VI, 11.12). You are in our hearts, so that we can die and live together. I hope a lot in you, I boast a lot about you, I am filled with consolation, abounding in joy, despite all our sorrow (VII, 3.4). What is our hope, writes the same apostle to the Thessalonians, or joy, or crown of praise? Are you not before our Lord Jesus Christ at His coming? For you are our glory and joy (1 Thess. II, 19.20). We, in all our sorrow and need, were comforted by you, brothers, for the sake of your faith. For now we are alive as you stand in the Lord. What gratitude can we give to God for you, for all the joy with which we rejoice over you before our God, night and day praying with all earnestness to see your face and to complete what was lacking in your faith (III, 7-10)? In general, the messages of the Ap. Paul's second to the Corinthians and his first to the Thessalonians present clear evidence of the deep love that filled the heart of the apostle. However, his other epistles testify to the same thing (Philip. I, 7–9; II, 12; IV, 1; Col. II, 5; Rom. I, 9–12). The apostles commanded the same path and the same nature of evangelistic activity to their successors in the work of evangelistic ministry (2 Tim I, 8; IV, 5). II indeed, the history and writings of famous Christian preachers provide numerous evidence of their selfless activity, their deep love for their listeners. So - let's limit ourselves to just a few - St. John Chrysostom once, after a short break from his preaching work forced by illness, began his conversation (on the parable of the debtor with ten thousand talents, etc.) with these words; “It’s as if I have returned to you from a long journey - that’s how I feel today. For those who love, when they cannot be with their loved ones, there is no benefit from intimacy. That is why we, staying at home, felt no better than strangers, since we could not talk with you in the past. But forgive me: this silence was not from laziness, but from illness. Now you rejoice that we are freed from illness; and I rejoice that I am enjoying your love again. For me, even when I was ill, what was more painful than the illness itself was that I could not participate in this kind meeting; and now that I have recovered from my illness, what I desire more than health itself is that I have the opportunity to enjoy your love,” etc. He, saying goodbye to the (Constantinople) flock when going into exile, said to his listeners like this: “You are my fathers, you are my life, you are my praise. If you succeed, I am glorified, so that my life and wealth are in your treasury,” etc. What sincere and deep love these words of Christ’s evangelist are imbued with. These are the models that modern preachers should imitate. The strongest motive for evangelistic activity should be the preacher’s love for his listeners, compassion for them. The evangelist tells about the Lord Jesus Christ: Jesus saw a multitude of people and had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and began to teach them a lot (Mp. VI, 34: Μ f. IX, 36). And if every preacher does not have in his heart the same pity for those who demand teaching, then he cannot be an evangelist of Christ. With this general mood of love in the preacher should be combined (cf. 1 Cor. XIII, 4 - 7) in particular meekness, condescension and selflessness - following the example (1 Thess. II, 7. 9; 2 Thess. II, 7-10; 1 Cor. IX, 1-22) and the instruction ( 2 Tim. II, 24. 25) of the apostles. In the same direction and spirit the saints acted and instructed to act. fathers and teachers of the church. So St. Ignatius writes to the Bishop of Smyrna Polycarp: “condescend to everyone, as the Lord does to you. Bear the infirmities of all. If you love only good disciples, you still have no grace for this: it is better to conquer the bad ones with meekness” (Chapters I and II). Also St. John Chrysostom in his conversation on 1 Tim. II, 25 and many more. etc. Preaching activity should have the character of pastoral counseling. At the same time, we affirm that the moral requirements we have indicated relate only to preaching activity, and not to other aspects of pastoral ministry, and that pastoral counseling, therefore, coincides with the work of preaching. The moral demands placed on pastors go, first of all, beyond the limits set by the tasks of the ministry of sacred rites. On the one hand, we see that the matter of spiritual birth is decisively connected with the ministry of the gospel. Thus, the Apostle Paul, more than the other apostles, served this cause of the spiritual birth of the children of Christ, fully experienced the pangs of spiritual childbirth and earned the full right to be called the father of many born in Christ Jesus; and, however, it is known that he was sent by Christ not to baptize, but to preach the gospel (1 Cor. I, 17), therefore for him the matter of spiritual procreation was connected with the gospel, and not with the sacrament of baptism, 13 and his words to the Corinthians should be taken literally: I have begotten you in Christ Jesus by the gospel (1 Cor. I V, 15). On the other hand, the ministry of the sacraments, as depicted in such authoritative Orthodox works as the famous book On the Positions of Parish Presbyters, requires from the clergyman only faith and decency, while the moral qualities of the pastor in this book are set out in the chapter on teaching. Pastors, as rulers of Christian society, as organizers of church discipline (and court), in general, the canonical order of life, are in external legal relations with their flock. It is quite consistent with the nature of such relations both that the own activities of the rulers of the church are determined by more or less precise regulation, and that the ministry of governing Christian society is carried out by the shepherds for the most part collectively. Something else needs to be said about the ministry of spiritual leadership or pastoral counseling. For the shepherd this is not an external service, but a service of life; it requires from him high moral qualities, difficult inner feats, deep love and true self-denial. According to these requirements, the pastoral ministry of spiritual guidance of the flock is similar to the preaching activity depicted above. But this coincidence is explained not by the fact that to depict evangelistic activity we took colors from another area, but by the fact that in fact preaching activity and the spiritual leadership of the flock should be inextricably linked. Spiritual leadership in all its forms is nothing other than evangelistic activity: in other words, preaching activity must always and continuously have the character of pastoral counseling. And indeed, what reason can be given for calling the speeches of priests from the church pulpit to parishioners about objects of faith sermons, but not calling their speeches to the same parishioners and with the same content outside the church by that name? Is it really of decisive importance here that in the church the priest has many listeners, but outside the church - few and even, perhaps, one? Or is the important difference here that the majority of the visitors to the church usually do not feel any particular need for a certain teaching and are ready, if only ready, to listen to any Christian instruction, while the shepherd’s interlocutors outside the church usually each bear a special imprint and each of them has a certain spiritual thirst - one family needs peace, another needs consolation, here the dying one calls the shepherd to him, there hesitating in the faith? Or is the exclusive reason for calling a pastor's speech from the church pulpit by the name of a sermon, that it is usually compiled in advance according to a well-known homiletical form and pronounced from a notebook, while his conversation outside the church is a living speech and flows freely from his heart? But did our Lord Jesus Christ teach only in the temple and synagogues, and did not he teach mostly in the field, on the street, by the river, along the road, in a private house? Did He preach only to numerous listeners, and His conversations with Nicodemus, the Samaritan woman, and the sisters of Lazarus were no longer a sermon? Wasn’t His teaching always a living, unartificial speech and did not answer the most heartfelt needs of the listeners - each and every one of them? He revealed the doctrine of spiritual rebirth in a conversation with Nicodemus, He explained the doctrine of resurrection as a consolation to Martha and Mary... His teaching can least of all be compared with a philosophical system in which every particular question is raised only by an abstract sequence of thought and which does not want to know the particular characteristics of the disciples. Jesus Christ always revealed His teaching from the side from which it was accessible to His listeners, had points of contact with their spiritual development and state - always in response to the requests of one or another of the listeners, now comforting, now reproaching, now encouraging, - always guiding souls. He was inseparably at every moment a teacher and a shepherd. He commanded the same nature of evangelistic activity to his disciples: go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you (Matthew ΧΧΛΤΗ, 20). Doesn’t pastoral counseling coincide with the “learning to observe everything that the Lord commanded” (διδασκαλια), but this “learning to observe everything that the Lord commanded”, can it be separated from the teaching that precedes baptism (μαθητεια)?... The apostles acted according to this commandment: they taught not only in churches and publicly, but also in the homes... of each (Acts V, 42; XX, 20. 31) The fathers and teachers of the church also understood preaching. Read, for example, the instructions of St. Gregory the Great about the content of the sermon in relation to persons and conditions, and tell me, if we separate counseling from preaching, what these instructions relate to, the first or the second. In our domestic book On the Positions of Parish Presbyters, five types of teaching are indicated that “a priest should offer to the people”: 1) teach the faith; 2) expose heresies and superstitions: 3) “correct those corrupt in lawlessness; 4) to instruct and confirm the faithful and honest in virtuous living; 5) to console and uplift the sad and despairing.” This book instructs pastors to teach not only [in churches on Sundays and holidays, but also in their homes, in season and unseasonably, privately and solitarily, to monitor, like a shepherd leaving ninety-nine sheep to find one lost one, the moral state of each parishioner and to offer each appropriate food and medicine... If we distinguish missionary preaching from didascalia, then it is easy to see that each of them equally requires inner struggle and moral action from the pastor. Learning to “keep everything that the Lord has commanded” is precisely pastoral counseling in the generally accepted sense of the word; and missionary preaching, as having the direct goal of the spiritual birth of the children of Christ, precisely for this purpose should have the character of a Christian work, and not a literary or verbal activity. Preaching, as a simple Christian teaching, is already a living matter of Christian love and self-denial, and it should be understood differently, i.e. in the sense of only a theoretical exercise, it means to understand falsely. Even school teaching of the Law of God cannot have proper success if it is only a theoretical exercise for the teacher of the law. One cannot read the words of the famous teacher, K.II, without pleasure. Yanovsky: “the success of teaching the Law of God in an educational institution, with the goal of developing Christian love in students, depends mainly on the personality of the teacher of the law. The teacher of law must be imbued with the conviction that his teaching duty is to develop Christian qualities in students - love for God and neighbor. But in order to achieve this, he himself must be filled with Christian love in general, and for children in particular; since only under this condition will he have moral influence on them and can count on the affection and respect for himself from the children, i.e. on such their qualities, with the help of which he can easily influence, with the help of the word of God, and on the development in them of Christian qualities - love for God and neighbor” (Russian school 1898, No. 7-8 p. 85). But the objection to the counseling nature of preaching activity can come from a completely opposite direction. They may say: that missionary preaching, with the goal of the spiritual birth of the children of Christ, should be a matter of pastoral life, the influence of the preacher’s personality on the will of the listeners, this is very understandable; but a sermon that has listeners who are already spiritually reborn Christians and whose goal is to maintain and grow their spiritual life can easily do without the influence of the preacher’s personality on the will of the listeners. This point of view is taken by the German homiletics, who follow Schleiermacher and do not recognize the preacher’s right to influence the will of his listeners. The same objection of the homileticsist of the direction that we recognize as due is encountered in another place, precisely where she claims that preaching has its essential task of teaching listeners the gospel, that it should always be teaching, 14 to which they object that missionary preaching itself should be like this, while preaching addressed to spiritually reborn Christians who have no need for teaching should not to teach, but to express the feelings that animate Christian society. Such an objection definitely comes from German homiletics of a certain direction. What to say to such objections? Such homiletists completely overlook what is beyond doubt for others, namely, that, in the case of distinguishing missionary preaching from didascalia, the latter must be recognized as coinciding with spiritual pastoral activity. The most important thing that should be pointed out in response to the above objections is that one should not completely break the connection between didascalia and missionary preaching - one should not think that Christian listeners of the sermon have no need for teaching. Imagine those thousands of simpletons in the faith who fill our rural churches, and tell me, don’t they need Christian teaching, aren’t they a people sitting in darkness? And the inhabitants of our cities, who differ in so many ways from the rural inhabitants and are so superior to them in education, are they not also simpletons in matters of faith? But let many, very many of the hearers of the church sermon know the gospel; But is this knowledge not suppressed in everyone and always by the darkness of passions and delusions to such an extent that we, who call ourselves Christians, do not see much in the Gospel and do not hear when we hear? In our modern Christian society, not only are there many vices that we commit due to the weakness of our will, when we want to do good and according to the inner man we find pleasure in the law of God, but we have many errors that close the light of the Gospel from us and which for us replace the Gospel teaching; we do many things as Christian that in fact are not Christian. It is completely false to think that knowing the gospel is very easy and that all of us who make up the Christian community know the gospel. It’s just the gospel for the pure in heart, but for our society much is hidden in it; our Christian society really needs the teaching of the gospel! But let us also agree that members of modern Christian society know the gospel teaching. However, who will deny that for many of them this is theoretical knowledge, not accompanied by spiritual rebirth - bookish, dead knowledge. How much more there is to do here for a true preacher, for his living, touching, convincing and reviving words. Only the living word of the preacher can give spirit and life to this theoretical knowledge, and the simpleton and the learned theologian equally need his word 15. F.M. Dostoevsky, represented by Fr. Zosima masterfully drew the image of such a preacher, who with a living word attracts the hearts of everyone, simpletons and scientists - but this image, let us remember, was removed from living reality. Finally, even having experienced spiritual rebirth, a Christian man does not rise above the need for the living, reviving word of the preacher. Spiritual rebirth in relation to the time of its occurrence cannot be compared with physical birth. Physically, man is born into the fullness of organic life; This is not what spiritual birth is like. The old man lives in us even after we are born spiritually; The law of sin continues to operate in our members even when we enjoy the law of God. A Christian needs the reviving word of a preacher all the time of his life... Both now and in our Christian society, there is a lot of harvest and many workers are needed.. Pointing out the last goal of the sermon in the spiritual rebirth of the listeners and the means to achieve this goal - in the love of the preacher, in the feat of his self-denial, through which Christian life is continuously transmitted from generation to generation, we, however, would be far from the truth if we did not limit our thoughts. The self-denial of the preacher is what is required of man to further divine purposes, but the actual force in man's regeneration is divine grace. In this matter, the one who plants and the one who waters is nothing, but God who increases everything. He who plants and he who waters are only co-workers with God, and those who are reborn are God’s field, God’s building (1 Cor. III: 7-9). Essentially, this does not at all change what has been said about the way in which Christian life is passed on from generation to generation: the power of God acts through human means - it brings back what man sows and waters; but for individual cases the possibility of unlimited exceptions is given here. These exceptions are possible in two ways. First of all, the completeness of human efforts may be without result, the word of a preacher full of love, selfless and tireless may be ineffective. Here there is abundant sowing, abundant watering, but there is no action of the increasing power of God, either because the field is unworthy of it, or for some other reason... This limitation in the action of preaching was briefly expressed by St. the Apostle John, saying: whoever is not from God does not listen to us (1 John IV, 6). But an exception is also possible in the completely opposite sense - it is possible that the preacher’s word, not sincere, not confirmed by the example of his own life, will sink deep into the soul of the listener and bring abundant fruit. We must again make a reservation that such cases, no matter how numerous, do not contradict what has been said about the normal path of spiritual rebirth, that they represent an exception only in the relation of this preacher to this listener, that the insincere word of the preacher can sink into the soul of such a listener, who, by the circumstances of his life and other personal relationships, is already prepared for a spiritual upheaval, here a word heard by chance has the meaning of a grain that falls on the soil that has already been loosened and moistened, it reveals to a person’s consciousness what has already matured in him. It was no coincidence that the appeal of Bl. Augustine, and even earlier, the conversion of Saul, for all its miraculousness, took place not without psychological preparation, which was created by the fact that he was a persecutor of Christians. However, in relation to this or that preacher, such cases represent an exception, and they can be numerous. Therefore, do they not base the possibility of such preaching practice in which the word acquires meaning outside of connection with the life of the preacher? Isn’t that what the apostle says when he writes: some preach out of envy and selfish ambition. But what about that? No matter how they preach Christ, feignedly or sincerely, I rejoice and will rejoice (Philip. I, 15.18) 17. Moreover, for listeners in relation to such preachers, the words of the Lord Jesus Christ have full force: whatever they tell you to observe, observe and do; do not act according to their deeds: for they speak and do not do (Matt. XXIII, 3)... But even in such cases, the preacher must remember that, preaching not sincerely, living contrary to what he himself teaches, he destroys with one hand what he creates with the other, he counteracts the power of God, he reduces the possibility of such cases. Oh, if only it were possible for him not to cooperate with God, but here non-cooperation is already opposition - truly, whoever is not with Christ is against Him (Luke XI, 23). Giving his listeners the opportunity to tell him: doctor! heal yourself (Lk. IV, 23), the preacher thereby pushes his listeners away from Christ and his sermon “for the most part is not only cold and ineffective, but also depraved, leading many to be suspicious, faith to be a fable, and virtue to be only covetousness” 18... Finally, in the very last case, the preacher must remember at least his personal responsibility for the work to which he is called. Here the preacher is not only, like every other worker, threatened with responsibility for his work, but his responsibility is especially strengthened by the fact that he teaches others, and therefore, by not doing what he teaches others, he condemns himself (cf. James III, 1). God will judge every person with his own lips (Luke XIX, 22) and therefore an extremely strict judgment threatens the teacher. You are inexcusable, every person who judges (another), for by the same judgment with which you judge another, you condemn yourself, because, judging (another), you do the same... You are storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath and revelation of righteous judgment from God... How are you, teaching another, not teaching yourself? preaching not to steal, are you stealing? saying: Do not commit adultery, do you commit adultery? By abhorring idols, are you blasphemous? boasting in the law, but by breaking the law you dishonor God (Rom. II, 1.5.21-23)?.. Chapter two. Subject of Christian preaching The teaching of the Word of God and the patristic teaching on the importance of the preacher’s own life for the success of preaching fully convinces that in the preaching work the word does not have exclusive or even primary importance; However, the previous considerations do not provide a basis for a thought that could be expressed in the question: is it necessary, given such an important importance of moral achievement and living communication for the spread and establishment of Christian life, is the preaching word actually necessary? The need for a preaching word does not in the least weaken the primary importance of moral action for the spread and establishment of Christianity. A matter, even a matter that in itself has a reason for itself (raison d’être) and has an objective meaning, needs a word in order to be a matter for a person, as a rational being, in order to have meaning for others. Just as a word in some respects is an empty sound without a corresponding deed, so a deed, in order to be reasonable, must be accompanied by a word that gives it meaning for a person. Our Lord Jesus Christ was tempted in the desert, invisible to human eyes, and really defeated the devil and saw him fall from heaven (Luke X, 18); but so that His victory could serve as a model for man and be a victory for us, He conveyed His temptations to the apostles. When He suffered on the cross, His suffering was a matter of His obedience to the will of the Heavenly Father, but so that the mystery of His relationship with the Father would be revealed to us and His suffering would be suffering for us and for us, He, hanging on the cross and dying, preached: Father! forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing. - My God, My God! Why have you forsaken me? - I'm thirsty! - It's finished! In a similar way, the custom is full of deep meaning, according to which the one asking for alms exclaims: “Give for Christ’s sake,” and the giver replies: “Accept for Christ’s sake.” Only these words give alms a Christian meaning, and only by their power does the work of physical nutrition become a Christian work. Likewise, the entire feat of the spiritual birth of the children of Christ and living communication in the name of Christ must be accompanied by a reasonable word, since. spiritual birth and growth, unlike physical ones, cannot take place without the participation of the consciousness and will of the person being reborn. This opens up a broad perspective, although not exclusive, but very important, of the meaning of the preaching word: not without work and life, but with work and life 19 the word of teaching is necessary insofar as a person not only lives, but lives wisely. Here we can again repeat the words of St. John Chrysostom, (already cited by us): “the main goal of the teaching is to lead those taught, both in deeds and in words, to that blessed life that Christ prescribed - and each of these two parts (i.e., deeds and words) has a need for the other, so that the building is perfect.” So the word is necessary in action, and other reasons can explain the degree of importance of the preaching word. The degree of importance of the preaching word is explained by St. Paul in the words: how can we believe (in Him) of whom we have not heard? how to hear without a preacher (Rom. X, 14)?... This meaning of Christian preaching is not sufficiently explained by the concept of religion in general, but is based on some features of the religion of Christ. Unlike any other religion, Christianity is a religion of the word. Our Lord Jesus Christ is called by the name of the Logos-Word (John I, 1-14). This name undoubtedly indicates that He is the light of the world (John VIII, 12). And according to His activity during earthly life, He was and was primarily called a teacher. This is very significant and important for understanding Christianity. The religion founded by our Lord Jesus Christ requires from a person not blind, but reasonable faith; she does not suppress him with mystery, does not drive him away with words procul ite prolani, but she turns to the light that a person has within himself; she meets him not with the darkness of mysteries, as it was and is in paganism, but with the light of teaching and calls his own conscience and mind as witnesses of her truth, saying to him: go and see (John I, 45), - search the Scripture (V, 39). According to St. Gregory the Theologian, “by understanding alone, God is truly accepted and preserved and grows in us” (I, 180). In Christianity, first of all, the person himself is recognized as the judge of his life: he knows what is good and what is evil, his conscience judges his actions and thoughts, he understands the ways of life and death. True, there are sacraments in Christianity, but they do not precede the teaching, but are preceded by it and follow it 20. That is why our Lord Jesus Christ, having Himself been a teacher on earth, gave the commandment to His apostles as a last testament: go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation—teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit (Mp. XVI, 15; Matt. XXVIII, 19). And the apostles looked so highly upon the ministry of the word that without hesitation they preferred it even to the distribution of bread (Acts VI: 2); ap. Paul said about himself: Christ sent me not to baptize, but to preach the gospel (1 Cor. I, 17); he called the gospel of God a sacrament (Rom. XV, 16). The successors of the apostles looked at the ministry of the word in the same way. St. Gregory the Theologian called the word the most fitting sacrifice to God, a gift that is holier than the sacrifice under the law, holier than the firstfruits, pleasing to God more than anything that the law held in the power of Israel, a precious pearl of the Gospel, and he called himself a servant of the word (I, 179. 180). So we move on to discussing preaching as the ministry of the word. Considering preaching as a ministry of words, we must first of all answer the question about the subject of the sermon. Let's see how this issue is resolved in our homiletics. The presentation of the question about the subject of the sermon can be twofold - either practical or theoretical. So we have the essay by Rev. I. Tolmacheva Orthodox conversational theology or practical homiletics. This is work broadly conceived, thoroughly and conscientiously executed; from it we can easily learn what the practical presentation of the question about the subject of the sermon consists of. “We,” the venerable author writes in the preface, without touching on any homiletical rules, actually introduce the preacher into the circle of his homiletical activities, open the Bible to him and offer him all kinds of materials for his preaching activities. Topics with arrangements for sermons serve as such material.” He “offers a wide variety of topics with arrangements for sermons, both on the Gospels and on the Apostle, prefacing the conclusion and development of particular preaching topics with a general exegetical-homiletical overview of the day’s Gospel and the Apostle.” This is the plan of Practical Homiletics, etc. Tolmacheva. Without going into an assessment of this remarkable multi-volume work and an explanation of the important significance of works of this kind, we consider it necessary to note that one of the first conditions for the suitability of such practical works is their breadth, since here “a wide variety of topics are offered - all kinds of materials are offered for preaching.” To give a few pages in an essay with such problems means to deceive the reader’s hopes. Moreover, this should be extensive not in the sense of generality of content, but in its specificity. “We took great care, writes the same author, that the topics were specific, private and, so to speak, special, i.e. touched one object, but from all sides; speaking, for example, about prayer, we did not consider the entire broad question of prayer, but either the properties of prayer, or the duty of prayer, or patience in prayer,” etc. Theoretical works on homiletics should have a completely different character. The theory of homiletics, trying to be relatively brief, must reveal the idea of ​​preaching, from which the essential content of any particular sermon would necessarily follow, so that the preacher, having mastered this idea, could quite accurately, but also completely freely, determine for himself in each particular case what he should preach about. The theory of homiletics must provide a fundamental solution to the question of the subject of preaching, must indicate the only thing that makes every sermon a sermon and without which there can be no sermon, find the essential in diversity and distinguish the necessary from the possible, the main from the secondary and accidental. Turning to our theories of homiletics and, above all, to Amphitheater’s Homiletics, we do not find in them this principled approach to resolving the issue of the subject of preaching. Prof. Y.K. Amphitheaters, devoting to this issue the entire first of the two parts of homiletics, i.e. 35–276 pages, which is too much for the theory of homiletics in general and, in particular, for homiletics of 578 pages, sees in this issue “a countless number of preaching subjects.” What does he do with this series of objects that cannot be counted? He generalizes “the numerous and varied subjects of church conversation” into several groups, “without seeking a special beginning in order to derive from it all types of subjects of church conversation, he simply collects and counts them in the following order: dogmatic teaching, practical teaching, teaching about worship, teaching about community life, historical teaching and teaching about objects and phenomena of the physical world.” Even more in general order and in accordance with the three particular goals of church instruction (education of the mind, education of the will and formation of Christian feeling), the author distributes the subjects of the sermon as follows: dogmatic teaching along with auxiliary natural teaching and historical teaching, then active teaching and, finally, church and liturgical teaching. True, in this correspondence of the distribution of preaching subjects into groups with the goals of church instruction, the principle we are talking about seems to be given. But this is the principle of the distribution of objects already indicated in advance, and not the principle of the very indication of preaching objects. All preaching subjects, distributed on the basis of this principle into three groups, are equally important and therefore this principle turns out to be purely formal. Finally, this principle cannot be considered valid, because according to this principle, on the one hand, it is recognized that dogmatic teaching does not contribute to the formation of will and feelings, and active teaching does not contribute to the formation of feelings, which is not true in itself and contradicts other, clearly expressed principles of the homiletics under consideration, and on the other hand, the difference between activity and the doctrine of activity, between worship and the doctrine of worship is omitted. from the attention that teaching, both active and church-liturgical (as opposed to the education of the will and the formation of feelings through divine service), first of all and in any case relates just as much to the education of the mind as dogmatic teaching. Having distributed the “countless series of preaching subjects” into several groups, the author then, when applied to each group, partly explains the importance of the subjects included in it and the ways of their disclosure in the church pulpit, and mainly reveals in its possible completeness the “general order of truths” that can serve as the subject of preaching. We can say that the author reveals the teaching itself - dogmatic, active and liturgical. So eg. he lists and even expounds the dogmas that make up the distinctive dogmatic teaching of our church, sets out and symbolically explains the service of Compline and all other services, not only the daily circle, but also the annual one, speaks separately about almost each of the liturgical books, even about the book of prayer songs, akathists, prayer books, as well as about the books that make up the church library - about Margarita, Blagovestnik, Prologue, "Lavsaik", Limonare, etc. Such content of homiletics on the subject of preaching not only has no theoretical or fundamental significance, but is also unsuitable in practical terms and therefore completely pointless. It is unsuitable in practical terms due to its generality, due to a lack of breadth and specificity. True, it is presented in Amphiteatrov’s Homiletics on 200 pages, but 200 pages is too much for the theory of homiletics and too little for practical homiletics - too little compared to the several volumes of Tolmachev’s Practical Homiletics, especially since the latter examines only the Gospel and the Apostle, and in Amphiteatrov’s Homiletics the “general order of truths” of dogmatic together with natural and historical, moral and liturgical. For practical use, i.e. a detailed and concrete presentation of all these truths would require many volumes. Instead, in Homiletics, prof. Amphitheater we encounter only a cursory overview of these truths - and such a review is nothing more than a brief and general repetition of dogmatic, moral and liturgical theology 21 . It is easy to understand that the same solution to the question of the subject of the sermon as we find in Prof. Amphiteatrova, in any brief homiletics it turns out to be simply naive, devoid of any interest even for students. This is the Guide of Archpriest. Favorova. The author promises in the section on the subjects of church interviews, first of all, to “indicate, as far as possible, the full range of preaching subjects, indicating their comparative importance”... But he does not indicate the comparative importance of preaching subjects. True, he seems to note the exceptional significance of the word of God for preaching: “by the very concept of church conversation, its general subject is the word of God”; but now he destroys this position, meaning by the name of the word of God not only St. Scripture, but also “everything that St. teaches us.” the church in its teachings, decrees and rituals.” It must also be recognized as strange that the author, calling the explanation of St. The Scriptures and the presentation of dogmatic and moral truths are special subjects of preaching, while at the same time, as sources, for example, moral truths, the decalogue, the Lord's prayer, the beatitudes of the Gospel are indicated, as if these sources do not constitute parts of the Holy Scriptures. The Scriptures and as if to expound the moral truths contained in them does not mean to expound the word of God. But what is the indication of the full range of preaching subjects in Favorov’s Manual? The author shows that the subjects of preaching exposition from the area of ​​St. Scriptures can serve as daily readings, psalms, proverbs, and, finally, entire books from the Old and New Testaments, as if naming its parts next to the whole means explaining something; then he reveals that the first and main index of dogmatic subjects is the symbol of faith, and for moral truths - the decalogue, the Lord's prayer, the beatitudes of the gospel and church commandments, as if those preparing for preaching need to explain what is known from the first rudiments of Christian teaching. It is easy to understand that the author’s instructions cannot have any significance for the content of the sermon, that on holidays in honor of ethereal forces one should preach about ethereal forces, on fasting days the doctrine of fasting should be revealed, on the consecration of churches - on the meaning of churches, etc. The content of the homiletics we are considering on the subject of the sermon is not only devoid of fundamental interest and has no practical significance, but the solution to this issue in them must be called extremely vague, not to say false. Prof. Amphitheaters alludes to “a countless number of preaching subjects” and clearly indicates several groups in which, along with dogmatic and practical teaching, he names the doctrine of worship, the doctrine of history and the doctrine of objects and phenomena of the physical world. This is the same as “everything and about everything” (Prot. Kheraskova Words, teachings and speeches, 1886, p. 245). But the truth is the opposite: there is only one subject for preaching, and this is precisely the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, let’s delve into the words: the subject of the sermon. Obviously, the subject of the sermon is what the listeners should learn through the sermon, what they should be instructed in, what they should be taught in the sermon. But the listeners must be taught by the preacher one thing - the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, they must be instructed in this alone, this alone must be taught in the sermon. The teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, as the content of a sermon, is precisely that which is “only necessary” and that which is “sufficient” for the purposes of preaching. This is the basic idea of ​​Christian preaching, the disclosure of which constitutes the homiletical principle in deciding the question of the subject of the sermon. The main idea of ​​a sermon can be revealed from several points of view. First of all, we should point out the divine establishment of the sermon. Christian preaching differs from any other kind of speech in that it has historical origins. The preacher speaks not only because he wants to teach others, and not only because in preaching he sees the only means to achieve certain goals, but first of all because he was commanded to preach by the Lord Jesus Christ. Just as the Father sent the Lord Jesus Christ into the world, so He sent His disciples into the world (John XVII: 18), commanding them: go and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you; and her. I am with you always, even to the end of the age (Matthew XXVIII, 19.20). In the content of the sermon, uncertainty and arbitrariness are least possible; Preachers are commanded to teach all nations and teach only one thing - to observe everything that the Lord has commanded. If the Lord Himself had not taught people, if He had not left His teaching to the world and had not sent disciples to preach His Gospel to all creation (Mp. XVI, 15), then there would have been no Christian preaching. The apostles and their successors were sent by Christ Himself to preach to the world nothing less than His Gospel, His teaching 22 . There is no other source, or content, of the sermon: we have one Father, who is in heaven, and we have one teacher and mentor, Christ (Matthew XXIII, 8-10). The Christian preacher teaches what he himself was taught by the Lord Christ; he conveys to the world what is commanded by the Lord: what I say to you in the dark, speak in the light; and whatever you hear in your ear, preach on the housetops (Matt. X:27). True, he must not only convey what the Lord has commanded, but also be a witness to Him (Acts I, 8); but this refers to the feat of life, and not to the content of the sermon. The unchanging and definite content of the sermon is given for the preacher in the teachings of Christ. In oratory and in any other kind of words, the question of the invention (inventio) of matter is inevitable, and on this side the speaker and writer especially have to work; only the preacher does not need to invent and invent, because he speaks not from himself and not his own, but from the Lord what He commanded. We have one teacher, Christ, and He is the only teacher, incomparable with any other teachers: He revealed the truth to the world (John I, 14.17; XVIII, 37). The pagan world, despite all the impulses in this direction and all the efforts, did not know the truth, and Pilate’s question to Christ: what is the truth (John XVIII, 38)? expresses the despair of a pagan who walked in his own ways to comprehend it. Only Christ revealed the truth to the world: He gave man the answer to the eternal questions that trouble the human heart - questions about why we live and what we should do. His teaching is a whole and integral worldview, or worldview. Hence, Christian preaching is the teaching of this worldview, and this is its essential nature, completely distinguishing it from any other human speech. It is a religious teaching, but it differs from the teaching of any other religion, not excluding the Jewish one, in that it enlightens a person. Not to mention the pagan religions, and the Jewish religion represented many legalizations that were a purely external command for a person, accepted by him as a yoke, not freely and without understanding their inner meaning. The religion of Christ has a different character. He is the light that enlightens man; The truth communicated by Him, assimilated by man, gives people freedom (John VIII, 32). By accepting His teaching, a person perceives the light of life within himself (John VIII, 12). This is not like a “lamp burning and shining,” which gives light only to those who are near it; but Christ’s worldview is the light that a person carries within himself and takes with him everywhere. Having mastered it, a person no longer needs anyone to teach him (1 John II, 27), but he himself knows everything (v. 20). Of course, the point here is not the amount of detail of knowledge, but the understanding of the essential meaning of life, which freely determines its particular cases and relationships. It is enough for a person to assimilate the general worldview of Christ, to be imbued with it, and he can consciously and freely determine his personal life, resolve individual issues of private and public life, and carry this worldview into everyday, civil, and state life 23 . – Constituting a feature of the Christian religion, in contrast to any pagan and even Jewish religion, preaching is all the more different in its general content from secular oratory. A secular speaker does not have the opportunity to express his personal worldview to his listeners, just as the worldview of his listeners is not necessary and even indifferent for him; he speaks every time with the practical purpose of illuminating one or another private issue of personal or public life, and inducing listeners to a private decision. Such a practical goal can be achieved without the assistance of a general understanding of the world, only by selecting some information and arousing certain passions. On the contrary, the preacher has as his direct task to establish a common Christian worldview in the souls of his listeners, to lead them all to the unity of the Christian worldview, so that, having assimilated it, they can completely freely and consciously determine their attitude to each particular case of life. Here, the solution to a particular issue and the conviction to a particular action without a general Christian worldview and continuous mood are of too little importance; here every particular issue must be resolved on the basis of a general worldview, and every particular decision of the will must flow from the continuous mood of the heart. Finally, the purpose of the sermon also presupposes its specific content. The purpose of the sermon is to call listeners with the gospel to salvation (2 Thess. II, 13.14), to life and incorruption (2 Tim. 1:10). But such a goal can only be achieved through the gospel of Christ; only His word, His teaching possesses such life-producing power: he who hears My word, He said, and believes in him who sent Me, has eternal life (John V, 24 cf. James 1:18, etc.). In the language of the apostles, the word of life (Philip. II, 16) is as definite as the word of truth (Eph. 1:13; 2 Tim. II, 15; James 1:18, etc.), points to the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ: besides His teaching there is no other word of life and therefore there is no other subject of preaching. To say that “church teaching should occupy the mind with important objects, somehow ready-made results of science, and arouse in the soul sober, pure, lasting feelings of goodness and beauty,” as Archpriest puts it. Favorov, this means losing sight of the only thing that makes a sermon a sermon. It is good to “occupy the mind with important subjects and arouse in the soul a strong feeling of beauty,” but this may not be done by a sermon and this does not express the essential task of the sermon. Not everything that is important to the mind and beautiful to the senses leads to eternal life, and the subject of preaching should be that which alone is the word of life. The preacher must never lose sight of his great goal, but in every sermon he must strive towards this one goal. Like the apostle, he must preach the gospel not in the wisdom of the word, so as not to abolish the cross of Christ, and it is better to know nothing except Jesus Christ, and him crucified (1 Cor. 1:17; II, 2). Thus, the preacher has the most definite content for his word and his calling is to convey to his listeners everything commanded by the Lord, to teach them a Christian worldview. He must act in this regard in the same way as a school teacher. The latter tries to ensure that his students master a certain program and are able to answer the upcoming exam. He explains the subject to them according to the questions of the program from the first to the last; he constantly asks himself if they know everything and if they know everything; He either reveals new things to them, then repeats what he has learned, explains what is unclear to one or the other. This is what a preacher should do. He must teach all his listeners everything commanded by the Lord, reveal to them the whole will of God. They will have to give an answer at the judgment of God and he will give an account for them to the Knower of the Heart. They will answer for all their sins themselves, except those that they committed out of ignorance, if it did not depend on them; for their ignorance, if it was his fault, he will give an answer to God (Ezek. II Ι, 17–21). Therefore, he must teach so carefully that he can say to his disciples in the words of the Apostle: I am pure from the blood of all, for I did not fail to proclaim to you the whole will of God (Acts XX, 26.27); you know how each of you, as the father of his children, we asked and convinced and begged to act worthy of God, who called you to His kingdom and glory (1 Thess. II, 11.12). The preacher must be concerned, first of all, with the fulfillment of the program: nothing except what is commanded by the Lord, but he is obliged to convey everything commanded by the Lord to the listeners, without omitting anything. The question should never be silent for him: has everything been handed over to him? Isn't something forgotten? Then he must always have in mind each of his listeners and especially the most ignorant of them. He must first give “milk” instructions if among the listeners there are those who are unable to tolerate solid food; then let him lead them further along the steps of knowledge of the will of God, but let him carefully monitor whether everyone is succeeding, whether it is necessary to give anyone special lessons. Next, he must carefully observe to what extent his instructions are assimilated by his listeners, whether they are carried out by them, each and everyone, in life. If he notices that they are beginning to know more than they want to do, 24 then let him dwell on the truth taught and let him ask, convince and entreat them to act worthy of God (1 Thess. II, il. 12), let him insist in season and out of season, reprove, rebuke and exhort with all long-suffering and edification (2 Tim. IV, 2), not forgetting at the same time to give food those who are more successful in knowing God. So he must study constantly (I Tim. IV, 16). The most shameful fear of a preacher is that he will become exhausted, lose interest in novelty, and begin to repeat himself (das Sichauspredigen). This fear can arise only when one forgets that the preacher is a permanent teacher and has a prescribed program. Occasional reading before random listeners for fleeting success should be interesting, but constant lessons before permanent listeners should be the fulfillment of a certain content. Let the preacher not be afraid to repeat before his listeners the same teaching of our Lord, remembering that he has been assigned to this very task by the Lord, that he is called to be a constant teacher; let the command of God never cease to ring in his ears: O you who remind us of the Lord, do not remain silent (Ps. LXII, 6). This preaching fear seems especially strange in view of the religious needs of our people, which educated people and especially theologians should not judge by themselves. For the latter, the sermon is valuable mainly because it adds something new to the simple words of the Gospel, and the simple people thirst for the simplest Gospel truth. Let the preacher overcome this fear in himself according to the word of the Lord: do not be afraid, but speak and do not be silent, because I have many people in this people (Acts XVIII, 9.10). In the West, famous preachers sometimes undertake “preaching” travels, demonstrating their art in one city or another; Such preachers should think about the subject of the sermon in front of casual listeners 25. For a preacher who has certain listeners whom he knows, each and every one whom he taught yesterday and the day before, it is strange to find it difficult to choose the subject of the sermon. Each time he needs to remember the whole will of God and what he said a year, two or three years ago and what his listeners need; he needs to talk about things from “the whole will of God” that he has not yet spoken about, he needs to repeat what he has already talked about for a long time, he needs to remind his listeners, at times and at times, about what they do not understand well. In short, he needs to be a Christian teacher 26. The only subject of Christian preaching is the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ; but His teaching is accepted by the church and taught by it, mainly in the Holy Scriptures; Therefore, called to proclaim the teaching of the Lord, the preacher must preach the Holy Scripture itself. It is easy to understand to what perfection the preacher himself is obliged to know the Holy Scriptures and, above all, the writings of St. apostles The exceptional importance of the little book of the New Testament for the preacher cannot be exaggerated. Only from this book should he draw the truth, eternal and unchanging; in this book there is his spiritual sword (Eph. VI, 17), and a shield, and a helmet, and armor - in it are also his weapons of war, and a fortress, and supplies. He must not be separated from her; he must read it daily, finding in the reading itself the highest pleasure, consolation, relaxation and spiritual nourishment; for him that day was lost in which he did not feed on the word of God. A preacher of Christ can only be one who in the book of the Gospel sees the most precious heritage of the Apostles of Christ, who knows it perfectly, limited perhaps by weakness of memory, but not by a lack of zeal and love, who can think about sacred objects, about the most important issues of life and moral activity, only in the spirit of the Gospel, and speak only in the words of the Gospel, from whom the words of the Gospel themselves come from their lips along with evangelical thoughts. In connection with the idea of ​​the need for a preacher to know the word of God, we must touch upon the opinion that the grace of God is the main productive force of preaching. This opinion was expressed by Prof. Barsov, as new 27, decisively and persistently, means that the Spirit of God speaks through the mouth of the preacher (Matt. X, 19, etc.) 28, that the preacher speaks in ecstasy or enthusiasm, that prophetism or the prophetic element of preaching is the main element of preaching, an essential feature of its very nature” 29 ... Fully agreeing that “there cannot be a true sermon without grace,” what the preacher says under the guidance of grace and on behalf of the church that only a Christian, “reborn and blessed”, can be a preacher, we cannot recognize prophetism as the main element of preaching 30, we cannot apply it to the sermon itself and, more precisely, to its content Matt. X, 19 et cetera, we cannot call grace the productive power of preaching. Prof.'s main mistake. Barsov is that he contrasts grace only with the subjective creativity of the preacher and only in them exclusively, i.e. in grace and subjective creativity, sees possible sources of the preaching word, forgetting that the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ is passed on from generation to generation (Christian tradition in the broad sense of the word), that it is contained in the word of God. He constructs the following dilemma: preaching is a product of either grace or the natural forces of man, subjective creativity. He sees rationalism only in the denial of grace as the productive force of preaching, and mysticism only in the recognition of grace as the only productive force of preaching 31 . In fact, the only source of sermon 32 is tradition (in the broad sense of the word). The preacher’s task is not to produce, or, simply speaking, to invent content: it is given to him in the word of God. “The teachers of the church received this name only because they are the transmitters from century to century to future generations of the single and unchangeable teaching of the one true teacher of Christ” 33. Here are two orders: 1) Matt. X, 17–20: Beware of people, for they will hand you over to the courts, and in their synagogues they will beat you. And you will be brought before rulers and kings for Me, to testify before them and the Gentiles. When they betray you, do not worry about how or what to say, for in that hour it will be given to you what to say. For it is not you who will speak, but the Spirit of your Father who will speak in you (par. et seq.); 2) Matt. XXVIII, 19. 20: go, teach all nations... teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you; Mf. X, 27: what I say to you in the dark, speak in the light; and whatever you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops; 2 Tim. II, 2: what you heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, then convey to faithful people who would be able to teach others. Of these two orders, the second order is strictly and exclusively applicable to preaching. True, subjective creativity is also possible in a sermon, but it does not actually relate to the content of the sermon, not to what the preacher teaches, but to the way he teaches (the nationality and modernity of the sermon); in any case, it does not oppose grace as a productive force, but serves as a complement to tradition; rather, it is itself determined in the preacher by grace. Rationalism is possible here - but not in the denial of grace as the productive power of preaching, but in the denial of tradition, in the denial of the teachings of Christ, or the word of God, as the only subject of preaching; in recognizing the productive significance of grace for preaching, even if it is not accompanied by a denial of subjective creativity, one should see genuine mysticism. So, the preacher, although he acts under the guidance of grace, must first learn himself what he is called to teach others. In words, blessed. Augustine, we must “teach the teachers themselves” (op. cit. IV, XXXIII). The preacher must not only comprehend the word of God “with the spirit,” but also study it “with the mind” (1 Cor. XIV), be Christian wise (Blessed Augustus. IV, VII), so that the mind of his listeners “is not left without fruit.” He must apply all diligence and all natural means to studying the word of God and to understanding its meaning... New Testament alone or together; and should the Old Testament be the subject of preaching? The teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ is set forth in the New Testament, and not in the Old, and therefore the Christian preacher is obliged to preach the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament (2 Cor. ΠΙ, 6). After our one teacher said: you have heard what was said to the ancients, but I say to you...; after the Old Testament shadows and types were fulfilled in Christ, the Old passed away and the New came. But the New Testament stands in historical connection with the Old and much in the New Testament is explained by the Old, according to which the Old Testament books entered the canon of books of the Christian Church and have wide liturgical use in it. Therefore, the preacher must turn to the Old Testament for that and only for that which the listeners need to know in order to understand the New Testament. These are the historical and educational elements of the Old Testament. They are presupposed by the New Testament and are therefore inevitable in preaching; but they should be set forth in it as briefly as possible, not as a subject of teaching in themselves, but only as an explanation of the New Testament. – Necessary in a sermon only to explain the New Testament, the sacred Scriptures of the Old Testament must be presented in a sermon solely in the meaning and spirit of the New Testament. The preacher should especially remember this in relation to the ethical worldview of the Old Testament. The ethics of the Old Testament is composed of two parts: one has a divine origin and lasting significance, the other has a character applied to the hardness of the Jewish people (Matt. XIX, 8) and a temporary significance. The greatest commandment of the first part is the commandment of love, about which the Lord Jesus Christ Himself said that all the law and the prophets are established on it (Matthew XXII, 37-40), is the first commandment in the New Testament 34; about the commandments of the second part He said: you have heard what was said to the ancients, but I say to you... But such a distinction in the Gospel is not made in relation to each commandment and each individual feature of Old Testament ethics; in this case, one must be guided not by the letter, but by the spirit of the New Testament. In this case, the preacher needs to be very careful. The difference between the Old and the New in this area is not always recognized, because the Old is more understandable to our carnal heart. Thus, according to the Old Testament worldview, there is assumed proportionality between righteousness and Temporary welfare, whereas before the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, the world hates those who are not of the world, and therefore causes suffering and persecution to the righteous 35 - the world rejoices, and the righteous weep and weep, although they are consoled by the hope that their sorrow will turn into joy. Reality justifies the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the Old Testament worldview gave rise to grave temptations for the Old Testament righteous themselves. Meanwhile, Christian preachers sometimes, through imprudence, list worldly well-being among the fruits of righteousness and, when depicting Christian life, use Old Testament features too widely. “Detailed instructions will help little here, but even more so is it necessary for a preacher to have his own discretion.” The Holy Scriptures can be presented in a sermon in two forms: exegetical and thematic. The first consists of reading and expounding the word of God in its own sequence - word by word, verse by verse, chapter by chapter: this is homily, teaching on the scriptures (ἐπὶ ταῖς γραφαῖς διδασκαλία), conversation. The subject of explanation is the entire word of God; the sequence of explanation may embrace the entire canon of sacred books or may be limited to one book, one chapter, several verses and even a few words; each individual homily can be an explanation of any passage of the word of God. The second form of presentation of the Holy Scripture in a sermon - the teaching word (διδασκαλίας λόγος), or simply the word, otherwise teaching - consists in revealing the teaching of the word of God on one or another point of the Christian worldview separately, in systematizing the Holy Scripture on individual topics of the Christian worldview, in indicating complete answers according to the word of God to one or another of emerging issues of Christian life. This form of preaching corresponds to the natural need of a Christian, on the one hand, to know not only individual sayings of the Lord Jesus Christ, whose teaching is set out historically in the Gospels, but to imagine an integral Christian worldview - in a coherent system, we would say, if we were not afraid of the scientific meaning of this word, in which it is not applicable to Christian preaching - on the other hand, the need to have a complete answer to this or that question, which is interpreted in various places of Scripture from different angles and with various thoroughness, or an answer to such questions put forward by life, to which there is no literal answer in the word of God, but to the solution of which the word of God must also be applied. In accordance with this, in teaching words or teachings, one should either systematically present Christian teaching, or explain in detail its individual points, or answer, according to the word of God, the relevant questions of the current life of Christian society 36 . Exposition of the word of God and teaching can easily alternate and at no time should they exclude one another. But this order seems appropriate. During the initial instruction in the truths of the Christian faith, one should present the most essential from the system of the Christian faith, concentrating it in one most important point, mainly in the teaching about the work of the Lord Jesus Christ and about our calling to salvation, and from this point reviewing the rest, with the main attention being paid to ensuring that this essential is not general and abstract, but is as vital as possible. Then the believer must be imbued with the word of God, reading and explaining to him the Holy Scriptures to the fullest extent possible. What follows is a systematization of the teaching of the word of God, clarification of the spirit of the Christian worldview, and it is necessary to pay great attention to those points that are either more important in the system, or require preferential clarification according to the requests of the listeners and the state of the flock. The last link in teaching the word of God, which presupposes that listeners have already been instructed in the truths of faith, should be the illumination of current life by the word of God. By pointing out two forms in the preaching presentation of Holy Scripture, we consistently move on to the question of the relationship of preaching to church teaching. First of all, it should be noted that the name of church teaching is often given to many things that either are biblical teaching or are not teaching at all, and therefore the area of ​​church teaching is much narrower than they think. Prot. Favorov calls the special subjects of the sermons of St. Scripture and what the church teaches us in its teachings, decrees and rituals. Already in these words we encounter a strange mixture of church teaching with church decrees and rituals. The latter, as a church discipline, must be distinguished from the teachings of faith 37. The subject of preaching can only be the doctrine of faith, which is of divine origin, and not discipline, which is the area of ​​activity of the church authority, and not the teacher 38. – It is not enough to present only the Holy Scriptures in a sermon, but the need, in addition, to present church teaching in a sermon, Fr. Favorov motivates by the fact that in a sermon it is necessary to present Christian truths in connection and consistency, to reveal many of them separately with particular detail and thoroughness, to teach listeners brief lessons in piety and to talk about various subjects as required by circumstances. But isn’t coherence and consistency, detail or brevity and, finally, application to circumstances the only forms of presentation of the same teaching of the word of God? Do they create a special subject of preaching and make church teaching out of the word of God? In particular, as indicators of moral truths, as one of the types of church teaching, he names the decalogue, the Lord's Prayer, the beatitudes of the Gospel and church commandments. But the Decalogue, the Lord's Prayer and the Beatitudes of the Gospel are parts of Holy Scripture, and therefore the only indicator of church moral teaching remains the church commandments. But church commandments belong to the area of ​​church discipline, not church teaching. Thus, in the church commandments about fasting, the discipline of the church is expressed, and not its teaching: the church does not have a teaching about fasting that is different from the teaching of the word of God, even if only in terms of presentation. Likewise, the decrees of the church on the performance of the sacraments, on the relationship of the pastor to the flock, on the methods of accepting heretics into the community of believers, and other similar things relate to church discipline, and not to the teaching of the church. To put it briefly, there is no moral church teaching that is different from the teaching of the word of God, even if only in form and presentation, 39 . – Church teaching is limited to what is called dogmatic teaching in the broad sense of the word. This includes mainly the conciliar definitions of faith and, above all, the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed. What is the significance of church teaching and how does it relate to the teaching of the word of God? Church teaching is a summary of the teaching of the word of God on the most important issues of faith 40 and has the meaning of a norm that a Christian must adhere to in understanding the teaching of Holy Scripture on these issues. It cannot be said that every Christian needs to actually know all the dogmas and that without knowing them it is impossible to be saved, for who among the laity knows the dogmas of the IV and VI Ecumenical Councils? But dogmas are obligatory for everyone as limits which a Christian’s thought should not transgress in the understanding of the truth of the Gospel 41 . Therefore, they are obligatory for the preacher as soon as he moves on to a thematic and systematic presentation of the teachings of Holy Scripture, as precisely such limits. So, church teaching is a series of formulas for which the content is given by the word of God, and therefore it is unthinkable as a separate subject of church preaching from Holy Scripture, but it is a guide, with the character of unconditional authority, which the preacher must adhere to when presenting the teaching of Holy Scripture on issues of the Christian faith. The subject of the sermon is one - the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, set forth in the writings of St. apostles 42; but when explaining Holy Scripture, the preacher must be guided by the authority of church understanding. This is what the fathers of the 5th Ecumenical Council decreed: “The heads of the churches must, on all days, especially on Sundays, teach the entire clergy and people the words of piety, choosing from the divine scripture the understanding and reasoning of the truth, and without transgressing the already established limits and traditions of the God-bearing fathers; and if the word of God is examined, then let it not be explained in any other way than as the luminaries and teachers of the church have set forth in their writings.” The explained position, important in the system of homiletics, is especially important in practical application. In our time, so rich in learned preachers, one can often hear such a sermon, which is a paragraph from dogmatic theology. This shouldn't happen. Here the question is not about the importance of tradition, in contrast to scripture, as a source of doctrine, not about the importance of Orthodox dogma, but exclusively about what is suitable for preaching according to its idea. Everything is good in its place and there is no need to touch upon the issue of the importance of tradition, the difference in this regard between Orthodoxy, Catholicism and Protestantism, in order to assert that preaching should not have the character of dogma. An Orthodox preacher must be instructed in Orthodox dogma and not contradict it in anything; but not everything he learns in school should be carried out into the church pulpit. Dogmatics is a science; she is dry and abstract; preaching must be living and effective, its subject is the word of life, the word of God. “No one denies the merits of the scientific presentation of Christian teaching, but the first place in our spiritual enlightenment does not belong to it, but to the direct word of God.” 43 And on dogmatic issues, the preacher is obliged to present the teaching of Holy Scripture. Excellent examples - the word of the Archbishop. Innocentia Hers. on the day of the Holy Trinity on the text in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and so on. Putyatin’s teaching that God is spirit... We are not saying that the preacher should not touch theological issues at all. Life itself may demand this from him. So in ancient times, at the request of the time, St. Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil the Great willingly devoted sermons to discussions on theological issues; So today it is necessary for a preacher to touch on theological topics in the fight against heterodoxy, schism and sectarianism. But even in such cases, the preacher must not forget the purpose of the sermon, its true nature, its true subject; and missionary apologetic preaching, to be true preaching, should not be limited to issues of disagreement between Christian societies, but should pay main attention to the positive disclosure of the teaching of the word of God. Otherwise, it will not be a sermon, but a theological reading, a debate, etc. One can only call it false the idea that ritual and religious differences constitute the most important and even the only reason for the division of Christian society, that with the elimination of this reason unanimity should naturally arise. Rather, the religious-moral state in which rituals and theological opinions become important to a person is the reason for the division of Christian society: with this reason present, it is impossible to achieve unity in the field of rituals and theological opinions; on the contrary, with the elimination of this reason, unity of rituals and opinions is automatically achieved, or even unanimity in the face of difference, otherwise with indifference in rituals and opinions. Therefore, the task of preaching, in contrast to competitions and disputes that only inflame passions, is the task of preaching to raise the thoughts and hearts of listeners to that height of the Christian spirit at which a person can be everything to everyone through love and endure everything. Only on the assumption that the listeners, having the proper religious and moral direction of thought and heart, are, out of weakness of conscience, confused by one or another opinion, can the preacher enter into the consideration of these opinions condescendingly and prudently. The preacher must always remember the admonition of St. Pavla: I wish... those who believed in God tried to be diligent in good deeds: this is good and useful to people. Avoid foolish competitions, and genealogies, and torahs, and strife about the law, for they are useless and vain (Titus PI, 8.9); from competitions and word disputes come envy, strife, slander, crafty suspicions, empty disputes between people of a damaged mind (1 Tim. VI, 4.5); the goal of exhortation is love from a pure heart, and a good conscience, and unfeigned faith, from which, having retreated, some have deviated into idle talk (I, 5. 6).... 44 The only subject of preaching is the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, set forth in the writings of the holy apostles and explained in church teaching. But what is churchliness, or worship, sacred history, actually church history, since the biblical one is embraced by the Holy Scriptures, and, finally, the phenomena of the physical world and current life, if these are not the subjects of preaching, as they are called in our homiletics, and what do they have to do with preaching? The Holy Scripture should be presented in a sermon, as it is easy to understand and as will be explained below, in relation to the condition of the hearers, in connection with the interests and circumstances of their lives. The condition of listeners can be extremely diverse and the circumstances of their lives can be very diverse; however, certain aspects and forms of life in Christian society, in connection with which the sermon should stand, can be definitely indicated. This is churchliness, or the church form of life. Christian worship embraces the entire life of Christians and the entire Christian faith. The Church sanctifies every step of our private and public life with prayer; she devotes every day of the year and even hours of the day to sacred historical memories, in which the truths of faith are expressed in one way or another; Church services are entirely imbued with historical and symbolic meaning and visually reproduce before the viewer in sacred rites and sacred images the history of the Christian faith, reveals to him in chants and prayers, symbols and rituals the secrets of faith, affects his feelings with art - architecture, singing, images, consoles him in sorrows, pacifies his passions, evokes repentance in him, nourishes hope. Worship constitutes a significant part of the spiritual life of Christians, and the preacher, who is obliged to closely monitor the content of the spiritual life of his listeners, must always keep in mind that aspect of their life that is formed by worship. But the divine service partly meets the temporary needs of Christians, and partly it is prudently distributed by the church according to the seasons of the church year itself. Therefore, liturgical times have the meaning for the preacher of indicating when and what he should preach about. Already the explanation of Holy Scripture can be in connection with the reading of the Word of God during worship. Moreover, the teachings should correspond to the times of the church life of the Christian society: to set forth in sermons the Gospel teaching about fasting and repentance is opportune when the church educates its children through fasting, when, as required by church life, they lament their sins; the apostolic teaching about the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ should primarily be expounded when the church celebrates the memory of this event 45, etc. This is the attitude of churchliness to preaching. Nevertheless, the events of civil life and the physical conditions among which Christians live constitute the subject of the sermon, 46 but these are also the essence of the points of contact between the general content of the sermon and real life, giving it modernity and liveliness, moreover, the events of civil history and the phenomena of the physical world constitute for the preacher an indication of the time when what to talk about, only to the extent that they are part of the real life of the listeners, are actually experienced by them (the events of history are in memories). To clarify the issue we are considering, let us turn once again to the relevant section of Favorov’s Guide. This section in the Manual is divided into two parts: the first answers the question of what generally can and should be included in the area of ​​preaching teaching, and the second explains when it is more convenient and necessary to offer what to the people from the church pulpit. Obviously, only the first of them answers the question about preaching matter, while the second speaks only about the choice of objects in accordance with times and circumstances (the modernity of preaching). But it is significant that the author, having pointed in the first part, in addition to the explanation of Holy Scripture and dogmatic and moral truths, to church rituals, sacred history, natural phenomena, civil history and modern events, in the second part also speaks about church times, church-civil circumstances, phenomena of the physical world and modern events of social life, i.e. he says the same thing twice. If it makes no sense to talk twice about the same thing and you have to choose one place out of two in homiletics for the subjects under consideration, then, of course, such a place can only be the department on the modernity of preaching. In particular, about churchliness it should also be noted that it in itself, without relation to preaching, is the education of the will and feelings of the children of the church 47. By appointing times for holidays and fasts, determining types of food and degrees of abstinence, accompanying every step of a Christian with prayer, reminding him daily of examples of Christian asceticism and with all its institutions in general, the church, acting everywhere with grace, educates, strengthens and develops the will of its members; chanting artistically composed hymns, sometimes solemn and joyful, sometimes touching and repentant, glorifying the mercies of God, praising the patience of the righteous, reproducing spiritual life and the spiritual world in sacred artistic images, also with the splendor of churches and the solemnity of ceremonies, the church educates their feelings. So, churchliness, as a discipline and art, exists not as a subject of teaching, but along with preaching, achieving in other ways, namely through action on the will and feeling, the same thing that preaching achieves through teaching: there the church acts through rulers and performers of worship, here through the apostles and teachers 48. Churchliness does not burden the preacher as a new subject of teaching, apart from the Holy Scriptures, but assists him in achieving a single goal - the perfection of saints. Yes, if churchliness were the subject of preaching teaching, then it would be a truly inexhaustible subject: is there any possibility of explaining in sermons all the hymns and prayers, all the rituals and sacred rites, all the symbols and sacred images, the entire content of the prologue and the four menyas? Everything that is usually presented in this area in sermons is an explanation of the liturgy, some randomly selected passages from chants, the lives of some saints or the most famous, such as St. Nicholas the Wonderworker, St. Alexy of God, a man, or those who are of exceptional importance for the local church - after all, all this is only a drop in the ocean of all churchism. This inexhaustibility alone does not allow us to see churchliness as the subject of preaching. True, something, even a drop, is better than nothing. But the fact of the matter is that the teacher has nothing to do with churchliness: by presenting chants, rituals, and the life of a saint in teaching, the teacher cannot achieve the slightest fraction of the results that are achieved by the ritual, singing, and celebration itself 49 . Will the teaching of the song “Christ is Risen” really add anything to the celebration of Easter? (We must remember that the famous teaching of St. John Chrysostom on Easter is itself a solemn song: it is not the teacher who speaks in it, but the celebrant). Is it possible that anything can be added to the tenderness that seizes our heart and fills it when we sing “Behold the Bridegroom Cometh” by explaining this chant in the teaching? Is it rare that a teaching, invading a field other than its own, cools the feelings evoked by the divine service? 50?.. But all this, they will tell us, would be true if the divine service were understandable to the people, whereas in reality this is not the case: chants and sacred rites, in order to affect the feelings of listeners and spectators, must first be explained to them. There is a wide field for the activity of a church teacher here. To distinguish in this case, they will further say, the clergyman from the teacher, referring to the duty of the first to explain the divine service, and to the duty of the second to preach the Word of God, means to build castles in the air: the Jews had priests and prophets, in the primitive Christian church some were apostles, others were shepherds, others were rulers, others were teachers; perhaps in our country, even in the near future, the duties of teaching will be removed from the pastors in view the complexity of their government and liturgical activities, and will be entrusted to special teachers who would devote all their activities to preaching, just as there are now special missionaries, which would be fully consistent with the high importance of preaching, but in any case, now the clergyman and the teacher are one person and the duty of preaching the gospel and explaining divine services rests on him alone. There is a lot of truth in this remark, we must admit. However, the truth should be clarified without paying attention to established practice: practice should be determined by the clarified truth, and not the clarification of the truth by practice. Our task is to clarify the idea of ​​the sermon - no more, no less. And it can hardly be said that the idea of ​​preaching that we understand has no practical application in the respect under consideration. If worship is not the subject of preaching, but still must be explainable to the people, then the explanation of worship should be done without the slightest damage to preaching activity: here is a practical conclusion, which alone we consider sufficient to justify the importance of the above discussions about the relationship of worship to preaching. The divine service must be understandable to the people: let it, first of all, be performed in a language understandable to the people; let the shepherd further perform the divine service earnestly, separately, clearly; let him attract the people to participate in the divine service - and then the divine service will be understandable to the people in itself 52 . Then there is another means for explaining churchism to the people - school and books. A sermon cannot be replaced by school and books; it must be the living speech of the pastor and, in this sense, requires his special attention: and for the explanation of worship, school and books are the best means. Finally, we do not say that the pastor is not allowed to explain the divine service: as the performer of the divine service, he is obliged to explain it; but let him not, when explaining the divine service, think that he is fulfilling a preaching duty, just as he should not think that when he writes registries and prenuptial searches, he is not obliged to write sermons. If for five years he devoted his sermons exclusively to explaining the symbolic meaning of the service, expounding the prologue and the four menias, and ask himself at the end of the fifth year, how much did he do during this time to present to the people the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ, i.e. as a preacher, the answer can be one: nothing. The homiletics of our time must reveal this practical conclusion with particular persistence, because it is now a common phenomenon that our sermons are preached only during divine services, only on holidays, and that the content of these sermons is the history of the holiday and the life of the celebrated saint. Thus, from year to year, parishioners listen to the tales of the prologue and four mena about the life of St. Phocas, called the heli-grader, Rev. Spyridon, prosphora of Pechersk, St. John Kushchnik, learn about how the cross of Christ was found, from what time Christians began to especially solemnly celebrate the Presentation of the Lord, on what occasion the feast of the origin of the honorable trees of the cross of the Lord was established, etc., and at the same time they remain ignorant in the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ. Here before us is the Prologue and the Chetiy Menaion in the teachings of the priest. IN. Guryev’s 5 books are edifying reading, but read them carefully and you will see that these teachings not only do not exhaust the teachings of the Lord Christ, but also draw from him only by chance and therefore cannot replace the gospel of Christ 53... The only subject of preaching is the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ, which is accepted and taught by the church in the writings of St. apostles; but reading the Word of God does not constitute a sermon; the preacher needs to explain and present the Holy Scripture, therefore, not the letter of the New Testament, but its spirit can serve as a complete and true guarantee of fidelity to the preaching of the Word of God: because the letter kills, but the spirit gives life (2 Cor. III, 6). So we come to the question of the spirit, or the internal character of the sermon. This question should not be separated from the question of the content of the sermon, as our homiletes do: these two questions coincide into one and the answer to them is one: preaching is nothing more than the explanation and exposition of the Word of God, and the spirit of preaching is the spirit of the Word of God. In this case, we can say in the words of Prof. Amphitheater: “we must be firmly convinced that our orbit should be neither more nor less than the Bible revealed and explained... The internal, authentic character of the church conversation lies in the exact expression of the spirit of the Bible” (§§ 199. 203) 54. Our homiletics, presenting these two questions completely separately, are not satisfied with the indicated principle of revealing the spirit of the sermon, but some, in addition to it, and others, without mentioning it, name as such a principle something else, completely separate from the content of the sermon - and this is their major drawback. At the same time, Amphitheaters, and after him others, place the center of gravity of this department of homiletics in the formal side, and therefore this department strikes the reader with extreme artificiality. This shortcoming in Amfitheatrov is somewhat compensated for by his content: he reveals a deep understanding of the spirit of the church and the Bible, and in this regard, the pages on which he explores the internal character of the sermon are the best in his Homiletics, which have not lost their significance to our time; other homiletics, and above all Favorov's leadership, borrowed from Amfitheatrov only an artificial scheme and, thus, created a department in homiletics, which, especially in comparison with its other departments, evokes a contemptuous smile in the reader. Prof. Amphitheatres calls “a) the spirit of the Bible, b) the spirit of the church, and c) the relationship of this spirit to the spirit of the people being taught, “the positive principle from which the character of church conversation should develop,” but along with this, in accordance with the threefold purpose of the conversation, he indicates three main signs from which the internal character of the conversation is composed: I) edification for the mind, II) persuasion for the will and III) anointing for the heart. Combining the indicated principle with these signs, he creates the following scheme: I) edification: A) religiosity, or the biblical spirit: a) holiness, b) truth, c) saving; B) Orthodoxy: a) holiness,) truth, c) salvificity and (in another division) 1) biblical Orthodoxy, 2) dogmatic Orthodoxy, 3) practical Orthodoxy, 4) ritual and canonical Orthodoxy; B) nationality; II) persuasion of the will, or persuasiveness; III) anointing: a) gospel grace, or pleasantness, b) life-giving, c) nourishment, d) touching, e) prophetic severity, f) sublimity and speed, g) depth, h) apostolic authority and power, i) paternal meekness, j) simplicity, j) sincerity, 1) abundance and m) variety. – The disadvantages of this scheme are as follows. According to this scheme, nationality is lost among the many properties of the biblical spirit, meanwhile, nationality is a property of the Bible and preaching that is completely special from all other properties of the spirit of the Bible, so that all of the listed properties, with the exception of nationality, should be generalized in one heading, and nationality should be isolated in another heading: the properties of the first group are properties of the unchanging biblical spirit, and the nationality of the Bible remains the nationality of preaching only by changing according to the conditions of place and time, the first are the unchangeable in a sermon, the second is constantly fluid, the first characterize the general in the sermon, the second the particular, the first constitute the objective principle, the second - the subjective 55. Then the author unnecessarily names the spirit of the church as a principle for revealing the spirit of preaching, along with the spirit of the Bible, since, in his own words, “the spirit and teaching of our Orthodox Church are the same as in St. Scriptures; therefore, the general properties of Orthodoxy, which church conversation should express, are the same as those in the expression of the biblical spirit” (§ 212). – In addition to the spirit of the Bible, Amphitheater’s Homiletics also names edification for the mind, persuasion for the will and anointing for the heart, as the main signs of the internal character of preaching, to which he, however, attaches fundamental importance, so that even the spirit of the Bible in his scheme is shown only in the sense of a particular manifestation of edification. We are not saying that this makes the scheme confused and the principle of the biblical spirit is not maintained; but let us ask what basis does the author have for introducing into this scheme the relationship of the sermon to the mind, heart and feelings of the listeners. The division of the effect of a sermon into particular relationships to the mind, heart and feeling can have a real, and not fictitious, meaning only if the sermon is edifying in completely different ways than those with which it acts on the will and feeling. If the sermon conveyed the Gospel teaching in artistic form, then, in addition to its biblical edification (for the mind), it would have new properties with which it would act on the senses; If, more specifically, the artistry of the sermon had the form of oratory, then the sermon, in addition to biblical edification, would have additional properties with which it would act on the will. Otherwise, the dismemberment is fictitious: the dismemberment is fictitious if the sermon acts on the feeling and will with the same properties that it acts on the mind, as it actually is. It must be borne in mind that in addition to the deliberate touching that speech acquires as a result of artistic form, and deliberate persuasiveness as a result of a certain artistic form, namely oratorical, simple speech can be touching and convincing in its very essential content. You will certainly touch a person’s heart if you talk about subjects close to his heart - if you talk about children to a loving father, about greedy wealth, about spiritual good to those seeking salvation; your simple speech will be convincing to the listener if the subject of speech is capable of moving him to action, if you talk about a buried treasure for a greedy person, about a compassionate sufferer who requires help. In this sense, the gospel is extremely touching and convincing, because it speaks of the mercy of God, of the atoning sufferings of Christ, of the terrible coming judgment, calls us to salvation, to eternal good, speaks of subjects that have an enduring interest, which are dear to man by his nature and which are actually close to the hearts of many 56 . Presenting the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, teaching the gospel, the sermon is touching and convincing in its very content, but in this sense, the touching and convincing nature of the sermon, as completely dependent on the subject of teaching, coincides with the properties of the sermon as teaching, i.e. with those properties that are generalized in edification. In addition, it should be noted that sometimes persuasiveness comes to simple speech, as a property and action of the will of the speaker, and not as a property of speech itself. Not only a stick in the hands of a speaker can give third-party persuasiveness to his speech; The mental influence of the will on the will can have enormous power of persuasion, which, as a property of the will, must be distinguished from the properties of speech itself. In preaching, as we saw above, the psychic influence of the will is required by the very essence of the matter and can be detected on a wide scale; but this property of the preacher’s will should not be included among the properties of preaching speech - this persuasiveness of the will should be distinguished both from the persuasiveness that a sermon has in its content, and from the persuasiveness that it could have if it had the artistic form of oratorical speech. Addressing Homiletics prof. Amphitheater, we see that by persuasiveness he with complete clarity and certainty means not the property of a sermon, but the property of a preacher. “The quality and strength of true Christian conviction,” he writes, does not depend too much on art and science. Only the will acts on the will; the spiritual power of will that the actor possesses overcomes and attracts to its goal the will of those on whom the action is directed. Hence the character of a truly Christian conviction of the will is no more and no less than the genuine character of a truly Christian will in the preacher himself. He who has a Christian will convinces, whether he speaks a lot or a little, or even does not speak at all” (§ 225). Obviously, such a conviction, if it can be without speech, is not actually a property of a sermon, as a word. Outside the section on persuasion of the will, the author understands the persuasiveness of a sermon as a property that coincides with edification 57; in the same way, by touching, which he calls unction, he does not mean that characteristic and, so to speak, deliberate, or deliberate touching, which is a manifestation of art, but means the property of the content of the sermon, i.e. again coinciding with edification. Thus, he has no reason (as indeed he should not) to divide the effect of the sermon into relations with the mind, heart and will; and he himself expresses with complete clarity the idea that a sermon is edifying by the same properties that make it convincing and touching. “Edification, he notes, is the main and general property of church conversation, relating to the mind, will, and heart of the listener” (§ 201); in the same way he writes about anointing; “Anointing generally means that the interview is imbued with the Christian spirit; it alone imparts life and true character to true edification and true conviction of the will” 58 (§ 231). What remains of the whole scheme in which prof. Does the amphitheater reveal the internal nature of the interview? Only this: the only “positive principle from which the character of church conversation should develop” is the spirit of the Bible; all the “signs that make up the internal character of the conversation” are only properties of the spirit of the Bible, which can be revealed only by penetrating into it, through study and experimental comprehension of the gospel spirit, without any preconceived formulas. In the study of the evangelical spirit, Homiletics Amphiteatrova can provide a significant service: among the individual features of the biblical spirit, they, with a deep understanding of the matter, point out: holiness, truth, salvificness, pleasantness, life-giving, nutritional, touching. The homiletians who followed Amphitheater borrowed from him mainly the design to the detriment of the content; but at the same time they were bound to find themselves in difficulty. Prof. Amphitheater indicated a lot of signs of the internal character of the sermon with a clear effort to give some of them the meaning of principles from which others would flow, like a tree growing from a root; but it is obvious that his scheme is confused and difficult to understand. Amfitheatrov’s followers get out of this difficulty in this way: each of them, with complete arbitrariness, selects from this set of signs several, usually three (a sacred number!), which are given fundamental importance, then from the remaining signs some (preferably three) are subsumed under principles. So in Favorov’s Manual we find the following scheme: 1) edification: a) holiness, b) truth and c) saving; II) persuasiveness: a) sacred dignity, b) pastoral perseverance and c) confidence; III) life-giving: a) anointing, b) touching and c) touching; in Potorzhinsky's Brief Homiletics: I) the biblical spirit: a) holiness, truth and salvificity; II) the spirit of Orthodoxy and III) nationality; in addition, visible signs of the true nature of the sermon: edification, life-giving and persuasiveness. In homiletics of the 20th century we will already encounter the following scheme: I) holiness: a) the biblical spirit, Orthodoxy and the relationship of this spirit to the spirit of the people; II) truthfulness: edifying, persuasive and life-giving; III) salvific quality: anointing, tenderness and touching, etc. There is no limit for variety here, because there is no soil under your feet and all the structures hang in the air... By asserting that the spirit of preaching is nothing other than the spirit of the Word of God, we thereby say that the study of this spirit is not the proper task of homiletics: its task is to clarify the principle - to indicate that preaching must embody the spirit of the Word of God, and what the spirit of the Bible is, this should be expounded to candidates for the priesthood in the science of exposition of the Word of God, but to preachers it is revealed from the Word of God itself, which they must read continuously and tirelessly. However, if homiletics were to take up this subject, it would only commit the sin of violating the boundaries between theological sciences, but in any case this is a highly important subject and worthy of the most careful study. In view of this, and also taking into account the fact that when systematically explaining the Word of God behind particulars and details, behind individual events of Gospel history and texts, the general and essential - the spirit of the Word of God - may elude the attention of students, we here offer to the attention of students a brief disclosure of the spirit of the New Testament Word of God. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself defined the nature of his teaching as follows: the spirit gives life; the flesh is of no use. The words that I speak to you are spirit and life (John VI, 63). The words of the Lord Jesus Christ are spirit. Let us remember how He explained the commandments of the Old Testament, compare His teaching on fasting, the Sabbath, washing hands, and worshiping God with the views of the Old Testament people and especially the scribes and Pharisees on these subjects, and we will easily understand why His teaching is called spirit. The Old Testament forbade adultery, but the Lord Jesus Christ even forbids lust; Old Testament people fasted in order to appear to be fasting to people, but the Lord Jesus Christ commands us to fast not before people, but before the Heavenly Father, Who is in secret; the scribes and Pharisees attached great importance to the washing of hands and cups and, in general, to the traditions of the elders regarding external purity, and the Lord Jesus Christ taught that external things cannot defile a person, but that evil thoughts emanating from the heart defile him; Old Testament worship was ritual, entirely tied to a certain place and to certain times, entirely related to the body, sensual, and the Lord Jesus Christ commanded the worship of God in the spirit. The teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ is spiritual, because according to His teaching, the most important thing in a person is his spirit and heart, and not the body and everything external, because the rules of life given by Him, embraced in one commandment about love for God and people, determine precisely the life of the spirit, because He established service to God in the spirit. The Lord Jesus Christ revealed to man the great truth that God is spirit, that He does not need the service of human hands, that He does not look at the person, origin, external position and external righteousness of a person, that He does not require external sacrifices from him, that he can reveal himself only in the spirit of a person, that He wants from him a spiritual sacrifice - spiritual purity, mercy and love; in the light of this great truth, the Lord Jesus Christ taught man to know himself - He taught him that his true life is not in the body, but in the spirit. People before Christ did not know themselves; they identified themselves with their own, external; they believed the most important thing - some in the political glory of the people, others in the strength of mind and beauty, others in external belonging to the religious life of God's chosen people, in descent from Abraham and in the careful performance of all those rituals that confirmed the connection of each person with the people, all in a temporary, shadowy way. But the Lord Jesus Christ taught us that before God everything external can have meaning only as a symbol and expression of the internal, that a person’s own life is in his spirit. Accordingly, he did not attach the Pharisaic importance to external purity and observance of rituals, but demanded from a person spiritual purity, love for all people, and service to God in spirit. Even moral mental and physical purity, which is so highly valued in Christians that, according to the words of the Apostle (Eph. V, 3), fornication and uncleanness should not even be named, is not assumed in a Christian as the fulfillment of the law (Gal. V, 23), but as a free result of spiritual life, as the same apostle says: walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lusts of the flesh (v. 16). Since the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ is spirit, it is therefore itself truth. Worldly people believe their life not in what is real life, but in what is only an external image, a fleeting shadow, and therefore their worldview is not the truth; pagan and even Old Testament rules of life related to the body, to the shadow, and therefore their fulfillment could not give a person real benefits; Not only pagan worship, but even Old Testament worship was sensual and therefore only shadowy. But the Lord Jesus Christ taught man to see the most important thing in the spirit, which has an enduring reality; the rules of life given by Him relate to the spirit and therefore convey real benefits; instead of symbolic worship, He established spiritual service, which is real service to God, embracing a person’s entire life and making him a partaker of the divine nature 59 . As spiritual and true, the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ gives man freedom. Know the truth, He told his listeners, and the truth will make you free (John VIII, 32). His teaching gives a person freedom of conscience, making it strong from a weak one (Rom. XIV, XV; 1 Cor. VIII), frees him from the shackles of the ritual law, from the yoke of weak elements, from slavery to fear and sin and gives him the spirit of adoption, by which we boldly approach the throne of grace, and freedom of spiritual life. In order to imagine with what power the weak and pitiful material principles dominated over the Old Testament man, how they constrained his conscience, suppressed his spiritual life, for this we need to recall the accusatory speeches of the Lord Jesus Christ against the scribes and Pharisees, who did all their deeds so that people could see them, who gave tithes on mint, anise and cumin and left the most important things in the law, judgment, mercy and faith, they strained out a mosquito, and devoured a camel, which cleansed the outside of the cup and dish, while inside they were full of theft and untruth, who placed their hope solely on their descent from Abraham - we must remember that the anger of the scribes and Pharisees against Jesus Christ, which led to His death, was fueled mainly by their attachment to the letter of the law, to the traditions of the elders - we must finally remember what kind of struggle they had to fight take out St. to the Apostle Paul with the foolish zealots of the Old Testament ritual law in order to defend the freedom of the Christian religion. With what hellish persistence these unreasonable servants of the Old Testament letter attacked the newborn Christianity in order to subjugate it to the ritual law and turn this religion of the spirit into a simple Jewish sect, and with what superhuman firmness the apostle. Paul opposed this strongest and most dangerous enemy of Christianity. How highly this apostle valued Christian freedom and with what zeal he warned Christians against the old bonds of slavery! Stand in the freedom that Christ has given us, and do not be subjected to that slavery again. You are called to freedom, brothers! Let your freedom not be an excuse to please the flesh, but serve one another through love (Gal. V, 1.13). If you and Christ died to the elements of the world, then why do you, as those who live in the world, keep the decrees, do not touch, do not taste, do not touch - (that everything decays from use) according to the commandments and teachings of men? (Col. II, 20–22, etc.). As spiritual, as giving man truth and freedom, the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ gives him life (John V, 24, etc.). Under slavery to sin, the weak elements of the world, and the traditions of the elders, the life of the spirit extinguishes. The teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ calls the spirit to life and therefore calls a person to real eternal life. He who fulfills His teaching truly lives. We know, the apostle writes, that we have passed from death to life because we love the brothers (1 John III, 14). Therefore, the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ is truly life-giving and nourishing. “It is, in the wonderful words of Prof. Amphitheater (II, 62. 63), satiates the soul in the same way as ordinary bread saturates the body. Therefore, in St. In Scripture, the Word of God is compared sometimes to honey and honeycomb, sometimes to solid food, to beer and meat. The preaching word is a living branch of the Word of God; therefore there is power of nutrition in it; from its seed it not only revives the soul and gives life to our inner man, but gradually and successively serves as food and drink for him, and is tender and soft, like milk and manna, in the infancy of our inner man; It is food that is solid and strong during manhood; It is beer that cheers the spirit in the old age of a spiritual man.” The words of the Lord Jesus Christ are truth and life in another way. They are the truth because they reveal to man a true understanding of the world, in the light of which he can quite freely define all his private relationships. But at the same time, they are the essence of life, because this worldview revealed by the Lord has been given to us entirely for application to life. He did not teach us anything that would have a purely theoretical interest, that would satisfy only our curiosity, but His theoretical teaching has entirely practical purposes. This is precisely the idea expressed by our homiletics, asserting that, on the one hand, when revealing dogmas from the church pulpit, “the preacher must avoid abstract reasoning and pay attention primarily to the practical significance of the dogma,” on the other hand, in preaching, “every moral teaching must be closely connected with dogmatic teaching and be established on it as its foundation.” Since the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ reveals the truth to us and gives us freedom and life, it is very full of “spiritual pleasantness and the sweetness of the Gospel. What this sweetness consists of was demonstrated by the Savior himself when, in the synagogue of Nazareth, he read a passage from the book of the prophet Isaiah: The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, for He has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor, and He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach liberation to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are tormented, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord (Luke IV, 18.19). Evangelism in general, i.e. the communication of joyful truths, the spirit of consolation for the broken-hearted, the proclamation of freedom from sin in particular - this makes the word" of God "inexpressibly pleasant and sweet" (Amphit. II, 59.60). At the same time, the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ is extremely convincing, because it points us to the benefits that are close to our hearts. Therefore they said about Him: never a man spoke like this man (John VIII, 46). However, this is the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ only for those who love the truth; for those who loved darkness more, it is a fire that ignites their hatred. For everyone who does evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds be exposed, because they are evil. But he who acts righteously comes to the light, so that his deeds may be revealed, because they were done in God (John III, 20.21). The Lord Jesus Christ did not teach in such a way as to be pleasing to everyone, but in order to attract to the Father only those who are from God - He did not seek glory from people and did not look at faces. He won children of God among the toiling, burdened and humiliated, and not among the noble, the self-righteous and those who imagine themselves to be seers. For the latter, His teaching is temptation and madness. This is how it should be according to the minds of the world. What was the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, such was the teaching of His holy apostles, and such should be the spirit of every Christian sermon. The preacher must set his main task - to call the human spirit to life in order to make it the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit, so that a person lives eternal life and becomes a partaker of the divine nature. He should never lose sight of this task, under any circumstances. To achieve this goal, he needs to confront everything that constrains and is ready to consume the life of the spirit - to counteract all Jewish fables and decrees of people who turn away from the truth (Tit. I, 14). He must be a champion of Christian freedom, taking care at the same time that this freedom does not serve as a temptation for those weak in faith and conscience and does not degenerate into slavery to sin, and that those weak in faith do not condemn their brother, the servant of the Lord, who enjoys freedom, and do not seek to impose the burden of their weakness on him. He must simultaneously fight both with reckless hope in the works of the law and the flesh, without indulging in any good appearance, such as donations to the church, if they think they will free themselves from the obligation of good deeds (Mp. VII, 11 - 13), - and with vainglorious Gnosticism, which is inclined to replace Christian life with fruitless religious contemplation and speculation - he must see to it that everyone, to what he has achieved, thinks and according to He lived by this rule (Philip. III, 16). He must be able to distinguish and teach to distinguish between symbol and reality in the field of religious life. The constant inclination of man is to replace the actual religious life - the life of the spirit, the true feat, with a symbol, a ritual appearance, a theoretical confession, so that one can seem to be a true worshiper of God and at the same time live according to the inclinations of his carnal heart. Finally, the preacher must avoid in his speech flattering the worldly mind, must avoid the temptation to portray the teaching of Christ in such a way that it seems reasonable in the worldly sense of the word: this would mean abolishing the cross of Christ (1 Cor. I, II, etc.). He must attract to Christ the spiritual, not the spiritual. A natural man does not accept what is from the Spirit of God, because he considers it foolishness, and cannot understand it, because it must be judged spiritually (P, 14). Let’s finish the section on the spirit of preaching with a note about the names of the sermon: holy, saving, edifying, etc. Our homiletics try to designate with these names certain aspects of the internal character of the sermon. But despite their philological difference, these names, when applied to preaching, essentially point to the same thing - namely, that a sermon that deserves such names is not a simple human word, but is the transmission of the Word of God, and has as its subject the sacred. Scripture maintains the spirit of the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ.... Chapter three. Modernity and nationality of sermons In Homiletics, prof. Amphitheater, as we have already seen, there is a department devoted to the question of the modernity and nationality of preaching. Placed in the wrong place, Amfiteatrov’s department provides a correct solution to the problem, but not sufficiently developed. Of our later homiletics, some barely repeat Amfitheatrov’s thoughts, others completely omit this question. Meanwhile, in monographic and journal homiletical literature, the question of the modernity of preaching is hotly discussed, although not all writers advocating the popular and modern direction of preaching outline the same boundaries for applying the character of the nationality to preaching; Not even everyone who has discussed this issue is on the side of the nationality and modernity of the sermon. The issue, therefore, needs a thorough review and systematic solution. The teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ is the truth, i.e. an integral theoretical understanding of the world, which is mandatory for every Christian and gives every person who has mastered it freedom in understanding and defining all particular cases of life. As a general understanding of the world, it is not designed to satisfy exclusively the private needs of man and society; being frank, it has a negative attitude towards every human opinion, not allowing any compromise, any concessions. But always remaining unchanged and true to itself, like a divine revelation, the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ was at the same time popular and modern. Despite the generality of its content, it is vital and applicable to every particular phenomenon of personal, family, social and state life. When one of the people asked the Lord Jesus Christ to divide the inheritance between him and his brother, Jesus Christ withdrew from this private family matter, but He offered the people a word about non-covetousness (Luke. XII), and His teaching in its general content serves as a sufficient basis for resolving any economic misunderstandings between Christians (Acts II, 44.45). When He was asked whether it was permissible to give tribute to Caesar, in this case He did not change the basic principle of His teaching, expressed by Him in the words: My kingdom is not of this world (John XVIII, 36), the kingdom of God is within you (Luke XVII, 21), He did not teach socio-political theory to those who questioned Him; but nevertheless, His teaching contains provisions that with sufficient certainty resolve the question proposed to Him and all sorts of similar questions for His followers: render the things that are Caesar's to Caesar, and the things that are God's to God. Then, although His teaching has a completely negative attitude towards all human opinions that it replaces, it at the same time allows for the possibility of a subjective, to some extent, attitude towards it, more precisely, the possibility of assimilating it from those predominantly aspects that are more consistent with the individual character of a person, society or people; it can be perceived by both those under the law and those alien to the law, and the weak and the strong. Therefore, it was taught by the Lord Jesus Christ with wise application to the condition of the listeners. He always revealed His teaching in connection with the spiritual state of the listeners, their beliefs, expectations, and spiritual needs. In the beliefs and expectations of the Jewish people, He found points of contact with His new teaching and presented it from the side from which it was more accessible to his understanding. The Jews were filled with anticipation of the kingdom of the Messiah, and the Lord Jesus began His sermon with the words: repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Although the Jews did not understand the kingdom of the Messiah in the sense that it was given to us by Christ, He took their expectations as the starting point of His preaching and gradually corrected their views on the kingdom of God. His listeners lived according to the Old Testament law, and He revealed His teaching in comparison with the Old Testament law: you have heard what was said to the ancients, but I say to you... His preaching always responded to the living religious needs of his listeners, taking into account their characteristics: He spoke differently with the scribes, differently with the common people, differently with the supposed righteous, differently with humble sinners. The Samaritan woman was interested in the question of the place of worship of God, and the Lord Jesus Christ reveals to her the teaching about the worship of God in spirit and truth; Martha and Mary grieved for their dead brother, and He preached to them about the resurrection of the dead. He either calls the people to Himself, then turns to the Pharisees and scribes, or calls away the disciples: His speech is always a personal appeal. He speaks about wealth in the presence of a rich man, about the temptation of one of the little ones in the presence of children. At the same time, He revealed His teaching with wise gradualness: He gradually made clear to the people and disciples the concept of His kingdom that is not of this world, the truth of His sonship with God, and gradually, with greater and greater clarity, He predicted His suffering... As was the sermon of the Lord Jesus Christ, so was the sermon of the apostles. And their preaching, first of all, had an unchanged general content, which was for them the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ; and their preaching, in its general content, was alien to the worldly spirit, as they themselves testified: we received not the spirit of this world, but the spirit from God, so that we might know what was given to us from God, which we proclaim (1 Cor. II, 12.13). But at the same time, their preaching was not limited to the literal repetition of the words of Jesus Christ, but had something more in it. This greater thing is the nationality and modernity of their preaching. Jesus Christ addressed His word almost exclusively to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, and not to the Gentiles, and therefore He presented His teaching in accordance only with the beliefs and expectations of the Jewish people; He addressed His word to listeners from whom a Christian society was barely emerging, and therefore He did not apply His instructions to those special relationships that became possible only later, in the established Christian society. The apostles, continuing the work of Jesus Christ, not as slaves, but as friends, under the living influence of the Holy Spirit, made the teaching of Jesus Christ a living word not only for Jewish listeners, but also for pagans of all countries, and made it a living word for the established Christian society. Thus, the Apostle Paul takes the Athenians’ veneration of the unknown God as the starting point of his speech to the Athenians (Acts XVII: 23); Thus, the apostles spoke about the mutual relations of Christians among themselves, about the duties of bishops, deacons, about meetings of Christians, gave Christians consolation in the persecutions that befell them, taught those who expected the imminent second coming of Christ, eliminated discord and disagreement from Christian society, and revealed to everyone the teaching of Christ to the best of their understanding with wise gradualness, giving some milk, others solid food. After the apostolic, both the preaching of the apostolic men and the patristic sermon was popular and modern. Thus, over time, preaching made Christian teaching a living word for scientifically educated people, served as an instrument for protecting Christian teaching from heresies and Christian society from schisms, and was either apologetic or morally accusatory. The patristic sermons of a moral and practical direction are distinguished by a particularly striking character of modernity, in which there are often descriptions and denunciations of contemporary preachers of the morals of Christian society; but also sermons of abstract dogmatic content, such as the theological and dogmatic-polemical words of St. Gregory the Theologian, Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, satisfied the living demands of society and reveal the inclinations of the people of that time when, “starting with the emperors and descending to the last commoner, everyone began to reason, following the theologians by profession, about the Born and the Unborn, about the trinity of persons in the Divinity, about the two natures in God the Son.” The patristic way of teaching is entirely psychological, a way of adapting to the spiritual state of the listeners. This is what the saints did. fathers are not by accident, but deliberately. To be convinced of this, it is enough to read the famous passage from the famous third word of St. Gregory the Theologian. “If someone wanted to tame and tame a multi-faceted and diverse beast... he would have to acquire multifaceted and varied information and use a walk appropriate to each (property of the beast). Thus, since the general body of the church, like one complex and varied living being, is composed of many and different morals and minds; then it is absolutely necessary for the primate (of the church) to be both simple, relatively correct in everything, and as many-sided and varied as possible in order to treat everyone decently, and equally capable of useful conversation with everyone. For only infants and, one might say, not yet strong enough, require milk for food, i.e. the simplest and most basic lessons, and cannot accept verbal food befitting a husband. Others, having sufficiently trained their senses to distinguish between true and false, have a need for the wisdom preached among the perfect (1 Cor. II, 6), and for higher and more solid food,” etc. St. Gregory the Great devotes the entire and, moreover, most significant (third) part of his “Pastoral Rule” to the disclosure of various methods of church teaching in accordance with the different states of the listeners. One “list of the various states of the listeners with which the preacher must conform in his teachings” takes him several pages. In the preface to this part, St. the father expresses general thoughts on the question of the psychological basis of the sermon. “Every word of teachers,” he writes, must be adapted to the qualities and properties of the state of the listeners, so that each of them is offered his own, characteristic of him, and at the same time does not deviate from the general requirements of edification. For what are the tense minds of listeners if not strings, if I may say so, stretched on a musical instrument, which are touched in different ways by the hand of a skillful player, so that from various contacts one harmonious, harmonious, musical song is formed? And the strings produce melodic sounds precisely because they are set in motion by one instrument, but not by the same blows. Thus, every shepherd of the church, as a teacher and leader of his flock, in order to be suitable for each and everyone to create their salvation, must touch and edify the hearts of his listeners with one teaching, but not with the same tact or meter.” Following the example of the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ and His holy apostles and the example of the patristic sermon, the later sermon should be popular and modern... But here we encounter an objection to this direction of preaching. “There is no need to prove it, they say that it is better to preach than the St. preached. Fathers, it’s impossible for us. Therefore, our preachers need to value the experiences of the patristic fathers and be guided by them, considering the needs of our time with them” 60. This objection contains an internal contradiction, with the disclosure of which it falls by itself. There is no doubt that the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ is the only subject of preaching, and it should be a word “from a higher mind, and not from earthly wisdom”; but at the same time the preaching of Jesus Christ and His St. the apostles should serve as a model for later preaching, and the preaching of Christ and the apostles was a living word - popular and modern! Modernity is a feature of preaching that requires from the preacher not blind imitation, but freedom. While the inner character of preaching in the spirit of the Bible is generally acquired by the closest possible proximity of the sermon to the word of God, nationality and modernity require creativity from the preacher 61 . If the sermon blindly imitated what was modern and popular in the word of God, then it would be unmodern and unpopular, and therefore, because of the imitation of the letter, it would contradict the spirit of the preaching of Christ and the apostles. In this case, the word of God in the fullness of all its features is abstractly given to the preacher, with the character of irrelevance, and his own task is to make the word of God a living word for his contemporaries. The words of Jesus Christ: Martha, you worry and fuss about many things, but only one thing is needed (Luke X, 41.42) were living speech, a personal appeal; but if the preacher accepts these words inextricably in their relation to a specific historical person, then the great thought about “the only thing needed” will remain in his mouth inapplicable to his listeners. Therefore, the preacher, having first reduced the living speech of the Lord Christ to a general thought, must then apply it to his listeners, some of whom live like Martha and others like Mary 62. The accusatory speeches of the Lord Jesus Christ against the scribes and Pharisees, against blind attachment to the traditions of the elders and external righteousness, must change in the mouth of the preacher into denunciation of contemporary folk morals and customs. Jesus Christ always developed His divinely revealed teaching in direct relation to living reality, brought the light of divinely revealed truth into all the “streets, alleys and crossroads” of the spiritual state of the Jewish people of His time, with the goal of correcting the whole life of a person - his thoughts, desires, hopes; Likewise, the preacher must bear together the divinely revealed teaching of Jesus Christ with the spiritual popular interests of his time, and must illuminate the course of modern life and the feet of the living people with the lamp of revealed life. This is the attitude of the preacher towards the word of God; the same should be his attitude towards patristic preaching. And in the latter, one thing, precisely that which coincides with the word of God, is immutable, and the other, popular and modern, is temporary and conditional, which must be replaced by the living word of the preacher. True, patristic preaching is closer to the position of any preacher than the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ and His apostles, since it is already the application of the New Testament word of God to the needs of the people and the time. But this is something the preacher should not forget: the patristic sermon is adapted to the needs of his time, which are different from the needs of another time and another people. It is not with the experiences of the patristics that the preacher “needs to consider the needs of our time,” but the patristic sermon must be considered with the needs of our time. “If Chrysostom himself, let’s say in the words of Archbishop. Nikanor 63, resurrected and now stood among us on the church pulpit with an abstract 64 explanation of the positive content of the Christian faith, then our contemporaries would have listened to him for a little, it seems, only out of curiosity, and then would have left him. It is necessary in modern preaching to touch upon the same issues of modern unbelief.” In addition, the preacher must beware of equating the patristic sermon with the word of God: the word of God is the only subject of his preaching. Let us recall the book’s instruction on the positions of parish elders: “from the writings of St. Father, to explain what part of the faith and to confirm the teaching proposed to the people, decent passages can, and sometimes should, be used in one’s conversation. But both the holy fathers of Scripture and church traditions should not be confused or compared with the word of God and his commandments. One is the word of God, and another is the word of St. father of scripture and church traditions" (22). To replace living preaching with patristic writing, whose sole subject is the word of God, would mean placing human tradition above revelation. But “does Massillon really contain living waters more than the student who flowed from the lips of Chrysostom”? We don't say that. Borrowing from the sermons of “fashionable” Western church speakers - let it be - is a great sin against the truth of the sermon, for which the only content should be the word of God; but this sin is not committed in the name of modernity of preaching, since blind imitation of models, even the latest ones, is an even more and undoubted sin against the liveliness, nationality and modernity of preaching. If some preachers want to be modern by replacing imitation of ancient models by borrowing from “fashionable” authorities, then this, of course, should be called a sad misunderstanding. But from such sad experiences, in extreme cases, the lesson follows that the modernity of preaching should not consist in replacing ancient authorities with later ones, but in freedom from any imitation, in closeness to the hearts of the listeners, in the psychological basis of its effectiveness. The patristic sermon, in its fidelity to the word of God, is higher than the sermons of Bossuet and Flechier, but the preacher must be recalled from imitation of the latter not for the sake of “resting” on the ancient sermon, but for the sake of the living preaching of the word of God. We cannot help but notice, in addition to these considerations, that the dignity of the sermon in the sense of its modernity will not increase if the preacher “rests” on the later Orthodox authorities - on the sermons of the Philaret and Innocent. Of course, these latest sermons are not alien to our people and time, just as the times of Gregory the Theologian and John Chrysostom are alien and distant from us, but they are suitable only for the Philaret and Innocent. From the point of view of the true modernity of preaching, the difference between flocks at a distance of several miles, as between urban and rural, and several years, can be just as significant as at a distance of centuries and hundreds of miles... However, it is more important for us to establish a principle than to enter into. consideration of its practical application. For the sake of the opportunity to imitate Archbishops Nicanor and Ambrose, one cannot object to the principle of modernity and creativity of preaching, because both the sermons of Nicanor and Ambrose came from the same principle... Thus, truth, i.e. the presence of a Christian worldview, or the truth that the Lord revealed to the world “Jesus Christ, on the one hand, and the nationality, on the other hand, are the two principles from which the element of preaching is composed and by which it differs both from any type of (worldly) literature (by its truth) and from the word of God (by its modernity). Of these two principles, the first relates to the content of the sermon, the second to the manner in which the content is revealed. Preaching is the modern and popular form of the word of God; it is the same word of God, but addressed to the life of a given time, a specific people, known listeners 65. The preacher’s calling is to translate the word of God into a language understandable to a certain circle of listeners, to always find that side of Christian teaching from which it is most useful and accessible to a certain flock, to give it an expression in which it responds to the needs of living people of a given time and place. If the Lord Jesus Christ had not given us His divine teaching and had not given the apostles the commandment to preach the gospel to all creation, then Christian preaching could not have existed, since it is the preaching of His teaching, in fulfillment of His commandment; if preaching could be unmodern and unpopular, then it would be unnecessary, superfluous; preachers could limit themselves to reading the word of God. Modernity and nationality are included in the very concept of preaching 66. The modernity and nationality of the sermon, more precisely and definitively speaking, are as follows. The sermon should be a presentation of the word of God that is understandable to known listeners. Here, first of all, it is a matter of language: the preacher must speak in a language that his listeners understand. Then, the comprehensibility of the sermon consists in the disclosure of the Gospel truth, accessible to the listeners, in adaptation to the degree of their spiritual development. The preacher should reveal the truths of the Gospel from the side from which they are understandable, close and dear to the listeners, should instill them in the existing inclinations of good in the hearts of the listeners, tie them to their good aspirations, no matter how insignificant the latter may be, hidden and intertwined with the bad desires of the heart. After all, a person does evil not for the sake of the fact that it is evil, but considering it good; one must believe that in the heart of every person, no matter how low he falls morally, there are truly good aspirations. The preacher must carefully look into the life of his listeners and, like the Apostle Paul, who found in Athens, among the many churches of immoral gods, one, perhaps; an abandoned altar with the inscription: to an unknown God - diligently search in their hearts for good goals, for the sake of which they, out of error, commit evil, and truly good aspirations, in order to tell them in the words of the Apostle: this good, which you, not knowing, are looking for, is given by the faith of Christ, these good aspirations of yours can only find complete satisfaction in Christianity. In this way, the truths of the Gospel are truly grafted into the human heart and become fused with it 67 . Having found access to the heart for the gospel or, what is the same, access to the gospel for the heart, the preacher must then develop the gospel truths before the listeners with wise gradualness, moving from the spiritual to the spiritual, from the earthly to the heavenly (cf. John III, 12) so that his speech does not exceed the understanding of the listeners. In this case, he must pay special attention to making clear to them the connection of all the Gospel truths with that which first of all found access to their heart and has already become akin to it. He must also ensure that the truths of the Gospel, as they are theoretically assimilated by the listeners, are applied by them to life, so that each of them, as far as he reaches, thinks and lives according to that rule (Philip. III, 16), so that the desire to know more than how much they want to fulfill in practice is far from them, so that not only the conviction is alien to them, but even the suspicion that it is possible, knowing something from the teachings of Christ and not following it in life, not to be subjected to condemnation. In general, a preacher should be inspired not by the requirements of the system, not by the course of his own thoughts, but by the actual needs of his listeners. Each of his words should not have a subjective logical, but an altruistic origin and arise on the basis of his spiritual interaction with his listeners. The Lord Jesus Christ sent twelve disciples to preach out of the same feeling of pity for the people, according to which he fed the hungry with bread and healed the sick (Matt. IX, 36; XIV, 14; XV, 32 and par.); so the preacher of Christ must open his mouth according to the feeling of the real need and needs of his listeners. Dead is his word, which arose in him at that moment when he did not remember about the listeners. A sermon should be a personal appeal from the preacher to the listeners, so that each of them feels that the preacher is speaking to him personally, sees his soul, and wishes him well. If at the same time the preacher says to the listeners not “you”, but “we”, then this form of address further enhances his communication with them and gives his words a special warmth. The preacher further has his task of distributing the word of God to his listeners in due time (Luke XII, 42. Cf. Gregory God. Creativity, part 1, p. 29). According to one church writer, our soul is by nature Christian. This means that Christianity satisfies all the normal needs of our soul. Usually a person, due to the relativity and conditionality of his life, is not aware of all these demands at the same time, but time, in connection with the various conditions and circumstances of his life, brings to his consciousness first one and then the other. Often a person is aware, but does not clearly understand the need for heavenly things, does not give himself an account of what his soul yearns for. The preacher is called to offer from the word of God to his listeners what is good for them; he knows how to come to them with the word of God on time and is quite like a prudent steward who distributes a measure of bread to the servants in due time. With his assistance, each listener draws from the word of God what he needs, and even clarifies his own soul. Finally, the preacher is obliged to illuminate a person with the light of God’s word in all aspects and every step of his life. Man as he is, in other words, the whole natural, or worldly, life of a person for the preacher seems to be an environment into which the rays of Christian truth must penetrate, which must be purified for God, an area that must be acquired for Him, become His property. To come to God, for this a person does not need to go beyond the boundaries of natural life, to go out of himself, but he needs to make from natural life, instead of the kingdom of the prince of this world, the realm of God, his entire natural life, even such natural functions as nutrition (1 Cor. X, 31), to make an instrument of the glory of God. Therefore, the light of the Christian worldview must penetrate into all the crossroads of our lives. In this regard, the living word of the preacher is especially needed. “Modern preaching, having come closer to real life in all spheres of its direction, sets its task, by exposing the inconsistency, the abnormality of the false direction of life, to indicate the true path by which one can be saved in the environment of everyday social life, to show and teach how one should and how one can live like a Christian and in the very environment, under the very conditions in which, by the force of the natural course of things, the listeners are placed” 68 . In this case, the gospel can be compared to a standing lamp, from which the preacher lights movable lamps, distributes them to the travelers of this world, and himself carries them along all directions of the path of life. Even those who have mastered the Christian worldview and received freedom to apply it to particular cases of their lives need an experienced leader in the matter of this application. Moreover, those who receive the word of the Gospel with joy, but, not having the root in themselves, are tempted from sorrows, or in which it is drowned out by the worries of this age - even more so do they need the lamp of the word of God to illuminate every step of their lives. But life continuously flows and everything in it is diversified. The preacher stands close to life, he is on guard over all its trends, he illuminates every change in it with the light of the Christian religion, he “follows all new movements and directions of thought in Christian society” 69, he “makes every possible effort to know his sheep” 70, he must be aware of both their external position and condition, and their internal interests, spiritual mood, and heartfelt inclinations. A farmer knows the properties of the field he cultivates, knows what and when sowing will bring a greater harvest to his field. And a true preacher knows the properties of his flock: at what level of religious knowledge his listeners stand, whether they require baby food or solid food; he knows the nature of their religious activity: whether they are cold, or hot, or warm, whether they are embraced by the flame of first love, or plunged into the mire of carnal lusts, or frozen in Pharisaic self-righteousness. The preacher must know not only the state of the actual religious life of his listeners, but also their worldly life, the interests of the working day, the nature of family life, the way of rest, habits, superstitions, and the whole course of their mental life. He must speak differently to the simple farmers, the smart factory workers, the bustling urban rabble, and the rich merchants. The mental life of his listener must be clear to him; he must understand by what unconscious motives a downtrodden worker is a tyrant in his family, what happens in the soul of a poor man when he drinks away his week's earnings in an hour, forgetting about his hungry family. The city preacher must be familiar with the current state of science, with fashionable views on life, with the direction of art. It is not science that is important to him, but its influence on people, on their views, beliefs and feelings, its attitude to religion, to the current system of life, to the requirements of morality; and art for him is important not in itself, but as an expression of modern life and the motives underlying it. In short, the preacher must know his hearers in every way. Like a true shepherd, leaving ninety-nine sheep, he goes to look for one that was lost; Thus, the preacher of Christ does not neglect any phenomena in modern life, but, seeing behind each of them the human soul for which the blood of Christ was shed, he illuminates phenomena and events with the light of the Gospel, makes them instructive and directs the public mood towards Christianity 71 .. Thus, preaching, being established, on the one hand, on the unshakable foundation of the word of God, enters, on the other hand, into the flow of life and reflects not only its currents and storms, but even the slightest disturbances. Above, pointing to the specific content of Christian preaching, we said: let the preacher not be afraid to repeat the same teaching of Christ before his listeners, remembering that he was assigned to this by the Lord, that he is called to be a constant teacher. But while remaining the same in its content, the sermon, due to modernity, reflecting not only the currents of life, but also the slightest excitement, cannot be repeated in presentation. The preacher lives and lives a double life - his personal life and the life of his listeners, and therefore the truth in his mouth, while remaining unchanged in content, involuntarily changes in external expression. Here identity is truly united with movement 72 . Just as a living sermon cannot be repeated, so the requirement from modern preaching is the requirement that the sermon not be repeated. A living and effective sermon cannot be delivered with complete benefit to the cause by another preacher, at another time and in another place - it is timely and appropriate only once 73 . In order to correctly judge the preaching people, it is necessary to keep in mind its relationship to the spiritual experience of the preacher. Preaching nationality is not the same as the spiritual experience of the preacher. The latter gives the preacher knowledge of human nature in general, the depth of sinful fall, ways of moral revival, means of combating sin, stages of spiritual growth: through his own experience he comprehends what is happening in the soul of every person. Nationality in preaching consists in applying the word of God to the individual characteristics of the time, people, society, and even individuals. But nationality has real significance in preaching only if the preacher has spiritual experience: only by being firmly rooted in spiritual experience can the branchy tree of nationality bear healthy fruit. Already the preaching people of the Lord Jesus Christ was based not only on the fact that He knew about the national characteristics and modern interests of His listeners, but also on the fact that He experienced the power of sin over man and the weakness of our nature (Heb. II, 18: IV, 15. Cf. St. John Chrysos. in. h. 1.). Likewise, every preacher must know not only the characteristics of his listeners, but also the nature of man in general - through his own experience. Only in connection with the spiritual experience and pastoral care of the preacher, the nationality of his word is the real vitality of speech. And since, at the same time, spiritual experience is a necessary path to the knowledge of the Gospel truth, and the sermon expresses the Gospel truth the more deeply and truthfully, the more it is established on the spiritual experience of the preacher, the more vital it is: then the lack of vitality in the preaching is accompanied by a lack of holiness or salvificness in it. Here we find the key to understanding the true nature of scholastic and abstract dogmatic preaching. Scholastic preaching is alien to the people; This is its disadvantage. But this is not enough to say about her. If we only limited its characterization to this, we would not distinguish it from ascetic preaching. More important than the lack of nationality is that scholastic preachers lack spiritual experience. They perceive the word of God only with reason and in the sermon they only reason about the Gospel truth, most often they prove it logically, historically, etc. Their preaching is abstract not only in the sense that it does not have an individual relationship between the preacher and the listeners, but it lacks an experienced comprehension of the truth, and therefore it equally lacks both a relationship to life in general and gospel holiness and salvation. The nationality could not make up for these shortcomings. We can easily imagine a scholastic sermon in the clothes of modernity and nationality: despite the appendage of nationality, scholastic preaching still remains abstract, lifeless and to the same extent alien to the gospel spirit. And the very nationality of scholastic preaching appears in a strange form. In fact, the scholastic sermon of the 16th and 17th centuries was not completely alien to the attitude towards listeners: the preachers of that time tried to entice their listeners, entertain, sometimes make them laugh, used popular expressions, etc. But despite all this, their preaching remained lifeless: they were a scholastic people. – We must judge abstractly dogmatic preaching in the same way. It may also lack nationality, but it is essentially characterized by a lack of spiritual experience, an exceptional predominance of rationality: dogmatic preaching is only reasoning, research, reflection, as M. M. Philaret called his sermons. At worst, abstract dogmatic preaching is completely scholastic; at best, it's like m.m. Philaret differs from the scholastic one in that in the latter, each gospel topic, even if it is a practical truth or commandment, is revealed rationally, while the dogmatic preacher chooses primarily and even exclusively theoretical issues as topics, so that the completely abstract-dogmatic nature of preaching is revealed in its entire scope, precisely in the preacher’s inclination towards exclusively abstract theological topics. Dogmatic preaching, as has been said, may at the same time lack nationality; but modernity cannot change its basic character. Thus, the sermons of M. M. Philaret do not lack modernity, as can easily be seen from the research of I.N. Korsunsky 74; but this connection between Philaret’s sermons and modern life is easier to discover for a historian from the archives than it could be felt by listeners, so in this regard, the study of I.N. Korsunsky does not in the least undermine the review of Philaret’s sermons by the author of Russian Preaching (393–396); they stood in connection only with the mental life of the intelligentsia contemporary to Philaret, and he set the task of his preaching activity to call his contemporaries to “thorough, pure, sublime, pious reflection” 75. Having discussed scholastic preaching, we see what significance spiritual experience has for the preaching people, without which modernity does not have proper vitality - we see what modernity itself cannot impart to preaching; In order to see what significance modernity has for spiritual experience in preaching and what exactly it adds to the sermon, we will imagine a sermon in which the Gospel truth is revealed through experience, but which lacks nationality and modernity. This is what ascetic preaching is. It is easy to see that just as, on the one hand, without the presence of spiritual experience, the people in the proper sense cannot give the sermon evangelical vitality, so, on the other hand, the spiritual experience of the preacher is not enough for his sermon to be a living word: for this it must be a word of the people and modern. To be convinced of this, it is enough to recall the first point indicated above in the concept of nationality - this is the nationality of the language. The sermons of St. are wonderful. Ephraim the Syrian, but for a Russian person they are completely incomprehensible: they are available to us only in translation into Russian. It is very appropriate in this case to recall the instructions of St. Paul in 1 Cor. XIV: whoever speaks in an unknown tongue speaks not to people, but to God; because no one understands him, he speaks secrets in the spirit... If you utter unintelligible words with your tongue, how will they know what you are saying? You will speak into the wind... But it is obvious that for the effectiveness of a sermon, a language that is understandable to listeners is necessary, not only in the literal sense of the word, but also figuratively - speech that is close to the soul of everyone, adapted to his condition, position, his interests, that is, folk-modern in the above sense. By thus connecting the nationality of the sermon with the spiritual experience of the preacher, we eliminate the last objection to this property of the sermon. Now the question is about the limits of applying the character of modernity and nationality to preaching. We see a fairly definite, as far as definiteness is possible here, indication of these boundaries in the very concept of modernity: it is not the source of content in the sermon, but only an image, or a method of revealing this content, a psychological form for it. Therefore, the verbal discovery of modernity in a sermon is permissible only to the extent that it does not become the content of the sermon. Let's turn to an analogy. The reality of the divine providence for people can be proven either by theological reasoning or historically. In the latter case, the history of this or that people does not constitute the actual subject of discussion, but is considered only to prove the point taken. The critic will have no difficulty in pointing out where in such an argument the author moves away from his subject, gets carried away by the story itself and expounds it unnecessarily. We say similar things about modernity in preaching. Let us explain our idea in more detail. A sermon, by its very idea, is an explanation and disclosure of the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, only that speech deserves the name of sermon in which some truth of the word of God is revealed; if the speech does not reveal or explain any gospel truth, then it is not a sermon. Therefore, Feofan Prokopovich’s word of welcome to the coming of His Tsar’s Majesty to Kyiv, the panigirikos or the word of praise about the glorious victory over the Suean troops, the word of praise in honor of the glorious deeds of His Serene Highness Prince Alexander Danilovich Menshikov and the like are not sermons. The same should be said generally about court sermons in the 18th century. “Theophanes and his imitators and contemporaries did not so much touch on subjects of faith and morality as they revealed the meaning of Peter’s reforms, praised Tsar Peter himself and his associates and reconciled the people with reforms that were not entirely clear to them, but difficult. Further followers of Theophanes and his preaching direction also mainly revealed in their sermons issues of domestic policy, and each reign gave a special flavor to the sermon, in accordance with the modern situation of state and court life. A number of such court preachers existed throughout almost the entire 18th century." 76 Likewise, the words festive and funeral, so commonly used in later times, in most cases are not the essence of sermons. In fact, as noted above, what gospel truth is revealed in the speech, which is limited to the presentation of the tales of the prologue and the menaions about the life of St. Foki, Rev. Spyridon, and stories about how the cross of Christ was found, since when did Christians begin to solemnly celebrate the Presentation of the Lord? In funeral eulogies, it is customary for us to talk about the merits of the deceased in all respects, not excluding the merits of scientists, artists, statesmen, and the military. Are such speeches sermons? Based on the same idea of ​​preaching, we must reject not only such an extreme deviation of preaching towards modernity, which we see among the court preachers of the 18th century, but also that one-sidedness in this direction, which manifests itself in mixing preaching with church journalism. We must distinguish preaching not only from secular journalism, but also from spiritual journalism. Even if the spiritual publicist “deduces and defines his guiding ideas and principles not from the humanitarian idea of ​​the human person and human dignity, as the secular publicist does, but places his guiding principles in the teaching of the church” 77, nevertheless, preaching must be distinguished from spiritual journalism. This difference lies in the fact that spiritual journalism sees in the word of God only the guiding principles by which it discusses and evaluates modern events, while preaching has its direct task of revealing and explaining the word of God, and the modernity of preaching consists only in adapting the teaching of the word of God to the state of the listeners. Hence, the attitude of the preacher and the spiritual publicist to the events of current life is quite different. Unlike a publicist, a preacher does not engage in consideration of current events on their merits, from an objective side, and therefore, in sermons, objective “analysis of public phenomena and related local and temporary circumstances, the subtle psychological art of depicting human nature, mainly in its sinful manifestations” 78 are inappropriate. For a preacher, modern events and phenomena of social life are important only to the extent that they constitute the internal life of society, and only from the top side with which they come into contact with religion. This idea of ​​preaching is particularly at odds with later Western sermons, in which one can often find presentation and criticism of a philosophical system, a work of art, sociological theory, etc. The preacher should know all this, but it is inappropriate to go into the analysis of such phenomena in a sermon. Otherwise, listeners may say: “we could hear about this at home” 79. The preacher must punish vices without depicting them. In popular philosophical teaching, only the psychological basis of the teaching deserves his attention, whether it reflects the thirst for heavenly things, or the fear of death is manifested in it, or it testifies to the immersion of the spirit in worldly interests, and he must meet precisely such aspirations, directing or correcting them according to the teaching of the word of God, without analyzing the philosophical system itself. It is absolutely not the preacher’s job to talk about art and its trends, but he must go towards what lies in the psychological basis of modern art. It is also inappropriate in a sermon to enter into judgment about the events of political or social life: he is interested exclusively in the soul of a person, as it is revealed in these events, or is affected by them. He examines modern phenomena only to show how applicable Christianity is to private aspects of our lives: even if we call this examination an analysis, then it is a subjective or tendentious analysis. Let's take a look at the sermons of the archbishop. Ambrose of Kharkov. Here is his word about love. He speaks here about the spirit of our time, but his description is brief and entirely determined by the task of “pointing out the need for love for people placed in special conditions by the spirit of our time”: and nothing more! Here is his wonderful word about fidelity in small things, in which he proceeds from the misery of the modern situation, “when all the fields of life open to us are measured not by the steps of our actual progress forward, but by the eye and personal considerations, and answers the question: what is the reason for such a misfortune and where is the way out of it?” He finds indications of both only in the Gospel instruction about faithfulness in small things (Luke XVI, 10). In his word for the New Year 1884, the preacher explains 1 Cor. I, 23. 24 in a living application to modern reality, but this word, with its exclusive object, has an indication of the means for returning the lost faith. In the remarkable liveliness and modernity of the word about pleasures, we do not encounter “an artificial depiction of the sinful manifestations of human nature.” There is precisely nothing here that the listeners could say: we could hear about this at home. “We will not,” writes the archbishop. Ambrose in one of his words 80, “we will not, and the dignity of the church pulpit does not allow us, to reveal in detail the gloomy picture of vices” 81. In his sermons, the speech is addressed to the listeners, as precisely to those who live and think in a way known to the preacher, but this worldly way of life itself is not revealed in them. But here we have before us the teachings of another famous church leader - Archbishop. Nikanor of Kherson. Reading all his teachings and conversations gives the greatest pleasure, but many of them cannot be called sermons: some are nothing more or less than an edifying everyday picture (for example, a conversation depicting a revolution in the spirit of the Orthodox population of St. Petersburg), others are historical (about the merging of peoples in Christianity) or theological reasoning (in refutation of the Shtunda, against Count Tolstoy), others are expounded in too much detail and The philosophy of nihilism, evolutionism, etc. is criticized. A deep philosopher, in his teachings he is inclined to develop not just Christian, but philosophical-Christian concepts 82 . The preacher himself was aware of this nature of his teachings: he pronounced some of them abbreviated, others intended for extra-liturgical interviews. In general, we are dealing here with sermon-essays. We take this opportunity to note that the purpose of sermons for publication in most cases reflects unfavorably on their character. In relation to the whole volume of sermons, modernity is limited in the sense that the preacher must speak not only on issues of current life, but, with the goal of instructing listeners in the fullness of Christian teaching, he must at the same time explain the teaching of the word of God in its own sequence and in the gradual assimilation of it by the listeners. And within the above boundaries of modernity, various degrees are possible. To the greatest extent, modernity is required from initial missionary preaching, and from sermons that have listeners already instructed in the truths of the faith, from those whose goal is to illuminate current life with the word of God. But after turning to Christ in the listeners, in addition to the desire to have in the sermon the application of the word of God to particular cases of current life, it is also natural to desire to assimilate the teaching of Jesus Christ in greater or less completeness, in its own consistency and relatively!! detachment from everyday life. How sometimes there is a strong desire in a person to immerse himself in the pure realm of divine truth! The preacher must never forget this need of his listeners. But, of course, one should not assign long periods of time for teachings of one and the other kind; both teachings should alternate, as noted above about exegetical and thematic teachings. The preacher must either rise to heaven or descend to earth in order to attract the attention of the listeners to the word of God and draw them to heaven; he must rise to heaven in order to teach his listeners from his height to look at the earth and to establish the kingdom of God on earth. As a bird teaches its chicks to fly, now descending, now rising; so the preacher must carefully monitor the state of his listeners, so as to never be either too exalted or too base for them. “Striving for the heights, he will not leave his neighbors who need his help, among the infirmities that depress them; and taking compassionate participation in their needs, he will not cease to strive for the higher things” (Right. past. P, 5). Thus, the true boundaries, as well as the true goal, of preaching nationality and modernity are comprehended in their application to the full scope of preaching. Within the indicated boundaries, that is, requiring from each sermon both truth and adaptation to the state of the listeners, a relative predominance of either idealism or realism should be allowed and relative scope should be given to the individual characteristics of the preachers. Highly appreciating the sermons of Nikanor of Kherson and Ambrose of Kharkov, we must also highly appreciate the sermons of Demetrius of Kherson, Macarius of Moscow... Closely related to the question of the boundaries of modernity in preaching is the question of the application of logical proof to preaching. A scholastic sermon was usually structured, in the form of a word, like this: some truth was put in the title, and then the entire essential content of the sermon was reduced to evidence of this truth - from the word of God, patristic, historical, logical. This structure of the sermon is completely false. The first goal, as well as the main content of the sermon, is the positive disclosure of the word of God. The most evangelical truth should form the content of the sermon. The Lord Jesus Christ did not use logical arguments in His teaching: He did not prove the truth, but testified to the truth 83. The preacher must do the same. This is how the famous modern preacher Archbishop Ambrose talks about it. “Following the century along the path of enlightenment,” he writes, 84 we delved into the field of knowledge and transferred our faith there too, and from there we borrow all the methods and techniques for assimilating it. For us, faith has become a totality of thoughts, and we hope to achieve both the initial enlightenment of non-believers and the return to it of those who have fallen away with the persuasiveness and evidence of our thoughts and knowledge. This is why modern European missions among pagans have had little success, and this is why many of the Christians who have fallen away are hopeless in returning to the faith. However, we were given to know by the first preachers of the faith of Christ that the word and preaching about it do not consist in convincing words of human wisdom, but in the manifestation of spirit and power; so that our faith is not based on human wisdom, but on the power of God (1 Cor. II, 4-5).” Most of all, the preacher should be alien to the desire to give the gospel truth the appearance of worldly wisdom (1 Cor. I, 18, seq.); least of all should he see his right to teach others in his mental superiority over them, in his learning, in the power of logic. No, his right to teach is that he has experienced the Christian truth, experienced the good of Christianity and is filled with the desire to lead others to the same good; his confidence in the effectiveness of Christian preaching must rest on faith in a person’s calling to Christianity (John VI, 44; Rom. VIII, 29): it is enough to reveal the Christian truth to the called one, and it will find access to his heart. Let us remember what was said above about conviction as the action of will on will. There is no 85 here and there should be no place for the power of logic. “Touching in a modern sermon the issues of the same modern unbelief” does not mean entering into the logic of unbelief, but means testifying to those gospel truths that modern unbelief rejects, showing their connection with those truths that are equally recognized by the gospel and, at least to some extent, by unbelief, revealing that only in the Christian faith are those ideals that justify unbelief fulfilled 86 . Only, perhaps, in those cases one should use argumentation in the sermon when the hearts of the listeners already believe, but the mind still hesitates, bound by prejudices 87 . But can lies and madness be left to themselves? Doesn't this mean giving them the battlefield? Let us answer this with the words of the famous preacher, who is usually credited with the honor of “the creator of the vitally practical direction in Russian preaching,” 88 John Bishop of Smolensk. “Let,” he writes 89, lies and delusions run amok in the world: they will complete their circle, ripen and become overripe and fall away by themselves... The truth of Christ acts in the world through the conviction of hearts, against which all conclusions are powerless, opens a very special, unusual for natural knowledge path of enlightenment - moral, moral elevation and purification of a person, purifying and elevating his mind" 90. Various types of preaching are nothing more than types of preaching nationality and modernity. These are the initial missionary sermon - the Christian teaching of unbelievers (μαθητεία), and the church sermon - teaching the believing members of the church to observe everything that the Lord has commanded, and the sanctification of their current lives by the word of God (διδασκαλία). Then we should call a sermon addressed to those who have fallen from the faith: a sermon called apologetic-polemical is reduced to this type, since due to the infrequency of evidence in preaching, a sermon cannot be apologetic-polemic in the strict sense. Finally, teaching the law in schools should be mentioned as a special fourth type of preaching. The section of our homiletics on the external nature of preaching and precisely that part of this section in which the issue of using Slavic and Russian, educated and common languages ​​in preaching is resolved, there is also only a paragraph in the homiletics department on the modernity and nationality of preaching. In general, this issue is resolved satisfactorily by our homiletics. The sermon, as the preaching of the word of God, must be distinguished by sacred dignity, created in the sermon by “the moral properties of the style, which the conversation should borrow from the word of God (Prof. Amphitheaters). By this we should mean that the language of the sermon corresponds to the sacred importance of the content, so that it expresses and arouses in the listeners evangelical thoughts and feelings in all their purity. The theory of homiletics cannot take upon itself the task of teaching this secret of language: here the point is not in theory, but in religious education, including the action of grace, and, if necessary, in verbal education. The language of the sermon should be as close as possible to the language of the word of God. In any case, sayings that are characteristic only of Christian teaching or that are peculiar to it in a special sense from the usual use of words should not be replaced in a sermon by colloquial language and, moreover, should be used only to express the truths of the Gospel 91. At the same time, the sermon, as addressed to the people, must be in the language of the people. What this means, first of all, is that the language of the sermon should be a language that is natural to the listeners, “domestic, contemporary to the conversation” (Prof. Amphitheaters). It follows from this that the Russian people need to preach in Russian; the Slavic language and even individual Slavic sayings, even if they were borrowed from the Slavic Bible, are inappropriate in Russian preaching. It is necessary to distinguish the language of the Bible, which has also been translated into Russian, preserving in the Russian translation the “moral properties of the syllable” of the Bible, from the Slavic language, which is not the exclusive language of the Bible. For preaching, those Greek and Slavic idiocy that are contained in the Russian translation of the New Testament are sufficient. True, the Slavic language is our liturgical language. But even without questioning its inevitability in liturgical practice, we must recognize its use in preaching as inappropriate, contrary to the very concept of preaching as a popular and modern form of the word of God. To speak in a sermon to the Russian people in the Slavic language and even to quote in this language even only the sayings of the Holy Scriptures means giving the listeners stone instead of bread and introducing darkness into what is the only means of religious enlightenment for many Russians 92 . The Russian people do not understand the Slavic language. The use of Slavic texts with a Russian translation is, in essence, the use of a Russian translation with a useless and pointless addition of a Slavic text. – Then the nationality of the preaching language means the intelligibility of the sermon for all classes of the people - for the educated and the common people: the preacher is required to speak clearly not only for the common, but also for the educated, and vice versa, not only for the educated, but also for the simple. However, the breadth of this requirement is reduced by the fact that the preacher can choose his flock according to the language to which he is accustomed, or, what is the same, the preacher can be chosen according to the quality of his flock. In this case, the preacher should speak as he is accustomed to. This is entirely consistent with the fact that it is too late for someone called to preaching to learn the art of words, and the calling itself presupposes a person who has already developed in this regard, that homiletics presupposes the theory of literature and verbal education, if such is necessary for the preacher, that, finally, language for the preacher is nothing more than a ready-made means of being understood, and not an artificial tool with varying degrees of perfection. Therefore, in homiletics, discussions about the general properties of language are completely unnecessary. But since educated people understand simple speech, but simple people do not understand learned speech, then one who is accustomed to speak simply should not try to speak in a learned way, even if he had to speak before educated listeners, and a learned preacher should speak simply before simple listeners, especially since the gospel is also characterized by simplicity. Consequently, the requirement from the preaching language of the people comes down to the requirement of simplicity and general intelligibility. Chapter Four. The external side of preaching in connection with the question: is preaching an art? Let's start with some basic clarifications. Artistic speech is a means of communication in feelings; simple speech is a means of communication in thoughts. Art 93 consists of the deliberate expression of feeling; the intentionality of expressing feelings in art is determined by the artist’s desire to evoke in other people the same feelings that he himself experienced. Therefore, contagiousness is the main sign of art. And since feeling is of great importance for the will, the intentionality of expressing feelings in art embraces the more or less conscious desire of the artist to influence the will of other people; in oratory this desire appears with complete certainty. Influencing the will through feeling, a work of art can also express thought: an artist can be a thinker, like, for example, I.S. Turgenev named Ivanov 94. This especially needs to be said about verbal art: I.S. Turgenev, F.M. Dostoevsky, L.N. Tolstoy is an artist-thinker. But the essence of art is not this, not the expression of thought, but the influence on feeling; therefore, the most important thing in art is images and form - artistic form 95; an artist and thinks in images. Conversely, simple speech can have in its content touching objects, that is, close to the heart, and therefore convincing; but the main difference between simple speech, as a means of communication in thoughts, and artistic speech is that it addresses the mind. Faith can be the subject of the art and simple teaching, because “faith begins in the thoughts, but belongs primarily to the heart,” as the Catechism puts it. Religious teaching is simple speech. Does the church recognize the edifying value of art? does it allow for the direction of Christian life through art? Undoubtedly, he recognizes and allows. Thus, already in the times of the apostles, the art of singing was used at public meetings of Christians, and precisely for the purpose of mutual edification of Christians, as the apostle writes. Paul in the last to the Ephesians: be filled with the spirit, speaking to yourselves in psalms, and hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts to the Lord (V, 18. 19) and to the Colossians: teach and admonish one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing in grace in your hearts to the Lord (III, 16). Subsequently, Christian art diversified and appeared, in addition to singing, in the form of sacred rites, rituals, architecture and painting. Undoubtedly, in all its forms and in all its wide application to church life in our time, church art has an edifying or educational significance - not only in the meaning of art in general, but also in the intention of the church. Prof. Amphitheaters, in one of his conversations about the relationship of the church to Christians, indicates the following methods of church-social teaching of Christians: 1) the method of sacred signs and images (symbolic, pictorial), 2) the method of sacred actions (representative), 3) the verbal method, which consists of reading, chanting and, finally, delivering sermons 96. According to the meaning of this conversation, the church does not edify the mind with sermons alone, but it also edifies the heart, “delighting” it 97.... Is there an art to preaching and is it possible to entrust the sermon with the task of acting directly on the hearts of the listeners? This question must be answered in the negative for the following reasons. Highly valuing a person's mood and deeds - manifestations of feeling and will, Christianity at the same time requires from a person knowledge of the truth. A Christian must be brought up in rules that determine the direction of his will and feelings; but besides and first of all, he must be taught a Christian worldview. Faith belongs to the heart, but begins in the mind. Preaching is Christian teaching. In the entire system of church activities, preaching is the only means of such teaching. She fills Christians with all knowledge of Christ (Rom. XV, 14), renews them with the spirit of the mind (Eph. IV, 23), makes them light in the Lord (V, 8), wise and prudent (15.17), mature in mind (1 Cor. XIV, 20). The preaching word differs from all other methods of church edification as the only method of teaching. This is the deep meaning of the sermon. The sermon would not have this exceptional significance if it were one of the types of church art. To the extent that teaching the truths of faith is important, one should resist the use of artistic form in preaching. By making an artistic form obligatory for preaching, we would make an insignificant gain, add another bull to several types of church art, but we would cause enormous damage to church life, depriving Christian society of the opportunity for intellectual edification and opening wide gates for the replacement of precise and definite truths with vague feelings. Preaching differs from all types of church art, precisely as a simple religious teaching, in that it is directed from heaven to earth, there is a word God to people, while art is directed from earth to heaven, from people to God (Eph. V, 19: singing to the Lord; also Col. III, 16). Christian teaching is given by God and preserved by church tradition; Christian teaching must therefore be authoritative, i.e. teaching on behalf of the Lord Jesus Christ and the church through authorized persons. The Church has always jealously guarded its exclusive right to teach. So up. Paul wrote: even if we or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel other than what we preached to you, let him be accursed (Gal. I: 8). Having themselves been sent to preach by the Lord Jesus Christ, the apostles prepared their successors in teaching (2 Tim. IV, 1-2) and they were commanded in turn to confirm the tradition of Christian teaching: what they heard, writes the ap. Paul to his disciple Timothy, “what you heard from me in the presence of many witnesses, entrust to faithful people who would be able to teach others (2 Tim. II, 2). Subsequently, this continuity of teaching was identified with the continuity of the church hierarchy, and the right of teaching was assigned by the church only to bishops and elders. However, even in those cases when the church allowed (cf. Lent, Apostle VIII, 32, also the example of Origen), as it still allows the laity to teach, the basic principle of Christian teaching, expressed in the words of the Apostle, is not weakened in the least: how to preach if they are not sent? (Rom. X, 15) 98. Likewise, by appropriating the right of teaching to hierarchical persons, the church more intensely expresses the same principle of Christian teaching (cf. above). Not only that. The Church not only sends preachers, but also assigns the responsibility of teaching to persons of higher hierarchical levels, which clearly demonstrates that preaching is not an art, for art cannot be assigned as a responsibility to certain persons. See MP. XVI, 15; Mf. XXVIII, 19.20; 1 Cor. IX, 16; 1 Tim. IV, 1; 2 Tim. IV, 1. 2; right ap. 58: a bishop or presbyter who neglects the clergy and people, and does not teach them piety, shall be excommunicated, and if he remains in his negligence and laziness, let him be deposed; 36; 80; VI all. personal etc. 19. On the contrary, church art is an expression of the existing feelings of Christians of one time or another and constitutes a means of mutual edification of Christians (Eph. V, 18. 19; Col. III, 16 cp. 1 Cor. XIV, 26). True, over time, the church was forced by the abuses of heretics to take art under its supervision. But this observation related, as it goes without saying, to the church use of works of art, but not to creativity itself. These are the personal Laod. right 15; Apart from singers who are members of the clergy, who enter the pulpit and sing according to the book, no one else should sing in church; right 59: it is not proper to speak non-sacred psalms in church, etc. But such rules obviously have a conditional meaning, since the church, to the best of favorable circumstances, always expresses the desire that all Christians take part in church singing. The same should be said about other types of church art. Turn to our time, understand whose melodies are heard in our churches - are they not free composers, spiritual and secular? by whose architectural art are our churches built? whose art is our church painting? This is the art of individuals, their free creativity. Let us now consider the imaginary foundations of the artistic nature of the sermon, which are borrowed from the history of preaching. They say that in the very word of God some parts have an artistic character. These are the psalms, the Song of Songs, in the Old Testament. Yes, we will answer this, the Holy Scripture in some parts has an artistic character, but only in the Old Testament parts. In the New Testament, psalms are equated with hymns and spiritual songs, as a means of mutual edification of Christians (Eph. V, 19; Col. III, 16). But doesn’t the New Testament word of God also contain artistic parts? Isn't it the art of parables? L.N. Tolstoy calls parables art, but it is very easy to prove the opposite. He writes: “The business of art is to make understandable and accessible that which could be incomprehensible and inaccessible in the form of reasoning 99 . Usually, when receiving a truly artistic impression, it seems to the recipient that he knew it before, but just did not know how to express it. And this has always been good, highest art: the Gospel parables convey very high feelings and, despite this, are quite understandable to us now, educated and uneducated, and were understandable to those of that time, even less educated than our working people” 100. On the contrary, from the Gospel we know that Jesus Christ usually spoke to the people in parables and sometimes very dark ones (τοῖς ἔξω); To the disciples He either spoke in parables together with the people, always adding explanations to the parables in private (Mp. Ι V, 84), or spoke in direct speech. The very custom of teaching the people in parables, which caused bewilderment among the disciples (Matt. XIII, 10), He explained to them this way: it has been given to you to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, and to those outside everything happens in parables, so that (ἵ να) they look and do not see, and listen and hear and do not understand, lest they turn and their sins are forgiven (Mp. IV, 11. 12; Luke VIII, 10), for whoever has, more will be given to him; and whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken away from him (Matt. XIII, 12). Subsequently, His disciples testified to Him: behold, now you speak plainly and do not speak any parables (cf. John XV, 14, 15: you are My friends... I no longer call you servants, for the servant does not know what his master is doing; but I called you friends, because I have told you everything that I heard from My Father) 101. Now we see, the disciples continued, that You know everything, and have no need for anyone to question You. Therefore we believe that You came from God (John XVI, 29.30). It is obvious that the Lord Jesus taught the people in parables not for the sake of their artistic character, but according to the same instructions by which He chose Judas to be one of the twelve... In any case, the parable in the mouth of Jesus Christ had exceptional significance; therefore, it is not repeated subsequently either by the apostles or by the successors of their preaching ministry 102. Neither Jesus Christ Himself nor His apostles used the art of orators in their preaching activities; the simplicity and artlessness of their speeches was even fundamentally hostile to oratory. In this regard, especially clear evidence is given by the preaching practice and instructions of St. Paul on the methods of preaching presentation. So 1 Cor. I, 17: Christ did not send me to preach the gospel in the wisdom of the word (οὐκ ἐν σοφί ᾳ λόγου) and further to Art. 31; II, 4. 5: my word and my preaching are not in convincing words of human wisdom (έν πειθο ĩ ς ανθρωπίνης σοφίας λόγοις), but in the manifestation of the spirit and power, so that your faith is not based on human wisdom ( έν σοφία and νθρώπων), but on the power of God; 2 Cor. IV, 2; 1 Thess. II, 4 – 6; 1 Tim. I, 3 – 4; VI, 4.5; 2 Tim. II, 15. 16, 23: Tit. III, 9. 103 True, the apostle spoke about all Christians in 1 Cor. VIII, 1: we all have knowledge (γνώσιν) about ourselves 2 Cor. XI, 6: although I am ignorant in words, I am not ignorant in knowledge (τή γνώσει), but this is not the wisdom of this age, but the wisdom of God (1 Cor. II, 6.7). The instructions of the apostle are also important for us. Paul regarding the order of public meetings of Christians (1 Cor. XII-XIV). We have already mentioned that the Christians of the first times showered each other with works of art - psalms, hymns and spiritual songs; but besides this, extraordinary spiritual gifts were found in abundance among them. Thus, when they came together, each of them could not only have a psalm, but also a teaching, a language, a revelation, an interpretation (1 Cor. XIV, 26). Disputes arose among Corinthian Christians about which of the spiritual gifts was higher. Ap. Paul, in his letter to them, explains on this subject that the various spiritual gifts are like the various members in the body and are manifestations of the same Spirit, therefore none of them should be neglected, but that, at the same time, some of them are preferable to others, and those that produce edification are the most excellent of them. On this basis the apostle places the gift of prophecy above the gift of tongues. In general, he instructs the Corinthian Christians so that everything they do - psalm, teaching, tongue, revelation, interpretation - let all this be for edification (v. 26). He who speaks in a tongue speaks not to men, but to God; because no one understands him, he speaks secrets in the spirit. And whoever prophesies speaks to people for edification, admonition and comfort (vv. 2.3); Therefore he who prophesies is superior to him who speaks in tongues (v. 5). The Apostle expresses his thought very clearly: undoubtedly, even in a state of religious ecstasy and exaltation, a Christian receives edification, but he edifies only himself and does not edify others - and in himself he edifies only the spirit and does not edify his mind - his mind remains unfruitful (v. 14)... Applying the instructions of the Apostle to the solution of the question we have posed, we can say: if Christians did not have a teaching sermon, then no matter how they they have abundant means of spiritual edification, their mind would remain fruitless. But making such an application of the words of the ap. Paul to preach, we must remember that the apostle in 1 Cor. XIV, 26 speaks of teaching, which must be distinguished from preaching. He writes: So what, brethren? When you come together, and each of you has a psalm, there is a teaching, there is a tongue, there is a revelation, there is an interpretation - let all this be for edification. According to him, each of the Christians who came to the meeting could have a lesson. But this is an order completely different from that according to which Christian preaching exists. The beginning of the sermon is the one teacher Christ; He sends other preachers of His teaching, so that an embassy from Him or from the church is a necessary sign of Christian preaching. True, the obligation to evangelize falls on all disciples of Christ; but of course this obligation is only in the sense of evangelizing life; in the sense of the actual ministry of the word, this obligation means, in part, the legal capacity of all Christians to teach (Rom. XV, 14, cp. 1 Cor. VIII, 1), in part, the obligation to actually exercise this legal capacity under the condition of a special calling and to the extent of one’s position (1 Cor. XIV, 35). And even if all of Christ’s disciples actually became preachers, the significance in the matter of preaching of the embassy from the one Christ, or His Church, would not have changed or diminished. On the contrary, in the order of public meetings of Christians, described by the apostle in 1 Cor. ΧΙ V, 26, we see a completely opposite direction of teaching: each of the Christians, coming together, brought with him to the meeting of Christians a psalm, or teaching 104, etc. What is this teaching that every Christian could bring to the Christian congregation? In any case, it was a means of mutual edification of Christians, like the above-mentioned works of Christian art (Eph. V, 18.19; Col. III, 16); then it was a more or less direct manifestation of the Holy. The Spirit, an extraordinary gift, which differed from the gift of tongues only in the degree of clarity for the mind, it was the speech of the spirit, and not the mind, which is why the apostle brings it under general instruction - let all this be for edification; finally, this teaching, being a direct inspiration from the Holy Spirit, was at the same time a type of Christian art, which is why it was called by the apostle between psalm and language, and it is self-evident that inspiration from the Holy Spirit and artistry are completely compatible with one another (Eph. V, 18. 19; Col. III, 16). It was an inspiredly artistic speech - a solemn, festive, liturgical speech, similar to the above-mentioned well-known Easter word of St. John Chrysostom. In explanation of words there is a psalm, there is a teaching, there is the language of St. John Chrysostom writes: “in ancient times I composed psalms according to gift, and taught according to gift.” Here we cannot help but remember that the apostle distinguished the word of wisdom (λόγος σοφίας) from the word of knowledge (λόγος γνώσεως). By wisdom he meant human wisdom and artistic speech and said about himself that he did not use verbal art in preaching: by knowledge he meant Christian wisdom, the fullness of frank knowledge of the truth, which was completely reconciled with ignorance in the word. In agreement with this blessed. Augustine considered the one who can speak wisely (sapienter) to be capable of Christian preaching, and not the one who speaks eloquently (eloquenter) 105. But the apostle, considering the manifestation of human wisdom and verbal art inappropriate in preaching, allowed the manifestation of wisdom (σοφία) in Christians, as inspiration from the Holy Spirit, Who makes human art pure - he even desired such wisdom for Christians as a means of their mutual edification 106 - 1 Cor. XII, 8; Col. III, 16. The manifestation of such inspired artistic wisdom was the teaching about which the apostle speaks. Paul in 1 Cor. XIV, 26 and which in XII, 8 corresponds not to the word of knowledge (λόγος γνωσεως), but to hellish wisdom (λόγος σοφίας). Preaching, as a teaching sermon, as the only means of filling Christians with all knowledge of Christ (Rom. XV, 14), renewing them in the spirit of the mind (Eph. IV, 23), imparting to them divine wisdom (V, 15.17) - preaching, like hellish knowledge (λόγος γνώσεως), genetically comes from the wrong place inspired artistic teaching, which among the ancient Christians was a means of mutual edification, and from the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ, from the apostolic preaching, to which “verbal art” was alien, and is established in tradition (2 Tim. II, 2). The homiletical theory of blessedness fully agrees with this. Augustine, who distinguishes the action of grace guiding the preacher from the immediate and complete inspiration of liturgical and solemn speeches (cf. above) and who calls the Christian preacher a sage (sapienter λόγος γνώσεως), and not an orator (eloquenter λόγος σοφίας ). When the Protestant homiletists of the III Leiermacher school demand that church preaching be only an expression of the feelings of the Christian community, they are not actually talking about preaching, but about the mutual edification of Christians through inspired and artistic speeches, from which preaching differs in essence. When, further, some homiletists point out the main productive force of preaching in the grace of the Holy Spirit, considering it to be inspired and artistic speech, then they are also not talking about preaching, which is pronounced only under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but about the same mutual edification of Christians. Finally, in defense of the artistic nature of sermons, they point out that in the ancient Christian church there were two types of sermons - not only artlessly didactic, but also inspired and solemn, having an artistic presentation and form. These are the words attributed to Hippolytus, Gregory the Wonderworker, Methodius of Patara, these are the numerous festive words of Gregory the Theologian and many other famous preachers. The presence of artistic and solemn sermons in ancient preaching literature is an undoubted fact; but for us the fact itself is not important, but it is important to evaluate what significance it has for the doctrine of the nature of the sermon. The significance of this fact is determined by the origin of ancient artistically solemn sermons. We have seen that already in the Apostolic Church there were two types of verbal edification - preaching teaching, which came according to tradition from the one teacher Christ, and the mutual edification of Christians through inspired artistic speeches. It is easy to assume that the artistic and solemn church speeches of subsequent centuries belong to the last kind of edification, namely the mutual edification of Christians, which, of course, is not in the least contradicted by the fact that such solemn church speeches were pronounced by the heads of churches: they, being the envoys of Jesus Christ in teaching sermons, in solemn speeches in which, in the words of Gregory the Theologian 107, they “sang” God, acted as representatives of the flock, expressors of her feelings. But this assumption is not enough to explain the origin of solemn church speeches, which began to appear, perhaps, from the middle of the third century, abundantly in the 15th century, and especially in the 5th-7th centuries. The fact is that already within the meaning of the above instructions of St. Paul in 1 Cor. XII-XIV Among Christians over time, preaching teaching began to prevail in meetings over inspired and artistic mutual edification; At the same time, extraordinary talents were being discovered more and more weakly among Christians. But from the 4th century. a new factor appeared, to which solemn church speeches owe their origin, completely or largely, - it was the influence of pagan oratory. This influence is recognized by all scholars who have worked on the history of preaching. We will present an authoritative opinion on this issue, highly respected. Anthony, now Metropolitan. St. Petersburg. “The most famous fathers of the church,” he writes, the preachers of the fourth century, who received their universal, humane education in the then pagan schools, where eloquence was the most important subject of study, very noticeably used its rules in their preaching practice. In their sermons one can find examples of all three types of (pagan) eloquence 108, its influence was reflected in their oratorical and preaching techniques, in the development and arrangement of thoughts and evidence, in the decorations of speech, in the difference in syllable according to the difference in the purpose of words intended either for simple teaching, or for persuading the will, or for glorifying the holiday and praising the memory of saints, etc. Although this influence becomes especially noticeable from the fourth century, its initial traces are found much earlier, in the very first monuments of preaching literature dating back to the third century. These traces affect mainly the noticeable difference in their external and internal properties of different directions and types of preaching, which arose, of course, under the influence of different types of eloquence, of which, when applied to preaching, the deliberative and solemn types received special significance. From the very first moment in the history of church eloquence, we simultaneously encounter two parallel literary and preaching movements: the teaching (deliberative) and the solemn, which stretch throughout the entire history of ancient Greek preaching. Until the fifth century, the teaching kind of preaching had predominant importance; from the fifth century, the solemn kind gained dominance, which intensified and acquired greater and greater development as the circle of festive celebrations increased in the Christian Church. There is a marked difference between the one and the other kind of preaching, each of them being influenced by a special theory. And the extent to which one or another theory significantly influences the structure and character of sermons is most conveniently studied in the works of the same preacher. A different character, for example, is captured in the words of Gregory the Theologian, where he simply teaches something (catechumens), another - where he tries to influence the will of the listeners, and another - words in which a person or holiday is glorified. As a result, each of these areas of preaching has its own special range of preaching works. Catechetical teachings, explanatory conversations or homilies, moralizing words belong to the advisory or teaching type, the purpose of which is teaching in general and directing the will to certain activities. Words of praise on the feasts of the Lord and the Mother of God and in honor of the saints refer to the solemn generation, the purpose of which is the glorification of an event or person, the glorification of the greatness and mercies of God revealed to the human race. The area of ​​the first is mind and will, the area of ​​the second is feeling and imagination. The first is, as it were, preaching prose, the second is preaching poetry, the main elements of which are drama and lyricism” 109. However, in this opinion about the influence of pagan oratory on Christian preaching, one cannot agree with the fact that not only solemn church speeches, but even the teaching type of preaching appeared under the influence of pagan oratory. After all, the teaching type of preaching is preaching prose. But can not only poetry, but even prose, appear only under the influence of “models and theory?” Preaching prose is a completely unartificial teaching speech, originating from Jesus Christ and the apostles and continuously continuing to this day in the continuity of tradition. Moreover, to explain the origin of this kind of preaching there is no need to resort to pagan oratory, since the latter in all its forms was art: it did not know prose (see above). So, when we read that the influence of pagan oratory, especially in the 4th and later centuries, “affects mainly the noticeable difference between different directions and types of preaching,” and namely the unartificially instructive and the artistically solemn, then this must be understood in such a way that before the time of this influence Christianity knew one type of sermon and the actual preaching of the unartificially instructive 110, and from the 4th century. another type of sermon appeared - artistic and solemn speeches, which, as suggested by our previous discussions and as will be explained a little below, are not the essence of sermons proper 111. Now we can answer the question of what significance the presence of ancient solemn speeches has for the doctrine of the nature of Christian preaching. Since solemn church speeches appeared under the influence of pagan oratory, these speeches have no significance for the doctrine of the essence of teaching preaching. It should be borne in mind that in the field of Christian art, which is directed from earth to heaven, from man to God, the influence of pagan art is permissible, since it is universal to mankind; on the contrary, in the field of Christian teaching, which is directed from God to man and rests entirely on tradition, such influence is intolerable. Therefore, the very existence of solemn speeches in the church is allowed only in the sense of art, as a means of mutual edification of Christians, along with teaching sermons, and the invasion of the same solemn tone into teaching sermons and the predominance of solemn speeches over teaching sermons should be considered a sad result of the influence of pagan art. Such a replacement of teaching sermons with solemn speeches became common in the ancient church, starting from the 5th century, while the invasion of artistic tone into teaching sermons was noticed already in the 4th century. So we find artistically touching descriptions in moral and practical sermons, for example. in the words of Basil the Great about covetousness, for those who get drunk, Gregory the Theologian about love for the poor. That these sermons as a whole are of a teaching nature, and not artistic, is indisputable: only a partial influence of pagan art is noticeable in them 112. Such artistic parts in teaching sermons and, in general, the artistic tone in them, contrary to the now usual view 113, should be looked at not as an advantage, but as a disadvantage, as a concession by preachers due to human weakness, love of fame, and the whimsical desires of listeners who were carried away by eloquence and expected from the sermon not teaching, but pleasure. This is how the preachers themselves looked at it - John Chrysostom, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian. So the first of them, in conversation XXX on the Acts of the Apostles, reproaching his listeners for the fact that they “are not looking for words that are touching, but are looking for words that delight both in the pronunciation and composition of speech, as if listening to singers and musicians,” writes about himself: “and we, in a cold and pitiful way, try to please your desires, which should be rejected. And it happens the same as if some father gave his too tender and at the same time sick son cake, refreshments and everything that only delights, but did not offer anything useful... The same thing happens to us when we care about the beauty of expressions, about the composition and euphony of speech, in order to give pleasure, and not to bring benefit, to arouse surprise, and not to teach, to delight, and not to touch, to receive applause and walk away with praise, but morals cannot be corrected. Believe me, I say it not without reason, when my words are accompanied by applause, at that time I feel something human, why not tell the truth? - I rejoice and enjoy; but when, returning home, I think that those who applauded did not receive any benefit, and if they could have used anything, they lost it from applause and praise, then I grieve, regret and cry, I think that I spoke in vain, and I say to myself: what is the use of my labors when the listeners do not want to receive any benefit from my words? By asserting that preaching is not an art, we stand against all our authorities. Metropolitan Anthony, Professor E.E. Golubinsky 114, V.F. Pevnitsky, N.I. Barsov recognize preaching as an art. Metropolitan Anthony writes on this issue as follows: “Church sermon in the sphere of literary works is a special literary type, which has its own special tasks and goals and is subject to its own laws of internal development and artistic creativity... Between the different types of verbal works, preaching has a close relationship and kinship with the oratorical type of literature... Sermon naturally had to submit in its development to the basic laws and rules of secular eloquence 115, etc. (Continued in the above excerpt.) Considering it our duty to justify ourselves in such a contradiction with scientific authorities, we should note the following. The authors we named did not directly raise the question of whether preaching is an art, but spoke on this issue in passing; Metropolitan Anthony spoke out more directly than others. As expressed in passing, their views are not distinguished by certainty. So Barsov, objecting to one of his reviewers, who recognized the sermon as eloquence, asserts only that the sermon is “not only a work of art,” that it is oratory of a special kind, only requiring proper boundaries for oratory in relation to faith, so that sermon and oratory are not merged, although he allows their inseparability; however, on the same pages of his book we find undoubted evidence against the artistic nature of the sermon: the ancient “church,” he writes, allowed pagan speakers by profession to be baptized and accepted into its bosom not before they had formally renounced their oratory profession: obviously, the church understood oratory as a thing by its nature inconsistent with the Christian character of preaching and alien to it... The essence of all homiletics patristic, its main tendency is a decisive and complete rejection of secular rhetoric” 116. When assessing the same solemn speeches, the named scientists fall into contradiction with each other: Barsov with Pevnitsky in assessing the words of Hippolytus, Gregory the Wonderworker, Methodius of Patarsky 117, Golubinsky with Metropolitan. Anthony in his assessment of the words of Cyril of Turov. And there is reason to believe that such disagreement is explained by “not established common views and the lack of solid principles for the correct assessment” of the sermons. At least this is how Metropolitan looks at the matter. Anthony, who brings his polemics to prof. Golubinsky on the question of the essence and nature of preaching 118. Finally, the opinion of Metropolitan. Anthony, who spoke more or less definitely on our question in the two above excerpts, which we will now keep in mind, his opinion, being contrary to our view at first glance, turns out to be easily reconciled with it upon closer examination of the matter. He notes two trends in the history of ancient Greek preaching - teaching and solemn, of which the first is preaching prose, and the second is poetry. But in this case, it cannot be said that church preaching is generally subject to the laws of artistic creativity, that it essentially has an affinity with oratory. This can be said about only one type of sermon - about solemn church speeches; Another preaching movement - teaching, by the author's own admission, is not art. Therefore, even if we agree to call solemn church speeches sermons, and in this case, a concession on our part: does not change our view of the essence of preaching in the least: in this extreme case, we agree only with the fact that only one type of sermon, undoubtedly the most important, is not art, while the other is art, that everything we have said about the essence of preaching relates only to the first kind, that we present the doctrine only about one type of sermon - teaching 119. But we cannot make such a concession for the following reasons: firstly, the fact that in the history of ancient Greek preaching (as well as ancient Russian, which was influenced by Greek) we encounter sermons not only teaching, but also solemn, should not have decisive significance for the doctrine of the essence of preaching. Each theory has a basis for itself that extends beyond the limits of historical fact. After all, we consider scholastic or political preaching to be a false direction in preaching. If everything historical had a law-positive significance for theory, then theory would be impossible. Moreover, “until the fifth century - in the most important period in the history of preaching - the teaching type of preaching was of predominant importance.” Secondly. It is essentially impossible to call teaching sermons and solemn church speeches the general name of sermon, if only we consider the sermon to be “a special literary type, having its own special tasks and subject to its own laws.” By combining sermons and solemn speeches under one name, we will not get a special literary type, but we will get a literary concept under which any literary or verbal work fits. This is obvious: both types of preaching were influenced by a special theory (p. 349), were subject to special laws and had special goals (352) - and therefore they are not combined into “one literary type.” Homiletics cannot deal with both kinds: it is the theory of teaching preaching, and for church ceremonial speeches there must be a special theory - the theory of church verbal art. Thirdly. By denying the title “sermon” to solemn church speeches, we do not cause any damage to church literature, because we do not cast these speeches out of the realm of church literature, but only classify them as church art 120. At the same time, we do not in any way demean the solemn speeches and do not belittle their significance. If they were sermons, then they would, of course, be the lowest kind of sermons; but as art, as another kind of verbal works, they are neither higher nor lower than teaching sermons. With this we make the necessary clarifications to the previous chapters. In the chapter on the content of the sermon, we reasoned that the only subject of the sermon is the word of God, and in churchism we only indicated the condition of the modernity of the sermon, and in the chapter on the modernity of the sermon, we refused to call festive words sermons, i.e. those words to which churchliness not only gives form to modernity, but also gives content. Our reasoning might seem strange to the reader. If these are not sermons, the reader might think, then what: aren’t they romances or fairy tales? This, we now answer, is church verbal art, which is neither higher nor lower than a teaching sermon. The depiction of the life of a saint in the church word, the glorification of the holiday, like the Easter word of John Chrysostom, is art. You just need to remember, on the one hand, that church verbal art should not replace teaching preaching. Although solemn speeches cover a large area of ​​a person’s inner life, although artistic poetic works always have a larger circle of readers and, therefore, a larger circle of influence, 121 they cannot replace a simple teaching sermon, which has its own special goals. On the other hand, we must remember that holiday words, like church chants, “require high artistic talent. The higher the artistic talent, the better the solemn speech, and vice versa. In the hands of people not gifted with such talent, such speech can turn into empty phrase-mongering, cold rhetoric." 122 In conclusion of the discussion that preaching is not an art, we consider it not superfluous to repeat once again that preaching should not be abstract or dry, but lively and touching. The only point is that in preaching the word of God must be conveyed vividly and touchingly, not according to the laws of art, not according to form, but according to content and spiritual experience. The Word of God, living and touching, must be assimilated by the preacher not artistically, but with the mind, but not with the mind alone, but spiritually and experientially and transmitted to the listeners with love for them, along with the soul of the preacher. Preaching is alive, but not because it is a matter of art, but because it is a matter of life. In connection with the question of the relationship of the teaching sermon to solemn church speeches, we consider it not superfluous to make a remark about the relationship of the sermon to the divine service. A teaching sermon, in contrast to solemn church speeches, cannot be called only an act of worship, a part of worship, as Schleiermacher consistently does, who by church sermon means solemn speeches, or as Prof. Barsov emphatically calls the sermon liturgical. A sermon is quite appropriate during worship, adjacent to the reading of the word of God, as its explanation; it is quite appropriate for worship, since Christian worship, as a public service, gathers the Christian people. It is quite understandable why from ancient times the liturgical meeting was also a teaching meeting; It would be desirable for it to be the same now. But preaching should not be limited to worship; it is required wherever there are listeners; it should be pronounced not only in churches, but also in houses, and in the field, and on the road. Opponents of this view must prove not only that from ancient times a sermon has been a necessary part of worship, but also that preaching was never preached outside of worship and church by either the apostles or their successors. It is, of course, impossible to prove this... We can only rejoice at the recent widespread use of extra-liturgical interviews, which are attended by the people willingly and bring undoubted educational fruit. Preaching is not an art; therefore, from the outside it should be completely artless and simple. These few words express the entire teaching of homiletics about the external side of preaching. Let us now consider our homiletics from this point of view. The entire part of Amphitheater's Homiletics, which treats the external side of the sermon, consists of four elements: 1) those discussions about the preaching language that are appropriate in the section on the nationality and modernity of the sermon; 2) reasoning about the aesthetic properties of the sermon; 3) rules of grammar and logic and 4) special externally practical rules. In this place we will talk about the second of these elements. Amphitheaters, in the section on the external nature of the church conversation, discusses in some detail, although perhaps reluctantly (II, p. 189), the aesthetic or oratorical properties of the preaching style, the beauty of the form of the sermon; in the section on the message of a church interview, he talks about bodily eloquence, about the aesthetic qualities of the preaching act, including even aesthetic pleasantness and entertainment; in the section on the action of the voice and verbal organ, he talks about the art of graceful declamation. If preaching is not an art, then all these discussions in the science of preaching are completely inappropriate. Of our other homiletics, similar in this regard to the Reading on Church Literature, in Chepik’s Experience we even find a whole (first) part, general, however brief, devoted to the consideration of a sermon as a verbal work, or as a work in general, and as an actual oratorical work in particular. However, how unclear the author is about the matter is clear from the introduction, where he says that “church sermon should, on the one hand, be like a pious conversation at home - simple, unartificial, frank; and on the other hand, to represent a more or less artistic, coherent and harmonious presentation of the known truths of religion” (p. 4): artlessness and artistry, according to the author, are only two sides of the presentation and can be simultaneously in the same verbal work! Let us now turn in particular to the question of the form of preaching, which in our homiletics is also considered from an artistic point of view of preaching. When talking about the form of a verbal work, they usually and legitimately use the word form in a sense in which simple speech has no form: the form of a verbal work is the actual artistic form - a novel, a story, a drama, an oratorical speech. When we talk about simple speech, we mean that it does not have an artistic form, i.e. has no form. And by the name sermon we do not indicate in the least the form of a verbal work, but we indicate solely and exclusively the content, purpose and internal character of the speech - a simple teaching speech that has no form. Therefore, there should be no actual teaching on the form of preaching in homiletics. The entire teaching of homiletics about the external side of preaching, as already said, is exhausted by the words: preaching is simple, unartificial speech. In the improper sense, form refers to either some aspects of the internal character of speech (psychological or internal form - a figurative expression, but a common one), or a technique and method in the presentation and disclosure of thoughts (so they say: analytical and synthetic forms), or random and unimportant external features of speech, for example. dialogical, monologue, question-and-answer forms. So we above called modernity a psychological form of preaching, we called exegetical-analytical conversation and synthetic-thematic teaching forms. Conversation and teaching are not, in the proper sense, forms of preaching, but only methods of presenting thoughts in a sermon. But we will continue to call conversation and teaching forms of preaching in the improper sense, not only because they are usually called that way, but also in order to be able to designate with one name conversation, teaching and word, which are used both in preaching practice and in theory in the same meaning (forms of preaching) and of which the latter is truly an artistic form. The essence of our view does not change from such word usage: conversation and teaching are not forms of preaching in the proper sense, but are methods in the preaching presentation of thoughts, in explaining the word of God, and therefore they need to be talked about in homiletics exactly where we talk about them (in the section on the content of the sermon); There should be no special teaching about them as forms of preaching. If our homiletics speak especially about the form of preaching in general and about the forms of preaching in particular, it is because they look at preaching from an artistic point of view. There can be two and only two forms of preaching as techniques in the preaching explanation of the word of God in essence: an exegetical-analytical conversation, in which the word of God is explained in its own sequence, and a synthetic-thematic teaching, in which the teaching of the word of God is presented on one or another issue, or systematically. In the first times of Christian history, preaching knew no other form than these two. We find exegetical and thematic techniques already in the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ and His apostles with the peculiarity of later times that for them the Holy Scripture (Old Testament) was not the subject of preaching, but its explanation was only a means of revealing a new teaching; therefore, they chose well-known passages from the Holy Scriptures of the VZ for explanation (Luke IV, 17: found the place; cf. D.A. II). Over time, when Christians acquired the sacred Scripture of the New Testament, which has absolute importance for them in its entirety, these two forms of preaching became even more clearly defined. Relevant testimonies of Tertullian, Irenaeus, Apostle. decrees (III century) are generally known and are given in all courses on the history of Christian preaching. In those days, as later, even entire books of Holy Scripture were expounded in exegetical conversations, and issues of life and theology were revealed in thematic teachings. But since the influence of pagan oratory on Christian preaching, a new artistic oratory form of preaching has appeared, along with exegetical conversation and thematic unartificial teaching - the word. For us in this place it does not matter whether this influence from the form extended to teaching sermons, or was limited only to church solemn speeches. In any case, the form of the word in terms of thematization differed from the exegetical conversation and was similar to the teaching, but differed significantly from the teaching in that the teaching was, although thematic, but completely unartificial preaching, and the thematization was not strictly defined, i.e. it did not deliberately observe the unity that was considered perfection in oratorical speech, and the word was an oratorical artistic form, with strict thematization and logical order of presentation. It can also be noted that teaching was always more abundant in moral teaching; on the contrary, the word was sometimes limited to abstract theological questions. During the times of scholasticism, when preachers and homilets paid the strictest attention to the form of preaching, the word as a form acquired tactile, visual certainty. That such definiteness of form was thought in the days of scholasticism and even earlier, during the decline of Byzantine preaching, to replace the artistry of form and forgot about its artistry itself, as is always possible either with a lack of artistic talent or with the artificial application of this form to teaching speech, this is for. the question of the origin of the word as a form is irrelevant. So, in essence and according to historical circumstances, preaching has three forms - conversations, teachings and words, and conversation and teaching are not the actual forms, but the word is an artistic oratorical form. Let us now turn to our homiletics. They recognize four forms of preaching: the word, conversation, catechetical teaching and short teaching. First of all, let’s exclude from this list the unnecessary things that crept in here due to a misunderstanding. By naming catechetical teaching among the forms of preaching, the homiletes expressly indicate that this name designates not the form, but the content of the sermon. So Favorov writes: “under the name of catechetical teachings we mean the presentation of the main subjects of Christian teaching in the form of classroom lessons... catechetical teachings can take all forms of 123 sermons.” And Potorzhinsky reports that even the Holy Synod, which examined the catechetical teachings of Stratilatov, called them by the general name “church teachings.” Likewise, a short teaching is not a form of sermon, because brevity is not a form, and given their brevity, these teachings, according to the Manual, can be compiled both in the form of a complete and correctly composed arrangement for a word or for a conversation, and in the form of an epistle, or only in the form of an appendix, or in the form of simple fatherly advice, i.e. without any form. About the speeches that the archimandrite. Athanasius are combined with short teachings, and in Chepik they call it a special form of sermon; a correct remark is made in Favorov and Potorzhinsky: this name in homiletics indicates not the form, but the content, according to which speech is not a sermon; “if the content of the speech is general Christian, then the name of the teaching by speech has no special meaning” 124. So, according to our homiletics, the forms of preaching remain the word and conversation. Considering these forms, homiletics take an artistic point of view on preaching, although inconsistently. There is no doubt that the word, as a form of preaching, both in its origin and in the view of our homiletics, is an artistic oratorical form. So Favorov calls the word a complete oratorical speech; Potorzhinsky expresses that the word, in its external presentation and purpose, approaches oratory speech; Chepik, in a special section considering a sermon as an oratorical composition, and in a section on the form of a sermon, says that the rules for composing words are based, among other things, on the rules regarding secular essays, and the requirements regarding the components of an oratorical speech, with only a few exceptions and modifications, take place when composing sermons in the form of a word. Only someone completely unfamiliar with the history of homiletics can think that the requirements of this form of preaching are only the outline of any rational speech; no, these requirements from the point of view of simple reasonable speech do not make any sense. It's easy to show. According to Favorov, “the essential advantages of the arrangement of the word are completeness and unity. The word is supposed to reveal one truth; it must form a whole in which everything is imbued with one main thought. Without such unity, the word would not achieve its goal.” What purpose: the purpose of oratory or teaching? If the author understands the purpose of oratory, then he is right; if he understands the purpose of the sermon, then he is wrong. The requirement of unity in relation to every reasonable speech is a completely conditional requirement. It means: if you speak on a certain topic, then do not deviate from the subject of speech. But this is not an unconditional requirement in the sense that our speech should be limited to only one subject each time. It is unreasonable to jump to another thought without finishing one thought, without finishing one subject; but reasonable conversation can move from one subject to another without ceasing to be reasonable. The same applies to teachings: thematic, but unartificial teachings can always have an indefinite thematization. The purpose of teaching - teaching and edification - does not require elevating the strict unity of the topic to the ideal of form, considering it dignity and perfection. “The word,” Favorov continues, would not have achieved its goal if, for example, when speaking about the duty of children to obey their parents, we had made the following arrangement of the word: children must obey their parents... but in order for the obedience of children to be unhypocritical and non-slavish, parents should not abuse their power.” But what’s wrong with this from a preaching point of view? On the contrary, what is better than to speak in one teaching about the relationship of parents to children and children to parents, or about the relationship of servants to masters and masters to servants, etc.? In order not to go far for evidence of our thought, let us read what the same homiletics say about another form of preaching - conversation. “The conversational type of teaching is very important and can be excellently aimed at the edification of listeners. Here there are special benefits for listeners in that they can hear in one conversation about many and various very important subjects” (Athan. Notes p. 142). Obviously, the demand for unity makes sense only from an artistic point of view, and as soon as art is replaced by scholasticism, we get a false-classical unity. In addition, it must be remembered that this unity in the word is inextricably linked with the division of the whole into certain parts - attack, sentence, division, study, pathetic part and conclusion, and is fully achieved as a “strict connection of all these parts.” But about these parts it must again be said that they cannot be required from simple rational speech, from a simple teaching word. Thus, rhetorical homiletics considers the attack to be an unconditionally necessary part of the word, assigns to it a very special task of influencing listeners in a certain way, setting them in a certain direction necessary for the speaker. In this sense, the attack is inapplicable to teaching, which has the goal of teaching listeners, directing their will and adjusting their feelings solely by expounding the word of God. The attack of oratorical speech in the sermon is replaced by modernity and nationality, i.e. the adaptability of the presentation of God's word to the present state of the listeners. We will find confirmation of these thoughts in the homiletics themselves. “Attack,” we read in the Notes of Archimandrite. Athanasius, constitutes an absolutely necessary part of the sermon only when circumstances allow or require to offer a complete and correct (in form) word: otherwise, the circumstances themselves can serve as the best approach to the sermon and not require anything other than the shortest reservation” (p. 125). Next is a divided proposal and research. The sentence in a rhetorical word is the main idea expressed by the speaker, and “the study is the presentation of everything that the preacher has necessary and useful to say to the listeners about the chosen subject.” The evidence is mainly presented here (ibid. 129) expressed by the speaker in a sentence of thought, and the word of God itself is reduced to the level of proof along with evidence from history, nature, etc. This form is completely inapplicable to a simple teaching sermon, in which the sentence and presentation must coincide, because all its content is made up of a presentation of the teaching of the word of God and neither a special sentence, as the main idea of ​​the speaker, nor evidence are inappropriate in it. The application (pathetic part) in the word is a tribute to eloquence (Notes, p. 135), but to collect in one part of the sermon “everything that can touch the listeners” is completely contrary to the spirit of the sermon, in which the entire presentation of the word of God should be lively and touching. So, the word is an artistic oratorical form. But our homiletics do not consistently maintain this view of the word and, partly in special remarks, and partly in the very understanding of this form, they reduce their reasoning to the idea that the requirements of the word, as a form, are the requirements of simple rational speech, that the word must be artless. So, for example, Favorov: “a sentence in a word is necessary, just like in any composition” (76); the word “should never lose the character of conversation common to all forms of preaching” (68); in some cases, “conversation and word can become so close to each other that it is difficult, and there is no particular need, to posit any difference between them” (80) 125! Potorzhinsky well calls forms of preaching nothing more than ways of presenting thoughts in a sermon, and indicates two such methods - synthetic and analytical, but, in accordance with this, calling two forms of preaching - conversation and word, he thus considers the word only as a way of presenting thoughts. Chepik, devoting an entire chapter to the consideration of the sermon as an oratorical speech and in the section on forms speaking about the application of “artificial techniques from pagan rhetoric” (47) to the sermon, nevertheless reduces his speech to the idea that “the sermon should be a means of communicating the truth to people - that’s all that can be demanded from its form or arrangement” (48)! From such inconsistency comes the greatest shortcoming of the teaching of homiletics about forms, namely the fact that it does not specifically call teaching as a thematic, but artless sermon, and the only oratorical word is presented as a synthetic form of sermon. And this, in turn, leads to the fact that in homiletics any sermon “simple, sincere and unartificial” is called a conversation - not only the actual analytical conversation, but also synthetic teaching, so that the difference between analytical conversation and synthetic word disappears... So we return to what was said: preaching has three forms - conversations, teachings and words, and the word is an artistic oratorical form. But since preaching is not an art, it should not take the form of words. The sermon should always be unartificial and, moreover, either an exegetical conversation or a thematic teaching. We now need to relate our conclusions to preaching practice. That the sermon really appears in the three named forms is amenable to tactile, visual verification. consider everything that is usually considered a sermon, and it turns out that every sermon is either exegetical (conversation), or thematic, but unartificial (teaching), or artistically oratorical (word). But it’s a different matter if we pay attention to the titles used and used for the sermon. Bypassing in silence the names of the speeches of the Lord Jesus Christ and His holy apostles, because these names least of all indicate a homiletical form, we, already in the times closest to the apostles, encounter different sermon titles than we now use. So in Apost. fasting, exegetical conversation is called teaching on the scriptures ἐπὶ ταῖς γραφαις διδασκαλια, and thematic teaching is called teaching word ὁ της διδασκαλιας λογος. The name of sermon used in ancient times was homilia, conversation, but homilia was also exegetical and thematic 126. Likewise, the naming word was applied in ancient times both to artistic words and to thematic, but unartificial teachings. Sermons, identical in form and presentation, had different names. The name word began to indicate a strictly defined form during scholasticism. But in later times we again encounter instability in sermon titles. In our country, a word is used not only for a sermon in the form of an oratorical speech, but also for unsophisticated teaching. The full form of the word is extremely rare. The name conversation is commonly used; the explanation of a sacred text is most often called by this name, although not always: many words in short texts are essentially explanatory conversations. There are especially many such words to M. M. Filaret. In general, for every hundred words of our preachers, ninety-nine should be renamed either teachings or conversations. Recently, the name teaching has come into widespread use as the name of a thematic, but unartificial sermon, but often a short or catechetical one is unnecessarily added to this name. Outside of liturgical interviews and class lessons, there should be either conversations or teachings... How unstable we are in using the names of sermons can be seen from the fact that M. M. Filaret, once sending his sermon to a Moscow academic journal for publication, refused to give any title to his sermon and, as a joke, “left it to academic scientists to decide whether it was a word or a conversation” 127 . Obviously, from preaching practice it is impossible to draw definite conclusions regarding the names of forms of preaching, and it is necessary to establish a more or less conventional uniform terminology. By proposing such terminology in calling exegetical preaching a conversation, and thematic-synthetic preaching a teaching, we still think that we are expressing a more or less established use of these terms in our later preaching practice. In connection with the question of the form of the sermon, let us make a note about the use of the initial text in sermons. Should the text be placed at the beginning of every sermon or not? We have discussed this a lot, but nothing definite has been said. Some say that the custom of putting a text at the beginning of a sermon is an ancient and venerable custom, that the initial text indicates the sermon precisely as the preaching of the word of God. Others object that in ancient times the text at the beginning of the sermon was not always or even often used, that this custom was finally established during the times of scholasticism, that now the text is often only an epigraph, which serves no purpose and cannot even serve as a guarantee of the Christian content of the sermon. Indeed, even the best preachers have sermons in which they explain not the initial text, which is forgotten already in the first line of the sermon, but another. In our opinion, in resolving this issue one should proceed from the very concept of conversation and teaching. If a conversation is an explanation of the word of God, then a text is necessary in it. If the teaching is a presentation of the teaching of the word of God on one or another issue, then it does not have an exclusive relationship to one or another text and therefore the initial text is unnecessary. Either the text or the topic. When our homiletics teach about the initial text in a word, so that not only the main idea, but also the private thoughts of the word follow directly from the initial text, then, obviously, they confuse the word with conversation. If a teaching (or word) has such a close relationship to the text, then it is not a teaching (or word), but an explanatory conversation. As has been said, M. Filaret especially has a lot of such words. In short, everything that can be said in favor of the use of the initial text relates to the exegetical conversation; everything that is said against the custom of putting a text at the beginning of a sermon refers to synthetic teaching. It now remains for us to consider two more elements of the four that make up Amphitheater’s section of Homiletics on the external side of the sermon—namely, the rules of grammar and logic and special externally practical rules and advice. In those parts of this section of Amphitheater's Homiletics in which preaching is treated as an art, not all of the content of Homiletics follows directly from the view of preaching as an art, but very much here is simply borrowed from the old rhetorical homiletics, for which oratory was not an art, but a mechanism, a painted doll, and which believed all art not in the freedom of creativity, but in the slavish execution of the rules. Here we encounter clearing, communication, concession, warning, correction, passage, silence, interlocution, questioning, tension, buildup... These scholastic rules are closely related to grammatical and logical rules and practical instructions. Regarding the first of them, it should generally be noted that they are inappropriate in homiletics. If preaching were only a type of artistic and literary work, then grammatical and logical rules would be inappropriate in homiletics, just as they are inappropriate in the theory of the novel, drama, comedy, because they relate in general to language and speech, and not to types of literary works. But preaching is not just a type of artistic and literary work - it is living, unartificial speech, therefore, in the theory of preaching, grammatical and logical rules are doubly inappropriate. We may desire for the preacher a broad general education; but it does not have a specifically preaching or homiletical meaning. In relation to general education and in particular to grammatical education, the church at the moment of calling says to the preacher: be what you really are, speak as you can and as you know how 128. She can choose an educated pastor for educated parishes, and a simple shepherd for the common people, but each preacher, as he has received the word of God, is called to preaching, and must teach. If only the sermon was understandable to the listeners. Therefore, homiletics must consider language exclusively from the point of view from which the blessed. Augustine said: we are given speech in order to be understood. It is strange for someone preparing for preaching to teach that “speech becomes rough from the combination of many vowels, from the same combination of consonants,” etc. The scholastic-rhetorical and grammatical-logical rules imperceptibly transform into practical instructions regarding the pronunciation of the sermon, the external action of the preacher, the state of his body and the mute organs in the pulpit. What can we say about these instructions? Firstly, they are inappropriate in the theory of homiletics, because they stem not from the concept of preaching, but from general concepts, partly about expressive reading, partly about church decorum. Thus, in the section on the preaching activity of the Amphitheaters, he speaks either about the aesthetic or ecclesiastical qualities of the preaching activity, not excluding discussions about reverence befitting a church, etc. The section on the action of the voice, with the exception of the paragraph on improvisation, which is discussed below, is limited to the properties of the voice and the qualities of the reprimand in general. Here there are rules: no letters, no words need to be hidden or absorbed, etc. The same should be said about the section on the state of the preacher’s body and his dumb organs in the pulpit: rules are also set out here, stemming either from general concepts of decency, such as keeping your head straight and courteously turned towards the listeners, not raising it high, not wrinkled your brow unnecessarily, or from the concepts of church decorum, once emerging from the altar calmly, standing in front of a local icon and with reverence pray, making the sign of the cross correctly, etc. To see how unimportant these church customs are for preaching and have a conditional meaning only in relation to the church, one only has to imagine preaching outside the church. Secondly. In practical terms, all these rules are completely useless. Of course, in them the image of the pronunciation and action of the preacher is depicted quite correctly; but the way of pronunciation and action is not learned by rules, 129 but they are accustomed to it, they are brought up in it. They are accustomed to expressive reading - of course, at the time when they are learning to read - they are brought up in reverence for the church, for the word of God, they are accustomed by good examples to the external position of a preacher 130, and the rules here are completely useless, for, writes the blessed one. Augustine 131, it often happens that people understand the very objects for the understanding of which rules are taught rather than the intricate lessons about the rules” 132, etc. In this case, homiletics repeats the error characteristic of other church-practical sciences, for example. liturgics: they pay the main attention not to what the student can do, but to the fact that he can say how to do it - they prepare the student not for the task, but for the exam 133. If we need to talk about pronunciation and preaching action, then the conversation about this subject should be addressed not to students, but to teachers and educators: it should be about ways to train and educate preachers (about teaching homiletics) Chapter Five. Sermon as a living word In the paragraph on preparation for delivering sermons, the author of “Readings on Church Literature” expresses the desire that “every preacher be an improviser, at least in those cases that, due to their suddenness and unexpectedness, do not give the preacher time to think. In all other cases, according to prof. Amphitheater, it is much better to compose and say what you have composed. Improvisation is only an exception.” Contemporary of Prof. Amphiteatrova, the famous preacher M. Filaret, during his long preaching practice, with the exception of two or three cases, did not utter improvisations at all himself and even condemned the priests who practiced in this field. Now we have lost a famous preacher-improviser in the person of the late Archbishop Ambrose. Kharkovsky, who at the same time in the book “The Living Word” gave a theory of the living preaching word, drawn from his own many years of experience. Archbishop Ambrose considered improvisation in the work of preaching not an exception, but a normal way of preaching teaching; he makes an exception in the opposite direction only for the dogmas of faith and abstract truths of Christian moral teaching, and then only in the sense that it is difficult to speak about these subjects thoroughly and correctly and to express clearly in teachings that are not written down and have not been previously processed. “Therefore, it is necessary at the beginning to beware of improvisations of strictly dogmatic content and an abstract presentation of moral teaching. Only after many years of practice can one begin such teachings” (p. 102). The exception is unimportant, since dogmatic and abstract subjects should generally be avoided in sermons. From now on, looking at a sermon as anything other than a living, oral, improvised word, as the author of “The Living Word” looks at a sermon, is a sad turn to dead scholasticism 134 . According to clarification. archbishop Ambrose, the living word is oral as opposed to bookish. Speeches written at home, memorized and then delivered in meetings are not at all what deserve the name of a living word. Living speeches are completely unwritten speeches, sometimes only thought out at home, or even thought up on the spot, and then pronounced in meetings in the order and in those expressions that the speaker develops at the moment of utterance. The living word is completely opposite to the composition. In desk work, according to the requirements of logic, proofs, explanations, transitions from one part of speech to another, etc. turn out to be necessary, but in the living word, the requirements of abstract logic and the rules prescribed for essays are replaced by those feelings and movements of thought that the improviser notices in his listeners and which guide his speech. The living word comes to life. It is so opposed to a composition that even when an improvisation is written down, it turns into a composition and ceases to be a living word 135. The speech of an improviser is more or less colloquial. The preacher must speak as he can and as he knows how 136. To this masterful and deeply true description of the living preaching word, we allow ourselves to add the following remark. Archbishop Ambrose considers live speech only from an artistic oratorical point of view, equally applying it to both sermons and table speeches. In his opinion, the living word completely coincides with the oratory art of improvisation 137, without distinguishing the preaching word from secular oratory speeches. This point of view is revealed in the enumeration of those abilities that the author of “The Living Word” requires from an improviser. In his opinion, an improviser must certainly possess everything that is required of a gifted and thorough writer, and in addition have a special talent - alertness of mind, lightness, mobility, also a vivid imagination, a special gift of speech, power of voice, good appearance and overall appearance, and finally, a certain state of health and nervous system 138. Presenting the improviser in such an ideal light and endowing him with such a variety of high qualities, which are not easy to find in their entirety in one person, the author makes only the concession that the improviser may not have all these talents to the highest degree and, moreover, in complete harmony 139 . The concession is so insignificant that it is obviously not possible for all the pastors of the church to be improvisers. On the contrary, it seems to us that the possibility of a living preaching word should least of all be made dependent on special talents; We consider the sufficient psychological basis of preaching improvisation, in contrast to secular improvisation, to be the spiritual experience of the preacher, his calling, love for the listeners in connection with “possibly deep knowledge of the teachings of the faith with all the features of its external vestment and presentation” 140 and knowledge of the life of the listeners. We do not think that there are any special requirements from a sermon, as from a living word, except for those that are presented to the life of the preacher, to the content of the sermon and its nationality. This is due to the fact that preaching is not oratory, but simple, completely unartificial, colloquial teaching speech. At the same time, we allow ourselves to think that of the advantages of the living word that are indicated in the book of the archbishop. Ambrose, some, such as the open face and eyes of the orator, in which the strength of his inspiration is most expressed, the opportunity for the preacher to dwell on one thought more, shorten another - do not express the essence of preaching improvisation, while others, such as the influence on the listeners of the movements and emotions of the soul of the improviser, associated with thinking, with the difficulties and even dangers of unprepared speech, so that “every stop of the speaker worries the listener, every happy turn of speech he is pleased, and he remains under a double impression - both from the content of the speech and from the success of the speaker” 141 - do not fit the position of a preacher who, as a messenger of God, speaks simply, maybe rudely, but confidently. It is not from the point of view of these advantages of oral speech, not from an artistic point of view in general, that the living preaching word should be considered, but from the point of view of the true character of Christian preaching. The oral living word in the work of preaching is important as evidence of this nature of preaching in the sense that a true preacher can only speak with living speech. In fact, imagine a Christian preacher acting by calling, and tell me how he alone can speak to the people. A Christian preacher is a person who has experienced the Christian truth, is convinced of the saving faith of Christ and has deeply known “with his mind” the word of God; he loves his listeners with the love of Jesus Christ, he is ready to lay down his life for them; he knows their spiritual needs intimately. He speaks out of a sense of duty, as an ambassador of Christ, and out of awareness of the spiritual need of his listeners. He can only speak in living language, conversational, heartfelt speech. For him, preaching is not an exercise in words, but a matter of life; for him, speech is a means of living communication. For him to speak from a notebook is as unnatural as it is unnatural for a father to caress and instruct his son with words composed in advance from a notebook; it is just as strange for him to think about the form of speech, about the artificial arrangement of thoughts, about the choice of expressions, as for a messenger hastening to convey the message on which the salvation of the city depends. Not to mention the preaching of the Lord Jesus Christ and His holy apostles, and in general “in ancient times of Christianity, improvisation was the main type of preaching. The most famous church fathers spoke their conversations for the most part without preparation and did not write on charters; a notebook with a prepared sermon was considered a sign of inability to preach; They didn’t want to listen to anyone who showed up at the pulpit with a scroll. Missionaries of all times also improvised." 142 Preaching from a notebook is an artificial planting, which has been cultivated by abundant labor over a long period of time. The book school is the first breeding ground for such preaching. It intensively teaches the written expression of thoughts, weaning them from live speech. It teaches one to look at a sermon as an essay; it creates preachers who learn to write sermons before they themselves begin to experience the Christian truth in life, for whom Christian truth is bookish, abstract truth. The deepest basis of book preaching is an abstract view of Christian truth, a lack of spiritual experience, and alienation from life. The custom of preaching in church from a notebook is supported by the conditions of election of our shepherds, their preparation, the nature of their relationship to the flock, and generally historical circumstances and habits, but not by any reasonable grounds. All objections to oral preaching stem only from misunderstandings. Thus, first of all, what is opposed to improvisation is that it does not make it possible to subject a sermon to preliminary censorship, that an improvising preacher always faces the danger of expressing himself inaccurately, and perhaps incorrectly, about objects of faith. “Church teachings must be composed in advance, because caution and forethought are preferable in a matter in which the slightest negligence entails disastrous consequences. Even the most skilled will not dare to utter anything that he has not previously prepared with all possible care, that has not been verified not only by his own judgment, but even by the judgment of many.” This would be a serious objection to preaching improvisation if it were not based on a lack of faith in man and a belief in a dead letter, on a scholastic and even seemingly clerical view of the Christian religion. How insignificant the importance of logic and grammar is for the Christian faith, which is life and spirit, this can only be forgotten by those for whom everything is colored ink, who are accustomed to observing clerical reporting in everything. And where is the limit for fear of heresy? Let us remember those historical times when, as a result of this fear, the circle of people who were allowed to preach was limited, when independent preaching was completely prohibited, when the living word was completely silent: these were terrible times. Even within the narrowest limits, caution and prudence in this matter require limiting preaching only to the church and forbidding the pastor to talk with parishioners about objects of faith outside the church, in their homes, during and out of season. True, the subject of a church sermon, in contrast to the counseling conversations of a pastor outside the church, is often theological and dogmatic; There were even times when preaching was used for political purposes. But the task of the new homiletics, unlike the old one, is to dispel false views on the subject of preaching and to indicate for it the only content in the simple gospel truth, which stands not only outside political interests, but even outside that area, the theological, in which heresies and religious differences primarily fall... Then, the living preaching word is not an unprepared sermon and delivered with carelessness. It is improvisation only in relation to the expressions of thought, to the form of speech, because it is not a composition, but not in relation to the content. We imagine an improvising preacher as a person for whom the Christian mood and Christian way of thinking are familiar, who has the words of the gospel constantly in his thoughts and in his tongue, who delves into himself and into the teaching and is constantly engaged in this (1 Tim. IV, 16). He is ready every minute to give an answer to everyone who questions him; he is always prepared and prepared for the exposition of Christian teaching. “Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks. Where there is no such excess, the lips become numb. How do you want fruit to grow from a meager seed? Where will we get the excess of holy thoughts and inspirations of love when the preacher does not nourish it in himself through prayer, reading the word of God and the works of St. fathers, reflection on oneself and constant observation of human infirmities?... Another, relying on his theological knowledge, cares only about worldly things for six days, and on the eve of the seventh day, for good luck, he chooses a text, becomes thoughtful, throws a few quick thoughts on paper, and already dreams of fruitful sowing. After such meager preparation, the mouth of the preacher will, of necessity, convey to the Christians only weak food, without vital juice and strength. In our worldly relations, what do we see? Those objects with which our mind is captivated and our heart is filled constitute the essence of our conversations; what we love is echoed in speeches; we talk willingly and without boredom about what we love. Why be surprised if the word spoken in churches is subject to the same moral law as all other human words? 143. But, they will say, don’t we really consider it possible that the inability to improvise is actually possible, i.e., that a pastor, fully prepared for the content of the sermon, nevertheless cannot speak without a notebook, because he is timid, his nerves cannot withstand the hundreds of eyes fixed on him, because his tongue refuses to find and pronounce the necessary words? There can be one thing here: either the pastor is incapable of speaking at all, or he is only incapable of preaching the word. Of course, there is a natural inability to speak in general, ranging from an inability to articulate sound to an inability to speak smoothly and clearly. We must consider such an inability to be an exception and not take it into account in a fundamental discussion of the issue. Then it may be that a pastor, who is generally capable of speech and speaks smoothly in society about religious issues, finds it difficult and apparently cannot speak on these issues in preaching improvisation. This apparent inability may be based on one of two reasons: either theoretical or psychological. The theoretical reason for the seeming inability to improvise preaching lies in the false rhetorical view of our homiletics on the sermon as a composition, as an oratorical speech. We have lost the very concept of the simplicity of Christian preaching. We have forgotten to what extent a preaching word should, and even more so can, be simple, unartificial and short. We have forgotten that the simplicity of Christian preaching, which won thousands of hearts and conquered the world, embarrassed and offended the aesthetic sense of an educated pagan. I am ignorant of words, the apostle said about himself. Paul (2 Cor. XI, 6). The preacher should not have the slightest concern about the attack, or about any rhetorical figures, or about the pathetic part and conclusion, or about the beauty of speech. Let him speak as best he can and as best he can. What kind of shepherd cannot give a short, simple gospel instruction to his listeners?.. The psychological reason lies in the lack of consciousness of the preaching duty, in the failure to realize that the silence of the preacher assigned to the line is disastrous for the flock. But consciousness of the duty of preaching is necessarily presupposed in the called preacher: its absence presupposes the absence of calling. And whoever has such a consciousness feels a fire in his chest that he cannot contain. Let us say again that this consciousness serves as a sufficient psychological basis for preaching improvisation; there is no need for any other psychological impulse; For a preacher, religious education alone is enough. Just as there is no special preaching-improvisation talent, so the inability to preach improvisation indicates the pastor’s religious unpreparedness for his work. But by calling the living word the only word possible for a preacher, evidence of the true nature of the sermon, are we not talking too “hard” a word for modern preachers, among whom improvisers are so rare? No, and we do not say too “hard” words for our preachers, and improvisers among them are not as rare as they seem. More than once we have dwelled on the idea that we cannot limit the scope of preaching to those teachings that are delivered in our churches on major holidays from notebooks. If it were so, then we would truly have had a terrible famine of hearing the word of God uninterrupted for many centuries. In fact, preaching is equal to the entire field of pastoral counseling. Our shepherds, if not all, then many, teach their flock with the living word. When a priest talks with a peasant in the field about how everything needs to be done with prayer, that the harvest and every success in labor is given by God, when he consoles a family that has lost its breadwinner with hope in God, when he teaches children at school, and in many other countless cases, he talks with the flock in lively speech. And the presence of living preaching in every Christian time, in every Christian people, and the ability of our modern pastors for a living preaching word cannot be doubted. But a priest who limits his preaching to reading two or three other people’s sermons a year, and then enters into communication with the flock only through buying and selling, and at meals, or at the card table, who, to put it briefly, really does not converse with the flock through lively preaching speech and is incapable of such teaching, who can call such a priest a true shepherd and preacher? Therefore, the question of preaching improvisation should be posed in this unique form: does the preacher need to speak to them in the church, in front of a crowd of people, with the same simple living word that he teaches to the flock outside the church, or does the holiness of the church require that the living word be silent here and the preacher speak only from a notebook? There can only be one answer... Yuryevsky A. Homiletics, or the science of pastoral preaching of the Word of God See also: Homiletics, or the science of the pastoral preaching of the Holy Word of God. A. Yuryevsky In the “Guide for p. paste." in 1899, 1900, 1901 and 1902, A. Yuryevsky’s extensive work Homiletics, or the science of pastoral preaching of the Word of God, was published. This work deserves the full attention of all who are interested in the success of preaching. In any case, it justifies the hope that homiletics will immediately acquire important significance as soon as it deals with issues raised by preaching practice and which will give it that valuable content that it did not have until now. From all our newest homiletics, starting with Reading about Church Literature by Y.K. Amphitheater and ending with the Experience of a complete course of homiletics by M. Chepik The science of pastoral preaching of the Word of God compares favorably. The main drawback of Amfitheatrov's homiletics is that it considers preaching, if not exclusively, then primarily from a literary or verbal point of view. Later appeared homiletics - Notes on theology interviewing arch. Athanasius, Guide to Church Conversation by Archpriest. Favorova, Brief homiletics prot. Potorzhinsky and Experience of a complete course of homiletics by Chepik are only to some extent independent in presentation, being in content completely dependent on Amphiteatrov’s homiletics and sharing with it its shortcomings. A. Yuryevsky's homiletics, as the science of the pastoral preaching of the Word of God, breaks with this tradition, is completely independent of it, and therefore represents homiletics, in comparison with previous works in this area, with completely new content. However, the idea of ​​the independence of A. Yuryevsky’s work needs some limitation. In addition to integral homiletics and independently of them, the needs of preaching practice in recent years have generated a huge number of journal articles and brochures on homiletics. This small homiletics literature clearly demonstrates how far our homiletics are from preaching practice and what interesting content homiletics would have if it took up the same living issues that have been discussed in recent years in small homiletics literature. G. Yuryevsky studied this latest literature with complete approval and fully used it for his work. It seems that the author did not leave a single small article not only in thick magazines, but even in diocesan bulletins, without attention. This is the basis of his freedom from previous homiletics, but this, as we will see, is the explanation for the shortcomings of his homiletics: it turned out that he replaced one chain with another. Small magazine articles and brochures discussing specific issues of homiletics do not and cannot have a common fundamental content: Mr. Yuryevsky, who stitched them into one notebook, did not try to unite them with such content. Before moving on to a review of Yuryevsky's homiletics in essence, we consider it our duty to note that this entire extensive work was executed carefully, each paragraph was processed with equal attention, it was all written in correct and clean language, its tone was serious and sedate from beginning to end: from the outside it makes a pleasant impression. II its content in particulars - regardless of the general content, plan and goals of homiletics as a science - is of great interest. Eg. in paragraph (45) about the methods of preparing for a sermon, the author writes: “In a subjective sense, a liturgical-church sermon is the fruit of the preacher’s mental labor, it is a presentation of his Christian beliefs, the result of his mental activity aimed at organizing, arranging and clarifying the knowledge and information that he previously acquired regarding a known subject, and his personal reflections. Only that word of the preacher can be called in the full and true sense a sermon, the ideas of which matured in the mind of the preacher long before the utterance of the word and were, so to speak, familiar and related to him. If we turn to reality, we will see that there are two categories of preachers who deliver sermons of their own composition. Preachers of one category, intending to speak on a certain day before the audience in the pulpit, begin several days before reading various works and collections of outstanding preachers, trying to extract from them several thoughts, one way or another related to the subject about which they proposed to speak to the listeners. They collected disparate thoughts from everywhere into one whole, after slight processing, and offer them to listeners as a church preaching word. Preachers of the second category look at the benefits of reading books and the need for reflection differently. Being constantly occupied with divine truth, they study it and reflect on it - not, however, with the special goal of preparing for a certain specific sermon, but with the goal of complete and deep perception of this truth in their consciousness and heart, with the goal of generally expanding their mental horizons, acquiring that breadth and maturity of character that is so necessary for a true preacher. Always carrying in their hearts a deep conviction of the truth of Christian teaching, having accepted the truth of Christianity with their whole being, they always have both the subject and private thoughts ready for their word; they do not need to stitch together their sermons each time from various separate patches and passages; they only need to turn to their spirit, go inside themselves and there find those thoughts and ideas that relate to the topic they have planned in order to speak to their flock with a living word of Christian conviction. There is no doubt that of the two categories of preachers indicated, representatives of the second category are closest to the ideal of a true preacher.” The author speaks equally well about the psychological element of preaching. “A sermon, for example, about love,” he writes (46), in order to make a real, more or less living impression on the listeners, must be full of strong and deep psychological analysis. This analysis should show in the most vivid, most vivid way that a person who constantly harbors hostile, hostile feelings towards his neighbors is a pitiful, unhappy and even harmful creature; that the enmity lurking in him gnaws and undermines his heart, torments him with internal burning pain, displaces all the noblest and most sublime feelings and thoughts from his consciousness, introduces darkness and destruction into his spiritual, inner world, humiliates and corrupts his moral and rational nature and introduces elements of decay even into family and social life.” Also among the best pages of the work under consideration are paragraphs about the prayerful mood of the shepherd (16), about the usual indecency and incomprehensibility of the readings of the word of God during worship (37), about the incomprehensibility of the Slavic translation of church hymns (31), etc. The best impression from all these pages is weakened only by the fact that they are nothing more than excerpts from various articles or paraphrases of them, although, of course, it would be even worse if the author hid his borrowings. But the author does not belong to the category of those who silently steal words from their neighbor and conscientiously indicates his sources. This circumstance would be completely insignificant if Mr. Yuryevsky did not limit himself to painstakingly collecting the material that was at his fingertips, but introduced into it a fundamental illumination, an ideological element, which, unfortunately, we do not find in him. Homiletics, or the study of the pastoral preaching of the word of God, consists of preliminary information, an introduction, and four parts of study. In preliminary information, the author discusses preaching the word of God as the duty of every Christian and as the main duty of spiritual shepherds, gives an idea of ​​the purpose of preaching and the definition of homiletics, provides historical information about the science of preaching, and finally defines the concept of preaching, the nature and composition of homiletics. The subject of the introduction is the preacher and his qualities. The very doctrine of church-pastoral preaching falls into four parts: 1) pedagogical (school) preaching; 2) church-liturgical sermon (church); 3) extra-liturgical preaching, where we are talking about so-called extra-liturgical interviews, and 4) missionary preaching. The author himself talks about homiletics, built according to such a plan: “the content of homiletics, determined by the indicated division of pastoral sermon, gives the latter a purely national, Russian character, completely independent and in no way independent of the homiletical trends of the West” (§ 8). Thus, the author himself places great hopes on his homiletics. This gives us the right to take his work more seriously and strictly. Reviewing the plan of the science of pastoral preaching of the word of God, we see that its center of gravity lies in the division of preaching into four types; The author reduces the entire teaching on church-pastoral preaching to a discussion about these types of preaching. This is truly original, but... strange to say the least. These four types of preaching are nothing more than types of nationality and modernity of preaching, its adaptation to listeners, time and place. Thus, the author reduces all homiletics to the question of the types of nationality and the modernity of preaching, i.e. to the fact that in homiletics it should be one paragraph. In this regard, there was no place for all the essential content of homiletics, all of its fundamental part, which should fit between the introduction and the teaching on the types of preaching: here we encounter a gap, truly amazing and one of a kind! It’s surprising how the author himself did not notice this gap. The fact is that at the end of paragraph seven, the author defines preaching this way: it is “the living oral word of a Christian pastor, not limited by either place or time, based on the idea of ​​the kingdom of God, revealed in the spirit of the Orthodox Church, and offered with the goal of helping people achieve eternal salvation through the transformation of their inner world.” Defining preaching so highly and correctly, the author, however, does not consider it necessary to say anything about what in a sermon is not limited by either place or time, does not depend on circumstances - namely, about the content of the preaching word (after all, a word cannot be without content!), about the idea underlying the sermon, and about the spirit in which its content should be revealed, and instead, in the next paragraph, he reduces homiletics to the doctrine of species sermon, to the fact that it depends on adaptation to the listeners, place and time. The only thing in the entire section of homiletics under consideration that relates to the doctrine of the fundamental side of preaching is the introduction of it about the preacher and his qualities. But this section is also presented unsatisfactorily: it is devoid of ideological character, it lacks the idea of ​​​​the connection between the life of the preacher and his ministry, the idea of ​​preaching as a matter of life. Here the author talks about the mental education and development of the preacher, about his attitude to the general character of his people and the spirit of the time, about the mental and religious-moral state of the flock, as a subject of study by the pastor, about the preacher’s conviction in the truth of the preached doctrine, about the agreement of his life with the teaching, about his love for the flock, about his prayerful mood and patience. However, in this section, as in others, there are many particular good and even wonderful thoughts borrowed by the author from various articles. We consider it necessary to note that the shortcoming we are talking about is not in the least compensated for by the preliminary paragraphs of homiletics. The third paragraph on the purpose of the sermon consists of only thirteen lines. Paragraph seven, at the end of which contains the above-mentioned practical definition of the concept of preaching, fits on five pages and is presented dogmatically. Claiming categorically that the pastor must preach “dogmatic and moral truths that have their source in the word of God or the Holy Scriptures,” the author does not want to know either that in Favorov’s homiletics the concept of the word of God as the source of preaching is expanded to the limits of church teaching, with the inclusion of church rituals in its scope, nor that the relationship of preaching to dogmatic church teaching and the relationship of elements in preaching dogmatic and moral is a worthy and fruitful subject for discussion in homiletics. The author dwells in greater detail on the historical outline of homiletics, but this essay is presented without any guiding or critical comments from the author and in general, due to the absence of a fundamental point of view in the homiletics under consideration, should be considered inappropriate in it. At this point the author made an unconscious concession to the homiletical tradition. The absence of a fundamental part in Yuryevsky’s homiletics has an unfavorable effect on its existing parts. This disadvantage is revealed in two respects. Firstly. In the absence of a fundamental department, the author, willy-nilly touching on some particular issues of this department, is forced to either place the discussion of these issues, without any reason, in one of the four parts of his homiletics, or to repeat it in different parts. Eg. The author discusses the dogmatic and moral content of pastoral preaching, its journalistic and apologetic elements in the section on church liturgical preaching. But why? Don’t all types of preaching in the same sense have dogmatic or moral content? Shouldn’t journalistic and apologetic elements be alien to extra-liturgical conversations? Shouldn’t apology for the faith be the work of a teacher of the law, at least in secondary and higher schools? Open the corresponding pages of Mr. Yuryevsky’s essay and read them: you will never guess from the content which part these pages belong to. “A clear consciousness and idea of ​​what Christians should believe in awakens in them a deep, sincere feeling of reverence for God and His saints, a feeling of fear and, at the same time, love for Him, a feeling of gratitude for His benefits to fallen man. Knowledge of objects of faith, a clearly clarified concept of them, is reflected in a quite noticeable way also on the moral and practical activity of a person. The moral ideas of the dogmas of the Orthodox faith clarify for a person the meaning of his existence, illuminate the nature of his relations with his neighbors, serve to raise moral energy, generate and strengthen the feeling of Christian love for his brothers in faith and for all people in general,” etc. etc. Tell me: which department is appropriate for this speech? Likewise, the paragraphs cited above in the passages about methods of preparing for a sermon and about its psychological element, in general the genesis and structure of (church and liturgical) sermons - why are they given by the author in the second part? What type of sermon cannot be said to be that “it is the fruit of the preacher’s mental labor, it is a presentation of his Christian beliefs, the result of his mental activity aimed at organizing, arranging and clarifying the knowledge and information that he acquired (was) previously regarding a known subject, and his personal reflections”? To what type of sermon cannot be applied the requirement that it “must be full of strong and deep psychological analysis”? We have given several examples of the author’s groundless placement of passages of a fundamental nature in any one part. Quite a few examples can be cited of the opposite - namely, the repetition of the same thoughts of a fundamental nature in different parts. Thus, in the first part about conversations of sacred historical content, the author writes (§ 28): “Sacred history in itself, in its historical facts, taken apart from their relation to the highest tasks of religious education, has almost no meaning. Its entire significance boils down to how much it is capable of influencing the development of moral and religious feelings in children with its stories. The purpose of sacred historical conversations is far from identical with the purpose of teaching civil history in educational institutions. The purpose of teaching biblical history is not to familiarize children with the fate of the chosen Jewish people, but to impart religious knowledge to children, enrich students with ideas about moral and religious life, point out role models for them, influence their moral sense and aspirations,” etc. And here is what the author writes in the third part about biblical history as the subject of extra-liturgical interviews (72): “When conducting extra-liturgical interviews on sacred history, the preacher must remember that the purpose of his interviews is not to acquaint his listeners with the historical fate of the Jewish people, but to extract teaching and edification for them. The task of the priest is not to inform the people of special and detailed information on biblical history, not to ensure that his parishioners know everything in detail and clearly, for example, biblical events, persons, numbers, proper names, etc. - no, the priest. History should in this case not be an academic subject, but a living, high means for religious instruction and edification of listeners,” etc. True, the author compiled the first section based on the “abstract on the teaching of the Law of God in primary schools” by St. Rozhdestvensky, “Methodology of the Law of God” by Sokolov Af., and the third according to the works of Mavritsky V. “Resurrection.” and celebration out-of-god interview.”, Dyachenko “On Sunday readings for the people”; but he should have noticed that in these different manuals we are essentially talking about the same subject?.. And with all this, why does he, in addition to the first and third parts, not talk about sacred historical interviews in the second part?.. Many examples of this kind of unfavorable consequences of the absence of a general section in the homiletics under discussion could be given: about a rare paragraph one cannot help but say one or the other, or that its content is repeated in other parts, or that it is unfairly confined to only one part. Another unfavorable consequence of the indicated lack of science about the pastoral preaching of the Word of God is reflected in the unfoundedness of the author’s random judgments on certain issues of a fundamental nature. Without connecting these issues together, without subjecting them to a coherent, consistent and thorough study, the author, forced to touch on them here and there, necessarily expresses unfounded judgments, despite the serious and sedate tone, despite the external careful treatment. Many examples of this could also be given; but we will limit ourselves to a little. In paragraph 47, the author discusses the lyrical element in the liturgical church sermon, without giving himself a clear account of the subject of his speech. The inspiration of the preacher, the warmth of his speech can be either the fruit of his Christian conviction, love for his listeners, spiritual experience, or the result of the artistic nature of the sermon. These two things are very different, but the author does not suspect this difference. First he says that “the lyrical element in a sermon is the immediate revelation in it of the very personality of the preacher.” Then he quotes the words of one writer, who obviously understands the oratorical artistic effect of the preaching word: “capture the full attention of your listeners. Arouse their regret or indignation, sympathy or disgust, or dignity. Make it seem to your listeners that you are animated by them, that you are inspired by their inspiration, while it is not they who move you, but you who move them. When you have thus, as it were, separated all these souls from their bodies; when they come crowding to the foot of your pulpit and when you control them even with the power of your one glance; then do not spare them, for they belong to you, because truly all these souls have passed into your soul. See how they follow its curves and ebbs, how they desire what you desire. Continue forward without rest, speed up your speech, and you will see how all your chests rise, because your chest rises; how all the eyes begin to burn, because your eyes are fiery; or how they fill with tears of tenderness because you are touched. Yes, you will see listeners watching every movement of your lips, or rather you will not see anything, you yourself will be overcome by your own excitement, you will bow, you will fall before your genius and the more eloquent you will be, the less you try to show it! And finally, our author draws a conclusion from here (“So”...) about the shepherd’s deep heartfelt faith in God, his love for his flock... Even less, the author suspects the legitimacy of the question about the artistic nature of the sermon... With the exception of each part of the homiletics of Yurievsky content with a fundamental character, or repeated in different parts or illegally confined to any one part - with this exception, will there be any material left in each of the parts? In some, apparently, it will remain. This especially needs to be said about the first part. Here the author sets out nothing more and nothing less than... the methodology of the Law of God. He talks about progressive and joint systems of teaching the Law of God, about its forms - acroamatic and erotematic with a division into heuristic and controlling, and even offers in tables a plan for teaching the Law of God according to the concentric system in primary schools... All this is original on the part of the author, but... hardly thorough. That the methodology of the Law of God is inappropriate in homiletics? this is obvious to everyone. And if this is not obvious to Mr. Yuryevsky, then it is not difficult to convince him. In paragraph five of his work, he defines the sources of homiletical provisions as follows: “The main and primary sources and foundations of homiletical provisions, which have the meaning of rules, advice and instructions for the preacher, are: first of all: the way of teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ himself... the speech of the prophets and apostles... the instructions of the apostles... further: the decrees of the church... finally: the laws of psychology and logic, the rules of pedagogy and the requirements of the theory of literature." And so the methodology of the Law of God is established exclusively on the rules of pedagogy in their application to the Law of God and therefore is inappropriate in homiletics. The essence of preaching is equally compatible (or incompatible) with each form of teaching the Law of God, and therefore the latter must be entirely left to the discretion of the teacher of the law. Homiletics deals with the essence of preaching. The rules of pedagogy cannot be included in it, just like the rules of voice control and expressive reading. Homiletics assumes they are known, no matter whether they are needed for a preacher or not: it begins behind them. Likewise, the Christian teaching on the distribution of property does not include arithmetic, and the theory of painting and architecture does not include the rules of rubbing paints and firing bricks. In ancient times, homiletics was filled with rules from the theory of literature and logic - and this was the old scholastic homiletics; now they want to fill homiletics with the rules of educational pedagogy and this will be a new scholastic homiletics. And our homiletic author exposes the inconsistency of his theory with his inconsistency: after detailed and lengthy discussions about the teaching of the Law of God in primary schools, he limits himself to a few lines on the issue of teaching the Law of God in secondary and higher educational institutions: why? why doesn't he take up the methods of readings on theology at universities and academies?.. With the exception of each part of Mr. Yuryevsky's homiletics for content with a fundamental character, or repeated in different parts or illegally confined to any one part, and content, although of a private nature, but inappropriate in homiletics - with this exception, what will remain in all parts of this homiletics? Enough for one paragraph, but too little for a whole science... Homiletics is a science of a fundamental nature... By the way, it must clarify and substantiate the principle of nationality and modernity of preaching, but it must leave the private application of the types of preaching arising from this principle to the free prudence of the preacher. If modern pedagogy speaks of the need to give room for personal creativity and inspiration of teachers, then should the preacher of the Word of God be constrained by fractional homiletical rules?.. But shouldn’t a preacher conform to the rules of pedagogy, literature, and the rules of expressive reading? should he really only be simple as a dove and not be wise as a serpent? Let him conform. But let pedagogy, literature, and not homiletics demand this from him; let the latter not accept the rules of pedagogy, literature, expressive reading into itself, do not give it its authority, let it, for its part, assume a living person in the preacher, let it, for its part, give him freedom in relation to these rules. The Gospel demands from us dovelike simplicity and serpentine wisdom, but it teaches only dovelike simplicity... So is homiletics. It does not protect the preacher from the demands of pedagogy and literature; but as soon as it itself is filled with the rules of these sciences, it will necessarily become scholastic and, behind rules alien to it, will forget the essence and spirit of preaching... Practical needs cannot be referred to here. After all, a missionary going to China must know Chinese, but it is not the job of homiletics to teach him Chinese. Also, the methodology of the Law of God, or the history of pagan religions, accusatory theology, the history and denunciation of schism should not have a place in it... In conclusion, let us make a remark regarding the very four-part nature of Yuryevsky’s homiletics. And from his point of view, one of these parts should not exist. If he defines preaching as “the living oral word of a Christian pastor, unlimited by place or time,” etc., and if in cases of church or school preaching the preacher adapts to a special place or time or listeners; it is obvious that in the case of interviews outside of school and outside of liturgical services, addressed to the same listeners who fill churches and schools, there cannot be any special adaptation to the place, time and listeners. It is not surprising that the author in the third part repeats the content of the first two parts... So, Mr. Yuryevsky’s extensive work, as a science, should be considered a very weak work; but as a collection of articles on homiletics mainly from the “Manual for p. past.”, set out in abbreviation and some system, it must be recognized as worthy of full respect. We sincerely wish for the speedy publication of this work in the form of separate prints and its distribution among the clergy. Therefore, not every eloquent person is an orator. A speaker is one who uses speech as a means of persuasion. Skilled in speech in general (sermo) in Latin was called disertus: a skilled speaker - eloquens. We previously encounter the same thing in Gibert in his L’éloquence chrétienne dans l’idée et dans la pratique (1715) and Fenelon in Dialogues sur l’éloquence en général et sur celle de la chaire en particulier, to which Jungmann often refers. Homiletics who break ties with rhetoric and demand evangelical simplicity from preaching are rare in recent times. Such is Stier's homiletics (Stier: Grundriss einer biblischen Keryktik, 2 Ausg. 1844), which is also remarkable in that it gives due importance to the personality of the preacher in the matter of preaching. In this regard, Mosheim’s Anweisung erbaulich zu predigen (1763) should be especially mentioned, a work quite similar to Jungmann’s homiletics mentioned above. Homiletik. Vorlesungen von D Th Christlieb, 1893, S. 88. The opposite direction is expressed in the epigraph of Kern’s homiletics (The ministry to the congregation. Lectures on Homiletics by I. A Kern, 2 ed. 1898): “in preaching, the thing of least consequence is the sermon.” Cp. pp. 1–14, lect. VII, XXVI, XXVIII For the attitude towards Temerin, see page 479. Without further purpose to influence feeling and will in this way. Palmer Evang. Homiletik, 1867, S. 26 Although with the word “not only shepherds, but also the laity are called and obliged to preach Christ” (Archbishop Nikanora Teachings, vol. 2, p. 467, cf. Archimandrite Anastasia Sermons, 1880, p. 34), but undoubtedly with a lesser degree of obligation. To some extent, the same feature was inherent in the speeches of the Old Testament prophets, whom St. Justin the Philosopher writes: “in their speeches they did not indulge in proof, for they are above all proof, being reliable witnesses of the truth” (Conversation with Trif. 7). By already demanding that the preacher be a true Christian, we thereby assume in the preacher a person “reborn and blessed”; now we even talk about “the grace of the teaching word.” However, we consider it unnecessary for homiletics to enter into a solution to the question of the relationship of grace to the natural powers of the preacher; Moreover, the church teaching on this issue is well known: grace “heals the weak and replenishes the impoverished” and, in this general relation to the natural powers of man, it, in particular, guides the preacher and assists him. In any case, it would be an exaggeration to give grace in the work of preaching a specifically productive meaning, as is done by the Western homiletists Spener and Gaupp and the Russian prof. N.I. Barsov, who writes: “the main productive power of preaching is the grace of the Lord, bestowed on the church in the sacrament of the priesthood; preaching, first of all, is a product of the grace of the priesthood” (Several Research Historians, 1899, p. 6) We will talk about this opinion in other places; but let us now make a few comments that are appropriate here. In contrast to this opinion, we attach to grace in the work of preaching 1) a very important mediocre vital significance in the sense that it is one of the active causes in the rebirth of man, that every Christian is a person reborn and blessed, and preaching is a vital matter, its success depends on the life of the preacher, just as the knowledge of Christian truth is a vital, and not exclusively theoretical matter; 2) direct or specific and precisely guiding meaning, and we believe the essential meaning of this meaning of grace is in the embassy of the preacher (Rom. X, 15) from the Lord Jesus Christ or the church. Therefore, we are not talking about the productive meaning of grace, but in general about the life of a Christian preacher, trace. blessed, and we will talk about the preacher’s knowledge of the word of God and real life (cp. ibid. p. 11: “The moral Christian maturity and personal spiritual experience of the preacher give him competence in moral teaching and reproof; his special knowledge of the dogmas of faith makes him authoritative for instruction in the truths of theoretical teaching; then knowledge of the conditions of place, time, characters and human relationships - all this gives wide scope to preaching subjectivism"); in particular, we are talking about the calling to the work of preaching by the Lord Jesus Christ or by the church (cf. ibid. pp. 10 11: “the preacher speaks his word only under the guidance of grace .. and on behalf of the church”). We, therefore, distinguish religious-ecstatic speech, as a product of the Holy Spirit, from the word of a preacher, who is only assisted by grace - we distinguish as the blessed one did. Augustine (Chronicle science, book IV, chapters XXXII-XXXIII). – By the way, the exclusive and specifically productive significance of the grace of the priesthood cannot be attached because the church has allowed and continues to allow the laity to preach, because for a preacher, therefore, an embassy from the church, and not the priesthood, is absolutely necessary: ​​not only priests, but all the disciples of Christ are called to preach Christ (Archbishop Nicanora Teachings vol. 2, p. 467). If during everything. Councils, the right of church teaching was limited to pastors, this is explained by historical circumstances (after all, then even the living word was prohibited to the pastors themselves); Outside of these historical features, the combination of teaching with shepherding has significant meaning in the embassy of pastors by the church to teach, and not only the church, but also the bishop or presbyter can allow a layman to preach. Our Russian Church obliges candidates of theology to preach, of course, with the blessing of the bishop... And what is not, even in the likeness and shadow, in oratory. It goes without saying that we talk about the sacraments only in relation to the moral demands from the clergy. Theologically educated do not listen to sermons, then, of course, only those that themselves are similar to theological treatises. But a living sermon can never be replaced by either a theological chair or a theological scholarly book, and how, therefore, a living sermon should not resemble a scholarly theological treatise! The relation of this need to 1 John ii. 27 is similar to that of 1 John. I, 8 to 1John III, 6, 9. The apostle's words must be explained by context. About the positions of parish elders. 48. Just as a word without life is an exception in preaching, as mentioned above; so living without a word (1 Peter III, 1 – 2) is an exception (relative). Except Mp. XVI, 15; Matt. XXVIII, 19 Wed. Ephesus 1, 13; V, 26, 1 Pet. 1, 23. 25. Maybe due to the circumstances of the time Y.K. Amphitheaters and “had the right to speak in homiletics about such subjects” (Strannik 1894, I, 323), in any case, this is not the field of homiletics. “The teachers of the Church received this name only because they are the transmitters from century to century to future generations of the single and unchangeable teaching of the one true teacher of Christ.” Ambrose arch. Kharkiv Sermons ed. 1895, p. 542. Wed. Archbishop Innocent Khers. Sochin. vol. 2 1872, p. 144. Wed. Owl. II, 16: we have reached it, we must think this way and live according to this rule. Wed. St. Ioanna Zlat. in a conversation on Epiphany: “What can I teach you when you come to me once or only twice a year in the church of God”?.. On questions about the specific content of Christian preaching as opposed to pagan oratory and about its teaching character cp. N. Barsova History of primitive Christian preaching, 1885, pp. 80–41, and F. Dupanloup Conversations on preaching as a pastoral service, Russian. lane 1899, pp. 61–84. As far as research history, 1899, pp. VII-VII Ι. Page 18 Wed 16–17, 290. This, however, does not prevent prof. Barsov speaks about the need for a future preacher to study the subjects of general, verbal and logical education (p. 14) and expresses himself this way: “the entire totality of the educational resources of a theological school prepares for preaching. Therefore, the reasons for the shortcomings in modern preaching should be sought in the general educational and special educational properties of the modern theological school, and not in anything else” (p. 34)... Cf. higher. This will be discussed further below. We say this, remembering that below we will call the nationality and modernity of the sermon the subjective creativity of the preacher, because this creativity does not relate to what he conveys (the only word of God), but to how he conveys it. Archbishop Ambrosia Khark. Sermons, 1895, p. 542. In Govt. Confession III, resp. to the question 47 Of the commandments of the Old Testament, only the commandments “relating to loving God and neighbor” are called obligatory for Christians. The truth of the suffering of the righteous was also seen by the Old Testament prophets, for example. Ps. XXI, Isa. LIII et al. To questions about the methods of explaining St. Scripture (about the literal, figurative and mysterious meanings) and the systematization of Christian teaching (creed and moral teaching, Orthodoxy and heterodoxy, the comprehensible and incomprehensible side of dogma, evidence of dogma, the most important and secondary dogmas) should be answered in this place by homiletics, if these questions were subject to it: but they are not subject to it, and their place is in biblical isagogy, in dogmatic and moral theologies. Wed. V.F. Kiparisova Doctrine three and discipline in the Christian Church V.V. 1896 - Cont. in the same and next g. Wed. S. Nikitsky Faith Orthodox. Gr-Russian Church according to its symbolic books, tetr. 2nd, p. 217: “in the symbolic books of a universal nature there are no direct individual, special, rules or definitions expressed in a clear and precise logical formula regarding Christian moral teaching”... M. Filaret (Exposition of the differences between the Eastern and Western Churches §§ 1 8): “the only, pure and sufficient source of the teaching of faith is the revealed word of God,” and “to admit the unwritten word of God means exposing oneself to the danger of ruining the commandment of God for human tradition.” Arch. Philaret (Pr. D. B-ie, 1, 1864, p. 7): “dogmas are (contemplative) thoughts of revelation about God.” We express only the thought of Arch. Philaret (Prov. D. B-ie, 1, p. 10): “it is another thing to reject dogma, another thing is not to know it,” etc. Let us not forget, of course, that knowledge of the creed is considered necessary for accepting a new member into the Orthodox Church and, as such, the creed must be explained in a sermon. We only say that knowledge of the symbol of faith, as an abbreviation of the word of God, does not provide anything new in comparison with the teaching of Holy Scripture; therefore, its explanation should be nothing more than a presentation of the word of God according to its formulas, in its system: when explaining the symbol of faith, the preacher should not add anything to the word of God from those dogmatic contemplations that dealt with the theology of the times of the ecumenical councils. The idea that the teaching of the Orthodox Church lies in the sacred. Scripture, that by explaining Scripture, it is possible to explain the entire Christian faith and moral teaching, that church teaching expresses the essential content of the word of God, we find in the homiletics of Fr. Notorzhinsky, but he falls into the mistake of other homiletes when he says: “such (essential) truths (words of God) are collected by the church and expressed briefly (not only) in the creed, (but also) in the 10 commandments of God’s law, in the Lord’s Prayer.” In Chepik’s Experience, the same error is expressed in a more crude form: “Christian teaching, scattered in different places of St. scriptures, summarized in the creed (dogmatic teaching); in the decalogue, in the Gospel teaching about the beatitudes, etc., there is a moral teaching. This is an abbreviated church teaching... every Christian needs to know. Hence, the truths contained here are more obligatory for the pastor of the church to explain than even to reveal the meaning of St. scriptures." What a confusion of concepts! Reduction and parts are more important than the whole?!. In the extreme case, this is a matter of free choice: “it doesn’t matter, we read in the Epistle of the Patriarchs. ave. - cafe c. (chapter 2), “it makes no difference whether one learns from the Scriptures or from the universal church.” We are talking only about preaching choices. In this last, homiletical, respect, the instructions of the book On the Offices of Parish Elders are especially valuable for us, which teaches that “all members of the faith are contained in the word of God, (therefore) we must test the word of God, draw divine truths from it and teach the people - from the writings of St. father (only) to explain what part of the faith and to confirm the teaching proposed to the people, a decent passage can, and sometimes should, be used in one’s conversation. But like St. Father of Scripture, so church traditions should also be confused or compared with the word of God” (18-22). Archbishop Ambrose X. Sermons, 1885, pp. 212–213. – We consider it unnecessary to point out that side of the issue we are considering, that it is not permissible for a preacher to introduce his personal theological reasoning into the sermon, because this naturally follows from the position that the content of the sermon is given in the teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ. Personally, the preacher brings into the sermon spiritual experience and a way of livingly transmitting the word of God (modernity and nationality).. See Archbishop. Innocent X. teachings for the first week of V.P., Passion, Light, etc. The preacher does not draw instructions from events, but the matchmaker of the Word of God sheds on events (Amvrosiya Arch. Kharkiv. Sermons, ed. 1895, p. 378). This attitude of preachers to events is not changed not only by the “importance and instructiveness” of events, which our homiletics talk about and which we will discuss below, but even by the fact that some events have the significance of signs of the times (Ibid. p. 381 ff.). See the word Ambrose Arch. Kharkiv about the significance of the church in the matter of Christian education. Church statutes, statutes and rules are only declared by the church authority so that they are known to everyone (B.V. 1896, III, 35), and constitute observed practice, while faith itself is the subject of teaching, because it requires understanding (cf. B.V. 1896, II, 340 note 1) and gives a person an understanding of the world. We must also remember that churchliness also includes the self-edification of church members (Eph. V, 19, etc.). Wed. answer Arch. Nikanor to the question: “Do ordinary Russian people understand anything in the poetry of Christianity, anything in their churchliness? They understand. They understand the faith of Christ not so much with their mind as in general with their spirit... they pray not so much with their mind as with their spirit... Those who do not understand rejoice more (in the solemn church symbols)... (Teachings. vol. III, p. 265 next). It is known that the teachings themselves are divided into ceremonial and actually teaching. Of these, the first have the character of church hymns and are part of the divine service organically. But here we do not touch on this difference, because the very question about the subject of the sermon makes it clear that the words are teaching, and not solemn. For our part, we completely exclude solemn words from the concept of preaching: this will be discussed below. Wed. N.I. Barsova Several studies. ist., 1899, pp. 28–29. See Archbishop. Nikanor's Teachings vol. 5, ed. 1891, pp. 263–264. Let us remember that worship largely explains itself - by the dogmatic and historical content of the chants, synaxarions, etc. If the reader does not agree to recognize the Word of God as the only subject of preaching, then in this case our reasoning retains full significance for distinguishing in preaching the necessary from the possible, the main from the secondary. Of the later homiletics, this especially valuable idea of ​​Amphitheater’s Homiletics is retained only in Potorzhinsky (§ 10). One relates to content, the other to form. What is sacred to us. scripture? asks the Archbishop. Demetrius (vol. 2, 1889, p. 243) This is comforting news from heaven, our true fatherland; this is a merciful letter from the King of Heaven to us sinners, etc. O Potorzhinsky inseparably speaks in the section about persuasiveness and that “action on the will of another, which depends on the one hand on the subject, and on the other on the spiritual qualities of the speaker and his relationship to the listener,” and about that for which “requires such an image of the subject that would amaze the feeling and dispose the listener to action” (§ 13). To be more specific: without holiness, truth and salvation, a sermon cannot be touching; and without life-giving, nutritional value, etc., a sermon cannot be edifying. So the cumbersome scheme collapses on its own. An excellent explanation of Christ’s teaching on the worship of God in spirit and truth is given by Archbishop Demetrius in his homily on the 5th week of Easter (Complete Collection of Prop. vol. III, pp. 57–65), where we read: the “service of God” established by Christ is “spiritual and true service in relation to the Old Testament, sensual and representative service. – The basis of Old Testament worship was the bloody sacrifices of dumb animals, which, in themselves, could neither cleanse a person from sins nor reconcile him with God; there washings and sprinklings were performed, sprinkling, as the apostle says, to the purity of the flesh, but not cleansing and not sanctifying the soul; there was only a shadow of future blessings. Whoever performed the Old Testament rituals with living faith in the coming Redeemer did not receive the grace of redemption and salvation, but (only) had a sure guarantee of this salvation and could die with the good hope of being a participant in the kingdom of Christ. These are not the Christian sacraments; whoever receives them with living faith in the Son of God who came and suffered for us, receives the grace of deliverance, sanctification and salvation by deed and truth. All Christian sacred rites are most highly spiritual, as performed by the Spirit of God, and most highly true, because they do not only mean or foreshadow, but actually communicate divine grace. Here is the very truth of God’s grace.... Who prays to God in the spirit? The one who, pronouncing the words of prayer, pronounces them not with his lips alone, but with all his soul and heart... Who prays to God in truth? Whoever, serving God by participating in divine services, serves Him with his very life and his deeds." Russian sermon, pp. 397" 398, Although creativity does not relate to the content of the sermon, not to its subject, but only to the methods of revealing the subject of the sermon. Archbishop Nicanor (Teachings, vol. III, 1890, p. 120): “Exclude from here (Acts I, 6–8) personal, decent only to St. peculiarity to the apostles, throw away the popular Jewish originality, take the universal significance of this sacred saying, apply it to the conditions of our time, our nation and your personal situation”: this is the principle of preaching. Teachings, volume 5, 1891, page 261. We consider it necessary to replace the expression archbishop with this word. Nicanor “with his positive explanation,” because in a sermon it is necessary, if not exclusively, then first and foremost, to reveal Christian teaching from the positive side, as we talk about this elsewhere, but only the positive disclosure of Christian teaching should not be abstract, but relative to the issues of modern unbelief. St. Demetrius of Rostov in the teaching on Luke. VIII, 7 (in week 21 according to St. D.) writes: “I heard the interpretation of the parable (about sowing seeds) in the gospel, but it was interpreted in short words, and I do not remember, so that the interpretation would fit into everyone’s mind. We just want to explain something more broadly”: this is the motive of the sermon in its relation to the word of God. This definition of nature: Christian nature was given to us back in 1853 by Galakhov (see Russian prop. p. 357), then expressed more than once (ibid. on p. 403 next), and recently formed the main theme of the above-mentioned speech by Prof. Govorova. These are the words of Archbishop Ambrose about religion as the basis of the people's well-being, about Christian progress, about the fact that everyone should begin to correct public morality with themselves, etc. II Zavedeeva History of Russian preaching from Χ V Π to the present. vr. 1879, p. 230 Archbishop Ambrosia Kharkiv. Sermons, 1895, p. 412. M m. Filaret in the word on John. X, 27, 28 per day m. Alexia 12 Feb. 1822 See Archbishop. Ambrosia Kharkiv. speech, pronunciation 17 Jan 1889 on 1 Cor. II, 4–5 (in the Kharkiv Univ. Church) and Aug. 20. 1889 (in Svyatogorsk monastery). From conversations about preaching the Americas. prop. F. Brooks, Kiev, 1898, p. 18. Wed. Tolmacheva, c. op. vol. 1, 1868, p. V. M. M. Filaret according to his sermons Wed. Zavedeeva, cit. cit., pp. 194–195. Kataeva Essay on the history of Russian church preaching, 1874, p. 160. Prof. Govorova, cit. speech, pp. 35–39. Ibid. 31. However cf. page 39. Although this does not mean that the preacher, even in his instructions, does not touch upon the works of the flesh. No, let him, in the words of Gregory the Dvoeslov (Prov. Past. II. Ch. 5), “with a lofty mind ascending to the secrets of the invisible world of the angels, with compassionate heartfelt sympathy for human weaknesses, descends, like the Apostle, even to the secrets of the marital bed (1 Cor. VII, 1-6).” Prop., 1895, pp. 51–52. We recommend reading Gilyarov-Platonov’s reasoning on the issue we have raised, filled with deep interest, in the article on nihilism (Collected works, vol. II). Some pages from the conversations of St. Ioanna Zlat. on 1 Cor. (special pp. 52–56 Russian translation 1859) explain the same question. A preacher of Christian truth has nothing to do with unbelief that has no ideals. But this, of course, is not the case when “the preaching word should bear the character of a learned composition” (V. and R. 1893, No. 5, p. 269, church department). We do not allow such cases. Zavedeeva, cit. cit., p. 234. What is excluded from the field of preaching can conveniently form the subject of theology, although even here one must take into account the opinion of a layman in this form: “nothing has pushed me away from the faith to such an extent, or aroused so many doubts, as apologetic books in defense of the truths of the faith.” (See V.V. Rozanov. In a world of unclear and unresolved St. Petersburg. 1901, p. 234). But we must distinguish the language of the gospel from the language of school or scholarly theology. The latter, as an abstract language and incomprehensible to non-theologians, should not find a place in the sermon, which is quite consistent with the fact that the only subject of the sermon is the gospel, and not theology (cf. above). Concerns expressed on page 66 of Tr. To D.A. t. 2, 1896, not solid. It seems to us impossible to understand art otherwise than within the meaning of L.N. Tolstoy’s article What is Art by V.F. and P. books 40 and 41. Full collection op. ed. Marx, vol. XII, p. 91. “A publicist and a poet may have exactly the same tasks... only in the matter of art the question is: how? – is more important than the question: what?” ibid. vol. II, p. IX. Amphitheater Conversations on the attitude of the church towards Christians, 1885, pp. 93–110. Wed. Anthony, now Metropolitan. With. Petersburg, From the history of Christian preaching, 1892, pp. 352–353, also Archbishop. Ambrose's word about the significance of the church in the matter of Christian education. The responsibility of teaching in Christianity lies with everyone, that is, not only with the clergy, but also with the laity; it lies with all Christians, but in fact they carry out this responsibility according to a special calling, which distinguishes the clergy from the laity, and to the extent of their calling. We will turn again below to this idea of ​​​​combining the universality of obligation with vocation in Christian teaching. But we do not have the opportunity to express a complete thought about the relationship between spiritual teaching and lay teaching, revealing only parts of it. In this regard, we recommend reading an excerpt from Arhang. Eparch of the Vedas. 1900 No. 15 in the Church. Vedas 1900 No. 37 p. 1479, and in more detail in Hand. for with pasta 1899, I, 42–48. Elsewhere: “If it were possible to explain in words what the artist wanted to say, he would have said it in words. And he said with his art, because it was impossible to convey in any other way the feeling that he experienced.” V.F. and Ps. book 41, p. 61. Also cf. John XVI, 25. On the gospel-historical significance of Christ’s teaching in parables, see our Philosophy of Gospel History § 33. In all these places we do not mean exclusively oratory speech itself, but of pagan wisdom as it existed in the time of the apostles and as they encountered it, i.e. Of course, together there is a certain content of human wisdom and a certain, or usual, form, oratorical or sophistic presentation. But in any case, the latter is obvious and is rejected in the apostolic words. So blessed. Theodoret's explanation of 1 Cor. II, 1 “the apostle calls eloquence a word, and wisdom (σοφια) - art in speech, and he says, when I came to you, I did not use either one or the other”; at the station 6. “he calls sophists, poets, philosophers and rhetoricians the powers of the century, as those who have acquired fame through eloquence.” In this place, it is only important for us to establish the difference between the two orders of Christian edification, and that one of them and only one is actually preaching, this follows from our entire reasoning, and not from this place only. The distinction made here is complemented, in addition to the previous ones, by the following reasoning that teaching sermon and artistic and solemn speech cannot form one literary type and that the first genetically comes from the word of knowledge (λόγος γνωοεως), and not from the word of wisdom (λόγος σοφίας). Along with the wisdom of God (σοφία Θεοῦ – 1 Cor. II, 7). See the beginning of the word on St. Easter (Creation IV, 122–123). Political, or deliberative, solemn, or panegyric, and judicial. From the History of Christian Preaching, 1892, pp. 348–350. “From the middle of the third century, preaching begins to deviate from the former conversational simplicity, masters the art of artistic construction of the word and gives not only edification, but at the same time delight of the ear.” Tr. K. D. A. 1886 No. 5, p. 9. Yes, and this is only partly true. In full agreement with reality, one should say this: such a difference already existed in the Apostolic Church; but artistic and solemn church speeches decreased or even disappeared in the 3rd centuries. and appeared again in the 4th century. under the influence of pagan oratory. At the same time, we do not touch upon the question of whether it completely disappeared or only weakened in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. profitable inspiration, when exactly did the influence of pagan rhetoric begin and whether, in particular, the sermons attributed to Hippolytus, Gregory the Wonderworker and Methodius of Patara represent the fruit of rhetoric (Pevnitsky in the article of St. Gregory Ch. Tr. K. D. A. 1884, I, 355 seq.) or the fruit of profit inspiration (Barsov History of the first archive, etc. p. 275 et seq.). It may be that some of those holiday words from which church hymns are borrowed generally have a teaching character, for example. words of Gregory the Theologian on the Nativity of Christ, on Pentecost, on St. the lights of the Lord's appearances; one can even suspect the artistry of the hymnological passages found in them, since the church hymns converted from them have an abstract dogmatic character, according to the demands of the time... However, we are only speaking conjecturally. However, see Barsova Several studies, p. 9. “The true goal of church preaching is to convince, to act on the hearts and feelings of people, positioning them through living and animated images of the worthy and the unworthy, the useful and the harmful, to strive for one and move away from the other” (Hist. Russian ts. vol. 1, half 1, p. 659 - M. Anthony From the historical archives, prop. p. 342). Several research pp. 9–14 The uncertainty of Pevnidky’s views runs through a number of his numerous articles on the history of homiletics, published in Tr. E. D. A. He expresses full sympathy with the representatives of “the art or oratorical trend in preaching” Mosheim (1896, III, 308) and Jungmann (1898, III), who subjected preaching to “the same laws that secular eloquence is subject to” (1896, III, 262; 1898, III, 505), and does not sympathize with Spener (1896, P, 484); however, he, along with Achelis, reproaches Melanchthon for “subordinating church and secular eloquence to the same rhetorical rules” (1896, 1, 28), and objects against Schleiermacher that “eloquence, and with it preaching, cannot be transferred into the realm of art without special stretch” (1898, 1, 101). Tr. K. D. A. 1884, March; East. primal prop. page 275 next Name op. page 337 next Wed. above there is a similar concession in the remark about the most important and secondary content of the sermon. In ancient times we had special collections of “celebrants”. From ucm. xpucm. prop. page 354. How many of them, according to Favorov, are there, if one of the four is not a form? Above we used the name solemn artistic speech in a special sense. In ancient times, this name did not indicate a specific form of preaching, but the general internal nature of the sermon, whereas in homiletics we are talking about certain forms of preaching. Wed. Archbishop Ambrose Living Word pp. 49, 86, etc. It is worthy of note that Amphiteatrov did not compile a synopsis for the department of homiletics under consideration on the basis, among other things, that some things do not need to be studied, but simply read about them. When in our homiletics you read the preliminary concept of preaching (as preaching the word of God - in church, during divine services), the rules about the external methods of church preaching - leaving the altar, praying, saying in the name of 0. and S. and St. D., then you involuntarily think that homiletics are designed for students who have never been to an Orthodox church... True, Archbishop. Ambrose writes: “when it is necessary to give a person (conditional?) decency, grace and dexterity in gait and movements, then rules and laws are called to the rescue” (J. Sl. p. 79); but preaching is not an art... One of Turgenev’s heroes, a landowner, having read an article in Moskovskie Vedomosti about the benefits of morality in peasant life, forced all his peasants to learn it by heart.... Chepik, who filled the section of his homiletics on teachings without written preparation with extracts from the readings of Amphiteatrov and the “Living Word” by Archbishop. Ambrose, presented the experience of connecting the incompatible. What conclusion can be drawn from this regarding the custom of preparing teachings for publication?! Living Word, pp. 28–32, 49. 86 117. Readings about the church. words II. 214. Letters on the Offices of Holy Orders, vol. 1, 1843, pp. 184–185. You might be interested in: