Recently, only scientific thought has begun to pay attention to the so-called phenomena and

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The work of the Spirit in early Christianity, and it seems to us that here is the point of contact between scientific and religious thought, which should serve as the basis for an objective historical understanding of many essential features of early Christianity. Here, again, the very evaluation of a fact, the most religious attitude to it, depends on the faith of each of us, and science cannot decide for a person whether or not he believes in the divine content of a given fact. This question of faith or evaluation was posed in the most decisive form in the time of Christ: Is His Spirit true and holy, or false and impure, is He truth or falsehood, deception, the frenzy of a madman? But the very formulation of this question, the very disputes about the Spirit, show that it was a question of a certain real spiritual phenomenon, of a special kind of pneumatic state, of a special kind of consciousness, word, and activity.

First of all, we will recall the Old Testament ideas about the spirit[602]. We know that the inspiration of the spirit explained prophecies, visions, ecstasy, both prophetic and even morbid, and in the latter case the evil spirit was understood, just as in the case of the frenzy of the false prophet. Intuition explained every powerful emotion under the irrepressible impulse of which a person acted. The prophets acted under the inspiration of the Spirit of God, the false prophets – under the inspiration of their spirits. External signs seem to have often been homogeneous, so that in some cases the number of prophets was decisive, for example, in the case of Ahab (3 Kings 22). In antiquity, therefore, the prophets often formed special communities, for example, the prophets who met Saul (1 Kings 10), or bene nebiim under Elisha. The internal criteria of a true prophet were the power of inspiration, the power of the word, and its truth. In the apostolic church, the manifestations of the "spirit and power" were the main witness of the apostles: the "Spirit" who testified to Christ also witnessed to His church. The spirit manifested itself in a multitude of "gifts" – in inspired ecstasy (D. 10:10; 2 Cor. 12:2), in glossalia or speaking in "angelic" tongues incomprehensible to man (D. 10:46; 1 Cor. 14), in the gift of

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healings, visions, prophetic preaching, in the abundance of moral virtues, in the rapturous fearlessness of the confessors, in inspired prayer, in teaching, in spiritual renewal and regeneration, in all the potentiated consciousness of the Church, in her "life," which she was conscious of as eternal and divine life, as real communion with God in Christ.

Such were the ideas, although it is obviously impossible to speak of any dogmatic ideas or of doctrine: the latter was formed only in the era of the councils. In the apostolic Church, the "Spirit" was not a doctrine or a dogma, but a central fact of religious life, a real force experienced, a phenomenon experienced by the faithful in their sacred enthusiasm. The abundance of this power was revealed not only in the depth of the moral consciousness, in the faith of the regenerated man, but also in the bodily life itself, in all his deeds, in works of mercy and in signs – visions, healings, prophecies and other extraordinary actions and ecstatic states, the reality of which was recognized by all. The very deviations of the religious enthusiasm of the first centuries bear witness to its power, the power which conquered the world and all the "spirits" that dominated it. That such enthusiasm presented the greatest dangers, we see from the first steps of the apostolic preaching, which demanded "discernment of spirits" and struggled with imaginary inspiration, with self-conceit, puffed up with the gifts of the spirit, with the unbridled anarchy of the "people of the spirit," or pneumatics, who exalted themselves with their revelations. Such were the sectarians, the Gnostics, intoxicated with the new wine and pouring it into the old wineskins of the old pneumatology; such were the Montanists afterwards. Ancient Semitic ecstasy with its sensual frenzy comes to life on a new soil and enters into an alliance with Greek mysticism and catharticism, giving rise to many bizarre sects. And although this process reaches full development only later, it is the apostles who are forced to struggle with the deviations of the spiritual life. Paul testifies to the impression made by other religious assemblies of the apostolic age on an outside observer: "If the whole church comes together, and all speak with tongues (λαλῶσι γλώσσαις), and those who do not know or

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Disbelievers, will they not say that you are possessed?" (1 Corinthians 14:23). Inspiration was expressed in ecstatic speech, which sometimes lost all human meaning, and in ecstatic actions. A simulation of ecstasy was possible, there could also be a pathological, sensual frenzy, hysteria induced artificially. Along with the "angelic tongues," "angelic knowledge," or gnosis, soon appeared. All kinds of perversions and abuses could and did penetrate into the early Christian communities through the intermediary of "people of the spirit." For this reason, the Apostles, "without quenching the spirit," were compelled to regulate the spiritual life, exhorting them "not to believe in every spirit," but to "discern spirits" (1 John 4:1 ff.), and the very ability to discern such discernment (διάκρισις τῶν πνευμάτων) was {49} regarded as a special gift (1 Cor. 12:10). Nevertheless, in the Spirit that filled the Church, God lived, Christ lived, which is already true and independently of religious considerations, and not only in the religious sense, but above all in the moral, psychological and historical sense. Therefore, for believers there were also objective criteria for evaluating the spirit that inspired individual pneumatics – the commandments of Christ, the commandments of the apostles, the tradition of Christ, His living word and His image. Hence that amazing combination of the most humble, chaste purity and spiritual sobriety with inspired ecstasy, that inner victory over madness, that great clarity of rational consciousness and subtlety of moral judgment, which is combined with the revelation experienced in the greatest of the Christian bearers of the spirit. We see such a pneumatic first of all in the person of the Apostle Paul, who "spoke with tongues more than anyone else" and in his revelations heard "ineffable speeches" (ἄρρητα ρήματα, 2 K. 13:4). None of the opponents of Christianity will say that these revelations lowered the intellectual and moral energy of the great founder of the Church of the Gentiles, that they puffed him up with madness or spiritual pride. In the "Spirit" was the source of his strength, his humility and love, before which he counted all gifts and signs for nothing.

The source of this power for the apostles was the "Father of Jesus Christ," or Christ Himself. It also served as an objective norm, a criterion of the spirit. Such was the state of affairs

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