Заключение. Свод данных для учения о благодати Божьей в рассмотренных древне-отеческих творениях.

The method of revealing and expressing the doctrine of the grace of God in the works of the most ancient, mostly eastern, St. fathers and teachers of the church, to bl. Augustine, differs in many respects from the subsequent Western expression and revelation, inherited by us Eastern Orthodox and practiced in our systems. The patristic revelation is broad, multifaceted, original and does not fit into our usual school rubrics, however, with a non-superficial, careful study, it brings significant clarity to a difficult, easily unraveled issue, complicated by Western disputes and various misunderstandings. We began our exposition of the ancient patristic teaching about the grace of God, apparently, very far away, precisely with the teaching about the Holy Trinity in Its manifestation to the world. In fact, however, this method of research did not move us away from our main goal, but, on the contrary, brought us closer, directly leading to its achievement, since the patristic revelation of the doctrine of grace was closely connected with the said doctrine of the Holy Trinity, directly flowing from it, or, better to say, was one of the private forms of its expression and disclosure. The concept of the Grace of God. Ancient St. the fathers and teachers of the church looked at the grace of God as a diverse manifestation of the goodness of the Triune God the Creator, Provider and Redeemer of the world and, raising their gaze to the beginning of these manifestations, saw their source in God the Father and His Son, the Word, which is why, following the sacred writers of the New Testament, they spoke at first (i.e. in the first period - before Origen) only about the grace of God the Father and His Son I. Christ, which is noticed, first of all, in the writings of the apostolic men with their characteristic greetings. What relates to the action of the Holy Spirit was considered by the most ancient saints. by the fathers and teachers of the church before Origen, not as a special grace of the Holy Spirit itself, but as a result, a gift of the same grace of the Father and Christ, why these actions were not called grace, but a gift, gifts of the Holy Spirit, etc. The Holy Spirit was thought of as grace itself, and not as a giver of grace. Although the Spirit grants numerous benefits, these benefits, in fact, are not directly and directly His, but the Father through the Son, and therefore they are given by the will of God the Father, Christ the Son of God through the Holy Spirit, and the Spirit is actually the Spirit of the grace of Christ, according to the expression of Holy Scripture. Very early already from the time of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, we find among the fathers a desire to distinguish between what in God’s action on the world should be attributed to one or another Person of the Holy Trinity. Already St. Irenaeus comes out with the following provisions: “The Father deigns and commands, the Son does and arranges, and the Spirit nourishes and grows,” “The Spirit acts, the Son serves, the Father approves.” And at St. Cyprian, we find many discussions on the question: is it necessary to separate the action of the Holy Spirit from the grace of Christ, with a negative answer to this question, through which the actions of the Holy Spirit were indirectly introduced into the scope of the concept denoted by the word grace. However, this St. father and other fathers and teachers of the church, like St. Irenaeus and Tertullian, although they occasionally allow the expression “the grace of St. Spirit,” but refrain from the usual use of this expression, which serves as a sign of their strict fidelity to the biblical use of the word grace and characterizes their ideas about grace as those benefits that come from the first two Persons of the Holy Trinity, the Father and the Son, as the sources of all goods, all grace for man and which are only given through the Spirit of Christ. From Origen, the teaching begins to be revealed directly about the three kinds of grace, about the “special” action of the Persons of the Holy Trinity, and the Father and the Son seem to act on everyone, and the Holy Spirit only on those worthy, and He, the Spirit, assimilates “another grace,” which is called “higher.” From now on, the action of the Holy Spirit finally receives the name grace, i.e. is introduced into the vast scope of this concept as a particular and final form of it. From this same time begins a series of detailed explanations of the combined and at the same time primary action of the Persons of the Holy Trinity both in the Old and New Testaments, both in the general economy of salvation, and in the matter of assimilating the salvation of Christ to each individual person. Meanwhile, St. the fathers and teachers of the church of former times depicted primarily the combined action of the Son-Word and the Holy Spirit (Wisdom-Spirit and Word in Theoph. Antioch.; Son Word and Spirit: the Word is the Spirit and the Spirit is the Word - in Tertul.) St. fathers of the 4th century tried to reveal the idea of ​​not only the cumulative, but also the predominant action of one or another of the Persons of the Holy. Trinity at one or another moment in the economy of human salvation. “The Father, through the Son in the Holy Spirit, exudes heavenly gifts. The Father gives to the Son, and the Son gives to the Spirit. The Spirit is the sanctifier of all rational beings, angels and men, created by God through Christ,” according to St. Kirill Ierus. These thoughts were especially revealed by St. Vasily Vel. According to the will of the Triune God, creation, providence, redemption and sanctification are distributed as follows among the Persons of the Holy Trinity. The Father is the original cause. commanding, creative Son, perfecting Spirit. The Holy Spirit completed the creation of the created world together with the Son, not only the visible, but also the invisible. It also completes the restoration of man in Christ. Just as the Father, “creating by one will, had no need of the Son,” however, “wants” to do everything “through the Son,” so “the Son, having no need of assistance,” however, “wants to do everything through the Spirit.” Therefore, Christ the Son of God does everything with the participation of the Spirit (for example, incarnation), in the Spirit and through the Spirit. Because of this, the Spirit is our primary, although not exclusive, sanctifier, for He sanctifies us together with the Father and the Son according to the indivisibility of the Holy Trinity. We perceive Christ through the Spirit and in the Spirit, and in general we receive the grace of the Father and the Son in the grace of the Holy Spirit. The same thoughts about the division of economy between the Persons of the Holy Trinity, with the assignment of the final, sanctifying action to the Holy Spirit, revealed St. Gregory the Theologian and St. Gregory of Nyssa. Thus, the idea of ​​​​concentrating the grace of Christ in the grace of the Holy Spirit is clarified, without omitting, however, from attention that this is the grace of the entire Holy Trinity - both the Father and the Son, and not just the Holy Spirit. So, in the second half of the period under review, the word grace began to be directly applied to the action of the Holy Spirit, although before, starting with Holy Scripture, this action was essentially thought of as grace, i.e. as a blessing, mercy, gift of God. This position thus has, in essence, only terminological or, in other words, philological significance, clarifying, however at the same time, but certainly not excusing, some phenomena in the history of dogmatic errors regarding the grace of God (Pelagianism). According to the use of the word grace, the scope of this concept among the ancient saints. Fathers and teachers of the church was very wide. It included everything that bears the features of God’s benefits to the human race, namely: our very existence (St. I. Chrysostom), inspiration at creation (St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Basil the Great), innate gifts (St. Apostle Barnabas - naturalіs gratіa), the image of God as “original grace” (St. Gregory of Nyssa ), natural law - conscience (St. I. Chrysostom), the law of Moses (Clement Alexander, St. I. Chrysostom), inspiration of the prophets, grace of the prophets (epistle to Diognetus, St. Cyril of Jerusalem), the very Old Testament church (St. Cyril of Jerusalem). In particular, St. the fathers spoke about the grace of the Word among the pagans (St. Justin Martyr), about grace in the Old Testament, in the canopy of the law (Tertullian, Macarius of Egypt, St. John Chrysostom), in the Old Testament righteous, forefathers, judges, prophets (St. Cyril of Jerusalem), in Job (Macarius of Egypt), Solomon, Saul, the Jews (St. Cyprian, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. I. Chrysostom), from David (St. Gregory of Nyssa), etc. Then, the concept of grace included: the appearance of the Son of God in the flesh (St. Cyril of Jerusalem, St. Gregory of Nyssa), the teaching of Christ (St. Justin Martyr., St. Cyprian of Carthage, St. I. Chrysostom), death on the cross, the atonement of I. Christ (St. Justin Martyr., St. Cyprian of Carth., St. Cyril Jerusalem, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. I. Chrysostom), the resurrection of Christ (St. Gregory of Nyssa), the miracles of Christ (St. Gregory of Nyssa), the sending of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost (St. Gregory of Nyssa), the gift of tongues (St. John Chrysostom, etc.), the assistance of the Holy Spirit to us in achieving our salvation ( Origen and the Holy Fathers after him), finally, bliss in the future life (St. Cyprian of Carth., St. Irenaeus). Since, according to the everlasting teaching of our Orthodox Church, our salvation is accomplished not only by the grace of God, but also with a certain share of our participation in this matter, together with the revelation of the doctrine of grace, we find in the works of the ancient fathers the revelation of the doctrine of man, his free will and original sin. The doctrine of free human will and original sin. The ancient fathers paid considerable attention to the disclosure of these points of teaching, as well as to the teaching about grace. They revealed a lot of the doctrine of the freedom of human will, directing their disclosure against the pagan doctrine of fate and necessity and against Gnostic and Manichaean errors. Already St. Justin Much. spoke at some length about the freedom of “choice to avoid evil and choose good,” about the human “ability to change many times” in moral terms, about the “ability to do the opposite,” i.e. to good and evil, about the impossibility of “a reward from God if a person did not have the ability to choose good.” According to St. Irenaeus of Lyon, man has "freedom of choice"; he “may not follow the Gospel itself”; “a person’s faith is his own faith”; “both in faith and in deeds he is completely free.” Tertullian's reasoning is especially remarkable. In freedom he posits the image of God and likeness. In it he sees the goodness and wisdom of the Creator, who did not want to create man, “the king of the whole world, so that he would not reign, first of all, in the domains of his soul, but would be the master of everything else and the slave of himself.” God gave man freedom so that it would make good for man “his own property, in some way his nature, through voluntary exercise,” so that “he would not be a slave of either good or evil,” so that he would “always be the master of himself, voluntarily serving good and voluntarily avoiding evil.” According to God’s loyalty to himself, “He did not want to interfere, during the fall of his ancestors, with that which he did not want to exist, in order to preserve what he wanted” (i.e., free will). “Having once granted freedom,” He “could not act against himself”; “to prevent the fall would be to destroy freedom.” Fallen “let freedom therefore place its blame not on the One who gave it, but on the one who did not manage it properly.” According to St. Cyprian, we have “the freedom to believe or not to believe,” and even when we become churches of God, then “we are the builders and abbots of these churches.” Clement Alex spoke very expressively about free will and human volition. and Origen, then St. Cyril Jerusalem, Vasily Vel., Gregory the Theologian. The latter noted that God, who created man, “honored him with freedom and gave him a law for the exercise of freedom.” St. Gregory of Nyssa saw the image of God in his mind and free will, and St. I. Chrysostom believed it “in nothing other than dominion” over nature and in all his creations he strongly, persistently and constantly defended the preservation of human will and freedom of human actions, despite the powerful, all-encompassing action of Divine grace, which in a variety of ways only corrects, guides and educates, but does not force the human will. Ave. Macarius revealed in detail the idea that human free will does not completely disappear both when deeply damaged by sin, and when a person ascends to a high degree of perfection, when he is even “intoxicated with grace,” which is why great righteous people can also fall. To what has been said, it should be added that the ancient fathers, in accordance with the psychology of that time, divided the volitional process into several separate acts or moments, namely: 1) wish (as the primary movement of the will, not yet determined), 2) research, 3) consideration, 4) consultation, 5) judgment (predecision), 6) decision (γνώμη), 7) assent (or will, προαίρεσις) 8) aspiration (towards an object), 9) use. When they talked about free will, they meant those last moments when inclination, a final decision and consent to something occur, which is why they most often used the expression προαίρεσις, and sometimes γνώμη or αὐτεξούσιος. This meant that area of ​​mental activity and that moment of the volitional process when the ability of self-determination is inherent in a person, he never completely disappears - that ability that was given to him by the Creator is invariably protected by Him, is never violated, is preserved even in extreme cases, both a sinful state and a state of grace, which is why cases of both the conversion of the greatest sinners and the fall of the great righteous are possible. This region is the sanctuary of the soul, and this is what St. understood. Cyprian, when he said that the inner church of the soul “we ourselves are the builders and abbots.” The doctrine of original sin. The circumstances of that time, namely the existence and prevalence of Gnostic and then Manichaean errors, contributed little to a thorough disclosure of this point of teaching; the dualism of both tried to find support, albeit imaginary, in the said teaching. Nevertheless, there is quite a lot of data for this point of teaching in the works of the ancient fathers, although to an unequal extent for everyone. We find general comments regarding the transfer of ancestral sin into us through natural birth and about our deep hereditary sinful damage in St. Justina Much., St. Irenaeus, St. Vasily Vel. and St. Gregory God. St. Justin Much. notes: the entire human race “from Adam fell under death and the deception of the serpent”, “subject to damnation”; I. Christ “became man through the Virgin, so that in the same way the disobedience that came from the serpent began, in the same way it received its destruction,” i.e. through the incarnation from Pr. Virgos. According to St. Irenaeus, “Eve became the cause of death both for herself and for the entire human race”; “we offended God in the first Adam”; “through the first birth we inherited death”; “man by carnal birth from Adam, having become criminal, needed the bath of rebirth”; “People cannot be saved from the ancient bite of the serpent except through faith” in Christ the Redeemer. According to Basil Vel., Adam “by his eating passed on sin to us.” And this sin is not alien to us, but our own, since not only Adam, but we all sinned in it, as St. Gregory God. in the following sayings: “paradise was entrusted to us; a commandment was given to us"; “The fruit that killed me was red in appearance”; “we died in Adam”; "O! my weakness, for the weakness of my ancestor is also my own”; “Adam concluded heaven for himself and for his descendants as well as paradise.” The Holy Father, recognizing our damage from original sin as grave, comparing the soul struck by sin with the Canaanite woman “crippled from sin” and with the four-day Lazarus, does not deny, however, the existence of remnants of good in fallen man, since he allows the existence of natural virtues in man unregenerate by the grace of Christ (the parent of St. Gregory) and notes about the “purification” only of the image of God in Baptism, therefore, recognizes its existence in fallen man. But more accurately indicated the limits and degree of depth of our damage by original sin, and also explained its essence Tertullian, St. Gregory of Nyssa, Ave. Macarius of Egypt and partly St. I. Zlatoust. According to Tertullian, the evil in our soul “comes from original sin as in some way natural.” “Damage to nature is a second nature, having its own god and father, but in such a way that good exists in the soul, sometimes original, sometimes divine and related, and in the proper sense natural. For what is from God is not so much destroyed as darkened, since it is not God; but it cannot be destroyed, because it is from God.” There are good and bad people, but “in the worst there is something good and in the best there is something bad”; “There is not a single soul without vice because there is not a single one without the seed of goodness.” Thus, hereditary damage, becoming our second nature, does not completely destroy the properties of the first, God-like nature, i.e. our aspirations for good, which remain, no matter how deeply we fall. The same thoughts were expressed by St. Gregory of Nyssa in the following provisions. “From Adam death entered the world” and “we are heirs of (his) sin”; in us “evil spread by succession; the evil wealth of vice, shared by each, increased by each.” With all this, not everything good in fallen man has been destroyed: “with the very essence and nature of man the desire for good and perfection is connected, and with his very nature is associated a dispassionate and blissful love for that intelligible and blissful Image, of which man is the likeness.” “Human nature is weakened by sin.” Man, although he does not completely lose the image of God, for he retains his mind (that is, in our language, mind and will with their ideals and aspirations), but losing his likeness through sin, he has a distorted image; his mind does not guide his entire nature, but is guided by the vileness of the substance and, instead of reflecting the features of the Divine, reflects in itself the ugliness of the substance: the human mind is like a distorting mirror, i.e. the image of God is distorted, but not destroyed. Rev. Macarius of Egypt, together with Tertullian, holds the largest share in the disclosure of this point of teaching. The teaching of the Egyptian ascetic is expressed in his following provisions. In the fall of Adam, sin - “the evil word, first received through external hearing, passed through the heart and enveloped his entire being.” Lazarus stinks - the likeness of Adam. But we also represent the same thing, by virtue of being born from him. And “you bear the same plagues, the same stench, the same darkness; We are all sons of this darkened race, we are all involved in the same stench; With whatever weakness he suffered, we all who come from Adam’s seed suffered the same.” “From the time Adam transgressed the commandment, the serpent entered and became the master of the house and he is with the soul as another soul; sin, having entered the soul, became a member of it, clung to the physical person himself, and many unclean thoughts streamed into the heart.” “Every soul has an incurable ulcer of sin,” “ulcer and darkness” mainly in “the inner man, in the sovereign mind that sees God.” “Just as Adam, who transgressed the commandment, took into himself the leaven of the evil of passions, so through communion those born of him and the entire race of Adam became partakers of this leaven.” “Through the disobedience of the first man, we accepted into ourselves the evil of passions alien to our nature, which we turned, as it were, into our nature.” But although “the evil prince clothed the soul and its entire composition with sin and desecrated it all and captivated it all,” “desecrated and captivated the whole person, soul and body,” although sin “mixed with the soul,” it did not lose its godlike nature; it has its own nature, just as sin has its own. True, she lost the likeness of God, resembling a counterfeit coin, but it cannot be said “that everything was lost, destroyed and died.” A soul stricken by sin is like the Gospel's bleeding wife and the blind man, as well as the sick man lying in bed and the baby who cannot yet walk - all these persons who are infirm, weak and powerless, but who can cry out to Christ as a Doctor and as a Mother. “The soul, although ulcerated by the wounds of shameful passions, although blinded by sinful darkness, at the same time has a desire to cry out and call Jesus, so that when He comes He will create eternal deliverance for it.” “Some, deceived by false teaching, say incorrectly that man is completely dead and absolutely cannot do anything good.” “The soul can resist sin, but it cannot defeat or eradicate evil without God.” St. I. Chrysostom traces the beginning of our sinfulness to Adam, as well as righteousness and holiness to Christ and shows that hereditary damage is deeply rooted, especially in our will. “Adam became the cause of death for those who came from him, although they did not eat from the tree.” “Sin alone introduced death and condemnation.” We are all sinners, i.e. "subject to punishment and condemnation to death." “The sin of Adam’s disobedience desecrated everything.” Our will “quickly inclines towards evil,” and in it lies the deep root of evil and sin. “Let sin appear (Rom. VΙΙ, 13), i.e. let it be revealed what evil sin is, careless will (προαίρεσις), desire (ὁρμὴ) for the worse and damaged will (ή δίαφϑαρμένη γνώμη), for this is the cause of all evil.” And the law was given precisely “to correct actions that are vicious due to arbitrariness.” And Christ himself came to “correct the will (προαίρεσιν).” True, the will, like all human nature with the body and the whole soul, is not evil in itself. On the contrary, as a God-given ability, it is a great good and it is in it, and “in nothing else”, that the image of God (dominion over nature) lies. “To want good and not to want evil was given from above from the very beginning.” And in the human will, despite its deep damage, there is still enough strength left to, with the help of God, follow the path of good, as evidenced by the Old Testament righteous, for example. Abraham, who showed examples of high virtues even without the law of the Old Testament and without the grace of Christ, with the sole assistance of God's providence, although this was incomparably more difficult for them than for us, New Testament people. Consequently, human nature, although deeply damaged by original sin, nevertheless retains many of the forces and aspirations given to it by God. So, according to the teachings of the ancient fathers, ancestral sin, having penetrated the entire human nature, clinging even to the physical composition and manifesting all mental powers, made a person extremely weak, weak, powerless: it perverted the mind, so that, instead of reflecting the features of the Highest Image, it reflects the features of matter and becomes like a crooked mirror or a counterfeit coin, it filled the heart with unclean thoughts that constantly flow in it, made the will quickly inclined towards evil and providing the most convenient soil for bad habits to take root in it. In a word, the evil in the soul became, as it were, another soul, its member and embraced all its forces. However, it did not completely destroy everything good in a person. It could not destroy good, for good in man comes from God the Creator; it could only darken, distort and greatly weaken the goodness deeply embedded by the Creator in human nature. And when defeated by sin, the human mind retains many features of its Image. Even in the human will, in which evil habits build their nest and take such deep roots that even baptism cannot finally tear them out (“the font destroys sins, but correct the habit” - Zlat., see below), however, the desire, the attraction to goodness, never disappears, although in itself it is powerless to reach fulfillment. The work of grace is to purify, revive and recreate all human nature and in particular the human will, without destroying, however, its freedom. First, i.e. cleansing from sins, rebirth and the beginning of reconstruction takes place in the first period of the action of grace on a person up to and including baptism, the second is the complete restoration and implementation of all the powers of the soul and in particular the human will - in the subsequent period of the life of a Christian until the end of his earthly life. All this constitutes the essence of the process of human salvation. The beginning of the realization of human salvation in Christ. To navigate the rather complex range of patristic ideas regarding the process of human salvation, you need to keep in mind that the view of the ancient fathers was based on the following ideas. First of all, at no moment in this process, except for its very first beginning, does grace act alone without human participation. Then, just as grace represents different types and degrees (“divided” - St. Cyrus, Jer.), indicating different ways of acting grace in one essence - the grace of God the Father (attraction), the grace of the Son (guidance), the grace of the Holy Spirit (help, assistance), so human participation also has several degrees: starting from the mind, it goes deeper to the heart and finally touches the will and is concentrated in it, expressed in gradual and finally, a decisive inclination of human will towards one thing or another. The last point is the most important; its onset, the grace of the Holy Spirit awaits for the manifestation of its fuller influence, assistance, and help. Accordingly, there is faith and faith, will and will, as well as divine help and help. The work of God's grace is expressed primarily in a calling that extends to all worthy and unworthy. This is the attraction of the Father and the guidance of the Son, addressed to all people without any distinction (Orig.). The reason for the universality of the action of calling grace is that God in Christ was reconciled with the entire human race, having previously forgiven the sins of all: “God, for the remission of our sins, having sent down his only begotten Son, first forgave the sins of all” (Vas. Vel.) and thereby destroyed, therefore, the reason for the unequal attitude towards people, who from now on are all equal before God, worthy of being accepted into the love of God in Christ, i.e. called to salvation in Christ Jesus. “Vocation has equal meaning for everyone, without distinguishing either dignity, age, or national differences” (Grig. Nissk.). “As for God’s participation, everyone is saved, because everyone is called” (I. Zlat.). “But God left it to be different and in our power, and over this everyone is the only master.” And therefore, “with the offer of grace common to all, it is unfair for him who voluntarily rejected it to blame not himself, but another, for this misfortune” (Grigor. Nissk.). If, for example, the Jews did not believe in Christ, then “unbelief was only their fault, but everything was prepared on God’s part”; and equally, the acceptance by the pagans of the call to Christ “was a matter not only of grace, but also of the will of those who came” (I. Zlat.). Consequently, the effect of calling grace is not irresistible, but provides human will with complete freedom to accept or not accept the call. Due to God's preservation of our freedom, in the matter of attracting us to Christ, the mood of our will is of great importance, i.e. a disposition towards goodness developed by the natural life preceding conversion. Such was the mood of the virtuous parent of St. Gregory God. (Grieg. God.) and ap. Matthew, whose “nobility of will”, like a pearl in the mud, God saw and therefore attracted him to himself; Such was the state of the persecutor Saul, full of aspirations for truth and goodness, although he was mistaken as to where this truth and goodness were. In accordance with the mood of a person, known to God before works and manifestations outside (I. Zlat.), the action of God’s grace either does not leave the state of calling or passes into election and attraction, according to foreknowledge. “If calling were enough, then why weren’t everyone saved? Therefore, says the apostle, the salvation of those who are called is accomplished not by calling alone, but also by foreknowledge. The calling was not something forced or violent” (I. Zlat.). However, the goodness of human will and natural virtues are not the cause of election, but only its condition, the reason being God’s love, goodness, and grace. “He called us love before. This did not happen as a result of work and good deeds, but from love, not only from love, but also from our virtue. For if it were from love alone, then everyone should be saved, but if it were from our virtue alone, then the coming of Christ and everything that was accomplished according to the economy would be superfluous. But not as a result of love alone and not as a result of our virtue, but as a result of both. Chosen, he says, us. The chooser knows what He chooses. In love, he says, he first named us. For virtue would not save anyone if there were no love. Tell me, what would be the benefit of Paul and what would he have discovered if God had not called him from above and, having loved him, had not drawn him to himself? In other words, it was a matter of love, and not of our virtue, to be rewarded with so much” (I. Zlat.). Thus, in the action of God on St. Paul differ: his calling and his attraction due to the special love of God, which sees the hidden in man. Exactly the same thing was revealed in the election of Matthew, in which God, “knowing the secret,” “recognized the pearl lying in the mud,” and therefore, “bypassing others who seemed to be Matthew’s better deeds from the outward appearance,” “and marveling at the beauty of it (the pearl), chose him and added his own grace to the nobility of his will” (I. Zlat.). The same thing happened with the parent of Gregory the Theologian: election for “good morals”, giving him the “gift of God” - a kind, believing Christian wife and through her attraction to Christ. This is how prevenient grace (an expression not commonly used by the ancient fathers) works, or (closer to the patristic expression) calling grace, the grace primarily of the Father and the Son. It affects everyone, but does not find favorable soil in everyone. And where she finds one, she turns into a elector, which is manifested by an attraction to Christ, manifested in various forms. But how exactly does the salvation of those capable of accepting the influence of calling grace take place? The process of salvation begins with the action of grace on a person before he takes any step or movement towards salvation in Christ. “God’s good deed always precedes” (I. Zlat.). Grace is like rain; “If there was no rain, there would be neither fruit nor thorns. And although it would seem a reproach to say on behalf of the rain: I created both fruits and thorns in the earth, although it is indecent to say, it is nevertheless fair. The miraculous actions that come from God are like rain; but the wills are different, like cultivated and neglected land” (Orig.). So in the work of our salvation, the action of God precedes, then comes knowledge and, finally, faith. “As a result of action (the influence of God) is knowledge... Knowledge follows faith, and faith follows worship” (Vasil. Vel.). How and through what is God’s action accomplished? Through the attraction of the Father to the Son and through the action of the word of Christ, the gospel preaching or through the leadership of Christ. Here grace acts “from the outside” (Cyrus. Hierus.), through the reading of Holy Scripture (Orig., Cyrus. Hierus.), through the influence of others (Greek. Bog.), through a sense of conscience, in which the feeling of sinfulness is awakened and strengthened under the influence of grace, and other “many different ways in which someone can be healed” (Orig.). From the action of the grace of Christ, movement begins in the human mind: “reason little by little receives healing” (Grief. God). Knowledge and the first beginnings of faith appear. But this knowledge and faith are still of a purely theoretical, rational nature: “dogmatic faith,” as “the consent of the soul (i.e., the mind itself) to something,” faith “from man,” “from us” (Orig.), faith “cognitive” (I. Zlat.) Grace, acting initially from the outside, little by little from the announcement enters inside; the soul becomes more accessible to understanding and softens (Cyr. Hierus.) Faith, awakened by grace and developing with the participation of man, increases as blindness is removed from spiritual eyes through the catechumen by the Physician of souls Christ (Clim. Alex.). But enlightenment of the mind and some heartfelt attraction alone are not enough: we also need an inclination of the will, the fullness of our consent, which “God and the grace of the Spirit await” (I. Zlat.), since free will is the inviolable sanctuary of our soul. True, in this respect too, i.e. the grace of Christ helps us in inclining our will. Christ gives help to our very desire; “Jesus also grants will”; Thus, with a question to a paralytic, he “drew him to knowledge” and “encouraged him to ask”, attracted “energy” (Cyr. Hierus.). This action of the grace of Christ on the will is, however, such an action that concerns the first moments of the movement of the will and relates to the awakening in it of general aspirations for Christ, but which at the same time provides complete freedom to our will. “The Lord tests wills,” like a military commander when recruiting soldiers, and does not seek anything else from us except this very will. “Although God is generous in doing good, he expects from everyone a sincere will” (Cyr. Jerusalem). When a sincere inclination of our will follows, then there is a direct touch of grace on the soul (dream vision of the parent Grieg. God.); “Then they no longer proclaim to you from outside, but you hear a voice within you, because the Spirit living in you makes your mind a divine dwelling.” Here faith “from God” begins, “rays of light and knowledge” appear, but this is only the “pre-shine of the Spirit” (Cyrus. Jerusalem), which “precedes baptism” (Grig. Bog.). This is only the beginning of complete illumination, complete spiritual enlightenment, the fullness of faith given by God, with our participation, however, and our best efforts. These works consist of “pre-cleansing” (Grig. Bog.) from sins, which, like fog, obscure the spiritual light from our eyes (Klim. Alex.). This “purification before purification” “protects the gift (in baptism), so that perfection is entrusted to purity, and the good bestowed is not endangered by skill that is opposed to grace.” “You must first cleanse yourself... This is necessary for those approaching baptism carelessly, without preparation and without skill in goodness that does not provide redemption.” “Preparing for baptism” is of great importance for the preservation of baptism, “for baptism blots out sins, but does not take away corrections.” (Grieg. God.). This pre-purification, therefore, is necessary for the exercise and education of the will, for freeing it from the evil habits that lie in its depths, rooted in its freedom and therefore ineradicable even by grace without destroying freedom: the habits must be corrected by the person himself (I. Zlat.), although not without the help of grace. Reviewing everything that happens to a person in this first period of salvation, we can say, in agreement with the ancient fathers, that the largest part in this matter belongs to God. To him belong: the calling and initial attraction to Christ, the enlightenment of the mind, the arousal of desire and, upon the appearance of our permission, strengthening it with power from above through the direct touch of grace to the soul. All that remains for a person is: non-resistance to divine attraction, final consent and feasible labor of purification. The most important and most difficult thing in this whole matter: besides the very first step - the attraction to Christ - the emergence in a person of the desire for salvation and the strengthening of the determination or voluntary will to go to Christ, all this is more God’s work than ours. “God’s help is also needed in order to wish good, especially since the very permission of what is due is something divine, a gift of God’s love for mankind, for it is necessary that salvation depend both on us and on God.” But “since the very will is from God, the apostle is just (Rom. IX, 16) attributed everything to God” (Grig. Bog.). In baptism and confirmation, or, as the ancient fathers called them, in baptism with water and the Spirit, one obtains “abundant grace, that is, accomplished by water and the Spirit.” The first grace is the grace of water, the second grace, the “greater” one of the first, is the grace of the Spirit (Cyr. Jerusalem). Acceptance of both is necessary: ​​one cannot be content with one, for example. by the grace of the Spirit, or the baptism of the Spirit, as the example of Cornelius shows (Cyrus. Jerusalem). In both baptisms 1) we are united with Christ in the Spirit and with the Spirit through Christ; 2) we are cleansed, reborn, recreated, adopted, strengthened in faith and good will; 3) instantly, without any work or effort on our part, although 4) the saving power of this double baptism for us depends on certain conditions on our part. Through baptism with water and the Spirit, we are grafted into Christ and the Holy Spirit, we receive the grafting of both (St. Irin.), we are united both with Christ, with whom we die, are buried and are resurrected (Cyrus. Jerusalem, Basil. Vel., etc.), so “we are united with the Divine Spirit” (Tert.). in which our inner man receives the breath of life, a new soul. We are united with Christ in the Holy Spirit or through the Holy Spirit; We are also united with the Holy Spirit through Christ or in Christ. One cannot strictly separate the grace of Christ from the grace of the Holy Spirit; the first cannot exist without the second (St. Cyprus) and, conversely, the Spirit cannot sanctify without Christ the Son of God (Vas. Vel.). However, it is possible to some extent to distinguish between the “grace of water” and the “grace of the Spirit” (Cyr. Hierus.). The first is primarily Christ’s, although “there is no gift that can be given without the Spirit,” and in water there is grace “from the presence of the Spirit,” which makes us “partakers of the grace of Christ” (Vas. Vel.). The second grace is primarily the grace of the Holy Spirit, which is why even St. Cyprian following the forgiveness of Christ: “the forgiveness of Christ and the heavenly grace that follows are equally shared by everyone” (Cyprus). Both differ in their fruits. In baptism with water and the Spirit, we are cleansed from sins, reborn, recreated - by the action of the Holy Trinity, mainly Christ the Son of God and the Holy Spirit. And first of all, we are cleansed from sins; The Father leaves them, the Son takes them up and the Holy Spirit cleanses them from them (Grig. Nissk.). Baptism with water cleanses the body, and baptism with the Spirit cleanses the “depths” of our spirit (Gr. God). In baptism by water we are reborn in Christ by the Spirit, which, grafting us like wild olives into Christ and clothing us in Him, renews us with the life of Christ (Irin.). In the baptism of the Spirit we are recreated, receiving the breath of true life, the Holy Spirit, the soul of our soul. “From the Spirit we have regeneration, from regeneration we have regeneration, from regeneration we have knowledge of the dignity of Him who recreated” (Grig. God.). Here, in the baptism of the Spirit, faith “from God” receives its fullness, becomes all-perfect, no longer dogmatic only, but leading to the contemplation of God and “effective beyond human strength” (Cyr. Jer., Orig.). “Faith is perfected by baptism.” The Spirit, pouring out only on those worthy who have been cleansed of sins, leads them to a more complete knowledge of God and to the consciousness of sonship and adoption. “He (the Spirit), like the sun with which a pure eye meets, will show you in himself the Image of the Invisible, and in the blissful contemplation of the Image you will see the indescribable beauty of the Prototype” (Vasil. Vel.). “The Spirit moves your soul” when you pronounce the first sound “after these wonderful pangs of birth,” calling God the Father (“Our Father”). The outpouring of the Spirit on us, as on the apostles on the day of Pentecost, is an “abundant irrigation”, “encouraging human nature to give the fruit of virtue to the Cultivator of people” (I. Zlat.). So, the fruits of baptism with water: cleansing from sins and rebirth; the fruits of baptism in the Spirit or confirmation: restoration, adoption, perfection of faith and strengthening of strength for a virtuous life. The action of grace in baptism is accomplished “without labor, effort and good deeds,” “with great brevity,” “through one short word,” in an instant. “What is formed in the womb takes time, but not so in water; here everything happens in an instant” (I. Zlat.). “The bonds of ignorance are removed as quickly as possible, on the one hand by human faith, on the other by divine grace, when sins are forgiven through a single healing medicine, baptism with the Word” (Clim. Alex.). Revival is not the work of human forces, but “God’s work.” It “is not acquired by long study over a long period of time, but is gained in a short time through grace, which produces maturity.” “When,” says St. Cyprian, with the help of the birth wave, the stains of my former life were washed away, a clear and pure light poured into the purified heart from above, when, after absorbing the Heavenly Spirit, the second birth made me a new person, then in an amazing way “everything became clear, all doubts were resolved and I knew that “what the Holy Spirit animated began to be God.” (Cyprus.). Although rebirth and restoration do not depend on our will and grace is “certainly inherent” in the sacraments, like the sun rising independently of our desires and prayers (Grieg. Nissk.), nevertheless, for the “success” of the action of the power of God on a person, aspirations and desires in the regenerated are necessary. The mystery of rebirth in baptism is similar to the mystery of ordinary birth. Both are accomplished by the power of God; without it, in an ordinary birth, the aspirations and efforts of those giving birth are “invalid and useless”; Without it, spiritual birth or rebirth cannot take place, no matter how much we desire it. But this does not mean that our “strivings for what we desire” are useless. Through them, those who are reborn “either acquire some increase in grace or do not turn away from themselves the inherent grace,” that grace that “is certainly inherent in those who are reborn through this mysterious economy.” You can turn away from yourself the grace that is certainly inherent in the sacrament, which is later revealed in some people who unworthily approach the sacraments, in the fruits of life, alien to the signs of rebirth: the liberation of the soul from the “impurity of passions” and the presence of the “gift of the Holy Spirit” (Grig. Nissk.). It must be remembered that baptism is only “the beginning and foundation of great blessings”, that the inner, regenerated person is like a baby who must grow: “this fruit is born by faith, brought into the world by the rebirth of baptism.” And not everything in a person is changed by baptism. Human nature in its essence does not change; the powers of the soul “are not transformed”; even evil is “not completely destroyed”; there is only a “suppression of the continuity of evil”; “a person renounces association with evil.” Something similar happens when a snake’s “head is dead, but the tail is still animated by its own irritability and is not deprived of vitality; so one can see that vice, struck by a mortal blow, still disturbs life with its remnants” (Grieg. Nissk.). These remnants are skills rooted in free human will, i.e. in an area inviolable for God himself and His grace. That is why baptism does not destroy habits, these remnants of sin: “the font destroys sins, but you correct the habit,” notes St. I. Zlatoust. And what needs to be done before baptism, during the period of pre-purification; otherwise, it is better not to start the sacrament: “destroy the bad habits that have taken root in you, destroy the habit, so that after baptism you do not turn to it again” (I. Zlat.). In the same way, baptism does not destroy the habit of good: “baptism, blotting out sins, does not destroy correction” (ϰατορϑωμάτων, Grieg. Bog.), - literally, good deeds, which remain in the will in the form of skills for good. Human life after baptism: improvement, prosperity. The further advancement of a Christian man is also accomplished by the action of grace in union with human will, with a huge, however, preponderance of the former compared to the efforts of the latter. “A newly enlightened person, if he does not add keeping the commandment to faith, is nothing more than an innocent person”; he is “like a young warrior who has just been added to the military lists”; “For one putting on the garment of incorruptibility and the washing away of sins” we will not receive a reward (Grig. Nissk.). · We must “keep baptism”, i.e. received its grace-filled fruits and gifts. This preservation depends both on God and on us (Gregory Bog.). “It is necessary for improvement in virtue to combine both, human effort and assistance, which comes down from above by faith” (Vas. Vel.). The Holy Spirit “for all who sincerely accepted the gift (in baptism) remains a helper and cohabitant, creating good in everyone, for advancement in matters of faith,” but this help of God and growth in goodness require diligence and effort on our part. “The truth of works and the grace of the Spirit” must “unite, but being in separation from each other does not bring any benefit to the soul, for just as grace cannot dwell in souls fleeing salvation, so the power of human virtue in itself is not sufficient to lead souls not involved in grace to a perfect form of life” (Grig. Nissk.). Our prosperity is similar to what happens in agriculture." “Just as the good of agriculture, the creativity of the fruit, is composed of the good will of the farmer, in accordance with his art, and of the involuntary goodness of the air, dependent on Providence, and sufficiently abundant rain, so the good of the rational world is composed of his free will and the inspiration of divine power in him who chooses the best. Not only in order to become good and kind are our will and divine inspiration needed, which, as far as we are concerned, does not depend on our will, but this is also necessary in order for the one who has become good and good to remain in virtue: since even the perfect will fall if, standing high in goodness, he considers himself to be the culprit of it, and does not give due glory to the One who has gifted him to a much greater extent both for the creation and preservation of virtue.” (Orig.). Thus, an incomparably large share in our prosperity belongs to God, His grace, while for us it is a small one. “To succeed you need two shares from the great God, namely the first and last, and also one share from me” (Grig. God.). “The majority belongs to God, but at the same time we ourselves contribute something small.” One can even say, as the Apostle said (Rom. IX, 16), that everything belongs to God, “since to whom the greatest belongs, all things are said to belong to him; to us belongs the choice and the will, but to God the fulfillment and the bringing to an end.” Pre-election and will are left to us: grace “does not prevent our desires, so as not to harm our will.” “God did not want everything to be His work, so that it would not seem that He was crowning us in vain, and vice versa (he did not want everything to be) from us, so that we would not fall into madness, for if we are arrogant, having a smaller part, what would happen if we were masters of everything”? With our will, the disposition of the will and feasible good deeds, we must “attract the grace of God to assist us” and then “grace is not only present in labor and danger, but also participates in such deeds that seem the easiest, and contributes its assistance everywhere,” so that “the constant presence of grace in us is the reason for all good things. She guides us to all that is good; just as when it flies away from us, it destroys us and makes us helpless.” Therefore, “we will care about only one thing, how to attract His grace, how to attract its strong effect on ourselves” (I. Zlat.). This is how our progress takes place with the omnipotent and great influence of God and with our comparatively small participation in this matter. But what exactly happens to a person in a state of prosperity? The Spirit of God restores the highest part of our being to its power and dominion in relation to flesh and blood, i.e. to the body and the lower animal part of our soul. But for this to happen, it is necessary, having received the instillation of the Spirit (in baptism), to become better in life through faith and bear the fruits of the Spirit, to demonstrate vigilance, diligence, and not to reject the Spirit. If all this is observed, then the Spirit of God will strengthen the human spirit and help it to bring into subjection the lower aspects and parts of the human being, and man will be restored to the primitive state. The improvement of man, beginning with grafting into Christ through the Spirit and the outpouring of the Spirit (in baptism and confirmation), continues with the participation of man throughout his entire life, for in this life we ​​only “gradually get used to perceiving and bearing God.” “The full grace of the Spirit” in the future life “will make us like Him and perfect us according to the will of the Father, for it will make us (finally) in the image and likeness of God” (Irin.). This is the complete re-creation that follows rebirth (Greek. Bog.), the beginning of which lies in baptism - “the foundation and beginning of great blessings” (Greek. Nissk.). Ave. Macarius of Egypt introduces us even deeper into the process of human improvement, pointing out, as the goal of further progress, the “transformation” of the human soul, “a change in its appearance,” the complete eradication of sin, the gradual education of the human will, the completely complete union of our entire soul with the whole of Christ and with the whole Spirit, as if to “dissolve” with Them. In the soul, even after baptism, sin nests in its deep recesses: “the serpent lurks under the very mind, in the depths of thoughts, nests and kills you in the so-called recesses and repositories of the soul, for the heart is an abyss.” Although the soul is purified, although “the spring pours out pure water, underneath lies mud.” “Smoke and sin abide with grace,” for grace can abide with sin without being defiled by it. “The soul has many members (multi-components) and great depth.” “When a person seeks grace, it comes to him and takes possession of, for example, two parts of the soul.” “But the greater part of it is possessed by sin, and only one part is under grace.” The task of grace is to take possession of all areas of the soul and destroy, “dry up” the very “root of sin” hidden in free will. Although “grace can purify a person in an instant,” for his benefit, it does its work not suddenly, but gradually, “in various and varied ways”: first it enlightens the soul “in part,” not all; sometimes it retreats for a while in order to gradually embrace it all, penetrate its depths and dry up the very root of sin in the depths of the human will. And all this is precisely for testing and training human will and strengthening our vigilance, since even one standing at a high degree of perfection and almost completely embraced by grace can fall if he allows negligence and falls into exaltation. Grace educates our will in various ways with the goal of bringing it to such a state when the soul is completely surrendered to God, when it becomes the throne of God, when “Christ carries and leads and supports it,” like the chariot in the vision of Ezekiel, when “holy souls are carried and supported by the Spirit of Christ,” when “to the depths of effective grace holds the mind in its arms and lifts it into heaven,” and the will becomes “bound by grace, captive.” her,” although miraculously he does not lose his freedom. Then evil, at first, “seems to become thinner and liquefied,” and in the end, like the root of a plant or a source, it completely dries up. All this is accomplished with the constant manifestation on the part of a person of “will and good diligence,” forcing oneself even against the desire for good, “preparing oneself as much as possible for good,” the initial striving of the will (compare St. I. Chrysostom), and then “the Lord himself easily and without difficulty creates everything in him,” and meanwhile “attributes the whole thing to us.” The completion of the entire process of a Christian’s advancement is the perception into his soul of all of Christ and the entire Holy Spirit, the complete union of the entire soul with Christ and the Spirit, soul to soul, hypostasis to hypostasis, for which the Divinity convenes its unapproachable glory, diminishes itself to union with the limited human soul (prov. Mac. Egypt). This is “through success in good deeds, the indwelling of the Spirit” and the entry of Christ the Bridegroom into the depths of the soul, into the “inside” of it, into “all the gates of the soul,” about which St. Gregory of Nyssa, and that combination with the Divine Spirit, which begins with baptism and should continue throughout life in the form of a close marital union, which Tertullian wrote about. “The soul is united with the Divine Spirit and the flesh follows the soul as a captive given as a dowry and no longer as a servant of the soul, but of the Spirit; O! a blessed marriage if it does not allow adultery.” The picture of the state opposite to prosperity - the possession of the soul by sin, the dominance of sin in it - is also depicted with especially vivid features in the works of St. Macarius of Egypt. Grace is crowded out from all areas of the soul: sin takes possession of all its parts. “The whole source becomes muddy and the soul, when it is indignant, mixes with vice and Satan becomes one with the soul,” sitting on it as on his throne (Mac. Egypt). However, even then the grace of God does not completely abandon the soul: “The spirit, although it does not have communication with the unworthy, nevertheless, apparently, coexists in some way with those once sealed, awaiting their salvation upon conversion” (Basil. Vel.). Moreover, free will is not lost: sin is a robber rampaging in the soul, but the master of the house is also there, although weakened by the robber, so that there are: “especially the robber and especially the master of the house” - free will (Mac. Egypt). This is why illnesses of the soul cannot be looked at as bodily wounds; these latter are incurable, “with will nothing like this happens, but often an evil person, having willed, can change and become good, and a good person, being careless, can fall into evil” (I. Zlat.). In other words, in our will, due to the ineradicable desire for good inherent in it by the Creator, never, no matter how grave our sinful state, the vitality or possibility of conversion completely disappears, and therefore the incurability of the will cannot be allowed. If a person desires, then these inclinations of vitality, under the influence of grace, which never completely leaves a Christian person, will develop, and the sinner’s conversion will be accomplished. Following the path of theological, rather than anthropological, revelation of the doctrine of the grace of God outlined by the ancient fathers, i.e. coming out of the teaching about Prov. The Trinity in Her revelation to the world, we had the opportunity: 1) to notice in the patristic view of grace its division into private or, in the words of Origen, its special types, namely, the grace of God the Father and the Son on the one hand and the grace of the Holy Spirit on the other, through which 2) the ancient church teaching was clarified about this or that action of grace on man, namely: about another action of grace of the Father and the Son and another - the grace of the Holy Spirit, and 3) the moment and scope of both the action of God and human participation were more precisely determined: that the action of God in the grace of God the Father and the Son precedes all human participation and excites it, and human decisive participation and inclination to the side of grace precedes a new, special action of grace, namely the grace of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, which gives special help and assistance to weak human forces, 4) that in baptism, in addition to the cleansing of the defilements of the body and soul, there is a combination of the human soul with the power of God, the grace of Christ in the Holy Spirit, through the supernatural action of God, 5) that this union with God in the later life of a Christian, in the state of his prosperity, becomes closer and closer, reaching the complete transformation of human nature and the penetration of it by grace, with why our will, with its desire and aspiration, must always go ahead of grace in order to attract it to action, but 6) that, nevertheless, an incomparably large share in the matter of advancement, as in the beginning of salvation, belongs to grace, but for us it is something small: grace not only precedes and accomplishes, but also completes our salvation, and we are only drawn by it and participate in our salvation, which, in essence, is accomplished by it - non-resistance, consent, determination, the desire of our will and the possible contribution of our weak forces to it through the truth of deeds. Experience of the formula of the dogmatic teaching about the grace of God on the basis of the ancient fatherly creations. Based on the previous presentation, we consider it possible to present to the attention of readers the following experience of the formula of the dogmatic teaching about the grace of God, compiled on the basis of ancient fatherly explanations and stated, as literally as possible, in the words of the ancient saints themselves. fathers and teachers of the church until bl. Augustine. 1) The grace of God, essentially one, is divided, according to the manner of its action on man, into the grace of God the Father and the Son and into the grace of the Holy Spirit. The first - the attraction of the Father and the guidance, enlightenment of the Son - acts on all worthy and unworthy; the second is the assistance and assistance of the Holy Spirit, like the highest grace - only for the worthy. 2) The first grace - of the Father and the Son, based on the preliminary forgiveness of the sins of all people by God the Father, in Christ the Redeemer, and therefore acting on everyone, calls everyone to salvation without distinction and can be called calling. It turns into one that selects and attracts some through insight into the innermost man, into the mood of human will, known to God and before it is revealed in deeds. Grace calling, in both states, i.e. and as calling all and attracting some, the chosen ones, can be called, in accordance with the Last. eastern patriarchs, preceding 837. 3) Man, as the subject of the action of grace, is a being deeply damaged both in body and soul by ancestral sin and therefore weak, powerless, with an indestructible, but attraction to goodness, deeply embedded by the Creator in his nature, with a darkened, distorted, but not destroyed image of God in the mind, heart and even will, in which evil takes the deepest roots in the form of evil habits. The work of God’s grace is to purify, revive and recreate all human nature and in particular the human will, without destroying, but its freedom and therefore with the participation of man himself in the matter of its re-creation. The accomplishment of salvation for those worthy of being drawn by grace to Christ is accomplished in the following way. 4) Grace, which attracts salvation in Christ, acts on a person first from the outside in various ways: through familiarity with Holy Scripture, through the surrounding Christian environment and other ways in which someone can be healed. Acting on the mind, attractive (anticipatory) grace little by little penetrates into the depths of the heart and helps the human will by awakening in it the desire for salvation. The beginnings of faith appear in a person, but so far only dogmatic faith, faith from man, faith as consent to accept the gospel sermon. 5) But acting on a person’s will, grace does not force the will, it tests the will and waits for its inclination. When this inclination follows, a special grace begins to act - the grace of the Holy Spirit 838 awaiting precisely this inclination to bestow upon the person further, even more powerful help and assistance than before. From the action of this special grace, the pre-shine of the Spirit begins, rays of light and knowledge appear in the soul, faith is strengthened, faith from God is born. However, for complete illumination by the Spirit, for the fullness of faith, for complete purification and rebirth, a special action of grace is needed in baptism with water and the Spirit (baptism and confirmation) and, first, as a preparation for this, pre-purification, purification before purification. Pre-purification, which consists in the exercise of goodness, is necessary both for the worthy acceptance of the grace of baptism, and for the weakening in the will of habits towards sin that have grown together with it and therefore are opposed to grace. 6) In baptism with water and the Spirit (baptism and confirmation), the cleansing of a person from all sins, rebirth (in baptism with water), restoration, adoption, strengthening in faith and good will (in baptism with the Spirit) are accomplished by grace. In baptism by water the Father forgives us our sins, the Son takes them away and cleanses us from sinful filth by the Holy Spirit. In baptism by water we are given the grace of Christ in the Holy Spirit, and in baptism by the Spirit (myrrh.) the grace of the Holy Spirit through Christ; in both baptisms we are united with Christ in the Holy Spirit and with the Holy Spirit through Christ - we receive the instillation of One and the other. From the Holy Spirit (in confirmation) we receive the breath of true life, the soul of our soul, the beginning of regeneration, the boldness to call God Father and abundant irrigation, prompting human nature to give the fruit of virtues to the Cultivator of people. The action of grace in baptism occurs without labor or effort on our part, with great speed, through one short word, in an instant. In baptism, grace is certainly present, regardless of our will and desire, but for the success of the action of grace on a person, he must have a desire for what he desires (rebirth and reconstruction). 7) Baptism is the beginning and foundation of great blessings, but only the beginning. The complete reconstruction of man in him is just beginning: the nature of the soul with its powers and personal characteristics is not transformed; the root of evil is not completely destroyed by baptism, just as the good (good deeds) done before baptism is not blotted out by the waters of baptism. Both in the form of skills remain inviolable in the will in its freedom for grace. Hence, the further action of grace on man, its further help and assistance to him, is necessary. Evil, like good, can grow from seed and root into a great tree. Stopping the development of the first and promoting the growth of the second is a matter of grace in union with human will. The actions of grace represent continuity, wise gradualness and a variety of ways of influencing a person, with full protection and only the wise direction of his free will. 8) The final re-creation, the transformation of a person’s soul, with the active participation of his will, is accomplished by grace throughout the subsequent life after baptism. A large share, almost everything in this case, as at the beginning of salvation, belongs not to man, but to the grace of God, but to man something small. Without preventing human desire for the protection of human freedom, grace requires the initial desire of the human will to attract it (grace) to help, assistance, a deep consciousness of powerlessness on the part of man, full of his hope only in God, at the same time, however, constant care and attentiveness to his moral state and the feasible participation of his weak forces in what is accomplished by grace. The rest is done by grace, the actions of which consist in the transformation of the human soul, in a complete change in its appearance, in the final drying up of the root of sin in the human will, in the gradual infusion of the whole of Christ and the whole of the Holy Spirit. into all areas of the soul until complete, as far as is possible for a limited human being, union with God. 9) The opposite of progress, the sinful state consists in more or less complete embrace of the soul by sin, and, however, the grace of God does not completely move away from the soul once sealed in baptism, but in some way coexists with it, awaiting its conversion. Grace and sin can coexist in the human soul in its various areas. The possibility of the conversion of sinners expected by grace is hidden in the depths of human freedom, which never completely disappears both in a state of high righteousness and in the deepest fall of man, as a result of which the possibility of conversion of the greatest sinners, as well as the fall of the great righteous, never completely disappears. The compilation of this formula was the final goal of all our feasible work on the study of the ancient fathers' creations in this regard. To compare with the formula just proposed, we cannot help but cite the following, also a kind of formula from one of the works of our famous ascetic theologian, Rev. Theophanes - a formula, however, incomplete, relating only to the main and mainly the first moments in the process of salvation, but striking in its unusually complete similarity with the ideas, and often the expressions of the ancient fathers. “Together with the word of the gospel calling for salvation through the hearing of the ear, grace passes into the soul and excites it. But it only excites thoughts and feelings. Since desire and inclination of the will must soon be formed, it retreats and waits for what the owner of the soul will choose. When desire and the inclination of the will are formed, it again comes to the aid and helps to establish what the will is inclined to. This is how contrition for sins is formed, the desire to get rid of the extremes to which they lead, faith in the proposed image of deliverance, the decision made as a result and the initiation of the sacraments. In all these moments, the grace of the Holy Spirit follows will. Without it, the grace of God will not, by its own power, produce against the will that which should depend on the movements of the will. When, finally, grace, which hitherto acted from the outside, overshadowing, enters inside in the sacrament and is combined with the soul of a person, then a special movement of will is no longer required. It prepared itself for this with all its previous efforts and opened itself to grace by committing itself to the Lord in the final decision” 839. – “The decision is the main moment in the moral structure of one who turns to the Lord; but as long as it is not yet sealed with mysterious grace, it is still fragile, unreliable, powerless. Why is St. offered after him? baptism. What is given in baptism is a gift of God, which is given, but not unconditionally. The condition is the said decision by faith. For the sake of this decision, by faith, the grace of God enters inside through the sacrament and combines there with the spirit of man, holding that decision, and, tempering this decision, lays down the seed and embryo of a new spiritually grace-filled life. One’s personal decision, weak in itself, is clothed here with power from above... Here grace and freedom are combined together and then act inseparably throughout life, unless some sin comes again to separate them” 840. “From here on, grace abides inseparably from freedom, but still acts in the same way as before, promoting and strengthening the desire and strength for salvation, but never touching the sanctuary of freedom - its arbitrary choice and inclination” 841. The entire difference between this reasoning of the deceased saint and the above patristic formula lies only in the lack of differentiation between the types of grace and the lack of details in depicting the process of our salvation, starting with baptism and continuing with the period of prosperity, which is spoken of only in the most general terms. But for what concerns the first moments of salvation, the quoted words of Rev. Theophan and in their entirety and in each expression separately, one might say, breathe the patristic spirit, representing without a doubt the fruit of a deep and thoughtful study of the patristic works, in view of which we allowed ourselves to present the aforementioned reasoning of the deceased saint, which naturally came to our mind when presenting the ancient patristic teaching on grace. To conclude our entire study, there are a few general judgments and comments. A few general final thoughts and comments. Clarification of the ancient fathers' views casts considerable light on the subsequent history of the revelation of the doctrine of grace. For the ancient Eastern fathers, with their flexible, balanced and disciplined minds amid theological disputes (about the Holy Trinity and the Person of I. Christ), such exaggerations and hesitations in the teaching about the mutual relations of grace and human free will, which we later encounter when Westerners began to reveal this point of teaching, were impossible. The Eastern ancient fathers agreed and developed in complete harmony all three main ideas that underlie the said teaching of the Orthodox Church: the idea of ​​the predominance, the most powerful, all-encompassing action in our salvation of the grace of God, then the idea of ​​inviolability, the protection by grace itself and the direction of human free will by it, and, finally, the idea of ​​​​the combined action of the power of God and human forces from the beginning of salvation to the end of it. None of these ideas suppressed the other and they developed normally, emerging from the contemplation of the wisdom and goodness of the Triune God, our creator, provider, redeemer and sanctifier. This is not what should have happened when the West, with its unbalanced and undisciplined mind in subtle dogmatic matters, took on the solution of soteriological issues. First of all, the Pelagians seized on the ancient broad concept of grace. Having filled the content of their concept of it with what the ancient fathers bore the name of the grace of God the Father and the Son, and, moreover, not with what in this type of grace was expressed by the action of the power of God on the soul of each individual person, but with what related to the gifts of God objectively given by the grace of God the Father by the Son of God for the entire human race (gratia naturalis, gratia legis, gratia Christi), they turned the concept of grace into the concept of God-given means contained in the Godlike human nature, in the revelation of the old and the new, and in the redemption of Christ. This, in their opinion, is that very Divine help, which is mainly, almost exclusively necessary for us and is essentially sufficient for our salvation. The grace of the Holy Spirit (gratia Spiritus Sancti) is, in their view, the power of God that helps us only to more easily accomplish what can be done, although not so easily, without it, by our own, self-sufficient forces. And thus, among the Pelagians, instead of two forces that bring about our salvation, God’s and human, one human power remained, which, together with the objective gifts of God (gratia legis, gratia Christi), took the place of grace as the power of God, helping us in working out our salvation in Christ. This abuse of the broad scope of the ancient concept of grace, at first unnoticed by the Easterners, deceived by the imaginary identity of the Pelagian teaching with their broad concept of grace 842, was first of all noticed and denounced by Bl. Augustine. At the same time, he was faced with the need to narrow the concept of grace and, without denying its “diversity,” he had to bring to a particularly prominent place the idea of ​​grace as a special power of God, and specifically the grace of the Holy Spirit. But having exaggerated the degree of insignificance and damage by original sin to our powers and not giving them anything other than complete sinfulness, he attributed the entire work of achieving our salvation to the action of the single all-effective grace of God. And again there remained only one force that brings about our salvation, but not human, like the Pelagians, but God’s. There was no harmonic combination of both. Augustine. The oscillation between these two views was expressed in the so-called semi-Pelagianism, which all consisted of concessions, transactions and mechanical connections of the incongruous. It made a concession to Pelagianism at the first moment of salvation, attributing the beginning of faith to the independent action of man himself, then - a similar concession to the bl. Augustine, appropriating the beginning of grace and the emergence of good activity in a person. Further, attributing to grace the growth of faith and improvement in a virtuous life, the Semi-Pelagians followed the bl. Augustine, and the final strengthening in faith and virtuous life assimilated by man himself, they followed in the footsteps of the Pelagians. As for the first moment of salvation (the beginning of faith), in this case, in addition to the inclination of the semi-Pelagians towards Pelagianism, they were influenced (in all likelihood) by the narrowing of the concept of grace. As soon as grace was defined as precisely the grace of the Holy Spirit, which, according to the teaching of the fathers, is given only to the worthy and which, before revealing its effect, awaits the inclination of our will (i.e., to believe), then the thought itself suggested itself that, therefore, the beginning of faith is from us. With the ancient patristic understanding, with the distinction between the types and moments of the action of grace, such a situation did not seem either wrong or suspicious; the ancient fathers, from their point of view, could talk about both warning and non-warning by the grace of our will and desire, depending on what moment of salvation and what type of action of grace were being discussed. The Semi-Pelagians have a similar situation: the beginning of faith - from us, with its general character and the absence of any restrictions, became not only suspicious, but also incorrect, unfaithful. Further, by dividing the entire process of salvation equally between grace and human powers and attributing one to the former and the other to the latter, the semi-Pelagians violated two ancient patristic ideas: 1) the idea of ​​the predominance of grace and 2) the idea of ​​its eternal action combined with human powers. Grace and man himself do not act equally, not by half, but more must be attributed to grace, almost all, at least two-thirds of the entire work of salvation, and moreover, in such a way that grace never, except the very beginning of salvation and partly the moment of baptism and confirmation, acts alone without us, especially since we alone can do nothing without grace. Thus, there was no harmonious and harmonious combination of the actions of the power of God and human forces here either. Semi-Pelagianism turned out to be an imaginary reconciliation of extreme views, a mechanical combination of them, reminiscent of equally unsuccessful attempts to reconcile heretical and Orthodox teachings about Proverbs. The Trinity and the Person of I. Christ in ambiguous formulas and symbols. We will not go into a presentation or even a general overview of the further history of the development of the doctrine of grace in the West: in disputes about predestination in the 9th century, in the theories of medieval scholastics, in the teachings of the Roman Church and in the teachings of Protestant societies. All this represents such a vast subject that requires special careful, laborious research, and it is hardly possible to say anything more than superficial about such a subject in a short note. We allow ourselves here only to note that throughout this richly developed, centuries-old history of Western soteriology, the same one-sidedness and imbalance of Western theological thought was reflected, which in the immediate period of the ancient fathers was foreshadowed by history in the above-mentioned (Pelagianism, semi-Pelagianism and the extremes of the teachings of St. Augustine) prototypes of subsequent Western soteriological theories. We understand, first of all, the characteristic features of the theories of the medieval scholastics, who, with all their efforts, separately presented all the moments of the action of grace in its many divisions (gratia antecedens aut praeveniens et consequens, gratia operans et cooporans, gratia gratis dans, gratia gratis data etc.) and show, in imitation of partly the ancient fathers, the joint participation of grace and human in these moments forces, a view so unusual for the ancient fathers took shape and developed as a view of merit that requires fair retribution from God (merces, praetium, meritum, aequalitas quaedam, quaedam justiae modus, actus meritorius, meritura de congruo, meritum de condigno - in Thomas Aquinas, etc.) for everything that happens in a person from the action of grace and is accomplished by him her help. What was prepared and developed in the Middle Ages by the scholastics was finally consolidated in the theology of the Roman Church in new centuries and (under the influence of the accepted and authorized Anselmo-Dunscott theory of the fall of the first parents and original sin) this inclination towards exaggerating the importance of the human element in the work of salvation was expressed in even more striking features (the doctrine of supererogatory merits, indulgences, etc.), so that everything is soteriological the teachings of Roman theology took on a color largely reminiscent of ancient semi-Pelagianism. Protestant teaching in its various forms received the opposite coloring, expressed as a repetition and modification of the extremes of the teachings of Bl. Augustine - in predestination teachings and in carrying out in the soteriological teaching the principle of a single justifying faith - a principle that belittles the importance of the human element in soteriology (good deeds in the broad sense). Over the course of the middle and new centuries, an enormous amount of labor and energy was spent on all these Western theories, which deserved a better fate. True, not everything in them is false; lies are mixed with truth, gold inherited from ancient times is mixed with various impurities, but very often it is difficult to determine where the gold turns into an impurity alien to it. And in relation to these Western theories, often very tempting, brilliantly developed, often rich in psychological analysis, the teaching of the ancient fathers about the grace of God can serve as a reliable touchstone for distinguishing what and how much pure gold they contain and what and how much impurity. “The goodness of God bestowed Divine and enlightening grace, which we also call prevenient, which, like the light that enlightens those who walk in darkness, guides everyone” (“Post. Eastern Patr.”). Here there is a similarity not only with the idea, but even with the way of expression of the ancient fathers. True, there is no mention here of the division of grace into the grace of the Father and the Son and the grace of the Holy Spirit, but the name of the prevenient grace “Divine and enlightening”, “guiding everyone” is reminiscent of the ancient fathers: “the attraction of the Father”, “guidance, enlightenment of the Son”. And then it speaks of “special grace”, “promoting, strengthening and constantly improving” (given below). “Those who wish to freely submit to it (prevenient grace), for it prospers those who seek it, and not those who resist it, and to fulfill its commands, which are necessary for fear, therefore receive a special grace, which promotes, strengthens and constantly perfects them in the love of God, i.e. in those good deeds that God requires of us (and which prevenient grace also required), he justifies them and makes them predestined” (“Episode Eastern Patr.,” ending the above cited passage). Special grace, although not called here the grace of the Holy Spirit, is obvious, judging by the actions it assimilates (assistance, strengthening, improvement), is exactly what the ancient fathers called the completion, completion, grace of the Holy Spirit. Regarding prevenient grace, it is said here that it also requires good deeds, not in the sense of the obvious conditions in order to begin its action (for it “guides everyone” regardless of their moral dignity), and for the salutary effect of its effect on a person. “Letters to a person in St. Petersburg regarding the appearance of a new teacher of faith there.” St. Petersburg 1881 p. 72. There is also a little higher, page 71. Ibid., p. 72 (end of the above discussion). Let us understand the well-known facts of the justification of the Pelagians at the first eastern councils: Jerusalem 414 and Diospolis 415. The acquittal here occurred not only from the lack of skill of Pelagius’ accusers, but mainly from the fact that the Pelagians spoke in the then generally accepted theological language, skillfully hiding their non-Orthodox teaching under Orthodox expressions. However, for the same reason, not everyone in the West suddenly understood the essence of Pelagianism, as evidenced by Pope Zosimus, who carried out this method of Pelagian expositions, their constant ranting about grace and spreading them on topics completely unrelated to the controversial issue (exposition of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity, the Person of I. Christ), i.e. the usual technique of the unthinking. You might be interested in: