The Mystery of Faith. Introduction to Orthodox Dogmatic Theology

Further, ascending, we say that She is not a soul, not a mind; She has neither imagination, nor opinion, nor word, nor understanding; It is neither word nor thought; It is inexpressible in words and incomprehensible; It is not number, not order, not magnitude, not smallness, not equality, not inequality, not likeness, not difference; It does not stand, does not move, is not at rest, has no power, and is neither force nor light; It does not live and does not live; It is neither essence, nor age, nor time; It is not characterized by mental perception; It is not knowledge, nor truth, nor kingdom, nor wisdom; It is not one or unity, not divinity or goodness; It is not spirit in the sense we know, nor sonship, nor fatherhood, nor anything else that is accessible to our perception or to anyone else's perception; It is not something of non-being, and it is not something of being... Above all affirmation is the perfect and only Cause of all, and above all negation is Her superiority, as completely abstract from everything and transcendent for everything.Dionysius the AreopagiteThus, it is clear that God exists. And that He is in essence and nature is completely incomprehensible and unknown... The Unborn and the Beginningless, and the Unchangeable, and the Incorruptible... - does not mean that God exists, but that He is not. And to those who wish to speak about the essence of something, it must be explained that it is, and not that it is not. However, it is impossible to say of God that He is in essence. Rather, it is more common to speak (of Him) through the denial of everything. For He is not something of existence, not as Non-Being, but as Being above all that exists, and above being itself... Thus, the Divinity is boundless and incomprehensible. And this alone - infinity and incomprehensibility in Him - is comprehensible. And what we say about God affirmatively shows not His nature, but what is near nature. Whether you call Him good, or righteous, or wise, or anything else, you will not speak of the nature of God, but of that which is near nature. Also, some (of what) is said of God in the affirmative has the meaning of an excellent negation; as, for example, when we speak of darkness in relation to God, we do not mean darkness, but that which is not light, but is above light; St. John of DamascusAccording to the Scriptures, God sleeps (Psalm 43:24), awakens (Dan. 9:14), is angry (Deut. 11:17), walks and has cherubim as his throne (Isaiah 37:16)... In accordance with our concept, we have also called the things of God by names taken from ourselves. When God, for reasons known to Him, ceases His care and carelessness, as it were, for us, it means that He is asleep, because our sleep is such inactivity and carelessness. When, on the contrary, he suddenly begins to do good, it means that He is awakening... He punishes, and we have made of it - he is angry, because with us punishment is the result of anger. He acts here and there, but according to ours - He walks... And also every other power of God and every other action of God is depicted in us by something taken from the body.

The Mystery of the Trinity

Christians believe in God the Trinity - the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Trinity is not three gods, but one God in three Hypostases, that is, in three independent personal (personal) existences. This is the only case where 1 = 3 and 3 = 1. What would be absurd to mathematics and logic is the cornerstone of faith. A Christian partakes of the mystery of the Trinity not through intellectual knowledge, but through repentance, that is, a complete change and renewal of the mind, heart, feelings, and our entire being (the Greek word "repentance" – metanoia – literally means "change of mind"). It is impossible to commune with the Trinity until the mind becomes enlightened and transfigured.The teaching about the Trinity is not an invention of theologians - it is a divinely revealed truth. At the moment of the Baptism of Jesus Christ, God for the first time clearly reveals Himself to the world as a Unity in three Persons: "And when all the people were baptized, and Jesus was baptized and prayed, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form, like a dove, and there was a voice from heaven, saying, Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased" (Luke 3:21-22). The voice of the Father is heard from heaven, the Son stands in the waters of the Jordan, the Spirit descends upon the Son. Jesus Christ repeatedly spoke of His unity with the Father, that He was sent into the world by the Father, that He called Himself His Son (John 6-8). He also promised His disciples to send the Spirit of the Comforter, Who proceeds from the Father (John 14:16-17; 15:26). Sending His disciples to preach, He says to them: "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). Likewise, in the writings of the Apostles it is said about God the Trinity: "Three bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit, and these Three are One" (1 John 5:7). The ancient Jews sacredly preserved faith in one God, and they would not have been able to understand the idea of the trinity of the Godhead, because such an idea would have been perceived by them unequivocally as tritheism. In an era when polytheism reigned supreme in the world, the mystery of the Trinity was hidden from human eyes, it was, as it were, hidden in the deepest core of the truth about the unity of the Godhead. The first verse of the Bible - "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" (Gen. 1:1) - in the Hebrew text contains the word "God" in the plural (Eloghim - lit. "gods"), while the verb "created" is in the singular. Before the creation of man, God says, as if in consultation with someone: "Let us make man in our image, and after our likeness" (Gen. 1:26). With whom can He consult if not with Himself? With angels? But man was not created in the image of angels, but "in the image of God" (Gen. 1:27). Ancient Christian interpreters asserted that here we are talking about the consultation of the Persons of the Holy Trinity among Themselves. In the same way, when Adam ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God says to Himself: "Behold, Adam became as one of Us, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3:22). And at the moment of the construction of the Tower of Babel, the Lord says: "Let us go down and confuse their language, so that one may not understand the speech of the other" (Gen. 11:7).Some episodes of the Old Testament are considered in the Christian tradition as symbolizing the trinity of the Godhead. The Lord appears to Abraham at the oak grove of Mamre. "He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men stood against him. When he saw them, he ran to meet them from the entrance to the tent and bowed down to the ground, and said, "Lord! If I have found favor in Thy eyes, do not pass by Thy servant... but I will bring bread, and you will strengthen your hearts, then go, as you pass by your servant... And they said to him, Where is Sarah thy wife? He answered, "Here, in the tent." And one of them said, I will be with you again at the same time, and Sarah will have a son" (Gen. 18:2-3, 5, 9-10). Abraham meets Three, and worships One. Thou = You, Pass = Go, Said = Said, 1 = 3...The Prophet Isaiah describes his vision of the Lord, around Whom the Seraphim stood, crying out, "Holy, holy, holy, Lord of hosts." The Lord says: "Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?" to which the prophet answers: "Here am I, send me" (Isaiah 6:1-8). Again, equality between "Me" and "Us". In the Old Testament, in addition, there are many prophecies that speak of the equality of the Son of the Messiah and God the Father, for example: "The Lord said to me, You are my Son, this day I have begotten you" (Psalm 2:7) or "The Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand... From the womb before the dawn I begat you" (Psalm 109:1, 3).The above biblical texts, however, only foreshadow the mystery of the Trinity, but do not speak of it directly. This mystery remains under the veil, which, according to the Apostle Paul, can only be removed by Christ (cf. 2 Cor. 3:15-16).

Ternary terminology

Christians, from the earliest days of the Church, have believed in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, based on the words of Christ and the testimonies of Scripture. However, it took several centuries for the doctrine of the Trinity to be clothed in precise theological formulations. In the third century, the Church was confronted with the heresy of Sabellius, who taught that God is one Being, and that the three Persons are, as it were, three manifestations of one and the same Nature, as if three "masks" under which God appears to people (the Greek term "person" - prosopon - means not so much a person as a "mask", a mask of an actor). One and the same indivisible Monad, according to Sabellius, acted at different times as if in three different modes: in the Old Testament God manifested Himself as the Father, in the New Testament as the Son, and in the Church after Pentecost as the Holy Spirit. God, according to Sabellius, is the "Son-Father": in relation to the world He is the silent Monad, but in relation to the world He is the Word-Logos. The teaching of Sabellius was an extreme expression of monarchianism, which was based on the idea of God as an indivisible Monad.At the beginning of the fourth century, the Alexandrian priest Arius taught that the Father is the one true God, and the Son is His creation. The Son was created "out of nothing", but He has an advantage over other creatures, since He was born before time and centuries. Arianism is one of the forms of subordinationism, that is, the doctrine of the subordination of the Son to the Father, and the Spirit to the Son. Arianism quickly became widespread and caused heated debates throughout the Christian East. In connection with the teaching of Arius, the First Ecumenical Council was convened in Nicaea in 325, which was destined to formulate the Orthodox teaching on the Holy Trinity.The Council of Nicaea spoke of the Son as "consubstantial" (homoousios) with the Father, that is, having one essence with the Father. Theologians also used another term - "hypostasis" (hypostasis - existence), originally perceived as a synonym for "essence". Gradually, however, already in the era after the Council of Nicaea, the word "hypostasis" acquired the meaning of personal existence, i.e. personal and concrete being, while "ousia" began to be understood as a certain general ontological property. A decisive role in the final development of the Trinitarian terminology was played by the "great Cappadocians" - Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and Gregory of Nyssa. They also formulated the teaching about the Holy Spirit as consubstantial and equal to the Father and the Son.Thus, the Orthodox teaching about God the Trinity is expressed in the following terms: God is one in essence, but one in three Hypostases. If the formula "one nature - three Persons" left it possible to speak of emanations and faces of one and the same Being, then the formula "one essence - three Hypostases", pointing to the ontological unity of the Godhead, at the same time emphasized the independence of each Hypostasis. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three full-fledged Persons-persons, each of whom has not only the fullness of being, but is also the whole God. One Hypostasis is not a third of the general essence, but contains in Itself the fullness of the Divine essence. The Father is God, not a third of God, the Son is also God, and the Holy Spirit is also God. But all the Three together are not three Gods, but one God. We confess "the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the Trinity, one in essence and indivisible" (from the Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom). That is, the three Hypostases do not divide the one essence into three essences, but the one essence does not merge or mix the three Hypostases into one.

The Fullness of the Divine Life in the Trinity

In order to make the doctrine of the Trinity more comprehensible, the Holy Fathers sometimes resorted to analogies and comparisons. For example, the Trinity can be compared to the sun: when we say "sun" we mean the celestial body itself, as well as sunlight and solar heat. Light and heat are "hypostases" in their own right, but they do not exist in isolation from the sun. But the sun also does not exist without heat and light... Another analogy: water, source and flow: one does not exist without the other... In man there is a mind, a soul, and a word: the mind cannot exist without the soul and the word, otherwise it would be soulless and wordless, but neither the soul nor the word can be without the mind. In God there is a Father, a Word, and a Spirit, and, as the defenders of "consubstantiality" said at the Council of Nicaea, if God the Father ever existed without God the Word, then He was wordless or irrational. The simplest thing would be to explain the mystery of the Trinity, as did St. Spyridon of Trimythous, a participant in the Council of Nicaea. According to legend, when asked how it could be that the Three were One at the same time, instead of answering, he took a brick in his hands and squeezed it. From the clay softened in the hands of the saint a flame burst up, and water flowed down. "As in this brick there is fire and water," said the saint, "so in the one God there are three Persons. [1] "Another version of the same account (or perhaps another similar event) is contained in the Acts of the Council of Nicaea. A philosopher argued for a long time with the Fathers of this Council, trying to prove logically that the Son cannot be of one essence with the Father. Tired of long debates, everyone was about to disperse, when suddenly a simple shepherd elder (identified with St. Spyridon) entered the hall and declared that he was ready to argue with the philosopher and refute all his arguments. Then, turning to the philosopher and looking at him sternly, he said: "Listen, philosopher, there is one God, the Creator of heaven and earth, who created all things by the power of the Son and the co-operation of the Holy Spirit. This Son of God became incarnate, lived among people, died for us and rose again. Do not trouble yourself in vain to seek out proofs of that which is comprehended by faith alone, but answer: Do you believe in the Son of God?" The elder said: "If you believe, then come with me to church and there I will unite you to this true faith." The philosopher immediately got up and followed the elder. As he came out, he said to those present: "While they were proving to me in words, I opposed words to words, but when divine power appeared from the mouth of this elder, words could not resist power, because man cannot resist God" [2]... God the Trinity is not some kind of frozen existence, it is not rest, immobility, static. "I am that I am," God says to Moses (Exodus 3:14). Being means existing, living. In God is the fullness of life, and life is movement, manifestation, revelation. Some divine names, as we have seen, have a dynamic character: God is compared to fire (Exodus 24:17), water (Jeremiah 2:13), and wind (Gen. 1:2). In the biblical book of the Song of Songs, a woman is looking for her lover, who is running away from her. This image is reinterpreted in the Christian tradition (Origen, Gregory of Nyssa) as the soul's pursuit of God, who is eternally fleeing from it. The soul seeks God, but as soon as it gains it, it loses it again, tries to comprehend Him, but cannot comprehend Him, tries to contain Him, but cannot contain Him. It moves with great "speed" and always exceeds our strength and our capabilities. To find and catch up with God means to become Divine yourself. Just as, according to physical laws, if any material body began to move at the speed of light, it would itself turn into light, so the soul: the closer it is to God, the more it is filled with light and becomes luminous... The Holy Scriptures say that "God is love" (1 John 4:8; 4:16). But there is no love without a beloved. Love presupposes the existence of the other. A lonely isolated monad can only love itself: self-love is not love. An egocentric unit is not a person. Just as man cannot realize himself as a person-person except through communion with other persons, so there can be no personal being in God except through love for another personal being. God the Trinity is the fullness of love, each Person-Hypostasis is turned by love to the other two Persons-Hypostases. The persons in the Trinity are aware of Themselves as "I and You": "You, Father, are in Me, and I in You," Christ says to the Father (John 17:21). "All that the Father has is Mine, therefore I have said that He shall take of Mine and declare it unto you," says Christ of the Holy Spirit (John 16:14). "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God" - this is how the Gospel of John begins (John 1:1). In the Greek and Slavonic texts, there is a preposition "to": the Word was "to God" (pros ton Theon). The personal nature of the relationship between the Son (the Word) and the Father is emphasized: the Son is not only born of the Father, He not only exists with the Father, but He is turned to the Father. Thus, each Hypostasis in the Trinity is turned to the other two Hypostases.On the icon of the Most Holy Trinity by St. Andrei Rublev, as well as on other icons of the same iconographic type, we see three angels sitting at a table on which stands the Chalice, a symbol of the redemptive sacrifice of Christ. The subject of the icon is borrowed from the above-mentioned case of Abraham ("Abraham's Hospitality" is the name of this iconographic version), and all the Persons of the Trinity are represented facing each other and at the same time to the Chalice. The icon seems to imprint the Divine love that reigns within the Trinity and the highest manifestation of which is the redemptive feat of the Son. This, in the words of St. Philaret (Drozdov), is "the love of the Father crucifying, the love of the Son crucified, the love of the Holy Spirit triumphant by the power of the Cross [3]." The sacrifice of God the Son on the Cross is also a feat of love between the Father and the Holy Spirit. Eternal. Collection of Spiritual Reading No342. Paris, 1983. P. 61 ^ Acts of the Ecumenical Councils. Ed. 1-e. T. 1. Kazan, 1859. Ss. 101-103 ^ PG 4, 221 ^

Anthology of Holy Texts

We believe in One God, the Father Almighty, the Creator of all visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Only-begotten, begotten of the Father, that is, of the essence of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten, uncreated, consubstantial with the Father, by Whom all things are (brought into) being. For our sake, people, and for our salvation, Who came down from heaven and was incarnate, and became man, and suffered, and rose again on the third day, and ascended into heaven, and sits at the right hand of the Father, and is coming again to judge the living and the dead. And in the Holy Spirit. Those who say: "There was (a time) when (the Son) was not," and that He was created from non-existence, or who say that He is from another hypostasis or essence, or (call) the Son of God convertible or changeable, are anathematized (excommunicated) by the Catholic and Apostolic Church.The Creed of the Council of NicaeaIf the Word is not eternally co-existent with the Father, then the Trinity is not eternal, but was formerly a Unity, and through addition was subsequently made the Trinity... And again: if the Son is not His own birth of the Father's essence, but came from non-existence, then the Trinity was also composed of non-existence, and was when the Trinity did not exist... But this is not true. Let it not be so! The Trinity is not created, but the eternal and one Godhead in the Trinity, and the one glory of the Holy Trinity... The Christian faith knows the unchangeable, perfect, and always the same blessed Trinity, and does not add anything more to the Trinity, and does not imagine that it has ever been insufficient... worships Her, preserving the indivisibility and unity of Her Divinity.St. Athanasius the GreatIt is necessary to observe faith in one God, and to confess three Hypostases, or three Persons, each with His personal attribute. In my opinion, faith in one God is observed, when both the Son and the Spirit are attributed to one Cause... Faith is also observed in the three Hypostases, when we do not invent any confusion or fusion... Personal attributes will also be observed when we represent and call the Father beginningless and the beginning as the Cause, as the Source, as the eternal Light, and the Son not without beginning, but also the beginning of all things. When I say "the beginning," you do not bring time, do not put anything in between the Begat and the Born... Thus, the Father is without beginning, because He did not borrow His being from anyone else, not even from Himself. And the Son, if you imagine the Father as the Cause, is not beginningless, because the beginning of the Son is the Father as the Cause, but if you imagine the beginning in relation to time, he is beginningless, because the Lord of times has no beginning in time... But you will ask: "If the Son is begotten, how was he born?" The more and more he wants to see, the more he injures the senses, and to the extent that the object in question exceeds the scope of sight, such a person loses the very faculty of sight, if he wants to see the whole object, and not such a part of it as he could see without harm. You hear about birth: do not try to know what is the way of birth. You hear that the Spirit proceeds from the Father: do not be curious to know how it proceeds?.. We have one God, because the Godhead is one. And to the One those who are from God are raised, although they believe in the Three, because just as the One is not greater, so the Other is not less God: and the One is not before, and the Other is not after: They are not separated by will, nor are they divided according to power... The Divinity in the Divided Ones is indivisible, as in the three suns, which are enclosed one within the other, one dissolution of light. Therefore, when we have in our thoughts the Divinity, the First Cause, and the Unity of Authority, then what we imagine is one. And when we have in our thoughts Those in Whom there is Divinity, Who are from the First Cause, and Who are from Her at the same time and with equal honor, then there are three worshippers.St. Gregory the TheologianThis God's nature is Unity in three Persons, There is one Kingdom, and Divinity and Power, There is Unity in the Triad, and the Triad in Unity. Homogeneous to each other in essence and nature,Equal wholly and always equal,In unity remaining together unmerged,In separation, on the contrary, inseparable and united... The Holy Trinity is One in three Persons,That is, the three are One, and the One is the Trinity.Understand, worship and always believe in it!That Unity, appearing, shining, illuminating everything,Having been taught, surrendered, is every good.Therefore we often call this goodNot only by one word, but in different ways: light, peace, joy, life, food, moisture, dew,Clothing, covering, heavenly palace,Sunday, east, With consolation, with the font,And with fire, and with water, and with the fountain of life,And with the river, and with the stream, and with the riches of the faithful,With our daily bread, with the secret delight,With the eternally shining sun, with the ever-bright star,And with the lamp that shines brightly and clearly in the heart.St. Symeon the New TheologianThus, the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church expounds together the teaching about the Father and His Only-begotten Son, born of Him out of time... and impassibly and incomprehensibly, as God alone knows all things, just as fire and the light proceeding from it exist at the same time, and not first fire, and after it light, but together: and as the light, which is always born of fire, is always in it, in no way separated from it, so the Son is born of the Father, not at all separated from Him... We believe in the same way in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Life-giving, proceeding from the Father and resting in the Son, worshipped and glorified with the Father and the Son as consubstantial and co-eternal... We do not say that the Spirit is from the Son, but only call Him the Spirit of the Son... and we confess that He has revealed Himself through the Son and is distributed to us... just as from the sun is a ray of sunlight and light, for it itself is the source of the sun's ray and light.

Chapter IV: Creation

God the Creator

One of the main dogmas of Christianity is the doctrine of God the Creator, Who, unlike Plato's Demiurge, who arranges the cosmos from some primordial substance, creates the Universe from nothing. This is how it is said in the Old Testament: "Look at the heavens and the earth, and seeing all that is in them, know that God created all things out of nothing" (2 Mac. 7:28). Everything that exists came into being thanks to the free will of the Creator: "He spoke, and it was done, He commanded, and it was manifested" (Psalm 32:9).All three Persons of the Holy Trinity participated in creation, as it is prophetically said already in the Old Testament: "By the word of the Lord were the heavens created, and by the Spirit of His mouth all their power" (Psalm 32:6). The Apostle John speaks of the creative role of God the Word at the beginning of the Gospel: "All things were made through Him, and without Him was not anything made" (John 1:3). The Bible says about the Spirit: "And the earth was formless and empty, and darkness was over the deep, and the Spirit of God moved over the waters" (Gen. 1:2). The Word and the Spirit, in the figurative expression of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, are the "two hands" of the Father [1]. It is about co-operation, joint creativity of the Three: Their will is one, but each has its own action. "The Father is the initial cause of all that exists," says St. Basil the Great. "The Son is the creative cause, the Holy Spirit is the perfect cause, so that by the will of the Father all things exist, by the action of the Son all things are brought into being, by the presence of the Spirit all things are accomplished [2]." In other words, in creation, the Father plays the role of the First Cause of everything, the Son Logos (the Word) plays the role of the Demiurge-Creator, and the Holy Spirit completes, that is, brings to perfection, all created things. "No one has ever seen God: the Only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made manifest" (John 1:18). The Son revealed the Father to created being, thanks to the Son, the Father's love was poured out on created being, and it received life. Already in Philo of Alexandria, the Logos is an intermediary between God and creation, and the Christian tradition speaks directly of the creative power of the Logos. In the same sense, the words from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah are interpreted: "My word, which proceeds out of my mouth, it does not return to Me in vain, but does what pleases Me, and accomplishes what I sent Him to do" (Isaiah 55:11). At the same time, the Logos is the plan and law according to which everything is created, the rational foundation of things, thanks to which everything has purposefulness, meaningfulness, harmony and perfection. The divine essence in the process of creation of the world did not undergo any separation or change: it did not mix with creation and did not dissolve in it. God is the Artist, and creation is His painting, in which we can recognize His "brush", His "hand", see the reflections of His creative mind, but the Artist did not disappear in His painting: He remained what He was before its creation. To this question patristic theology answers: "out of an abundance of love and goodness." "As soon as the good and most gracious God was not satisfied with the contemplation of Himself, but out of the abundance of goodness desired something to happen that in the future would benefit from His blessings and be a partaker of His goodness, He brings from non-existence into existence and creates everything," writes St. John of Damascus [3]. In other words, God wanted something else to participate in His blessedness, to share in His love. Cit. by: Bishop Kallistos Ware. The Orthodox Waу. London-Oxford, 1979. P. 44^PG 32, 136^ Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith 2, 2^

Angels