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.

During the Arian controversies and in connection with Arianism, the false teaching of the Holy Scriptures also arose. The Spirit of Macedonius (Bishop Constantine), who became the head of a heretical party, which received from him its name "Macedonians" or "Doukhobors" (πνενματομάχοι). Macedonius, belonging to the semi-Arians, taught in the Holy Spirit that the Holy Spirit is the creation (κτιστον) of the Son, that He is incomparably inferior to the Father and the Son, that in relation to Them He is only a servant creature (διάκονος και υπηρέτης), that He does not have the same glory and honor of worship with Them, and that in general He is not God and should not be called God; He is only to a certain extent superior to the angels and differs from them. As a continuation and logical conclusion of Arianism, Macedonianism was equally contrary to the Christian dogma of the Holy Scriptures. Trinity. Therefore, it met with the same strong opposition from the Church as Arianism. The Second Ecumenical Council was convened (381). In a short article of the Nicene Creed, "We believe... and in the Holy Spirit", the Fathers of the Second Ecumenical Council (150 in number) introduced the following additional explanatory provisions: "The Lord, the Life-Giving (i.e., that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Holy Spirit). — not a creature), Who proceeded from the Father (i.e., that He did not come through the Son), Who with the Father and the Son worshipped and glorified (i.e., that He was not a servant being), the prophets said."

In the Nicene-Constantinopolitan creed there is given a clear and precise teaching of the consubstantiality of the persons of the Holy Spirit. Under the banner of this definition of faith, in the struggle against heretics, the fathers and teachers of the Church, the teaching of the Holy Trinity was revealed in the most particular way. Trinity. Among them, the names of the great universal teachers and hierarchs are especially glorious: Athanasius and Basil the Great, Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory the Theologian. In the West, the most powerful and famous defender of Orthodoxy against Arianism was St. Hilary of Poaties.

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Period three. The exposition of the faith compiled at the First and Second Ecumenical Councils, according to the definitions of the Third (Canon 7) and subsequent Ecumenical Councils (Sixth Ecclesiastical Council 1), was not to be subject to either additions or reductions, and, consequently, it was to remain forever unchanged and inviolable, unchanged even in letter. In accordance with this, the Universal Church in all subsequent times did not make any additions to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan definition of the dogma of the Holy Scriptures. The Trinity, nor its diminutions. Its main concern was the preservation of the dogma in the form that it received in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan exposition of the faith. Such remained in the Eastern Orthodox Church the attitude to the dogma of the Holy Spirit. Trinity and to the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, even after the division of the churches, it remains so to this day.

Of the false teachings that arose in the East after the Second Ecumenical Council, St. The Trinity requires mention only of the so-called tritheism, or tritheism (VI century), and tetratheism, or tetratheism (VI-VΙΙ centuries). The Tritheists represented the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Spirits as three particular, separate persons possessing three special and separate divine essences, just as there are three human persons having the same but not one being. The tetratheists, in addition to the three persons in the Trinity, also represented a divine essence standing behind them and apart from them, in which they all participate, drawing their divinity from it. In the struggle against these false teachings, it was enough to clarify their disagreement with the teaching of the Trinity, expressed in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.

Such was the first period after the Second Ecumenical Council of the attitude towards the teaching of the Holy Spirit. Trinity and the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Definition, and the Western Church. But this unanimity did not last very long. From the time of Bl. Augustine, the opinion began to spread in the Western Church that the Holy Spirit proceeds not from the Father alone, but "also from the Son" (Filioque), which gradually acquired in it the meaning of a dogma, was included in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed itself, and the confession of the new dogma was protected by anathema. In this perverted form the dogma of the Holy Spirit is professed. The Trinity of the Western Church to this day. In the same form it is contained by Protestantism in all its forms, which separated from Rome, i.e., Lutheranism, Reformation, and Anglicanism.

Having raised to the level of dogma the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit. Not given in revelation, but arbitrarily deduced by reason from revelation, the Roman Church entered the path of rationalism. The same rationalistic spirit manifested itself in its elevation to the level of dogmas and other private opinions. Protestantism also assimilated this spirit from it, which deviated from the ancient church confession in its doctrine even further. But it expressed itself with particular force in Protestant sectarianism, which was the last transitional stage to strict and pure rationalism. Hence, in the Christian societies that separated from Protestantism, there arose a new series of heretical teachings of the Holy Scriptures. Trinity; all of them, however, to a greater or lesser degree only repeat what was expressed by the ancient heretics.