Aristotle, apparently, does not impose any mythology of his own. If the early Church Fathers were Platonists, as a rule, then they also perceived Plato to some extent through an Aristotelian prism, with the assimilation of certain aspects of Aristotelianism, which was also characteristic of the pagan Neoplatonists at the same time. But all the more so later, such an important teacher of the entire Orthodox world as John of Damascus was a zealous Aristotelian and prefaced his main theological work with a short textbook of logic. Sometimes I am asked whether it is true that Christianity is essentially irrationalism. I answer, apparently not, otherwise why would John of Damascus have done such a thing? And then, at least twice, in the twelfth century and in the fourteenth century, the heretical, free-thinking, and neo-pagan currents of Byzantium relied on Plato, and the defenders of Orthodoxy were each time Aristotelians. But in Russia, Aristotle has never been properly read; I mean in such a way that it becomes part of Russian culture. Of course, in Russia in modern and modern times there were specialists who studied Aristotle and translated him; but Aristotle had never yet been read by culture as a whole.

The influence of Greek philosophy, a certain interaction, interpenetration between Greek philosophy and Christian teaching gave rise to certain kinds of possibilities, certain kinds of problems, contradictions, sometimes contradictions that went unnoticed, etc.

How serious was the assimilation of the language of Greek philosophy is shown by a great deal. For example, in the Symbol of Faith, in the Christian prayer that begins with the word "I believe" (Credo) and is heard at every liturgy, there is the word "consubstantial" (Greek homousios), which has no lexical correspondence in the Bible, but is a philosophical term.

In general, without philosophical terms, it would be impossible to build a Christian theology. And Christianity is a religion in which theology, teaching, and doctrine play a very special role. Not only in comparison with some paganism reduced to rites; No, not even in comparison with the same Judaism, which is also a "teaching". (The very word "Torah," which means the Pentateuch, which we are accustomed to translating as "law," does not actually mean "law," but "teaching.") The moment of teaching, the doctrinal moment in Judaism is important, but it is weakened, since the question of the identity of the believer is largely decided by two factors: nationality and observance of rituals; The acuteness of the attitude to agreement in matters of doctrine immediately weakens – simply because this place is occupied, this weight is already placed on other supporting supports. Doctrine is important—and yet it is never so important.

In Christianity, everything is different. Some dark moments in the history of empirical Christianity, explosions of intolerance, are in some way connected with this. For Christians, just as tragic a moment can be for Jews or Muslims can be the possession of an inch of land where the Old Testament Temple stood, the question of the exact formulation of doctrinal statements could always be.

After all, a Christian cannot in the final instance determine his identity by his origin and observance of rituals. This is not a Christian answer: well, I was born of Christian parents; I am Russian, so I am Orthodox; I am a Pole, so I am a Catholic. This is not a Christian answer, although it is quite possible in everyday life. But this is always the everyday periphery of Christianity. "Christians," said Tertullian once and for all, "not only for those centuries when former pagans became Christians, "are not born, they become Christians." He knew what he was saying. Christian identity is decided by a profession of faith that is correct, accurate, adequate and, ideally, a life that corresponds to this confession. But therefore the question of teaching for Christianity is an extremely acute question.

Christians, of course, can and should learn, and somehow learn from age to age, not to be tempted by the importance of this question in order to solve doctrinal questions with fire and sword. History somehow seems to have taught a significant part of Christians that nothing good comes out of this for the faith; however, the Christian alternative to intolerance can only be loving patience, not indifference to documentary questions, not the view that it is not so important what a person thinks about God, as long as he behaves decently. Christians are convinced that what a person thinks about God and how he will behave are very deeply interconnected; Therefore, it is impossible to separate moral problems from doctrinal ones. It is another matter that doctrinal conflicts, along with these substantive causes, have had, have, and will have some other, less meaningful motives in history: motives of a purely social nature, motives of enthusiasm for dispute, the will to assert oneself, the unwillingness to be like these; although Christ in the parable of the publican and the Pharisee seems to have taught once and for all that death for a person is to rejoice that I am not like this other person; But this is a science that is very difficult for empirical Christians. And all the Gospel criticism that concerns the Pharisees has retained the most lively, the freshest relevance for all generations of Christians for two thousand years.

People can be given simple negative commandments, very important ones: do not kill, do not steal, do not commit adultery, etc., and a person will know, even if he violates this commandment, that this is the commandment. But here's the question: knowing that some behavior is good and its opposite is bad, how do you avoid being satisfied with yourself by practicing good behavior, and contempt and unfriendliness toward another when the other behaves badly (or just not like me)? It is difficult to fulfill the commandments and definitions, the moral and ritual requirements of the same Judaism, the same Islam. Let's not lie, it's easy, it's very difficult. The righteous who fulfill their religious duty to the end are, of course, very few in each of these religions. But one can imagine a person who, in the system of Judaism or in the system of Islam, would fulfill EVERYTHING that religion requires of him, and would honestly know that everything is in order. A Christian is not threatened by such a prospect. He cannot accomplish EVERYTHING.

A few words about doctrinal disputes. This is a necessary and meaningful thing for Christianity. I wonder when doctrinal neglect increases. I am not talking about the phenomena of simple indifference and the erosion of faith, but even where faith is strong, doctrinal inaccuracy usually arises precisely when too much importance is attached to ritualism. One can see (sometimes unexpectedly) careless doctrinal formulations in the minds of very respectable people: teachers of the early Old Believers. And this is understandable: the Old Believers found themselves in the position of Jews: again a sacred people, whose faith is the faith of their ancestors, and their identity is expressed in the fact that they preserve rituals. Under such prerequisites, the doctrinal tension instantly subsides, and in the writings of a remarkable man, Archpriest Avvakum, one can find such striking expressions about the Holy Trinity: "Inseparable (i.e., Indivisible) — flog!"

But for full-fledged Christianity, for Christian Christianity, doctrine is very important. This does not exclude the fact that in disputes, in clashes, in conflicts, a certain madness arises. Even in the most ancient times, Gregory of Nyssa, condemned by the Fathers of the Church, at the end of the fourth century very vividly describes that life in the world has ceased to exist: you come to a bakery to ask for bread, and a dogmatic formulation is heaped upon you and asks whether you believe this way or not; When you come to the bathhouse, the bathhouse attendant does the same.

It can also be said that the perception of Greek philosophy was an acquisition for which one had to pay. Be that as it may, without the apparatus of Greek philosophy, the strict formulations of Christian doctrine would have been impossible. It was Greek philosophy that gave first of all the simplest forms of definition, built on the type "a" is "b". In the New Testament there is only one definition, in the Epistle to the Hebrews (11:1). This is the definition of faith. Faith is the "rebuke of those who are hoped" – in Slavonic, as if the reality (hypostasis – in Greek) of what we hope for. This is the definition. But in the Gospels we do not encounter definitions, we encounter metaphors and parables again and again. "The Kingdom of God is like"... to this and that. And when the Apostle Paul in the 13th chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians speaks of love, he says WHAT LOVE DOES, he does not say that there IS love. But when we take any medieval treatise – not only on moral theology, but even on mystical theology, and not only Western, but also Orthodox – there we find definitions of WHAT IS LOVE.

The price that had to be paid was a certain substitution of the philosophical-idealistic, Platonic substitution of eschatology and the biblical understanding of existence in general. The division into spiritual (in the Platonic sense immaterial) and material is perhaps very important for Christianity, but it is not a biblical division. In the Bible there is no concept of the immaterial in the Platonic sense, in the Bible there is the concept of the Holy Spirit as a power of sanctification, and, in the end, the ontology of the Bible, perhaps most preserved by Syrian theologians, emphasizes the gulf between the holy and the unholy, between that which, although material, is permeated by the Holy Spirit, and everything else. But European Christianity accepted Plato's dichotomy of the material and the immaterial, and accepted it very deeply; We encounter the word "immaterial" itself in Slavonic translations of such texts as, for example, church hymns.

The significance that the dogma of the immortality of the soul acquires in the European tradition is interesting. Of course, Christianity presupposes the doctrine of the immortality of the soul; I do not intend to deny this in any way, but, for example, the Creed does not say, "I believe in the immortality of the soul," but says "I hope for the resurrection of the dead." And another ancient creed speaks of the resurrection of the flesh, resurrectio carnis: this is the so-called Apostolic Creed, accepted in the Western tradition since ancient times, since the time of the undivided Church, but unknown in the East. The resurrection of the flesh, the resurrection of the dead, the day of judgment — this is biblical eschatology. But when already in modern times a list of four truths was spread in Europe, which every Christian must know (this list was developed in the Catholic world, but found spread in all religious spheres, including Orthodoxy), then this list no longer included the resurrection of the dead, but the immortality of the soul. It can be said that there are a number of points that in no way contradict the Bible, but give different emphasis. Heaven as the place of God's glory is mentioned, of course, in many biblical texts, but at some point there was a convergence of this biblical heaven as a place of glory, a place of royal epiphany ("The Lord reigned"...) of a personal God, with the empyrean, that is, the fiery sphere – the outermost, farthest from the earth, the highest sphere of the so-called Ptolemaic image of the world, which, in fact, is based on Aristotle. As for the word "heaven," there is the use of this word in the Bible as a chaste synonym for the word "God" (which in itself is not alien to European usage: "May heaven reward him," or something like that).

At the end of the Old Testament period and in the time of Christ, the Jewish milieu was especially characterized by a pious fear of saying the word "God" once again, therefore, in particular, instead of "the Kingdom of God" they preferred to say "the Kingdom of Heaven", in our traditional translation – "the Kingdom of Heaven". The Kingdom of God is a concept inherent in mystical historicism, it is a state of all things that comes in time, though not for time, but for eternity, in which not only all false, tyrannical, usurper power in the world is abolished – for example, the power of pagan princes (which was very important for the Jewish consciousness), but also in general – the power of evil people and the power of evil passions within man himself; and the power of all usurpers will be replaced by the power of the only true King, the power of God. This kingdom of God must come in an eschatological perspective in a future zone ("age"), in a future world state, but it is already coming.