Христианство или Церковь?

The theme of the Church remains a priority in the scientific and teaching activities of Vladimir Alekseevich. The question posed in the title of the article "Christianity or the Church?" is rhetorical: "The word 'Church'... is already found 110 times in the New Testament. The word 'Christianity', like many other words for 'Christianity', is not known in the New Testament."111 The living, organic unity of the Church, conditioned by being in one body, breathing one Holy Spirit, under a single head - Christ, gives us the right to talk about the very real boundaries of the Church. This unity, which does not allow partiality, makes it impossible for non-Orthodox confessions to partially belong to the Church of Christ. This totality and vitality of church unity forces us, together with Alexei Stepanovich Khomyakov, to recognize communities that have departed from the Church, including Western confessions, as “heresies against the dogma of the essence of the Church, against its faith. into itself" 112. This idea is derived from the teaching of the Church of the Apostle Paul and is confirmed by the interpretations of blessed Theodoret and Theophylact, St. John of Damascus, St. John Chrysostom and, especially, the thoughts of the hieromartyr Cyprian of Carthage. And again, taking a confessional position in relation to his contemporaries, who are ashamed of the faith of their fathers, considering it a sign of backwardness, Vladimir Alekseevich sets an example of his attitude towards the Church: “Yes, I believe in the one holy, catholic and apostolic Church, I belong to the holy Orthodox Church, and therefore I am the most advanced person, for in the Church that new life for which the Son of God came to the sinful earth is only possible, only in the Church can one come to the extent of the full stature of Christ, therefore: only in the Church is true progress possible” 113. Here is a theme that the author will develop two years later in his work “Progress and Transformation.” In the work “The Trinity of the Divine and the Unity of Humanity,” the same theme of church unity is revealed in connection with the words from the Savior’s high priestly prayer to God the Father: Let [and] We be one (John 17:11). The unity of the Holy Trinity and the unity of the Church is the unity of nature in many hypostases, and only in the Church is it possible to resemble the Trinity unity. Hilarion, (Archbishop of Vereisky), schmch. Without the Church there is no salvation. P. 69.