Others who accepted Christianity were not able to renounce the views of Judaism or pagan philosophy, and at the same time to assimilate the new concept of God given by Christianity. The attempts of such Christians to reconcile their old views with the new ones were resolved by the appearance of the heresies of the so-called Judaizers and Gnostics. The Judaizer heretics, brought up on the letter of the law of Moses, in which it is said: "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one, did not distinguish any persons in God; they affirmed the truth of the unity of God by means of a complete rejection of the teaching of the Holy Spirit. Trinity. Christ the Saviour, in their opinion, is not the true Son of God, but their teaching is the Holy Spirit. The spirit does not know. The Gnostics, adhering to the views of extreme dualism on the relationship between God and the world, spirit and matter, asserted that God, without the loss of His divinity, cannot be incarnated, since matter is an evil principle; hence the incarnate Son of God cannot be God. He is nothing but an aeon, a person of undoubtedly divine nature, but only through an outflow separated from the supreme God. Moreover, He did not only come out of the "Depth" (Βάθος), but before Him, together with Him and through Him, a whole series of similar aeons came out of the same "Depth", so that the entire fullness (πλήρωμα) of the Godhead contains from 30 to 365 different essences. Among the same aeons as the Son were the Gnostics and the Holy Spirit. In these fabrications of the Gnostic fantasy, obviously, there is nothing even similar to the Christian teaching of the Holy Scriptures. Trinity. The false teaching of the Judaizers and Gnostics was denounced by Christian apologists: St. Justin the Martyr, Thetian, Athenagoras, St. Theophilus of Antioch, especially the anti-Gnostics, Irenaeus of Lyons (in Book II. "Archpriest. heresies") and Clement of Alexandria (in "Stromata").

In the third century there appeared a new false teaching of the Holy Scriptures. The Trinity is monarchianism, which is manifested in two forms: in the form of dynamistic or Ebionian monarchianism and modalistic, otherwise patripassianism.

Dynamic monarchianism (its first representatives were Theodotus the tanner, Theodotus the Younger or money-changer, and Artemon) reached its highest development with Paul of Samosata († about 272). There is, he taught, a single divine person. The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. they are not independent divine persons, but only divine powers, i.e., the powers of one and the same God. If, however, the Scriptures seem to speak of three persons in the Godhead, then these are only three different names applied to one and the same person. In particular, the Son, who is also called in Scripture the Logos and the Wisdom of God, is the same in God as the mind is in man. A man would cease to be a man if his mind were taken away from him; so God would cease to be a person if the Logos were taken away and separated from Him. Logos is eternal self-consciousness in God and in this sense is consubstantial (ομοούσιος) with God. This Logos also dwelt in Christ, but more fully than He dwelt in other people, and worked through Him in teaching and miracles. Under the influence of the divine power that dwelt in Him, "as another in another," Christ is a simple man, born of the Holy Spirit. and Mary the Virgin, attained the highest holiness possible for man, and became the Son of God, but in the same improper sense in which other people are called sons of God. As soon as the teaching of Paul of Samosata became known, all the famous pastors of the Church of that time came out against him, both orally and in writing, Dionysius Alexis, Firmillian of Cappadocia, Gregory the Wonderworker, and others. and he himself was deprived of the episcopal dignity and excommunicated from ecclesiastical communion.

Simultaneously with the Ebionean monarchism, patripassian monarchianism also developed. Its main representatives were: Praxeus, Noetus and Sabellius of Ptolemais (in Pol. III century). The doctrine of Praxeus and Noetes is basically as follows: the divine person is one in the strictest sense, it is God the Father. But the Saviour of the world is God, and not an ordinary man, only not separate from the one Lord the Father, but is the Father Himself. Before His incarnation, He revealed Himself in the image (mode) of the unborn Father, and when He deigned to be born of a Virgin, He took the form (mode) of the Son not according to humanity, but according to divinity, "He Himself became His own Son, and not the Son of another." During His earthly life, He declared Himself to be the Son to all who saw Him, but He did not hide from those who were able to bear that He was the Father. Hence, the sufferings of the Son for these heretics were the sufferings of the Father. "Post tempus Pater natus, Pater passus est," said Tertullian. On the Holy Spirit. they did not expound the teachings. The teachings of Praxeus and Noetes found many followers, especially in Rome. It is natural, therefore, that in the very first stages of its appearance it met with refutation: Tertullian in his work "Against Praxeus", St. Hippolytus in "Against the Heresy of Noetus" presented their teaching as impious and unfounded, and at the same time opposed it with the Orthodox teaching; With the appearance of these works, patripassianism gradually began to weaken, but it did not disappear. In a new and modified form (philosophical) it was revived already in the East.

The culprit was Sabellius, a former Roman presbyter and originally a pure Patripassian. He also introduced into his system the teaching of the Holy Scriptures. Spirit. "The essence of his teaching is as follows. God is an unconditional unity, a boundless, indivisible, and self-contained "Monad," which does not and cannot have, in its infinity, any contact with everything that exists outside of it. From eternity She was in a state of inactivity or "silence," but then God spoke His Word or Logos and began to act; the creation of the world was the first manifestation of His activity, the work of the Logos proper. With the appearance of the world, a series of new actions and manifestations of the Godhead began, in the mode of the Word or the Logos. "The unity expanded into the Trinity" – the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. (modes of the mode of the Word, person). In the Old Testament God (in the mode of the Word) appeared as the Lawgiver – God the Father, in the new Testament as the Saviour – God the Son, and as the Sanctifier – the Holy Spirit. Spirit. There is, therefore, only the Trinity of revelations of the one divine person, but not the Trinity of hypostases. The teachings of Sabellius were the last word of the monarchian movements of the third century. It has found many followers, especially in Africa and Libya. The first and decisive denunciator of this false teaching was St. Dionysius Alexis, the first bishop of the Church in Africa. He condemned Cabellius at the Council of Alexandria (261) and wrote several epistles against him. Dionysius, bishop. The Roman bishop, who was informed of the heresy of Sabellius, also condemned him at the Council of Rome (262). The fall of this heresy and monarchianism in general was also greatly contributed by his writings to the most famous of the church writers of the third century, Origen.

The main error of monarchianism was the denial of the person and eternal existence of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Spirit. Accordingly, the defenders of the frank ecclesiastical truth against the monarchians revealed in particular detail the truth about the real existence and the difference of divine persons according to their personal properties. But the desire to present more clearly the trihypostasis of God led some of them to the fact that, with the distinction of divine persons according to Their personal properties, they (from the Western teachers – Tertullian and Hippolytus, from the Eastern – Origen and Dionysius Alexis) admitted the difference between the essence of the Father and the essence of the Son and the Holy Spirit, developing the doctrine of the subordination of the Son and the Spirit to the Father not only according to their personal being and personal relations (the so-called subordination according to hypostasis). but also in Their very essence, or the so-called subordinationism in essence between the persons of the Trinity. Their subordinationism consisted in the fact that, while recognizing the essence of the Son and the Spirit as one natural with the essence of the Father, they at the same time represented it as a derivative of the Father, dependent on Him, and, as it were, less than the essence of the Father, although not outside the essence of the Father, but in himself. According to their view, the Son and the Spirit have divinity, power, might, and other perfections from the Father, and do not have originally, from Himself, in such a way that the Son is lower than the Father, and the Spirit is lower than the Son.

With a certain deviation from the truth in the revelation of the dogma of the Holy Scriptures. Trinity of individual teachers of the Church of the third century, the Church itself of that time believed in this dogma in a completely Orthodox way. Evidence of this can be found in the "Exposition of the Faith (Symbol) of St. Gregory the Wonderworker. It is as follows:

"There is one God the Father of the living Word, of Wisdom and Self-Existent Power, and of the Eternal Image; Perfect Parent of the Perfect, Father of the Only-begotten Son. One is the Lord; the one of the one, God of God, the image and expression of the Godhead, the active Word, the Wisdom that contains the composition of all things, and the Power that builds up all creation; the true Son of the true Father, the Invisible of the Invisible, the Incorruptible of the Incorruptible, the Immortal of the Immortal, the Eternal of the Eternal. And there is one Holy Spirit, proceeding from God, manifested through the Son, that is, to men; A life in which the cause of the living; The Holy Spring, the Shrine that gives consecration. He is God the Father, Who is over all and in all, and God the Son, Who is through all. The Trinity is perfect, indivisible and inseparable in glory and eternity and kingdom. Why is there nothing in the Trinity that is created, neither servant, nor internal, which would not have existed before and which would have entered after? Neither the Father was ever without the Son, nor the Son without the Spirit, but the Trinity is immutable, unchanging, and always the same."

Second period. In the fourth century, with the advent of Arianism and Macedonianism, a new period opened up in the revelation of the dogma of the Holy Scriptures. Trinity. An essential feature of these false teachings was the idea of the otherness of the Son and the Holy Spirit in relation to the Father. Arianism applied it to the Son, and Macedonianism to the Holy Spirit as well. In accordance with this, during this period, the teaching of the consubstantial persons of the Holy Spirit was mainly revealed. Trinity.

Arianism, having set itself the task of reconciling the teaching of the revelation of the trinity of persons in God with the dogma of the unity of God, thought to achieve this by denying the equality (and consubstantiality) between the persons of the Trinity in divinity through the reduction of the Son and the Spirit to the number of creatures. The culprit of this heresy. the Alexandrian presbyter Arius, however, revealed in this sense only the teaching of the Son of God and His relationship to the Father. The main provisions of his teaching are as follows. 1) God is one. That which distinguishes Him from all other creatures and is peculiar to Him is His beginninglessness or unbirth (ό μόνος, άγέννητος). The Son is not the unborn; therefore He is not equal to His unbegotten Father, because, as begotten, He must have a beginning of His being, whereas the true God is without beginning. As having a beginning, He is therefore not co-equal to the Father. 2) The divine nature is spiritual and simple, which is why there is no division in it. Hence, if the Son has the beginning of His being, then He is not born of the essence of God the Father, but only of the divine will, begotten by the action of the omnipotent divine will from non-beings, in other words, He is created. 3) As a creature, the Son is not the Father's own, natural Son, but the Son only in name, by adoption; He is not the true God, but God only in name, only a deified creation. To the question of the purpose of bringing such a Son into existence, Arius answered with the dualistic opposition of God and the world. Between God and the world, according to his teaching, there is an impassable abyss, which is why He can neither create nor provide for it directly. Wishing to create the world, He first produced one being, in order to create all the rest through Him. From this flowed the teaching of Arius and the Holy Spirit. If the Father alone is God, and the Son is the creature through whom all other things came into being, then it is clear that the Spirit must be counted among the beings created by the Son, and consequently in essence and glory He is still inferior to the Son. But concentrating his attention on the teaching of the Son of God, Arius almost did not touch upon the teaching of the Holy Spirit. Spirit.

Arianism contained an internal contradiction. According to this teaching, the Son is thought of as the creator and the creature, which is incompatible. At the same time, the revealed teaching of the Trinity was completely destroyed by him. The heresy, however, began to spread rapidly. Extraordinary measures were required to stop it. On this occasion an Ecumenical Council was convened at Nicaea (325). The Fathers of the Council, in a book composed under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. The Symbol of Faith gave a precise definition of the teaching in the second person of the Holy Scriptures. Trinity, which received a dogmatic and obligatory significance for the whole Church. It is as follows: "We believe... in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only-begotten, begotten of the Father, i.e. of the essence of the Father, God of God, Light of Light, true of God, true of God, begotten, not created, of one essence with the Father (όμοούσιον τώ Πατρί), in Whom all things were, in heaven and on earth." At the same time, all the most important provisions of the teaching of Arius were anathematized (see the book of the Rule of the Holy Apostolate, the Ecumenical and Commemorative Sob., and the Holy Fathers). He himself and his associates were excommunicated from the church.

But the heretics did not want to submit to the Nicene definition of the faith. The heresy condemned by the council continued to spread, but already disintegrating into parties. The Arians were especially opposed to the inclusion of the Son of God with the Father in the symbol of the teaching of ο of consubstantiality (όμοούσια). Very many of the Arians, while not agreeing to recognize the Son of God as consubstantial with the Father, at the same time rejected the teaching of Arius on the creation of the Son. They recognized Him only as "subservient" (όμοιούσιος) to the highest Deity. This was the party of the so-called "Omiusians" or "Semi-Arians" (headed by Eusebius of Nicomedia and Eusebius of Caesarea). Their "subservients," however, are very close to "consubstantial." Other of the Arians, who strictly adhered to the principles of Arius, began to express his teaching on the Son of God even more sharply, asserting that the nature of the Son, as a creature, is different from that of the Father, that He is in no way like (άνόμοιος) the Father; they are known under the names of the Anomaeans (also Etherusians), the strict Arians, and from the names of the chief exponents and defenders of their doctrine, Aetius (Antiochus the deacon) and especially Eunomius (Bishop of Cyzicus), they were also called Aetians and Eunomians.