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.

In addition to these provisions, Bl. Zinovy dwells on the dogma we are considering two more times. In elucidating the mystery of the pre-eternal birth of the Word, Bl. Zinovy establishes precisely in which cases the Apostles call Christ God, and in which cases He is a man: "Since the Apostles often preached His cross, and blood, and death, by them Christ created salvation for us, and when the Apostles spoke the Passion of the Saviour, then they also spoke the man Christ; For it is for man to suffer, and not for God, and for truly God is man, since he is Christ. Whenever, apart from the cross and death, he speaks to the apostles about Christ, then the preaching of Christ is true of God" (233). These words most of all testify to the fact that Bl. Zinovy not only preserved the patristic understanding of the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, but also conducted his independent reasoning on this question in a strictly patristic spirit and direction. Such is the teaching of the later of the Russian theologians we are considering about the Most Holy Person of Jesus Christ, a teaching that is completely identical with the general patristic understanding of the dogma of the Incarnation. However, in his further reasoning, Bl. Zinovy makes a decisive definition of Christ by means of human concepts: "We know and confess the Lord Jesus Christ, King and Holy Hierarch and Master of all: the King, because Thou hast created all things, and conquered the apostate devil, and the Lord, as He has dominion over all His creation, and the Holy Hierarch according to humanity, as the Advocate for us to God and the Father, as the Apostle Paul teaches" (982). It should be noted that these definitions are, so to speak, purely external and conditional. We are talking about images of God the Father and Jesus Christ on icons. Bl. Zinovy points out that it is more convenient to depict Christ in the form of the Tsar and Saint, because these epithets refer to Him in the Holy Scriptures. Scripture. Further we read: "And not God the Father, the king and the saint: for how and to whom to intercede, to reconsecrate, who Himself is God and the Father." Such reasoning was caused by the extreme ignorance of the interlocutors of Bl. Zinovy and the real absurdities allowed in the iconography of that epoch. In the same place we read a description of one image of the God of hosts in the image of David: "And the schema is inscribed on the head and the omophorion on the frame: the legend, as a king and a saint. And this is filled with more pious thoughts and blasphemy: for in the Scriptures of God the Father is not found to be a King and a Saint. Know God the Father, the King and the Lord, visible to all and invisible. For if in the Lord also was inscribed a king and a saint, and not God the Father, for the Lord is the king of kings and a great saint in the house of God, both are inscribed with pious thoughts, for there is a schema on the head, and this blasphemous mark of God's glory. For the schema does not show the Lord and King, but shows the servant subdued; the king is shown by a diadem and a purple. For the schema is possessed by kings, and not by kings; for they learn to think that they do not reign and rule, but that they know that they have come under the yoke of Christ to work for God and in His commandments irrevocably, and so on." (981). As can be seen, it is a matter of artistic symbolic representations of the Divine Hypostases, and not of metaphysical concepts, which are fully and definitely expressed in the purely dogmatic part of the creation of Bl. And the passages we have written down are contained in the "discourse on the mark of God, in the form of David and Jesus, sitting fully armed, as is accepted." This consideration was conducted during the tenth coming of the Kryloschans, when questions of church discipline and worship were considered in general, which were of great interest in the local Church with a predominantly ritual character, and in that epoch, which was distinguished by great zeal for the purity of church life. Questions of a purely dogmatic nature, as previously considered, were not considered during this "coming". Consequently, the above-mentioned names of the Lord, as purely accidental, do not in the least distort the general dogmatic understanding of Bliss. Zinovia.

IV. Features of Western Theology on the Incarnation

The universal teaching about the Divine Person of the Lord Jesus Christ has been preserved in its essential features and in the confessions of the Western community, which has deviated from communion with the Church. But there, without changing in its basis, it took on a significant addition, which at first glance has the character of an innocent interpretation, perhaps not entirely successful, but in any case does not in the least change the basic character of universal truth. Only the further development of the Latin complement shows how little it harmonizes with the spirit of patristic theology. - The Latin theologians did not fall into the heresy of Nestorius or Eutyches, and fully preserved the doctrine of the two wills in the one person of Christ, but they introduced into dogmatic theology the doctrine of Christ as Prophet, High Priest, and King. At first glance, this teaching does not introduce anything new into the dogma of the union of the two natures in one person, but only explains the meaning of various aspects of the life of Jesus Christ, and also defines the very meaning of the name "Christ" in the "Confessio" fidei christianae.

Such a subdivision, completely unknown to Sts. was unconsciously copied by the Kievan scholastics into Russian Orthodox Theology. It is contained in both documents of Kievan theology of the seventeenth century. Lawrence Zizanius in his "Large Catechism" (l.4) says that Christ was preceded by three Jesuses: Joshua - a military leader, Jesus of Sirach - a teacher and Jesus - a high priest who lived at the time of the return of the Jews from captivity. Thus, the purely accidental circumstance of the existence in Jewish history of the three famous names of Christ is interpreted in the spirit of Latin innovation. It is overlooked that Joshua was not only a military leader, but also a teacher of the people. In the Orthodox confession of Peter Mogila, the doctrine of the three ministries, which is Latin in origin, is also set forth in the Latin form. In the exposition and interpretation of the second article of the Creed, we read: "What do these two words Jesus Christ, placed in one article, mean? Jesus means the Saviour, as the Archangel explained when he said to Joseph: "And he shall bear a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins" (Matthew 1:21). Therefore, it is fair to conclude that this name cannot belong to anyone else except our Lord and Saviour, Who delivered the entire human race from the eternal slavery of demons. The name Christ means the Anointed One, for in the Old Testament the anointed were called Christs, such as priests, kings, and prophets, to which three offices Christ was anointed, though not in common with the others, but above all the other anointed, as the Psalmist says of Him: "Thou hast loved righteousness, and hast hated iniquity: for this reason Thou hast anointed Thee, O God Thy God, with the oil of joy more than a partaker of Thy partakers" (Psalm 44:8). Here we must understand the anointing of the Holy Spirit, since He was anointed with the Holy Spirit, according to the story of St. John. Isaiah: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, and for His sake I have anointed, to preach good tidings to the poor of My ambassador" (Isaiah 61:1). Which words Christ refers to Himself: "For today this scripture shall be fulfilled in your ears" (Luke 4:21). By a threefold advantage and especially by a glorious majesty, Christ surpasses His partners. First of all, it is the priesthood after the order of Melchizedek, of which the Apostle says: "He was called of God High Priest after the order of Melchizedek" (Hebrews 5:10). In another place he calls Christ a priest, because He offered Himself as a sacrifice to God and the Father: "Who by the Holy Spirit offer unto Himself blameless to God." And below: "Christ was brought alone, to bear many sins" (Hebrews 9:14,28). Secondly, His royal dignity is especially glorious and advantageous, which was revealed by the Archangel Gabriel when he brought the salvific news to the Most-Pure Virgin: "And the Lord God shall give Him the throne of David His father; and he shall reign in the house of Jacob for ever, and his kingdom shall have no end" (Luke 1:32-33). Likewise, the Magi, who brought gifts at the time of His birth, bore witness to His kingdom, asking, "Where is the King of the Jews born?" (Matthew 2:2). The same is confirmed by the inscription of His guilt at His death: "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews" (John 19:19). The God-inspired Moses prophesied about the third advantage: "The Lord thy God will raise up a prophet from thy brethren as unto me" (Deuteronomy 18:15). This greatness of His is known from His holy teaching, in which He revealed both His Divinity and all that was necessary for the salvation of man, as He Himself says: "I have spoken Thy name unto them," and above: "The words which Thou hast given Me have been given unto them, and they have received and understood truly, for I have come forth from Thee, and believe, that Thou hast sent Me" (John 17). Christ showed His prophetic dignity (it is the third predominantly) when He foretold the future not by any revelation, but by His own knowledge, as God and man" (Rev. Ex. 92). Thus is the immeasurable and great name of the Son of God and the Divine Incarnation interpreted, the only phenomenon quite new and certainly extraordinary, which appears to be a simple combination in one person of three types, so common in the history of the Jewish kingdom in times of decadence. Christ appears as a priest of a bloody cult, as a king who controls the power of external power, and, finally, as a prophet-teacher, alien and shunning all coercive power and acting solely on the free human conscience. It should be noted that such a division is not found in a poetic or rhetorical work, where inaccuracies and repetition of the same thing are possible and even necessary for strengthening, but in a dogmatic system, the main feature of which is the accuracy and strict definiteness of expressions. Thus, Christ is recognized as the spokesman for the three ministries – the high priestly, the prophetic, and the royal; consequently, all these forms of service are thereby recognized as something original and fundamental.

Considering this teaching from the point of view of the universal tradition of the Church of Christ, it can be said that it is absolutely alien to the thinking of the Holy Fathers. Fathers. We may have dwelt in too much detail on the teaching of the Ecumenical and Old Russian Fathers about the Divine Person of the Lord, and, as can be seen from the numerous extracts we have made, we have not found anything of the kind. If Christ is called King or Bishop anywhere, then in a figurative or rhetorical sense, or simply the words of the Holy Scriptures are repeated. Scriptures, where Christ is called so. But in none of the monuments of patristic universal theology that we have analyzed does we find an exclusive reference to the three above-mentioned names. The absence of such a teaching in strictly ecclesiastical works imposes on the teaching itself the stamp of a certain alienation from the patristic understanding of Christianity. In addition to the degree of validity of the doctrine itself, its origin is very important, for, as St. Irenaeus of Lyons says: "One should not seek from others the truth, which is easy to receive from the Church, for the apostles, like a rich man in the treasury, have fully put into it all that pertains to the truth, so that whosoever willeth to take from it the drink of life" (Prot. Jer. 3:4).

Turning to the Bible, from which the images of the three ministries are borrowed, we see that the concepts of high priest, king, and prophet are by no means the only ones by which the sacred writers define the high dignity of Christ. In the "Great Catechism" of Lavrenty Zizanius, all the epithets of Christ existing in the Scriptures are indicated in detail. On what basis is preference given to these three, taken as accidentally as the others? After all, in the Bible Christ is called bread, and stone, and high priest, and sacrifice. Why are some epithets preferred over others? Calling Himself comparatively and figuratively bread (John 6:48) and vine (John 15:1), Christ literally calls Himself a teacher and guide. Indeed, for clarifying the nature of the earthly life of Jesus Christ, this epithet is the most appropriate. Christ, both in the way of life and in the form of His relations with the people, was a wandering teacher. Such was He for those who knew Him little or accidentally encountered Him, and His close friends and followers, having learned the exceptional nature of His preaching, understood that this was not a simple teacher, and through the mouth of Simon Peter they called Him "Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. 16:16). Can each of these epithets define Jesus Christ quite positively, and not comparatively only? The epithet of the High Priest is borrowed from the Epistle of the Apostle Paul to the Hebrews, written in the pictorial language of Jewish religious concepts borrowed from the cult of the Jerusalem temple. Devoted to the faith of their fathers, the Jews could not but relate with the greatest love and reverence to their holy place, to their glory and praise, to the temple in Jerusalem, where sacrifices were offered and praises to the true God were sung, while the whole world was polluted with idolatrous impiety and defiled by the stench of the impious teachings of the pagans. With ardent love for all that was good and beautiful in the world before the preaching of the Apostles, praising the piety even of the Athenians, the Apostle could only cherish deep sympathy for such sincere devotion to the sacred cult and with all his soul pity those of the pious Jews for whom faithfulness to the religion of the fathers was an obstacle to faith in the Saviour. To those who erred in their zeal for the institutions of Moses, the apostle wanted to show that Christianity can be compared even with the external side of the Jewish religion, and that this comparison is in favor of Christianity. From this point of view, he calls Christ the High Priest, and unlike the Jewish high priests, he calls Him the High Priest after the order of Melchizedek. Obviously, such a name of Christ is nothing more than a simple comparison, since the sacrifices of the ancient priests were in themselves only a condescension to the human weakness of the Jews inclined to idolatry, and not some unconditional way of pleasing God. This is how Sts. Fathers. St. Irenaeus of Lyons writes: "Thus He (i.e. God) ordained for the people the building of the tabernacle, and the building of the temple, and the election of the Levites, sacrifices and offerings, and statutes, and all the rest of the ministry of the law. He Himself had need of nothing, for He was always full of all good things, having in Himself every stench of sweetness and all incense that was fragrant, before Moses was, but He taught the people, inclined to return to idols, by various means of invocation, disposing them to be constant and to serve God, and by means of the secondary calling to the primary, that is, by the rites to the truth, by the temporal to the eternal, by means of the carnal to the spiritual, by means of the earthly to the heavenly, as it was said to Moses: "Thou shalt do all things in the image of what thou hast seen on the mountain" (Exodus 25:40). These words of the father and teacher of the ancient Church show that the Old Testament high priestly ministry was in the minds of Christians only a precautionary measure against the Jews inclined to idolatry. With greater certainty and force, the same idea is expressed by the Father of the ancient Russian Church, St. Joseph, Abbot of Volotsk. In the third word of the "Illuminator" we read the following reasoning about the worthiness of the Old Testament sacrifices: "For the Israelites dwell in Egypt and devour idols and demons from them, and play and rejoice and enjoy the organ of the Music. And when God desired to free them from the enslavement of Egypt, it was the custom of the sacrifices of idols to those who wished to devour them, when He made a calf in the wilderness and devoured the sacrifice by a demon; then you shall be allowed to eat, but not all, but an ox, and a sheep, and a goat, and a dove, and a turtledove, which eat for the sake of weakness, and many others, and not with an idol, but with Him alone, the true God. For the Egyptians were gods of the ox, and the sheep, and the goat, and the dove, and the turtledove, and many other things that were eaten. For this reason the one worshipped by the Egyptians is commanded to eat it, so that the gods will not know how to name it." Further quoting the words of the Lord through the Prophet Isaiah about the uselessness of sacrifices in the sinful state of the soul (Isaiah 1:11, 12, 15), the Holy Father continues: "For this reason God did not want to give sacrifices to the Jews from the beginning. But as a physician keeps a man with a fire in vain, desiring cold drink, and despising it, if they do not give him it, I will lay a boa on myself and throw it into my rapids; but the physician is a greater evil, though he forbids a lesser evil, though he is delivered from an untimely death. Thus did God do: since the Jews saw the Jews raging and choking, desiring sacrifices, and as they would not receive to the idols themselves, but those who had already come of their own accord, He commanded them to make sacrifices, and did not say to them: "If you are furious and want to eat, then do not eat Me." From this it was revealed that it was made by the Jews as an evil demon after the feast, then the sacrifice was commanded. But having commanded not to allow it to go to the end, but to lead away the wisest snares. And like a physician, he spoke of him, having allowed little desire of the sick man, commanded that the cup should be brought from his house, and that the one cold drink should be taken to the sick man, and so he commanded that the cup should be broken, so that we might not shamefully and ashamedly lead the sick away from the desire for it. Thus God also commanded to eat, but in one Jerusalem." These words of the sacred teacher of the Church and champion of Orthodoxy are so eloquent and clear that they do not need any kind of commentary. The thoughts set forth in them testify to how alien to the ancient Russian Church was the opinion about the absolute necessity of bloody sacrifices. Without recognition of this necessity, the idea of the high priestly ministry of Jesus Christ fades by itself.

The concept of a "king" suffers from even greater vagueness and conventionality, whose ministry is ascribed by the scholasticists to Jesus Christ not as a pictorial comparison, but as an essential property. The unlimited Oriental despots, the hereditary representatives of Lacedaemon, subject to the supervision of the ephors, the medieval feudal monarchs, and the modern constitutional princes, are all kings. "But what do they have in common?" Except for one thing: the earthly nature of their power. But the Saviour directly recognized His kingdom as a kingdom "not of this world" (John 18:36), i.e. having nothing in common with human kingdoms; and long before Christ, the royal prophet David noted the earthly nature of the power of the pagan kings, hostile to God: "And the kings of the earth arise, and the princes take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed" (Psalm 2:2). As for the "Anointed One" himself, i.e. the king of the Jews, his very existence was almost a greater condescension to the weakness of the people than even the institution of blood sacrifices. The very desire to have a king was instilled in the Jews by the example of the Gentiles: "Set a king over us, that he may judge us as among other nations" (1 Samuel 8:19-20), the elders of Israel said to Samuel. The Lord, showing His long-suffering and consent, nevertheless recognized the establishment of royal power among the chosen people as almost apostasy: "And Samuel did not like this word, when they said, Give us a king, that he may judge us. And Samuel prayed to the Lord. And the Lord said to Samuel, Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you, for they have not rejected you, but have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. as they have done since the day that I brought them out of Egypt, and to this day they have forsaken Me and served other gods; so do they do to you; and so listen to their voices, only present to them, and declare to them the rights of a king who shall reign over them" (8:6-9). From these words of the Lord it is evident that the ideal order of social life from the biblical point of view should be considered a primitive purely religious, and consequently strictly theocratic; as for the various forms of political life, the Bible is completely indifferent to them. Psalms and parables praising royal power are well known, but the biblical understanding of life in the Book of Maccabees also pays tribute to the republican system of the ancient Romans, which protected the eternal city from the strife so common in ancient monarchies: "Not one of them put on a crown, nor clothed himself with purple to boast of it. They have formed a council, and every day three hundred and twenty people constantly consult about everything that concerns the people and their welfare. And every year they entrust to one man the rulership over themselves, and dominion over all their land, and all listen to the one, and there is neither envy nor jealousy among them" (1 Mac. 8:14-16). Consequently, there is no reason to think that, from the biblical point of view, royal power appears to be the unconditional and final expression and form of political existence. It should also be noted that in the Gospel Christ is called king either allegorically (for example, John 1:49), or in mockery, as by the Roman soldiers and Pilate. It seems to us that what has been said is enough to understand the relativity of the royal ministry of Jesus Christ.