Regarding some perplexities in the science of Orthodox church law

Time to be silent, time to speak. In 1887, we published a study on the 50th chapter of the Helmsman’s Book, as a historical and practical source of Russian marriage law. At the end of the introduction to this work, we expressed the desire that it, in terms of the importance and difficulty of the issues addressed in it, be subjected to the same thorough critical analysis that we presented to the book by Prof. M. N. Gorchakov, who warned us with his scientific research about the same subject. 1 We expected a strict, but fair and thorough analysis, which would show in our criticism “both knowledge of the matter and a conscientious attitude towards it” (p. 7). In this way, that is, through the exchange of thoughts and knowledge with knowledgeable people, we hoped to test our main theses and general conclusions, at least only on the most important issues resolved in our book. But no reason for such verification was provided in any of the considerable number of reviews about our work (generally speaking, sympathetic ones) that appeared in various periodicals, spiritual and secular 2 . To get what we want, i.e. a detailed and serious analysis of our book - and, moreover, not only from an ecclesiastical legal, but also from a purely theological (dogmatic) point of view - two years ago we submitted it to the spiritual educational committee of the Holy Synod for the award of the late Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow. The prize was formally awarded based on a review compiled by the professor of church law at the Kyiv Theological Academy, Mr. Lashkarev 3. But we are firmly convinced that the educational committee, which awarded us the prize in an intermediate instance, was guided in this matter solely by its own judgment about our book, and not at all by Mr. Lashkarev’s review of it. For this review is essentially an announcement, the logical meaning of which can only be expressed in the form of the following concession period: although the book of prof. Pavlova is filled with various heterodox “Catholic and Protestant tendencies”; although it expresses such dogmatic innovations that “even the ancient schismatics” did not dare to express, however, in view of some of the author’s merits in resolving the issue of the sources of the 50th chapter of the Helmsman, it can be awarded a prize. It goes without saying that if the educational committee agreed with the first part of this period, then it could not possibly accept the second. For this is why it exists to recommend to the Holy Synod for awards for books, even if they are very learned, but in some respect disagree with the dogmas and statutes of the Orthodox Church. This conviction determined our personal attitude towards Mr. Lashkarev’s official review: we decided to leave it without any answer. But others saw the matter differently. The recently published book of the “Orthodox Interlocutor” for the months of February and March contains an article by Professor I. S. Berdnikov under the title: “A few words about the review of the research of Prof. A. S. Pavlova about the 50th chapter of the Helmsman’s Books” (pp. 258–346). The venerable author, struck by the unseemly critical methods and outlandish fundamental views of our official reviewer, took upon himself the trouble of thoroughly exposing the former and appreciating the latter. Characterizing in general terms Mr. Lashkarev’s review in the first respect, Professor Berdnikov says: “Mr. Lashkarev’s review naturally attracts our attention in view of the peculiarities of its author’s view of Prof. Pavlova. If Mr. Lashkarev disagreed with the opinion of other reviewers in his assessment of the main part of the work (i.e., the historical and canonical analysis of the content of the 50th chapter of the Helmsman), then it would be natural to expect that he had serious reasons for this and that he would develop them in his review with scientific thoroughness; It would be natural to think that in the person of G. Lashkarev, after many mediocre reviewers, which the author of the work himself desired and expected (p. 7), is a reviewer with “knowledge of the matter and a conscientious attitude towards it.” In the review by Mr. Lashkarev, we do not find the most essential signs of serious scientific criticism - truthfulness in the presentation of the opinions of the work being analyzed and the desire to oppose serious scientific argumentation to the analyzed and refuted opinions... In it (the review) the guiding views and main provisions of the book of prof. Pavlova are presented in such a concept that they are difficult to recognize, and often difficult to understand. Often the reviewer quotes a fragmentary phrase from a book, distorts its meaning, and on this basis builds an indictment against the author” (pp. 159–260). Leaving aside the examples given by Prof. Berdnikov from the review of the mountains. Lashkarev, in order to justify this general characterization of it (pp. 261–275), we allow ourselves to express, to our official reviewer, only one general remark: if he was convinced of the correctness of his insinuations against our book, then conscience and logic ordered him to draw from his premises the conclusion that follows from them with direct necessity, namely to say: the book of Prof. Pavlova deserves not a prize, but removal from circulation, as harmful to Orthodoxy; everything would be better. Mr. Lashkarev - to completely abandon the work entrusted to him, which, as can be seen from the execution, far exceeded his scientific and moral strength. Article by Prof. We read Berdnikov with great pleasure because it contains not only a fair assessment of Mr. Lashkarev’s unacceptable antics against us, but also a detailed scientific criticism of one of the sections of our book on which we worked the most. We cannot leave such criticism unanswered - out of a sense of respect and gratitude for the author for his work, which is both pleasant and useful for us personally and for science in the sense that it gives rise to the clarification of some important misunderstandings between its humble servants. With the appearance of the article by the venerable Kazan professor, the time for silence has passed for us, the time has come to speak up. In the main sections of our book, devoted to the historical and canonical analysis of the content of the 50th chapter of the Helmsman, we focused with special attention on two subjects: 1) on the teaching of this chapter “on the form of the mystery of marriage” and 2) on the question of spiritual kinship as an obstacle to marriage. Here and there we gave something new for the Russian science of church law, which no one had expressed before us: on these very issues we especially wanted to exchange our views with scientifically competent people. Prof. Berdnikov, in his article that occupies us, subjected only our last treatise (on the issue of spiritual kinship) to a critical analysis, and in relation to the first he limited himself to only a preliminary statement that the “historical arguments and considerations” we proposed about the form of marriage were “unconvincing” for him, but that he, “in view of the complexity of this issue,” hopes to return to it at another time (pp. 337–338). It must be noted, however, that the real critical work of Prof. Berdnikov does not refer to the entire composition of our treatise on spiritual growth, but only to some individual parts of it, namely those in which the view of an ordinary pair of recipients (a man and a woman) as the “spiritual parents” of what is perceived is expressed and developed. This look, apparently, “struck” the venerable Kazan professor as much as it did our official reviewer. But this impression was expressed on both sides in a special way. G. Lashkarev, supposedly out of personal “respect” for us, did not dare to reveal the shame of the errors he found here (let the spiritual education committee itself do this, based on our hidden warning); opposite prof. Berdnikov is rightly convinced that “authors who respect the truth cannot be offended by an impartial assessment, and that a “detailed scientific refutation of the opinions” of such an author “would be less offensive to him than a semi-contemptuous review of them, poorly disguised on the outside by a veneer of respect” (p. 275), - in this conviction, Prof. Berdnikov, finding our above view “sinful, although not to the extent that Mr. Lashkarev wanted to present to the reader with his figure of silence,” considered himself morally obligated to refute our thought both from a principled and historical point of view. On the way to fulfilling this main task, the venerable author also touches on another question, seemingly a side question, but in fact one whose solution greatly influenced the solution of the main task, namely: “is the institution of succession still a church institution” and - we will add on our own - the associated institution of spiritual kinship? The reason for posing this question was for Prof. Berdnikov, the following words of our book: “The institution of adoption was created not by church legislation, but by the life of ancient Christian (Roman) society, mainly under the influence of civil laws on adoption. This is an institution of customary church law in the proper sense of the word (here Prof. Berdnikov puts a silent question mark, showing some kind of bewilderment on his part). The custom at first required one recipient, mainly a man, and then, for a complete analogy of spiritual kinship with carnal kinship, two - a recipient and a successor" (we have p. 176). “Thus,” concludes our venerable critic, Prof. Pavlov apparently recognizes succession not only in its later form, but also in its original form, as a product of social, and not church life, of Roman society” (pp. 276–277 4). However, the author of the article, without hesitation, accepts this appearance as reality, i.e. for our genuine thought, which he is trying to refute with a long series of supposedly unfavorable facts of church teaching and legislation. Meanwhile, the meaning of our words is clear and does not allow for any misunderstandings. In fact, if we say that the institution of succession was created not by church legislation, but by the life of Christian Roman society, it is the institution of customary church law in the proper sense of the word (i.e. in the way in which the expression “customary law” is usually used in jurisprudence); if we add to this that the named institution developed under the influence of Roman civil laws on adoption (only “under the influence”): then how could one discern here the idea that adoption is “a product of the social, and not the church life of Roman society?” Wasn’t Christian Roman society (Orthodox, of course) also ecclesiastical and, as such, did not implement ecclesiastical views in its life, i.e. did not create the customary law of the church? Could an institution that we directly call the institution of church law (albeit ordinary) be mistaken by an attentive and knowledgeable reader for secular or purely social? Our words gave rise to only two objections: 1) succession is not an institution of ordinary church law, but was created by church legislation (the idea of ​​​​the opposition of the institutions and norms of ordinary church law to the institutions and norms established by the legislative branch of the church, Prof. Berdnikov obviously understood it in the sense of the opposition of church institutions in general to secular or civil ones); 2) the church-ordinary institution of adoption developed in Christian Roman society without any influence from civil laws on adoption (we can, if necessary, prove our opposite idea in detail). But neither one nor the other objection of Prof. Berdnikov doesn’t do it for us. We take this silence as a sign of agreement with us, refusing what should be attributed exclusively to the personal misunderstanding of our venerable scientific comrade. However, we must admit that this misunderstanding was accompanied by some that were undesirable for us and for Prof. himself. Berdnikov with unfavorable consequences. The idea of ​​succession as an institution of the customary law of the church was a guiding principle for us when reviewing the mass of contradictory facts related to church practice and even the legislation of local churches in the period after the ecumenical councils. In the history of this institution, custom, as an educational factor, constantly preceded legislation and determined its direction and, partly, its very content. The predominant power of church custom in the formation of the institution of succession and the spiritual kinship arising from it is explained very simply by the fact that this custom in the two dominant forms of its development (one recipient is a man 5 and two recipients of different genders) was ultimately established on the Gospel teaching about baptism as the second, spiritual birth of a person (Jn. 3:5), which means that he necessarily expressed the general church view, and therefore he himself could not in any way arouse fundamental opposition against himself from the legislative power in the church. - If only Prof. Berdnikov paid due attention to this guiding thought of ours, consistently carried through the entire treatise on spiritual kinship as an obstacle to marriage, then he would not have made us an undeserved reproach for “wavering thoughts” (p. 296) or for different “versions” of the same “opinion” (p. 276). We were not in the cramped position in which the venerable professor finds us: “the mass of raw material, which we had obtained, of different origins and varied merits” did not suppress us and did not impede “the free movement of our thoughts” (p. 296); on the contrary, from all the contradictions presented by this material, we emerged with the same clear and firm guiding thought: “Centuries-old customs are abolished for centuries until the popular views on which their binding force rests change. In particular, the custom we are talking about (i.e. a custom that requires two successors – a man and a woman) does not contain anything that would require its forced abolition” (p. 176), in other words: it does not contain any contradiction with the fundamental views of the church on succession. But this is where we encounter the directly opposite fundamental views of Prof. Berdnikov, inspired by the above-mentioned misunderstanding of the meaning of our words about succession as an institution of customary church law. Seeing in these words a hint of the secular, worldly, and not ecclesiastical origin of succession, our venerable critic found here an incentive to convince us of what we have no doubt, namely, that “baptismal succession is brought to life by the needs of the church and is a purely ecclesiastical institution” (p. 277). But the arguments presented by prof. Berdnikov, in order to prove this indisputable truth, somehow imperceptibly, thanks to the same misunderstanding, led him to a very controversial result - to the complete denial of the analogy between reception (more precisely, reception from baptism) and carnal birth. This denial is expressed in this form: “according to the ever-present teaching of the Orthodox Church, the recipient is called the spiritual father of the newly baptized, not in the sense of a “parent,” even a spiritual one, but in the sense of a leader entrusted by the church in his faith and Christian life” (p. 280, cf. 283). What is a “spiritual father not in the sense of a spiritual parent” - we do not understand this in the cited profs. Berdnikov, in the facts of the church teaching on succession, we do not find the slightest indication that the church posits any difference in the logical sense of the expressions: spiritual father and spiritual parent, and while giving the successor the first name, it resolutely refused him the second. For his part, Prof. Berdnikov, as a fundamental basis for such a refusal, cites the following dogmatic (in the theological sense) position: “the church itself gives birth to its spiritual children through the power of grace in the sacrament of baptism, and entrusts them to their recipients for guidance in spiritual life” (ibid.). Quite fair; only we again do not understand how the origin and internal meaning of the institution of mutual adoption is explained from this dogmatic position, and why the church itself establishes a relationship between the recipients and those received that is similar to the relationship between parents and children. From the fact that “the church itself gives birth to its spiritual children in the sacrament of baptism,” it only follows that all Christians, as spiritual children of the common mother church, must recognize each other as spiritual brothers and sisters. But in our book we are not talking about this universal spiritual kinship of Christians, but about that special one that arises precisely from succession and, within certain limits, is recognized as an obstacle to marriage. To introduce into the canonical (i.e., church-legal) structure of the doctrine of this last kinship the purely theological thought about the spiritual birth of all Christians by the church, as does Prof. Berdnikov, - it is inappropriate because, according to direct church rule, the priest, an active and necessary body of the church, “giving birth to his spiritual children in the sacrament of baptism,” does not enter into that spiritual relationship with the recipient and his parents, in which the recipient is placed with them 6. This means that the Church recognizes that the source and basis of spiritual kinship, with which we exclusively had and are dealing, is not the very sacrament of baptism, i.e. not the commission of it, but precisely the act of receiving one person from another from the font of grace-filled rebirth 7 . In vain, therefore, Prof. Berdnikov, for our edification, or, as he says, “to eliminate any thought about the participation of the recipient in the birth of his spiritual son,” cites the following (200th) rule of the Nomocanon at the Trebnik: “let the recipient not dare to stretch out his hand to baptize a youth into the font, for this is illegal: instead, let him receive it from the priest’s hand. For this reason, the recipient is also said, as if he receives him from holy baptism, and his son becomes, may he teach him piety” (p. 280, note 1). Here, on the contrary, the thought that Prof. Berdnikov wants to “eliminate” in every possible way, namely, that it is not the priest who performs the sacrament, but the recipient who enters into a spiritual relationship with the person being baptized. Our venerable critic does not notice this only because he does not look at the matter from the proper perspective, i.e. not from a canonical, but from an abstract theological (dogmatic) point of view, the application of which to succession, as an institution of positive church law, is not allowed by the church itself. And it's clear why. The dogmatic principle: “the church itself gives birth to its spiritual children in the sacrament of baptism” does not in the least prevent the church, in the sphere of its right, insofar as it regulates the ordinary relations of human life, from sharing its maternal care for the spiritual children it gives birth to with those who assist it in the birth of these children, i.e. who brings her unbaptized children for baptism and then takes them into his arms from the baptismal font. By placing its spiritually newborn children in the arms of their adoptive parents, the church thereby adopts them to the latter. Thus, each newly baptized person receives from the church a special spiritual father, who, in relation to his spiritual son or daughter, is, as it were, a delegate of the general maternal rights of the church in relation to all believers and serves as her assistant in the religious education of the newly baptized, as far as this is done in ordinary circumstances and in ordinary conditions of human life, which are not easily and cannot always be subject to the direct and immediate influence of the church in the person of its hierarchy. This is the constant vital motive by virtue of which the church, without the slightest prejudice to its spiritual parental rights in relation to all its children, on the contrary, for the greater implementation of these rights, puts each newly baptized person in a relationship of spiritual kinship not with the priest, but with the recipient. In the sphere of church law, and specifically marriage law, this relationship between the recipient and the recipient is a complete analogy with the relationship between parents and children; and from here it naturally follows that the church allows the same analogy between the causes that produce one and the other relationship, i.e. between reception from the baptismal font and carnal birth. Therefore we find that Prof. Berdnikov, in his fundamental polemic against the name of an ordinary pair of recipients “spiritual parents” of the perceived one, goes too far when he declares this name to be an expression of the view “not of the church, but of the people, carnal, alien to the church concept of adoption” (p. 281). The view, so strictly condemned by the venerable Kazan canonist, is in fact fully justified by the true meaning of the 53rd rule of the sixth ecumenical council, which we wrote about in our book: “this rule was a confirmation and at the same time a further development of the law issued by Emperor Justinian, by which spiritual kinship, resulting from the reception from the baptismal font, was for the first time recognized as an obstacle to marriage, namely, between the recipient and the recipient. “No one is allowed, this law says, to marry the woman whom he received from holy baptism, since nothing can so much arouse paternal love and establish a legitimate obstacle to marriage as this union, through which, through God’s mediation, their souls are united” (i.e., let us now add, a spiritual relationship of the first degree is established between them). The same motive is repeated in the opening words of the conciliar canon: “Before, affinity in spirit is more important than union in body (i.e. marriage union), but is repeated with the extension of its power to the attitude of the recipients and to the parents of the received children: “and as we have seen,” the canon continues, that in some places some who receive children from holy and saving baptism, after this enter into marital cohabitation with their widowed mothers: we determine that from now on nothing of the kind will be done.” It is clear that the entire content of Justinian’s law is implicitly repeated in the conciliar canon: for how could the council recognize “spiritual affinity” to a further degree between the recipient and the parents of the received one, if it were not assumed to already exist in the immediate one - between the recipient and the received one? That is why the first were placed in a relationship of spiritual kinship with each other, because they were the culprits of two births of the same baby: physical and spiritual, as a result of which they later received the very expressive name σύντεκνοι - co-born” (pp. 166–167). The whole meaning of the cathedral canon will be lost if we, together with prof. Berdnikov, let us take from him the idea of ​​a complete analogy of perception from the font of baptism with carnal birth - an idea denied by our venerable critic in principle and in relation not only to an ordinary pair of recipients, but also to one recipient. True, the council does not directly call the recipients the spiritual parents of the received; but it provides a direct basis for such a name, which therefore became quite common in later church terminology. Prof. himself Berdnikov gives several examples of such terminology, taken from various Greek and Russian sources of church law, namely from the so-called. private Eclogue, from the Nomocanon, published in Slavic translation at our Great Trebnik, from the decree of the Holy Synod of 1834, and we can add here the 50th chapter of Kormcha (see Berdnikov p. 280, note and ours p. 293). In the indicated sources about the recipients, the following expressions are used: “spiritually gave birth” (ἐγέννησε πνευµατικῶς – Nomok. under Requirements and 50th Chapter Korm.), “revived through St. baptism" ἀδελφοὶ πνευµατικoὶ – the so-called part. Eclogue), “father born in spirit (decree of the Holy Synod of 1874, see us p. 174). Bearing in mind, of course, that the oldest example of this terminology is found in a source of civil, and not ecclesiastical origin (namely, in the mentioned private Eclogue), the venerable Kazan canonist hastens by pointing out this circumstance to weaken the power of other examples presented by sources of undoubtedly ecclesiastical origin. But cannot and should not secular Christian legislation, in its decrees on church affairs and relations, express church views, i.e. speak the language of the church itself? At the same time, this is another question: is it accurate that the reception from baptism was first called “spiritual birth” in the indicated monument of Byzantine civil law, and then this name began to be repeated in monuments of ecclesiastical origin? It is much more likely to assume the opposite attitude, namely to accept that the unknown compiler of the private “augmented” (aucta) Eclogue introduced into it a ready-made one, i.e. the rule that existed then (around the end of the 9th century) in church practice (about the spiritual relationship of the godson and goddaughter of the same person) and expressed it as it was expressed in the modern language of the church. There is no doubt, at least, that expressions about recipients, completely equivalent to the above, or even stronger, are also found among church Greek writers, and, moreover, those who did not yet know the private Eclogue. So St. Nicephorus the Confessor, Patriarch of Constantinople († 828), in his story about the baptism in 619 in Constantinople of several married couples of the Huns, expressed himself about their successors and successors in the following words: τῷ θείῳ λουτρῷ ἐτεκνώσαντο 8 - “they gave birth to divine baptism and adopted together” (the verb τεκνόω has both of these meanings, which, as we will see below, completely exhausted the entire content of the church concept of succession). Even more significant for us is the expression used in the life of the teacher. Gregory Decapolitus († c. 820) about the recipient during tonsure into monasticism, which - it should be noted - Greek theologians, for example. Theodore the Studite, was equated with baptism and in which, therefore, a recipient (ἀνάδοχος) was also required: the latter in the indicated life is directly called the “spiritual parent” (πνευματικὸς γεννήτωρ) of those accepted into monasticism 9 . If this name was adopted by the performer of an action that provides a rather distant analogy with the reception from baptism, then all the more it befitted the one who performed the action from which this analogy was taken. And what, in fact, could there be a reasonable basis for the church, which undoubtedly called the recipients the spiritual fathers or mothers of those received, not to call them the parents of their godchildren, when both of these names in relation to the recipients are nothing more than unambiguous metaphors? It seems to us that if we called an ordinary pair of recipients not “spiritual parents”, but “spiritual father” and “spiritual mother” of the recipient, then Prof. Berdnikov would not have found a reason for his above discussed polemic with us. Truly, this polemic is a rather typical example of a dispute over words, when the very essence of the case being defended is often forgotten. Something similar happened to our venerable critic. He lost sight of the fact that his argument in favor of the view of one successor, as the only spiritual father accepted by the church in the sense of his leader in the Christian faith and life, can easily be turned in favor of that view, which recognizes the expediency and even the necessity of not one, but two or more successors: in any matter, one reliable and faithful leader is good, but two or many are even better. When baptizing infants, the usual pair of recipients, allowed in parallel with the carnal parents of the baptized, seems all the more appropriate, in comparison with one recipient or one recipient, because just as the ordinary, home education of children, physical and moral, is initially the work of primarily the mother, and then the father, so the work of the religious-Christian education of the newly baptized baby, as he grows older, requires a division between a man and a woman - a spiritual father and a spiritual mother returned in Christ. These are the fundamental reasons why Prof. Berdnikov does not find it possible for the church itself to adopt the view of an ordinary pair of recipients as the spiritual parents of the recipient. But he also tries to interpret in an unfavorable sense for us those historical evidence in which we find a direct indication of the actual existence of such a view in the church. The oldest of these testimonies dates back to the time of Emperor Justinian, i.e., to the first half of the 6th century. It is contained in the following story by the Byzantine historian Procopius (pagan) about the famous general Justinian Belisarius: δεϊον λουτρὸν καὶ χερσὶν ἀνελόµενος ἐνθένδε οἰκείαις, είσποιητὸν ἐποιήσατω ξὺν ῇ γυναικὶ παῖδα, ἥπερ εἰσποιεϊσθαι ? ἅτε πιαδα ὄντα ἱεραῖ λόγῳ, ἠγάπα τε ώς τὸ εἰκὸσ κὰν τοῖς μάλιστα ἐπιμελομενη υφ’ αύτὴν εῖχεν· εὶθ’ ὕστερον αὐτοῦ ἐρασθεῖσα ἐκτόπως... καὶ κατακορὴς γεγονυῖα τῷ πάθει ἀπεσείσατο μὲν θείων τε καὶ 10. Following some authoritative scholars (for example, Chizhman), we presented this passage as follows: “Belisarius, together with his wife Antonina, received from baptism one young Thracian named Theodosius, and, as Christian custom required, adopted him. But subsequently Antonina entered into a carnal relationship with her godfather and adopted son, which, according to Procopius, constituted in the eyes of Christian society such a grave crime that only a person who had lost all fear of divine and human laws could decide to commit it” (p. 177). Prof. Berdnikov finds this rendering of the Greek text “inaccurate” (grammatically). According to him, “the text does not say that Belisarius received Theodosius “together with his wife,” but it says that he alone baptized him and received him from baptism “with his own hands.” And then it is said that Belisarius (after baptism) took the newly baptized person into his care and adopted him (already) “together with his wife,” according to the rite and custom of adoption used by Christians... Prof. Pavlov recognizes adoption, which is spoken of here, as one with sonship, into which a newly baptized person enters to his godfather, and says that in those cases when the baptized person was an orphan or a child of unknown or non-Christian parents, then the adoption of the adopted person was, as if by necessity, combined with adoption. Meanwhile, here two “ecclesiastical” (?) – legal relations are clearly distinguished - adoption from the font, which was performed by Belisarius alone, and adoption, performed by Belisarius together with his wife... Adoption was a special legal act, different from adoption “and among Christians it was accomplished through church prayer (?). This form of adoption is indicated by the expressions of the passage we are considering about Belisarius: ὄνταίερῳ λόγῳ (pp. 284–285). – The above expression, based solely on the external (grammatical) construction of the Procopial text, would have its force, i.e. the way it is expressed, if prof. Berdnikov previously proved that in the times of Justinian (and Belisarius) in Greco-Roman Christian society there already existed a “special” custom and rite of “church” adoption, different not only from civil adoptio, but also from the church method of adoption through perception from baptism. But the fact of the matter is that he did not prove this, and - let's say in advance - cannot prove it. The Code of Justinian contains this emperor's own constitution on adoption, which abolishes the previous civil forms of adoption and establishes a new one, also civil, consisting of recording the agreement between the adoptive parent and the person giving the adoption in the court record, in the presence and without contradiction of the adopted person 11 . Would it be possible in this new law on adoption to remain silent about the special church form of adoption if it, as Prof. imagines the matter? Berdnikov, had already become part of a general custom, the observance of which was recognized as mandatory for persons standing near the imperial throne? A special church rite of adoption, different from the act of reception from the baptismal font, has never been known in the Western Church, but in the east we find the first evidence of it in the 24th and 89th short stories of Emperor Leo the Wise, i.e. at the end of the 9th or beginning of the 10th century. But even in these short stories, the custom of making adoptions through a church rite is not elevated to a generally binding law; from the preface to the 24th novella it is clear that the legislator himself did not attribute to this custom any particular antiquity and prevalence. The comparative recentness of the emergence and weak binding force of this custom is also proved by the fact that the very short stories published in its confirmation were soon forgotten. Balsamon directly points to this in his interpretation of Rule 53 of the Council of Trula. Having cited here the words from the 24th short story of Leo the Wise, the interpreter found it necessary to make a special suggestion to the reader: “note (from this short story) that adoption is also accomplished through sacred prayer, and keep this in mind, for this is not mentioned anywhere else (except for the short stories of Emperor Leo”). A special motive for this suggestion to Balsamon was the fact that he “often heard from many people experienced in civil and ecclesiastical laws that adoption rites should not take place and that now adoption is carried out without church prayer and without church perception, which, however, these novels do not allow.” Then, as if to confirm his words that the special church rite of adoption is not mentioned in any legislative act, except for the short stories of Leo the Wise, but in the laws (as well as in the explained conciliar rule) only about spiritual kinship that occurs as a result of reception from baptism, Balsamon cites from the acts of the patriarchy a synodal definition that took place under Patriarch Nicholas the Grammar and which, indeed, speaks of one thing only spiritual kinship arising from perception from St. font, then, at the very end of the interpretation, he notes: “The power of this definition also extends to adoption, because the kinship that comes from adoption, according to the short story of the ever-memorable Emperor Leo the Wise, is established by God and with the performance of divine prayers.” Thus, in the east, until the time of the named emperor, receiving baptism from the font was, if not the only (as in the west), then at least the predominant church way of establishing spiritual kinship that prevented marriage, i.e. such a relationship, which in its source and in its original form was recognized as completely similar to the relationship between parents and children. This analogy, as we have already seen, was first formally established in the law of Justinian, who found a completely legitimate obstacle to marriage between persons connected by such a close sacred union in the paternal love of the recipient for the received one, arising through God's mediation. In the time of Justinian and after, the concept of adoption was so closely connected with the concept of a special (and only) church method of adoption that among the Greeks the verb ἀναδεχεσθαι (to perceive) was very often replaced by the verbs: υίοποιεϊσθαι, υίοθετεϊσθαι or (as we have already seen in St. Nikephoros the Confessor) τεκνῶσθαι, and the Latins, instead of suscipere, said adoptari 12. Of course, adoption, established through adoption from baptism, in its legal consequences was not identical with civil adoption (adoptio in the proper sense): it coincided with this latter only in the sense of an obstacle to marriage, but did not confer either on the adoptive parent the rights of paternal power over the adopted child (in the meaning of the Roman potestas patria), or on the adopted child the right of inheritance to the adoptive parent. However, in those cases that we noticed in our book. namely, “when the person being baptized was an orphan, or the child of unknown or non-Christian parents” (pp. 177–178), adoption in the civil sense of the word was, as if by necessity, combined with the reception from baptism. Procopius also talks about approximately the same case of adoption through baptism in the place that occupies us in his history: Belisarius’ godson Theodosius, who even before his baptism lived in his house as a pet (alumnus), came from parents who belonged to the heretical sect of Eunomians, who, according to the 7th rule of the 2nd Ecumenical Council, were accepted into the church as pagans, i.e. through baptism. If in this way Theodosius became the “son” of Belisarius in both the ecclesiastical and civil sense of the word, then Procopius’ remark about the love affair of the adoptive parent’s wife with the adopted child as a matter contrary to all divine and human laws is understandable. Antonina's sin, according to the meaning of Procopius's story, was all the more serious because she, together with her husband - we insist on this - took some active part in the religious rite of adoption of Theodosius, which consisted in the latter's reception from the baptismal font. This understanding of the historian’s words is not contradicted by their grammatical construction, which is emphasized by Prof. Berdnikov. Subordinate clause: xαὶ χερσὶν ἀνελόμενος ἐνθένδε (i.e. ἐκ τοῦ θείου λουτρῦ) οἰκείαις expresses the mode of action (adoption), which is referred to in the main sentence: εἰσποιητὸν ἐποιήσατο ξὺν τῃ γυναικὶ παίδα. Such adoption, i.e. through reception from the baptismal font - Procopius further notes - there is a common custom among Christians: the remark is completely fair and completely consistent with the above facts. But Belisarius, on the direct instructions of the historian, carried out this religious adoption of Theodosius not alone, but “together with his wife,” who therefore fell in love with Theodosius, as if he had become her son through a “sacred rite” (ἅτε παίδα ὅντα ἱερῷ λόγῷ i.e. i.e. through the above-mentioned τὸ θεῖον λουτρὸν). Prof. Berdnikov, who so unsuccessfully inserts here a guess about a special church rite of adoption, different from adoption, could have given us a more serious objection if he had pointed out the fact that Theodosius, whose baptism and adoption Procopius talks about, was already an old youth, and therefore the wife of the adoptee (Belisarius) could not be present at his baptism. But this objection does not eliminate the possibility of Antonina’s active participation in the rite of Belisarius’ adoption of Theodosius through his reception from the baptismal font. The very act of perception was performed by Belisarius alone, as directly indicated by the words of Procopius: χερσὶν ἀνελόµενος οὶκείαις - “to receive with one’s own hands” (and even now a baptized baby is usually given into the arms of one of the recipients, and not both together); but then, when the newly baptized was dressed in baptismal swearing, the recipient led him to his wife, who stood in the church at some distance from the font, and by some symbolic action, through the mediation of the priest, introduced her to participate in the sacred act of adoption through perception. In any case, Antonina, in the eyes of her contemporaries, became the mother of her husband’s godson - ἱερῷ λόγῳ, i.e., in a sacred way, and at that time there was no other “sacred method” of adoption other than reception from the baptismal font. in a sacred way, and at that time there was no other “sacred method” of adoption, except reception from the baptismal font. Thus and now, i.e. after objections from Prof. Berdnikov, we leave, without any change, the following conclusions we drew from Procopius’s story: “this fact is significant for us in many respects. Firstly, he shows that before the Council of Trula there were examples of the perception of one baptized by two persons, a man and a woman, and, moreover, by “spouses”... Secondly, the above evidence contains a direct and clear indication of the existence in the 6th century of a general Christian view, according to which, in the case of the perception of the same baptized by two persons of different sex, both of these persons were recognized as close to him as his relatives father and mother. Thirdly, if a husband and wife were allowed to receive the same baptized person, this means that in those days neither custom nor law had yet placed the recipient and the recipient in a relationship of spiritual kinship with each other, preventing their marriage” (pp. 177-178). Other evidence in which we found (and find) an indication of the same ordinary pair of receivers belongs to much later times, distant from the times of Justinian by almost a whole millennium. It goes without saying that during this long period, the institution of succession and the institution of spiritual kinship based on it, as an obstacle to marriage, had to go through several phases of its further development. First of all, under the influence of the already known to us 53rd canon of the Council of Trula, which for the first time placed recipients in a relationship of spiritual kinship with the parents of the recipient, in the practice of the Greek Church a rule was formed prohibiting a father or mother, under pain of separation from marital cohabitation, from receiving their own children 13 . Then, both in the West and in the East, the spiritual hierarchy had to enter into a long and, generally speaking, unsuccessful struggle with the custom of inviting not one, but many recipients to receive children. “The spiritual hierarchy, we say in our book, could not look favorably on this custom, since, on the one hand, it destroyed the analogy of spiritual birth with carnal birth, on the other, it led to an excessive expansion of the circle of spiritual kinship, and thus unnecessarily increased the already considerable number of canonical obstacles to marriage” (p. 170). But the analogy of spiritual birth with carnal birth, as we have already seen, is in no way violated in the case when two persons appear from the baptismal font - a man and a woman. That’s why we say further in our book: “of course, under the influence of the church’s view of recipients as the spiritual parents of the baptized, the current usual (i.e., established by custom) number of them was established - two, a man and a woman, representing a complete parallel with the carnal parents of the recipient. In the West, this number was canonized in the decrees of the Council of Trent. But in the East, the spiritual hierarchy, as far as we know, is never formal (i.e. - let us now add - in some legislative act) did not put up with this pair of recipients, and although she allowed it at the baptism of children, she recognized and called only a man as a valid recipient, and in a woman it is seen as nothing more than a nanny of the baptized baby. This particular view of this pair of persons, who, according to general custom, were present at the baptism of children, is expressed in the following words of Simeon of Thessalonica (XIV century): “Divine baptism is performed like this: if a baby is baptized, then he is brought by a woman, accompanied by a recipient.” But there is no doubt that at the basis of the custom itself lay a different view, namely, that both of these persons are equally necessary at baptism, as the spiritual father and mother of the baptized. This view did not remain alien to the spiritual hierarchy itself, as can be seen from the following article of the famous Greek Nomocanon, adopted into our Great Breviary: “If a husband and wife baptize a child for one person, we command that the one not mix with each other, since the godfather is imputed (ἐπειδὴ σύντεχνοι λογίζονται). If they copulate, they are prohibited for 17 years...; forgive these, let them be cursed.” So, in the era of the appearance of this Nomocanon, both recipients were considered as connected by spiritual kinship not only with the recipient and his parents, but also with each other.” (pp. 170–171). We have deliberately given this long extract from our book in order to be able to thoroughly consider and correctly evaluate the historical and (partly) fundamental objections of Prof. Berdnikova. The above extract indicates the initial moment in the development of those church and social views that in one way or another determined the normal number of recipients at baptism. Two factors were involved in this matter: the authority of the spiritual hierarchy, which, for the above reasons, demanded only one recipient or one recipient, and the power of folk custom, which did not put up with this requirement, but placed at each font many or, what was considered more correct, two recipients of different sexes. In the 14th century, as can be seen from the quoted words of Simeon of Thessaloniki, the Greek hierarchy still knows only one recipient - a man, but folk custom already substitutes a woman for him, if only as a nanny (or, as our old Trebniks call her, “women”) of the baptized baby. This woman carries the child to the church, holds him in her arms throughout the rite, until he is immersed in the font, from where, although he is transferred by the priest into the arms of the recipient, but, without a doubt, soon again passes into the hands of the nanny, who is better able to dress the newly baptized person in the baptismal “robe” and help the clergyman in performing the sacrament of confirmation over him. The custom begins to come into force: the nanny introduced by him at the baptism of children is already mentioned in the Church Breviary, along with the recipient; but the difference between the hierarchical and popular views of this woman remains in full force: for the people she is a successor; for the hierarchy - a woman not involved in the matter of receiving the baptized person. This is how we understand the given testimony of Simeon of Thessalonica, and in vain Prof. Berdnikov thinks that we find in this evidence the idea of ​​a “receiver, only understood in the sense of a nanny” (p. 286). But the very fact of introducing this woman into the church rite of baptism, in any case, is quite significant: it already expresses some concession to folk custom, which required that every newly baptized baby have not only a spiritual father, but also a spiritual mother. And since the opposite requirement of the spiritual hierarchy was affirmed on some unshakable dogmatic or canonical basis, but only on the example of ancient church practice, which undoubtedly allowed for frequent exceptions, it is not surprising that the popular view of a pair of recipients as the spiritual parents of the baptized person began to be shared by the hierarchy itself. We find the first evidence of this not in Simeon of Thessalonica (as our venerable critic claims), but in the Greek Nomocanon of the 15th century, which in the Slavic translation is located at the end of our Trebnik. The above rule of this Nomocanon provides for the same case that, according to Procopius, took place in his time - the case of the reception of the same baptized person by a pair of recipients, and, moreover, spouses. But church views on such a case have now completely changed: Rule 211 of the Nomocanon, as we have seen, places spouses who have adopted someone else’s child in a spiritual relationship not only with the adopted child and his parents, but also with each other, and demands that they, as having become “companionate” (σύντεxνοι), should be separated from further marital cohabitation, threatening "curse" for failure to comply with this requirement. Prof. Berdnikov does not agree with our understanding of this rule. He finds that it is not about joint, but about separate and equal perception of children in the same family by husband and wife. Not without regret we must admit that we ourselves gave rise to such an obviously erroneous interpretation. It is in his book (p. 179, note. 3) we identified with the above article of the Nomocanon a special version of it, which really favors the interpretation of prof. Berdnikov, but in which a new rule is actually given, different from the rule of Nomocanon and only constituting a distant conclusion from it. In fact, the idea that spouses cannot, without the danger of separation from their cohabitation, receive children in the same family even separately, could only arise on the basis of an already existing rule (even if still unwritten) about the impossibility of them being together the recipients of the same baptized person. This is exactly the rule given in Article 211 of the Nomocanon. Prof. Berdnikov finds, however, in the very text of this article (Greek) confirmation of his interpretation, namely: here, in this text, the perceived children are spoken of not in the singular, as in the Slavic translation, but in the plural: παιδία. But not to mention the fact that in the oldest and best Greek lists of the Nomocanon there is not παιδία, but παιδίον (in our first edition of the Nomocanon such lists are not indicated), let us draw the attention of the venerable professor to one feature of the Greek text of the article that he overlooked, which is in all the lists of the Nomocanon, namely, that one word ἀνδρόγυνον (husband and wife) is accompanied in the original by the numeral οί δύο, which in this form (i.e. with a member) always means both (uterque, ambo), i.e. indicates the joint action of two persons and, in general, two factors of any kind. Examples of such word usage are quite often found in the sacred books of the New Testament (for example, John I, 37: ἢκουσαν αὐτοῦ οἱ δύο µαθηταί - both disciples heard him; XX, 4: ἔτρεχον δὲ οί δύο όμοῦ - both together; Philip I, 23: συνέχομαι δὲ ἐx τῶν δύο - we will be supported by both). In view of the indicated numeral (οί δύο), representing both spouses-recipients standing at the same font, the word παιδία (if we take it as the original reading) cannot give the article the meaning that Prof. finds in it. Berdnikov: the plural παιδία could be used in the Nomocanon either instead of the singular (which in both Greek and Russian is possible with a general indication of the very fact of the adoption of children in someone’s family, without determining the number of those adopted), or to give the rule such a meaning that spouses cannot together perceive other people’s twin children. A rule having this latter meaning actually exists in the modern practice of the Greek Church. This can be seen from the recently published (in 1887) in Constantinople, in a manual for practice dedicated to Patriarch Jokim III, the church-civil legal collection Πρόχειρον νοµιχόν, compiled in the last century by the Bishop of Campania Theophilus. Here on page 271 we read: “Ὁµοίως ἐµποδίζονται νὰ βαπτίσωσιν ἀδελφοὺς ταυτοχρόνως ἀνὴς; καὶ γυνή σύζυγοι ἀλλ ἤ ό εῖς ὁ ἕτερος πρέπει νὰ πράξωσι… τούτο· διότι, ἄν λέγεται σύντεχνος ὁ πνευµατικὸς πατὴρ, ὅστις ἐβάπτωε, μὲ τὸν σαρκικὸν πατέρατα τοῦ βαπτιστοῦ (βαπτιστικῦ?), πόσῳ µάλλον τὸ ἀνδρόγυνον, ἄν βαπτίσωσιν ἀδέλφια, ἢθελαν ὀνοµασθῆ συνανάδοχοι.” That is: “It is not permissible for spouses to baptize brothers at the same time; but let either one or the other of them do it. For if the spiritual father who baptized is called co-parent with the carnal father of the godson, then even more so the spouses, if he baptized brothers, should be called co-recipients.” In view of these facts, let Prof. himself judge. Berdnikov, can we agree with him in what he inspires us with, namely, “that there is no reliable historical evidence in favor of the existence in the Greek-Eastern Church of the custom of using a pair of recipients during baptism” (p. 289). We, for our part, propose to our venerable scientific comrade, on occasion, to ask one of the Greek clergy what is the modern church practice in their homeland on this issue. We can say in advance: the answer will be not only interesting, but also edifying... Not so decisively, but still with some opposition, Prof. speaks out against us. Berdnikov and on the question of what was, is and should be the dogma of Russian church law regarding a pair of successors. He agrees with us that this pair, despite the long “struggle of Russian pastors with the custom of dual succession” (p. 289), was finally legitimized through the adoption of the printed Trebniks of the 17th century. the following rule: “I am not worthy of being a recipient of one who is baptized by many, but only, as the custom is accepted, for the male and female sex: multiplying by that (dual number) in no way.” But for some reason, our venerable critic ignored another, more important and directly indicated by us fact, testifying to the formal and more solemn recognition of the “custom of dual succession” on the part of the Russian church hierarchy of the 17th century. We are talking about the following place in our book: “the great Moscow council of 1666 still decreed: “the gaps are firmly established, so that when baptizing a man and a woman, the recipient is the same and (and not or) the recipient is the same woman.” At the same time, the council ordered the priests: “both of these recipients” to be recorded in the church (metric) books of baptism” (p. 173). For us this fact is as significant as for prof. Berdnikov is unfavorable. It is known that the Greek patriarchs were also present at the council of 1666; This means that the above cathedral decree serves as evidence of the validity of the same rule in the modern practice of the Greek Church: the conclusion is all the more likely because in other cases the cathedral quite sharply contrasted the Greek church orders with the Russian ones (for example, on issues of widow priests, the rebaptism of Catholics and Lutherans, etc.). Ignoring the cathedral resolution of 1666 gave prof. Berdnikov to assert that the period of validity of the rule in our country, which recognized the usual pair of receivers, was very short, namely limited only to a “small” number of years in the “first half” or, as he paraphrases further, the beginning of the 17th century.” For the rest of the time, both before and after this period, the Russian Church (according to Prof. Berdnikov) rejected this custom and fought against it” (p. 290). “This word is cruel,” because of its deep disagreement with historical truth. Even the rule of the Jokimov Trebnik of 1677, which remained in all subsequent editions of this book, was not a direct “rejection” and open “struggle” against the custom recognized by the former All-Russian patriarchs and formally confirmed by the council, representing the entire Eastern Church. The rule of the Trebnik speaks only about the sufficiency of one recipient or one recipient during baptism (“it is sufficient”) and about the possibility, if necessary, of performing baptism without a recipient at all, and this is far from the same thing as an “open struggle” against the custom of inviting godfathers and godfathers to christenings. In any case, the custom continued to retain its former force, finding direct and constant support in the church legislation itself - “even to this day.” Thus, the Spiritual Regulations, repeating the decree of the great Moscow Council of 1666 on the establishment of metric books at each church, prescribes, among other things, to include in these books the names of the recipients of the baptized 14. In 1724 St. The Synod compiled and distributed to the dioceses a uniform form of metric books with a special column to indicate: “who were the recipients” in each individual case of baptism 15 . In the first half of the last century, this form was corrected and supplemented; By the way, it contains the approximate names and surnames of the recipient and recipient: in this form, it is printed to this day in the Code of Laws, as an appendix to Article 1035 of Volume IX (on states). It’s in vain, that’s why prof. Berdnikov in the decree of St. The Synod on June 18, 1834 (see our pp. 174–175) sees “a sharp turn in our church legislation to the views in the practice of the early 18th century” and is perplexed about the “reasons” for this turn (p. 290). The decree does not introduce anything new, in the sense of a “turn” to the old, but simply affirms the existing and legally recognized status quo - in its following regulations: “for the baptism of one baby, there will be one recipient and one recipient, and for this, the priests performing this sacrament are obliged to: 1) in the case of many persons invited to receive from the font, to allow one person to perform the ritual action, mainly appointed for this purpose by parents or relatives the person being baptized, the couple, remembering it in prayers; 2) include the current couple in the registry book, and 3) assign spiritual kinship to this only couple, as actual recipients, as determined by church rules.” It goes without saying that the decree, so unfavorable to the historical evidence and fundamental views of prof. Berdnikov, could not help but provoke scholarly criticism on his part. “With this decree, he says, there are many theoretical contradictions and practical inconveniences in the field of marriage law” (p. 291). By “theoretical contradictions” introduced by the decree into the field of marriage law, the author apparently means the disagreement of this legislative act with his own theory of adoption: the decree, contrary to this theory, directly calls the successor “the father of the person adopted by birth by spirit and thus, as it were, humiliates himself to the recognition of views that the venerable Kazan canonist declares “not church, but folk, carnal.” As for the “practical inconveniences” associated with the decree of 1834, they are directly indicated in the following comments by Prof. Berdnikov: “by legitimizing a pair of recipients, this decree speaks contrary to the rule of the Trebnik, according to which there is only one recipient for baptism” (ibid.). Why is the decree of St. The Synod could not “speak contrary to the rule of the Trebnik,” which is not any ecumenical canon and in which the author himself, together with us, finds an important editorial flaw - the requirement that the recipient be of the same sex as the person being baptized, which turns out to be in disagreement with the 53rd rule of the sixth ecumenical council? (see our page 165 and 179 and Berdn. 295). We are no longer talking about the fact that this rule, according to the evidence of the above facts, remained a dead letter in the Trebnik - until the publication of a decree opposite to it in 1834, and after that - until the present day. Why, we repeat, could not the decree “speak contrary” to such a rule? – Another practical inconvenience of the decree is, according to the instructions of prof. Berdnikov, in that he “commanding to remember a pair of recipients at church prayers also diverges from the rite of baptism, which always, with a few (?) exceptions, required the commemoration of one recipient.” To this we will say: if there were a few exceptions (in fact, there were more of them than the author wants to show): then why not accept another one, completely in agreement with the current church laws and only de facto, and not de jure, not converted into a rule? “The third point of the decree,” continues Prof. Berdnikov, where it is said: “spiritual kinship refers only to this couple,” goes against the decree of 1810, in which, on the basis of the Trebnik, the idea is expressed that only a recipient of the same sex should be considered related to the person being baptized.” And it’s good that it “goes against.” This idea, as the author himself admits, does not agree with the true meaning of the 53rd rule of the Sixth Ecumenical Council and, in addition, contradicts the own decree of 1810, by virtue of which the successor, the godfather of the girl, cannot then marry her as with his spiritual “daughter” (see our pp. 163–164). If a later decree in some point “contradicts” the older decree, this only means that the latter in the subject paragraph is canceled first. There is no reason to see any “practical inconvenience” here. This always happens according to the rule: lex posterior derogate priori. – The last inconvenience of the 1834 decree of Prof. Berdnikov finds that “the legalization of a pair of successors casts a shadow of doubt on the fairness of the practice, also legalized by St. Synod, according to which no obstacles to marriage are recognized between godfather and godfather.” So be it; but from the fact that the decree of 1834 places both recipients in a spiritual relationship with the recipient and his parents, it does not necessarily follow that exactly the same relationship is established between this pair of recipients in the sense of an obstacle to marriage. This idea is contained only in article 211 of the Nomocanon at the Trebnik; but, as is known, the binding force of this article for the practice of marriage law, since the beginning of the last century, has been denied by both the Greek and Russian churches. We, for our part, tried to justify this attitude of the church government in the article of Nomocanon in two ways: 1) historically - by the example of Belisarius and his wife, who jointly adopted their pet and then remained unhindered in their marital cohabitation, and 2) theoretically - by the following considerations: “The extension of spiritual kinship to a pair of recipients is not required by the very analogy between perception from the baptismal font and carnal birth. In fact, if from carnal birth only a union of parents and children arises, and not any new connection between the parents themselves, preventing their further marital cohabitation, then through the reception from the baptismal font only a spiritual-parental connection of the recipients with the received one and a spiritual-brotherly connection with the carnal parents of the latter should be established. This was the constant point of view of canonical legislation even in those times when it began to expand the scope of spiritual kinship beyond the limits specified in the 53rd rule of the Council of Trull. This expansion went only along a descending line from the receiver and the perceived, where the same connection between parents and children continues” (p. 178). For whom these considerations are unconvincing, let him be content with one bare negative fact - the absence of any positive canonical basis to prohibit the recipient and recipient of one child from marrying each other. If we take the point of view of modern church practice, which does not recognize either spiritual kinship or obstacles to marriage between the most ordinary pair of recipients, then there will be no reason for a legislative struggle against the custom that created this couple. But we know that church practice did not always adhere to this point of view. The above-mentioned 211th article of the Nomocanon under the Trebnik undoubtedly once had full effect in our country. And since it did not happen here, but in the Greek east, it is necessary to assume that its binding force was recognized there too - at least at the time and in the area when and where our Nomocanon originally appeared. The spiritual hierarchy, not having any positive basis for assessing the canonical dignity of this article, could recognize it as a mandatory rule only due to the vital motive that it expressed the dominant view of modern church society on the impossibility of marriage between persons who, through the perception of the same baptized person from the font, became, as it were, spiritually related to each other. In such cases, the church, in order to avoid temptation, usually acts according to the rule of the Apostle Paul: all is worthwhile, but not all is for good. In fact, if a Christian society creates for its life some rule that has at least an indirect, distant basis in the law of God or in the rules of the church itself, and considers the violation of this rule to be a more or less serious sin: then what incentive could there be for the spiritual hierarchy to go against public conscience? And vice versa: if such a rule, over time, begins to lose its generally binding force, then why should the spiritual hierarchy insist on its mandatory implementation in each individual case? This is the reason for the fluctuations in church practice that we described in relation to an ordinary pair of recipients, the extent to which the question about it became a question of marriage law (and not the rite of baptism itself), and that is why we showed the “inseparable” prof. Berdnikov’s “indecisiveness” in the implementation of the problematic measure we proposed - to formally abolish the custom of dual adoption, in order to thus put an end to the fluctuations in church practice on the issue of the possibility of marriage between co-parents (in Berdnikov, p. 292; in ours - 176). We recognized this measure as too drastic and hardly advisable. “Centuries-old customs,” we said on this issue, based on the lesson taught to us by the entire history of the institution of succession in its relation to marriage law, “centuries-old customs are abolished for centuries until the popular views on which their binding force rests change.” The unshakable and only canonical basis for resolving all questions about spiritual kinship as an obstacle to marriage is the 53rd rule of the sixth ecumenical council. In our book, we proposed a detailed interpretation of this rule, which has the character of a so-called “logical” interpretation (pp. 165–167 and 180–183). As a result of this interpretation, the following provisions were obtained: 1) the emergence of a spiritual relationship between the recipient, the perceived one, and the parents of the latter is not conditioned by the identity of the gender of the recipient and the perceived one - a position directed against recent examples of Russian church practice, which, by introducing this condition, found it possible, contrary to the true meaning of the conciliar rule, to allow a recipient of a different sex with the perceived one to marry his (widowed) parent; 2) in the initial words of the conciliar canon: “Since kinship in spirit is more important than union in body” (τῆς τῶν σωµἀτων συναφείας), a comparison is made of spiritual kinship not with carnal kinship, but with carnal union, i.e. with the marriage” (in this sense the word συνάφεια is used in the rules of the Trull Cathedral itself); therefore, the prohibition of marriages based on spiritual kinship should not extend beyond the limits established by the council itself, namely, beyond the second degree of this kinship - a provision directed against the later and still dominant practice of the Greek Church, which extends the prohibition of marriages in spiritual kinship to the 7th degree inclusive. Prof. Berdnikov, as we already had the opportunity to notice above, certainly agrees with the first position (see his p. 294); but regarding the second he makes the following remark to us: “Prof. Pavlov is not content with the desire that the practice of our church adhere to the 53rd rule of the Council of Trula and strictly adhere to its letter (as Prof. Berdnikov wishes); he finds it necessary to generalize the prescription of this rule so that marriages are considered prohibited not only in those combinations of spiritual kinship as indicated in the rule, but also in all other cases of spiritual kinship in the second degree (if Prof. Berdnikov wants to “exactly adhere to the letter” of the conciliar rule, then he is in vain talking about some combinations of spiritual kinship indicated in the rule: the letter of the rule knows only one combination - the recipient is a man and the widowed mother of the recipient). And this draft legislative interpretation of 23 Ave. of the Trull Cathedral by prof. Pavlov considers “valid canon law” in this case (p. 294). The last phrase leaves us very perplexed. The "legislative interpretation" of laws, otherwise called authentic, belongs only to the legislator himself; “Projects” of such an interpretation are drawn up by special powers, regulations and officials. In our position, we could not have and did not express in any way the slightest claim to one or another role. Our book, however, contains something that, perhaps, can be called “a draft legislative interpretation of the 53rd Council of Trula”: this is the opinion of the ever-memorable Metropolitan of Moscow Philaret (see our pp. 182–183). But if prof. Berdnikov disagrees with this opinion, then he was obliged to refute it not as ours, but precisely as belonging to the said great hierarch. We, for our part, are responsible only for the fact that we allowed ourselves to give preference to this “draft of legislative interpretation of the 53rd rule of the Council of Trula” over the corresponding norm of current Russian law, namely, we expressed the idea that “real canon law” is contained in the first, and not in the second. As a learned canonist, we could make no other judgment. For the method of legal interpretation, attached by Metropolitan Philaret to the 53rd rule of the Council of Trula, has been constantly practiced in the Orthodox Church from the time when the composition of its canonical code was finally established. This technique consists of generalizing the meaning of ancient canons, i.e. in extending their action not only to those individual specific cases that were directly provided for in them, but also to all other, homogeneous ones. Thus, the 53rd rule of the Council of Trula, as interpreted by Metropolitan Philaret, received the following general meaning: marriage is prohibited in all combinations of spiritual kinship in which, like that indicated in the rule, a second degree of this kinship is obtained. The ever-memorable hierarch himself insisted (unsuccessfully) on the need to extend the effect of the Trullian canon only in the case of a son’s marriage with his mother’s goddaughter; and we, following the example of him and the entire Greek-Eastern Church, recognized it as completely legitimate to bring two more combinations of spiritual kinship under the same rule: 1) the recipient and the daughter of the adopted or adopted and 2) godson and goddaughter of the same person), which, together with that indicated in the opinion of Metropolitan Philaret, exhaust all possible cases of prohibited marriages in the second degree of spiritual kinship. It is in vain that Prof. Berdnikov fears that the way we have adopted, following such an authoritative hierarch of the Russian Church, the way of interpreting the 53rd rule of the Trulle Council will lead us “the way of the Greek canonists, who, on the basis of a free (?) interpretation of the same rule, too expanded the limits of the prohibition of marriages on the basis of spiritual kinship” (p. 294). Three cases are far from the same as the many dozens of heterogeneous cases to which the Greek canonists applied this rule! What will happen if we accept the recommended prof. Berdnikov's method of strictly literal interpretation of ancient church canons? Something will come out that, in all likelihood, our venerable critic himself will refuse: in the 53rd rule of the Council of Trulla it will not be possible to see the prohibition of marriage between a godfather and his goddaughter, a godfather with his godson, and the father of a godfather with his godfather, and in the 54th rule there will be no reason to recognize the marriage of a great-uncle with a first-cousin granddaughter as illegal; for not one of these combinations of spiritual and carnal kinship is directly indicated in the cited rules. In conclusion, may we be allowed to express the hope that the promised prof. Berdnikov’s detailed analysis of our treatise on the “form of the secret of marriage” will bring the same “benefit for science” with which the real criticism of our treatise on spiritual kinship was written, about which the author himself quite rightly spoke for the edification of our official reviewer: “From what we said above regarding the study of Prof. Pavlov about spiritual kinship as an obstacle to marriage, the reader could be convinced that Mr. Lashkarev had many reasons to say his word on this issue for the benefit of science” (p. 295). Only for the real “benefit of science” we ask Prof. Berdnikov and our other venerable comrades in science, anyone who wishes to take part in the development of such an important and difficult question as the question of the form of the secret of marriage, observe in the critical (in relation to our book) part of their work the following generally binding rules: 1) do not draw any “distant conclusions” from our construction of church teaching on this subject (see Berdnikov. p. 337) without the premises on which our own conclusions set out on pp. 71–74 are directly based; 2) check our opinions according to the positive data of church teaching “on the form of the mystery of marriage”, which are given in our book, contrasting them not with our personal opinions and considerations, but with the same ones, i.e. positive church data, disagreeing with those with which we had to deal; 3) do not impose on the author opinions that he did not have and could not have. We are saying this exclusively to prof. Berdnikova. In his preliminary report on the content of his future review of our treatise “on the form of the mystery of marriage” (p. 337), he categorically states that our opinion on this subject “does not differ very much” from the opinion of Mr. Lashkarev, who, along with other outlandish things announced by him in his official review of our work, also put forward the following position: “the beginning of marriage was identified by the church fathers with the beginning of the emergence of feelings, constituting the essence of the marriage union." From this position it naturally follows that along with the disappearance of the feeling of sexual love between a man and a woman, “who have become spouses precisely because of this feeling,” their marriage itself ends. Is it really Prof. Does Berdnikov seriously think that this opinion “does not differ much” from ours? He was confused by the expression in our book that, according to the teachings of the Kyiv theological school of the 17th century, “in marriage, the legal and religious elements, contract and sacrament, completely coincide” (p. 51). Having extracted from this expression, following the example of Mr. Lashkarev, a folding term that does not belong to us: “sacrament - agreement,” prof. Berdnikov did not pay attention to the fact that we dealt with the teachings of the Kyiv theological school as an objective historian, and that with the same objectivity we presented the opposite teaching, according to which the consummatory power of the sacrament of marriage rests not “in the words of the coupled persons” expressing their consent to marriage, but in the marriage ceremony itself. We checked both teachings on the basis of the tradition of the ancient universal church and as a result we received the following conclusion: “Christian marriage is a sacrament in the commission of which two factors must take part: the will of the spouses themselves, which gives real existence to marriage with the necessary sacramental character, as a reflection of the seal of baptism always inherent in Christians, and the church, which with its blessing affirms the marriage and imparts to it the living and active grace of God.” (page 72). To clearly express this joint action of the persons getting married themselves and the church in the celebration of the sacrament of marriage, we considered it “totally agree with the essence of the matter”: to introduce into the modern church rite of marriage the formula “words of the persons being married”, similar to that adopted in the Trebnik of Peter the Mogila, and at the same time pointed to a similar example of introducing into the modern “rite of confession” from the same Kyiv Trebnik the famous prayer of permissiveness priest with the inscription: “performing the mystery of holy repentance” (p. 74). Is it really possible, we repeat, that all this is in any way similar to the romantic teaching of Mr. Lashkarev about marriage accomplished by the love of the persons getting married themselves? This analysis was published in various books of Christian Reading for the years 1882–1886. The publications in which these reviews are published are indicated at the beginning of the article by Prof. I. S. Berdnikova, which will be discussed further. This review was published in Christ. Readings 1890. Sept.-Oct., pp. 468–488 We cannot consider the expression “social life of society” to be successful; but we hold it back to avoid the reproach of inaccurately conveying other people’s words. In this we see the clearest and most ancient trace of the influence of Roman civil laws on adoption on the formation of the church institution of adoption: it is known that only men had the right to adoption in the Roman state. In the 50th chapter of the Helmsman we read: “a priest, who is not like any other priest, baptizes his child like a priest, and is not separated from his wife, since no one has received his child from holy baptism. This same priest creates no spiritual kinship from this, just like no other kinship with the other children of his parish, and baptizes them: from them he can, if he desires, marry his son as a wife and his daughter as a husband (see our page 317) See previous note for words in italics. See Nicephori archiep. Constantinop. opuscula historica, ed. Boor, p. 12. Lipsiae.1880. See Μνημεία άγιο).ογικά, έκδιΒ. άπό θεοφίλου 'Ιωάννου. ο. 160. Venice. 1884. Wed. our Nomocanon under Bol. Trebnik, page 94. Procopius ex recens. Dindorfii vol. III (we need to correct a proofreading error in our book: vol. II) p. 14 1. 1. S. de adopt. VIII, 48. For us, the mistake of Chizhman is not entirely clear, who in his famous work: “Marriage Law of the Eastern Church” claims that Justinian’s predecessors Anastasius and Justin issued laws testifying to the existence in their time of a special church rite of adoption (pp. 280–281). This error could only have occurred from a misunderstanding of the expressions used in the laws quoted by the author: per divinos afflatus and: ex di vinis jussionibus, which actually and exclusively mean imperial decrees and commands, but not what the venerable German scientist saw in them. Examples of such usage can be found in abundance in Ducange's Lexicons of Medieval Greek and Latin under the words: ἀναοεχεσδαι υίοθεσία, adoptari and filiolus For this rule and its sources, see our edition of the Nomocanon under Bol. Trebnik pp. 179 et seq. Adding to the Spirits. Regulations on the rules of clergy § 29. See Full. collection resolution according to Orthodox confession Vol. IV No. 1218 and its appendix. Wed. also Rozanov History of the Moscow diocesan administration, part I, p. 108. You might be interested in: