§ 125. Его беседа; письмо; исповедание Св. Троицы.

St. Epiphanius preserved the famous Conversation of St. Meletia, which was spoken at the suggestion of Constantius. St. Meletius reads it with the thought that sincere communion with Christ the Son of God is the foundation of all Christian life, so that whoever knows the Son in the depths of the spirit also abides in the Father. Then he shows what the true confession of the Son should be. “The Son of God, he says, is God from God (εκ Θεοῦ), one from one, only begotten from the begotten, a special (ἐξαιρετός) birth of the one who gave birth and a Son worthy of the Beginning, inscrutable and interpreter of the inscrutable, begotten, perfect from the perfect and always the same, unflowing from the Father, unabridged and separated, but dispassionately and completely happened.” After this, he urges not to indulge in inappropriate testing of what cannot be caught by testing, and in the words of the Apostle he says that the unknown now will be revealed to you there, in eternity. As for the words: The Lord created Me to be the beginning of the ways: then Meletius said that this does not speak of creation itself, but only of the new form that eternal wisdom took on at the incarnation of man 294. Another monument to the faith of St. Meletia, preserved by time, is the confession of faith that St. Meletius proposed on behalf of the Council in a letter to Emperor Jovinian. The same spirit of love and, at the same time, fidelity to Christ’s truth breathes here again. “We present to Your piety that we accept and constantly observe the faith of the Holy Council, long ago assembled at Nicaea. For the word: Consubstantial, which for some seemed new and unusual, received a safe explanation from the Fathers and precisely means that the Son was born from the essence of the Father and is essentially similar to the Father 295. St. Athanasius wrote about this confession: “We should not look at those who accept everything else written in Nicaea as enemies and doubt only about the word Consubstantial... We reason with them as brothers with brothers who are of the same thought as we are. When they said that He (the Son of God) is both of essence and similar in essence, what else do they express but that He is Consubstantial? 296. It remains for us to say more about the Meletian Confession of St. The Trinity, which is treated so unreasonably, with such harm to themselves, by unreasonable readers of old letters. The confession of Meletius is described to us by historians Theodoret and Sozomen. The matter took place at the same time as the interpretive conversation was pronounced on the call of Constantius. Theodoret writes: “When loud exclamations of the people were heard (after the sermon about the Consubstantial One), and they asked him to give a brief instruction: He showed three fingers, then bent two, and left one, uttered these praiseworthy words: “We imagine three in our minds, but we talk as with the One” 297. Sozomen, speaking briefly about the content of the sermon, says: “At the beginning he taught the people moral thoughts, but finally he clearly explained that the Son is of the same essence with the Father. They say that the archdeacon, who was then among the clergy, ran up and covered his mouth with his hand while he continued to speak. But he indicated his thought even more clearly with his hand than with words. For, first stretching out three fingers, then again bending and straightening one, he depicted to the people by the position of his hand what he was thinking, and what they were not allowing him to say. When the frenzied archdeacon, leaving his lips, grabbed his hand and gave freedom to his tongue; then with a loud voice he proclaimed His glory even more clearly” 298. Here a) we see that the narrative of one historian is explained and supplemented by the words of another historian, so that the doubt that could be aroused when reading one narrative can be resolved by the narrative of another, with the unity of the subject about which historians agree with each other, b) According to both historians, the subject of Meletius’ confession was the consubstantiality of the Son of God with the Father and the Holy Spirit. c) Such a confession was also expressed with the fingers of the hand: St. Meletius first showed three fingers, thereby expressing the trinity of persons of the Divine; then, bending his fingers, he extended one finger, showing that all three faces are one in essence. d) Sozomen rightly noted that Meletius, now with the sight of his hand much more clearly than before with the words of the conversation, expressed the glory of the Son of God. In words, he portrayed his thoughts rather carefully, although he said quite a few words. With his fingers he briefly but very powerfully depicted the object of his spiritual belief. e) As for the thoughts of your brothers, which they think to see in Theodorite’s narrative about the confession of St. on the cross. Meletia, i.e. as if then St. Meletius wanted to depict and depicted the sign of the cross: this desire is not visible either in the narrative of Sozomen or in the words of Theodoret. – In the present case, the Holy Teacher had no reason to have this desire, since the subject that was being discussed was completely different. And the very fact that the imaginary Theodorite legend about Meletius, in the form beloved by famous people, appears in Slavic manuscripts no earlier than the 16th century, and not in the same form, clearly shows that all this is the fruit of later arbitrariness. In Epiphanius Haer. 78 and in 5 volumes of the Galland Library. Socrates 3. 25. Sozomen 6. 4. in 5 volumes. Dutch Bibliot. Epistola de synodis § 41. Sl. reviews about St. Meletia St. Basil the Great in letters to St. Athanasius (Er. 67) and Peter of Alexandria (Er. 266), also praiseworthy words of Gregory and Chrysostom. Τρεῖς ὐποδείξας δακτύλους, εἶτα τοὺς δυο συναγαγὼν καὶ τὸν ενα ?? νούμενα, ὡς ἐνὶ δὲ διαλεγόμεθα. 2.22. Καὶ τρεῖς μόνους εἰς το προφανὲς δάκτυλους ἐκτείνων, εἰς ταυτῶν δὲ πάλιν τουτους συνεῖλεγε, καὶ τον ενα ωρθη, τῷ σχήματι τῆς χειρος εἰκονιζον τοῖς πλήθεσιν, ἅπερ εφρονεν κ. τ. α. N. E. 4.28. You might be interested in: