In the "Great Catechetical Discourse" of St. Gregory of Nyssa, the dogma of the Incarnation was considered exclusively from the point of view of the union of the divine and human natures. On the one hand, the idea is clarified that there is nothing in incarnation that degrades the high dignity of the deity, and on the other hand, it is established that human nature could well be united with God. "Either let them show," says St. Gregory, "that birth, education, growth, the ascent of nature to perfection, the tasting of death, the resurrection from the dead, are evil, or, if they agree that what is numbered is alien to evil, then they must necessarily admit that that which is alien to evil is not in the least inglorious. But since it is recognized as perfectly good, how pitiful in their foolishness are those who teach that what is good is unbecoming of God" (63). "

If the human soul, which is naturally united to the body, dwells freely everywhere, then what extreme is it to assert that the divinity is limited by the nature of the flesh? And from the examples available to us, can we not obtain for ourselves a certain decent understanding of God's economy? For just as the fire in the lamp appears to encompass the underlying substance, and although the intellect distinguishes both the fire in the substance and the substance that stirs up the fire, it is not possible to separate them from each other and show flames without substance in its own nature, but both are one (only let no one in this example admit the destructive power of fire, but, taking in this likeness only that is decent, let him remove that which is dissimilar and inappropriate), in the same way, i.e. as we see flame both dependent on the substance laid down, and not contained in matter, which prevents us, having imagined a kind of unity and rapprochement of the divine nature with humanity, to preserve the God-worthy concept and in this contact, believing that the divinity was beyond all limitation, although it dwelt in man" (66). The above excerpts fully determine the nature of St. Gregory's understanding of the fact of incarnation; he sees in this phenomenon an exceptional and unique event, and therefore so carefully clarifies and defines all aspects of the phenomenon. Then he proceeds to expound the causes of incarnation, which constitute the domain of completely different ideas. Consequently, we have the right to look at the exposition of the view of St. Gregory of Nyssa as completely complete.

Bl. Theodoret discusses the incarnation on the basis of polemics with the numerous and varied enemies of the Church: "I have put forward so many heretical opinions in order to show the truth of the Church's teaching in opposition to them. For the Church calls one and the same thing the Only-begotten, and God the Word, and the Savior the Lord and Jesus Christ. But He was called the Only-begotten Son and God the Word and Lord before the Incarnation, and He is called equally after the Incarnation. He was called Jesus Christ properly after His incarnation, and this for the following reasons. The word Jesus means Saviour, as the angel Gabriel testifies, who said to the Virgin: "Bring forth a son, and call His name Jesus" (Luke 1:31), which name He interprets in His conversation with Joseph as follows: "May He save His people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). He is called Christ because of the anointing from the Holy Spirit. Spirit. For the Psalmist David says: "For this reason have I anointed thee, O God, Thy God with the oil of joy, more than a partaker of Thy joy" (Psalm 44:8). Through the mouth of Fr. The Lord Himself said: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, and for His sake I have anointed" (61:1). And how this prophecy should be understood, the Lord Himself taught us. For having come to the synagogue, and taking the prophetic book, He read the designated place and said to those present: "For today this Scripture shall be fulfilled in your ears" (Luke 4:2). The great Peter also preached in agreement with the prophets. For, explaining the sacraments to Cornelius, he said: "Ye have known a word throughout all Judea, which began from Galilee, after baptism, when John Jesus was preached, who was from Nazareth, for God had anointed him with the Holy Spirit and with power" (Acts 10:37-38). From what has been said, it is evident that He, because of the anointing from the Holy Spirit. And is called Christ. But He is anointed not as God, but as a man. But if He is anointed as a man, then after the Incarnation He is called Christ" (62). Here we can see the desire to establish a certain view of the relationship between the divine and human natures. In general terms, the view of the Incarnation is the same as in the patristic testimonies we have examined. Jesus Christ confesses exclusively by the incarnate Word.

The same view of the Incarnation as the union of the Divinity with humanity, which has nothing like it in the ordinary course of historical life, is set forth in the most detailed of the Greek dogmatics, in the "Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith" by St. John the Baptist. John of Damascus, which is a kind of the highest synthesis of the patristic understanding of the Divine work. "By the good pleasure of God and the Father, the Only-begotten Son and Word of God, and God, who is in the bosom of God and the Father, who is of one essence with the Father and the Holy Spirit, the Eternal, the Beginningless, Who was in the beginning and was with God the Father, and was God, Who in the image of God, having inclined the heavens, descends, i.e. having undespised His indefatigable height, He descends for the benefit of His servants by such condescension, which was both ineffable and incomprehensible, for this is the meaning of the word descent. And being perfect God, He becomes perfect man and does the work that is the newest of all that is new, a work that is new under the sun (Ecclesiastes 1) and through which the infinite power of God is revealed, for what is greater than that God was made man? and the Word, unaltered, became flesh; of St. The Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit. Mary, the Ever-Virgin and the Mother of God; and He is called the Mediator between God and men, the only one that loves mankind, conceived in the immaculate womb of the Virgin, not from desire or lust, or union with a husband, or birth associated with pleasure, but from the Holy Spirit. And He is made obedient to the Father by becoming like us and through what He has received from us, healing our disobedience and becoming for us a model of obedience, without which it is impossible to receive salvation" (3:1). The name of Jesus Christ, as in the preceding dogmatic systems, is understood and interpreted as the name of the incarnate Son of God: "We confess that of the Divinity and of mankind the perfect God and the perfect man are and are called One and the same, and that He is of two natures and exists in two natures. The word "Christ" is the name of the hypostasis, which is understood not as something of one kind, but as serving to designate two natures. For He Himself anointed Himself, anointing His body with His Divinity, as God, and being anointed as a man, for He Himself is this and that. The anointing of mankind is divinity. For if Christ, being of one complex nature, is of one essence with the Father, then consequently the Father will also be compound and of one essence with the flesh, which is utterly absurd and full of all blasphemy" (3:3), that Christ, as the Anointed One, was not even compared to St. John. John of Damascus with the rest of the anointed, this is best indicated by the explanation of the reasons that compel the Orthodox to reject the Nestorian name of the Holy Trinity. "But we do not call the Holy Virgin the Mother of Christ, in any way, because this name, as an insult, was invented by the impure and abominable, Judaic-minded Nestorius, a vessel of dishonor for the destruction of the word "Mother of God" and for the deprivation of honor of the Mother of God, Who alone is truly honored above all creation, even though this one was torn with grief together with his father - Satan. For David the king is called Christ, i.e. the anointed one, so is Aaron the high priest, because both the royal dignity and the high priesthood were connected with anointing, and every God-bearing person can be called Christ, but not God by nature, just as Nestorius, rejected by God, in his pride, called the One born of the Virgin the God-bearer. But let it not be that we should say and think that He is the God-bearer, but that He is God incarnate" (3:12). With these words, the Holy Father shows that he does not recognize anything in common between the anointing of Christ and the other anointings of divine grace, for the other anointed are men, and Christ is both God and man: "Christ is called both God and man, created and uncreated, and subject to passions and passionless. And every time He is called in one of the parts the Son of God and God, He takes on the properties of the existing nature, i.e. the flesh, being called God - subject to suffering, and the Lord of glory crucified: not because He is God, but because He Himself is also a man. And each time He is called man and the son of man. He took on the qualities of divine nature and adornment, the pre-eternal child, the beginningless man: not because He was a child and a man, but inasmuch as, being the Pre-eternal God, He became a child in the last days. And this is the image of mutual communion, when of the two natures, what belongs to it is offered in exchange to the other, because of the identity of the hypostasis and their penetration of one into the other. Therefore, we can say of Christ: "This our God hath appeared on earth, and dwelt with men," and this man is uncreated and unsubject to passions, and indescribable" (3:4). "One is Christ, perfect God and perfect man, Whom we worship with the Father and the Spirit in one worship, not excluding His immaculate flesh, not saying that His flesh is not worthy of worship. For it is worshipped in the one hypostasis of the Word, which for it has become the hypostasis of not the creature, for we worship it not as simple flesh, but as united to the Divinity, and since His two natures are raised to the One Person and the one hypostasis of God the Word. I am afraid to touch the coal because of the fire associated with the tree. By reason of the Godhead united to the flesh, I worship both together the natures of Christ. For in the Trinity I do not insert a fourth person - let it not be! But I confess One Person of God the Word and His flesh. For the Trinity remained a Trinity even after the incarnation of the Word." In all the above passages of the dogmatic system of the most detailed of all the Holy Fathers of the Systematists, the incarnation of the Word is considered exclusively as a union of the divine absolute nature with the human limited nature, and some sayings positively reject the idea of the possibility of comparing the meaning of the incarnate Word of God with any phenomenon, however lofty, but undoubtedly human. In an internal connection with the recognition of the exclusivity of the divine person of Jesus Christ and His incomparison with historical phenomena, St. St. John of Damascus defines as accurately as possible the mutual relationship between the two natures: "

For, being of one essence with God and the Father, He autocratically desires and acts as God. But, being of one essence with us, He freely desires and acts as a person who is the same with us. For to Him belong the miracles, to Him also the sufferings" (3:13). But through union with divinity, the human nature of Jesus Christ appeared to be deified: "We must know that it is said of the flesh of the Lord that it is not by reason of the transformation of nature, or change, or change, or fusion, that it is deified, and has become a partaker of the same divinity and God, as Gregory the Theologian says: of which the one is divine, and the other is deified, and, I venture to say, is a partaker of the same divinity. And that which was anointed became man, and that which was anointed became God. For this happened not because of a change in nature, but because of the union connected with the economy, I mean the hypostasis, according to which the flesh is inseparably united to God the Word, and also because of the penetration of nature to one another, just as we speak of the red-hot iron. For, just as we confess the incarnation of the flesh without change or transformation, so we also imagine the event of the deification of the flesh. For for the reason that the Word was made flesh, and He did not go beyond the boundaries of His divinity and did not lose His inherent adornments, corresponding to the dignity of God, neither did the deified flesh change in relation to its nature or its natural properties. For even after the union, both the natures remained unmixed, and their properties intact. But the flesh of the Lord, by reason of the purest union with the Word, i.e. hypostatic, was enriched by divine actions, in no way suffering the deprivation of its natural properties, for it performed divine actions not by its own power, but by reason of the Word united to it, since the Word revealed Its power through it. For red-hot iron burns, possessing the power of burning, not as a result of natural conditions, but having acquired it from its union with fire" (3:17). Even the most detailed arguments arose, as can be seen from the above passage, on the basis of a thorough study of the laws of the union of the two natures, which is possible only if the incarnation is recognized as the only and exclusive deed. This confession, made in principle, was reflected in all the separate arguments of the divinely wise interpreter of divine dogmas. This view of St. John of Damascus on the Incarnation was expressed with exceptional vividness in a remarkable chapter on the divinely manly action produced by the power of the joint action of the will of God and man: "Blessed Dionysius, having said that Christ among us performed a certain new divinely manly action, speaks of one action that proceeded from both human and divine, without abolishing natural actions. For under these conditions we could also call new the one nature, which proceeded from both the Divine and the human, because the action is one, in the opinion of the Holy Fathers. of the Fathers, one and the essence. But he speaks, wishing to show a new and ineffable way of revealing the natural actions of Christ, in accordance with the ineffable image of the penetration of Christ's natures into one another, - also the human race of His life - extraordinary and wonderful, and unknown to the nature of existence - and the image of communion arising from the ineffable union. For we are not speaking of separate actions, nor of separately acting natures, but of what each together does with the participation of the other, that which it had as its own work. For He did not make man in a human way, because He was not only man, nor divine, as God alone, because He was not God alone, but made it, being God at the same time as man. For just as we understand both the union and the natural difference of natures, so we understand the difference between natural will and actions. God-manly action means that after God became man, i.e. became man, and His human action was divine, i.e. deified and not deprived of participation in His divine action, and His divine action was not deprived of participation in His human action, but each of the two was performed together with the other" (3:19). The above arguments about God-manly action with no less force than the above-mentioned words testify to the view of an accurate interpreter of sacred truths on the incarnation of the Word as an absolutely exceptional event. In addition, this passage introduces a somewhat more detailed explanation of the work done by the Lord Jesus Christ. If the person of Christ cannot be compared with the personality of any historical figure, then even in the external manifestations of His human nature, Christ revealed the image of another, hitherto unknown to the human race, God-manly action.

Having explained in such detail the exceptional character of the divine incarnation, St. John of Damascus interpreted various figurative expressions found in the Holy Scriptures. Scriptures concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. This interpretation is made on the basis of the temporal meaning of this or that image, what is said about Christ: "For one thing will be fitting to Him even before the incarnation, another in the union, a third after the union, a fourth after the resurrection" (4:18). Each of these images, as can be seen from further discussions, expresses different features of the Divine hypostasis.

III. The Teaching of the Moscow Theologians on the Same

Russian theology of the sixteenth century retained all the peculiarities of universal theology, as we have already said above. The teaching about Christ in the works of Joseph of Volotsk and Zinovy of Otensk has been preserved the same as that we saw in the writings of the ancient patristic writings, only general thoughts about the Divine dignity of Jesus Christ and the extraordinary significance of His sacred mission are set forth in an adapted way for the admonition of Russian heretics, against whom the works of Russian theologians of that era were mainly written. Prep. Joseph expounds the doctrine of the Person of the Son of God in three points of his system: in Homily 1, where he refutes and denounces the general propositions of his opponents regarding the Divinity. The Judaizers denied the Orthodox dogma of the One-in-Essence and Life-Giving Trinity. In contrast to their errors, St. Joseph expounds this dogma with his inherent talent and power, and, of course, speaks of the Second Hypostasis of the venerable Godhead. He has to talk a lot about the fact that the One is essentially triune in persons. This truth is proved by a detailed examination of those passages in the Old Testament sacred books where the difference in the hypostases of the Godhead is clearly visible. Having affirmed on the "immovable stone" of the divinely revealed testimonies accepted by his opponents, the mystery of the Life-Giving Trinity, St. Joseph points to the testimonies of the Scriptures about the incarnation of the Word, testimonies which cannot be applied to other persons and events because of the exceptional meaning and power of incarnation. Interpreting the words of St. Daniel on the eternal kingdom of the Son of Man (Dan. 7:13-14), St. Joseph says, "And His power, saith, is everlasting, which shall not pass by, and His kingdom shall not be scattered. To whom does the power not pass by, and to whom the kingdom will not crumble? For David was the most beautiful among kings, and Solomon the wise reigned, after he died, and their power passed by, and their kingdom was scattered. And all the kings who were under heaven were beaten by them, their power passed by, and their kingdom was scattered. And there is one our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Most Eternal, Who is also called the Son of Man and Christ. For He has reached the clouds of heaven to the Ancient of Days, and to Him His Father Almighty gives eternal power, so that the kingdom does not pass by, so that it does not fall apart." In the same way, the complete and incomparable superiority of Jesus Christ over the religious heroes of Israel, with whom the biblical writers, yielding to the spiritual weaknesses of the people, compared the expected Christ, is recognized. In the same first word we read: "And Moses saith, Keep this law, which God has given you to eat, and for ye enter into the promised land, ye shall not do an abomination to those tongues. He shall call the prophet the Lord incarnate for the sake of his incarnation, saying, that not by nature, but by deed, for no one has been a lawgiver of the prophet from Moses to Christ. For this reason Moses saith, For me; not being created is a servant to the Lord, nor a creature being equal to the Creator, but assimilating time to time, and writing the truth to the shadow" (ibid.). The exceptional significance of the Divine life of Jesus Christ is affirmed on the basis of His Divine nature: "Isaiah saith: Behold, a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14), which is said to be God with us. For if there was one person and one composition of the Godhead, and if Christ were not of one essence with God the Father, but like David, and Solomon, and Moses, then whom does the prophet show to be born of the Virgin, and with us the essence of God? And so: Behold, our God Himself will come and save us. Then the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will hear (Isaiah 35:4-5). When was this? Never, but when the Lord came to earth from heaven and saved us, and then the eyes of the blind were opened, and the ears of the deaf heard" (ibid.). The whole meaning of the incarnation of the Word is that God dwelt in a visible and tangible way among people: "Jeremiah saith, This is our God, and shall not be reckoned to him. Invent every way of art, and give it to Jacob his servant, and to Israel his beloved. And after these things He appeared on the earth, and dwelt with men (Bar. 3:36-38). Behold, this true and true prophecy will be corrupted by no one. As God appeared to the prophets, yet never lived with men in sensuality. But our Lord Jesus Christ, for the love of mankind for the sake of this God, was a man, appeared on earth and dwelt with men" (ibid.). Since the teaching of the Judaizers was full of all sorts of inaccuracies and internal contradictions, as we have already said, their denial of the Divine dignity of Jesus Christ was reduced to an empty mockery of church dogma and to a frivolous likening of the Son of God to other servants of the Divine will. Denouncing them, St. Joseph was compelled to speak primarily in the words of the Old Testament, and in general to talk about heterogeneous phenomena, he had to touch upon questions raised by ignorant minds, and moreover, deliberately, in the form of the destruction of Christ's truth. Therefore, the teaching of the "Enlightener" about the incarnation is not distinguished by its completeness and completeness, but nevertheless the main idea that the appearance of the Lord in the flesh had no historical likeness has been preserved in its entirety and inviolability. Venerable himself. Joseph is aware of the features of his theology that we have indicated, but with even greater force he points to the exclusivity of the Divine manifestation: "Behold, little and in part, we speak of the Divine Scriptures and the prophets about our Lord Jesus Christ, that He is called Christ and the Son of Man after humanity, but according to Divinity the Son of God, the One-in-Essence and Co-throned Counselor of the Father, and the mighty God, and the Lord, and the Prince of the world, and the Father of the age to come, and the Creator, and the Creator of the visible and the invisible, with the Father and with the Holy Spirit. By the Spirit, and not as Moses and David and all the prophets" (ibid.).

Denying the Divine dignity of the Word and denying the Holy Spirit. As can be seen from the "Enlightener", the Judaizer heretics did not have a definite and accurate view of the Person of Jesus Christ. Judging by the first word we have just examined, they were inclined to recognize the Divine origin of Christ's ministry, only they refused to see in Christ God, One in essence with God the Father. This, in all likelihood, was said by those of the heretics who were going through the process of rejection of church teaching and blasphemy of dogmas, because the Jews gradually introduced them into the mysteries of their teaching. Having become acquainted with the inner spirit and aspirations of Judaism, the heretics no longer wanted to recognize any Divine significance of Jesus, even in the relatively modest degree of a prophet, and already taught that Jesus, recognized as the Son of God by the Church, was an ordinary man, and the Messiah Christ foretold by the prophets had not yet been born, but the time would come for the fulfillment of the prophecy about the coming of Christ. In denunciation of their madness, St. In the second word of the "Enlightener", Joseph gives a detailed description of the external events of the earthly life of Jesus Christ, as the exact fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies about the coming of the Messiah, which makes impossible the new expectations of Christ, who has already accomplished His work. In the above-mentioned sermon, St. Joseph speaks of the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem of Judea, at the time of the humiliation of the political power of Israel, speaks of the fulfillment of Daniel's famous prophecy about the weeks; all the Old Testament prophecies about the Lord's sufferings are given in equal detail. It should be noted that in this word (strictly polemical) St. Joseph makes almost no digression towards the interpretation of Divine dogmas and confines himself to refuting heresy. For the complete moral destruction of the Judaizers, who were waiting for the coming of the Messiah, it was quite enough to determine the fact of the coming of the Messiah on the basis of the testimonies they accepted. Prep. Joseph does so, adding, however, that the Christ expected by the heretics will be the Antichrist. For us, the reasoning of St. Joseph, placed in the second word, are of less importance than his testimonies about the Person of the Lord Jesus quoted above. It is only important that here too St. Joseph remained faithful to the basic principle of patristic thinking, which saw in the coming of Christ not only a great deed, but also an unparalleled one.

Establishing in the 7th homily of the "Enlightener" the true concepts of worship of God for the admonition of heretics who tried to identify Orthodox worship with an idolatrous cult, St. Joseph considers it necessary to repeat once more in strong and beautiful terms the teaching about the venerable Trinity, so that the impious may be ashamed, who have reproached the Church with superstition and idolatry. There again we encounter several sayings about the Divine incarnation: "For if this God also was perfect for our sake, perfect in the last days, was born of the Holy Virgin Mother of God Mary, the great, pre-eternal, beginningless, invisible, incomprehensible and indescribable, bringing the hearts of all man together. For there are two kinds of His births: the first is from the Father eternally, childless, bodiless, shining forth as light from the sun. The second from the Holy Scriptures. The Virgin Mary, without seed from the Holy Spirit. Spirit. For this reason we know nature in two, in the divine and in the human. For there is one composition, for there is one Son of God and one Son of the Virgin. And God is the same, and man, and in a double essence: for He is of one essence with the Father according to Divinity, and of one essence with the Mother according to humanity. And the two actions of the Divinity and humanity, and the two wills, the rexhe of will. For having the Divine will, by it, as God, Thou didst do the Divine things, raising the dead and enlightening the blind, and doing many other ineffable signs and wonders. And having a human will, thou hast willed: for thou hast received human flesh and spiritual actions and passions for the announcement of the true, and not by the apparition of incarnation, and if from the malice of passion, if they defile our life, as unworthy of the most pure Divinity, be marked; For thou didst suffer, in this double nature, for thou didst hang in the flesh on the cross, dying in the flesh, for thou didst remain immortal to His Divinity. For if the immortal in the flesh and the Divine die, His soul departed from the Most-Pure Body, but the Divinity was inseparable from the flesh, for the Almighty God Himself descended with the Father on the throne and with the body, in the tomb and with the soul into hell, and preached to the souls in hell the way leading to eternal life and those who believed in the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Raise up the Spirit with Thee, and leave those who do not believe in hell, as Thou didst create on earth, Thou didst save them by faith, and condemn those who did not believe. And He appeared as a disciple in incorruptible flesh, already deified after the resurrection, and ascended into heaven with the flesh, and sat at the right hand of the Father with the flesh, and not in the scattering of corruption, as we do. And He will come with glory to judge the living and the dead, but His kingdom has no end" (Prosv, p. 7).

These words, filled with patristic wisdom, seem to us to exhaust the entire depth of Christian philosophy on the question we are considering, and represent an exact and correct definition of Orthodox dogma; they, like the above-mentioned testimonies of St. Joseph, preserve in all its purity and intact the patristic understanding of the incarnation of the Word, as the union of sinful human nature with the infinite and incorruptible Divinity.

Moving on to another writer of the sixteenth century, Bl. It is necessary to take into account that he was not a theologian-systematist. Therefore, in his works one can find only fragmentary remarks about the coming of the Son of God. True, he dwells in much more detail and more often on the great deed accomplished by the Lord Jesus, but the podvig of the Savior is usually considered separately under one name or another. About the very coming of the Saviour. St. Maximus says: "With Paul, the Divine Apostle, I preach dangerously, and say with all my soul and with all my tongue: 'Who is the radiance of glory and the image of his ever-present being, bearing all things by the word of his power, having made cleansing for our transgressions, sit at the right hand of the throne of the majesty of the highest' (Hebrews 1:3), and the rest all day and night I sing and speak with you all, And having ascended into heaven, and sitting at the right hand of the Father, and having done so; In the same way in the daily doxology I sing, bless, glorify and say: "Lord God, Lamb of God, O Son, take away the sins of the world, have mercy on us, take away the sins of the world, accept our prayers, sit at the right hand of the Father, have mercy on us, and so on" (3:33). In these words there is nothing new in comparison with what we have read in the works of Sts. Fathers and in the "Enlightener" of St. Joseph; consequently, the usual patristic point of view is maintained. In addition to the above excerpt, Bl. Maximus speaks of the coming of the Son of God in a homily on the Nativity of Christ. It should be noted that in this, purely oratorical work, the syllable of St. Maximus, usually very simple and brief, if I may say so, acquires a certain pomposity, expressed mainly in figurative comparisons: "Behold both the cave and the manger; the newborn child is in them, lifted up by his unadulterated matter, and the wolves are honored with honorable gifts, and guided from above by the star through the natural one, and the angelic order cries: Glory to him who reigns in the highest, and peace to those who dwell on earth, and shepherds hearing from above: Christ is born to you in Bethlehem, your hope! In truth, all things are foreshadowed and clearly proclaimed to this child: "Be God, the King of all; for no one can speak to these who were after the visit; For this has long been prophesied of him, and of these are the true witnesses of the divinely inspired books of the holy God-speaking men. Let the disobedient Jewish tongue be put to shame, arguing boldly with this most manifest thing; yes, or as God, they sing Jesus together with us, beholding all things, as the holy prophets prophesied of Him before many years, and it came to pass of Him, not falsely, I cleanse the lepers (with a word), and give sight to the blind, and raise up the dead from the grave with a word, or in their wickedness willingly, let them obey the holy prophets, as such are those who have lied against Christ, Below let them wait for another to come, as the time of his appearance has long since come" (3:40). In this sermon, which has not only a didactic, but also a polemical character, Bl. the author draws the attention of his listeners to the Divine dignity of the newborn Infant; it is true that he also calls Him King, but this name comparatively indicates the Divine highest dignity. Exclusively, as about the descent of God to earth, says Bl. St. Maximus about the coming of the Saviour at the beginning of the story of the exaltation of the Most Holy Theotokos of bread: "Who is the Son of God and the Word, for our sake, being man, besides sin, as he will raise up human nature, having done evil of old from paradise, and having endured the cross by will and death, and burial, and resurrection, ascended to the original glory" (3:104).

A more detailed content of the dogma of the Divine Incarnation, with the retention of the above-mentioned point of view, is found in the theological system of the third teacher of the Russian Church of the period under consideration. Bl. the monk Zinovy of Otensk returns to this dogma several times and, as the author of the system, is compelled to assign it a definite place in his work. The theological system of Bl. Zinovia, just like Joseph's "Enlightener", pursued purely polemical tasks; The teaching about the person of Jesus Christ is of the same character: "Wherefore the law of preaching Jesus Christ God is, and the apostles also taught that our Lord Jesus Christ is God and man.

But there is no such thing, as the Scythe blasphemes against God, speaking falsehood on high" (Hist. Pok. 217). These words sufficiently clarify the point of view from which Bl. Zinovy looks at the reasoning about the person of the Lord: the heresy teacher asserts that Christ is a simple man, i.e. an ordinary, albeit outstanding personality. In contrast to him, the Orthodox teacher of the faith persistently pursues the idea of the Divine dignity of Jesus Christ, thus recognizing Christianity as an absolutely exceptional phenomenon, with special tasks and purposes. Defending Orthodox truth, Bl. Zinovy puts forward the following points, proving them with references to the relevant passages of the Bible: 1) "For Jesus Christ the Son of God was begotten, and not created; 2) As the apostles of Jesus Christ spoke for this man's sake, since the Son of God was incarnate and was man, and God did not live on earth as a ghost with men, but truly this God was man; 3) As Christ and the Son of God before all ages, God is, and see to it that He is incarnate to save us." Proofs of these propositions are taken from the Holy Scriptures. The Scriptures are not something new and original. The only thing that is important for us is that in the content of the propositions themselves, the idea of the Divine dignity of Jesus Christ is expressed in all its purity, without the admixture of any philosophies of a lower order and later origin, a profound and powerful idea, on which the entire significance of Christianity as a great, universal force rests. It is important for us that Russian patristic theology took into account the very essence of the idea, without introducing anything superfluous and remaining completely faithful to the traditions of Eastern theology, which, for all the depth, brilliant development and charming beauty of the Greek language prevailing in the Eastern Church, in which the New Testament sacred books were written, always treated with distrust and apprehension the ability of human language to accurately and thoroughly expound the content of the Divine word due to its limitations human concepts.