Christianity or Church

When people don’t know or don’t understand something, they usually prefer to remain silent. And this, of course, is quite reasonable. Let us imagine a person; knowing nothing, for example, in chemistry, who, however, constantly interferes in the work of chemists, corrects their scientific formulas obtained with great difficulty, puts one in place of another, replaces one with another. Everyone will say about such a person that he acts extremely unreasonably - which, of course, is completely fair - and one can only sincerely pity him. But there is one area of ​​​​issues where everyone considers himself a complete master and even, as it were, a legislator; This is the area of ​​questions of the Christian faith and the Church. In this area, with great intensity of theological thought and with a spiritual upsurge of faith and piety, a kind of clear and definite formulas have also been established, which can only be accepted on faith. But despite this, very many people, if they ever enter the field of issues of faith and the Church, do so only as very brave and decisive reformers who want to remake everything according to their personal desire. If there is a lack of knowledge or understanding, then they do not prefer to remain silent at all - oh, no! - in this case, they begin not only to talk, but downright scream. The columns of newspapers and the everyday speeches of those gentlemen who generally very rarely remember faith and the Church, and if they do remember, prefer to speak exclusively in an authoritative and accusatory tone, are usually filled with this kind of shouting on issues of faith and the Church. In this, so to speak, atmosphere, a great many different ugly opinions are born, which nevertheless become current only because no one takes the trouble to think about them and check them. And with the dominance of such opinions, it very easily happens that even people who are devoted to the faith and the Church in their souls unconsciously assimilate them. We would call one of the very widespread and “accepted” opinions the separation of Christianity from the Church, and we would like to understand the question of the real relationship between the Church and Christianity with the help of the word of God and the writings of the patristic writings. The life of Christ the Savior is presented to the reader by St. The Gospel contains many great moments that fill the soul with some special feeling of greatness. But perhaps it was precisely the greatest moment in the life of all mankind, when the Lord Jesus Christ, in the darkness of the southern night under the overhanging arches of green trees, through which, as if the sky itself was looking at the sinful earth with twinkling bright stars, in His high priestly prayer exclaimed: “Holy Father! Keep them in Your name, those whom You have given Me, so that they may be one, just as We are. I pray not only for them, but also for those who believe in Me through their word, that they may all be one: just as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You, so that they also may be one in Us” (John 17:11, 20-23). Special attention should be paid to these words of Christ. They clearly define the essence of all Christianity: Christianity is not some abstract teaching that is accepted by the mind and contained by everyone separately. No, Christianity is a life in which individual personalities are so united with each other that their unity can be likened to the unity of the Persons of the Holy Trinity. After all, Christ did not pray only for His teaching to be preserved, so that it would spread throughout the entire universe. He prayed for the unity of all those who believe in Him. Christ prayed to His Heavenly Father for the establishment, or, better said, for the restoration on earth of the natural unity of all humanity. Humanity was created one (Acts 17:26). “In people,” writes St. Basil the Great, “there would have been no division, no strife, no war if sin had not cut the nature”... And “this is the main thing in the Savior’s economy in the flesh - to bring human nature into unity with itself and with the Savior and, having destroyed the evil section, restore the primitive unity, just as the best doctor reconnects the body with healing medicines, torn into many pieces" 1. It is this unity of human personalities - not only the apostles, but also all those who believe in Christ according to their word - that forms the Church. Among earthly objects there was not a single one with which the new society of saved people could be compared. There is no unity on earth with which church unity can be compared. Such unity was found only in heaven. In heaven, the incomparable love of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit unites three Persons into one Being, so that there are no longer three Persons, but One God, living a triune life. People are also called to the same love, which could unite many into one, for which Christ prayed to the Heavenly Father: “Let the love with which You loved Me be in them” (John 17:26). In the above words of Christ, the truth of the Church is placed in the closest connection with the mystery of the Holy Trinity. People who have entered the Church and loved it are like the three Persons of the Most Holy Trinity, whom Their love unites into one being. The Church is, as it were, a consubstantial being of many persons, created by the moral principle of love. This very idea in the quoted words of the high priestly prayer of Christ the Savior is seen by many of the most famous fathers and teachers of the Church - St. Cyprian of Carthage, St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose of Milan, Hilary of Pictavia, Cyril of Alexandria, Blessed. Augustine and St. John Cassian. Let us allow ourselves to give brief judgments of a few of this great and glorious host of fathers. So St. Cyprian of Carthage wrote to Magnus: “The Lord, instilling in us that unity comes from Divine power, affirms and says: “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). And directing His Church towards such unity, he adds: “And there will be one flock and one shepherd” (John 10:16) 2. And in his essay “On the Lord’s Prayer” he says: “Not content with redeeming us with His blood, He (the Lord) also asked for us! And when you ask, look at what desire He had: that we too may remain in that very unity in which the Father and the Son are one” 3 . And here is what St. writes. Cyril of Alexandria: “As an example and image of indivisible love, harmony and unity, conceived in unanimity, Christ, taking the essential unity that the Father has with Him, and He on His part with the Father, wants to unite in some way and us with each other, obviously in the same way as the Holy and Consubstantial Trinity, so that the whole body of the Church is conceived as one, rising in Christ through the intercourse and union of two peoples into the composition of a new perfect. The image of divine unity and the essential identity of the Holy Trinity, as well as the most perfect interpenetration, must be reflected in the unity of like-mindedness and unanimity of believers.” St. Cyril also shows “the natural unity by which we are connected with each other and all with God, perhaps not without physical unity” 4 . The entire earthly work of Christ must therefore be viewed not as teaching alone. Christ did not come to earth just to inform people of several new theoretical principles; no, He came to create a completely new life for humanity, i.e. Church . Christ Himself said that He would create the Church (Matthew 16:18). This new human society, according to the thoughts of its Creator Himself, differs significantly from all natural connections of people into different societies. Christ Himself often called His Church the Kingdom of God and said that this Kingdom is not of the world (John 14:27, 15:19, 17:14,16, 18:36), i.e. its character is not of the world, not worldly, it is not like political kingdoms. The idea of ​​the Church, as a new perfect society, in contrast to the public, for example, the state, is very deeply and beautifully expressed in the kontakion on the day of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, when the Church remembers and celebrates its beginning. “When the languages ​​of the Most High came down and divided the languages; And when we have distributed the fiery tongues, we call all together to unite, and accordingly we glorify the All-Holy Spirit.” Here the founding of the Church is placed in parallel with the pandemonium of Babylon and the “confusion of tongues.” It was then that God descended, merging languages ​​and dividing languages, the Most High. The biblical story about the “pandemonium of Babylon” has a very deep meaning. Just before this story, the Bible reports the first successes of sinful humanity in the field of culture and civil society; Before the pandemonium, people began to create stone cities. And so the Lord confused the languages ​​of those living on the earth, so that they ceased to understand each other and were scattered throughout the whole earth (Gen. 11:4, 7-8). In this “pandemonium of Babel” there is given, as it were, a certain general type of civil or state public, based on an external legal norm. Our Russian philosopher V.S. Solovyov defined law this way. “Right is a compulsory requirement for the implementation of a certain minimum good or order that does not allow certain manifestations of evil” 5. But even if we accept this definition of law, it will obviously never coincide with Christian morality. The right touches the appearance and passes by the creature. A society created on a legal basis can never merge people into one. Unity is destroyed by selfishness, egoism, but law does not destroy egoism; on the contrary, it only affirms it, protecting it from attacks from the egoism of other people. The purpose of a state based on law is to create, as far as possible, an order in which the egoism of each of its members would find satisfaction without at the same time violating the interests of another. There can be only one way to create such an order - some limitation of the egoism of individual members. This is the insoluble contradiction of law: it affirms egoism, but it also limits it. Therefore, a society based on legal principles always carries within itself the seeds of its decay, for it protects selfishness, a principle that corrodes all unity. The fate of the Tower of Babel is the fate of the legal society; in this society, a “confusion of languages” must often occur, when people cease to understand each other, even if they speak the same language. Legal order often gives way to terrible disorder. This kind of legal, purely earthly society is opposed to Christian society - the Church. “When tongues of fire are released, all are called into unity.” Christ creates the Church not by protecting human egoism, but by completely destroying it. The basis of church unity is not the legal principles protecting personal egoism, but love, the principle opposite to egoism. In his farewell conversation, Christ told his disciples: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another; just as I have loved you, so you also love one another; By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:34–35). It is this new beginning of church unity that creates not a mechanical unification of internally divided individuals, but an organic unity. Christ himself likened church unity to the organic unity of a tree and its branches (John 15:1–2). But the apostle speaks in particular detail about the organic unity of the Church. Paul. The Church is also compared to a tree by St. Paul (Rom. 11:17–24), but most often Apostle Paul calls the Church a “body” – σωμα 6. The very name of the Church “body” indicates its unity, for two bodies cannot be organically connected with each other, as well as the special nature of the unification of the members of the Church. The image of the “body” in application to the Church is perfectly revealed by the apostle himself. Paul. Many, i.e. all who enter the Church constitute one body in Christ, and individually members of one another (Rom. 12:5; 1 Cor. 12:12–13). The body is one, but has many members, and all the members of one body, although there are many of them, constitute one body. “The body is not made of one member, but of many. If the foot says: “I do not belong to the body because I am not a hand,” then does it really not belong to the body? And if the ear says: “I do not belong to the body because I am not an eye,” then does it really not belong to the body?” “God arranged the members, each one in the body, as He pleased” (1 Cor. 12:12, 14–16, 18). “As in one body we have many members, but all the members do not have the same function” (Rom. 12:4). “The eye cannot say to the hand: “I don’t need you”; or also head to feet: “I don’t need you.” “God proportioned the body, instilling greater care for the less perfect, so that there would be no division in the body, and all members would equally care for each other. Therefore, if one member suffers, all members suffer with it; if one member is glorified, all members rejoice with it” (1 Cor. 12:21, 24–26. Compare Rom. 12:1–5). But how is it possible to realize such a unity of people in the church community? After all, the natural state of man is more consistent with the creation of only a legal society, for sin is self-affirmation or selfishness, which is protected by civil law. Indeed, for a person, as long as he protects his sinful state, perfect unity will be an empty dream that is not destined to come true in reality. But here everything is precisely resolved by the idea of ​​the Church. Christ gave the commandment: “love one another,” but this commandment alone is completely insufficient. This commandment, like any theoretical position, cannot create anything if there is no strength to implement it. And if Christianity were limited only to the theoretical teaching about love, it would be useless, because in the existing human nature, distorted by sin, there is no strength to implement this teaching. Reason recognizes that the commandment of love is good, but a person will constantly encounter another law within himself, one that fights against the law of the mind and takes him captive to the sinful law (Rom. 7:22–23). But this is the strength and significance of the work of Christ, that it is not limited to theoretical provisions. Humanity has been given new strength, and therefore a new church unity becomes possible for it. A new beginning has been given, a new source of life – the Holy Spirit. Christ himself said that whoever is not born of water and the Spirit cannot enter the Kingdom of God (John 3:5) - one must be born of the Spirit (John 3:6–8). And when ap. Paul talks about the unity of people in the Church, he always talks about the Holy Spirit as the source of this unity. For the Apostle, the Church is not only “one body,” but also “one Spirit” 7 ; and here what is meant is not like-mindedness or unity of religious convictions, as some Western scientists want to interpret, but the one Spirit of God permeating the entire body of the Church, as the holy fathers and teachers of the Church testify. “What is the unity of the Spirit?” - asks St. John Chrysostom answers: “Just as in the body the spirit embraces everything and imparts some kind of unity to the diversity that comes from the diversity of bodily members, so it is here. But the Spirit was also given in order to unite people who are different from each other in origin and way of thinking” 8 . “With these words (one spirit) he wanted to encourage mutual agreement, as if saying: since you received one Spirit and drank from one source, there should be no discord between you” 9 . Blazh. Theodoret: “You have all been granted the same grace; a single source pours out various streams. You have received one Spirit, you make one body” 10. Blazh. Jerome: “One body in the sense of the body of Christ, which is the Church; and one Holy Spirit, one dispenser and sanctifier of all.” 11 Blazh. Theophylact of Bulgaria: “As in the body, the spirit is the beginning of everything that connects and unites, although the members are different; so in believers there is the Holy Spirit, which unites everyone, although we differ from each other in gender, morals, and occupations” 12. According to the Apostle, all church life is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit of God; every manifestation of love, every virtue is an action of the gift of the Spirit. The same Spirit produces everything. People, in the words of the ap. Peter, only builders of manifold grace (1 Pet. 4:10). The Spirit of God, penetrating the entire Body of the Church, giving all members of this body various gifts, makes new life possible for humanity. It is he who unites everyone into one body, and unites precisely by the fact that he pours love into the hearts, which in the natural state of a person cannot be the principle of his life and his relationships with other people. “Love comes from God” is the saying of St. John (1 John 4:7) can be called the general theme of a whole series of apostolic discussions. Love is called God's 13. The love of Christ embraces the members of the Church (2 Cor. 5:14). The Lord directs the hearts of all into the love of God (2 Thess. 3:5). Love is the fruit of the Spirit (Gal.5:22). “The love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Rom. 5:5). God saved us by the renewal of the Holy Spirit, which he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior (Titus 3:5). Thus, in the Church, the living Holy Spirit gives each member of the Church the strength to be a new creature, to be guided by love in his life. Teachings of the Ap. Paul about the Church is inextricably linked with his teaching about love as the beginning of Christian life. This connection is little noticed by modern scientific interpreters, but it is pointed out by the holy fathers of the Church. So blessed. Theodoret says about the apostolic comparison of the Church with the body: “This likening is fitting for the teaching of love” 14 And St. John Chrysostom, interpreting the words: “one body,” says: “Paul demands from us such love that would bind us together, making us inseparable from each other, and such perfect unity, as if we were members of one body, because only such love produces great good” 15. Reading the messages of St. Paul, you can notice that he usually speaks about the Church and about love side by side, and this, of course, is because in the very system of the Apostle both these ideas are inextricably linked with each other. The entire Christian morality of the Apostle is based on the dogmatic teaching about the Church. Thus, in the last chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, the Apostle speaks in detail about Christian morality. This speech begins with the 9th verse of the 12th chapter, and in the five previous (4-8) verses the Apostle briefly outlined the teaching about the Church as a body. In the first letter to the Corinthians, the teaching about the Church set forth in chapter 12 is immediately followed by the “New Testament song of love” (1 Cor. 12:31–13:13). Something similar can be seen in the letters to the Ephesians and Colossians. What follows from all that has been said? The teaching of Christ is a teaching not only about the re-creation of an individual moral personality, but also about the re-creation of a perfect society, i.e. about the Church. In the Church, the living Spirit of God gives strength for the implementation of Christian teaching in life, and since this teaching is a teaching about love, its implementation again creates a community, for love is a connecting principle, not a dividing one. Outside the Church and without the Church, Christian life is impossible. Without the Church, only Christian teaching remains, i.e. empty sound. Christian life is church life. Only in the life of the Church can an individual person live and develop. In a bodily organism, individual members never grow or develop separately from each other, but always only in connection with the entire organism. It's the same in the Church. The growth of the Church is at the same time the growth of its individual members. In the New Testament writings, the purpose of the existence of the Church is indicated in the moral perfection of the human person. Spiritual gifts and all ministries in general exist in the Church, according to the thought of St. Paul, for the perfecting of the saints, i.e. for the moral rebirth of Christians (Eph.4:12), “until we all come into the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Eph.4:13). And then the Apostle depicts the process by which regenerated humanity reaches the measure of the full stature of Christ. But, unfortunately, the words that speak about this process are perhaps the darkest in the entire Slavic text of the New Testament. Namely: “from it the whole body is assembled and put together in a decent way with every touch of alms, according to the action of one part at a time, the body is restored to its own creation through love” (Eph. 4:16). The Russian translation is somewhat clearer: “From Whom the whole body, composed and copulated through all kinds of mutually consolidating connections, when each member acts in its own measure, receives an increase for the creation of itself in love.” However, preference should be given to the Slavic text, because Russian does not convey the whole idea of ​​the original, which is preserved in Slavic, but hidden in vague expressions. Without going into a detailed analysis of the Greek text 16, we will only say what thought the Apostle wants to express 17. The entire body of the Church is constantly more and more harmoniously united through the reception of the gracious gifts of the Holy Spirit, acting in each in a special way, and thus the body of the Church achieves perfection in all its members. The entire growth of the church organism is determined by the participation of individual members in the law of love, because only with love and with union with the Church is the very perception of the gifts of the Spirit possible. This is how the quoted words of St. are understood. Apostle St. John Chrysostom 18, blessed. Theodoret 19, John of Damascus 20 and Blessed. Theophylact 21. Their thoughts are united by His Grace Theophan the Recluse, whose words we will quote. “The Christian faith unites the faithful with Christ and thus forms one harmonious body from all. Christ creates this body, communicating Himself to everyone and giving him the Spirit of grace effectively, tangibly, so that this Spirit of grace, descending on everyone, makes him what he should be in the body of the Church of Christ. The Body of Christ, harmoniously combined with such a gift of the Spirit, then grows in itself, to the extent that each member meets its purpose or acts for the good of the Church with all the fullness of the gift of grace received” 22. From the above teaching of the ap. Paul and his interpretations by the holy fathers, it is clear that according to the New Testament teaching, the improvement of the individual is conditioned by his belonging to the Church, as a living organism growing under the grace-filled influence of the Holy Spirit. If the connection with the body of the Church is severed, then the individual, having become isolated and withdrawn in his egoism, will be deprived of the gracious influence of the Holy Spirit living in the Church. “In fact, if the hand happened to separate from the body, the spirit flowing out of the brain, looking for a continuation and not finding it there, does not break away from the body and does not transfer to the removed hand, but if it does not find it there, then it is not communicated to it. The same thing happens here if we are not connected by love” 23. “Everything that has only been separated from the vital principle cannot, with the loss of its saving essence, live and breathe a special life” 24. “Separate the sunbeam from its beginning, - unity will not allow a separate light to exist; break off a branch from a tree, and the broken branch will lose its ability to grow; separate the stream from its source, and the separated one will dry up. Likewise, the Church, illuminated by the light of the Lord, spreads its rays throughout the world; but the light spreading everywhere is one, and the unity of the body remains undivided. She will spread her branches laden with fruits throughout the earth; its abundant streams flow into distant space; despite all this, there remains one head, one beginning, one mother, rich in the success of fruitfulness” 25. In these animated and tenderly poetic words the idea is clearly expressed that an individual, even a separate Christian community, is alive insofar as he lives the life of Christ, insofar as he is united with the entire universal Church. To isolate oneself, to withdraw into oneself, is for an individual or even for a local church what is for a ray to be separated from the sun, for a stream to be separated from a source, for a branch to be separated from a trunk. Spiritual life can only exist through an organic connection with the universal Church; If this connection is broken, Christian life will dry up. We hope that it has been sufficiently shown that the idea of ​​the Church also has a very significant meaning in the New Testament teaching. Christianity does not have in mind the interests of reason; it teaches only about the salvation of man. Therefore, there are no purely theoretical positions in Christianity. Dogmatic truths have moral significance, and Christian morality is based on dogmas. But it is precisely the idea of ​​the Church that is the point at which doctrine turns into moral teaching, Christian dogmatics turns into ethics. The idea of ​​the Church gives life and fulfillment to Christian teaching. Without the Church there is no Christianity; only Christian teaching remains, which cannot “renew fallen Adam.” If we now turn from the revelation of the New Testament idea of ​​the Church to the facts of the initial history of Christianity, we will see that it was this idea that was the main idea of ​​the Christian worldview, and it was it that created reality. Christians recognized themselves first of all as the Church, and Christian society, preferably over all other names, called itself the Church. The word "Church" (εχχλησια σ) already appears 110 times in the New Testament. The New Testament does not know the word “Christianity”, like many other words with “Christianity”. After the descent of the Holy Spirit on the disciples and apostles of Christ, the Church came into being as a visible society with spiritual mutual relations of its members. After all, at first there was no system of dogma. The faith of Christ was contained in a few very general provisions. There was nothing to learn about Christianity. There was little need for agreement on any theoretical positions. What did it mean to be a Christian at that time? Nowadays, you can hear many different answers to this question, something like this: to be a Christian means to recognize the teachings of Christ, to try to fulfill His commandments. This is, of course, the best answer yet. But early Christianity answered this question completely differently. From the very first pages of its history, Christianity appears before us in the form of a like-minded and unanimous community. There were no Christians outside of this community. To believe in Christ, to become a Christian, meant joining the Church, as is repeatedly expressed in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, where we read: “The Lord added daily to those who were being saved” (Acts 2:47, 5:13–14). Every new believer was like a branch grafted onto the tree of church life. And here is the most typical example, as it were, an illustration of precisely this kind of joining the Church. The persecutor Saul, who breathed reproach and murder against the disciples of the Lord, miraculously becomes a follower of Christ on the way to Damascus. Here we have before us a special revelation of God to man. However, in Damascus, the Lord sent Ananias to Saul, who baptized him, after which Saul was in Damascus with his disciples for several days. Then Saul, having arrived in Jerusalem, tries to join the disciples, and after Barnabas informs the Apostles about him, he stays with them. Thus, even the future great Apostle, whom even in the vision of Ananias the Lord calls the chosen vessel (Acts 9:15), immediately after his conversion joins the Church as a visible society. Here it is especially clearly shown that the Lord does not want to know His servants outside the Church 26. It is clear why St. St. Paul speaks so insistently in his epistles about the Church: he does not create a doctrine about the Church, and even at his very conversion he met the Church as a fact. Even before his conversion, Saul knew precisely the Church, and not anything else. He himself later recalls: “You have heard about my former way of life in Judaism, that I cruelly persecuted the Church of God and devastated it” (Gal. 1:13). Saul did not persecute the followers of any teaching, but precisely the Church, as a value defined even for “outsiders.” The early Christian community was, according to the testimony of the Writer, an almost complete realization of the idea of ​​the Church. The multitude of believers, we read in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, “had one heart and one soul” (Acts 4:32). And it is very remarkable that in the 4th century, with the revelation of the dogma about St. To the Trinity, some holy fathers pointed as an analogy precisely to the early Christian community, where plurality was unity. And how sharply defined the early Christian community was, this is perfectly demonstrated by one verse in the book of Acts, which is somehow not noticed. “No stranger dared to approach them” (Acts 5:13). Thus, on the one hand, conversion to Christianity is thought of as joining the Church, and on the other hand, “no one from outsiders dared to pester them.” Isn’t it clear that at the very first time, when the Lord’s direct disciples were alive, Christianity was precisely a visible society - the Church, because it was not yet a theory, but was life itself? Yes, in the first centuries the Church opposed itself to the school. School, σχολη διδαχαλειον, was almost a swear word in the language of ancient Christians. School was the name given to heretical communities that separated from the Church, as can be seen from the writings of St. Irenaeus of Lyons and Hippolytus of Rome. With this name, did they not emphasize their view that outside the Church there is no Christian life, and there remains only a place for rational school, scholastic wisdom. You can now even bring evidence “from outsiders.” It is known how Protestants distorted the idea of ​​the Church by preaching some doctrine about the “invisible” Church. This teaching is so vague and vague that even one Lutheran theologian, in an official report to the Diet of Speyer in 1875, stated: “Our Protestant teaching about the church is still distinguished by such vagueness and inconsistency that it can be called the Achilles heel of Protestantism.”27 However, Protestants sometimes try to impose their doctrine of the Church on early Christianity, and some of the Protestant scholars emphatically declare that the founding of the visible Church is contrary to evangelical Christianity and was a distortion of it. This is, for example, the point of view of Rudolf Som 28. But recently, even in Protestant science, not so decisive voices have been heard about the Church of the first centuries: science, alien to the Church, is gradually coming to recognize the truth that the Church and Christianity at the very first time were identical concepts and completely inseparable from each other. Finally, I think we would be making a great omission if we did not cite at least some of the judgments of ancient church writers on the issue that interests us. Let us dwell on the views of only two writers who worked hard to understand the dogma of the Church - St. Cyprian of Carthage and Blessed. Augustine. According to the judgment of St. Cyprian, to be a Christian means to belong to the visible Church and to submit to the hierarchy established in it by God. The Church is the realization of the love of Christ, and any separation from the Church is precisely a violation of love, which is where heretics and schismatics alike sin. This is the main idea of ​​his treatise “On the Unity of the Church”; the same thought is constantly repeated in the letters of St. father. “Christ gave us peace; He commanded us to be agreeable and of one mind; commanded to inviolably and firmly preserve the union of affection and love. He who has violated the love of Christ by treacherous disagreement will not belong to Christ: he who does not have love does not have God. Those who do not desire to be unanimous in the Church of God cannot remain with God” 29. Heretics and schismatics have no love, i.e. fundamental Christian virtue, and therefore they are Christians only in name. “A heretic or schismatic does not preserve either the unity of the Church or brotherly love 30 and acts against the love of Christ” 31 . “Marcian, having united with Novatian, became an opponent of mercy and love” 32. It is known about heretics that they retreated from the love and unity of the Catholic Church 33 . “What kind of unity does he maintain, what kind of love does he preserve, or what kind of love does he think about who, giving in to the impulses of discord, dissects the Church, destroys the faith, disturbs the world, uproots love, desecrates the sacrament?” 34 St. Cyprian even expresses such a decisive thought: outside the Church there can be no Christian teaching, not only Christian life. Only in the Church is there pure faith 35 . Cyprian calls the Church “truth” 36. The unity of faith cannot be separated from the unity of the Church 37 . There is one truth, just as the Church is one 38. Anyone who does not adhere to the unity of the Church cannot think that he maintains the faith 39 . Any separation from the Church is certainly associated with a distortion of faith. “The enemy has invented heresies and schisms in order to overthrow faith, pervert the truth, and dissolve unity. His servants proclaim treachery under the pretext of faith, the Antichrist under the name of Christ, and, covering lies with plausibility, destroy the truth with subtle cunning.”40 “Just as the devil is not Christ, although he deceives in His name, so one who does not abide in the truth of His gospel and faith cannot be considered a Christian.”41 “The heretic dissects the Church, destroys the faith 42; he is armed against the Church, a traitor in relation to faith, a blasphemer in relation to piety, a disobedient slave, a lawless son, an enemy brother” 43 . “If we consider the faith of those who believe outside the Church, it turns out that all heretics have a completely different faith; even, strictly speaking, they have only fanaticism, blasphemy and debate, hostile to holiness and truth” 44. It is impossible, according to St. Cyprian, to be outside the Church and remain a Christian. Outside the Church - outside the camp of Christ 45. Those who have apostatized from the Church and act against the Church are antichrists and pagans 46 . Here, for example, is what St. writes. Cyprian Antonianu about Novatian. “You wished, most beloved brother, that I should write to you also regarding Novatian, what heresy he introduced. Know that, first of all, we should not be curious about what he teaches when he teaches outside the Church. Whoever and whatever he may be, he is not a Christian, no matter how soon he is not in the Church of Christ." 47. “How can anyone be with Christ who does not remain with the bride of Christ, is not in His Church.” 48. Finally, in the treatise “On the Unity of the Church,” we read the famous words: “He can no longer have God as a father who does not have the Church as a mother.” 49. St. Cyprian completely denies everyone who stands outside the Church the name “Christians,” as if repeating the decisive exclamation of his teacher Tertullian: haeretici christiani esse non possunt (heretics cannot be Christians!). It is therefore understandable that St. When Cyprian was admitted into the Church, he even rebaptized the Novatians, although they were only schismatics. For Cyprian, the baptism of schismatics upon admission to the Church was not re-baptism, but was precisely baptism. “We affirm,” wrote St. Cyprian Quintus - that we do not rebaptize those who come from there, but we baptize (non rebaptizari apud nos, sed baptizari); for they receive nothing where there is nothing” 50. Baptism outside the Church is only “empty and unclean immersion” (sordida et profana tinctio) 51. “People are not washed there, but only become more defiled; Sins are not cleansed, but only aggravated. Such a birth produces children not of God, but of the devil" 52 . Cyprian's idea about the invalidity of any baptism outside the Church and the need to baptize again all those turning to the Church was confirmed by the local council of the Carthage Church in 256, which was chaired by Cyprian himself. In his final speech, as if summing up all the conciliar reasoning, St. Cyprian says: “Heretics must be baptized with the only baptism of the Church, so that they can become friends from opponents and Christians from antichrists.”53 The stated views of St. Cyprian, which, obviously, was shared by the entire Council of Carthage, clearly and very definitely testify to how decisively the Church was merged with Christianity in the third century and vice versa. The views of St. Cyprian were not accepted by the Church in their entirety. In particular, his teaching on the need to baptize even schismatics upon their conversion to the Church was rejected. In connection with this, the views of Blessed. Augustine are somewhat different, although in essence the view on the relationship of the Church to Christianity remains the same. Blazh. Augustine admits that Christian teaching, understood theoretically, can be preserved outside the Church. The truth remains the truth, even if it is expressed by an evil person. After all, the demons also confessed Christ in the same way as the apostle. Peter 54. Gold is undoubtedly good, and it remains gold among robbers, although it serves them for evil purposes 55 . Christ once said to his disciples: “Whoever is not against you is for you” (Luke 9:49–50). From this it can be seen that those who stand outside the Church in some matters are not against the Church and have something from the Church’s wealth 56. The Athenians honored the unknown God (Acts 17:23), and the ap. James testifies that demons also believe (James 2:19), and they, of course, are outside the Church 57. In his writings against the Donatists, Blessed. Augustine proves and substantiates in detail the validity of schismatic baptism. But if the true teaching can be preserved outside the Church, if even the sacraments performed in separation from the Church are valid, then is the Church absolutely necessary? Isn't salvation possible outside the Church? Doesn't the blessed one separate? Augustine Christianity from the Church? All these questions in the system are blessed. Augustine gives a negative answer. Christian life leading to salvation, blessed. Augustine ascribes only to the Church, and outside the Church this life cannot exist. All that those who have separated from the Church retain from the church’s wealth brings them absolutely no benefit, but only harm 58 . Why is this so? “Because,” answers the blessed one. Augustine - that all those who are separated from the Church do not have love. Christ indicated a sign by which His disciples can be recognized. This sign is not Christian teaching, not even the sacraments, but only love. “By this,” He said to His disciples, “all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). The sacraments will not save if the one receiving them does not have love. The Apostle says: “If I know all mysteries (sacra inenta) and do not have love, I am nothing” (1 Cor. 13:1-3) 59. Caiaphas prophesied, but was condemned 60. Separation from the Church itself is the greatest sin, which shows that schismatics have no love (Ididem). One who has been reborn in baptism, but has not united with the Church, has no benefit from baptism, because he does not have love; baptism begins to be saving for him only when he is united with the Church 61. The grace of baptism cannot cleanse from sins someone who does not belong to the Church; its action is, as it were, paralyzed by the stubbornness of the schismatic heart in evil (i.e., in schism) 62. Since someone who is baptized outside the Church immediately after baptism reveals his sinfulness, his lack of love, entering into the darkness of his schism, his sins immediately return to him. And that forgiven sins return if there is no brotherly love, this was clearly demonstrated by the Lord when he spoke about the slave whom the master forgave ten thousand talents. When this slave did not take pity on his comrade, who owed him a hundred denarii, the master ordered him to give him everything that he owed him. Just as that slave received forgiveness of his debt for a time, so the one who is baptized outside the Church is also temporarily freed from his sins, but since after baptism he remains outside the Church, then all the sins committed before baptism are again charged to him. His sins will be forgiven only when he lovingly unites with the Church 63. It is not because schismatics are deprived of hope of salvation that their baptism is invalid, but only because they are outside the Church and in hostility to it 64 . The grace of the Holy Spirit can only be received and preserved by those who are united in love with the Church 65. Anyone who has separated from the Church has no love. He who does not love the unity of the Church 66 does not have the love of God; it is in vain that he says that he has Christ’s love 67 . Love can only be preserved through unity with the Church 68 because the Holy Spirit animates only the body of the Church 69 . There can be no legal and sufficient reason to separate from the Church 70; whoever is separated from the Church does not have the Holy Spirit 71, just as a member cut off from the body does not have the spirit of life, although it retains its former form for some time 72. Therefore, all those who have separated from the Church cannot be good while they oppose it; even though their behavior seemed commendable, the very separation from the Church makes them evil 73 . Thus, according to the teachings of Blessed. Augustine, the Church is a narrower concept than Christianity, understood in the sense of theoretical provisions alone. While remaining outside the Church, one can be in agreement with these theoretical positions; for unity with the Church it is necessary, in addition, agreement of the will (consensio volinlalum) 74. But it is obvious that without this latter, only theoretical agreement with Christian teaching is completely useless, and there is no salvation outside the Church. Views of St. Cyprian and Blessed Augustine, apparently, are somewhat different, but they both come to the same conclusion: extra ecclesiam nulla salus - there is no salvation outside the Church! What saves people is their love, which is the grace of the New Testament 75. Outside the Church it is impossible to preserve love 76, because there you cannot receive the Holy Spirit 77. So, what did we find among representatives of church thought of the 3rd-5th centuries? We found exactly the same thing that we came to before, considering the New Testament teaching about the Church and the facts of the initial history of Christianity. Christianity and the Church do not coincide with each other only when by Christianity we understand the sum of some theoretical provisions that do not bind anyone to anything. But such an understanding of Christianity can only be called demonic. Then demons should also be recognized as Christians, who also believe and only tremble because of this. To know the system of Christian dogma, to agree with the dogmas - does this really mean to be a true Christian? A slave who knows the will of his master and does not fulfill it will receive many beatings and, of course, fairly. “Christianity is not about silent conviction, but about the greatness of the deed,” as St. Ignatius the God-Bearer 78. No, Christ is not only a great teacher; He is the Savior of the world, who gave humanity new strength, who renewed humanity. It is not only teaching that we have from Christ our Savior, but life. If we understand Christianity as a new life not according to the elements of the world, which knows only the principles of egoism and selfishness, but according to Christ with His teaching and example of self-denial and love, then Christianity will necessarily completely coincide with the Church. To be a Christian means to belong to the Church, for Christianity is precisely the Church, and outside the Church there is no Christian life, and there cannot be. Finally, one only needs to look closely at the Creed to understand how important the idea of ​​the Church is. After all, almost all the members of the Creed were added after various heretics appeared who distorted this or that truth. Therefore, the entire Creed can be called polemical. Its history shows how its content was replenished in the fight against certain heresies. It’s not at all the same with the ninth member of the Church. From the very beginning, this member was in the Creed, where it was included even regardless of the appearance of any false teachings. After all, at that time there were no Protestants dreaming of some kind of churchless Christianity. It is clear that from the very beginning the idea of ​​the Church was at the head of Christian beliefs, and we can consider the truth that Christianity is precisely the Church as given by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Having risen to this height of church self-awareness, it is very useful to look at our contemporary life, at the trends and opinions widespread in it, and give them a church assessment. “I believe in one holy, catholic and apostolic Church.” This is how every Orthodox Christian confesses his faith in the great truth of the Church. But it is hardly possible to point out any other member of the Creed, which would be so little perceived by the heart of a person reading the Creed with his lips, like the ninth, where the truth of the Church is expressed. This is partly understandable. After all, it is in the ninth article of the Creed that a person confesses his connection with the visible society of the followers of Christ and thus, already in these short words of confession, he agrees with all the truths taught by the Church, which is recognized as the guardian of Christ’s teaching, and on the practical side, once and for all consent is given to submission to all those laws by which the Church achieves the goal of its existence and by which it, as a society living on earth, is governed. Therefore, I think we will not be wrong if we express the idea that the truth of the Church, above all others, concerns the very life of every Christian, determines not only his beliefs, but also life itself. To recognize the Church means not dreaming only about Christ, but living like a Christian, following the path of love and self-denial. And that is why the truth of the Church is contrary to those principles of life that have long and imperceptibly crept into the consciousness and worldview of even Russian church society, mainly, of course, the so-called intelligentsia society. Since the sad times of Peter the Great for the Church, the top of Russian society broke away from church folk life and began to live rather a common life with all other European nations, but not with the Russian one. Submitting to Western influence in all areas of life, Russian society could not avoid the influence of Western confessions on the structure of its religious worldview. And it was not without reason that the faithful son of the Orthodox Church and the Holy Motherland, A. S. Khomyakov, called these confessions “heresies against the dogma of the essence of the Church, against its faith in itself,” and it was not for nothing that he considered the denial of the Church the most characteristic feature of both Catholicism and Protestantism. The truth of the Church was greatly distorted in the West after Rome fell away from the Church, and the Kingdom of God there began to resemble the kingdom of the earth. Latinism, with its legal accounts of good deeds, with its mercenary attitude towards God, with its counterfeit salvation, has darkened the Christian idea of ​​the Church in the minds of its members. Latinism gave birth to a completely legitimate, although very rebellious child in the person of Protestantism. Protestantism was created on the basis of humanism, but humanism itself was not a religious phenomenon; on the contrary, all his guiding ideas are purely earthly, human: he created respect for man in his natural state. And Protestantism, which transferred the principles of humanism to the religious field, was not a protest of the genuine ancient church Christian consciousness against those forms and norms that were created by medieval papism, as Protestant theologians are often inclined to imagine. No, Protestantism was a protest on the same plane; he did not restore ancient Christianity, but replaced one distortion of Christianity with another, and there was a new lie worse than the first. Protestantism said the last word of papism and drew a logical conclusion from it. Truth and salvation are given to love, i.e. Churches – such is the church consciousness. Latinism, having fallen away from the Church, betrayed this consciousness and proclaimed: the truth is given to the individual person of the pope - albeit one pope, but still a separate person - and the pope is in charge of the salvation of all. Protestantism only objected: why is the truth given only to the pope? - and added: truth and salvation are open to every individual, regardless of the Church. Each individual man was made an infallible pope. Protestantism put the papal tiara on every German professor and, with its countless number of popes, completely destroyed the idea of ​​the Church, replaced faith with the reason of the individual and replaced salvation in the Church with a dreamy confidence in salvation through Christ without the Church, in selfish isolation. In practice, of course, the Protestants, from the very beginning, deviated from their main principle and in a roundabout way, by smuggling, so to speak, introduced some elements of dogma from the Church, recognizing some authorities, at least in the area of ​​​​religious doctrine. Being church anarchism, pure Protestantism, like any anarchism, turned out to be completely impossible and thereby testified to us the immutable truth that the human soul is ecclesiastical by nature. However, the principled side of Protestantism came very close to the heart of human selfishness and self-will of all kinds. Selfishness and self-will received a kind of sanctification and blessing in Protestantism, which was reflected and is now revealed in the endless division and fragmentation, first of all, of Protestantism itself. It was Protestantism that openly proclaimed this greatest lie: you can be a Christian by denying the Church. By binding its members, however, to certain obligatory authorities and church rules, Protestantism thereby becomes entangled in a hopeless contradiction: it itself freed the individual from the Church and itself sets some limits to this freedom. Hence the constant revolt of Protestants against those few and pitiful remnants of churchliness that are still preserved by the official representatives of their confession. It is clear, of course, that it is Protestantism that most closely corresponds to the general, almost completely pagan worldview that has established itself in the West. Where the cult of individualism flourishes magnificently, finding prophets in fashionable philosophy and singers in fiction, there, of course, there cannot be a place for Christ’s ideal of the Church, which first of all denies selfishness and self-will in people and demands love from them. In our contemporary religious life in Russian society there is a direct influence of Protestantism. All of our Russian rationalistic sectarianism has all its ideological roots in Protestantism, from which it sometimes directly derives. After all, where do all sorts of sectarian missionaries come to us, if not from Protestant countries? Therefore, almost all points of disagreement between sectarians and the Orthodox Church come down precisely to the denial of the Church in the name of imaginary “Evangelical Christianity.” But even regardless of Protestantism, many people now come to deny the Church, adopting in general the Western European worldview, which developed outside the Church and is completely alien and even hostile to the spirit of the Church. The same Western European proud individualism is penetrating to us more and more. Our literature, which used to be a preacher of love and moral revival, especially in the immortal works of the great Dostoevsky, in recent years in the person of, for example, Gorky, Andreev and the like, has bowed its knees to the Western European Baal of proud individualism. When, in Orthodox society, love is supplanted by pride and self-love, which receives the venerable name of “noble” - although the holy fathers of the Church speak of self-love and pride only of demons - when self-denial is replaced by self-affirmation and humble obedience by proud self-will, then, of course, the bright truth of the Church, inextricably linked with principles directly opposite, is shrouded in a thick fog. Over the course of many years, Russian people lost the habit of thinking in a churchly way; gradually they even lost the thought of the Church as the new life of Christ. There was once, a good time when I.T. Pososhkov bequeathed to his son: “I firmly command and conjure you, my son, to adhere with all your strength to the holy Eastern Churches, like the mother who gave birth to you... and cut off all opponents of the holy Church from yourself and do not have any friendly communication with them, since they are the enemies of God” 79 . According to Pososhkov, an opponent of the Church is certainly an enemy of God. Many people have now lost such clarity of thought, and little by little the most terrible counterfeit of the faith of Christ has been created in our days. It was this faith that was looked at from a purely theoretical point of view, as a sum of truths on which various rational operations can be performed. Christianity, in the sense of the church life of humanity reborn by Christ the Savior, has almost been completely forgotten. Christ Himself said that He was creating the Church, but do they really talk about the Church now? No, now they prefer to talk about Christianity, and Christianity is considered as some kind of philosophical or moral teaching. Christianity sounds like Novokantianism or Nietzscheanism! This counterfeit of the Church by Christianity, like a subtle poison, penetrates into the consciousness of even church society. It is a subtle poison, because it is hidden under the flowery shell of loud speeches about the shortcomings of “historical Christianity” (ie the Church?), about its supposed inconsistency with some kind of “pure”, “evangelical” Christianity. The Gospel and Christ are contrasted with the Church, which is called “historical” for some reason, as if there is or ever was another “non-historical” Church! Truly here Satan took the form of an angel of light. He pretends to care about the good of the truth of Christ, as if he wants to cleanse the truth of Christ from human untruth. At the same time, one involuntarily recalls the wise saying of St. Vincent of Lirinsky: “When we see that some cite apostolic or prophetic sayings to refute the universal faith, we should not doubt that the devil speaks through their lips, and in order to more unnoticeably sneak up on the simple-minded sheep, they hide their wolfish appearance, without abandoning the wolf’s ferocity, and, like a fleece, they wrap themselves in the sayings of the divine Scripture, so that they feel the softness wool, no one was afraid of their sharp teeth” 80. In fact, opposing the gospel to the Church and replacing the Church with the vague concept of Christianity has many of the most deplorable results: Christian life dries up, there turns out to be only one superfluous teaching in the endless series of teachings, ancient and new, moreover, a very vague teaching, because without the Church the possibility of an innumerable number of its understandings, the most arbitrary and even contradictory, opens up. In this respect, Christianity stands incomparably lower than many philosophical schools. In fact, the founders of philosophical schools left behind entire volumes of their works, left more or less clearly stated systems, expressed themselves more or less fully, so that there is no limitless scope for various arbitrary interpretations of their teachings. The Lord Jesus Christ did not abandon His system. He didn't write anything. It was only once said about Him in the Gospel of John that He wrote with a finger, and even this time He wrote on the ground or simply drew towards the ground (John 8:6). Therefore, there is nothing easier than to reinterpret the teachings of Christ according to your own taste and create “Christianity,” presenting under this name the dreams of your heart and the images of your idle imagination. The sacred books of the New Testament were written by non-literate apostles. But in all centuries there have been, as St. calls them. Irenaeus of Lyons, “correctors of the apostles” 81, who considered themselves superior to the apostles, these “Galilean fishermen.” Well, is it fitting for a highly educated European of the 20th century to take on faith everything said by some “fishermen”? Therefore, many free themselves even from the authority of the apostles and want to interpret Christ’s teaching, guided only by their personal sympathies. After all, Leo Tolstoy directly stated that the ap. Paul did not properly understand the teachings of Christ 82; Therefore, Tolstoy considered himself superior to the ap. Pavel. And one can marvel at how far people go in their “interpretation” of Christianity. Whatever they want, they immediately find it all in the Gospel. It turns out that every idle dream and even malicious thought can be covered up by the authority of the Gospel. No, the faith of Christ becomes clear and definite for a person only when he unfeignedly believes in the Church; Only then is the bead of this faith pure, only then is it not mixed with a heap of dirty garbage of all kinds of willful opinions and judgments. The apostle also spoke about this. Paul, when he called the Church of the living God the pillar and ground of the truth (1 Tim. 3:15). Thus, in separation from the Church, even Christian teaching turns out to be something very vague, elusive, constantly changing at will. But the counterfeit of the Church by Christianity leads to another terrible counterfeit - the counterfeit of Christ the God-Man by the man Jesus of Nazareth. Just as faith in the Church is inextricably linked with the recognition of the Divinity of Christ the Savior, so the denial of the Church certainly leads to the denial of the incarnation of the Son of God, the denial of the Divinity of Jesus Christ. After all, in order to give any teaching, there is no need to be a God-man. The God-manhood of Christ is necessary only for those who see in Him the Savior, who infused new strength into human nature and founded the Church. In fact, isn’t this indissoluble connection between the truth of the Church and the truth of His Sonship of God already visible from the words of Jesus Christ Himself? Simon Peter said: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Then Jesus said to him: “And I say to you: you are Peter, and on this rock (i.e. on the truth of the Incarnation, which Peter confessed) I will build My Church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it” (Matthew 16:16–18). The ancient Church, with a special effort of all its forces, defended this truth of the consubstantiality of the incarnate Son of God with God the Father, because it longed for a real renewal of human nature, the re-creation of a “new creation,” i.e. Churches. The unshakable faith that the Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, came to earth, became man, revealing to people the secrets of the Kingdom of God, founded His Church on earth, suffered for the sins of the human race and, having conquered death, rose from the dead, opening the way for people to become like God and deify not only in the soul, but also in the body - this faith lay as the internal motive at the basis of all dogmatic movements of the 4th century 83 . Why was the struggle against Arianism so intense? Why did the Arians meet with such decisive resistance that St. Did Athanasius the Great, this pillar of the Church of Christ, refuse to call them “Christians”? To a modern, little-religious person, the dogmatic disputes of the 4th century seem incomprehensible and seemingly meaningless. But “this was a struggle between two extremely opposing views of Christ - the mystical-religious, in which He was the source of life, salvation, immortality and deification, and the rationalistic, where Christ was presented only as a deified Teacher and a normal example for His followers. The question was essentially whether in the future Christianity will remain a religion with all the totality of its bright beliefs and mystical hopes or whether it will resolve into a simple philosophy with a religious tint, of which there were many at that time. That is why questions about the Divinity of the Son of God, which affected the most intimate side of the believing soul, were discussed in squares and markets” 84. It can be said that even then the Church defended the consubstantiality of its Founder with God the Father; The Areans, people of a rationalistic bent, denied the consubstantiality of the incarnate Son of God, looking at Him as the founder of a school, who does not necessarily need to be a perfect God. The desire to be a “new creation,” “renewed by nature,” in other words, the Church of the living God, requires recognition of the full Divinity of Christ. “God became man so that man could become god.” “The Son of God became the son of man, so that the sons of men might be supported by the sons of God.” This is how the meaning of the Incarnation of St. is determined. Irenaeus of Lyons and Athanasius the Great 85. The liturgy of our Orthodox Church is full of the same ideas. Here are examples from just one service on Christmas Day. “Today God has come to earth, and man has ascended to heaven” 86, “In the image and likeness of having been corrupted by crime, having seen Jesus, he bowed the heavens and came to dwell in the virgin womb without change, so that in it he might renew the decayed Adam” 87. “Let all creation rejoice and play, for Christ has come to renew us and save our souls” 88. “Having been decayed by crime, having been in God’s image, all the corruption that exists, the best of divine life having fallen away, is again renewed by the wise Creator” 89 . “Having received the desire, and the coming of God, the redness of Christ, people have been honored, now they are consoled by the restoration of existence” 90. The Orthodox Church is the bearer of the idea of ​​the real salvation of man, his complete rebirth, renewal, re-creation and deification, which man cannot achieve on his own, no matter how much he philosophizes. The Church, in order to be precisely the Church, a society of renewed humanity, requires the incarnation of the Son of God, and therefore for church people who have perceived the full height of the religious ideal of St. Church, Jesus Christ has always been and is the Son of God, consubstantial with God the Father. “Others,” writes St. Irenaeus, - they do not attach any importance to the descent of the Son of God and the economy of His incarnation, which the apostles announced and the prophets predicted that through this the perfection of our humanity should be realized. And such should be counted among those of little faith" 91 . During St. Irenaeus, some false teachers claimed that the whole work of Christ consisted only in the fact that He gave a new law instead of the old one, which He abolished. St. Irenaeus, on the contrary, argues that it was not a new law, not a new teaching that was the goal of Christ’s coming, but precisely the restoration of fallen human nature. “If you,” he writes, “the following thought arises: what new did the Lord bring with His coming? Know that He brought everything new by bringing Himself and thereby renewing and revitalizing man” 92. If someone denies the Church with its religious ideal, then Christ for him becomes only in the category of sage teachers, next to Buddha, Confucius, Socrates, Laozi, etc. Moreover, Christ turns out to be far from an independent teacher. Helpful science points to many different sources, even Babylonian myths, from which the teachings of Christ were allegedly borrowed. Christ is likened to a bad scientist who composes his own work, not always successfully compiling from various other people's books. The enemies of Christianity gloatingly point to these results of scientific research and declare that, in essence, Jesus of Nazareth did not even give a new teaching; He only repeated what had been said before Him and what they would have known without Him. But for someone who believes in the Church, all these speeches about various “influences” on Christianity do not make the slightest sense, because the essence of the work of Christ, as has been said, is not at all in teaching, but in salvation. “God sent his only begotten Son, that we might have life through him” (1 John 4:9; cf. 5:13). Even though in the teachings of earthly sages there are insights of truth close to Christianity, but Christ renewed human nature, created the Church, sent down the Holy Spirit and thereby laid the foundation for a new life, which no sage from the human race could do. It was precisely for the creation of the Church that the descent to earth of the Son of God and His death on the cross was necessary. And therefore, everyone who separates Christianity from the Church sooner or later comes to the blasphemy of denying Christ the God-man and comes precisely because the God-manhood of Christ becomes unnecessary for them. Are there not enough people among us who dream of a kind of churchless Christianity? These people seem to constantly have an anarchic system of thinking; They are either incapable, or more often, they are simply too lazy to think through their thoughts to the end. But not to mention the most obvious contradictions of this churchless quasi-Christianity, one can always see that in it there is absolutely no genuine grace-filled Christian life, grace-filled inspiration, or enthusiasm. When people take the Gospel, forgetting that the Church gave it to them, for them it is like the Koran dropped by Allah from heaven. When they somehow manage to see in it the teaching about the Church, then all that remains of all Christianity is one teaching, just as powerless to recreate life and man as any philosophical system. Our ancestors Adam and Eve wanted to become “like gods” without God, relying on the magical power of a beautiful fruit. Likewise, many of our contemporaries dream of being saved without the Church and without the God-Man, although with the Gospel. They hope in the book of the Gospel in the same way as Adam and Eve hoped for the apple of paradise. But the book turns out to be unable to give them new life. People who deny the Church constantly talk about Gospel principles, about Gospel teaching, but Christianity as life is completely alien to them. In its churchless form, Christianity is just a sound, sometimes sentimental, but always caricatured and lifeless. It was these people who, by denying the Church, made Christianity, in the words of B.C. Solovyov, “deadly boring.” “When the building of the Church is destroyed, and an edifying sermon stands on a bare, poorly leveled place, it turns out sad and even terrible.” David Strauss said this. In recent times, our most consistent preacher of churchless Christianity has been Leo Tolstoy. Tolstoy confused many people with this sermon, but it is precisely through the example of Tolstoy that one can perfectly observe the complete failure of Christianity without the Church. The starting point in Tolstoy’s false teaching can be called precisely his sharp separation of Christianity from the Church. Tolstoy decisively condemned the Church, bowing at the same time before Christianity. But Christianity immediately became for him only a teaching, and Christ only a teacher. When we have some teaching in front of us, it doesn’t really matter to us whose it is, who the teacher is. And for Tolstoy, the living personality of Christ lost all meaning. Having taken the teaching of Christ, it turned out to be possible to forget about Him Himself, and Tolstoy rejected Christ the God-Man, calling Him a “crucified Jew,” “a dead Jew.” By this alone, the Gospel was truncated at its beginning, where it tells about the supernatural birth of the Son of God from the Virgin Mary, and at its end, where it reports about the resurrection of the Son of God from the dead and His ascension into heaven. But Tolstoy did not limit himself only to this “cutting off” of the Gospel from the beginning and from the end, but remade its entire middle to his liking, thus forcing his Jesus to say only what the Yasnaya Polyana teacher ordered him from his office. Not only that. Christ Himself promised His disciples to send them “another Comforter.” The Church of Christ honors this “Comforter”, the Divine Paraclete, as the source of new grace-filled church life, and St. Paul, as we have seen, constantly speaks of the Holy Spirit living in the Church. Despite all this, Tolstoy rejected the Holy Spirit, mockingly called the Orthodox Church not Christ’s, but “Holy Spiritual,” and then humiliated himself to the point of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit. sacraments, in which a member of the Church receives the gracious help of St. Spirit for a new life. Baptism, this sacrament of rebirth, for Tolstoy is “bathing babies.” The Most Holy Eucharist, without which, according to the teachings of Christ Himself, one cannot have life in oneself (John 6:53), in Tolstoy’s blasphemous terminology, a “pottage” that is “swallowed from a spoon.” We can thank Tolstoy for being brave and consistent. Having limited the whole work of Christ only to His teaching and rejecting the Church, Tolstoy with logical necessity came to all his conclusions, which destroy Christianity itself. And Tolstoy clearly showed us what the absurd separation of Christianity from the Church and the denial of the Church in the name of this imaginary Christianity leads to. If we separate Christianity from the Church, then there is no need for the Divinity of the Savior, and the Holy Spirit is not needed. And without the Holy Spirit and without the Divinity of the Savior, without the incarnation of the Son of God, the teaching of Jesus of Nazareth becomes as little valid for life as any other, for one cannot share the Socratic optimism, according to which knowledge is a virtue. The inconsistency of Tolstoy’s churchless understanding of Christianity is clear from the fact that Tolstoyism did not create any life. Christian life is possible only in unity with the living God-man Christ and in the grace-filled unity of people in the Church. In Tolstoyism there is neither one nor the other, and instead of the enthusiasm of church martyrs and ascetics, instead of the union of love that bound the apostles and believers to the point that they had “one heart and one soul” - instead of all this from Tolstoyism we have only caricatured and completely lifeless “Tolstoy colonies”. “He who does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12). Tolstoy, as B.C. said Soloviev, united around himself only a few dozen stupid people, who, moreover, are always ready to scatter in different directions. The “great teacher,” it turns out, taught no one anything, and the “green stick” did not save anyone, because for salvation it is not the “stick” that is needed, but the cross of Christ. Thus, using the example of Tolstoyism, we see that churchless Christianity leads to a terrible distortion and even destruction of Christianity itself and is refuted by its complete lifelessness. Protestant false teaching is also disgraced by this same lifelessness. What have Protestants achieved by darkening the idea of ​​the Church with their wisdom? We have achieved only the most hopeless disunity and separation. Protestantism is constantly fragmenting into sects. There is no Protestant church life, but there is some kind of “barely alive” life of individual sects and communities. Protestantism killed the general church life for which the Lord Jesus Christ prayed in the High Priestly Prayer. In fact, the extreme orthodoxies of Protestantism are much closer to Orthodox Christians than to Protestants of extreme rationalistic views, who have nothing in common with Christianity except the name arbitrarily and without any reason given to themselves, fortunately they are not brought to trial for this. What kind of unity is possible between them? What kind of common life can they have? We are not saying all this on our own behalf. In moments of insight, the Protestants themselves say the same thing, even more sharply. “The country,” writes one, “which was the cradle of the Reformation, becomes the grave of the Reformed faith. The Protestant faith is dying. All the latest works on Germany, as well as all personal observations, agree on this” 93. “Isn’t it noticeable in our present theology that its representatives have lost everything positive?” - asks another 94. Even sadder are the words of the third. “The vitality of Protestantism is exhausted in the confusion of dogmatic schools, theological discord, ecclesiastical strife... The Reformation is forgotten or despised; the word of God, for which the fathers died, is subject to doubt, Protestantism is fragmented, weak, powerless" 95 . And the Orthodox researcher of Lutheranism ends his work with such a bleak conclusion. “Left to themselves, to their subjective reason and faith, Lutherans boldly took the wrong path. An autonomous and autodidactic personality perverted Christianity, perverted the most symbolic doctrine, putting the Lutheran Church on the brink of destruction. The authorities of the first reformers are more and more rejected in Lutheranism, the community of beliefs is more and more destroyed, and Lutheranism comes closer and closer to its spiritual death” 96. At present, Protestants already openly admit that in Germany no more than a third of pastors recognize the Divinity of Christ. What is this if not spiritual death, for “he who does not have the Son of God,” according to the word of the Apostle, “does not have life” (1 John 5:12). Once upon a time in Moscow there was a lot of noise with the World Christian Student Union. Various missionaries of this union, various “Mr. Mottas” and “Miss Rouss” came to the center of Russian Orthodox shrines, who addressed the Russian students with an English sermon. We also had to hear a report about this overseas alliance. It was said that the union was non-confessional; it provides freedom for every Christian religion. Religions are united in a union, as the speaker puts it, “on a federal basis.” Consequently, the possibility of Christianity independent of the Church is assumed. But precisely because of this, this union is something stillborn. Could it be, is there any kind of Christian life in this “union”? If there is, it is the most pathetic. Imagine a “congress” of Christian student organizations, attended by “delegates from federally united denominational factions,” a congress with its “resolutions,” “wishes,” and the like. If there is any kind of unity, then how infinitely inferior it is to genuine church Orthodox life! Only for someone who wanders in a country far from not only holy Orthodoxy, but also from any faith, only for that person can a barely living life in unity on some “federal principles” seem like a new revelation, a joy for an empty soul. What a blessing, in comparison with these glimpses of life, is the fullness of Orthodox conciliar life! When I listened to the reports of the “World Christian Student Union,” my heart was filled with sadness and grief. So many thirsty for God, thirsty for life sincere people are “perishing in hunger”, “fed from the faces” of some overseas student union! Do they really not know how it is possible to have an abundance of bread in the house of the Heavenly Father, in the Orthodox Church? You just need to forget all “federal principles”, freely surrender to full obedience to the Orthodox Church and cleave to the fullness of church life, to the life of the body of Christ. The unforgettable A.S. understood the idea of ​​the Church perfectly. Khomyakov, who said that for the Church of Christ union is absolutely impossible, but only unity is possible 97. There have been cases when frivolous people decided to create a world religion in an armchair way, sending out millions of appeals with an invitation to unite in this “common religion”, the draft of which was attached to the appeals. But this project was drawn up in the most general terms: a Catholic and a Protestant, a Mohammedan and a Jew could subscribe to it with equal convenience. And of course, if all people agreed with this project, it would not at all unite them among themselves: general abstract provisions would not oblige anyone to anything, people would remain the same, no one would receive any salvation. The idea of ​​uniting people on the basis of any doctrine is completely insane; This requires a special supernatural power, which the one holy, catholic Church of Christ possesses. With regard to all these and similar phenomena of our modern life, it is quite easy to answer the question: on what soil could they appear and what is their meaning? The reason for them is precisely that the true Orthodox Christian ideal of the Church turned out to be too high for many of our contemporaries. Now people are so ossified in their selfishness that the Orthodox ideal of the Church seems to them some kind of violence against the individual, an incomprehensible and unnecessary despotism. The Orthodox ideal of the Church requires from everyone a great deal of selfless humility, and love in general, and therefore for the love-poor hearts of our contemporaries, for whom their sinful self-love is most precious, this ideal seems an unbearable burden. How can this be? Oh, humanity knows very well what to do in such cases! When some ideal seems too heavy to bear, it is replaced with something more similar, the ideal itself is belittled, distorting its essence, but sometimes leaving its former name. After all, how many have now given up on the ideal of love! They say that building a social life on the basis of love is a completely unrealistic dream, which it is better to abandon in advance, so that it does not get worse later. Not only that. Infatuation with the ideal of church life, or even religious life in general, is downright called harmful; it seems to impede the necessary progress of social life. After all, just recently, when the collection “Vekhi” was published, wasn’t there a desperate cry from the camp of the most progressive “social activists”: “reaction! reaction!" Leaving love, as unsuitable in public life, only for the “private” needs of man, they turned all their attention exclusively to the right, with which they think to heal all human ailments. Along with this, virtue is generally replaced by order and external decency. Gold is expensive, and to replace it they invented gilding, and to replace the missing virtue they invented decency. They do exactly the same with the ideal of the Church, which requires complete unity of souls and hearts. The Church is replaced by Christianity, a value that is completely, as we have already said, indefinite. Conscience sometimes remains calm; After all, “Christianity” is a decent name! And without the Church, you can substitute whatever you like under this name. Thus, you won’t completely break with Christ, and you won’t particularly worry yourself. In a word, both the wolves are fed and the sheep are safe! And the trouble of our time is that no one wants to sincerely admit their spiritual poverty, the hardening of their hearts to the point that Christ’s ideal of the Church has become difficult and even incomprehensible. No, having replaced gold with copper, they do not want to attribute any value to gold itself. Now they are attacking the Church with bitterness and denying the very idea of ​​the Church, hypocritically hiding behind loud and stereotypically beautiful boring phrases about “personal freedom”, about the “individual refraction” of Christianity, about the religion of freedom and spirit. Christ's ideal of a single church society (“that they all may be one,” “as we are one”) turns out to be belittled and disfigured, and therefore it loses its vital significance. Churchless Christianity, some kind of “evangelical” Christianity, various worldwide Christian student unions - all this is nothing more than a belittlement and distortion of Christ’s idea of ​​the Church, killing any truly Christian grace-filled church life. But do these phenomena alone, which we spoke about above, indicate a lack of understanding in our days of the inextricable connection between Christianity and the Church? We encounter this misunderstanding positively at every step. After all, now people who think little about God in general, who are almost not interested in religious issues, people who are trying to get along in life without any living faith, nevertheless consider it a duty of decency, at least in words, to speak with respect about Christianity, and this respect sounds, of course, obvious falsehood and hypocrisy. We have not yet reached the point of complete and open contempt for Christianity. This limit was reached only by a few “raped by the devil” (Acts 10:38), the most “advanced” (if, of course, we count towards hell) renegades. Ordinary “philistines,” we repeat, usually speak about Christianity with some respect. “Christianity, oh! This, of course, is a high and great teaching. Who can argue against this? This is how they speak about Christianity. But at the same time, it is considered a sign of good manners to be in some kind of often unconscious opposition to everything churchly. In the souls of many of our contemporaries, respect for Christianity and disdain for the Church somehow coexist. At least almost everyone is not embarrassed to call themselves Christians, but they don’t even want to hear about the Church and are ashamed to reveal their churchliness in any way. People who, according to the metrics, are listed as “Orthodox”, with some kind of incomprehensible gloating, point out the real, and more often imaginary, shortcomings of church life, do not grieve over these shortcomings, according to the commandment of the Apostle: “if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it” (1 Cor. 12:26), but they do gloat. In our so-called “progressive” press there are many people who earn their livelihood exclusively by almost slandering church institutions, representatives of the church hierarchy. Slander against everything church has now become for some simply a profitable trade. But everyone is in a hurry to believe this obvious lie without any doubt. It happens to unkind people that when they hear something bad about their enemies, they are in a hurry to believe all this bad, fearing that this bad thing turns out to be untrue. This is precisely the same thing that we constantly observe in the attitude of many towards the Church. Here again we see how widespread the separation of Christianity from the Church is now: they consider themselves Christians, but do not want to hear about the Church. Moreover, in an environment far from faith in general, there is an unimaginable confusion of concepts. When people who are far from the Church begin to judge it, it is clearly evident that they do not understand at all the essence of Christianity and the Church, and therefore the advantages of the Church seem to them to be its shortcomings. For example, how many outbreaks of some kind of blind hostility towards the Church were caused by the death of Tolstoy! Well, is the Church to blame for the fact that Tolstoy retreated from it, becoming its obvious and dangerous enemy? After all, he himself broke with the Church as a visible society, denied the necessity of the Church in general, and even considered it a harmful institution. To keep such members - did this not mean for the Church to deny itself? But if so, then what do all these attacks against the Church mean in the press, in meetings, and in oral conversations? Positively, thought refuses to understand all this. There is no way to find even an insignificant amount of rationality in the speeches and actions that one has read and heard about. After all, every political party is recognized as having the inalienable right to excommunicate members who have betrayed their party views and begun to act to the detriment of this party. Only the Orthodox Church for some reason cannot excommunicate someone who himself has gone far from it and has become its enemy! Well, who would reproach and revile in every possible way some Social Democrats or Cadets because they would stop communicating with their former member when he went over to the monarchist camp, and because they would publicly announce this break, informing their members about the apostasy that had taken place! Yes, we observed a blind and senseless explosion of satanic malice against the Holy Church. But the saddest thing is that the Church was reviled by many in the name of Christianity. I had to hear and read a thousand times: “Well, they excommunicated Tolstoy, but wasn’t he a true Christian?” Forgetting all the blasphemies of Tolstoy and his denial of Christ the God-Man, such speeches were apparently repeated by sincere people, and not just professional newspaper liars. Again, the idea that is firmly ingrained in modern minds about the possibility of some kind of “true Christianity” without the Church and even a sharply hostile Church is making itself known. But would anything like this be possible if the idea of ​​the Church were clear, if it were not replaced by other completely incomprehensible and uncertain values? Is it possible to imagine that in the apostolic age the Christian Church would be subjected to any reproaches from the pagans for excommunicating unfit members, for example, heretics? But in the first centuries, excommunication was the most common measure of church discipline, and everyone considered this measure to be completely legal and very useful. Why is this so? And precisely because at that time the Church acted as a bright and definite value, namely the Church, and not some kind of Christianity. Then there was no room left for the absurd thought that Christianity is one thing, and the Church is another, as if Christianity is possible apart from the Church. Then hostility against the Church was also hostility against Christianity. Hostility against the Church in the name of supposedly some kind of Christianity is exclusively a product of our sad days. When Christianity appeared in the eyes of the world as the Church, then this “world” itself clearly understood and involuntarily recognized that the Church and Christianity are one and the same. But this kind of sharp certainty and, as it were, isolation of the Church from everything that is not the Church, is now lacking. In the Church we now have a positive attitude towards everyone, even those who themselves ask to be excommunicated, as was the case after the excommunication of Leo Tolstoy. There is, one might say, no church discipline: everything has become optional for intelligent laymen - attendance at divine services, confession, and communion. And therefore the Church, as a visible society, now does not have clear and definite boundaries that would separate it from “external” ones. Sometimes it seems as if our entire Church is scattered, as if in some kind of confusion. You won’t know who is ours and who is our adversary. A kind of anarchy reigns in the minds. Too many “teachers” have appeared. There is “strife in the body” (1 Cor. 12:25) in the church. In the ancient Church, a bishop taught from a high place; Now the one who says about himself that he is only “in the vestibule,” even only “near the church walls,” nevertheless considers himself to have the right to teach the entire Church, along with the hierarchy. They learn about church affairs and form opinions about them from “public sheets” that are clearly hostile to the Church (as Metropolitan Philaret called newspapers), where either disrobed priests and all kinds of church renegades, or generally embittered and “arrogant scoffers” (2 Pet. 3:3), people who have nothing to do with the Church and feel nothing but enmity towards it, for example, Jews, write about church issues. In such general confusion, many are already asking with concern: where is the Church? That is why there are so many different very bizarre “searches” in our time. In the apostolic age, those who were being saved were added to the Church, and no outsider dared to approach them (Acts 5:13). Then there was no opportunity for the question: where is the Church? It was a clear and definite value, sharply separated from everything non-church. Now between the Church and the “world” there is still some kind of intermediate environment. Now there is no clear division: Church and non-Church. There is also some kind of vague Christianity and not even Christianity, but a general abstract religion. The light of the Church has been darkened by these unclear concepts of Christianity and religion, and all seekers see it poorly, which is why the “search” so often now turns into “wandering.” And hence in our days there is such an abundance of “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7). A kind of sport of “God-seeking” has opened up, so to speak; “God-seeking” itself became the goal. After all, one can think about many of our “God-seekers” that if their quests were crowned with success, they would feel extremely unhappy and would immediately begin to engage in “God-fighting” with the same zeal. Indeed, in the “search for God” many in our time actually made a “name” for themselves. And I remember the harsh verdict of His Grace Bishop Mikhail (Gribanovsky) on all kinds of quests in general. “That’s why they are looking because they are left without principles; and while the best ones are looking for, the worst ones take advantage of the hustle and bustle and cheat without any twinge of conscience. And what kind of conscience is there when no one knows what is true, what is good, what is evil!” 98. Intermediate concepts of religion and Christianity only alienate many people from the truth, because for those who sincerely seek God they are a kind of ordeal. Many people take the path of these quests and ordeals, but not everyone successfully completes it. A significant part still “goes through ordeals” without finding blissful peace for themselves. Finally, in this sphere, so to speak, of half-light - half-truth, in this sphere of the unspoken and uncertain, in this world of “unclear and unresolved”, the soul itself shrinks, becomes flabby, poorly receptive to grace-filled inspiration. Such a soul will try to “search” even when it finds it. A sad type of “religious loafers” is being created, as F.M. called him. Dostoevsky. The noted state of affairs imposes a special responsibility on all church people in our time. Church people are much to blame for the fact that they do not clearly indicate to all those “seeking” and poorly illuminate by their example the final destination of their quest. And this point is not an abstract concept of Christianity, but precisely the Church of the living God. One can judge from the example of many people who have gone through the tedious path of quest to the end that complete peace comes only when a person believes in the Church, when he accepts with his whole being the idea of ​​the Church in such a way that for him the separation of Christianity from the Church will be unthinkable. Then the real feeling of church life begins. A person feels that he is a branch of the great, ever-blooming and ever-young tree of the Church. He recognizes himself not as a follower of any school, but as a member of the body of Christ, with which he has a common life and from whom he receives this life. Therefore, only the one who has believed in the Church, who is guided by the idea of ​​the Church in assessing the phenomena of life and in the direction of his personal life, who has finally felt the life of the Church within himself, he and only he is on the right path. Much that previously seemed uncertain and tempting will become undoubted and clear. It is especially dear that in times of general vacillation, hesitation from side to side, from right to left and from left to right, every church person feels how he is standing on an unshakable age-old rock, how firmly he is under his feet. The Spirit of God lives in the Church. This is not a dry and empty dogmatic position, preserved only out of respect for antiquity. No, this is precisely the truth, experienced by everyone who has been imbued with church consciousness and church life. The grace-filled life of the Church cannot even be the subject of dry scientific study; it is accessible to study only by the experienced. About the life of grace, clearly felt, human language can always speak only vaguely and darkly. Hilary of Pictavia expressed a great and absolutely correct thought: “This is the property of the Church that then it becomes understandable when you assimilate it” 99 . It is precisely about church life that only those who have it know; for him it does not require proof, and for those who do not have it it is unprovable. Therefore, for a member of the Church it should be the task of his entire life to constantly unite more and more with the life of the Church, and at the same time, to others, to silently preach about the Church, without replacing it with Christianity, without replacing life with dry and abstract teaching. Too often they now talk about the lack of life in the Church, about the “revitalization” of the Church. We find it difficult to understand all these speeches and are very inclined to recognize them as completely meaningless. Life in the Church can never dry up, for until the end of the age the Holy Spirit abides in it (John 14:16). And there is life in the Church. Only churchless people do not notice this life. The life of the Spirit of God is not understandable to spiritual man; it even seems to him foolishness, for it is accessible only to spiritual man. We, people of a spiritual mindset, are rarely given a sense of church life. Meanwhile, even now people, simple in heart and pious in life, constantly live by this feeling of grace-filled church life. You especially feel this church atmosphere, this church breath in monasteries. When they talk about the lack of life in the Church, they usually mention the shortcomings of church administration, thousands of consistory papers, etc. But for someone who truly understands church life, it is clear as daylight that all these consistories with their decrees almost completely do not touch the depths of church life. The deep river of grace-filled life flows continuously and feeds everyone who wants to quench their spiritual thirst. This river cannot be dammed with paper... No, in our opinion, we do not need to talk about the lack of life in the Church, but only about the lack of church consciousness in us. Many live the church life without even clearly realizing it. And even if we consciously live a church life, we preach little about the good of this life. We usually argue with outsiders only about Christian truths, forgetting about church life. Teaching, theory, dogma in our eyes are higher than church life. We, too, are sometimes capable of replacing the Church with Christianity, life with an abstract theory. Our misfortune is that we ourselves value our Church and the great good of church life little. We do not confess our faith in the Church boldly, clearly and definitely. Believing in the Church, we constantly seem to apologize for the fact that we still believe in it. We read the ninth article of the Creed without much joy and even with a guilty look. A church person is now often greeted with the exclamation of Turgenev’s prose poem: “Do you still believe? Yes, you are a completely retarded person!” And how many have so much courage to boldly confess: “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 measure of the full stature of Christ, - therefore: only in the Church is true progress possible! " Isn’t it more common to answer the question: “Are you not one of Christ’s disciples?” – are we ready to “grow and swear that I don’t know the Man”? (Matthew 26:74). Therefore, the urgent need of the present time can be considered an open confession of the immutable truth that Christ created the Church and that it is completely absurd to separate Christianity from the Church and talk about some kind of Christianity besides the holy Orthodox Church of Christ. This truth, we think, will illuminate for many the final point of their painful quest, will show it to them not in lifeless teaching, even if it is the Gospel, but in church life, where they will truly be freed “from the snare of the devil, who has ensnared them in his will” (2 Tim. 2:26). This truth will help us recognize church life and “gather together the scattered” children of the church, so that they may all be one, as the Lord Jesus Christ prayed before His suffering. We will end our discussion with one patristic similitude. The Church is like a strong oak tree, and a person outside the Church is like a flying bird. Look how the poor bird struggles as it flies in the strong wind! How uneven is her flight! Either it flies up, then it knocks it down, then it moves a little forward, then again it takes it far back. This is how man is carried about by the winds of false teachings. But just as a bird calms down in the thick branches of a tree and looks peacefully from its shelter at the storm rushing past, so a person finds peace when he resorts to the Church. From his quiet refuge he looks at the fierce storm “near the church walls”, grieves for the unfortunate people who are caught by this storm outside the Church and hesitate to take refuge under its blessed shelter, and prays to the Lord: unite them with Your holy congregation and apostles of the Church, so that they too may glorify with us the most honorable and magnificent name in the Trinity of the glorified God. Creations. Ascetic charters. Ch. 18. Part 5. Ed. 4. Holy Trinity Lavra of Sergius, 1902. pp. 359, 360. Creations. Letter 62. Ed. 2. Kyiv, 1891. Part 1, pp. 363–364. Creations. About the Lord's Prayer. Part 2, pp. 221, 217. Creations. Interpretation on St. John, book. 11, ch. 11. Ed. MDA. Part 15, pp. 105–112 passim. Only recently did Archbishop Anthony (Khrapovitsky) draw the attention of theological science to this idea with his remarkable article: “The moral idea of ​​the dogma of the Church.” Complete Works, ed. 2. St. Petersburg, 1911, T.2, pp. 12–30. Srvn. and another of his articles: “The moral idea of ​​the dogma of the Holy Trinity.” T.2, pp.70–76. Justification for good. Ed. 2. 1899, p.462. Rom.12:4,5; 1 Cor.6:15, 10:17, 12:13,27; Eph.1:23, 4:4,12,16,25, 5:23,30. Col. 1:18,24, 2:19,3,15. See 1 Cor. 12, 11. 13. Ephesus 4:3–4, 7, etc. Creations. On the last to Ephesus. conversation 9. Ed. SPb. Theological Academy. T. 11, p. 86. Creations. On the last to Ephesus. conversation 11. T. 11, p. 96. Creations. Part 7. M., 1861, p. 434. Creations. Ed. Kyiv Theological Academy. Book 17, p. 297. Interpretation of the message. Kazan, 1867, p. 123. Let us also give an interpretation by the Orthodox theologian prof. D. I. Bogdashevsky. “The unity of the Spirit is the unity that the Spirit creates or produces. This unity that dwells in the Church is from the Spirit of God.” Message of St. ap. Paul to the Ephesians. Kiev, 1904. p.505. 1 John 2:5, 3:17, 4:9; Rom.5:5. Srvn. 1 Cor. 13:15; 2 Thessalonians 3:5. Creations. On the last to Ephesus. conversation 11, 1. T. II, p. 96. For a detailed interpretation of this verse, see Prof. Bogdashevsky, cit. cit., pp. 557–565, as well as in I. Mansvetov. New Testament teaching about the Church. Moscow, 1879. pp. 143–160. “He (the Apostle) expressed his thoughts rather unclearly because he wanted to express everything suddenly,” says St. John Chrysostom. Creations. On the last to Ephesus. conversation 11, 3. T. 11, p.100. Creations. On the last to Ephesus. Conversation 11, 3. Vol. 11, pp. 100–101. Creations. Part 7, page 438. Opera, ed Le Quien Parisiis, 1712, t. 2. pp. 187 B-C. 180 D. Interpretation of the last to Ephesus. Kazan, 1881, p. 132. Interpretation of the Epistle of St. Apostle Paul to the Ephesians. Ed. 2. Moscow, 1883, p. 307. St. John Chrysostom. Creations. On the last to Ephesus. conversation 11.3. T. 11, p. 101. St. Cyprian of Carthage. Creations. About the unity of the Church. Part 2, ch. 23, p. 197. Comp. Archbishop Anthony. Collected works. T. 2, p. 16. Der Beweis des Glaubens. 1875. S. 585. Church system in the first centuries of Christianity. Transl. A. Petrovsky and P. Florensky. Moscow, 1906. Creations. About the unity of the Church. Ch. 14, part 2, pp. 188–189. Creations. Letter 43 to Antonian. Part 1, p. 236; Letter 59 to Stephen. Part 1, page 330. Creations. Letter 62 to Magnus. Part 1, page 360. Ibid., Letter 55 to Stephen. Part 1, page 312. Ibid., Letter 62 to Magnus. Part 1, page 361. Ibid., On the unity of the Church. Ch. 15. Part 2, p. 190. See also: About the Lord's Prayer. Ch. 24. Part 2, pp. 217–218; Letter 43 to Antonian. Part 1, page 239. Ibid., Letter 62 to Magnus. Part 1, page 371. Ibid., Letter 58 to Quintus. Part 1, pp. 326–327. Ibid., Letter 61 to Pompey. Part 1, p. 353; Letter 57 to Januarius. Part 1, page 326. Ibid., Letter 56 to Quintus. Part 1, p. 326; About the unity of the Church. Ch. 23. Part 2, p. 197. Ibid., On the unity of the Church. Ch. 4. Part 2, pp. 179–180. Ibid., ch. 14, p. 189. Ibid., p. 190. Compar. Letter 60 to Yubayan. Part 1, page 334. Ibid., On the unity of the Church. Ch. 17. Part 2, pp. 191–192. Ibid., Letter 60 to Yubayan. Part 1, pp. 334–335. Ibid., Letter 40 to Cornelius. Part 1, page 205. Ibid., Letter 62 to Magnus. Part 1, pp. 360–361. Cyprian refers here to Luke. 11, 23 Matt. 18, 17. 1John 2.18. See also: Letter 57 to Januarius. Creations, part 1, pp. 324–325. Letter 61 to Pompey. Creations, part 1, p. 351. Ibid., Letter 43. Part 1, p. 234. Ibid., Letter 42 to Cornelius. Part 1, page 212. Habere jam non potest Deum patrem, qui Ecclesiam non habet matrem. On the unity of the Church, ch. 6. Creations, part 2, p. 181. Comp. Ch. 17, p. 191: Is it possible to imagine that he is with Christ, who acts against the priests of Christ, separates himself from communion with His clergy and people. Letter 58, ch. 1. Creations, part 1, page 325. Letter 58 to Quintus, ch. 1. Creations, part 1, p. 326; Letter 61 to Pompey, ch. 2. Creations, part 1, p. 351. On the unity of the Church, ch. 11. Creations, part 2, pp. 185–186. Comp. letter 60 to Yubayan. Creations, part 1, p. 346. Migne, P. L., t. 3, coll. 1077–1078. Matt. 16:16, 8:29; Mark. 1.24. Onion. 8, 28. Contra litteras Petiliani III, 34, 39. Migne, P. L., t.43, col.68. Contra Cresconium. I, 22, 27. Migne, P. L, t. 43, col. 460. De baptismo, I, 7, 9, Migne, P. L., t. 43, col. 115. Contra Cresconium. 1, 29, 34. Migne, P. L., t. 43, coll. 463–464. De baptismo, I, 2, 3. Migne, P. L., t. 43 col. 110. Contra Cresconium. I, 22, 27; IV, 21, 26. Migne, P. L.; t.43, col.460–563. In 1 loan, tract. 5, 6 Migne, P. L., t. 35, col. 2015. De baptismo, I, 9, 12. Migne P. L., t. 43, col. 116. De baptismo, I, 10, 14. Migne P. L., t. 43, col. 117–118. De baptismo, I, 12, 18. Migne P. L., t. 43, col. 119. De baptismo I, 12, 19, 20, 1, 13, 21. Migne, P. L., t. coll. 119–121. De baptismo I, 15, 23. Migne, P. L., t. 43, col. 121. Contra Cresconium. II, 14, 17. Migne, P. L. t. 43, col. 477. De baptismo III, 16, 21. Migne, P. L., t. 43, col. 148. Epist. 61, 2. Migne, P. L., t. 33, col. 229. Contra litteras Petiliani, II, 77,172. De bartismo IV, 17, 24. Migne, P. L., t.43, coll.312. 169. Epist. 185, 10, 46. Migne, P. L., t. 33, col. 813. Contra epist Parmeniani, II, 11.25. Migne, P. L., t. 43, col. 69. Serm. 268, 2. Migne, P. L., t. 38, col. 1232. Contra Cresconium, II, 12, 15; II, 13, 16; II, 14, 17. Migne, P. L., t.43, col.476, 477. Epist. 185, 9, 42. Migne, P. L., t. 33, col. 811. Epist. 208, 6 Epist. 185, 9, 42. Migne, P. L., t. 33, col. 952. 811. Contra epist. Parmeniani, II, 3, 6. Migne, P. L., t.43, col.54. De baptismo IV, 17, 24. Migne, P. L., t. 43, col. 170. Quest. In heptat. 5, 15, Migne, P. L., t. 34, col. 755. Contra litteras Petiliani, II, 77, 172.. Migne, t. 43, col. 312. De baptismo, III, 16, 21. Migne, P. L., t. 43, col. 148. Father's will. Ed. edited by E. M. Prilezhaeva, St. Petersburg, 1893. pp. 3–6. Reminders. I, ch. 25. 26. Translation Assoc. P. Ponomareva. Kazan, 1904. pp. 47, 48. Against heresies. Book 3, ch. 1, § 1. See the preface to the Geneva edition of A Summary of the Gospel. See prof. A.A. Spassky. History of dogmatic movements in the era of ecumenical councils. Sergiev Posad, 1906. Page 651. Prof. Spassky, op. cit., p. 200. See prof. I.V. Popov. The idea of ​​deification in the ancient Eastern Church. M., 1909. His own. The religious ideal of Saint Athanasius of Alexandria. Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra. 1904. Comp. prof. Spassky, op. cit., pp. 198–199. Service for the Nativity of Christ, 2nd stichera at litia. On the poem there is a stichera for “Glory”. Canon of Cosmas, canto I, troparion 1. Compare. of the same canon, 2nd troparion of the 3rd canto: “by the communion of the bitter flesh he gave away the Divine nature.” Canon of John, canto 9, troparion 2. Compare. of the same canon, canticle 7, troparion 2: “carry the wealth of deification.” Irmos 4 songs: “the renewal of the human race, the prophet Habakkuk, singing of old, foretells... the word of people in renewal.” Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, ch. 99. Against heresies. Book 4, ch. 34, §1. Hohoff. Die Revolution seit dem sechszehnten lahrhundert. Freiburg im Breisgau. 1887. S.150. Kattenbusch. VonSchleiermacherzuRitschl. Giessen. 1893, S.5. Der Catholic. 1889. Bd. 2. SS. 400–401. N. Terentyev. Lutheran confessional system according to the symbolic books of Lutheranism. Kazan. 1910. p.460. See the first letter to Palmer in the second volume of his works. Letters from His Eminence Michael, the late Bishop of Tauride. Simferopol, 1910. P. 178.