Заключение

In the previous presentation, as far as possible, a complete summary and analysis of data relating to the dogmatic teaching about the sacraments in the works of the most ancient fathers of the church was made: the Apostolic Men, St. Justin the Martyr, St. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian and St. Cyprian. All these persons are undoubtedly the oldest and most important representatives, some of church tradition, like the Apostolic Men, others, at the same time, of the scientific disclosure of dogmatic truths and, moreover, in various directions, constituting the prototypes of further directions in the disclosure of church teaching. After St. Justin the Martyr, who was the first to apply the method of scientific disclosure and presentation to the dogmas of faith, is followed by representatives, on the one hand, of the speculative, philosophical direction: Clement of Alexandria and Origen, on the other, of the positive, practical direction: Tertullian and St. Cyprian. The middle between them is occupied by St. Irenaeus, a half-Eastern, half-Western father, representing a harmonious combination of Eastern speculation in the field of faith with Western positivity. In the works of these fathers and writers, the churches were completely determined - both the angle from which the sacraments were viewed in the Greco-Roman world, and those particular techniques that were used at that time to reveal the high significance of these sacred rites, as well as the entire path that the revelation of the dogmatic teaching about the sacraments in the period before scholasticism was outlined in its most important features. And this is not only because such personalities as Origen, Tertullian and St. Cyprian, had a great influence on the east and west, but also because the subsequent fathers and writers of the church were under the influence of the same general reasons (we do not have in mind the particular reasons consisting in the circumstances of the time before the 4th century and after the 4th century), which determined this, and not another, nature of the disclosure of the dogmatic teaching about the sacraments in the most ancient period of the existence of the Church of Christ. At the beginning of the essay, we set the goal of our research to solve the following questions: 1) Was the general concept of a sacrament developed in the ancient Church, as a concept representing the unification of essential features and properties common to all sacraments, was there a formula for “seven sacraments of the Church,” and was the dogmatic teaching about the sacraments generally revealed in the same way as it is being revealed at the present time? 2) If there was neither one, nor the other, nor the third, then do the paternal works, which began from the very early period of the existence of the Church of Christ, provide sufficient data for it to be possible to say that the Church, in the person of its most important representatives, the bearers of its tradition, from its very beginning looked at each of the seven sacraments separately as a sacred act, very important, imparting, in a sensual element or in a visible sacred action, a special gift of grace coming to it? In other words, the sacraments, without formally standing out from a number of other sacred rites, were they not put forward from the circle of the latter through the depiction of the great importance of each of them - separately and in other ways? Within the period we studied, we have the opportunity to answer both of these questions, the first - negatively, the second - positively. We have seen that the fathers and writers of the church, for various motives and reasons, tried to reveal the idea of ​​​​the everywhere and varied action of the Spirit of God in the Church - action aimed at the sanctification of man in various ways and in various relationships. This idea, of course, prompted them primarily to jointly consider the various ways of the action of the Spirit of God in the Church of Christ, and not to isolate the sacraments from a number of other ways of working the grace of God in the Church. Therefore, it is not surprising that in this period we do not find among the most important representatives of church tradition a constant and predominant desire to isolate the sacraments from the area of ​​everything that in the Church of God serves to sanctify man, but on the contrary, we noticed a predominance of the desire to jointly consider and depict all the parts that make up this broad area. That is why we did not find that they developed and precisely defined the concept of “sacrament” in the special sense of the word, nor that there was a term corresponding to this concept. The word μυστήριον = sacramentum, although used by them, was in completely different senses, being a means for them to designate completely different concepts. Although in the period under review they began to apply this word (Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian and Cyprian), among other things, to the sacraments in the proper sense, it was still not at that time a concept that would concentrate, combine and express the essential features of the seven sacraments. On the one hand, it was used to designate in the sacraments such aspects through which these sacred rites came into contact with many objects that had far from essential similarities with them, therefore μυστήριον = sacramentum not only did not separate the sacraments from the field of objects of faith and Christian life, but on the contrary united them with the latter. On the other hand, this name was attached to some of the sacraments, namely the first three, to indicate some (external, of course only) similarity with the pagan mysteries. In this case, it was a concept that, although generalizing these sacraments and distinguishing them from the area of ​​other sacraments and ritual rites, had the character of a random origin, and not developed by comparing all seven sacraments with each other in essence. So, in the first case, μυστήριον = sacramentum was too broad a concept, in the latter - too narrow; in both cases it did not at all express what we now associate with the concept of sacraments. If during the period under review they did not care about isolating the sacraments from the vast circle of the actions of the Spirit of God in the Church, and as a consequence of this, about subsuming all seven sacraments under one general concept of sacrament, in the narrow sense of the word, if then the term “sacrament” was not used in this sense, then it is self-evident that the formula could not appear: “there are seven sacraments of the Church.” Until the first was completed, the latter, of course, could not be completed. And under such conditions there could not be a completely satisfactory disclosure of the essential side in the dogmatic teaching about the sacraments in general and about each of the sacraments separately. The essential point of this teaching is to determine the relationship between the internal and external aspects of the sacrament, grace and a sensory sign, or church sacrament in general. Despite the fact that in the period under review there are in places remarkable explanations relating to this side of the sacraments (especially with regard to baptism and the Eucharist), we do not, however, find that among the fathers of the time under consideration the question of the relationship of grace to the visible side of all seven church sacraments was posed with all clarity and certainty and that, accordingly, answers to it were given with all separateness in application to each of the sacraments separately. And this is because such a formulation of the disclosure of this subject is possible only under the condition of - a preliminary, deliberate isolation of all seven sacraments from the circle of other means of saving man by the grace of God, - under the condition of analyzing their essence, - comparing these seven sacred rites with each other, - abstracting essential features from them, - combining them in one general concept and - expression in a formula. All this is necessary so that the thought of the reasoner will once and for all settle on one certain point of view in relation to the sacraments, so that this one point of view will become constant for him, obligatory, as in our time - such that a certain person no longer has the freedom to consider a given subject from such a side and from such an angle from which and from which he finds it necessary and useful at a certain time. But until all this happened, the revelation of the doctrine of the sacraments necessarily had to have the character of a certain kind of incompleteness, an accident, which is what we actually see in the period under review. This or that father accidentally, on special occasions, touched upon an essential aspect of this or that sacrament, and did not for long take our point of view in relation to this or that particular sacrament; in most cases, the fathers had no incentive to dwell on this particular side of the subject and took full advantage of the freedom granted to them by that time to talk about the sacraments and consider them from the most diverse points of view. The lack of generalization, formulation and separateness in the disclosure of the doctrine of the sacraments does not mean, however, that the patristic writings of the very first centuries provide little data for the dogmatic teaching about them. The imperfections of the formal side of this doctrine during the period under review did not prevent the essence of the matter from being expressed in a unique form. Let us group data of this kind relating to each of the sacraments separately. I. About baptism. The general idea about the extreme importance of baptism and the communication through it of grace, which revives a person into a new life, is carried out in the works of all the fathers, starting with the apostolic men. In particular, the most important data on the relationship of grace to water is found in the works of Origen, Tertullian and Cyprian. Baptism is not only a symbol; it itself is the source and beginning of gifts of grace (Origen). Water is the organ of St. Spirit; the waters absorb the grace of the Spirit (Tertullian). Water requires purification and consecration by a priest in order to receive the power to sanctify a person (Cyprian). Immersion in water stands out from all baptismal rites. II. During this entire period, confirmation is generally considered in connection with baptism, as its second part (baptism in the Spirit, as opposed to baptism in water). But at the same time, indications of the independent significance of this sacred rite date back to a very early time, even to the period of the apostolic men (in Hermas, although they are not very clear). In the works of Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian and Cyprian, chrismation or anointing, oil, the Holy Spirit, as they call it, is so clearly compared to baptism, like one value to another, as something not only equal to baptism, but even higher than it, that there is not the slightest doubt about the existence already in the primal Church of the teaching about this sacred rite, as a sacrament separate from baptism, and not as an additional rite to baptism, as if over time elevated to the level of a sacrament. The relationship of grace to oil or peace is indirectly made clear in Origen and Tertullian, more directly in Cyprian (the consecration of oil on the altar at the Eucharist). The naming of the sensory element in this sacrament as oil, and not as ointment, indicates only the uncertainty of one specific term to designate this object in contrast to others (we find quite a few examples of such uncertainty in this period; compare the names of hierarchical degrees), and not to the confusion of various objects 837. III. About the Eucharist. The belief in the actual presence of the true body and true blood of Christ in the Eucharistic elements is attested by numerous data in the works of all the fathers, beginning with Ignatius the God-Bearer and continuing with St. Justin and Irenaeus. The symbolism of Clement of Alexandria, Origen and Tertullian is only apparent symbolism, of the same kind as the symbolism of Cyprian. All the considered fathers and writers of the church, with the exception of Origen, give the right to assume the existence of their faith in the transubstantiation of the Eucharistic elements into the body and blood of Christ; but they did not pose this question as directly as we pose it now, and therefore we do not find direct answers to it in their works, with the exception of Origen again. From his works it follows with complete certainty that the doctrine of the transubstantiation of the Eucharistic elements was a “general church tradition,” and his doctrine of non-transubstantiation was his personal, private opinion. IV. Repentance in its entirety is recognized by all the fathers, beginning with Hermas, St. Ignatius the God-Bearer and St. Clement of Rome, so important that it comes along with baptism, and therefore bears the name of rebirth (St. Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria), or even second baptism (Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian). Moreover, in Origen, Tertullian and especially in St. Cyprian clarified in detail the important role of the hierarchy in the matter of resolving repentant sins, and St. Cyprian also indicates the relationship of grace to a visible sign. V. About the priesthood. All the fathers claim that hierarchical persons have special powers of grace, especially the power to knit and decide. The grace of the priesthood is already mentioned by apostolic men (Clement of Rome and Ignatius the God-Bearer). St. Irenaeus speaks about the gifts of the Spirit in the Church and about the succession of the episcopate. According to Clement of Alexandria, the grace of the priesthood is obtained from God himself, who appoints hierarchical persons, regardless of moral merit; The grace-filled gift of the priesthood is different from other grace-filled gifts: the bishop has deep grace. Origen speaks of the breath from Jesus that their successors, like the Apostles, receive, and of the grace of the priesthood. Tertullian testifies to the succession of the episcopacy from the Apostles and to the grace-filled powers of hierarchical persons. True, the previous fathers, with the exception of Origen, do not speak directly about the act of consecration as such a sacred act through which the gifts of the priesthood and the grace-filled powers of the hierarchy are acquired, but, asserting that hierarchical persons have received from God special grace and grace-filled powers, they give full right to conclude that this receipt of the grace of the priesthood occurs in some special act. According to Cyprian, this act precedes the exercise of priestly duties (breathing on the Apostles and preparing John the Baptist in his mother’s womb to fulfill the duties of the Baptist), and in the letter of Firmilian it is made clear that the bestowal of the grace of the priesthood occurs in the visible act of ordination. VI. About marriage. The Church's faith in the importance of the sacred rite of marriage is already evident from what is found in St. Irenaeus describes the mysteries of the Gnostics, who taught (in imitation of probably the Orthodox Church) about receiving grace through marriage and replaced the rites of baptism with the rites of marriage. According to Clement of Alexandria, marriage is something sacred; God himself unites husband and wife, sanctifies them in church rites and is present among them. According to Origen, in those combined by God there is a gift, although a similar gift is given to virgins. According to Tertullian, a special grace is necessary for the sanctification of marriage, similar to the grace in baptism. The testimonies of the last two - Origen and Tertullian - as persons least capable of personally elevating marriage on their own behalf - are of particular importance, representing irrefutable evidence of the general church teaching, which undoubtedly declared itself in this case. The fathers do not speak clearly about the relationship of grace bestowed in marriage to visible sacred rites, although they hint, namely Clement of Alexandria and especially Tertullian, who described the celebration of marriage in the Church in very majestic terms. VII. Only St. testify to the consecration of oil. Irenaeus and Origen, except for some indications on this subject in Tertullian. Already the Gnostics, as can be seen from the works of St. Irenaeus, performed anointing of oil, together with marriage, along with other important sacred rites, imitating in this case, in all likelihood, the Orthodox Church. And Origen put anointing with oil at death on a par with repentance and, therefore, considered this sacred rite one of the most important liturgical actions. The extremely clear testimony of St. The Scriptures about the consecration of oil do not allow us to attach importance to the paucity of data regarding this sacred rite in the works of the ancient fathers. We consider these data, represented by the works of the ancient fathers, to be quite sufficient for the scientific justification of the Orthodox belief in the existence - in the Church of Christ of the very first centuries, starting from the times of the Apostles - of all seven church sacraments and to confirm that all these sacraments were recognized as the most important sacred rites already in this very early period of the existence of the Church. We do not attach any significance to the lack of development of the formal side of the doctrine of the sacraments in this period and are not embarrassed by the absence of a known formula not only in the time under consideration, but also in the later period until the 12th century. We have already indicated at the very beginning of the work the grounds for such an attitude towards the external, formal side of dogma. In the present case, at the end of the essay, let us once again repeat some of these thoughts. Moreover, we take the liberty of expressing some of our conjectures and assumptions about the reasons for the relatively very late completion of the disclosure and formulation of the dogmatic doctrine of the sacraments. We were guided to these assumptions both by the study of our fathers’ creations within the period we took, and by many other data. It goes without saying that we do not attach any significance to our reasoning of this kind as more than guesswork and supposition, requiring justification for ourselves through a thorough study of the further history of the dogmatic teaching about the seven church sacraments. In contrast to the unchangeable essence of dogma, this divine side in it, the formal side is the human side, changing. However, for it there is a limit, beyond which it cannot undergo change: this limit is set by the Church through the acceptance and dogmatization of the well-known, best of the formulas developed in the previous time. But while the formal side of the dogma has not reached such a limit, it gradually develops, moving from an imperfect form to a more perfect one, under the influence of numerous and varied conditions of ordinary human life and in particular church life, not without the assistance of, of course, the invisible power of St. who directs everything in the Church. Spirit. This was the case with all Christian dogmas, including the dogma of the sacraments. In the Greco-Roman world, the formulation of the doctrine of the sacraments was influenced by numerous conditions of church and social life, different from subsequent conditions. We will point out some of the conditions of ancient social life, which, in our opinion, were especially important in this respect 838. It seems to us that as long as there existed an ancient world with a certain mental make-up and a certain character of general education, folk customs and language, in a word, with the entire ancient way of life, until then the formal side of the doctrine of the sacraments could not develop to the degree of perfection to which it reached in the new world, which was under the influence of other external conditions of life. The time before the scholastic period was the time of the dominance of Plato's philosophy. And the philosophy of Plato, deepening thought into the essence of things, elevating it to ideas, encouraging it to generalizations, was a philosophy of more ideas than forms, more contemplation as a whole than analysis of the content of concepts and education through such an analysis of the whole, equally developed in all its parts. It is not surprising after this that the fathers of the Greco-Roman world are predominantly concerned with the internal meaning of dogma, analyzing it with all their characteristic subtlety and wit, often entertaining themselves with ideas that are in contact with the main subject and having an internal connection with it, but they do not pay much attention to the careful decomposition of the content of dogma, into the particular concepts contained in it, and mainly they are not very much concerned with the precise definition of these particular characteristics and combining them again in one general concept and corresponding to this latter action of an exact verbal formula 839. After this, it is not surprising that until the 12th century. - until the times of scholasticism, we do not find a detailed, complete, systematic disclosure, separate presentation and precise formulation of the doctrine of all seven sacraments and each one separately, and that in the experiments of the systems of that time we do not find a complete treatise on this subject. This was the case with many points of Christian doctrine; this must have been the case with the treatise on the sacraments. All this was inevitable in the nature and direction of thought of the church fathers and church writers who lived before the dominance of Aristotle’s philosophy - the philosophy of logical forms, which taught minds to clothe ideas in solid, stable forms, to delimit concepts, classify them, to introduce external order and harmony into the realm of thought, and monotony into the method of expression. Further, we have already had the opportunity to point out the fact that the comparison of them with the pagan mysteries had an important influence on the disclosure and formulation of the doctrine of the sacraments in the first three centuries. But the influence of this reason, one might think, was not limited (as we noticed) only to these centuries, but extended to the entire period of time during which the Greco-Roman world continued to exist (not in the political sense, but in the sense of civilization), with its ancient way of life, concepts, and language. Until a new civilization appeared, replacing the ancient one, the latter dominated and subjugated new peoples, who destroyed piece by piece the political building of the Roman Empire, but did not bring with them any general educational elements. Whoever wanted to be educated at that time received an ancient classical education, was brought up on pagan poets and writers, on the study of classical antiquity. The fathers and writers of the church also received such a general education, and they had to act among society with the same general education. With the triumph of Christianity, although there was no longer the previous urgent need to use the means available to ancient education and ancient social life to protect and spread it, even then there remained a need to clarify and affirm the truths of the faith - for educated Christians - using the same means that secular education possessed at that time, and which represented the way of life, the language of an educated society - just as we now use and cannot help but use everything that modern science, life, language represents for us to establish in our minds contemporaries of the truths and rules of the Christian faith. It cannot be otherwise. The life around a person always gives him the means to reveal his thoughts and to put them into forms. Meanwhile, the structure of the entire life of the Greco-Roman, even Christian, world was in many ways completely different from the structure of life of the new societies, and therefore it is not surprising that the former provided different forms for the expression of thought than the latter. One of these forms in the Greco-Roman world were those forms of the ancient language, the root of which was hidden in the pagan past of the Greco-Roman people, which were supported by general education based on the ancient classics, which, finally, for Christian writers after the 4th century. were sanctified by the use of the fathers and writers of the church of the first three centuries - we mean the forms of the ancient mystical language. Therefore, there is nothing incredible in the fact that even after the 4th century, among people with such a general education, when thinking about the Christian sacraments, immediately, thanks to a word that recalled the past, a parallel arose in their minds, represented in relation to Christian sacred rites by pagan mysteries. In the period after the 4th century. may not have stopped to clarify this parallel in such detail as in the first centuries of Christianity, but even a mental, fleeting, so to speak (thanks to the ancient word) parallel could be of no small importance. She established the angle of view from which the object was viewed, outlined the side from which it was revealed. If this is true, then it seems to us that we have in this the key to unraveling the strange phenomenon that the fathers even after the 4th century. in most cases they talk about two or three sacraments, despite the fact that their creations are full of evidence that they did not consider the other sacraments to be simple rites, but extremely important sacred rites, conveying in visible signs special grace-filled gifts to the recipient of the sacrament. In fact, if you take this ancient point of view and ask yourself what kind of sacraments Christians have - μυστήρια or τελεταί, then, of course, it is quite natural to answer, as many fathers answered, that there are only two or three, or so many that it is difficult to list. In other words, in a certain sense, the name μυστήρια or τελεταί is applicable to only two or three sacred rites in the close sense of these words, namely in the sense of acts introducing new members into Christian society, like the ancient pagan mysteries, the idea of ​​which was closely connected with these ancient names. This is precisely how many fathers applied these names even after the 4th century. with I. Damascene inclusive. On the other hand, if we take the concept of improvement or sanctification (τελείωσις) as the point of departure, then we can count incomparably more sacraments than two or three, as the fathers also often did after the 4th century. But such a calculation of the sacraments is also not like ours, just as the ancient point of view, determined by historical circumstances, from which it was carried out is not like ours. Not to mention the fact that this very ancient point of view contributed significantly to the fact that the teaching about the sacraments was revealed by the fathers primarily not from the side of their objective essence (the union of grace with a sensory sign, or visible sacred action) - the side to which they touched more or less by chance and on the disclosure of which they deliberately did not stop - but from the side of the fruits that flow for a person from the reception of the sacrament. We do not deny that this method of disclosure was determined in very many cases by the practical goals of persons who served the cause of salvation and moral edification of believers; but we think that the above circumstance contributed to this to a significant extent. All of the above, taken together, having, in our opinion, a very significant influence on the method of revealing the doctrine of the sacraments, on the formulation of questions related to the field of study of this subject, and on the method of formulating the doctrine of the sacraments given in revelation and in church tradition, was an important obstacle to the doctrine of the sevenfold number of sacraments receiving completion in the ancient Greco-Roman world regarding the disclosure of its formal side. In the story of St. Irenaeus on Gnostic atonement draws attention to the fact that St. the father denounces the Gnostics for using on various occasions either oil, or myrrh, or balm. This circumstance makes it clear that oil and ointment were considered two different objects and were used in church practice on different occasions. Comp. Const. Apost. (1. VII p. 22): χρίσεις δε πρῶτον ἐλαίῳ’ ἔπειτα βαπτίσεις ὔδατι, καὶ τελευταῖον σφραγίσεις μύρῳ. At the same time, we do not mean to touch upon other types of conditions contained in the general course of church life and in various particular historical circumstances and events of this life, since all this, despite its importance, does not, in our opinion, have primary importance for resolving the issue in question. If this occurs from time to time in the ancient, pre-scholastic church world, then only in those cases when the needs of the Church forced the fathers to resort to such work, when it was necessary to enclose a certain teaching in precise formulas and separately designate all parts of a known dogma. The thought of the fathers was deep, subtle, extremely active and mobile, however, it was little inclined to the painstaking work of equally thorough analysis of each of the parts of the subject and the collection of then dissected parts into one whole, for which the thought of the scholastics, brought up on Aristotle, turned out to be so capable. That is why the paternal works, with all the extraordinary richness and depth of dogmatic teaching regarding all points of Christian dogma, present such imperfections in relation to the formal side, namely, they are distinguished by the unevenness of the disclosure of various aspects of the doctrine, the lack of separateness of presentation, the paucity of brief and precise formulas and definitions. Such properties distinguish both their reasoning about individual points of faith, excluding those that were subject to distortions from heretics, and entire dogmatic systems in which there are no entire treatises usual in our systems, existing treatises are not presented in the same detail, dogmatic thoughts are mixed with non-dogmatic ones, etc. You might be interested in: