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Introduction

Introduction to Theology – A little bit of everything needs to be said in this course. We live in a different time than when Gregory the Theologian could not enter a bathhouse or a shop for bread without being grabbed by someone by the sleeve and asked: "Tell me, which is more correct "omoousios" or "omiousios"? Now they do not theologize in this way and treat theology with hostility or distrust. Theology has become the lot of only theologians, specialists who discuss issues that interest no one else. The majority of Christians confine themselves to simple faith and look with suspicion at theology, fearing that something good will fall into heresy through it. This attitude has contributed to the transformation of theology into a pure science, an intellectual pursuit, the purpose of which is in itself, and which has no connection with life. Even the majority of priests, although theological education is obligatory for them, use only that knowledge gained during the five years of their study that concerns the rule and some practical points. The rest does not fit in with reality in any way. Here the question arises about the goals and tasks of theology. I belong to those people who believe that theology is the highest calling, that without it there is no and cannot be Christianity. And now, when life calls for practical deeds, I will say that we need a theological calling, we need the art of theology, we need a return to the old theology, that without this there will be no true Christianity, that faith of which it is said: "This is the victory that has overcome the world, our faith." Theology or "theology" (Greek) is the doctrine of the Godhead; It existed before the advent of Christianity. In ancient antiquity, theologians were those poets who dealt with the origin of the world (cosmogony) or gods (mythology), in contrast to philosophers who considered things in themselves. Even in later times, Plato called mythology theology, as the doctrine of the gods and their origin. It was only with the advent of Stoicism, the last flower on the tree of Greek philosophy, that the concept of "theology" acquired the meaning it has today: the doctrine of the nature and essence of the Godhead: In the Roman Empire, the verb "to theologize" meant "to deify the emperor, to recognize him as a god." In Christianity, the term "theology" did not appear immediately. In the beginning, it had too pagan, mythological flavor for Christians. With difficulty they got used to dealing with the remnants of pagan cults, as, for example, burning incense - incense. As early as in the III century, i.e. two hundred years after the birth of Christ, Clement of Alexandria and Origen still called Greek poets theologians. However, they already have a presentiment that true theology belongs to Christianity, that if for the Romans it is the cult of the emperor, the recognition of him as God, then for the Christians it must mean the proclamation of Christ by God. Only in the IV century did this word come into Christian use. Eusebius of Caesarea calls the Evangelist John a theologian and himself theologizing, developing the doctrine of Christ as God. The Greek Fathers gradually defined theology as the teaching of the right God, and since then this word has firmly entered the Christian vocabulary. The authors of ascetic works (Evagrius, Maximus the Confessor) call theology the third stage of perfection, the knowledge of God through prayer, for only in this way is true knowledge of the Divinity possible. Finally, a special understanding of what theology is arose in the West. For the scholastics, it acquired a precise, scientific meaning, and such a rationalistic attitude to theology exists in the West to this day. As for Orthodoxy, we call theology a lot (as well as a sermon - it is considered to be any word of a priest spoken from the ambo. Such abuse of the word, or weakening of the word, is the original sin, the poison of which poisons our church life as well. We use any word in any sense. For example, anyone can interpret the word "conciliarity" in his own way, while the word "catholics" in Greek is one of the definitions of the Church and only of the Church, and it is impossible to operate with it in a spiritual-psychological, unclear sense. Before beginning to engage in theology, one must take a vow not to pronounce words outside of their exact meaning, for with what blood did the Church pay for finding words expressing the mysterious things contained in her, and what "God-befitting" (Basil the Great) words they were! And what are dogmas if not those concepts of the faith of Christians worked out and expressed in words in a long process, about which, in turn, it is said: "This is the apostolic faith, this is the faith of the fathers, this is the Orthodox faith, this faith affirms the universe"! It is possible to distinguish precisely what is theology in theology and what is theological science, i.e. those supports that serve to establish the edifice. These props and scaffolding often obscure the very edifice of faith, without which the Christian soul, once immersed in the baptismal font, cannot do without. What is the object of theology and what are its methods? Each science must find the field that it cultivates. What is the object of theology? In order to answer this, we need to ask ourselves what Christianity is. It is from here that the study of theology must begin. They will say that this is self-evident, elementary. Meanwhile, there is a constant confusion of concepts, for Christ and faith are constantly confused. To believe in God does not mean to be a Christian. Belief in God is simply deism, not Christianity. There are millions of people who believe in God, and there were such people both when Christ came to earth and when the apostles preached. But with the coming of Christ, everything became different, for Christianity is not just an assertion that God exists, but a preaching that Christ the Son of God came and saved people, that this event took place in our human history. From the point of view of the historian, there may be facts more important than this, but for the Christian the belief that the salvation of the world took place - in the backwoods, somewhere in the backyard, among a small people - is the most important thing and contains the fullness of everything. For Christians, Christianity is not even a religion, as it was in the concept of the Romans, i.e. the connection of man with God, for Christians it is a living faith in Jesus Christ, the Son of God. When I say that I believe, I am not affirming a new doctrine, not a new morality, not a new principle. I affirm that this act of faith is salutary, and through this I affirm a theology behind which there is a certain experience, for only faith will know who this Saviour, this Messiah, is. That there is already theology in this statement we see from the words of Christ, when He preached to His disciples before His Ascension: "Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:19). Philaret of Moscow says that before Christians began to be called Christians, they were called disciples, and if Christians do not want to be Christians, then the Gospel was not preached for them. When we say, "Jesus Christ," we're confessing something. If we take a word that can be found in the catacombs, just a word or even just a sign, then it alone was already a whole theology. The word is IXQYS, and the sign is fish, for in Greek it means "fish." Ancient Christians deciphered it as - 1 (Jesus), - X (Christ), - Q (God), - Y (Son), - S (Savior). This sign contains all subsequent Christian theology. "Jesus" was the most common name at that time. But to this name is added the word "Christ," i.e., "Anointed One," "Messiah." To say "Jesus Christ" is to say that Jesus, i.e., a mere man, is the Anointed of God. To the day of the appearance of the Messiah, a great and terrible day, the entire Old Testament was coming. But the Old Testament did not recognize Him. And to know Him means to confess. They were waiting for the Messiah and knew that He would be from God. But Christ come and said He was God. Thus, one sign of this fish, one name "Jesus Christ" can fill our entire life. But this is not given to us immediately in our experience, since it is not something self-evident. This experience is gained if every morning when we wake up, we pronounce the name of the Savior as if we were hearing it for the first time in our lives. For faith is born every minute and is renewed every minute (the believer "shall live by Me" - John 6:57), for it is a mistake to say: "I have believed forever." Faith is a constant renewal of the core that constitutes the object of faith. In the First Epistle to the Corinthians (1 Corinthians 1-2), the Apostle Paul reminds them that "the gospel which I have preached to you" is "by which ye are saved." The Gospel contains the message of the life, death and resurrection of Christ. It is the object of our faith. Here is the strictest line between theology, and especially Christian theology, and philosophy. We have a tendency to mix theology and philosophy. However, philosophy is not based on belief in something. Its starting point is some principles (say, Plato's doctrine of ideas) that it develops; it is an intellectual occupation. Christianity, on the other hand, is different. In the teaching of the Apostles we do not find anything abstract, no philosophy; we do not even find the words "Trinity" or "God-manhood" there. Christianity was not a doctrine, it was the recognition of a fact that people did not know before. It was the message of a new life given to man. How to describe this life, how to give an understanding of it? Any teaching can be perceived intellectually. Christianity, on the other hand, is a new message, a fact that has been accomplished in the world. Therefore, all Christian theology is based on revelation. And this revelation is given to a sick and fallen person. Every philosopher, in so far as he thinks logically, thinks that he proclaims the truth. Christianity says that God proclaims the truth from heaven, for everything has fallen. Religious philosophy was successful and took root in Russian culture. But professors of theology must guard themselves against religious philosophy, which is not theology, for theology knows only revelation, truth from God, given not from below, but from above. Before we understand this, we ourselves must change. Many people object: "But the Gospel is written by men." Yes, however, it is not our needs that determine theology: we must adapt ourselves to the truth, not it to us. In the ancient world, man was considered the measure of all things, in Christianity the measure of all things is God. And theology is a science which considers God and all that is divine as its object. It is the revelation of Revelation on the basis of Revelation itself, the Gospel, the good news of the life and death of Christ. The deepest inner identity of theology and Revelation is comprehended through the definition of the nature of theology. The latter takes man and places him before the door of Revelation, where "all human flesh" must be silent, for "the King of kings and the Lord of lords enter." Revelation is a special sphere of theology; the purpose of theology is the revelation of this Revelation. Each of us is called to make this theology our vital source and to protect it from obscuration. Theology is the product of a complex development, connected partly with the history of the Church, partly with patrology. There are several periods in the development of theology: the Church lives as an early Christian community without scientific theology. This period ends with Origen, who is the first of the great theologians of the patristic style. Origen did not hold on to Orthodoxy, and some of the components of his teaching were condemned by the Church. His role in the history of the Church was fatal, and he is not one of the Holy Fathers. But this man loved Christ and had a genius of theology. The best book about it belongs to the pen of Jean Danielou, professor of patrology at the Institut Catholique in Paris, and is entitled "Origene". The Golden Age of Orthodoxy, the Age of the Holy Fathers. It lasts from the IV to the VIII century. During this period, the great fathers of the Church lived: Sts. Athanasius the Great, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, Gregory of Nyssa, who created the golden fund of Orthodox theology. Byzantine period. The name of Patriarch Photius stands out in it. This period falls on the IX century; in relation to him, we can speak of the Photian theology, the ideas of which were subsequently developed by the Church. In the XV century, Byzantium fell, but before its fall it managed to pass on its heritage to the Slavs. Bulgaria shared the fate of Byzantium - the Turkish yoke. The fate of Russia was also difficult in this era (see Fr. G. Florovsky's book "The Ways of Russian Theology"). The school of Russian theology was born in Kiev under the strong influence of the West, which went through Poland. This new "school" theology, which includes dogmatics, the New and Old Testaments, and other sections, was developed in the West and is influenced by the Western school tradition. In these sciences there is an inner solidarity, which is useful, but it can also be dangerous. Let's give a general idea of each of the above-mentioned periods.

The Early Christian Community.Baptism as the Main Feature of the First Period.

The original "charge," i.e., what Christianity brought out into the world, was not a philosophical system. It was a sermon on certain facts that had taken place in history, and this sermon itself led to certain facts. That is: from the facts about which it was preached, it was necessary to draw the appropriate conclusion - it was necessary to be baptized. Thus, the indissoluble connection between preaching and baptism is a feature of early Christian theology, which was not a theology of the armchair type. The prerequisite for further conclusions from it are the words of Christ: "Make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28:16). Therefore, the first type of theology that we find in the Church is the confession of faith pronounced by the person being baptized before baptism. The great function of the godfather is, in fact, a terrible thing; Nowadays, people take it too lightly. The godparent is obliged to be responsible for the person being baptized. Today, however, it comes down only to participation in home, family holidays, and only that, the foster parent does not even consider it an obligation to bring his "engagement" to the end. Here is the first thing we encounter in this regard in the Acts of the Apostles: a nobleman returning from Jerusalem, sitting on his chariot, read the prophet Isaiah. The Apostle Philip, who met him on the way, thanks to the providence of God, asked him: "Do you understand what you read?" and explained to him a passage from the Scriptures that the man was reading, thus preaching to him the gospel about Christ. When they came to the water, the Ethiopian eunuch (and the reader was him) said: "Here is the water; What prevents me from being baptized?" Philip answered him: "If you believe with all your heart, you can." The nobleman said, "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." And Philip baptized him (Acts 8:26-40). The words of the nobleman, "the Ethiopian man," are thus already a confession of life, a brief symbol of faith. Early theology had its own baptismal symbols. For the Jews, Jesus was the Messiah, for the Gentiles, God. In order to become a Christian, a person, Jew or Greek, was required to recognize one or the other; The Church has never done without elementary theology (i.e. without the most basic: we use "elementary" here in the French sense: element as constituting the basis of something). The word "Lord" as a symbol. If one part of the Christians in the early era adhered to the Jewish traditions, the other was scattered in the Greco-Roman world. This world began to persecute Christianity, and one of the reasons, in this case, was the Christian concept of "Kyrios", i.e. "Lord". In this word there was a certain confession. The Roman government was generally tolerant of other religions in the empire. The only thing she demanded of her subjects was the recognition of Caesar by the Lord. Therefore, when the aged Polycarp of Smyrna was brought to the forum, all they demanded of him was: "Say that Caesar is 'Kyrios'. The word "Kyrios" had a very special religious meaning in Christianity until the second century. The "Lord" was the master with whom a person was connected for life and whom he served until death. Proceeding from this, it is necessary to understand the words of Christ: "No man can serve two masters" (Matt. 6:24). "Kyrios" was written in the catacombs during the persecutions as having this special meaning. When the authorities began to deify the emperor, and he became "Kyrios", "having power", Christians should have been especially wary of this. For with the adoption of Christianity and baptism they passed into a new "subjection" ("God made this Jesus Lord and Christ" - Acts 2:36). This new citizenship obliged them to abandon all the former attachments that had hitherto existed in their lives, or to allow them to do so in so far as they did not contradict it. And if the Roman power, being religiously tolerant, demanded only the worship of the emperor, then Christians in this respect could not be tolerated, because for them the Dominion, the Church, and Christ were real. Whoever did not understand the truth that Christ came to destroy the power of the devil could not be a Christian and became a traitor. Now we do not attach the importance to words that we attached to them in those days. Today, when the priest says, "Blessed is the Kingdom," we are transferring the Kingdom to another, beyond the grave, which will come after our death. In ancient times, all words, all signs were real, and for the word "Kingdom," for this news of it, Christians died. To become a Christian meant to pass from one world to another. We do not feel the reality of the things of this world, because there is no special sign on them. We can go to the market, buy any things, read any books (for example, the works of Sartre), because they do not have an anti-Christian sign on them. But the first Christian could not go to the bathhouse with the pagans or to the market, where food sprinkled with blood sacrificed to idols was sold. It was as if he was erased from the life of this world, he really accepted another citizenship. Thus, the word "Lord," as a baptismal symbol, entered the life of a Christian from the very beginning. This word is as much a source of theology as the word "Christ." And if the first source of theology is baptism, then the confession of the Lord is also a tremendous theology. Theology began to develop in earnest when the struggle against heresies began. One can live by the sign of the fish, the deep meaning of which is: Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, the Savior. One can live by the word "Lord," which also contains great theological depth. Why did the Church also create cumbersome systems of theology? They were needed when the Church had to protect herself from all those poisons that began to penetrate into her from the pagan world. This was not an abstract defense, as we have theological disputes now. Let us recall the recent controversy about theology of Fr. Sergius Bulgakov: it was also of an abstract nature, the disputants did not indicate what exactly is pernicious in this theology. And in the first centuries, the Church defended against poisons not some theoretical truth, but the very essence of faith. One of the first heresies was Docetism, the doctrine of the illusory nature of Christ as a man. This heresy was based on the words of St. The Scriptures that the Saviour "took the form of a servant, becoming in the likeness of men, and in the form of a man" (Phil. 2:7). But, Ignatius of Antioch objected, if Christ was not a man, then why do I suffer? That is the sweetness, he continues, that Christ was a man. "The sweetness is in the fact that He is Emmanuel, 'God is with us' (Ignatius of Antioch. Epistle to the Romans). For such a person as St. Ignatius, Christ was indeed Emmanuel, he felt the Savior in his flesh and blood, and therefore defended with his whole life. Thus did the Church defend herself – with the blood of the holy martyrs. "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also" (Luke 12:34). This created the power of patristic theology. Thus, theology is based on faith in the Church itself, which is not just faith that affirms the existence of God, but it affirms facts that have occurred in history. From this faith grows a complex and multi-branched tree called theology. One of the main reasons that forced the Church to expound these claims was the fight against heresies. But how did she justify them? From the very beginning of its existence, the Church possessed the Old Testament, to which both Christ Himself and the Apostles referred. At first, it was generally a sect within Judaism. "Search the Scriptures," says Christ (John 5:39). Now we are again faced with the problem of the Old Testament. The interval, when the Christian consciousness departed from tradition, is over, and Christians of all confessions again turn to the Old Testament. In our modern textbooks on theology, for example, there is no explanation of how the prophecy of the Holy Trinity is related to the appearance of the three angels to Abraham; the story of Noah is often told only as a moral teaching; The image of the three youths in the furnace is given only as an example of faith. Meanwhile, Christ and the apostles understood their work in the light of the Old Testament: "Search the Scriptures... but they bear witness of Me" (John 5:39). The Scriptures here refer to the Old Testament. Christ was its executor, accomplisher, crowning. And the fact that Jesus was the Messiah cannot be understood outside the Old Testament. Christ is the main hope of the Old Testament. In the beginning, He is the one who must save the Jewish people from captivity. With the passage of time, faith in the Messiah acquires more and more spiritual outlines - Christ as the final revelation of the Truth. The very name of Jesus Christ is already a reference to the Old Testament. But it was at this point that the gap between Judaism and Christianity occurred, because Jesus, who came to earth and died on the cross, was not recognized as the Messiah by the Jews. In connection with this non-recognition, many think that at the present time the Old Testament has become unnecessary. Meanwhile, in the first centuries of Christianity, the Old Testament was the daily food of Christians, reading and explaining it was a daily occupation. In general, the first and third centuries know no other theology than the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. That is, exegetical theology. The first thing the Church had was the faith that the Jews lived, a faith based on facts. In our time, they seem to many to be mythology, but we, Christians, continue to believe that the Jews are God's chosen people, that their history is some kind of divine revelation. Therefore, the Old Testament is important for us primarily not from the point of view of morality, but as a preparation for accepting the promise of the Messiah. The first in the Gospels, the Gospel of Matthew, begins with a list of those Old Testament people who gave flesh to the future Christ. This is not the history of the saints - on the contrary, in this list we meet the names of sinful and even sinful people, and they seem to be underlined. They are underlined in order to show that none of them by themselves deserved divine chosenness. God Himself chose them to carry out His providence for the world through this sinful but chosen people. The entire Old Testament is a history of betrayals and falling away from their God, but the fruit of this Jewish tree was the Immaculate Virgin Mary, who ended the Old Testament. In the New Testament, in addition to the enormous material that gives an idea of God and the faith in Him of the people of Israel, is added the assertion that everything promised to mankind by the Old Testament was fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Therefore, the Apostolic Church for a long time did without its own books. Origen says in the third century: "Everything is in the Old Testament. Everything is a teaching about Him (about Christ - Fr. A. Sh.)." And indeed, if we take, for example, the Psalms written a millennium before the rise of Christianity and without a special religious purpose, we will see that everything in them is imbued with the thought of the coming Saviour. In any text, in any book of the Old Testament, we can find amazing revelations about Christ. And without this premise, i.e. without the belief that Jesus is the Christ, the Old Testament loses its meaning and it becomes unclear why it was written. For us, believers, the Old Testament is, as it were, a gradually clarifying and growing image of Christ. And when Jesus said, "It is finished!" (John 19:30), this meant that the truth of the prophecies about Him had been fulfilled. The "end times" have come. St. John the Theologian constantly repeats: "Children! Late!" (e.g., 1 John 2:18) Now they say that he was mistaken. But by asserting this, we thereby impose our thoughts on the first Christians, for if St. John was mistaken on this point, then it means that he was mistaken in everything else. The Church in those days lived with eschatological aspirations, i.e. expectations of the end ("ta eskhata" - the end - Greek). When we say, "Thy kingdom come," what do we think about? The end has already come. Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, and in Him all things are revealed and all things given. No new truth will be given to people, for all its fullness has already been given. This last time can last for millions of years. The Church is that strange society of people where everything is turned to one and the same thing, to what has already been. The Church is always turned to the past and at the same time to the future - to that Day, "great and terrible", the day of the Last Judgment. And the Last Judgment will be that everyone will recognize that Jesus is the Christ. The Church is those babes who know dogs, to whom all things are revealed ("Thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes" – Luke 10:21). And the days of the early church are sealed by this revelation, this expectation that Christ has already come. The whole essence of the first, and in general Christian faith can be expressed in the words: "The Lord has come, the Lord is coming, the Lord is coming!" ("Maranatha" - Come to her! - Hebrew). Everything that is now seen "as through a glass darkly" (1 Cor. 13:12) will become manifest on the day of the Second Coming. And the "end times" is the time of the Church living in this expectation. But time passed, and it became necessary to reckon with the world around us. Man is not a tabula rasa. He has some prerequisites; therefore, the truth about the Church was given to the world in the language in which it was able to receive it. The Apostles did not immediately begin to write down their memories of Christ, nor did the Gospels appear, which are only a small part of what was written and transmitted orally about the Savior at that time. A great deal of this remained in the apocrypha, which did not fall into the category of canonical books. The Gospels were written for different reasons and purposes. The Gospel of John the Theologian is written in Greek and opens with the words: "In the beginning was the Word." The word "Logos" in Greek is a term of Greek philosophy (see the work of Prince S. Trubetskoy "The Doctrine of the Logos"). With what amazing simplicity the Apostle John takes this term that is current in Greek philosophy and applies it in relation to the Saviour, as if saying to the Greeks: "You see, the Logos, of whom you have heard so much, is Christ!" when she wanted to explain the meaning of Christianity to the outside world. The Church had to face it, this world, very soon, and these clashes were twofold. On the one hand, they were connected with the persecution of Christians, on the other hand, with his entire culture, which at that time contained a poison much finer than that contained in the persecutions. Ernest Renan calls the Greek world of that era "le miracle grec"; Even now we are amazed at the beauty and completeness of the forms of this world. The "Greek miracle" continues to dominate the minds of people to this day, and in the fifteenth century, for example, the Renaissance wanted to immerse itself entirely in it. And so, ordinary Galilean fishermen challenged such a culture. How did this world live? What was his philosophy, his understanding of God? We will not find here a coarse paganism, which could, like Perun, be dragged to the Dnieper. No one in the 1st century of the Pasha era believed in idols. There was a belief in something much deeper, namely, a belief in natural harmony. Greek thought has always sought to move away from the accidental to the harmonious. The harmonious was eternal for her. The Greeks were not interested in history, did not love or appreciate it; they loved that which always exists in the world, and behind the individual fact, behind the individual human personality, they strove to see the general law. Everything in the world is cyclical, everything constantly returns: spring, summer, autumn, winter; Everything is harmonious, everything repeats. The Greeks abhorred everything concrete and historical. What a difference this was from the Christian preaching, which taught that the world lies in evil and that death - the shameful execution of Christ - will save the world from this evil! Christians believe that salvation took place in history, "under Pontius Pilate." This indication unites the abstract theory of salvation with the life of the world. Thus, Christian theology and the Greek world confronted each other, not understanding each other. Christianity wanted, on the one hand, to protect itself from it, and on the other hand, to blow up this world of culture. This period of Christian history can be characterized as the Christianization of Hellenism or the Hellenization of Christianity. Christianity was expounded in the language of Greek philosophy. The whole miracle of the ancient Church was that Hellenism was churched. Paradoxically, the entire Jewish Old Testament heritage - with stories about the tribes of Israel, about the battles, victories and defeats of the Israeli people, with stories about how God worked in them - found expression in the language of Hellenic culture. The combination of these two different natural values created early Christian theology. But before this fusion took place, Christianity had to go through a period of struggle with Gnosticism. By the first century A.D., the ancient world in most cases had already preferred to irrational faith the idea of higher knowledge, which God gives only to the initiated (as we now find in anthroposophy, theosophy, etc.). Secret sects with various ritual activities, which arose in the Greek world under the influence of Eastern cults, were very common. They gave food to the imagination, attracted with their mystery. Christianity also carried a mystery in itself, but this mystery was different, for Christ teaches: "What you hear in your ear, preach on the housetops" (Matt. 10:27). The Gnostics became interested in Christianity, because it seemed to them a new ally (Christians gathered at night, performed some mysterious rites). The Gnostics tried to incorporate Christianity into their teachings. Christianity spread very rapidly, and people often joined it without special, appropriate training. Therefore, the Gnostics were able to convince some of them that the main thing in Christianity was not that Christ brought salvation, but that He gave secret knowledge that could be learned by becoming an initiate. Myths appeared, created on the opposition of evil and good principles, although they carry some echoes of Christian teaching, but at the same time fundamentally distort it. The Gnostics taught that Christ was not a man and came to earth not to inhabit filthy and sinful human flesh, but to impart a mystery to people. Such an understanding gave rise to various distortions of Christianity. One of them was docsticism, which taught about the illusory appearance of Christ in the world. Feeling the real danger of dissolving among all these teachings, the Church decided to accurately formulate the canon of Holy Scripture. From the large, as we have already said, Christian material, which was distributed among the faithful, she selected four books, which she called the Gospels. Protestants believe that Orthodoxy subordinates the Gospel to the Church. But we believe that if the Gospel is the good news of Christ, then the Church has never been without the Gospel; It's just that at a certain moment she felt the need to record this news. And the best proof of this necessity is that we have four Gospels, and not one, that in all of them there is the same message about Christ, and that this message is transmitted according to the report of this or that evangelist, i.e. it is attested by him. Later, the Epistles were added to the Gospels, and by the fourth century the entire canonical code of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments was recorded. Thus, 1) at first the Church revealed the main core of her faith - Jesus is Christ - in pictorial symbols (catacomb signs), 2) then this core unfolded into the Gospels, and 3) the Symbol of Faith. It recorded faith in God as Father and Creator (a reaction to the Greeks' rejection of the idea of creation out of nothing), the Almighty (the rejection of the dualism of the self-sufficient forces of good and evil), and in the One Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became a man (and not a ghost), and in the Holy Spirit (a member of the Symbol that never received full revelation); then it is immediately spoken of about the Church, and thereby it is indicated that by the Holy Spirit the Lord dwells among us and lives in the Church. In the second century, as a reaction to the Gnostic poison, the Church also determined its structure, which was based on apostolic succession. Hierarchy was another point through which the Church defined her faith. Later, Christian doctrine developed as a science, but the foundation not only of its teaching, but also of liturgical experience, always remained: the symbol, the Gospel and apostolic succession. The Church once lived without a written Gospel and without a formalized hierarchy, but she never remained without the Eucharist. It is a sacrament with a capital letter, which gives the Church in living experience a sense of eternal presence, an eternal repetition of what constitutes her very essence: Christ is God, He lived on earth, suffered, died and rose again. In this mystical experience, there is the creation of the world, and its fall, and its salvation. In the Liturgy we partake of the very Source of living faith, He is the living Gospel. No matter what difficult moments the Church experiences, by preserving the Liturgy, she also preserves her objective experience. The basis and criterion of this experience is not abstract data, but the very life of the Church. And the drama of our time is that the laity have ceased to understand what divine services are. Only through the liturgy can theology and church piety be restored and revived. The inner unity of the symbol, the Gospel and the hierarchy is given to us in the sacrament of the Eucharist, which is constantly celebrated, in the fullness of which we can enter to the best of our ability. Thus, the sources of theology and its basis are: Holy Scripture, Holy Tradition and the teaching on hierarchy, as they were defined by the Ecumenical Councils and the Holy Fathers. The auxiliary purpose of theology is: the revelation and defense of what already exists in the Church in its fullness. Vincent of Lérins defined Holy Tradition and theology as that which is always, by everyone, and everywhere accepted. Theology is a witness not from my talent, but from the fullness in which I am baptized. Every Christian, therefore, is to some extent a theologian, a witness of Jesus Christ before God and the world, confessing that Christ is the Son of God. We are sent into the world as apostles; in this regard, the salvation of the world depends on ourselves, for we have been given what we must pass on to others - Tradition. The Church is a society that must continue the work of God on earth. Let us outline the range of sources of church theology, which remains unchanged. It consists of: Holy Scripture, Holy Tradition, 6 liturgical experience of the Church. If we add the latter to these, this does not mean that the liturgical rite, in the sense of the rite, remains one and the same. The source of the liturgical experience of the Church has not changed. In relation to this unchanging core, everything else in theology is the processing or disclosure, for one purpose or another, of certain facts or ideas that constitute the subject matter of theology. But before proceeding to the consideration of the immutable sources of theology, let us say a few more words about the historical fate of theology itself. Towards the end of the early period of the Church, when the very sources of theology were being compiled and formed, i.e. approximately by the middle of the third century, we notice individual attempts to give a systematic exposition of what the Church has in its experience. The birthplace of this original systematic theology was Alexandria, where an intense theological life took place and where Neoplatonism already existed at that time. There, under the protection of the brilliant Alexandrian School, or Museum, as it was then called, the school of Clement of Alexandria and Origen was born (you will get acquainted with the details of the teachings of these theologians in the course of patrology, and now we will only note certain currents of theological thought). Thus, Clement of Alexandria and Origen can be considered the founders of systematic theology. The need to theologize was first born in Alexandria - not only from the desire to defend the faith from its enemies, but also from some inner necessity, from a certain theological eros. In our time, theology is often opposed to holiness, but the early Fathers show us by their example that these are not heterogeneous quantities that have nothing to do with each other; At that time, theology itself led to holiness, and holiness to theology. Origen himself was a fanatic of asceticism, and not an armchair scholar. From his childhood he tried to be worthy of the crown of martyrdom, being the son of a martyr; his letter to his father, who was imprisoned for his beliefs, is a characteristic example of Origen's religious attitude. Origen is chained to the Holy Scriptures, which are for him the only source of both any speculation and holiness itself. He asserts that there are two ways of communing with Christ: one through partaking of the Saviour's Flesh and Blood, and the other through the Word of God. And this love for God's Word makes his theology first of all exegesis (i.e., interpretation). Believing that the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. The Scriptures are the foundation of both theology and Christian life in general, Origen felt the need for a scientific study of its texts. And if Origen is the father of systematic theology, then he can also be considered the founder of the research approach to the Holy Scriptures. Scriptures. He studied the Hebrew and Greek texts of the Bible, compared the various translations of the Old and New Testaments, using six columns of translations, and collected in Alexandria a large number of manuscripts and versions of the texts of the entire Old Testament. Origen left to subsequent generations of theologians many different interpretations of the Holy Scriptures. Hagiographa. With this, he set the tone for the further study of Scripture and the very nature of theology. Origen's main assertion is the following: the entire content of the Holy Scriptures. of the Scriptures, both the New and the Old Testaments, is Christ Himself. This approach led further interpreters to the so-called typological method of studying the Holy Scriptures. Typology should not be confused with allegory, since the former is the finding of prototypes that are typical of a particular event and remain fixed for eternity, while allegory is a product of time, which does not always coincide with reality and disappears when the epoch that gave rise to it passes). Using the typological method, Origen finds the transformative meaning of the entire Old Testament in relation to the New: the Old Testament Pascha is a prototype of the New Testament, of which Ap. Paul writes to the Corinthians: "Our Passover, Christ, was sacrificed for us" (1 Cor. 5:7); the liberation of the Jews from the Egyptian and Babylonian captivity is a prototype of Christ's salvation of the human race, and so on. Speaking of types and allegories, it is appropriate to note that in Christianity there are also symbols; In this respect, our entire Orthodox liturgy is completely symbolic. Very often these symbols are understood as allegories, i.e. as allegorical images of the life of Christ. They usually include the small entrance, the candle brought before the Gospel, etc. However, these usual interpretations are of later origin. An authentic symbol has a real meaning; it is not just a sign, but a sign filled with meaning. Thus, it is only through the symbol that we are given the opportunity to partake of the Body and Flesh of Christ, and in church practice, if the priest sees the body instead of the bread-symbol on the diskos, then this kind of manifestation is recognized by the Church as a state of delusion (temptation). Thus, allegory is something superficial, transitory, while typology reveals the inner meaning of this or that phenomenon in its relation to Christ, the Church, and to the human soul itself. Using this method, Origen in his work "On the Elements" tried to explain the principles of the Christian faith. He himself emphasizes that the system he proposes is new, and therefore Origen does not impose it, but only proposes it. His teaching can be regarded as an experience of a philosophical explanation of faith. In his work On the Elements, Origen speaks of the creation of the world and the fall of man. It is of great importance as the first experience of dogmatic theology. Clement of Alexandria, like Origen, also had a great influence in determining the future structure of theology.

The "Golden Age" of Orthodoxy.

From the fourth century a new epoch in the history of Christianity begins. Externally, this is the era of secularization, i.e. the reconciliation of the Church with the state, within the Church - the beginning of a long period of theological disputes, which led to a more precise definition of her teaching. To this epoch belongs the appearance on the church horizon of those titans of theology who are commonly called the Fathers of the Church. Before that, Clement of Rome, Ignatius the God-bearer and other teachers revered by the Church lived, but they did not create their own school. As for the Fathers of the Church in the special sense of the word, they are the theologians who lived in the period between the fourth and twelfth centuries and who forged our Orthodox dogmatics. Their works constitute the golden capital of the Church, which it enjoys to this day. The need to find and expound precise formulas of faith appeared with the beginning of Arianism. It was based on a dispute about the divinity of Jesus Christ, raised - no later than 315 - by the Alexandrian presbyter Arius. In textbooks on theology, the presentation of its essence is usually somewhat simplified: in them, as a rule, it is said that Arius denied the divinity of Jesus Christ. In fact, this controversy arose not from doubts of faith, but from some discrepancy between the act of faith and its philosophical interpretation. Becoming a Christian, a person had to reforge, as it were, his mind, to make it capable of perceiving the truth about the divinity of the Savior. The old tools that were available were not suitable for explaining the truths of the Christian faith. The Church believed in the facts of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Christ before she began to think about them, and lived with the joy of her faith in the reality of these events before she began to formulate this faith. The mind had to be churched and enlightened by it. This reforging of the mind, the reforging of ancient forms of thought into new ones, the discovery of a new language for a new truth, is the merit of the Fathers. Again we recall Basil the Great, who spoke of "God-worthy words." With our practical attitude to life, it is difficult for us to understand why people argued so much over certain words. It is difficult to understand, because we do not imagine that these words (as, for example, "omoousios", i.e. "consubstantial") were a confession of those ineffable truths that had to be dressed and clothes specially made for them. The Arian controversy lasted sixty years - between the First and Second Ecumenical Councils - and led to the definition of the Trinitarian dogma (i.e. the dogma of the Holy Trinity). Athanasius the Great, the Cappadocian Fathers - Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian - and some other teachers of the Church participated in the forging of this dogma. This first generation of Fathers devoted themselves to the formulation of the dogma of the Trinity, which is expressed in one word: "consubstantial." It was inspired from above by Athanasius the Great; Later, the Cappadocian Fathers were engaged in comprehending its meaning. No sooner had this dispute ended than a new, Christological one began. After the Church had defined the mystery of the Holy Mysteries. The question of another mystery immediately arose: how the two natures – divine and human – are combined in Christ. The history of this dispute is divided into two stages, the first of which is related to the heresy of Nestorius. Nestorius' theology should not be simplified, reducing it to a mere denial of the Mother of God, since in fact it was primarily about the divinity of Christ. Nestorius, who preached from the Syrian desert and later became archbishop of the See of Constantinople, taught Jesus as the greatest of the prophets, in whom all the fullness of Christ dwelt bodily. Many people were impressed by this teaching. One of the greatest Fathers of the Church, Cyril of Alexandria, rebelled against Nestorian theology and defeated it. St. Cyril was the first to give a formula about the divine-manhood of Jesus Christ and confessed that the Mother of God was indeed the Mother of God, calling her the Mother of God ( ). The second stage of the debate about the spirit of Christ's natures is connected with Monophysitism, a heresy opposite to Nestorianism - its supporters saw in Christ one God. A number of theologians rebelled against this heresy, the most prominent of whom was Pope Leo the Great. Their defense of the God-manhood of Christ led to the definition of the Fourth Council of Chalcedon (451), affirming in the Saviour the fullness of God and man "unmerged, unchanging, inseparable, inseparable." This conciliar formula is called "oros", i.e. "fence" or "definition". Thus arose the Christological dogma, the dogma of the God-manhood of the Saviour, the definition of faith of the Ecumenical Councils, which constitutes something immutable and absolute. If we take up the piles of material that have survived from the Ecumenical Councils, then the question involuntarily arises: what was the basis of their work? The Fathers of these Councils took Holy Scripture for it. At present, the depth of understanding of the Holy Scriptures. The Scriptures that took place in the epoch described have been lost, and we do not feed on them as the ancient Church was nourished by the Scriptures. The early Fathers, in addition to the explanation of certain passages and polemical letters against heretics, based on the same Holy Scriptures. Scriptures, they left nothing behind them. Therefore, the reproaches of the Protestants that Scripture is not sufficiently studied in Orthodoxy are inappropriate, since the entire tradition of the Church Fathers is permeated and sanctified by it. And if for Protestants the Bible is not just a book, but the Word of God, then for the Orthodox, every time during a service it is said: "And that we may be vouchsafed to hear the holy Gospel...", the Word of God is also a true reality. Thus, the main key to the explanation of the dogmas of faith has always been the Holy Scriptures. Writing. The further work of the Fathers consisted in combining the truths of faith with the concepts of Greek philosophy, i.e. in adapting philosophy to the perception of Christianity or in the churching of minds. When the dispute with the Arians arose, the Orthodox world agonized over what to oppose to this heresy, the dialectic of which seemed to be stronger. Arius referred to a number of texts from the Holy Scriptures. The Scriptures, which, in his opinion, substantiated his statements ("My Father is greater than I!" - John 14:28), "Of that day or hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father" - Mk. 13:32). And so, when theologians tried to answer Arius scientifically, based on the Holy Scriptures. In the Scriptures, the word "omoousios" was suddenly put forward by Athanasius the Great. It was absent in Scripture and was completely new in theology, but only this word, only this word, could save the Church from the Arian heresy. Only this word was suitable for the dogma of the divinity of Christ's nature to be finally affirmed. For some time, Athanasius the Great, hiding from persecution in the Egyptian desert with Anthony, supported this truth; even Basil the Great was not then a supporter of the concept of "omoousios". The fifty-year path of compromise, first of the Eastern and then of the Western Churches, ended in the end with the return of the entire Church, headed by the brothers Basil the Great and Gregory of Nyssa, to Athanasius. The correspondence of the Fathers on this subject makes an exciting impression, and especially the moment when Athanasius saw the return of the entire Church to the truth that he had defended all his life. Athanasius was neither a philosopher nor a particularly educated man, but in spite of this he left the ecclesiastical expression of truth. In such phenomena lies the power of patristic theology; when it was necessary to confess those facts about which the Holy Synod narrates. In order to forge "God-worthy words," the Fathers did not neglect the profane language and, turning to the language of their time, used it to serve the truth. Just as, in the words of Clement of Alexandria, "all the brass of paganism, all the gold of Egypt, after the return of the Jews from captivity, went to adorn the temple of the One God," so it happened with the creation of theological terminology. In this respect, the Fathers of the Church are of primary importance, and there has not been and cannot be a genuine theology that does not come from the Fathers. What they have created remains the foundation for all time; Theology cannot be understood without entering the world of the Fathers, although it is a different world and a different environment. The sacred foundation of patristic theology is valuable for us because it is a synthesis of the rules of faith and life.

The Byzantine period and the fall of Byzantium.