Введение

Origen’s teaching about the Holy Trinity is, on the one hand, a fact of church life in the 3rd century, on the other, one of the most controversial points in the dogmatic system of the famous ancient theologian, subject to various interpretations both in distant antiquity and at the present time. This indicates the possibility of a twofold attitude towards this teaching: one can take it as a historical fact standing in connection with its predecessor and what follows, and one can look at it as an exegetical task for a dogmatist. Of course, when making a choice, there can be no question of eliminating the last point of view: when an undoubtedly dogmatic question is posed, any research, even if it was conducted in the interests of history, will at the same time be dogmatic; therefore, in this case we can only talk about the predominance of one or the other point of view. If we turn to the indications of the history of this issue, we will have to decide in favor of the dogmatic point of view. Origen's doctrine of the Trinity has the traditional glory of a controversial subject, and this glory constitutes its special characteristic. But all these disputes were conducted on a dogmatic basis, and if the doctrine in question was illuminated from its historical side, it was only by chance, and moreover, this light was not independent: it was a simple reflection of the dogmatic illumination of the controversial point. If in the polemics they expressed that Origen’s teaching is the source of Arianism, then we have no right to look at such expressions as a verdict from a historical point of view: it was a conditional form under which a purely dogmatic judgment was hidden. The very simplicity of posing the question in dogmatic research speaks in favor of the dogmatic point of view: there is no rather artificial expansion of the scope of the question; you can leave aside everything that can come into contact with this teaching, you can look at it as a complete whole in itself, limit yourself only to its content, omitting the name of its author and the era to which it belongs, and this modest program will, however, be quite complete and dogmatically interesting. If we approach this issue from a historical point of view, we can easily see that conducting research with historical interest is very difficult, if not completely impossible. Indeed, one of the most important tasks that a historical point of view can pose in relation to this question will be to understand Origen's doctrine of the Holy Trinity as the result of the past, or of those influences among which this Christian thinker developed. But for a satisfactory solution to this problem, an accurate idea of ​​the sum of these influences is necessary, while we cannot be confident not only that all of them can be studied with sufficient completeness, but even that a correct idea of ​​their quantity can be formed. There are so few precise historical indications of the sources from which Origen could have borrowed certain views that it is impossible to create solid ground for research from these data. Most of the influences that acted on the formation of Origen’s teaching would have to be discovered in a dialectical way, based on the very content of this teaching, identifying with it similar phenomena of dogmatic thought of the previous era. This technique is far from providing those guarantees for its correctness and the firmness of the results obtained from it, which only positive historical data can provide. But, apart from this aspect, this method of historical research does not bring significant benefits to the matter because it only insignificantly increases the volume of probable sources of Origen’s teachings: the most significant similarity with this teaching is noticed only in those monuments whose influence on Origen is confirmed by undoubted historical data. Thus, having set myself the thought of explaining Origen’s teaching about St. The Trinity as a historical fact from its connection with the past, the researcher would have successfully solved his problem only regarding very few points of this teaching, while for most of them there would not have been any valuable analogies in the past. Another problem can be solved with great success, which is also indicated by the historical point of view on this subject. If the historical past is not rich in data explaining the very origin of Origen’s teaching, then there is no shortage of monuments that explain the general relationship of this teaching to the past, determine the meaning and place of Origen among those representatives of theological thought who understood the doctrine of the Trinity. Obviously, this task is of a lower order than the previous one, but therefore it does not present the obstacles that force one to abandon the latter. With this new formulation of the question, the past does not stand in a causal connection with the teachings of Origen, but only in a chronological one. Here there is no need to select only those phenomena in the past that were somehow reflected in the teachings of Origen; on the contrary, this point of view easily admits the assumption that he did not know some works of Christian writers or, at least, they did not have a noticeable influence on him; but as a result, such data are not deprived of their significance: they are valuable as material for comparison with the teachings of Origen. And since in this regard, each monument of the teaching about the Holy Trinity has its own meaning, then any choice becomes unnecessary, and all the data of this content can be included in the range of the material being studied. Thus, the whole task boils down to giving an outline of the history of the dogma of the Trinity in the period preceding Origen. This historical review can serve as the best objective standard for resolving the question of how great the merit of Origen is in understanding this dogma. Since the historical outline of the dogma also includes those data that stand in a causal connection with the teachings of Origen, this essay, in addition to its immediate purpose, can serve to clarify the question of the influences under which the doctrine was formed. This question will be resolved with the completeness that is possible even with a special formulation of it, if we complicate the review of the history of the dogma with several data of a different order, the influence of which on the teaching of Origen can least of all be subject to dispute. This is the teaching of the philosophical systems of this era about the relationship of the first principle to the second, i.e. that department of systems which presents some analogy with the dogma of the Trinity. The same two tasks that a historical study of a given teaching of Origen in its relation to the past may have in mind can also be solved in relation to subsequent phenomena of theological thought. In relation to the latter, Origen's teaching can be considered as one of the factors that influenced their education. From another, lower point of view, they can be used as material for determining the general meaning of Origen’s teachings in the history of dogma. This last point of view is inconvenient in the sense that it does not define the chronological limit to which this comparison of subsequent phenomena in the history of dogma with the teachings of Origen should continue. As for those of them that are causally dependent on the latter, their number is quite limited. The excitement of theological thought that was caused by Arianism gave such important results in relation to the doctrine of the Holy Trinity that this department of Origen’s dogmatic system could not help but remain in the shadows. Therefore, the era of the Arian disputes represents a historical boundary beyond which the influence of Origen’s teaching on the Holy Trinity on the minds of church writers becomes an anachronism, and there is no particular incentive to compare Origen’s teaching with the teaching of the latter. But the question of the relationship of Origen’s teaching on the Holy Trinity to Arianism deserves special attention: here lies the true criterion for Origen’s teaching, the most correct norm for historical-dogmatic judgment about him; here is the central point around which all ancient and modern verdicts about the teachings of Origen revolve. Arianism is the most important point in the history of Origen's teaching, dividing it into two sharply different periods - the period in which it was an active factor in the history of the dogma of the Holy Trinity, and the period in which it, remaining without any active role in the history of dogma, causes only certain judgments about itself. marked either by an excited state of dogmatic dispute, or by a more or less calm nature of scientific research. From the above it is clear that the present study is divided into three sections. The first section will present an outline of the state of the doctrine of the Holy Trinity before the time of Origen in connection with the philosophical doctrine of the relationship between the first and second principles. The second section contains as its content the very teaching of Origen about the Holy Trinity. The third section describes the fate of this teaching in three different periods; the first of them ends with Arianism, the second embraces the time from Arianism to the condemnation of Origen under Justinian; the content of the third period will be a review of the most important judgments of ancient and modern scientists about Origen’s teaching about the Holy Trinity. You might be interested in: