Philosophy seeks the Creator of the universe

As long as a person lives on earth, he has always been characterized by the desire to find the truth, to comprehend his existence. In ancient Greece, philosophers were engaged in the study of the universe and its laws, as well as man and the laws of his thinking, hoping on the basis of this to achieve knowledge about the first causes of all things. Philosophers not only indulged in reasoning and logic, they also studied astronomy and physics, mathematics and geometry, music and poetry. Studying the visible world, philosophers came to the conclusion that there is nothing accidental in the Universe, but each detail has its place and performs its function, obeying strict laws: planets never deviate from their orbits and satellites do not leave their planets. Everything in the world is so harmonious and expedient that the ancients called it "cosmos", that is, beauty, order, harmony, as opposed to "chaos" - disorder, disharmony. The cosmos seemed to be a huge mechanism in which one never-breaking rhythm, one never-losing pulse operated. But every mechanism must be created by someone, every clock must be designed and wound. In this way, philosophers dialectically arrived at the idea of a single Organizer of the Universe. Plato called Him the Creator, the Father, God and the Demiurge - the latter term means the Worker, the Master. "Everything that has arisen needs a certain cause for its origin," writes Plato. - Of course, the Creator and Father of this universe is not easy to find, and if we do find Him, it will be impossible to tell everyone about Him... The cosmos is beautiful, and the Demiurge is kind... The cosmos is the most beautiful of all things that have arisen, and the demiurge is the best of causes... Being good, He took care of all visible things, which were not at rest, but in disorderly and disorderly motion; He brought them out of disorder into order [1]."Plato lived in a country where polytheism reigned supreme: people deified the elements and forces of nature and worshipped them. In Plato's cosmology, the gods perform functions somewhat similar to those of the angels in monotheistic religions: the demiurge created and commands them, and they serve His will. Wishing to create people, the Creator addresses them: "Gods of gods! I am your Demiurge and Father of things, and that which comes forth from Me will remain indestructible, for such is My will." Then He gives them the primordial matter and instructs them to create people from it... In fact, ancient philosophy, in the person of its best representatives, overcoming polytheism, approached the truth about the one God.Philosophers also spoke of the Logos (Greek logos means "word", "reason", "thought", "law"), which was originally perceived as a kind of eternal and universal law, on the basis of which the whole world is arranged. However, the Logos is not only an abstract and abstract idea: it is also a divine creative force that mediates between God and the created world. This is what Philo of Alexandria taught and the Neoplatonists. In Plotinus, a representative of the Neoplatonist school, philosophy is almost transformed into a religion - he emphasizes the transcendence, infinity, limitlessness and unknowability of the Godhead: no definitions can exhaust Him, no properties can be ascribed to Him. Being the fullness of being, the One (as Plotinus called God) gives rise to all other kinds of being, of which the first is the Mind, and the second is the Universal Soul; beyond the circle of the Universal Soul lies the material world, that is, the Universe, into which the Soul breathes life. The world, therefore, is a kind of reflection of the divine reality and bears in itself the features of beauty and perfection. The One, the Mind and the Soul together make up the Divine Triad (Trinity). Through purification, catharsis, a person can rise to the contemplation of God, but God still remains incomprehensible and unapproachable, still remains a mystery.Ancient philosophy, through dialectics, comes close to those truths that will finally be discovered in Christianity - about the one God, the Creator of the world, about the divine Logos the Son, about the Holy Trinity. It is no accident that early Christian writers called philosophy "Christianity before Christ." "Although Hellenic philosophy does not contain truth in all its greatness... nevertheless, it clears the way to Christ," said Clement of Alexandria [3]. Many Fathers and teachers of the Church came to Christianity through the study of philosophy, or at least always treated it with great respect: the Hieromartyr Justin the Philosopher, Clement of Alexandria, Blessed Augustine, St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Gregory the Theologian. In the narthex of ancient Christian churches, along with martyrs and saints, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were depicted as forerunners and heralds of the truth... Plato. Timaeus 28c-30b ^ Plato. Timaeus 41a ^ Clement of Alexandria. Stromata 1, 1-1, 5 ^

Revealed religion

Most of the peoples who inhabited the pre-Christian world lived in the darkness of polytheism. Even if there were some bright minds, like the Greek philosophers, capable of breaking free from the captivity of polytheism, nevertheless their insights about the one God remained most often only the conjectures of a speculating mind, and God the Creator appeared distant and abstract. Some even thought that God only arranged the Universe, only launched, so to speak, the mechanism, and no longer interferes in people's lives, leaving everything to the will of fate - fate.However, there was one chosen people to whom God entrusted the secret knowledge about Himself, about the creation of the world, about the meaning of existence. The ancient Jews knew God not from books or from the reasoning of sages, but from their own centuries-old experience. They left behind the Great Book, the Bible, which is not man-made, but given from above by direct revelation from God. Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Elijah, many righteous men and prophets did not just think about God, prayed to Him - they saw Him with their own eyes, talked with Him face to face. "... And the Lord appeared to Abraham and said to him, "I am God Almighty, walk before me and be blameless; and I will establish my covenant between me and thee... And Abraham fell on his face. God continued to speak to him and said, "I, behold, I am calling with you: you will be the father of a multitude of nations... I will be thy God, and thy descendants after thee" (Gen. 17:1-4, 7). The Jews called God "the God of the fathers," that is, the God of the ancestors, and sacredly preserved the covenant entrusted to their fathers. God reveals himself to man not as an abstract force, but as a living Being - speaking, hearing, seeing, thinking, helping. "And the Lord said unto Moses, Behold, I will come unto thee in a thick cloud, that the people may hear how I speak unto thee, and that they may believe thee for ever. On the third day, when morning came, there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud over the mountain, and the sound of the trumpet was very strong; and all the people trembled... And Mount Sinai was all smoking because the Lord had descended on it in fire; and smoke went up from it like smoke from a furnace, and the whole mountain shook violently; and the sound of the trumpet became stronger and stronger... Moses spoke, and God answered him with a voice... And God spake all these words, saying, I am the Lord thy God... thou shalt have no other gods before me... And the people stood afar off, and Moses entered into the darkness where God is" (Exodus 19:9, 16, 18-19; 20:1-3, 21). Darkness and cloud in this case mean mystery: God, although He appears to man, nevertheless remains mysterious and incomprehensible. No man was to approach Mount Sinai "lest he die" (Exodus 20:19), for "man cannot see God and live" (Exodus 33:20). That is, although Moses saw God, His essence remains inaccessible to human vision.In the life of the people of Israel, God takes a living and active part. When Moses leads the people out of Egypt into the Promised Land, God Himself goes ahead of the people in a pillar of fire. God dwells among people, communicates with them, lives in the house that they have built for Him. When King Solomon finished building the temple, he called on God and asked Him to live there. "... A cloud filled the house of the Lord; and the priests could not stand in the service because of the clouds, for the glory of the Lord filled the temple of the Lord. Then said Solomon, "The Lord has said that he is pleased to dwell in darkness; I have built a temple in Thy tabernacle... Truly, is it for God to live on earth? Heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee, much less this temple which I have built... But look to the prayer of Thy servant and to his petition... Let Thy eyes be opened to this temple day and night, to this place of which Thou hast said, "My name shall be there"... in every prayer, in every petition that shall come from any man in all Thy people Israel, when they shall feel distress in their hearts, and have stretched out their hands to this temple, Thou shalt hear from heaven, from Thy dwelling place, and have mercy" (1 Kings 8:10-13, 27-29, 38-39). And God, Who dwells in darkness, that is, in mystery, Whom heaven and earth, that is, the visible and invisible world, cannot contain, descends to people and lives where they want Him to live, where they have given Him a place. that they can call him "our God" and "my God." And this is the gulf that lies between the revelation of God and all the achievements of human thought: the God of the philosophers remains abstract and inanimate, while the God of revelation is living, close and personal. Both paths lead to the understanding that God is incomprehensible and that He is a mystery, but philosophy leaves man at the foot of the mountain and does not allow him to climb further, while religion leads him to the summit, where God lives in darkness, it leads him into the cloud, that is, above all words and rational reasoning, it reveals to him the mystery of God...

Anthology of Holy Texts

Here is the mystery: there are souls who have come to know the Lord; there are souls who have not known Him, but believe; and there are those who not only do not know, but also do not believe... Unbelief comes from pride. A proud person with his mind and science wants to know everything, but he is not given to know God, because the Lord reveals Himself only to humble souls... Both in heaven and on earth, the Lord is known only by the Holy Spirit... And among the pagans, the soul felt that God exists, although they did not know how to worship the true God. But the Holy Spirit taught the Holy Prophets, then the Apostles, then our Holy Fathers and Bishops, and thus the true faith has come down to us... O people, God's creation, know the Creator. He loves us. Know the love of Christ and live in peace... Turn to Him, all the peoples of the earth, and offer up your prayers to God; And the prayer of the whole earth will go to heaven, like a beautiful quiet cloud, sanctified by the sun... Know, O nations, that we were created for the glory of God in heaven, and do not cleave to the earth, for God is our Father, and loves us as dear children. is an obvious and embodied reflection of the true teaching, a gift that was sent down to the Greeks from God. And it does not distract us from faith... on the contrary, we protect ourselves with philosophy as a kind of strong bulwark, discovering in it an ally, together with whom we then substantiate our faith... Before the coming of the Lord, philosophy was necessary for the Greeks to achieve a kind of righteousness... She was the same guide for the Greeks as the Law was for the Jews, and brought them as children to Christ (Gal. 3:23-24)... Without a doubt, there is only one way to the Truth, but streams flow into it, some on one side, others on the other, joining in its bed into a river that already flows into eternity.Clement of AlexandriaReading the books of the Platonists made me search for the incorporeal truth: I saw "the invisible, understood through creation," and, thrown back, I felt that, in the darkness of my soul, contemplation was impossible for me. I was sure that You existed, that You were infinite, but not spread out in space... And so, I eagerly grasped at the venerable books dictated by Thy Spirit, and above all the epistles of the Apostle Paul... I began to read and found that everything true that I had read in the books of the philosophers was also said in Your Scriptures... (But in the books of the philosophers) there was no form of this piety, no tears of confession... "a contrite and humble heart" (Psalm 50:19), there was not a word about the salvation of the people, about "a city adorned like a bride" (Rev. 21:2), about "the earnest of the Holy Spirit" (2 Corinthians 1:22), about the Chalice that redeemed us. No one there sings: "Is not my soul subject to God? From Him is my salvation..." (Psalm 61:2). No one will hear the call, "Come unto me, ye that suffer." They (philosophers) will contemptuously turn away from Him Who is "meek and lowly in heart" (Matt. 11:25-28). To those who love God, who are called according to His will, all things work together for good. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined (to be) like the image of His Son... and those whom He predestined, He also called, and those whom He called, He also justified, and those whom He justified, He glorified. What can be said to this? If God is for us, who is against us?Apostle PaulFaith in Christ is a new paradise. For this reason God foresaw before the foundation of the world all those who believed and should believe in Him, whom He called and will not cease to call until the end of the world, and glorified and glorified, and justified and justified, clearly showing them to be conformed to the image of the glory of His Son through holy Baptism and the grace of the Holy Spirit, mysteriously making them sons of God and restoring them from the old to the new, from mortal to immortal... St. Symeon the New Theologian

Chapter II: God

Here is the mystery: there are souls who have come to know the Lord; there are souls who have not known Him, but believe; and there are those who not only do not know, but also do not believe... Unbelief comes from pride. A proud person with his mind and science wants to know everything, but he is not given to know God, because the Lord reveals Himself only to humble souls... Both in heaven and on earth, the Lord is known only by the Holy Spirit... And among the pagans, the soul felt that God exists, although they did not know how to worship the true God. But the Holy Spirit taught the Holy Prophets, then the Apostles, then our Holy Fathers and Bishops, and thus the true faith has come down to us... O people, God's creation, know the Creator. He loves us. Know the love of Christ and live in peace... Turn to Him, all the peoples of the earth, and offer up your prayers to God; And the prayer of the whole earth will go to heaven, like a beautiful quiet cloud, sanctified by the sun... Know, O nations, that we were created for the glory of God in heaven, and do not cleave to the earth, for God is our Father, and loves us as dear children. is an obvious and embodied reflection of the true teaching, a gift that was sent down to the Greeks from God. And it does not distract us from faith... on the contrary, we protect ourselves with philosophy as a kind of strong bulwark, discovering in it an ally, together with whom we then substantiate our faith... Before the coming of the Lord, philosophy was necessary for the Greeks to achieve a kind of righteousness... She was the same guide for the Greeks as the Law was for the Jews, and brought them as children to Christ (Gal. 3:23-24)... Without a doubt, there is only one way to the Truth, but streams flow into it, some on one side, others on the other, joining in its bed into a river that already flows into eternity.Clement of AlexandriaReading the books of the Platonists made me search for the incorporeal truth: I saw "the invisible, understood through creation," and, thrown back, I felt that, in the darkness of my soul, contemplation was impossible for me. I was sure that You existed, that You were infinite, but not spread out in space... And so, I eagerly grasped at the venerable books dictated by Thy Spirit, and above all the epistles of the Apostle Paul... I began to read and found that everything true that I had read in the books of the philosophers was also said in Your Scriptures... (But in the books of the philosophers) there was no form of this piety, no tears of confession... "a contrite and humble heart" (Psalm 50:19), there was not a word about the salvation of the people, about "a city adorned like a bride" (Rev. 21:2), about "the earnest of the Holy Spirit" (2 Corinthians 1:22), about the Chalice that redeemed us. No one there sings: "Is not my soul subject to God? From Him is my salvation..." (Psalm 61:2). No one will hear the call, "Come unto me, ye that suffer." They (philosophers) will contemptuously turn away from Him Who is "meek and lowly in heart" (Matt. 11:25-28). To those who love God, who are called according to His will, all things work together for good. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined (to be) like the image of His Son... and those whom He predestined, He also called, and those whom He called, He also justified, and those whom He justified, He glorified. What can be said to this? If God is for us, who is against us?Apostle PaulFaith in Christ is a new paradise. For this reason God foresaw before the foundation of the world all those who believed and should believe in Him, whom He called and will not cease to call until the end of the world, and glorified and glorified, and justified and justified, clearly showing them to be conformed to the image of the glory of His Son through holy Baptism and the grace of the Holy Spirit, mysteriously making them sons of God and restoring them from the old to the new, from mortal to immortal... St. Symeon the New Theologian

Etymology of the word "God"

In different languages, the word "God" is related to different words and concepts, each of which can say something about the properties of God. In the ancient era, people tried to find those words with the help of which they could express their idea of God, their experience of contact with the Divine.In the Russian language and in other languages of Slavic origin belonging to the Indo-European group, the word "God", according to linguists, is related to the Sanskrit bhaga, which means "giving, endowing", in turn originating from bhagas - "possession", "happiness [1]". "Wealth" is also related to the word "God." This expresses the idea of God as the fullness of being, as all-perfection and bliss, which, however, do not remain within the Divinity, but are poured out on the world, people, and all living things. God bestows upon us, endows us with His fullness, His riches, when we partake of Him.The Greek word theos, according to Plato, comes from the verb theein, meaning "to flee." "The first of the people who inhabited Hellas worshipped only those gods who are still revered by many barbarians: the sun, the moon, the earth, the stars, the sky. And since they saw that all this is always running, making a cycle, it is from this nature of running that they were given the name of gods," writes Plato [2]. In other words, the ancients saw in nature, its rotation, its purposeful "running" indications of the existence of some higher rational force, which they could not identify with the one God, but represented in the form of a multitude of divine forces. "For the Lord thy God is a consuming fire, a jealous God," says the Bible (Deuteronomy 4:24); these words will be repeated by the Apostle Paul, pointing to God's ability to destroy and burn all evil (Heb. 12:29). "God is fire, and the devil is cold," write Saints Barsanuphius and John [3]. "God is a fire that warms and inflames hearts and wombs," says St. Seraphim of Sarov. - So, if we feel in our hearts the coldness that comes from the devil... let us call upon the Lord: when He comes, He will warm our hearts with perfect love not only for Him, but also for our neighbor. And from the face of warmth will flee the coldness of the hater of good [4]."St. John of Damascus gives a third etymology of the word theos from theaomai - "to contemplate": "For nothing can be concealed from Him, He is all-seeing. He contemplated everything before it came into being. .. [5].In languages of Germanic origin, the word "God" - English God, German Gott - comes from a verb meaning "to prostrate oneself", to fall down in worship. "People who in early times strove to say something about God," says Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh in this regard, "did not make an attempt to describe Him, to outline, to say what He is in Himself, but only to point out what happens to a person when he suddenly finds himself face to face with God, when suddenly Divine grace, Divine light shines upon him. All that a man can do then is to prostrate himself in sacred terror, worshipping Him Who is incomprehensible and at the same time has revealed Himself to Him in such intimacy and in such wondrous radiance [6]." The Apostle Paul, whom God shone upon on his way to Damascus, was struck by this light, and immediately "fell to the ground... in awe and terror" (Acts 9:4,6).The name with which God revealed Himself to the ancient Hebrews - Yahweh (Yahweh) means "He who is", having existence, having being, it comes from the verb hayah - to be, to exist, or rather from the first person of this verb ehieh - "I am". However, this verb has a dynamic meaning: it does not mean simply the fact of existence in itself, but a kind of ever-present being, a living and active presence. When God says to Moses, "I am that I am" (Exodus 3:14), it means: I live, I am here, I am next to you. At the same time, this name emphasizes the superiority of God's being over the being of everything that exists: it is an independent, primary, eternal being, it is the fullness of being, which is super-being: "In his significance, Being supernaturally transcends the totality of being, being the sole Cause and Creator of all that exists: matter, essence, existence, being; Being is the beginning and measure of eternity, the cause of time and the measure of time for everything that exists, and in general the becoming of everything that becomes. From Being proceed eternity, essence, being, time, becoming, and becoming, because in Being abides all things, both changing and unchanging... God is not just the Being, but the Being, Whom eternally and infinitely contains in Himself the totality of all forms of existence - both present and future," writes the author of the treatise "On the Divine Names [7].Ancient tradition says that the Jews in the era after the Babylonian captivity did not pronounce the name Yahweh - the Eternal out of reverent awe before this name. Only the high priest once a year, when he entered the Holy of Holies for incense, could pronounce this name inside. If an ordinary person or even a priest in the temple wanted to say something about God, he replaced the name Eternal with other names or said "heaven". There was also such a tradition: when it was necessary to say "God", a person fell silent and put his hand to his heart or pointed his hand to the sky, and everyone understood that it was about God, but the sacred Name itself was not pronounced. In writing, the Jews designated God with the sacred tetragram (YHWH). The ancient Hebrews were well aware that there is no name, word, or term in human language that can be used to describe the nature of God. "Divinity is unnameable," says St. Gregory the Theologian. "Not only reason shows this, but... the wisest and most ancient of the Jews. For those who honored the Divinity with special inscriptions and did not suffer that both the name of God and the names of creatures should be written in the same letters... could they ever dare to pronounce in an absent-minded voice the Name of the indestructible and unique nature? Just as no one has ever breathed all the air into himself, so neither the mind has completely contained, nor the voice embraced the essence of God [8]." By refraining from pronouncing the name of God, the Jews showed that it is possible to commune with God not so much through words and descriptions, as through reverent and trembling silence... M. Vasmer. Etymological Dictionary of the Russian Language, Moscow, 1986. T. 1. Ss. 181-182 ^ Plato. Cratylus 397b ^ Barsanuphius and John. A Guide to Spiritual Life, Answer 18. St. Petersburg, 1905. P. 14 ^ Chronicle of the Seraphim-Diveyevo Monastery. St. Petersburg, 1903. P. 113 ^ John of Damascus. An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 1, 9 ^ Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh. Conversations about Faith and the Church. P. 96 ^ Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Divine Names 5, 4 [PG 3, 817C] ^ Gregory the Theologian. Homily 30 (On Theology 4), [Creations in 2 volumes. St. Petersburg, without a year (published by Soykin). Vol. 1. p. 440] ^

Divine Names

In the Holy Scriptures there are many names of God, each of which, not being able to describe Him in essence, indicates one or another of His properties. The famous treatise of the fifth century "On the Divine Names", attributed to Dionysius the Areopagite, is the first Christian systematic exposition of this topic, although before that it was developed by other writers, in particular by St. Gregory the Theologian. The name Lord (Greek: Kyrios) denotes God's supreme dominion not only over the chosen people, but also over the entire universe. The names of the Lord of hosts, that is, the Lord of hosts, the Lord of hosts, the Lord of ages, the Lord, the King of glory, the King of kings, and the Lord of lords, are also included here: "Thine, O Lord, is the majesty, and the might, and the glory, and the victory, and the splendour, and all that is in heaven and on earth is Thine; Thine, O Lord, is the kingdom, and Thou art above all things as the Ruler. Both riches and glory are from Thy presence, and Thou hast dominion over all things; and in thy hand is power and might, and in thy power strengthen all things" (1 Chron. 29:11-12). The name Pantokrator (Greek: Pantokrator) means that God holds everything in His hand, maintains the universe and order in it: "My hand founded the earth, and My right hand stretched out the heavens" (Isaiah 48:13); The names Holy, Holiness, Holiness, Sanctification, Goodness, Goodness show that God has in Himself all the fullness of goodness and holiness, and He pours out this good on all His creatures, sanctifying them. "Hallowed be Thy name," we turn to God in the Lord's Prayer. That is, let Your name be holy not only in heaven, in the spiritual world, but also here on earth: may it be sanctified in us, that we may become holy as You... God is also called Wisdom, Truth, Light, Life: "Wisdom as knowledge of divine and human affairs... Truth as one, and not plural by nature (for the true is unique, and falsehood is many)... Light as the brightness of souls purified in mind and life, for if ignorance and sin are darkness, then knowledge and divine life are light..., Life, because he is the light, support and realization of all rational nature" (Gregory the Theologian [1]).Holy Scripture calls God salvation, Redemption, Redemption, Resurrection, because only in Him (in Christ) is the salvation of man from sin and eternal death realized, Resurrection to a new life.God is called Truth and Love. The name of Truth emphasizes Divine justice: He is the Judge who punishes evil and rewards good. In any case, this is how the Old Testament perceives God. However, the New Testament Gospel reveals to us that God, being just and just, surpasses all our conception of justice: "Do not call God just," writes St. Isaac the Syrian. - Although David calls Him just and just, the Son has revealed to us that He is rather good and gracious... Why does man call God just, when in the chapter on the prodigal son... he reads that at one of the contritions that the son showed, the father ran and fell on his neck and gave him power over all his riches?.. Where is God's justice? That we are sinners, and Christ died for us?.. Where is the recompense for our deeds? [2]" The New Testament supplements the Old Testament concept of God's justice with the teaching of His love, which surpasses all justice. "God is love," says the holy Apostle John the Theologian (1 John 4:18). This is the most sublime definition of God, the truest thing that can be said about Him. As St. Gregory the Theologian says, this name is "more pleasing to God than any other name [3]."In the Bible there are also names of God borrowed from nature and which are not His characteristics, not attempts to determine His properties, but as if symbols and analogies having an auxiliary meaning. God is compared to the sun, star, fire, wind, water, dew, cloud, stone, rock, fragrance. Christ is spoken of as the Shepherd, the Sheep, the Lamb, the Way, the Door, the image of God. All these names are simple and concrete, they are borrowed from everyday reality, from everyday life. But their meaning is the same as in the parables of Christ, when under the images of a pearl, a tree, leaven in dough, seeds in a field, we guess something infinitely greater and more significant.In many texts of Holy Scripture God is spoken of as a human-like being, that is, as having a face, eyes, ears, hands, shoulders, wings, legs, breath; it is said that God turns or turns away, remembers or forgets, is angry or calms, is surprised, grieves, hates, walks, hears. At the heart of this anthropomorphism is the experience of a personal encounter with God as a living being. In trying to express this experience, man resorted to earthly words and images. In biblical language there are almost no abstract concepts that play such an important role in the language of speculative philosophy: when it was necessary to designate a certain period of time, they did not say "epoch" or "period" - they said "hour", "day", "year" or "age"; When it was necessary to speak of the material and spiritual worlds, they did not say "matter" and "spiritual reality," but "heaven" and "earth." Biblical language, in contrast to philosophical language, has the utmost concreteness precisely because the experience of the biblical God was an experience of a personal encounter, and not an abstract speculative speculation. The ancients felt God next to them - He was their king, leader, He was present at their services, holidays, meetings. And when David says, "The Lord has heard my supplication" (Psalm 6:10), this does not mean that God did not hear before, but now He has heard: God has always heard, it is just that man did not feel it before, but now he felt it. And the words "show Thy face to Thy servant" (Psalm 30:17) are not a request that God, Who was not there before, should suddenly be here, because He is present always and everywhere, but that man, who had not noticed God before, would be able to see, feel, cognize, and meet Him. for Abraham does not recognize us, and Israel does not recognize us as their own; But Thou, O Lord, our Father, from eternity Thy name is our Redeemer" (Isaiah 63:16). In recent years, it has been increasingly said in the Protestant world that since God has no gender, He should not be called "Father." Some so-called feminist theologians insist that God is equally the Mother, and in the Lord's Prayer they say "Our Father and Mother" instead of "Our Father," and in the translation of Scripture they replace the pronoun "He" with "He-She" where God is mentioned. These ridiculous distortions of the biblical concept of God stem from a failure to understand the fact that the division into two sexes exists in the human and animal worlds, but not in the divine being. This is a kind of pseudo-anthropomorphism, which has little in common with biblical anthropomorphism. For us, the only thing that is indisputable is that, appearing to the people of Israel, God revealed Himself with the name Father. It is also obvious that when God became incarnate, He became not a woman, but a man - Jesus Christ. Ibid. [Vol. 1, pp. 442-443] ^ Isaac the Syrian. Homily 60 [Isaak tou Syrou eurethenta asketika. Athenai, 1977. Sel. 245] ^ Gregory the Theologian. Homily 23 [Vol. 1, p. 338] ^

Attributes of God

It is difficult to speak of the attributes of Him whose very nature is beyond words. Nevertheless, based on God's actions in the created world, man can make assumptions and conclusions about the properties of God. According to St. John of Damascus, God is beginningless, infinite, eternal, permanent, uncreated, immutable, unchangeable, simple, uncomplicated, incorporeal, invisible, intangible, indescribable, boundless, incomprehensible, immense, incomprehensible, good, righteous, Creator of all things, Almighty, Almighty, All-seeing, Provider of all things, Lord of all. He does not need anything else, free from external coercion and influence: "Who understood the spirit of the Lord, and was His counselor, and taught Him? With whom does He consult, and who admonishes Him, and guides Him in the way of righteousness, and teaches Him knowledge, and shows Him the way of wisdom?" (Isaiah 40:13-14).Infinity and infinity mean that God exists outside the categories of space, free from all limitation and deficiency. He cannot be measured, He cannot be compared or contrasted with anyone or anything. God is eternal, that is, He exists outside the categories of time, for Him there is no past, present and future: "I am the same, I am the first, and I am the last," says God in the Old Testament (Isaiah 48:10); "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, saith the Lord, Who is, and was, and is to come," we read in John the Theologian (Rev. 1:8). Having neither beginning nor end in time, God is uncreated - no one created Him: "Before Me there was no God, and after Me there will be none" (Isaiah 43:10). God has permanence, immutability and immutability in the sense that "He has no change and shadow of change" (James 1:17), He is always true to Himself: "God is not a man to lie to Him, and not the son of man, that he might change" (Num. 23:19). In His essence, actions, and properties, He is always the same.God is simple and uncomplicated, that is, He is not divided into parts and does not consist of parts. The trinity of Persons in God, which will be discussed in the next chapter, is not the division of the one divine nature into parts: the nature of God remains indivisible. The concept of the perfection of the Godhead excludes the possibility of dividing God into parts, since any partial being is not perfection. What does the essence of simple nature mean? - asks St. Gregory the Theologian. And in trying to answer this question, he says that reason, if it wants to investigate the infinite God, finds neither beginning nor end, because the infinite extends beyond the beginning and the end, and is not contained between them; and when the mind rushes up or down, trying to find some limits or limits to its ideas of God, it does not find them. The absence of all boundaries, divisions and limits is simplicity in God [2].God is called incorporeal because He is not a material substance and does not have a body, but is spiritual by nature. "God is Spirit," says Christ to the Samaritan woman (John 4:24). "The Lord is the Spirit," repeats the Apostle Paul, "and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom" (2 Corinthians 3:17). God is free from all materiality: He is not somewhere, He is not anywhere, He is not everywhere. When the Bible speaks of God's presence everywhere, it is again an attempt to express the subjective experience of a person who, wherever he is, meets God everywhere: "Whither shall I go from Thy Spirit, and whither shall I flee from Thy presence? If I ascend to heaven, Thou art there; if I descend into hell, and there Thou art there. If I take the wings of the dawn, and dwell on the edge of the sea, there Thy hand shall lead me, and Thy right hand shall hold me" (Psalm 138:7-10). But subjectively, a person can feel God everywhere, or he can feel Him nowhere - God Himself remains completely outside the category of "somewhere", outside the category of "place". No matter how much we try to investigate God, no matter how much we speculate about His names and attributes, He still remains elusive to the mind, because He surpasses all our thoughts. "It is difficult to understand God, but it is impossible to utter it," writes Plato [3]. St. Gregory the Theologian, polemicizing with the Hellenic sage, says: "It is impossible to speak, and it is even more impossible to understand [4]." St. Basil the Great says: "I know that God exists. But what is His essence - I consider it beyond understanding. Therefore, how do I save myself? Through faith. And faith is content with the knowledge that God exists (and not that He is)... The consciousness of the incomprehensibility of God is the knowledge of His essence [5]." God is invisible - "no man has ever seen Him" (John 1:18) in the sense that none of the people could comprehend His essence, embrace Him with their sight, perception, and mind. A person can join God, become a partaker of Him, but he can never understand God, because to "understand" means in a sense to exhaust. John of Damascus. An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 1, 14 ^ Gregory the Theologian. Homily 45 [Vol. 1, p. 663] ^ Op. cit. by: Gregory the Theologian. Homily 28 [Vol. 1, p. 393]. For the exact text, see: Plato. Timaeus 28c ^ Gregory the Theologian. Ibid. ^ Basil the Great. Letter 226 [Creations in 3 volumes. St. Petersburg, 1911 (published by Soykin). Vol. 3. P. 283] ^