Analysis of heterodox teachings on justification

Contents I. The teaching of medieval heterodox theology. II. Modern teaching of heterodox theology. III. The attitude of Russian science to heterodox theology. I. The teaching of medieval heterodox theology. The question of a person’s personal fear - this most important truth of Christian teaching praecipuus locus doctrinae christianae 1, of course, has long been resolved in the Orthodox Church. The Lord Jesus Christ brought this teaching in all its heavenly purity and intelligibility for every religious and moral consciousness, and not only brought it, but He Himself walked the path indicated by Him. Entire regiments of martyrs and confessors, ascetics and saints, entire periods of the highest development of church life - all these are examples of active following of Christ, all these are living embodiments of Christ's teaching. Finally, the whole patristic literature does not have its sole purpose to reveal and clarify the truth of salvation specifically for private consciousness? Moreover, all these are not considerations of the mind alone, but direct snapshots from life, the fruits of the personal experience of the saints themselves. writers. This question, therefore, has been more than resolved by church consciousness, and without this, church life would not be conceivable. The same cannot be said about its scientific development. Here, reliable soil has not yet been discovered, solid foundations have not yet been developed. The reason for this is that in the West they cared not so much about fidelity to the patristic and general church tradition, but rather about fidelity to a principle accepted for some reason, about the logical consistency of their favorite theories; Our theological science, always under the strong influence of the West, was afraid of independent research in the legacy of the Greek, patristic church bequeathed to it. Therefore, the abundant material that is given by the Holy Scriptures and Tradition on this issue remains not yet generalized and studied as it should be. The question of personal salvation cannot be just a theoretical problem: it is a question of self-determination. To tell yourself seriously what you need to do in order to be saved means to pronounce judgment on your entire spiritual content - to destroy favorite concepts, perhaps hereditary ones, and conclusions reached with sacrifices, with difficulty. This cannot be done by a natural person, especially one who relies only on the power of his own mind. And so, instead of the pure truth, a person in his reasoning offers us only a more or less successful compromise of the truth with his views and desires. This is the origin of every theological error and every heresy. At their core, they all have a moral imperfection, an inability or unwillingness to renounce oneself in order to perceive the truth. Based on his imperfect religious experience and succumbing to the attractions of his nature, man reaches the complete distortion of Divine truth. As it is based on moral imperfection, any such error requires healing, first of all moral, that is, it is subject to pastoral influence. But theological science cannot remain silent, especially when error has already developed into a system, when it even threatens Orthodoxy or wants to stand next to it as an equal. Just let science not forget the methods of pastoral influence, let it not try to defeat its opponent with syllogisms alone: ​​this path has been tested in its unsuitability. Science must impartially, sine ira et studio, decompose every false theory into its component elements, show that “human”, which by its admixture distorts the truth, and then positively reveal this truth. This is the task we dare to take upon ourselves in this matter. We are making an attempt to find out the basic lie of Western Christianity, which necessarily leads it to distortion of Christian truth, to absurdities, to contradictions with itself and religious experience - and, on the other hand, we are trying, on the basis of the data we have collected from patristic literature and the Holy Scriptures, to find out and establish in the scientific consciousness the idea that, as we are convinced, dominates in the Orthodox Church teaching about salvation and the fidelity of which will protect the theologian from all mentioned misconceptions. The point where the peculiarities of Orthodox teaching are most characteristically revealed is the question of the relationship between good deeds in earthly life and bliss beyond the grave. The further course of reasoning depends on this or that solution to this particular issue. We put this question at the head of our research in order to derive the Orthodox teaching about the essence of salvation, and from here, in turn, about the conditions for its achievement. In order to understand the internal conformity of good deeds and eternal life, for this it is necessary to rise to that stage of spiritual and moral development when virtue ceases to be an external law and feat, but becomes the highest good of man. Such a person, feeling their qualitative identity within himself, will easily understand their necessary connection. An ordinary person still has to force himself to virtue; he not only does not find his highest good in it, but also fears it; he is more inclined to believe his highest good in self-pleasure (no matter how you understand it). From the point of view of this ordinary person (which is what all people are), bliss cannot in any way be derived from virtue and, on the contrary, for him these are two phenomena of completely different orders. Therefore, such a person thinks it is easiest and most understandable to express the relationship between virtue and eternal life by the likeness of labor and reward, feat and crown, especially since for him a virtuous life is precisely a feat. In itself infallible, this method of expression is so familiar to man and so convenient for him and so clearly expresses the need for good deeds that it is not surprising if it occupies a dominant position both in the Word of God and in the teaching of the church. But the Church has never forgotten that these are only very suitable similarities, that the essence of salvation does not at all express the concept. Along with this analogy, the church has never forgotten the doctrine of the identity of good and virtue, and this doctrine sheds a very special light on the mystery of salvation. Meanwhile, the life of the Church has developed in such a way that this completely legitimate and completely understandable application to the spiritual development of Church members served as the source of that fundamental error that now characterizes Western Christianity; on this basis, a legalistic (legal) formulation of the doctrine of salvation developed. Christianity, from its very first historical steps, encountered Rome and, of necessity, had to reckon with the Roman spirit and the Roman way or way of thinking. Ancient Rome, rightly, is considered the bearer and exponent of the idea of ​​law. Law (jus) was the main element in which all his concepts and ideas revolved: jus was the basis of his personal life, it also determined all his family, social and state relations. Religion was no exception; it was also one of the applications of the legal idea. Becoming a Christian, the Roman tried to understand Christianity precisely from this side - he sought in it, first of all, legal consistency. The indicated elusiveness and at the same time the inseparability of the relationship between the quality of this life and the future could not be more favorable to legal understanding; the familiarity of the legal point of view itself made, in the eyes of the Roman, any further research about the properties of this relationship unnecessary. Seeing that it quite easily fits within the legal framework, the Roman was completely satisfied and did not ask about any further reasons. This is how the legal theory began, which consists in the fact that the aforementioned analogy of work and reward is recognized (consciously or unconsciously, openly or under the line) as a true expression of the very essence of salvation and therefore is placed as the main principle of the theological system and religious life, while the teaching of the church about the identity of virtue and blessedness is left without attention. Of course, this method of external understanding of salvation at first, when the Roman community was burning with faith, could not be dangerous for the church: all its inaccuracies were abundantly covered by the faith and fiery zeal of Christians; even more. The ability to explain Christianity legally was in some respects useful for this latter: it gave faith a kind of scientific form, as if it affirmed it. But this was during the heyday of church life. It became different later, when the worldly spirit penetrated the church, when many Christians began to think not about how they could more perfectly fulfill the will of God, but, on the contrary, about how they could fulfill this will more conveniently, with less loss for this world. Then the opportunity to understand Christianity legally bore fruit. A legal union arises when one person or family is unable to fight the world around him. In order to ensure a certain share of well-being, a person enters into an agreement with another person in the same position. They assume mutual obligations and work for the common benefit. But this communication is not at all a communication of love, not a moral union; these people serve others only because otherwise they cannot get what they want for themselves. The goal of their life is not society, but their own self. The legal system, therefore, has as its task the juxtaposition of several egoisms, so that the egoists do not interfere with each other and so that each of them receives his due share. As such, the legal system can only provide benefits to selfishness. Its first benefit is that instead of a living union it offers a cold external one. For the state or my fellow citizens, it is not particularly important what my internal mood is; for them, only my external behavior is important, because only this latter concerns their well-being and expresses my attitude towards them. This, of course, humiliates the individual, turning him into a soulless screw of the social machine, but this also gives a person such freedom, or better said, such arbitrariness in mental life, which he cannot obtain under any other system, especially in a moral one. The moral union requires moral conformity and penetrates with its demands and instructions into the very sanctuary of human conscience. The legal system never penetrates there, being content with observing the externally agreed framework and leaving a person as a complete master within himself. This arbitrariness is increased by the consciousness of complete independence or non-obligation of one’s well-being to anyone. In fact, if others serve a person with something, then he knows that they serve not out of affection for him, but out of necessity or out of a desire for good, first of all, for themselves. For this service they receive the same amount from him: relations are equalized, he, therefore, does not have to consider anyone his benefactor. True, this dooms a person to terrible loneliness, but selfishness is essentially loneliness. The consciousness of independence, this vague ghost of originality, is more valuable for egoism in its pure form. At the same time, all those services, even the most insignificant, that he provides to his allies receive the highest importance in the eyes of a person. These services are done, in essence, in spite of desire, not out of love for an ally, but simply out of a desire to receive equal reward. Therefore, a person demands this reward for himself, demands it as a due, and will consider himself entitled to take revenge if this reward does not follow. Feelings of gratitude in the proper sense cannot be found in the soul of an egoist. Therefore, the confidence on which all unions are based does not have the same properties as in a moral union. In the latter it is a joyful and at the same time humble hope, but in the former it is rather the confidence that the ally cannot deceive, since there is a certain guarantee by virtue of which he is in some way forced to fulfill the obligation. There, confidence rests on the free desire of the individual, and hence constant gratitude to it, but here on something third that forces the individual, and hence there is no gratitude, but only an egoistic sense of security. A person loses that “freedom of a child of God,” which constitutes his highest asset, but for egoism this freedom is too difficult for him not to exchange it for slavery, if only it would leave him with his desires. It is not difficult to see what can happen if a person (who, we note, has already lost the fervor of his first zeal for Christ and now hesitates with difficulty between love for God and selfishness), if he considers his relationship with God from a legal, legalistic point of view. The main danger of the legal theory is that with it a person can consider himself, as it were, to have the right not to belong to God with all his heart and mind: in a legal union such closeness is not assumed and is not required; there it is necessary to observe only the external conditions of the union, contrary to the word of the Apostle: “I seek not yours, but you” (2 Cor. 12:14). A person may not love goodness, he may remain the same self-lover, he must only fulfill the commandments in order to receive a reward. This is most conducive to that mercenary, slavish mood, which does good only for the sake of reward, without inner attraction and respect for it. True, this state of forced doing of goodness is necessarily experienced by every devotee of virtue and more than once in his earthly life, but this state should never be elevated to a rule, it is only a preliminary stage, the goal of moral development is perfect, voluntary good doing. Legal theory sins in that it sanctifies this preliminary, preparatory state as complete and perfect. And once the mercenary attitude towards the will of God is sanctified, the door is opened for all those practical and theoretical conclusions that necessarily follow from this attitude. In a legal union, a person stands before the face of God not at all in the position of an unrequited sinner who owes everything to Him: he is inclined to imagine himself more or less independent, he expects to receive the promised reward not by the grace of God, but as due for his labors. The object of hope here, strictly speaking, is not the mercy of God, but a person’s own strength, while the guarantee, that third one that obliges the ally without making him a benefactor at the same time, is his own deeds for the person. Deeds, thus, turn into something valuable in itself, deserving of a reward - a conclusion that could not be more suitable for a selfish nature that has lost its original purity, which, reluctantly, forces itself to fulfill the commandments and therefore values ​​​​its involuntary good at the highest price. Moreover, the dignity of merit is attributed not to virtues or constant dispositions of the soul, but to individual external actions, which, in turn, the mercenary mood tried to reduce as much as possible and make as formal as possible, according to the natural desire in the mercenary to achieve his pay with the least possible expenditure of effort. A person’s life has turned from a free moral path of internal improvement into a soulless execution of private instructions from various external authorities. The mechanism that developed in the Western Church did not fail to affect theological science, which, under the influence of the era, completely submitted to it and, in turn, contributed to its further development and, so to speak, formalization. Scholasticism, with its worship of Aristotle, cared more about the formal harmony of its systems and did little (not to say not at all) with spiritual experience, with life. It would not be surprising if it (scholasticism) adopted legal theory. Could a scholastic think about the truth of his theory when under each of its points he saw quotes from different authorities? And with this, so to speak, typographical method of proof, the scholastics justified all the extreme conclusions of legal theory. The completely natural doctrine of mutual assistance among church members turned, under the pen and in the mind of a scholastic, into a completely mechanical account of the actions of one person (saint) to another. The uncertain position of the souls of those who died in repentance, but did not bear fruits worthy of repentance, and were not confirmed in goodness, turned into purgatory, where a person pays to God with his torment for crimes committed on earth, and not yet paid for. The pastoral leadership during confession took the absurd form of payment for sins and indulgences—absolution of sins without moral tension, without repentance. The sacraments turned into magical actions opus operatum, in which bodily participation is more necessary than mental, etc. The sinful fear of moral work, taking advantage of legal theory, came up with many teachings that it needed and so polluted Western Christianity with all sorts of extraneous content that under these alien semi-pagan definitions it was difficult to recognize the truth of Christ. It was not without reason that when the reformers came to the idea that faith alone saves a person, this expression, so common in Christianity and constantly on the lips of the holy fathers, seemed so unusual and terrible that some considered it to be heresy and the destruction of all morality, while others took it almost as some kind of new revelation and ultimately distorted its meaning. Such fruits were brought to the West by its legal point of view on the world and, in particular, on salvation. Its main danger is, we repeat, that it gave a person the opportunity, if he did not want to, to limit himself to appearance alone; moral work seemed to be forgotten. Hence, a good Catholic was often a very bad Christian inside and, despite this, thought that he was being saved, and in this self-deception he perished. The human soul, in its best part, always longs for true life and salvation; only through a misunderstanding can it be content with the described legal understanding; it will certainly feel its falsity. This feeling of a living soul was expressed, albeit unsuccessfully, in countless sects, in many attempts to reform Catholicism, which we see throughout Western church history, and finally erupted in that terrible revolution, which is called the Reformation, and which still stands before Catholicism as a living denunciation of its untruth, in turn awaiting its accusers. The Reformation came out with a merciless denunciation of all Catholic counterfeits in life and teaching, the soulless formalism that reigned in it, and demanded life and truth for man. Protestants both wrote and said that the source of Catholic doctrine is not the Gospel, not the teachings of Christ, but considerations of reason, which stands on its own point of view and judges these things solely on a human basis 2 . Without penetrating into the inner work of those being saved, the mind stops at the external side and bases its conclusions and theories on it alone. It is not surprising if in this way he comes to positions that are absurd from the point of view of spiritual experience and before the judgment of human conscience; and then, feeling a lie and at the same time, not seeing any other way than the existing one, he is forced, against his will, to resort to various artificial constructions in order to somehow drown out the painful voice of his conscience. (This is why “alia opera, alii cultus, ab hominibus in magnis periculis excogitati adversus terrores conscientiae”) occurs. To avoid this sad and terrible fate, it is necessary to break all connections with accepted, but not reconciled with the truth of Christ, philosophical views and turn to the truth of Christ itself and explore it, listening to the inner voice of your conscience, trying to grasp what the Word of God and church tradition says not only to the mind, but to the whole soul 5, and to care not only about fidelity to logic, but about fidelity to the truth, which is essentially living and effective, not formal. Protestantism actually proclaimed this only true and safe method of theological induction. They thought to see the verification of the truth of their doctrine not in agreement with the metaphysics of Aristotle (for which Luther could not find a strong enough curse) 6 and with scholastic axioms, but in the fact that in it they find peace and consolation of a good conscience “piae et pavidae conscientiae.” It appears that the time has come for radical reforms in Western Christianity. Indeed, Protestantism began to furiously refute the main dogma of legal theory - the doctrine of works as merits before God. This teaching is untenable because it fundamentally contradicts the very foundation of the Christian faith - salvation through Jesus Christ alone. “Qui confidebit operibus se mereri gratiam, is aspernatur Christi meritum et gratiam, et quaerit sine Christo humanis viribus viam ad Deum” 7. Even if there were no such contradiction, man’s deeds taken in themselves, by their very essence, cannot be a merit before God because a person does good deeds only with the help of God’s grace 8 , yet everything he does himself inevitably bears the mark of sin 9 . Therefore, all who are magnified by the merits of their works, or hope for superfluous works, are magnified by vanity and hope for idolatry, subject to condemnation, 10 we read in the Scottish Confession. So decisively and mercilessly were exposed all those conclusions that necessarily followed from legal theory: purgatory, indulgences, etc. But... Protestantism was a child of its time and school. The first reformers learned to speak and think in the same Aristotle and Cicero as their Catholic opponents. Therefore, indignant at the blatant distortion of Christ’s truth that they saw in Catholicism, they thought to explain it only by accidental reasons, by the malice of the hierarchy, and did not suspect that instead of these conclusions, legal theory would give the necessary others, equally false, because the lie is not in the conclusions, but in the theory itself. Instead of rejecting any distortion in church teaching, the reformers only tried to replace one distortion with another. That is why the Reformation, in the sense of restoring Christ’s truth, ended in complete failure. Protestants, as we have seen, turned to life itself and tried to verify their conclusions with it - but they looked at life from a legal point of view. They wanted to bring peace of conscience with their teaching, but they understood this peace quite legally, in the sense of a sense of security, impunity for committed sins. A person is afraid of punishment, and so the death of Jesus Christ is pointed out to him as such a great, excessive satisfaction with the truth of God that this truth can no longer demand anything else from a person, any other satisfactions. A person, since he believes in the Gospel, must calm down about himself. We see that Protestants did not understand this greatest and most comforting mystery of our salvation in all its depth and vitality. Of course, man is a mercenary by nature, of course, he, first of all, fears for himself and seeks his own safety - and, therefore, he learns the secret of salvation first from this side. But our church, always pointing the sinner to this particular side (since it is most understandable, closest to the sinner), does not think because of it to forget other more encouraging sides of the mystery of salvation. She sees in Christ not just a passive instrument of propitiation, but the restorer of our fallen nature, the firstborn of the dead whom He brought out of death, calls Him “the second Adam,” the heavenly Lord, “the heavenly ones” (1 Cor. 15: 20, 23, 45, 47, 48), i.e., as if the leader of humanity, but only “Christ’s” ( 1 Cor. 15:23), who has put on Christ, following his Leader into the glory of the Father which is His from eternity (Col. 3:1–6). The Protestants, in this greatest secret, thought to find only that “third” legal union that lies between its members and which one of them forces, no matter what, to make a concession in favor of the other. Once this “third” has been found and, moreover, is not only sufficient, but also surpasses all measure, then there is no need to look for any other satisfaction. If Christ paid for our sins even more than they were worth, why else think that we need to work for this satisfaction ourselves? Human efforts, not to mention their imperfection before God, etc., are simply unnecessary and even dangerous: they diminish the significance of Christ’s merit. What, then, is salvation? It is nothing more than the remission of sins or deliverance from punishment for sins 11, justification 12, which is already followed by acceptance into the favor of God, etc. Justification is understood “not in the physical sense, but in the external and judicial sense” 13. It means not making the wicked righteous, but sensu forensi proclaiming him righteous 14, iustum aestimare, declarare 15, and this is for the sake of the merit of Jesus Christ, 16 that is, for the sake of an extraneous fact that has no connection with my inner being. Justification, therefore, is a completely external act, “an act that acts not in a person, but outside and around a person” 17. Therefore, the consequence of this act can only be a change in the relationship between God and man, but man himself does not change 18. We are still sinners, but God treats us, by virtue of the merits of Jesus Christ, as if we had not sinned, but rather fulfilled the law, or as if the merit of Christ were ours 19 . In other words, instead of the previous Pelagian legal point of view, rejected and condemned, Protestantism put forward the same principle of law, only taking its other side: having rejected human merit as insufficient to appease an angry God, or more directly, in order to oblige God to grant me eternal life, Protestants still looked at eternal life as an agreed payment that God “must” be given to a person, only the obligatory “third” for Protestants is not the person’s own merit, but the merit of Christ 20 . In Catholicism we saw the oblivion of Christ in the matter of our salvation, but here the work of man himself is forgotten, iustitia nostra and was reduced to imputatio alienae iustitiae 21. This idea is common to Protestants of all times 22 and if in the newest dogmatic systems of Protestants we encounter attempts to give a legal act vitality, reality, to transform dogmatic provisions into psychological phenomena, then these attempts either clearly do not reconcile with the basic Protestant principle, according to the consciousness of the Protestants themselves, representing only inevitable concessions to Protestantism, religious experience, or they only change names without changing the essence of the matter 23 . It cannot be said that the Protestant teaching does not have any indications of spiritual experience behind it. There is no doubt that only with development in goodness can a person understand the full depth of his sinfulness and moral weakness. Hence, the higher a person is morally, the stronger his consciousness of his unworthiness and the more abundant his repentant tears. Such, for example, is Rev. Ephraim the Syrian, whose creations are almost continuous lamentation, although they bear indelible traces of heavenly joy inherent in every true righteous person. Isn’t it also possible to say that it is an all-encompassing phenomenon that when the era of martyrs ended, Christian zeal found expression in nothing else, namely in monasticism, in the rite of penitents? The Protestants, we repeat, were not mistaken in pointing out this undoubted phenomenon and trying to draw conclusions from it for Christian teaching. But just as crude Catholicism, also based on the need for religious consciousness in its theoretical constructions, came to mercenary utilitarianism and Pelagianism, so Protestantism, seeing the legal inconsistency of salvation through the merits of man and at the same time not finding any other way of understanding other than the legal one, created for itself, in the essence of the matter, only spiritual seduction, a fiction of salvation that has no true content. True, Protestants, with all their desire to be faithful to the dogma of salvation by Christ alone, could not help but recognize the need for certain conditions on the part of man. But such a condition was recognized as the last “possible minimum”, faith in Christ without works. Yielding to the demands of life and conscience, Protestants make an attempt to give this faith as much vitality and effectiveness as possible. They say that only living faith 24 justifies, that is, active faith, which is necessarily accompanied by works 25 and is in no way conceivable in a person given over to sin 26; and that, therefore, justification will necessarily be accompanied by a moral regeneration of man 27 . “It cannot be that this holy faith remains idle in a person” 28. But how does this rebirth occur and in what sense can faith be called “the root of good works” 29? Not at all in the sense that it serves as an incentive, an inspiring principle, in a word, not at all in the sense of any moral work on the part of the person being saved. This work has nothing in common with justifying faith 30 and therefore does not relate to justification. Faith is the root of good works in the sense that through it we “receive Christ, who promised us not only liberation from death and reconciliation with God, but also the grace of the Holy Spirit, by which we are reborn into the renewal of life” 31. But this is no longer an excuse, but a consequence of it. Only one who has already been justified, that is, declared righteous, reconciled with God, can perceive Christ 32 . Does, therefore, the indicated real side of salvation have any significant significance in justification, the significance of an active condition or factor? No. To be justifying, faith must remain “exclusively perceptive, must rely solely and exclusively on a sacrifice independent of our subjective participation (Subjectivitat), but completely satisfying God” 33. Faith “justifies not by the fact that it is our work” (which would imply moral tension and would be precisely expressed by that spiritual upheaval that Scheele describes 34), but for the sake of Christ our righteousness, whom it perceives 35, and this is understood to mean that it perceives the promised mercy 36. Faith saves, thus, externally, for the sake of the truth and holiness of Christ, which it assimilates to a person 37, for the sake of the merit of Christ, which is imputed to a person 38. In other words, faith serves as the basis for only a legal act, and not a moral one 39 . After this, what significance does a person’s deeds, that is, his moral work and development in goodness, have in justifying him? It is impossible not to see that good works, even if they are presupposed in justification, are only as a co-existing or subsequent phenomenon, and not productive, not participating in the actual act of salvation. This idea is expressed with complete clarity in symbolic books. For example, the Ausburg Confession, recognizing that “faith (which justifies) must give birth to good fruits,” hastens to stipulate that remissio peccatorum fide apprehenditur 40. Or in the Apology: “To receive forgiveness of sins means to be justified... By faith alone in Christ, not through love, nor for love or works, we receive remission of sins, although love follows faith.” So, by faith alone we are justified, understanding the word “justify” in the sense of “making or regenerating from wrong to right” 41 . Thus, faith justifies in contrast to good deeds, moreover, understood not in the sense of external actions, but in the sense of even a whole mental disposition or mood. This disposition does not participate in justification, does not contribute to it, and even more, it cannot exist in a person before he is justified. “This is very unreasonably written by opponents, as if people guilty of eternal wrath deserve remission of sins through a work of love, when it is impossible to love God unless remission of sins is first received through faith. A heart that truly feels that God is angry cannot love God before He is appeased. As long as He terrifies and appears to subject us to eternal death, human nature cannot induce itself to love the one who is angry, condemns and punishes” 42 . What, then, remains of justifying faith, if the “love that promotes it” must be distinguished from it and must not share justification with it? Protestants, despite all their reasoning about living faith, must admit that according to their teaching, the actual phenomenon of mental theoretical perception, taken in itself, and not in its impact on the human soul, not because this faith is living, justifies. “When people believe that they are accepted into grace and their sins are forgiven for the sake of Christ, who by His death satisfied for our sins, God counts this faith as righteousness before Himself” 43... Or, even more clearly in the Apology: “We should not think that on the security of this love, or for the sake of this love, we receive remission of sins and reconciliation; just as we do not receive remission of sins for the sake of other subsequent deeds; but by faith alone, and precisely by faith in the proper sense (proprie dicta), remission of sins is obtained, since the promise cannot be acquired otherwise than by faith. And faith in the proper sense is that which agrees with the promise 44. Thus, faith justifies a person, even if it is rich in the possibility of works, then in any case at the moment of justification it is still only theoretical, and it justifies precisely by its theoretical side, as a medium et instrumentum, (the means) by which we assimilate to ourselves the satisfaction of the satisfaction of Jesus Christ 45 . Thus, there is no place for human participation, for the subjective side, in the Protestant justification. By this, Protestantism directly contradicted the requirements of the moral nature of man, from which it came. The human soul seeks good for the sake of good, wants life for life’s sake; she does not want to be counted only in the kingdom of God, but to really live in it and experience freely and consciously communion with God. Therefore, the human soul could never agree with the Protestant doctrine of imaginary (fictitious) justification. It was possible to destroy this fictitiousness only by recognizing the deeds of man not as a consequence, but precisely as a condition of justification. But for Protestants this meant going over again to Catholicism with its human merit, since from a legal point of view the condition can only be understood in the sense of a legal basis, merit. The impossibility of legal theory to preserve the middle was clearly demonstrated by Melanchthon's conciliatory attempt. In the Apology he says: “we teach that good works are meratoria esse, but what they deserve is not remission of sins, not grace or justification (this we achieve by faith), but other bodily and spiritual rewards during and after this life... By works we do not deserve justification... by works we do not deserve eternal life; for faith achieves all this, since faith justifies us and propitiates God” 46. “For,” he says in another place: “the righteousness of the gospel, which revolves around the promise of grace, is freely justified and quickened; but the fulfillment of the law, which follows faith, revolves around the law, in which it is not for nothing, but for our deeds that reward is given and due; but those who deserve this latter are justified before they fulfill the law; they were previously transferred to the kingdom of the Son of God and became joint heirs with Christ” 47. The moral development of a person in goodness, thus, in the eyes of Melanchthon, has the dignity of merit, only not for justification and eternal salvation, but for receiving various rewards on earth and in heaven. But this did not improve the matter, but made it even more difficult. Denying the dignity of merit for deeds before justification, Melanchthon, in essence, recognized deeds after justification not only as merits, but also as supererogatory, which are awarded a special reward in addition to the kingdom of heaven, bestowed on everyone. But because these supererogatory merits were performed after justification, their danger to the dignity of Christ’s merit did not decrease. If Christ brought excessive satisfaction, then why merit on the part of man? And if merit on the part of a person is necessary, even if only to increase the crown, therefore, the merit of Christ is insufficient. Most importantly, Melanchthon’s theory not only did not destroy mercenary utilitarianism, of which Catholicism was guilty and which Protestantism opposed, but was even more strengthened and, as it were, humiliated. It is no longer for the sake of eternal salvation and eternal life, but for the sake of either earthly well-being or reward, unlike others, that a person does good. On the other hand, the necessity of doing good for salvation, which a person’s conscience urgently speaks of as a necessity, a duty, and not a benefit, was by no means explained or proven by Melanchthon’s theory. In fact, if eternal life in communion with God is given to man and given to tuna, are all other rewards and benefits worth anything when compared with this highest good? Will a person think about them, and will he even consider himself to have the right to think and desire them? Not to mention that good deeds, as a consequence of justification, as a product of the Holy Spirit dwelling in the justified 48, do not, in essence, depend on a person, on his free choice and desire. It seemed as if a person, if he does not desire any special rewards for himself, on earth or in heaven, may not care about his moral success, but can simply leave it to the grace of the Holy Spirit: salvation for him is already assured. But this directly contradicted the testimony of experience, since conscience says that one must take care of succeeding in goodness and that without this it is impossible to be saved. Melanchthon’s theory, we repeat, only proved that there is no middle ground in legal theory, that only extremes are possible for it: either the merit of Christ, or the merit of ours, which are mutually exclusive. Since it does not explain anything in religious life and, on the other hand, is dangerous for the dogma of salvation by Christ alone, Melanchthon’s theory therefore did not find sympathy in the Protestant world 49 . Subsequent Protestants rejected any difference in the degrees of holiness and blessedness and asserted with particular force that real holiness (not to mention the fact that it is impossible without justification) is not important not only for justification, but also for eternal salvation in general 50. Thus, the Protestants, despite their sincere desire to be faithful to experience and to give consolation to piis et pavidis conscientiis (conscience), could do nothing while remaining on legal grounds. Avoiding the extremes of Catholicism, they fell into the other extreme: they completely crossed out the internal side of justification. True, Protestants of all times constantly say that they demand good works 51, that they recognize them as necessary in order for faith to be a living faith, which alone justifies 52 - that the accusation that they preach a teaching dangerous to morality is based either on “a misunderstanding or on a malicious distortion of Protestant teaching” 53. But all this is only the breaking through voice of conscience, only a concession to the demands of human nature - a concession unjustified in theory. Despite all these statements, the need for good deeds remains unfounded, since its motives are not based on salvation, but on extraneous motives: a sense of duty, gratitude to God, etc. 54 . But, after all, reason, if it stands only from a legal point of view, always has the right to ask: if my deeds are decidedly unimportant to God, in the sense of any legal value, then can they be considered a retribution of gratitude to God and is there any meaning in such a performance of an unnecessary duty? And since there could only be a negative answer to this question, the need for conscious and intentional good deeds naturally disappeared. The life of the justified person lost its moral character and his conscience did not receive peace. II. Modern teaching of heterodox theology. No matter how unsuccessful the attempt of Protestantism to explain the fact of human salvation was, it nevertheless showed with obvious certainty the weaknesses of the Catholic theory of merit. Catholicism, which had seen these aspects in its best representatives before, had to deal with the conclusions of Protestantism, especially since the latter threatened the very existence of the former. That human merit in its literal sense is both impossible before God and contradicts salvation through Christ alone—Catholicism could not but agree with this. But, on the other hand, it could not sacrifice either the experience or the tradition of all previous centuries of universal church life - both experience and tradition alone said that good deeds are necessary not only in the sense of a consequence, but also in the sense of a condition of salvation. How can these two apparently contradictory accounts be reconciled? How to understand this conditionality of salvation by doing good, if the latter at the same time cannot be a merit before God? This is the question that Catholicism was supposed to resolve. This question was directed to the very essence, it required a discussion of that basic idea that constitutes the very essence of Catholicism, the legal idea. And, without a doubt, Catholicism would have come to the right decision (since it did not want to break ties with church tradition) if it had really accepted the challenge and discussed itself impartially. But Catholicism only skimmed over the question posed to it, without touching on it or even trying to answer it: it only cared about somehow reconciling the contradictions of its basic idea with religious consciousness and church tradition, without touching on this idea itself. Therefore, the Catholic attempt is as unsuccessful as the Protestant one. If Protestants quite rightly accused Catholics of destroying the merit of Jesus Christ with their human merit, then Catholics, in turn, just as rightly point out to Protestants that they are contradicting the holiness of God with their fictitious justification 55 . Justification, according to the teachings of Catholics, should not be external, not based on the content of the soul, a purely judicial act of imputing someone else's righteousness to a person, but should be an internal change or renewal of a person 56 . Justification also has an external, judicial side 57 , but this is not its only content, and whoever believes its essence in this alone, let him be anathema 58 ; justification means not only “to declare righteous” or “to recognize as such,” but “to make righteous”, means the eradication of unholiness and the establishment of holiness in us, true and internal sanctification, making righteous (Gerechtfertigung) 59. Through a legal prism, the relationship between these two moments of justification 60 could only be understood in the sense of merit and reward, i.e. a person's holiness is a merit, and being declared justified and accepted into the sonship of God is the reward for holiness 61 . Now, if we recognize the participation of human freedom in the accomplishment of this holiness, then remission of sins and adoption will turn out to be a reward for a person’s merit, which directly goes against the revealed teaching of the One Savior Christ, as Catholicism also recognizes 62. Consequently, it is necessary to recognize the grace of justification as undeserved, if not in the unconditional sense, that is, in the sense of a person’s complete inaction, then in any case in the sense of the complete insufficiency of these efforts in relation to the legal 63. So, a person’s justification is real and, moreover, grace-filled. Thus, if for Protestants grace was an act performed in the Divine consciousness, it was actus Dei immanens 64 and therefore, from the point of view of man, an act completely abstract, formal, then for Catholics grace, first of all, is a “supernatural donum” 65, or “the action of God in creation” 66, i.e. an act, some movement occurring in the creature itself, its property or state, settled in it by God and what she experiences at one time or another. Accordingly, in particular, the grace of sanctification is a gift - "donum Dei internum et supernaturale creaturae-rationali per Christi merita concessum" 67. Thus, justification turns into a supernatural act performed by the power of God in the soul of a person - an act by which righteousness, holiness settles in it. And since this holiness appears in the soul as a new state, hitherto untested and not yet having a foundation in it (so that there is no merit), is thus, in addition to the existing spiritual content of a person, it is self-evident that the supernatural nature of this act should involuntarily intensify despite its arbitrariness and consciousness. Holiness descends onto the soul, if not completely unexpectedly, then in any case involuntarily or involuntarily, it does not constitute a conclusion from mental life, it comes to it from outside and apart from its natural development. This complete (in the sense described) involuntary sanctification is expressed by the Catholic term “gratiae infusio.” “All justification,” says Thomas Aquinas, “originally consists in gratiae infusio 68.” Instead of an external legal act, we get here some kind of supernatural transformation taking place in the soul itself. “Sanctification,” says Klee, “is true sanctification, accomplished not only through the actual (wirkliche) taking away, the negation of sin, but also through the positive instillation of new life, through the communication of the Divine Spirit. It is the taking away of the stony heart and the giving of the heart of flesh (Ezek. 36:26), the destruction of sin (Ps. 50:3) and the creation of a new spirit (Ps. 50:12), the death of sin and the life of Christ (Rom. 6:1 et seq.), putting off the old and putting on the new man (Eph. 4:22), ceasing to walk in the flesh and walk in the Spirit ( Rom. 8, Gal. 5), walking not in darkness, but in the light (Eph. 5:8 et seq.), burying dead works (Heb. 6:1; Rev. 3:1) and offering good works (Eph. 2:10) 69. Catholicism, apparently, quite thoroughly solved the task assigned to it: the merit of Christ is preserved and justification is not a deception, not a dream, but a real internal change. But this is only apparently. Not to mention the involuntary justification, which, in the essence of the matter, deprives it of the dignity of a moral phenomenon 70 and therefore directly contradicts fundamentally the religious consciousness and teaching of the entire Word of God and tradition - even taken in itself, Catholic justification is very unfounded from its own legal point of view. In fact, if the grace of justification is the work of God in man, independent of man, then how to explain its appearance in man? Why does God renew one and deprive another of this mercy? Catholics, as we have seen, did not want and did not have the right to recognize the previous life of a person as the basis for this, since this, translated into legal language, would be salvation by one’s own merit, and not by the merit of Christ. To avoid this, it was necessary to recognize all people without distinction as undeserving of salvation and justification by an exclusively Divine work, as Catholics do. But, in this case, why does God renew those and not others? Perrone, as we have also seen, tries, contrary to the clear teaching of the Council of Trent, to recognize as such a basis or merit “that which precedes justification in man,” i.e., faith, etc. But he himself must admit that sanctifying grace does not fit into the category of merit in the proper sense, 71 that faith, etc., which accompanies it, can never have a legal correspondence to the gift of holiness given to us in justification. Wouldn't faith then be only a tool for perceiving the merits of Christ, as the Protestants taught? This would be a direct conclusion from legal theory, and Catholicism must accept it if it wants to be faithful to this theory. But Catholicism could not do this: the Word of God, the tradition of the church, and the voice of conscience were against this, which demanded man’s participation in his salvation, and not notification of his salvation. Then Catholicism merges sanctification and justification in order to obscure with this technique the dreaminess of legal justification that was too obvious. The technique is quite natural given the false basic idea and is not new: Protestantism did the same in its efforts to give legal justification real content. Just as Protestantism makes faith an instrument for the perception of the power of God, which by itself, apart from man, sanctifies and renews him, similarly Catholics came up with their own infusion gratiae, which in essence is the same Protestant sanctification, only dedicated to justification itself and materialized to the extreme: if God acts there for man, then in Catholicism the gift of God acts, as something separate from God and settled in man - but, both there and here, the will of man does not act. But again, to this, the Word of God, the tradition of the church and conscience objected that it is not man’s inactive consent to salvation that is needed, but participation, and without this latter nothing can happen. It is so necessary, with the fatal inevitability of the legal principle, to come to that copper wall, which he is not able to cross. To be a legal act, justification must be a dream (and Catholicism did not refute this conclusion at all, but only artificially avoided it) and allows for the change of what is justified only in the form of a supernatural forced transformation, essentially devoid of a moral character and at the same time completely inexplicable, unfounded from the point of view of the legal principle itself. Having thus failed to explain the first, initial moment of justification, Catholicism thinks of correcting itself in the further history of justification. Let us suppose, it says, that the first act of justification is performed apart from man; let us suppose that the holiness that man receives is not actually his own, but that of Christ 72 ; This does not at all destroy man’s personal participation in the matter of salvation; on the contrary, the independence of this first act from human will preserves human participation with greater effectiveness, the greater value - it gives it the strength and significance of a condition, if not the only one, then almost equal to grace. This is what Catholics want to achieve with their theory of increasing the holiness received in justification through good deeds in the subsequent life. In justification, a person is undeservedly and, therefore, involuntarily given a certain degree of holiness, sufficient to obtain the right to afterlife bliss. But God “did not want Christ’s merits to benefit us without any assistance on our part,” 73 and therefore, by God’s definition, human work must have its place and its meaning. Holiness, as involuntary, is equal for everyone, but preserving it in oneself and increasing it in order to receive an even greater reward for it is already a matter for man (although, of course, not without the help of God). By his diligence, his efforts or good deeds, a person can add his own to the Christ’s merit he has acquired and, thus, independently increase his crown. At the same time, the legal point of view was reflected in a crudely mechanical representation of the further moral activity of man. A person’s independent participation was understood exclusively in the sense of certain external actions that serve as a revelation of inner holiness, in “the sense of concrete formations and manifestations of faith, hope and love” 74, and not in the sense of these latter taken in themselves. God is not looking for holiness as the general structure of the soul, but rather for the external manifestations of this holiness; It is works that justify a person 75. Why Catholicism insists specifically on works, on actions, and in what sense it understands this justification by works, it will be clear to us if we remember that, according to Catholic teaching, justification does not mean recognition only as a righteous person, but precisely the outpouring of righteousness. Justification by works, therefore, has the meaning that works deserve a new gift - superparutale donum 76, i.e. God, seeing a person’s good deeds, adds as a reward for him that holiness and righteousness that He poured out on a person at justification 77, and this gives the person the opportunity to do even more good deeds in order to again earn an increase in holiness, etc. Holiness achieved in this way, in turn, deserves bliss beyond the grave. The righteous, through their good works of grace, are truly meritorious before God, 78 and therefore eternal life is the legally necessary recompense for their efforts. “The righteous man,” Perrone describes the entire process of this increase in righteousness: “sanctified by the ingaring (co-present) inner grace, as a property, he is not only the heir of eternal life, to which he has both the right and the guarantee in himself in the most lasting way; but also one who is planted, as the Apostle says, in Christ Jesus and, so to speak, grafted in, bears fruit to God in holy deeds, which are the fruits of the spirit. The Apostle lists these fruits, saying: spiritual fruit is love, joy, peace, patience, etc. (Gal. 5: 22, 23). For sanctifying grace is like the seed or germ of eternal life, which develops in the heart of the righteous and is revealed in holy works, through which he grows in the sanctification achieved, and the crown of righteousness promised to him increases more and more, covers him with new decorations and makes him more precious. It is in these actions, performed in a state of righteousness, that merit (ratio meriti) consists, which begins from the very communication of grace, both actual and sanctifying by the power of the merits of Christ, and ceases only in eternal life” 79. So, although a person is sanctified involuntarily, in his subsequent life it is up to him to preserve and increase the received holiness through his personal labors. With this method, Catholicism wants to close a problem that is insoluble for it. But here again the previous question is raised about a person’s legal capacity to deserve eternal bliss before God. Merces, according to the understanding of Catholic theologians themselves 80, is called what is paid for someone’s work or deed - as if some price of the latter. Hence, just as giving a fair price for a thing received from someone is a matter of justice, so giving a reward for a deed or labor is a matter of justice. The relationship of labor and reward, in order to be a matter of justice, requires, first of all, equality, while the relationship of human goodness and eternal bliss does not represent this equality. The main thing is that no matter how diligent a person is in doing good, he will always remain a sinner before God, he must first be forgiven, and then think about reward; and his deeds will always bear traces of his imperfection and sinfulness. There can be no question of merit, therefore. – Catholicism is thinking of eliminating this confusion with its teaching about the difference between merit de condigno and merit de congruo. In the first case, merit is in the proper sense, and in the second only figuratively. The first are possible with complete equality of relations. Between God and man there is no equality of relationship, therefore between them there is only a quidam modus iustitiae (a kind of justice) 81, therefore human merit can only be de congruo 82; nevertheless, she is a credit. But Protestantism sharply and quite rightly objected to this, that this was only a trick invented in order to hide its Pelagianism; the essence of the matter remains absolutely the same, whether a human action is recognized as merit de condigno or de congruo: in both cases, the reward equally necessarily follows the work, the legal significance of the matter remains in all its force 83 . Consequently, the question of a person’s legal capacity for merit before God is by no means eliminated. Catholics try to remove this obstacle by attributing to human action a Divine character: the work of a person after justification is the work of the righteousness of Christ poured out on him and, therefore, Divine. Moreover, the Divinity of this action is protected from all impurities, from every touch of human impurity, since the will is recognized only as a recipient, and not as an actual creator of spiritual holiness. In this case, human deeds can receive the meaning of merit, like Divine deeds, and can be merit, moreover, not only de congruo, but also de condigno 84. In such a formulation, recognition of a person’s merit does not contradict salvation by Christ alone, since it leaves the power and significance of the merit of Jesus Christ in its complete integrity. “Likewise,” says Perrone, “just as nothing is diminished from the glory of the vine if its branches bear great fruit; on the contrary, the more fruit the branches bear, the more praise the vine deserves, because all the life-giving juice and moisture that is in the branches comes from the vine; in the same way, the glory of Christ’s merits does not diminish in the least from our merits, since the latter come from the first (Christ’s); on the contrary, the merits of Christ through our merits become more and more obvious (comendatur) 85. But here the question arises again: if a person’s deeds are essentially not his deeds, then how can there be any talk about a person’s merit and his right to a reward? To avoid this objection, Catholics allow the following compromise: they recognize the will as the second cause of good deeds. “Human merit, says Klee, if we define it more closely, is not at all absolutely pure merit, since the grace of God is the first and main cause of the good done in and through man, but it is not completely absent, because man is still the second cause of the good done in him and through him.” 86 Let's consider this situation. The will can be recognized as the second cause of action in the sense that it perceives and contains the righteousness poured into it and carries out its actions through itself 87 . If a good deed is performed, it means that the grace dwelling in a person strives to accomplish this deed, and since this striving is accomplished in a person, it naturally appears to his consciousness as his own deed, and he, as it were, arbitrarily decides to actually perform a certain good deed. Everything is from grace: the initiative of the movement 88 belongs to her; the will is the conductor of that current of grace, which, so to speak, moves a person’s hands to a good deed, nothing more than in this sense only the will can be called a helper and servant of grace. 89 This idea about the illusiveness of the active participation of the will in the process of doing good is perfectly expressed by Klee himself, saying: “(Man) must do what he can, but what he can and how he can, this is done by God” 90. Translating this, in itself, Orthodox expression into Catholic language, we get that a person must do what seems possible to him, and he will do this, recognizing himself as the cause of his actions, but in fact, both his ability to perform a certain action and the very way of discovering this ability is not his - this belongs to grace living and acting in him. Thus, it is obvious that recognizing the will as the second cause of good deeds does not at all resolve the question posed, but only rejects it; that even after this it is impossible to understand on what basis a good deed is recognized as a person’s merit, when the latter’s will serves only as a conductor of the influence of grace that is foreign to it. True, Catholics respond to this that “the recognition of the complete lack of merit on the part of man is based on the false assumption that man is absolutely deprived of freedom in relation to the Divine life and that he acts absolutely passively in the matter of sanctification and justification”; and that, “on the contrary, with the recognition of the truth that a person freely goes towards the excitement, direction and every action of grace, and then, after its influence and together with it, independently participates in the accomplishment of good - with the recognition of this truth, the merit of a person must be consistently established as possible and permissible, as really existing” 91 . But we have seen how the actions of a Catholicly justified person are rightly called “free participation.” Only one who forgets or tries to forget what was said earlier about the essence and consequences of Catholic justification can call them by this name. The righteousness poured into a person, this self-propelled and self-acting property independent of him or an appendage of his spirit, tolerates freedom next to it only as the described second reason, admits, therefore, only the ghost of freedom, at the same time the possibility of merit on the part of man is completely denied. Catholics, in the end, themselves had to recognize the inconsistency of their legal theory and its insufficiency to explain human salvation. Here, for example, is how the fathers of the Council of Trent prove the possibility of merit; “Although Christ himself, as the head in the members or as the vine in the branches, constantly pours out virtue into the justified themselves (which precedes and accompanies the good deeds of the righteous and concludes the procession of works, and without which in no case can deeds be favorable to God and deserving), nevertheless, one must believe that for the justified themselves there is no harm from this; one must think that nevertheless with these deeds, which are accomplished in God, they have satisfied the Divine law for the state of this life and truly deserve eternal life, which must follow in due time, if, however, they departed in union with grace" 92 In other words: although the works of a person are not his own and, therefore, cannot be his merit, nevertheless "one must believe" ... "one must think" that they "truly deserve." Why they deserve it, the council cannot explain this and should only demand blind faith, based on nothing, hiding behind its external authority. All Catholic theologians must and indeed do come to the same end. Let us remember the words of Perrone quoted above 93: “God did not want Christ’s merits to benefit us without any assistance on our part”; or in more detail and clearly Klee: “Since God deigned to recognize the good, begun by his grace and completed with the assistance of man, as man’s own deed, deigned to recognize the character of merit in it, and recognized the increase in active and mediating grace and, in the end, eternal life as a reward, recompense, fruit and inheritance, and the reward seems to be a matter of truth and faithfulness of God; then it cannot at all be the reality of human merit is denied" 94. Thus, neither Klee nor Perrone, by the logic of their theory, could in any way justify the need for human participation in salvation: Christ’s merit, as a legal value, is too sufficient to satisfy the truth of God to require any other human merit, the very dignity of which, moreover, is still subject to strong doubt. Why these merits are required for salvation cannot be explained from the point of view of the mentioned scientists. Meanwhile, conscience, tradition, and the Word of God urgently demand the personal, voluntary participation of a person and set this latter as an indispensable condition for salvation. And so Catholic scientists, who have been proving for a long time the necessity and possibility of merit on the part of man, are in the end only forced to testify to their inability to explain why this all happens this way and not otherwise. “It was God’s pleasure,” they answer instead of any explanation. But why did He favor it? After all, there must be some meaning in this God's definition? It can’t just be an empty, causeless desire, like a whim? For Catholics, however, the will of God is precisely the will, the order of the absolute Ruler of the world. They, as true adherents of the law, bow only to God’s disposition to command the universe and do not think of finding consolation in the fact that although God “rules the kingdom of man,” he does not arbitrarily—that He wants goodness and holiness not because He wants to, but because “He Himself is holy,” because holiness is the immutable law of world life, that it is good itself. “For Your power is the beginning of righteousness, and the very fact that You rule over all, disposes You to spare everyone” (Wisdom 12:16). Thus, Catholic dogmatism, which tried to build a theory of real salvation on legal principles, resorting to all sorts of tricks for this purpose, ultimately came to the realization of the impossibility of doing this, and to all the objections of reason only blindly points to the requirement of revelation, and it (dogmatics) hastens to misinterpret this requirement in its legal sense: it is impossible to prove the legal value of works, but the Word of God tells us that works are necessary for salvation and save, - therefore (Catholics conclude, making a logical leap), works, be that as it may, have the meaning of merit. This is the conclusion to which Western Christianity inevitably leads with its main lie - the legalistic legalistic understanding of salvation and all religious life in general. The legal system knows only external relations and does not care about the internal content hidden behind these relations. Without asking about the internal structure of the thing, he wants to find out its price and, having found out, considers his business over. If, according to Christian teaching, a person is saved only through Jesus Christ and only when he does the deeds commanded by Christ; then for the mind of the scholastics this means that Christ and man each represent to the truth of God a sufficient price for the promised eternal life. But, if the work of Christ and the work of man are legal concepts, then they are mutually exclusive: as much as the price of human merit increases, so much is the merit of Christ unnecessary; Christ came because man could not save himself. Meanwhile, the Word of God and conscience require both, and precisely together, and precisely as indispensable reasons for the salvation of man. This is the main lie of Western Christianity, which leads it to all sorts of tricks: its theory requires some conclusions, and the life and direct teaching of the Word of God, with which it does not want to break ties, requires others. In their essence, both Catholicism and Protestantism teach and say the same thing: both are sick with the same incurable disease, the only difference is in the covers with which each of them tries to calm itself down. Both those and others admit (Protestants openly, and Catholics under the line) that, according to theory, a person’s deeds are not necessary and should not have legal force. Both of them, in order not to go directly against the truth and at the same time not to deviate from their theory, must recognize the making of man as involuntary (Protestant sanctification and Catholic transformation - infusion gratiae). The only difference is that Protestants, without forgetting or hiding their theory, only think of somehow concealing its disagreement with life with its safety: deeds, they say, will necessarily follow - therefore, there is no need to worry about their absence in justification. Catholics, on the other hand, try to cloud the theory itself and, forgetting its main premises, only try to close their eyes to say that works are still necessary, that they still deserve salvation, without being able to explain how these works deserve it. From what has been said it is clear how Western Christianity can get out of its now hopeless situation. This only way is the way to deny the basic Western idea - the legal one. If it doesn’t exist, then all the now insurmountable difficulties of the doctrine of salvation will disappear by themselves, since these difficulties do not arise from the doctrine itself (which, like any Divine truth, is simple, clear and understandable), but namely from the legal idea, which is inappropriately imposed on this doctrine. As long as the legal idea dominates in theology and life, as long as one wants to understand Christianity from its point of view, as long as the difficulties in the doctrine of salvation are not eliminated, and that basic contradiction, that abyss over which Western Christianity in vain tries to hang, will not be smoothed over. III. The attitude of Russian science to heterodox theology. Turning now to the history of the question of salvation in our domestic theological science, we, first of all, must note the general fact of some uncertainty, indecision in conclusions and even direct hesitations regarding this issue: as if our theologians do not have solid ground under them and are afraid to come face to face with Orthodox life and teaching. The reason for this, of course, is not that Orthodoxy itself is vague and vague: whoever wants it, finds Orthodoxy, but not in our science, but in the worship of our church, in the elder’s cell, near Fr. John of Kronstadt, in life in general. The reason for this is that our current theological science came to us 200 years ago from the Western school, imbued with the spirit of this school and living by its interests - that it still comes to us from the same school, still lives by its interests, deals with its issues, remaining almost indifferent to the needs and issues of Orthodox life. The main, vital question of the Western theological school, on which it has been exhausting its strength for several centuries, is the legal theory: it is necessary to justify it, to agree with the life and teaching of the Word of God, because with the fall of this theory, the entire centuries-old edifice of Western Christianity falls by itself. But real, true Christianity, Orthodoxy, has no vital interest in legal theory; since our Lord did not preach this theory, it was introduced into Christianity from the outside, from Roman law, from Aristotle - introduced only as an auxiliary idea, only in the form of an analogy - with its elimination, therefore, Christianity does not lose anything, but on the contrary gains (due to its abuse). The task of Orthodox science, therefore, is not to adopt from Western science its Sisyphean work, to exhaust its strength on solving an insoluble question, moreover, completely outside the Orthodox Church, but to explore the Orthodox truth in itself, to clarify it positively. Then our theological science would not be foreign, alien, it would then serve Orthodoxy and for this would enjoy the sympathy of the Orthodox society. And the very content of theological reasoning would then change: there would not be that lifelessness and uncertainty, that artificiality and those fluctuations that our science is now accused of. Meanwhile, our theological science has forgotten this simple truth. Without touching upon the rich material that is given on the issue of salvation by the primary sources of our faith: the Word of God, patristic literature, divine services, etc., our theologians usually chose the easiest and more familiar path for a person living in the interests of the Western school: they took ready-made treatises of Western scientists and thought to find Orthodoxy by denying those of their conclusions that contradict the Orthodox symbolic books. To “complete the study,” sometimes they took treatises from both warring camps and, putting them one against the other, so to speak, reducing them to one another, they thought to get Orthodoxy as a remainder. It is clear what they could get as a result of such a technique. The extremes and inaccuracies of Western confessions, as we have seen, are not simple mistakes or passions in one direction or another (if they were, then the reception of our theologians would be appropriate), but necessary consequences of the falsity of their basic principle. Western Christianity is forced to admit and invent these visible extremes in order to somehow cover up its basic lie, its contradiction to the truth, in order to form, so to speak, some kind of artificial soil over the abyss over which it stands. Therefore, by denying these extremes, throwing off these artificial covers, our Orthodox theologian could receive not the truth, not Orthodoxy, but only the false Western principle in its pure form - he could only open the abyss over which these covers were built. How could he establish himself in the emptiness thus obtained? It is clear that he could either hopelessly run from one end to another, without receiving any conclusion from this deplorable task, or he must, like Western scientists, create for himself a new artificial soil over this abyss, to replace the destroyed one. But in this last case, the situation of our scientist is much sadder than the situation of his Western brothers. All paths are open to a Protestant: where the teaching of the church contradicts the theory he has accepted, he will not hesitate to reject the teaching, citing the testimony of his conscience 95 . For the Catholic there is again a defense: where his theory differs from the truth, he can calm the voice of his conscience by referring to the external authority of his Church. The Orthodox theologian has neither one nor the other: obeying legal logic, in his soul he is ready to agree with the Protestant, but, to his regret, the voice of the Church is against this, which he is not allowed to neglect; he thinks to resort to the authority of the Church, but this is not that Roman, copper authority that would cover up the contradictions of conscience and the Word of God. Without the right to openly take the side of Protestantism or Catholicism, such a scientist is forced to build his system from the scattered fragments of both. That is why its construction, while sharing the artificiality and fragility of Western constructions, does not have the certainty and harmony of these latter. Due to such and such a sad position of the Orthodox theologian (if the latter thinks to be faithful to legal theory and to unite the incompatible), praecipuus locus doctrinae christianae, the question of the salvation of man was, and remains, a question of little “interest” to our science, which concentrated its forces on questions of metaphysical or historical, and, moreover, those that arise in the West, and not here. As a result of this, our theological systems are usually or they simply avoided resolving this issue under one pretext or another, or, without touching on the essence of this dogma, its main idea, they dwelled on its particular provisions, trying to prove only truths that are self-evident and undeniable by anyone (for example, the necessity for salvation not only of faith, but also of good deeds, which Protestantism does not deny, - the impossibility of human merit in the proper sense, with which Catholicism also agrees). The same theologians who wanted to say something definite always aroused and arouse more or less solid suspicions, depending on heterodoxy. Let us remember how unfriendly the Orthodox people greeted the first representatives of our modern science - the so-called Cherkassy. This Latinizing type of church teacher was unpleasant to him, and the new words with which the teacher denoted the truths of the faith, incomprehensible to him, were unpleasant and suspicious. Of course, a large part of these suspicions can be attributed simply to ignorance and fear of everything foreign. But the popular feeling was not mistaken when it recognized this new science as alien. Indeed, these scientists were alien to Orthodoxy and imposed on it the bonds of the legal West that were alien to it. No matter how Orthodox this or that scientist was, if he thought in the logic of the Latin school, tried to translate Orthodox truths into the language of school theology, etc., he could very easily, along with the terms and methods of thinking, transfer Latin concepts to Orthodox teaching. To top it all off, the language of this new Cherkassy school was foreign, Latin until the second quarter of our century, if not further. No matter how ignorant the Cherkasy accusers were, a good part of their accusations turned out to be not entirely unfounded. Let's take for the main representative of Cherkassy in our science Metropolitan Stefan Yavorsky. Whether he was an obedient student of Bellarmine, etc., how much and what exactly he borrowed from this learned Jesuit, we will not talk about this. Let us take Stephen's writings as they are. One quick glance at these works is enough to make sure that, if he does not “speak Latin,” then, in any case, he thinks and speaks Latin. The main idea on which all his reasoning is based is undoubtedly a utilitarian-legal idea, on which all the inventions of Catholicism were built. “A bribe,” says Stefan Yavorsky, “does not exist without work and effort; it is given below.” Eternal life is a reward. Because eternal life is not given without work and effort” 96. If opponents present such a “controversy”: “It is dishonest and abominable to be, if one makes bribes for the sake of, and not the glory of God, and out of need, and not from the love of God,” then, says Yavorsky, “we answer: It is appropriate to look at what kind of reward there is, if the reward is temporary and the work is unequal and unworthy, turning away from God and burdening the whole person with everyday vanities, and burdening the conscience - in truth, it is dishonorable and abominable to do bribes for the sake of such and to wear out a poor life, idle for the sake of self-interest with damage to the conscience... Even if the reward is excellent, eternal, even if it takes place in the sight of the face of God, such things to do for the sake of bribes are not exactly dishonest, but also very glorious; for love is an eternal reward, even though it lies in the sight of God, it copulates a person even here on earth with God, turns away the charming beauties of the earth, sanctifies the soul from disorderly lusts, and strives to keep the commandments of God” 97 . Here is a brief formula and explanation of Yavorsky's main idea. Of course, in these words one can only see the idea that it is never shameful for a Christian to strive for bliss, because this bliss is not in some kind of selfish pleasure, but in communion with God, in holiness. We think that Yavorsky was of this opinion. The important thing here is that the Orthodox scientist did not speak his own language, but the language is not far from thoughts, from Catholic conclusions, if only the scientist wants to be completely consistent. Yavorsky did not come to these conclusions, but they were outlined by him. Thus, the justifying value of good works is presented almost in the form of Catholic merit and even de condingo. For example, Yavorsky says: “God’s reward happens in truth. The truth lies more fundamentally in this, that if you give everyone their due according to equality, if you do not repay what is due, or if you do not repay according to equality, you create offense and untruth... Because the righteous is God and rewards with justice, for everyone looks at the equality of merit and retribution." 98 In exactly the same way, another feature of Catholicism - a sensual, semi-physical representation of mental life and the materialization of the sacraments and all the actions of grace in general - is easy to notice in the writings of Stefan Jaworsky. Here, for example, are the analogies he allows to explain the internal essence of justification: “Just as sins happen, he says, clinging inside a person to the soul, so the grace of God, which drives away sins, must be inside a person on the soul; Otherwise, sin will not be born, unless it settles in the same place where the sin was, the opposite is driven out by the opposite from the same place. Even if they are in different places, they will not drive each other out. For example, warmth will not drive out cold from the church unless it enters the church. Just as sins exist within a person, so there can be an internal justification for sins that drives away sins” 99. Or again: “For example, someone stands near the lights and warms up. Here I ask: by what kind of warmth is the warmth of a warmed person, is it the same warmth that is in the fires? or is it already in him, received inside from the fire? It is appropriate to answer that heat is a warmth perceived within a person, and the warmth that is in the fires is the same warmth that is perceived in a person. Thus, the truth of Christ is the wine of our truth, existing within us” 100. These comparisons, like any comparisons, allow for all sorts of interpretations, including Orthodox ones, and can even be usefully applied to the explanation of Orthodox teaching (especially the last one). But they receive a completely special, deliberate meaning against the general background, when combined with other features and particulars of Yavorsky’s reasoning. We must remember how he imagines justification. Both of his words: “Excellent, internal justification that occurs on souls is a betrayal of the Right Hand of the Most High, when a person is changed from a sinner by the illumination of God’s grace into a righteous person, in the likeness of dark air, illuminated by the illumination of the sun. Just as the dark air remains in darkness until then, and does not even receive the rays of the sun; but sometimes it becomes illuminated by the light of the sun, but because of the darkness it becomes light and does not have darkness in itself - such a change occurs in justification. The human soul is like air. Sin in the soul is like darkness in the air. God is the sun of truth. The grace of God is like the light of the sun. With this light that shines upon the human soul, the darkness of sin is driven away, and the soul passes from the darkness of sin into the light of grace, that is, a person becomes righteous from the unrighteous, accepting justification within.”101 We repeat again - if you take these words out of connection with the rest of the teaching, you can see in them nothing more than an analogy. But what is characteristic here is that man appears to Yavorsky as only an inactive subject of the actions of grace, is likened to air illuminated by the sun, justification is compared to the perception of warmth - all these comparisons are physical, passive. About the internal, inseparable union of freedom and grace, in which freedom is not a lazy recipient of justification, but a living participant in it, very little is said about such a union of comparison by Yavorsky. The Latin school, therefore, necessarily makes itself felt, even if the author did not want to be a Latinist, even if he had the opportunity to correct his mistakes through prayerful communication with the church and church life. How dangerous this Latin school was even for completely Orthodox people and those who wanted to be Orthodox is proven by another even more striking, stunning case: when Saint Demetrius of Rostov presented his Chetya-Menaion to Moscow, then, as is known, they found something Latin in them, which the Saint later corrected. How to explain this dichotomy between life, sermons, in general, that in which the soul of the Saint is manifested and the actual image of his thoughts, on the one hand, and his scientific works, on the other? It is explained simply by the fact that the latter were an echo of the school, Latin education that the Saint received and which was alien to his Orthodox, holy soul and broke through only in the form of unexpected, involuntary errors and inaccuracies, and even then only where the Saint stood on the so-called scientific soil inspired by the school. This example, we think, speaks more convincingly than all reasoning how alien to Orthodoxy is the Latin science forcibly imposed and imposed on it with all its accepted axioms - superstitions, how inappropriate it is in it and how dangerous it is. Feofan Prokopovich was a representative of another type of Cherkasy - Protestants. How well founded are the suspicions of Protestantism that are directed at Theophan can be judged from his lectures given at the Kiev Theological Academy 102. The concept of justification here is given as follows: “Justification is such an act of Divine grace by which God considers and declares a sinner with sorrow his sins (this is true repentance) and a believer in Christ, for the sake of the sole merit of Christ, acquired by faith, gratis (in relation to man) and declares him righteous (iustum habet et declarat), without imputing his sins to him (this is the remission of sins), but imputing to him the righteousness of Christ, as if it were this man's own "103. Thus, according to the thought or words of Theophanes, a person is only declared righteous, iustificari, for him, it means only pronuntiari non esse reum 104, justification is only recognition as righteous. This purely Protestant expression, even in letter, is followed by no less Protestant details. The very “non-imputation of sin” is characteristic, but even more characteristic is the “imputation of the truth of Christ to us, as if it were ours”: only Protestants can say this in their symbolic books 105. External justification, by its very essence, cannot require from a person more than that he be only a listener of the Divine sentence, only that he perceives the mercy bestowed upon him; therefore, the condition for justification on the part of a person can only be the Protestant faith, and precisely from its perceiving side. “Justifying faith,” says Theophan, is fudica, confidence, by virtue of which (qua) a sinner, trembling with all his soul for his sins, resorts to the mercy of God and confesses that God will forgive him his sins for the sake of the merits of his Son, presented for us” 106. Good deeds, according to Theophan and again according to Protestant concepts, do not lie in this faith; they are “nothing more than a consequence of justification, and by no means a cause” 107. This explanation of the meaning of works very noticeably reveals the Protestant understanding, which, while denying works as a justifying force in its theory, is forced to deliberately reassure itself that works are not denied in practice. There is no doubt that Theophan, in his lectures, fully shares with the Protestants their dreamy salvation. True, he says that “it is another thing to be justified and another thing to be saved,” however, he also believes the essence of this salvation is in its judicial-legal, external side. He says: “To be saved means to avoid guilt and be freed from punishment” - this is a definition that can easily tolerate any external, fictitious salvation; especially since, according to Theophanes, salvation is inextricably linked with justification; one is more likely to be a side of the latter than a special phenomenon. “They (salvation and justification) are inextricably linked, and the first follows the second, otherwise justification would be false if it did not follow liberation or salvation (salus seu salvato 108). These are the data from Feofan’s Kyiv lectures. One can, of course, see only inaccuracies and slips of the tongue here, but this is even more worthy of attention. These involuntary slips in scientific works show that our scientists, Orthodox in their convictions, when they entered the soil of scientific reasoning, involuntarily deviated towards heterodoxy, not, of course, because they did not know Orthodoxy or were dissuaded from it, but simply because they tried to substantiate Orthodoxy scientifically, which meant for them: on the principles of the Western school, i.e. on the idea of ​​law. The lesson given by the pillars of theological science of the past century was so instructive that it still makes an impression on our theological works. A positive scientific solution to the question of salvation is usually feared and approached with reluctance, while during research they try more to avoid being in any way like Protestants or Catholics than to positively find out, finally, what justification really is. That is why current scientific works are either silent about the essence of salvation, or express only general views, allowing for different interpretations. As an example, let’s take our most outstanding scientists, of different types if possible. His Eminence Philaret of Chernigov avoids a more detailed disclosure of the doctrine of salvation on the grounds that this question does not relate to dogmatic theology. “By the very connection of the actions of grace,” he says, with the states and actions of freedom, it is natural for the difference that only exists in the actions of grace on a person to be based not on the properties of the action of grace, which in itself is always one, but only on the properties and states of the soul sanctified by grace. And in this case, the difference in grace-filled actions, which only meek self-examination can allow itself, becomes the subject not of that teaching that contemplates the relationship of God to man, but of that which teaches instructions about the relationship of man to God” (i.e., in ordinary language, moral theology) 109 . His Grace Macarius openly rejects Protestant external, judicial justification and admits that “the sanctification of a person consists in the fact that he is truly cleansed from sins by the grace of God and, with its help, is made righteous and holy” 110. This formula seems to resemble the Catholic teaching on transformation, although at the same time it is very restrictive: “with the help of it,” apparently wants to express the distinctive feature of the Orthodox understanding, in which human freedom is given its due place. In the same way, the Right Reverend Macarius recognizes good deeds as necessary for salvation, that is, not in the sense of justification’s companions, but in the sense of one of the reasons. Through good deeds a person preserves the holiness he has received, is strengthened and elevated in the Christian life, and finally receives the opportunity, after completing his earthly career, to appear justified and sanctified at the Last Judgment of Christ 111. Thus, real, internal justification or sanctification is necessary. But in what sense, why is it necessary, how does the inner holiness of a person become for him a source of eternal salvation - this question about the inner essence of salvation is left unanswered by the Right Reverend Macarius. Some particulars, apparently, indicate that the Right Reverend Macarius understood the relationship between holiness and beatitude legally, although next to these particulars one can put others that speak rather of a deeper understanding. “Since, says His Eminence Macarius, in doing good deeds the participation of our free will is necessary; since through this free participation in good deeds we express our faith, love and hope in God; since this participation often costs us great deeds and labors (Luke 13:24; 2 Cor. 6:4-6; 2 Tim. 3:12) in the fight against the enemies of our salvation - the world, the flesh, the devil: then the Lord God was pleased to credit us with good deeds as merit” 112. The mention that our good deeds cost us a lot of work and effort and, therefore, deserve to be rewarded, this mention, very characteristic in itself, seems to express an attempt to prove that human deeds can have meaning and the power of merit before God. But next to this mention stands another thought: that deeds serve as exponents of our inner virtue; at the end of the period there is a very elongated phrase that “the Lord was pleased to credit our deeds with merit.” This thought and this phrase speak, without a doubt, that the Right Reverend Macarius saw the inconsistency of the legal understanding of salvation and allowed it only in the form of likeness. A. S. Khomyakov objects to the very formulation of the question of the need for good works for justification under faith. “Those who say that faith alone does not save, but works are also needed, are also unreasonable,” he says, and those who say that faith saves apart from works; for if there are no works, then faith turns out to be dead; if it is dead, then it is not true, for in true faith Christ is truth and life; if not true, then false, that is, external knowledge. Can a lie save you? If it is true, then it is living, that is, it does deeds, and if it does deeds, then what other deeds are needed?” 113 Of course, no one can say anything against this; everyone agrees that faith really is, as the author expresses it elsewhere, “an act of all the powers of the mind, captured and captivated to its last depth by the living truth of a revealed fact” - that “faith is not only thought or felt, but, so to speak, both thought and felt together; in a word, it is not knowledge alone, but knowledge and life” 114. But, as we have seen, the point is not whether good works are needed or not needed for justification, whether they are presupposed with it or not. As we have seen, Protestants do not deny works, even with effort they prove that they require works, and, on the other hand, Catholics recognize that historical faith is not sufficient for salvation; both agree that both faith and works are necessary, their disagreement is not at all in the essentially empty and idle question of what should be understood by faith and what by works. The source of Western discord and disagreement, as we have seen, is that they misunderstand the very salvation of man, contrary to the voice of truth, and only out of necessity are forced to persist in the above-mentioned formalities. If we achieve mutual agreement from them to consider and call only living, active faith faith, then we will achieve nothing: the question will be raised of how faith saves a person, why exactly it is important that this faith must be living - and the formal agreement received will instantly disappear by itself. Protopresbyter I. L. Yanyshev, by the very nature of his work, which pays attention primarily to the moral, internal side of salvation, understands justification from its dogmatic side as “the forgiveness of a person’s sin or the removal of condemnation from him,” and as “the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to a person as his own righteousness, as if clothing him in Christ’s righteousness” 115. This is a definition that can hide behind itself a directly Protestant justification, pronunciation. To eliminate this latter, it is further said: “This seemingly external righteousness does not remain at all, but the teaching of the Word of God, only externally, but is reflected in the internal state of the justified” 116 “From a subjective or moral point of view, justification is such a state of a sinful person in which, despite the fact that he himself has not done anything truly good, he feels complete peace of his conscience, not disturbed by anything, the peace of his moral feeling, moreover: beatitude or joy in the Holy Spirit. This is not that artificial, as if feigned and therefore superficial and shaky self-satisfaction, which in a sinful person depends on his frivolous conceit, or with which he deceives himself - or not that painful and painful state in which he was when his conscience pricked him, but that peace of God, which Christ himself carried within himself during all the troubles of His earthly life and which was not taken away from Him by even the torment on the cross, on in which He did not cease to love and be one with the Father, not even death itself" 117. In this definition, the extremes of Protestantism and Catholicism seem to be reconciled: the former is given the exclusive objectivity of justification, and its internal side is taken from the latter, and at the same time there is neither the fictitiousness of the former, nor the unexpected, involuntary transformation of the latter. However, this does not solve the difficulty. Justification here is called “that peace of God that Christ himself carried within himself" during His earthly life. The question arises: where does this peace come from in man? Does it have its basis within a person, does it come from the entire disposition of his soul and the structure of life, or does it rest only on external judicial-legal pronunciation and the structure of life is its consequence? There are more reasons for the latter, especially since the author himself agrees that the righteousness of such a justification is “sort of external.” But, without clarifying the Orthodox teaching by establishing accepted terms, the work of Father Protopresbyter very definitely makes it possible to see the true essence of Orthodoxy where its venerable author leaves the accepted terms and scientific tasks and looks at the matter of salvation through the eyes of a believer, spiritually experienced and enlightened Christian philosopher. Father Protopresbyter concludes his lectures with a remarkable definition of the basic idea of ​​Orthodox Theology, a definition that excludes in the essence of the matter any possibility of a legal worldview. This is the conclusion: “Moral perfection and bliss are inseparable states from one another. If the Word of God points to bliss as the goal of virtue, to reward, and to torment, as the punishment of vice, then only for the morally imperfect, in view of those sufferings with which the work of salvation on earth is inevitably connected and those selfish sensual pleasures that so inevitably tempt the one being saved, in order to counterbalance these temporary sufferings in the hope of eternal bliss, and to counterbalance these temporary sinful pleasures with the expectation of eternal torment. The bliss of conscience in a virtuous person already grows on earth along with his virtue, just as spiritual suffering is inseparable from vice; therefore, it is entirely possible to appreciate this bliss only with the achievement of moral perfection; and where it is not achieved, there the expectation of rewards and the fear of punishment in the future life constitute the natural, although not strictly moral, lower motives of Christian life” 118. This idea, of course, is not new, but this is its dignity, this is the guarantee of its truth. It was the source of pride of the ancient philosophical world, and it was constantly on the lips of the holy fathers and teachers of the church, especially when they delved into the contemplation of the inner essence of salvation. This thought has always been clear and true for everyone who only consciously and seriously thought about their salvation, for all ascetics and the righteous. This thought, as we have seen, was also brought to the attention of the learned theologian, His Eminence Macarius, when he, thinking of expressing Orthodox teaching in ordinary legal terms, found them insufficient and gave an indication of the deeper vital meaning of the dogmatic concepts being defined. The important thing is that in the work of Fr. protopresbyter, this thought from the cabinet thoughts, from the inner world of conscience appears outward, becomes the subject of scientific consciousness, and is expressed in a theological scholarly work. From this consciousness it is not far to putting it into action, and since scientific research recognizes this idea as its guiding principle, then there will be no room left for legal theory, and Orthodox science will follow its own, unique and only true path. Apologia Ausb. Conf. II (2). In our citations of Protestant symbolic books we use the Hase edition. "Libri symbolici ecclesiae evangelicae". Lipsiae. 1846. Page 60. Tota doctrina adversariorum partim est a ratione humana sumpta, partim est doctrina legis, non Eoangelii. Apologia III (166). Hase. 119. Cp. Zwinglii Artic. V. Ed. Niemeyer “Collectio Confessionum in ecclesiis reformatis publicatarum” Lipsiae. 1840. Page 5. We use this publication for all symbolic books of the Reformed Church. Apol. III (144) Hale 113: “Opera incurrunt hominibus in oculos. Haec naturaliter miratur humana ratio, et quia tantum opera cernit, fidem non intelligit, neque considerat, ideo somniat, haec opera mereri remissionem peccatorum et justificare.” Apol. III (167). Hase 120. The first reformers, as we know, listened with great attention to the voice of some of the church fathers, especially Augustine, whose words are more than once quoted in the most symbolic books of Protestants. Eg Zwing. Expositio fidei XI, 103. Niem. 58. “If Aristotle had not had flesh and blood, I would not have hesitated to regard him as the devil incarnate.” An example of Luther's eloquence at the address of Aristotle. Scheukel. Das Wesen des Protestantis- mus. 2-te Aufl. Schaffhausen. 1862 s. 34. Conf. Ausb. I, 20. Hase 16. Cp. Apol. III (196). Hase 127: "Quid est hoc aliud, quam transferre gloriam Christi in opera nostra, quod videlicet propter opera nostra placeamus, non propter Christum." Conf. Belgica. Art. XXII: “Necesse enim est aut omnia quae ad salutem nostram requiruntur in Christo non esse: aut si sint in eo omnia, eum, qui fide Jesum Christum possidet, simul etiam perfectam babere salutem. Itaque horrenda est omnino in Deum blasphemia, asserere Christum minime sufficere, sed aliis quoque rebus opus esse. Inde enim sequeretur, Christum ex parte tantum esse serva-torem.” Niem. 374. Form. Cone. I, 2. Hase 579: Hominis intellectus et ratio in rebus spiritualibus prorsus sint coeca nihilque propriis viribus intelligere possint... Ex nobismet ipsis, tanquam ex nobis, non sumus idonei, ut aliquid boni cogitemur; qued vero idonei sumus id ipsum a Dffo est.” “Nulla opera edere possumus quae non sint carnis nostrae vitio polluta, ac proinde supplicio poenisque digna.” Conf. Belg. XXXIV. Niem. 376. Conf. Scot. I, Art. 15. Niem. 348. "We believe, teach and confess that our truth before God is precisely this, that the Lord forgives our sins out of goodness alone." Form. Cone. I, art. Ш (4). Hase. 584." Wed. Cont. Sali. art. XVIII. Niem. 334: “We believe that all our righteousness consists in the remission of our sins, which, as David testifies, is our only happiness.” Compare also Cont. Belg. XXIII, Niem. 374. Eg. Apol. III (40). Nase. 90, says, “that justification signifies not only the beginning of renewal, but also the reconciliation which we receive afterwards.” Iustificare dicitur non sensu physico, sed forensi et iudiciali, a reatu culpae et penae absolvere et iustum aestimare, declarare.” Ilollaz. Bretschneider. “Systematische Entwickelung aller in d. Dogmatik vorkommen- den Begriffe. Leipzig. 1841. S. 641. Apol. III (131). Hase 109. Form. Cone. I. Art. III (17). Hase 585: The word “justification” in this case means: to declare righteous, to free from sins and the eternal punishment of sins, for the sake of the righteousness of Christ, which is imputed by God to faith.” Or above: “God grants and imputes to us the righteousness of the obedience of Christ, for the sake of this righteousness we are accepted by God into grace and are considered righteous.” Art. Ш (4) Hase 584). Iustificare consistit in mutatione morali, quae constituit hominem iumine, sed circa hominem peragitur.” Quenstedt at Bretschneider. Op. cit. 641. Ibid. 642. Op. Art. Smalcald. Sh. Art. XSH (I). Hase 336: “Although sin is not yet completely destroyed in the flesh and is not yet dead, yet God does not want to impute it to us, nor to remember it.” “Our sins, as Cat puts it. maj. II, art. III (55). Hase 500, non nobis noceant in christianitate constitutis: ubi (which shows the identity of salvation and justification) nihil aliud, qnam assidua et indesinens est peccatorum remissio.” Nos fatemur vitam aeternam mercedem esse, quia est res debita, propter promissionem, non propter nostra merita.” Apol. III (241). Hase 136. "To justify" in this place (Rom. 5: 1) means "to release the guilty and declare him righteous" in a legal sense (foreusi conspectu), but for the sake of someone else's righteousness, that is, Christ's; this alien righteousness is communicated to us through faith. So, since in this place our righteousness is the imputation of someone else's righteousness, then we need to talk about righteousness here differently than when we are looking for in philosophy or in court real righteousness (proprii operis) ". Apol. III (184-5). - Catech. Palat, to the question Quomodo iustns es coram Deo? - Answers: “Without any merit of mine, from the mercy of God alone, the perfect satisfaction, righteousness and holiness of Christ is imputed to me (if only I receive these benefits with true spiritual confidence); as if I had not committed any sin, and even more: as if I represented the obedience for me, Pars. LX. Cf. XV. Niem. This teaching is very clearly expressed by Biederman (Christliche Dogmatik. Zuricb. 1869. S. 447), precisely as a characteristic feature of Protestantism: “Whereas, according to the Catholic understanding, iustificatio in its content consists in the infusio justitiae of Christ, based on which (infusio), man himself has the ability to increase his salvation to the degree of righteousness achieved by his own strength, - according to the Protestant understanding, justification consists rather in the applicatio "satisfactionis" of Christ. Moreover, the applicatio is two-sided: negatively, it is the remission of sins, remissio peccatorum, the objective Divine destruction of eternal punishment for sin (which is subjectively perceived as a relief from the feeling of guilt), and positively, it is reconciliation with God, reconciliatio cum Deo, God's objective acceptance of man into a restored correct life communion with Himself (which subjectively gives itself to know in the feeling of bestowed sonship).” For example, we can point to Martensen. On page 369 of his Cbristliche Dogmatik. (Berlin. 1856) he says this about justification: “Justification contains both positive and negative aspects, which mutually determine each other. It is impossible to possess a new life except in a good conscience, cleansed from the consciousness of guilt and condemnation of God; and vice versa, remission of sins and cleansing of conscience cannot be conceivable without actual life communion with Christ, when his perfection and righteousness become the animating principle of the life of the individual.” This is exactly the same as in symbolic books. And there, too, good conscience (respect., legal pronunciation) is accompanied by the indwelling of Christ as an animating principle. And for Martensen, this infusion does not serve as a force acting in justification, but only as a consequence of it - the root, the source of justification is again in legal pronunciation. Apol. (III 128–9). Hase 108–9: “We are not talking about idle knowledge, which even the devil has, but about faith, which resists the fears of conscience, encourages and comforts fearful hearts... This faith, since it is new life, necessarily gives birth to new aspirations and deeds." Compare Conf. Helv. XV. Niem. 495–6: “In this case we say not about fictitious faith, vain and idle, or dead, but about living and life-giving faith, which for the sake of Christ (Who is life and gives life) perceived by it is and is called living and reveals its vitality through living deeds.” “Good deeds will follow true faith (unless it is a dead or living faith) without fail and without any doubt, like the fruit of a good tree.” Form. Cone. IV (6). Hase 589. “The faith that you perceive in a heart that is afraid and flees sin, the remission of sins, does not remain in those who are in passions, and mortal sin does not exist.” Apol. Ш (23) H'ase 8ff “The main and especially characteristic feature of this (justifying) faith in our church,” says Scheele (Op. eit. 61.), is that it is fiducia specialis,” that is, personal heartfelt confidence in Divine grace in Christ. Here's the next thing. concerns not only the highest and deepest aspects of the human spirit, since for self-loving and earthly-oriented human nature there is nothing heavier than the determination, with the negation of oneself and everything created, to establish oneself (bauen) exclusively on the promises of Divine grace; but true faith is also inseparably connected with a moral influence, a certain transformation of the innermost property: where the love of Christ takes the place of a natural selfish mood (Sinnesart), there, at the same time, the very core of sin is torn out, so that there can be no talk of mortal sin, for then the selfish essence would again take root in the soul, and justification or righteousness from faith would be destroyed.” This is precisely what symbolic books want to say when they try with particular force to show that faith is not at all an easy thing, that it requires the highest tension of energy and even exceeds human strength. Eg. Apol. III. (128–8). Hase 108–9: Talis fides neque facilis res est, ut somniaut adversarii, neque humana potentia, sed divina potentia, qua vivificamur, qua diabolum et mortem vincimus. Conf. Belg. art. XXIV. Niem. 375. Catech. Genev. I. Niein 139: “Fidem esse radicem, ex qua nascantur omnia bona opera.” “Justifying faith, as such, should not be confused with anything alien to it, nor with that internal struggle preceding justification, in which a person still stands on the eve of communion with God and therefore strives to penetrate its sanctuary, nor with the struggle of sanctification, the task of which, among the various relations of earthly life, is to give form and image to the seed of Divine life planted from above, in order to bring to light the hidden treasure of the heart and unfold it before the eyes of people. The first undoubtedly forms an assumption, and the second, as fruit and action, follows the act of justification.” Wed. Conf. Scotic. I, art. 12. Niem. 346: “Spiritum Sanctum, sine omni meriti nostri respectu, sive sit ante, sive post regenerationem, nos sanctificse et regenerasse.” Catech. Genev. I, to the question: Anne sic a bonis operibus separari haec iustitia potest, ut qui hanc habet illis careat? Niem. 139. Cp. Conf. Scotic. art. 13: “As soon as the Spirit of the Lord Jesus, whom God’s elect remember through true faith, takes possession of someone’s heart, immediately revives and renews that person.” Niem. 346. With remarkable certainty you distinguish between these two concepts (justification and the indwelling of the essential truth of God, or God in a justified person) Formula Concordiae. "The question of the indwelling of the essential truth of God in us requires a correct explanation. For although God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit (who is eternal and essential righteousness) dwell through faith in the elect, who are justified by Christ and reconciled to God... however, this indwelling of God is not the truth of faith about which we speak Paul calls it the truth of God, for the sake of which we are declared righteous in the presence of God. The dwelling of God follows the righteousness of faith which precedes it, which (truth) is nothing else than the remission of sins, the acceptance of the sinner into grace, for the sake of the obedience and perfect merit of the one Christ. Scheele. Symbolic. H.59. Scheele. Symbolic. H.29. “Since faith perceives Christ - our truth and is completely surrendered to the grace of God in Christ, therefore faith is given justification, precisely for the sake of Christ, and not because it is our work." Conf. Helv. XV. Niem. 495. “Faith does not justify or save because it is a valuable thing in itself, but only because it receives the promised mercy.” Arol. II (56). Nace 70. Wed. ib. II (86). Has 76. Catech. Palatin. LXI; Cur sola fide te iustum esse affirmas? “Not because I please God by the merit of my faith, but because one satisfaction, the righteousness and holiness of Christ are my truth before God. And I can learn and assimilate it to myself in no other way than by faith.” Niem. 443. Bretschneider, op. cit. 652: “Faith alone justifies, and not good works (bona opera), whether in the sense of pious exercises chosen at will, or in the sense of the actual fulfillment of duty (Apol. VI; Ausb. Conf. art. 4; Form. Cone, art 3), because faith alone appropriates the merit of Christ, by which a person is justified (Artie. Sinalcald. pars II art. I).” E.g. Scbeele. Op. cit. 62: “Faith perceives Christ as the one through whom both the wrath of God and the personal inner unrest of the sinner are overcome.” Ausb. Conf. 1, 6. Hase II. Apol. II (76–8). Hase 73–74. Apol. II (36). Hase 66. Wed. Conf. Helv. XV: “We do not share the benefits of justification, a part of the grace of God or Christ, a part of our love, works or merit, but we give it inseparably to the grace of God in Christ through faith. And our love and deeds cannot please God if they are done by unrighteous people: we must first be righteous in order to love or do good deeds." Niem. 495. Ausb. Conf. I, 4. Hase 10. Apol. II (112–3) Hase 81. “We believe, teach and confess that faith alone is the means or instrument by which we receive Christ the Savior and with Him that righteousness that can appear before the judgment of God.” Form. Cone. r. I, art. III (5). Hase 584. Wed. Couf. Belg. art. XXII. Niem. 374: fides tantum est velut instrumentum, quo Christum iustitiam nostra apprehendimus. Arol. III. (73.75). Hase 96. According to the teachings of the Apology itself, i.e. Melanchthon. See above. The only exception is Confessio Helvetica posterior, art. XVI (Niem. 4 £ 8–499), which sets out, in essence, the same theory: “we do not think that we are saved through good works and that they are so necessary for salvation that without them no one has ever been saved. We are saved by grace and the gift of the one Christ, but works are born of faith necessarily”... However, “the works we do through faith are pleasing to God. Since those who do good works, which are done from above by the Holy Spirit by the grace of God, are pleasing to Him, for the sake of faith in Christ. God gives a great reward to those who do good... However, we attribute it not to the merit of the person who receives, but to the goodness, condescension and truthfulness of God who promises and gives, who, although he did not owe it to anyone, nevertheless communicated that He rewards His true admirers with a reward, and gives it to those who honor Him.” Form. Cone. I, art. IV (7). Hase 589: “Good deeds penitus excludenda sint, not only when it comes to justification from vura, but when de salute nostra aeterna, disputatur.” Apol. III (80). Hase 97: “We praise and demand good deeds and give many reasons why they should be done.” Wed. Conf. Helv. post. XVI. Niem. 498: about good deeds “about true, unfalse, or philosophical virtues, about truly good deeds, about the real duties of a Christian man, we teach diligently and, as much as we have the effort and strength, we instill in everyone, denouncing the carelessness and hypocrisy of those who praise and profess the gospel with their lips, but vilely dishonor with their lives - offering for this the terrible threats of God and His great promises and rich rewards, for conviction, for consolation and reproof.” “If,” says Martensen (Dogmatik. 369–70), “the Roman Church asserts that this doctrine is supposedly dangerous to morality, then it will forget the constant teaching of the Evangelical Church that justifying faith cannot be conceived in the soul in a dead or only at rest state, but that faith, like a living fruitful seed, contains within itself a powerful productive force, which must necessarily give birth to development of a holy life." “If,” in the words of Biderman (Dogmatik. 451): “Catholic dogma was inflamed with zeal for the need for good works and imposed anathema on those who deny the works, then this was a simple misunderstanding or a malicious distortion of Protestant teaching, which is still the case, however, Catholic polemics are trying to show off.” “Deeds must be done either for the sake of the command of God, or for the exercise of faith, or for the sake of confession and retribution of gratitude.” Wed. Apol. III (68). Hase, 95. Wed. Basileeu. prior conf. Disp. XXIV: “Deeds are performed by the faithful, not for the satisfaction of sins, but for the sole purpose of showing by them that we are in some degree grateful to God our Lord for the great benefits shown to us in Christ.” Niem. 100. “If sanctification consisted only in the external, legal imputation of the merits of Christ to us, and if even after it we remained in sin, our justification, the grace of God and redemption would only be external: then the truth of God would be destroyed, since He would see us as saints, which we would not be, and would not see us as sinners, which we nevertheless would be.” N. Klee, Katholiche Dogmatik. Mainz. 1835. Th. Sh, 67. Perrone. Pralcctioncs theologicae. Paris. 1842. Thoth. I, 1391: “Justification, according to the Catholic understanding, consists in internal renewal through grace, which, for the sake of the merits of Christ our Savior, ingarates the soul (of man).” Thus, according to Thomas Aquinas, justificatio impii est, with one article, and remissio peccatorum (see collection: Petri Lombardi, Sententiarum libr. IV... nes non Thomae Aquinati summ. Theologica. Paris. Tol. II, 950). In addition, there is a positive moment in this judicial act - justification is translatio ab eo statu, in quo homo nascitur filius primi Adam, in statum gratiae et adoptionis filiorum Dei per secundum Adam Iesum Christum, salvatorem nostrum.” Sacrosanctum, oecumenieum Concilium Tridentinum. Editio reformata. Tridenti. 1745. pag. 30–31. “If anyone says that people are justified without Christ’s righteousness, which He has earned for us, or that they are righteous through it only formally, let him be anathema,” reads the 10th canon of the Council of Trent. Tridenti n. pag. 39. The possibility of such a distinction in justifying the subjective and objective aspects is beyond doubt from a Catholic point of view. This is how, for example, his recognized authority says: “Righteousness in a man can be accomplished in the sense of a movement which is directed from the contrary to the contrary, and in this sense justification is some change from a state of unrighteousness to a state of promised righteousness... And since the movement receives its name more from the term “ad quem” than from “a quo”, therefore this kind of change by which someone is changed from a state of unrighteousness to a state of righteousness through the remission of sins, receives the name from the term “ad quem” and is called “iustificatio impii.” Thomas Aquinas, Volume II, 944. Thomas Aquinas (Thoth. I, 966) tries to recognize the participation of man at the moment of justification and at the same time avoid the concept of merit. He says: "A man is justified through faith, but in such a way that by the fact that he believes, he deserves justification, but in such a way that while he is justified, he believes, because justification requires a movement of faith." But Perrone (I, 1438) can serve as a clear proof of how a legal principle, strictly stated, also requires merit here. Perrone has an attempt to push back grace to the receipt of the first grace, and sanctifying grace is recognized as a reward for merit, although not de condigno. He says: “The division of merit (into de condigno and de congruo) is based on the teaching of the fathers, especially Augustine, who teaches that the wicked deserve remission of sins by faith; for he says: “And the remission of sins itself does not occur without some merit, since it is based on faith (si fides hanc); impetrat). By no means is the merit behind the faith by virtue of which that man said: God, be merciful to me a sinner, and went away justified by the merit of the believer’s humility. However, this is not merit in the strict sense taken or de condigno, as St. continues. Teacher; “Are there really no merits and no righteous people? Obviously there is, as long as they are righteous. But in order for them to become righteous, they had no merit for this.” So, that merit that precedes justification is merit de congruo “and is not called so in the proper sense.” “Grace,” says Klee (III, 47–48), is not given according to merit, because 1) then the concept of God’s goodness and His full right in distributing it would be destroyed, as well as the concept of grace, since where there is merit in the proper, strict sense, there appears in the proper and strict sense a debt or legal relationship, it is not grace that is required and given, but right and property; 2) because grace is the foundation and condition of all merit, therefore, grace cannot fall under merit (principium meriti non cadit sub meritum); 3) because God, according to Scripture and experience, gives grace to the unworthy; 4) because the biblical axiom that God does not look at faces, taken in its fullness and breadth, does not allow such an exception at all.” The Council of Trent does not recognize merit in acquittal. He says: “Nothing that precedes justification, whether faith or works, nothing deserves the grace of justification itself; for if there be grace, it is not by works: otherwise, as the Apostle says, grace is not grace.” (Tridentinum. pag. 33). He is followed by Klee (III, 62), when he considers only “the first grace, as the first, as the beginning and grace of justification, as the foundation of all merit,” to be undeserved. Wed. Thomas Aquin. Volume. II, 965: “Before grace, in a state of sin, a person has an obstacle to earning grace, obviously in sin itself; and after someone already has grace, this latter, as already existing, cannot fall under merit; because reward is the end of deeds, but grace is the beginning of every good deed in us... If someone deserves any gift by the power of prevenient grace, then this will not be the first grace. From this it is clear that no one can earn the first grace for himself.” Bretsctineider. Op. cit. 643. Thoma Aqain. That. II, 961: “No nature can be sufficient for such an act as would merit eternal life, unless some supernaturale donum comes in, which is called grace.” Klee (III, 26): “By the grace of God here we mean the power and action of God in creation, aimed at preserving or restoring and perfecting its relationship to Him, as that in which lies its salvation, its truth, freedom and bliss.” Perrone. I, 1241. Cf. I, 1399 (gratia habitualis). Thoma Aquinas. Vol. II, 952. Cf. glanders XI Council of Trent: “If anyone says that people are justified either by the imputation of the righteousness of Christ alone or by the remission of sins alone, without grace and love, which is poured into their hearts by the Holy Spirit and cleaves to them; or he will say that the grace of God is only favor; let him be anathema.” Trident. pag. 39. A clear proof of such a humiliation of the human will and, at the same time, the materialization of the entire process of salvation can be the words of Kiee (III, 56): “The will, much more than consciousness, needs the renewing and strengthening touch of the finger of God; the very core of our existence must be reborn in it. A new life must be founded: the will is a perversion of consciousness, there is sin in it; but not only because it has fallen and fallen so deeply, but because in it is our own selfhood, and the finite selfhood, “the will must be received by grace, turned and raised to God.” Gratiam sanctificarite non cadere sab meritum de condigno (Perrone, vol. I, 1447) - because, obviously, fides, as Peter Lombard says, although causa iustificationis, however at the same time, and ipsa est gratia et beneficium, quo hominis praevenitur voluntas et praeparatur. See the above-mentioned "Collection of Petri Lombardi Sententiarum"... et caetera. Vol. I, col. 201. “Righteousness, in the words of the Council of Trent (Tpident. pag. 37), “is called ours” only in the place of its, so to speak, application, because, as a result of its clinging to us, we are justified; but it is also the truth of God, because it is poured out on us as a result of the merit of Christ.” Klee. III, 20; “Good deeds are concrete formations and manifestations of faith, hope and love, the manifestation of the inner habitus of faith, hope and love in individual internal or external actions and expressions, or manifold and varied utterances, divisions of one great and abiding work of God, faith, hope and love, in our internal or external world.” Klee. Sh, 23; “Works are the conditions for the full presence, revelation and increase of righteousness in us.” “Isti boni motus (for example, diligere etc.), say Peter Lombard (Op. cit. I, 205), vel affectus merita sunt, et dona Dei, quibus meremur et ipsorum angmentationem“... That this is not Lombard’s private opinion, I prove oo. Council of Trent, which are in Can. XXIV de iustif., anathematizing him who denies that righteousness increases coram Deo, in Can. XXXII, directly explain how this increase occurs, precisely in the legal sense: si quis dixerit, that the good deeds of a justified person...non vere mereri augmentum gratiae (not truly worthy of an increase in grace), let him be anathema (Trident. pag. 41. 42). Wed. Perrone. 1, 1437. “Those who are thus justified (that is, through Christ in the sacrament of baptism), according to the words of the Council of Trent (pag. 34), ascending from virtue to virtue, are renewed, as the Apostle says, from day to day: that is, by mortifying the members of their flesh and presenting them as an instrument of righteousness for satisfaction (in satisfactionem), through the observance of the commandments of God and the church, received by the grace of Christ, they grow with the assistance of faith good deeds, and they are justified even more.” Perrone. I, 1440. Wed. Trident. pag.37: “To those who strive well to the end and trust in God, eternal life will be offered both as the grace graciously promised to the sons of God in Christ Jesus, and as the reward which, according to the promise of God himself, will be given to their good deeds and merits.” Ibid. 966: “Our work has the value of merit because it comes from free will, since we do something arbitrarily; and on this side there is merit by correspondence (meritum congrui), because it is a correspondence that while man uses his virtue for good, God acts in a superlative degree in accordance with his superior virtue.” Apol. II (19). Hase 63: “And that (Catholics) invent a distinction between merit congrui and merit condigno, they are only deceiving, not videantur aperte πελαγινιζειυ. For if God necessarily gives grace for the merit of congrui, then this is no longer the merit of congrui, but the merit of condigni. It's like they don't see what they're saying. After that gift (habitus) of love, they come up with, a person deserves de condigno. And yet they make one doubt whether this talent is available. How, then, do they know whether they deserve de congruo or de condigno? Thoma Aquin. II, 963: “If we talk about opere meritorio, as coming from the grace of the Holy Spirit, then the merit of eternal life is accomplished ex condigno, because the dignity of merit (valor meriti) is determined by the virtue of the Holy Spirit, moving us to eternal life (about this John 4:14: He will become in him a source of water flowing into eternal life); the price of the deed (pretium operis) is determined by the merit of grace, by the power of which a person, having become a partaker of the Divine nature, is adopted by God, so that he, as the son of God, according to the very law of adoption, should own the inheritance.” We do not exaggerate Catholic teaching by presenting a person’s mental life in the form of such a material, physical phenomenon. Mechanism and sensuality are the hallmarks of Catholic thought. Trident. pag. 31 (gratiam praeveniri). Catechismus ad parochos. Viennae. 1827. pag. 456: “(Homines)–adiutores et administri Dei gratiae.” See about this in Sehenkel. "D. Wesend. Protestantismus", for example, Abschn. I, Sar. I. Ss. 32–62. Stone of Faith. M. 1728. Page. 941. Chr istianae Orthodoxae Theologiae in Academia Kiewiensis adornatae et propositae Vol. I–III. Lipsiae 1782. Christ. Orth. Theol. Vol. II, 512. See the literal repetition of these words in Bretschneider (our text to the 7th note on page 14) and in Cathechismus Palatinus. Pars II, art. IX (in our note 2 on page 15.) Ibid. 513. Wed. our notes 35–39 Orthodox-Dogmatic Theology. St. Petersburg. 1882. Pp. 121. Orthodox-Dogmatic Theology. St. Petersburg. 1883. T, II, 293. Orthodox-Dogmatic Theology. T. II. 311. Complete Collected Works vol. II, M. 1880. Pp. 18 Orthodox Christian teaching on morality. M. 1887.Page. 302 You might be interested in: