The Mystery of Faith. Introduction to Orthodox Dogmatic Theology

At the center of the entire New Testament gospel lies the mystery of the incarnation of the Son of God.The first-created Adam was unable to fulfill the task assigned to him - to achieve deification through spiritual and moral perfection and to bring the visible world to God. After breaking the commandment and falling away from the sweetness of paradise, the path to deification was closed to him. But everything that the first man could not fulfill, was fulfilled for him by the incarnate God - the Word made flesh - the Lord Jesus Christ. He Himself walked the path to man by which man had to go to Him. And if for man it was the path of ascent, then for God it was the path of humble condescension, impoverishment and exhaustion (kenosis).The Apostle Paul called Christ the second Adam, contrasting Him with the first Adam: "The first man is of the earth, earthly, the second man is the Lord from heaven" (1 Cor. 15:47). This opposition is developed by the Holy Fathers, who emphasize that Adam was a prototype of Christ by contrast: "Adam is the image of Christ," says St. John Chrysostom. "As he became the cause of death for those who were born of him, although they did not eat of the tree, so Christ became for those who were born of him, although they did not do good, the giver of righteousness, which he gave to us all through the cross [1]." St. Gregory the Theologian contrasts in detail the sufferings of Christ with the fall of Adam: "For each of our debts a special recompense has been given... For this purpose, the tree is for the tree, and for the hand - the hands, for the intemperately outstretched - courageously outstretched, for the willful - nailed (to the cross), for the one who expelled Adam - uniting the ends of the world together. For this, the ascension (to the cross) is for the fall, the gall is for the eating (of the forbidden fruit)... death for death, burial for return to the earth."2 Few accepted the second Adam and believed in Him when He came to earth. Jesus, incarnate, suffering, and resurrected, became "a stumbling block to the Jews" and "foolishness to the Greeks" (1 Cor. 1:23). In the eyes of the orthodox Jew, Jesus was indeed a scandalous figure ("temptation" - skandalon), since He declared Himself to be God and made Himself equal to God (John 5:18), which was perceived as blasphemy. When Caiaphas, feeling that false testimony is insufficient against Christ, asks Him: "Are you the Christ, the Son of the Blessed?", not wanting to say directly "Son of God", so as not to mention the name of God once again, and Christ answers, "I am", the high priest tears his tunic, as if hearing unbearable blasphemy (Mark 14:61-64). We do not know exactly what this "I am" sounded like in Aramaic, but whether He did not call Himself by the sacred name of God Yahweh (Heb. Yahweh, as has been said, comes from ehieh - "I am"), which no one had the right to pronounce, except the high priest once a year, when he entered the Holy of Holies? Over the course of many centuries, Greek wisdom had built a temple to the "unknown God" (Acts 17:23), and it was incapable of understanding how the unknown, invisible, incomprehensible, omnipotent, omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent God could become a mortal, suffering, weak man. The God born of a Woman, the God Who is wrapped in swaddling clothes, put to bed, fed with milk - all this seemed absurd to the Greeks. Ioannis Chrysostomi Opera omnia. Ed. 2. Paris, 1834-1839. T. 9, 520S^PG 35, 433S-436A^

The Christ of the Gospel: God and Man

In the Gospel, Jesus Christ is described as a real person with all the qualities of an ordinary person. He is born and grows, eats and drinks, gets tired and sleeps, grieves and rejoices. Many have been seduced by this evangelical realism and have tried to construct an image of the "historical Christ" by contrasting him with the "Christ of faith" or the "Christ of believers," rejecting all that is miraculous and "mystical" in the Gospel, and leaving only that which "does not contradict common sense." For example, in the book by E. Renan "The Life of Jesus" all the miracles of Christ are called "juggling": He "thought that He performed" miracles, but in reality there were no miracles [1]. In his commentaries on the Gospel, Leo Tolstoy becomes sophisticated in blasphemy about the Seedless Conception, Transfiguration, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, as well as about all healings and miracles: "A sick person waits 20 years for a miracle. Jesus looked at him and said, "In vain do you wait for a miracle from an angel here, miracles do not happen." Wake up. Gather up your bed and live in God's way. He tried, got up and went... I knew a lady who lay down for 20 years and got up only when she was given a spray of morphine: 20 years later, the doctor who gave her a spray confessed that he had sprayed with water, and when the lady learned this, she took her bed and went [2]." In fact, Tolstoy does not so much ridicule the miracles of Christ as he denies the reality of human suffering: the cause of suffering is self-deception. With this approach, both healing and redemption seem simply superfluous: a person only needs to convince himself that he is healthy, and everything will fall into place. The so-called "historical Christ", that is, freed from the "patina of mysticism and miracles", turns at best, as in Renan, into the Christ of human fantasy - a sugary picture that has little in common with the real Christ. In the worst case, as in Tolstoy, everything ends with a caricature of the Gospel.The living, real Christ is known to us when we accept the entire Gospel to the last letter as a revelation of Divine truth. The Gospel is not a book comprehended by the human mind: it is superrational and supernatural, it is full of miracles from beginning to end, and it is itself a miracle. Indeed, the very first chapters of each Gospel bear witness to the Divinity of Christ, to the existence of angels and the devil, and they confront the human mind with a choice: either to humble itself, submitting to faith and the superrational revelation of the Divinity, or... close the book because it contradicts "common sense". Thus, in the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, we read about the birth of Christ from a virgin without the participation of a man; in the first chapter of Mark - about the temptation of Christ in the wilderness and his meeting with the devil; from Luke - about the appearance of the archangel and the Annunciation; From the first chapters, the Christ of the Gospel is revealed to us simultaneously as God and man: all His actions and words, being the actions and words of man, are nevertheless marked by the seal of divinity. Jesus is born, like other children, but not of a husband and wife, but of the Holy Spirit and a Virgin. The Infant is brought to the temple, like other firstborns, but He is met by a prophet and a prophetess and recognized as the Messiah. He grows and strengthens in spirit while living in his parents' home, but when he is twelve years old, he sits in the temple among the teachers and speaks mysterious words about His Father. He comes to be baptized on the Jordan, like other people, but at the moment of Baptism, the voice of the Father is heard and the Holy Spirit appears in the form of a dove. He gets tired of the journey, sits down at the well and asks the Samaritan woman to drink, but he does not drink or eat when the disciples bring food and offer it to Him. He sleeps at the stern of the boat, but when he wakes up, he tames the raging elements with a word. He ascends Mount Tabor and prays to God, like any other person, but during prayer He is transfigured and reveals to His disciples the light of His Divinity. He comes to the tomb of Lazarus and mourns the death of His friend, but with the words "Lazarus, come out!" He resurrects him. He fears suffering and prays to the Father to avoid it if possible, but He surrenders Himself to the will of the Father and expresses His willingness to die for people. Finally, he accepts desecration, humiliation and crucifixion, dies on the cross as a criminal, but on the third day he rises from the tomb and appears to his disciples.The Gospel irrefutably testifies to the divine-manhood of Christ. Being a book inspired by God, it is, however, written by living people, each of whom describes events as he saw and perceived them, or as he heard about them from eyewitnesses. The "inspiration" of the sacred books is understood as the joint creation of people and the Holy Spirit - their cooperation, synergia. There are certain differences in detail between the four Evangelists, which does not indicate a contradiction between them, but their unity: if the narratives were absolutely identical, this would indicate that their authors consulted with each other and copied from each other. The Gospels are eyewitness accounts in which each fact is reliable, but is presented from the point of view of a particular author. E. Renan. The Life of Jesus. Moscow, 1990. Pp. 188-189 ^ L. Tolstoy. Complete Works. T. 24. Moscow, 1957. P. 311 ^

The Christ of Faith: Two Natures

The Holy Scriptures are the main source of our knowledge about God and about Christ. But Scripture can be understood and interpreted in different ways: all heresies were supported by references to Scripture and quotations from the Bible. Therefore, a certain criterion for the correct understanding of the Bible is necessary: such a criterion in the Church is Holy Tradition, of which Scripture is a part. Holy Tradition includes the entire centuries-old experience of the life of the Church, reflected, in addition to Scripture, in the acts and beliefs of the Ecumenical Councils, in the writings of the Holy Fathers, and in liturgical practice. The whole pathos of the New Testament lies in the fact that its authors were "witnesses": "Of that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and which our hands have touched, concerning the Word of life: for life has appeared, and we have seen, and testify, and declare unto you this eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us" (1 John 1:1-2). But Christ continues to live in the Church, and the experience of contact with Him, of life in Him, gives birth to a new witness, which is sealed in Tradition. The Gospel spoke of Christ as God and man, but Church Tradition had to formulate the dogma of the union of Divinity and humanity in Christ. The development of this dogma was carried out in the era of Christological disputes (IV-VII centuries). In the second half of the fourth century, Apollinaris of Laodicea taught that the primordial God the Logos took on human flesh and soul, but did not take on the human mind: instead of the mind, Christ had a Divinity that merged with humanity and made one nature with it. Hence the famous formula of Apollinarius, later erroneously attributed to St. Athanasius: "one nature of God the Word incarnate." According to the teaching of Apollinarius, Christ is not completely of the same essence with us, since He does not have a human mind. He is a "heavenly man" who has only taken on a human form, but has not become a full-fledged earthly man. Some followers of Apollinaris said that the Logos took on only a human body, and that His soul and spirit are divine. Others went further and asserted that He brought the body from heaven, but passed through the Holy Virgin "as through a trumpet."1 Opponents of Apollinaris and representatives of another trend in Christology were Diodorus of Tarsus and Theodore of Mopsuestia, who taught about the coexistence in Christ of two separate independent natures, which are correlated as follows: God the Logos dwelt in the man Jesus, Whom He chose and anointed, with Whom he "touched" and "lived". The union of mankind with the Godhead, according to Theodore and Diodorus, was not absolute, but relative: the Logos lived in Jesus as in a temple. The earthly life of Jesus, according to Theodore, is the life of man in contact with the Logos. "God from eternity foresaw the highly moral life of Jesus, and in view of this He chose Him as the organ and temple of His Divinity." At first, at the moment of birth, this contact was incomplete, but as Jesus grew spiritually and morally perfected, it became fuller. The final deification of Christ's human nature took place after His redemptive feat [2].In the fifth century, Theodore's disciple Nestorius, Patriarch of Constantinople, following his teacher, made a sharp distinction between the two natures in Christ, separating the Lord from the "image of the servant", the temple from the "living in it", the Almighty God from the "worshipped man". Nestorius preferred to call the Most Holy Virgin Mary the Mother of Christ, and not the Mother of God, on the grounds that "Mary did not give birth to the Divinity." The unrest among the people over the term "Mother of God" (the people did not want to abandon this traditional designation of the Holy Virgin), as well as the sharp criticism of Nestorianism by St. Cyril of Alexandria, led to the convocation of the Third Ecumenical Council in Ephesus in 431, which formulated (although not definitively) the teaching of the Church about the God-man. but about the "union" of the two natures in Christ. In the incarnation, God took on human nature while remaining what He was: that is, being perfect and complete God, He became a full-fledged man. In contrast to Theodore and Nestorius, Saint Cyril constantly emphasized that Christ is one indivisible person, one hypostasis. Thus, the rejection of the term "Theotokos" means the denial of the mystery of the Incarnation, because God the Word and the man Jesus are one and the same Person: "We have been taught from the Divine Scriptures and the Holy Fathers to confess one Son, Christ and Lord, that is, the Word of God the Father, begotten of Him before the ages, in a manner ineffable and befitting only God, and Him in the last times for our sake, Who was born of the Holy Virgin according to the flesh, and since she gave birth to God Incarnate and Incarnate, we call her the Mother of God. One is the Son, One Lord Jesus Christ, both before and after the Incarnation. There were not two different sons: one Word from God the Father, and the other from the Holy Virgin. But we believe that the same Eternal One was born of the Virgin according to the flesh [3]." Insisting on the unity of the person of Christ, St. Cyril also used the dubious formula of Apollinarius, "the one nature of God the Word incarnate," thinking that this formula belongs to St. Athanasius of Alexandria. St. Cyril, in contrast to the Cappadocians who preceded him in time, used the term "nature" (ousia) as a synonym for the term "hypostasis," which, as it soon turned out, became a source of new perplexities in Eastern Christian Christology. They spoke of the complete "merging" of the Divinity and humanity into "one nature of God the Word incarnate": the formula of Apollinarius-Cyril became their banner. "God died on the cross" - this is how the supporters of Dioscorus expressed it, denying the possibility of talking about some of Christ's actions as human actions [4]. Eutyches, after much persuasion to accept the teaching of the two natures in Christ, said: "I confess that our Lord consisted of two natures before the union, and after the union I confess one nature."5 The Fourth Ecumenical Council, convened in 451 in Chalcedon, condemned Monophysitism and rejected the Apollinarian formula "one nature incarnate", contrasting it with the formula "one hypostasis of God the Word in two natures – divine and human [6]". The Orthodox teaching was expressed even before the beginning of the Council by St. Leo, Pope of Rome: "It is equally dangerous to recognize in Christ only God without man, or only man without God... Thus, in the whole and perfect nature of the true man, the true God was born, all in His, all in our... He Who is the true God is the true man. And there is not the slightest untruth in this unity, since both the humility of man and the greatness of the Divinity exist together... One of them shines with miracles, the other is humiliated... Humble shrouds show the infancy of a child, and the faces of angels proclaim the greatness of the Almighty. Hunger, thirst, fatigue, and sleep are obviously characteristic of man, and to feed five thousand people with five loaves of bread, to give living water to the Samaritan woman, to walk in the waters of the sea, to calm the rising waves, to forbid the wind, is undoubtedly characteristic of God [7]." In this way, each nature preserves the fullness of its attributes, but Christ is not divided into two persons, remaining one hypostasis of God the Word.In the dogmatic definition of faith of the Council it is indicated that Christ is of one essence with the Father in Divinity and is of one essence with us in humanity, and also that the two natures in Christ are united "unmerged, unchanging, inseparable, inseparable" [8]. These chiseled formulations show how sharp and vigilant the theological thought of the Eastern Church was in the fifth century, and at the same time how cautiously the Fathers used terms and formulas in trying to "express the inexpressible." All four terms that speak of the union of natures are strictly apophatic - they begin with the prefix "not-". This shows that the union of the two natures in Christ is a mystery that transcends the mind, and no word can describe it. The only thing that is said with precision is how the natures are not united, in order to avoid heresies that merge, confuse, and divide them. But the very image of union remains hidden to the human mind. V. Bolotov. Lectures on the History of the Ancient Church. T. 4. Pg. 1918. pp. 136-148. See. See also: M. Posnov. History of the Christian Church. Brussels, 1964. Ss. 372-374. See. See also: J. Meyendorff. Christ in Eastern Christian Thought. New York, 1975. R. 15 ^ V. Bolotov. Lectures on the History of the Ancient Church. T. 4. Ss. 152-156. See. See also: J. Pelikan. The Christian Tradition, v. 1: The Emergence of the Catholic Tradition (100-600). Chicago - London 1971. p. 231-232 ^ St. Cyril of Alexandria. 1st Epistle to Suckens ^ V. Bolotov. Lecture. T. 4. P. 243 ^ Ibid. P. 253 ^ J. Meyendorff. Christ. Pp. 26–27^ Op. cit. by: V. Bolotov. Lecture. T. 4. Ss. 267-269. See. See also: J. Pelikan. Emergence. Rr. 258–259 ^ Op. cit. by: V. Bolotov. Lecture. T. 4. Ss. 292-293 (full Greek text and Russian translation) ^

The Two Wills of Christ

In the sixth century, some theologians said that in Christ one must confess two natures, but not independent, but having one "God-manly action," one energy, hence the name heresy - monoenergism. By the beginning of the seventh century, another trend had formed, Monothelitism, which confessed one will in Christ. Both currents rejected the independence of the two natures of Christ and taught about the complete absorption of His human will by the Divine will. Monothelite views were professed by three patriarchs - Honorius of Rome, Sergius of Constantinople and Cyrus of Alexandria. They hoped to reconcile the Orthodox with the Monophysites by means of a compromise.The main fighters against Monothelitism in the middle of the seventh century were the Constantinople monk St. Maximus the Confessor and Pope Martin, the successor of Honorius in the Roman cathedra. St. Maximus taught about two energies and two wills in Christ: "Christ, being God by nature, used a will that was by nature divine and paternal, for He has one will with the Father. Being a man by nature, he also used a natural human will, which in no way opposed to the will of the Father [1]." The human will of Christ, although in harmony with the divine will, was completely independent. This is especially evident in the example of the Savior's prayer in Gethsemane: "My Father! If it be possible, let this cup pass from Me, not as I will, but as Thou wilt" (Matt. 26:39). Such a prayer would not have been possible if the human will of Christ had been completely absorbed by the Divine.Saint Maximus was severely punished for his confession of the Gospel Christ: his tongue was cut out and his right hand was cut off. He died in exile, as did Pope Martin. But the Sixth Ecumenical Council, which took place in the years 680-681 at Constantinople, fully confirmed the teaching of Saint Maximus: "We preach... that in Him (in Christ) there are two natural wills or desires, and two natural actions are inseparable, unchanging, inseparable, inseparable. These two natural wills are not opposed to each other... but His human will... is subject to the divine and omnipotent will [2]." As a full-fledged man, Christ had free will, but this freedom did not mean for him the possibility of choosing between good and evil. The human will of Christ freely chooses only the good, and there is no conflict between it and the Divine will. PG 91, 77D-80A. Cm. See also: J. Meyendorff. Christ. p. 147 ^ Op. cit. by: V. Bolotov. Lecture. T. 4. Ss. 498-499 ^

Expiation

In the New Testament, Christ is called the "atonement" for the sins of people (Matt. 20:28, 1 Cor. 1:30). "Atonement" is a Slavic translation of the Greek word lytrosis, meaning "ransom", that is, a sum of money, the payment of which gives the slave liberation, and the condemned to death - life. Through the Fall, man fell into slavery to sin (John 8:24, etc.), and redemption is required to free him from this slavery. Some believed that the ransom was paid to the devil, to whom man was enslaved. Thus, for example, Origen asserted that the Son of God gave His spirit into the hands of the Father, and gave His soul to the devil as a ransom for people: "To whom did the Redeemer give His soul as a ransom for many? Not to God, but... to the devil... As the ransom was given for us the soul of the Son of God, and not His spirit, for He had already delivered it up to the Father before, saying, 'Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit,' neither is the body, for we find nothing of this in the Scriptures." For such an understanding of redemption, St. Gregory the Theologian reproached Origen: "If the great and most glorious blood of God, of the bishop and of sacrifice is given as the price of redemption to the evil one, then how insulting it is! The thief receives not only the ransom price from God, but also from God Himself! [2] "St. Gregory of Nyssa interprets redemption as a "deception" and a "bargain with the devil": Christ, in order to redeem people, offers them His own flesh, "hiding" the Divinity under it; the devil rushes at it as a bait, but swallows the "hook" along with the bait, that is, the Divinity, and dies [3]. To the question whether "deception" is not immorality, uncharacteristic of the Divinity, St. Gregory replies that since the devil himself is a deceiver, it was quite right for God to deceive Him as well: "(The devil) used deception to corrupt nature, and the just, good and all-wise (God) used the invention of deception for the salvation of the corrupt, benefiting not only the lost (man), but also the one who caused our destruction (the devil)... For this reason, even the adversary himself, if he had felt the beneficence, would not have thought that it was unjust."4 Some other Fathers also say that the devil was "deceived," but they do not go so far as to assert that God deceived him. Thus, in the Catechetical Sermon attributed to St. John Chrysostom (it is read at Paschal Matins), it is said that hell was "ridiculed" by the Resurrection of Christ and "caught" for not noticing the invisible God under the visible man: "Hell was grieved when it met Thee: it was grieved because it was abolished, it was grieved because it was ridiculed... He took on a body and touched God, took on the earth and met heaven, received what he saw and was caught in what he did not see [5]." In one of the three kneeling prayers read on the feast of Pentecost, it is said that Christ "caught the beginning of the evil and deep serpent with divine flattery (i.e. deception)" [6].According to another interpretation, the ransom was paid not to the devil, since he has no power over man, but to God the Father. The Western theologian Anselm of Canterbury wrote in the eleventh century that the Divine Truth was angered by the fall of man, which demanded satisfaction (Latin satisfactio), but since no human sacrifices were enough to satisfy it, the Son of God Himself brought it a ransom. The death of Christ satisfied God's wrath, and man was restored to grace, for the assimilation of which he needs to have some merit - faith and good works [7]. But since, again, man does not have these merits, he can draw them from Christ, who has super-due merits, as well as from the saints, who have done more good deeds in their lives than was necessary for their personal salvation, and therefore have a surplus, as it were, which they can share. This theory, born in the depths of Latin scholastic theology, is of a legal nature and reflects medieval ideas about insults to honor that require satisfaction. The death of Christ, in this understanding, does not abolish sin, but only relieves man of responsibility for it.It should be noted, however, that the theory of satisfaction also penetrated into Russian academic theology, which in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was under the great influence of Latin scholasticism. Thus, for example, in the "Extensive Christian Katiechisis" it is written: "His (Christ's) voluntary sufferings and death on the cross for us, being of infinite value and dignity, as the death of the sinless and God-man, is both the complete satisfaction of God's justice, Who condemned us for sin to death, and the immeasurable merit that acquired to Him the right, without offending justice, to grant us, sinners, forgiveness of sins and grace for victory over sin [8]." The abundance of juridical terms (price, merit, satisfaction, insult, justice, law) testifies to the fact that such an understanding is closer to medieval scholasticism than to the views of the Fathers of the Eastern Church.In the Eastern Church, the reaction to the Western teaching on redemption as satisfaction was the Council of Constantinople of 1157, the participants of which, refuting the heresy of the "Latin-minded" Sotericus Panteeugenes, agreed that Christ offered a redemptive sacrifice to the entire Holy Trinity. and not to the Father alone: "Christ voluntarily offered Himself as a sacrifice, but offered Himself according to humanity, and Himself accepted the sacrifice as God together with the Father and the Spirit... The God-Man Word... He offered a saving sacrifice to the Father, to Himself, as God, and to the Spirit, by Whom man was called from non-existence to existence, Whom he offended by transgressing the commandment, and with Whom reconciliation took place through the sufferings of Christ [9]." The fact that Christ simultaneously offers and accepts sacrifice is stated in the priestly prayer read at the Liturgies of John Chrysostom and Basil the Great: "For Thou art the one who offers and is offered, and receives, and is distributed, O Christ our God." In one of the sermons of St. Cyril of Jerusalem it is said: "I see the Infant offering the lawful sacrifice on earth, but I see Him receiving sacrifices from all in heaven... He Himself is the Gifts, He Himself is the Bishop, He Himself is the altar, He Himself is the purgatory, He Himself is the Offerer, He Himself is the Sacrifice for the world. He Himself is the fire that exists, He Himself is the burnt offering, He Himself is the tree of life and knowledge, He Himself is the sword of the Spirit, He Himself is the Shepherd, He Himself is the priest, He Himself is the Law, and He Himself fulfills this law."10 Many ancient Church authors generally avoid speaking of "ransom" in the literal sense, understanding by redemption the reconciliation of mankind with God and adoption by Him. They speak of redemption as a manifestation of God's love for man. This view is confirmed in the words of the Apostle John the Theologian: "God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life" (John 3:16). It is not the wrath of God the Father, but His love that is the cause of the Son's sacrifice on the cross. According to St. Symeon the New Theologian, Christ offers mankind redeemed by Him as a gift to God, finally freeing it from the power of the devil [11]. Since man is enslaved to the devil from his very birth throughout his life, the Lord passes through every age so that at every stage of man's development the devil will be defeated: Christ "was incarnate and was born... sanctifying conception and birth, And gradually growing, blessed every age... He became a slave, taking the form of a slave - and us, slaves, he again elevated to the dignity of masters and made masters and rulers of the devil himself, who was formerly our tyrant... became a curse when he was crucified... and by His death He slew death, rose again, and destroyed all the strength and energy of the enemy, who had power over us through death and sin."12 The incarnate Christ, wishing to be like us in all things, passes not only through every age, but also through all possible forms of suffering, up to and including abandonment, which is the highest suffering of the human soul. The cry of the Savior on the cross: "My God! My god! Why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46) is the culmination of His suffering on Golgotha. But the great mystery of this moment is that the Divinity of Christ was not separated from humanity for a moment – God did not abandon Him, although He, as a man, feels human abandonment by God... And even when the body of the deceased Christ lay in the tomb, and His soul descended into hell, the Divinity was not separated from humanity: "In the grave in the flesh, in hell with the soul, as God, in paradise with the thief, and on the throne Thou wast Christ, with the Father and the Spirit, fulfilling all things, indescribable" (troparion of the feast of the Pascha of Christ). Christ simultaneously in hell and in paradise, and on earth, and in heaven, and with people, and with the Father and the Spirit - He fills everything with Himself, without being "describable", that is, limited by anything. "Do you see the depth of the mysteries? - writes St. Symeon the New Theologian. - Have you known the boundless greatness of abundant glory?.. (Christ) will have with us the same union by grace as He Himself has with the Father by nature... The glory which the Father gave to the Son, the Son also gives to us by grace... Having once become our kinsman in the flesh and made us partakers of His Divinity, He (thereby) made us His kinsmen... We have the same unity with Christ... what a husband has with his wife, and a wife with her husband [13]." In Christ, man is renewed and recreated. Christ's redemptive feat was accomplished not for the sake of an abstract "mass" of people, but for the sake of each concrete person. As the same St. Simeon says, "God sent His only-begotten Son to earth for you and for your salvation, because He foreknew you and predestined you to be His brother and co-heir."[14] In Christ the entire history of man, including his fall into sin and expulsion from paradise, receives justification, completion and absolute meaning. The Kingdom of Heaven, given by Christ to those who believe in Him, is something much more than the primordial paradise; it is "an incorruptible, undefiled, and unfading inheritance," in the words of the Apostle Peter (1 Pet. 1:4), it is the "third heaven," of which the Apostle Paul could say nothing, because the "ineffable words" that sound there surpass every human word (2 Cor. 12:2-4). The incarnation of Christ and His redemptive feat are of greater importance for man than even the creation of man itself. From the moment of the Incarnation, our history begins anew: man again finds himself face to face with God, as close, and perhaps even closer, than in the first minutes of human existence. Christ leads man into the "new paradise" - the Church, where He reigns and man reigns with Him. The word of the Gospel answers: to all those who believe in Christ ("whosoever believeth and is baptized shall be saved"; Mark 16:16). Faith in Christ makes us children of God, born of God (John 1:12-13). Through faith, Baptism and life in the Church, we become co-heirs of the Kingdom of God, we are freed from all the consequences of the Fall, we are resurrected together with Christ and partake of eternal life. "The Son of God becomes the Son of man, so that the son of man may become the son of God," says the Hieromartyr Irenaeus of Lyons [15]. St. Athanasius the Great expressed the same idea even more succinctly: "He became man so that we might be deified [16]." St. Maximus the Confessor says: "The firm and sure foundation of hope for deification for human nature is the incarnation of God, which makes man a god to the extent that God Himself became man. For it is evident that he who has become man without sin can also deify nature (human) without being transformed into Divinity, having raised it to the extent that He Himself humbled Himself for man's sake." St. Maximus calls God "desiring salvation and hungering for deification" of people [17]. In His immeasurable love for man, Christ ascended Golgotha and endured death on the cross, which reconciled and reunited man with God. PG 13, 1397-1399 ^ Gregory the Theologian. Homily 45 [Vol. 1, pp. 675-676] ^ Gregoriou Nyssis erga. T. 1. Sel. 468-472 ^ Ibid. Sel. 478-482 ^ PG 59, 723-724 ^ Festive Menaion. pp. 540 ^ PL 158, 382–430 ^ The Long Christian Catechism. Moscow, 1894. P. 36 ^ See: Hieromonk Pavel (Cheremukhin). The Council of Constantinople of 1157 and Nicholas, Bishop of Methodo: BT No1. Moscow, 1960. P. 93 ^ Cyril of Jerusalem. Catechetical and Secret Teachings. Moscow, 1900. pp. 360 ^ hymn 24, 129-132 [SC 174, p. 236] ^ Catechetical Discourse 5, 413-432 [SC 96, 410-412] ^ Moral Discourse 1, 6, 57-121 [SC 122, 228-232] ^ Moral Discourse 2, 1, 160-163 [SC 122, 322] ^ PG 7, 873 ^ PG 25, 192B ^ PG 91, 1209B ^

Anthology of Holy Texts

If anyone says that Christ, as through a trumpet, passed through the Virgin, and was not formed in her together divine and human... if anyone says that in the Virgin man was formed and then gave way to God... if anyone believes in two sons, one from God and the Father, and the other from the Mother, and not the same... if someone says that in Christ the Divinity, as in the prophet, acted grace-filled, and is not essentially conjugated and conjugated... If anyone does not worship the Crucified One, then let him be anathema and let him be reckoned among the God-killers.St. Gregory the TheologianWhat is more humiliating for God than the image of a servant? What is more humble for the King of all than to voluntarily enter into close communion with our feeble nature? The King of kings and Lord of lords takes the form of a servant; The judge of all becomes a tributary of the rulers; The Lord of Creation... he does not find a place in an inn, but is placed in a manger without words; the pure and blameless one does not abhor the defilement of human nature, but, having passed through all the degrees of our misery, he finally undergoes death itself. Behold the greatness of His self-abasement; Life tastes death; The judge is led to the praetor; The Lord of all life is subject to the sentence of the judge; The King of all supermundane powers is delivered into the hands of executioners.St. Gregory of NyssaThus, we confess that our Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, is perfect God and perfect man, (consisting) of a rational soul and body, that He was born before the ages of the Father according to Divinity, and in the last times, for the sake of us and our salvation, of the Virgin Mary according to humanity; that He is of one essence with the Father in Divinity and of one essence with us in humanity, for (in Him) the union of the two natures was accomplished. That is why we confess one Christ, one Son, one Lord. On the basis of such an unmerged union, we confess the Most Holy Virgin to be the Mother of God, because God the Word became incarnate and became man, and in His very conception united with Himself the temple received from Her... God the Word descended from heaven to earth and, taking the form of a servant, exhausted Himself, and was called the Son of man, remaining what He was, that is, God.St. Cyril of AlexandriaThus, following the Holy Fathers, we all teach in agreement to confess one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, perfect in the Divinity, perfect in humanity, truly God, truly man, the same from the rational soul and body, consubstantial with the Father in divinity, and of the same consubstantiality with us in humanity, in all things like unto us, except sin, born before the ages of the Father according to divinity, and in the last days for our sake and for our salvation from Mary the Virgin Theotokos according to humanity, one and the same Christ, the Son, the Only-begotten Lord in two natures, unmerged, unchanging, inseparable, inseparably known, so that by union the distinction between the two natures is not in the least violated, all the more is the property of each nature preserved and united into one Person, one Hypostasis – not into two persons of the one who is split or divided, but one and the same Only-begotten Son, God the Word, the Lord Jesus Christ... Exposition of the Faith of the Council of ChalcedonWe affirm in one and the same Lord our Saviour Jesus Christ all the twofold, that is, we confess in Him two natures... We also confess that each of His natures has natural properties: the Divine has all the divine properties, the human has all the human properties, except only sin... Confessing two natures, two natural wills, and two natural actions in our one Lord Jesus Christ, we do not teach that they are contrary and hostile to each other... we do not teach that they are divided, as it were, into two persons or hypostases... St. Agathon, Pope of RomeAll people have an inherent desire... If man by nature has the faculty of desire, then the Lord by nature has the faculty of desire, not only because He is God, but also because He became man. For just as He took on our nature, so He also took on our will according to natural laws... "Having come," says the Holy Gospel, "to the place, he said, 'I thirst.' And they gave him wine mingled with gall, and having tasted, he would not drink" (Matt. 27:34; John 19:28-29). If, therefore, He thirsted like God, and when He had eaten, He did not want to drink, then He was subject to suffering as God, for both thirst and eating are suffering. But if He did not thirst as God, then certainly as a man, and had the faculty of desire, just like man... We affirm that in our Lord Jesus Christ there are also two actions... The power of miracles was the work of His Divinity, and the works of His hands and what He willed and said, "I will, be cleansed," were the work of His humanity. The breaking of the loaves and the fact that he heard the leper and what he said, "I will, be cleansed" was what was done by His human action, and the multiplication of the loaves and the cleansing of the leper was the work of the divine nature... St. John of DamascusThe flesh of the Lord, by reason of the purest union with the Word... was enriched by divine actions, in no way undergoing the deprivation of her natural attributes, for she performed divine actions not by her own power, but by reason of the Word united to her, since the Word manifested His power through her. For red-hot iron burns, possessing the power of burning not as a result of natural conditions, but acquiring it from its union with fire. Thus, one and the same flesh was both mortal in nature and life-giving because of its hypostatic union with the Word. In the same way we speak of the deification of the will, not in such a way that the natural motion has changed, but in such a way that it has been united with His divine and omnipotent will, and has become the will of the incarnate God. through Whom all things were brought into being, that which is in heaven and that which is on earth... Being such, and abiding in the Father, and having the Father abiding in Himself, not separating from Him and not leaving Him at all, He descended to earth and was incarnated of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man, becoming... equal to us in all things, except sin, so that, having passed through all our things, we may recreate and renew that first man, and through him all those who are born and are being born, like their progenitor.St. Symeon the New TheologianCome, let us rejoice in the Lord, saying the real mystery: the center of the city is destroyed, the flaming weapon gives lashes, and the cherubim depart from the tree of life, and I partake of the food of paradise, from whom I was expelled for the sake of disobedience. For the unchangeable image of the Mother of God, the image of Him who bears Him, receives the form of a servant, having passed from the unadulterated Mother, having not endured change, for if He had remained, this God is true: and if He was not accepted, Man was for the sake of love for mankind. To him we cry out: Be born of a Virgin, O our God, have mercy on us. (Come, let us rejoice in the Lord, proclaiming today's sacrament: the barrier that stands in the middle has been broken, the flaming sword is turned back, and the cherubim departs from the tree of life, and I eat the food of paradise, which I was deprived of for disobedience. and he accepted what he was not - he became a Man out of love for mankind. Let us exclaim to Him: Thou who was born of a Virgin, O God, have mercy on us).Divine Service of the Nativity of Christ

Chapter VII: The Church

The Kingdom of Christ