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During the patristic period, there was hardly even a mention of the existence of the Church, although much was done about the concept of the existence of God. The question that preoccupied the Church Fathers was not to find out whether God exists or not; the existence of God was "given" to almost all people of that period, both Christians and pagans. The question that has tormented all generations has been rather how He existed. And such a question had immediate consequences both for the Church and for man, since both were regarded as "images of God."

It was not easy to answer the question about the existence of God and the patriotic period. The greatest difficulty was also rooted in ancient Greek ontology, which was fundamentally monistic; the existence of the world and the existence of God for the ancient Greeks represent an indissoluble unity. This linked together the existence of God and the existence of the world, while biblical faith proclaimed God to be absolutely free in relation to this world. Plato's concept of God the Creator did not satisfy the Church Fathers, precisely because of the doctrine of creation from primordial matter, which limited divine freedom.

It was therefore necessary to find some ontology that would avoid both the extremes of monistic Greek philosophy and the "gap" between God and the world, as taught by the Gnostic systems, which was the other great danger of this period. The creation of such an ontology was perhaps the greatest philosophical achievement of patristic thinking.

The ecclesial experience of the Church Fathers played a decisive role in breaking through ontological monism and avoiding the Gnostic "rupture" between God and the world. The fact that neither apologists such as Justin Martyr nor Alexandrian catechetical theologians such as the famous Clement and Origen were able to completely avoid the trap of the ontological monism of Greek thought is not accidental; They were above all "doctors", they were academic theologians fundamentally interested in Christianity as a "revelation". By contrast, the bishops of this period, theologians and pastors such as St. Ignatius of Antioch, and most importantly St. Irenaeus and later Athanasius, approached the existence of God through the experience of church community, through the experience of ecclesiastical existence. This experience revealed something very important; the existence of God cannot be known only through personal relationships and through personal love. Being means life, and life means communion.

This ontology, which proceeded from the Eucharistic experience of the Church, guided the Fathers in the elaboration of their teaching on the existence of God, a teaching formed above all by Athanasius of Alexandria and the Cappadocian Fathers; Basil

the Great, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa. Below is a brief summary of the result of this important philosophical development, which would not have been possible without the experience of the Church, and without which ecclesiology would have lost its deep existential meaning.

The being of God is relative being; without the concept of communication, it would be impossible to talk about the existence of God. The tautology "God is God" says nothing about ontology, just as the logical statement A = A is dead logic and, consequently, the negation of being, which is life. It would be inconceivable to speak of "one God" without speaking of the God who is "communion," that is, of the Holy Trinity. The Holy Trinity is a primordial ontological concept, not a concept that is added to the divine essence or rather follows it, as follows from the dogmatic teachings of the West, and as it is, alas, manifested in some textbooks of the East in our time. Outside of communion, the substance of God, the Essence of God — "God" — has no ontological content, no true being.

In this way, communication in patristic thinking becomes an ontological concept. Nothing in existence is in itself comprehensible as an individual, such as tТde t... Aristotle, since even God exists thanks to the fact of communication. Thus, the ancient world heard for the first time that it is communication that makes beings "exist"; nothing exists without it, not even God.

But this communication is not a relationship understood for its own sake, an existential structure that replaces "nature" or "substance" in its primordial ontological role, something reminiscent of the structure of existence found in Martin Buber's thought. Like "substance," "communication" does not exist in itself; The father is the "cause" of this. This thesis of the Cappadocians, which introduces the concept of "cause" into the concept of the existence of God, acquires great importance and significance. For this meant that the finite ontological category that makes something really exist is neither an impersonal and uncommunicative "substance," nor a structure of communication that exists in itself or is imposed by necessity, but rather a person. The fact that God owes His existence to the Father, i.e., to the Person, means (a) that His "substance," His being, does not limit Him (God does not exist because He cannot but exist), and (b) that communion is not a restraining structure for His existence (God does not love in fellowship, for it cannot but be in fellowship and love). The fact that God exists because the Father shows that His existence, His being, is the consequence of a free person, which ultimately means that not only communion but also freedom, a free person, constitute true being. True being comes only from a free person, from a person who loves freely, that is, who freely asserts his being, his identity through the act of communication with other people.

In this way, the discussion of the existence of God leads patristic thought to the following theses, which are fundamentally related to both ecclesiology and ontology.

a) Outside of communion there is no true being. Nothing exists as a "separate individual" comprehensible in itself. Communication is an ontological category.

(b) Communion which does not proceed from the "hypostasis," that is, from the concrete and free person, and which does not lead to the "hypostases," that is, from concrete and free persons, is not the "image" of God's being. A person cannot exist without communication, but any form of communication that denies or suppresses a person is inadmissible.

This theology of the person, which for the first time in history appeared through a patristic vision of the existence of God, without the mystery of the Church could never become a living experience for man. Humanity or sociology could fight as long as they wanted to confirm the importance and significance of man. However, existentialist philosophers show in our day, with an intellectual honesty that makes them worthy of the name of philosopher, that, humanly speaking, the self as absolute ontological freedom remains a quest without completion. Between the existence of God and the existence of man there remains an abyss of creation, and creation, creation, means precisely that the existence of each human person is given to him; Consequently, man himself is absolutely incapable of freeing himself from his "nature" or from his "essence," because biological laws dictate to him without destroying himself. And even when he lives in the event of communion or in the form of love or social and political life, he is ultimately obliged, if he wants to continue to live, to make his freedom relative, that is, to submit to certain natural and social "givens." The individual's striving for absolute freedom implies a "new birth," a "new birth," baptism. And it is precisely the Church's existence that "hypostasizes" the person according to God's mode of being.