Заключение

The Monk Nikita Stifat lived at a turning point and fateful time for the universal Christian Church, a time when the schism between Eastern and Western Christianity finally took shape. His works, teachings and letters absorbed everything that Orthodoxy defended in its dispute with Latinism on issues of dogma and the practice of Christian life. The liturgical question about unleavened bread was only the most acute and visible expression of that deep discrepancy in understanding the very essence of the gospel - what we are called to, what awaits us in the future life. The view of the goal of a Christian’s life as the desire for deification is the result of centuries-old ascetic practice of Eastern Christianity, which diverges more and more strongly from the Western worldview, moving towards jurisprudence in soteriology and naturalism or sensuality in asceticism. Therefore, it was necessary to clearly define the Orthodox understanding of genuine spiritual gifts, to protect this understanding from possible erosion in disputes with Latinism. The pathos of the treatise “On Paradise” is directed primarily against the sensual, visible understanding of heaven, against an overly simple and, as a consequence, poor understanding of man’s calling. The complexity of the picture of the world, man and heaven, shown by Rev. Nikita, leaves no hope for the temptation to exaggerate the most important spiritual issues, a temptation, the expression of which was the works of the so-called. sophists. In addition to its polemical significance, which is important but essentially temporary, the treatise by Rev. Nikita Stifata also has a rich theological content. The thoughts expressed in this work are, on the one hand, a continuation of the patristic tradition, strictly following the Orthodox theology developed and refined over many centuries, on the other hand, they lay the foundation for a deeper understanding of the influence of Divine power (energy) on man, revealed several centuries later by St. Gregory Palamas. Rev. Nikita Stifat as a student and follower of Rev. Simeon the New Theologian preserved for posterity the teachings of this great ascetic. He himself, being not only a theoretician, but also a deep mystic, a practitioner of mental doing, expressed, as far as possible for human language, the laws and secrets of the spiritual world. Therefore, his teaching about deification does not look like idle, unfounded reasoning, but as reliable knowledge, based on a solid foundation of personal achievement.