In view of the fact that man is not only able to submit to his sinful inclinations, but is also capable of conquering these inclinations in himself, it is logically quite conceivable that by means of a gradual exercise of the moral will he can develop his moral freedom to such a high degree that it will become completely impossible for him to sin. However, if this conceivable ideal of moral perfection were really realized in human life, then its reality could still not be conceivable in relation to man, because it would still not be possible to say of man that he can no longer sin. This could not be said because the facts of moral falls, even if they were only past in this case, would nevertheless irrefutably prove that man can actually sin, and consequently as long as he lives in the present conditions of life, in which he can undoubtedly sin, the denial of this possibility in relation to him is directly and unconditionally inconceivable. As a result, in the present conditions of human life, the reality of the complete victory over sin can be affirmed not on the basis of man's moral life, but exclusively on the basis of his righteous death for the truth of moral life; for it can really be said of the dead man alone that he can no longer sin; therefore, if a man were to accept death for his love of God and for his faithfulness to God's law of life, then by this he would really prove to himself the complete impotence of evil, since in this case his death for good would obviously be the greatest victorious triumph of good. But it goes without saying that to demand of man such a victory over sin is in essence nothing else than to demand of him that he should offer himself as a sacrifice for sin, that is, that he should gain such a victory over sin which, as acquired at the cost of his own life, it would have absolutely no significance for him, and in general would be a completely meaningless matter. After all, in fact, by his righteous death, a person can destroy not sin in general and all guilt for sin, but only his personal sin and his personal guilt for sin. If, therefore, for the sake of the abolition of sin, the conqueror of sin himself, the righteous man, must perish, then this destruction of man can equally serve neither to the attainment of the personal goals of human life nor to the attainment of the general goals of world life. This means that it can only be a completely senseless salvation of man from sin through man's own destruction.

Of course, no sane person can strive for such salvation from sin. As a result, not only ordinary, sinful people, but also the greatest ascetics of the moral life in reality can only struggle with sin and can overcome in themselves individual temptations of sin, but even the greatest righteous cannot destroy their sinfulness and absolve themselves of all their guilt for sin; because for this annihilation it is necessary not only to conquer in oneself the individual temptations of sin, but also not to experience any of its temptations at all. In order not to experience any temptations of sin, it is evident that the very possibility of sinful temptations must be destroyed. Meanwhile, this possibility is determined not only by man's own sinful nature, but also by his living connection with all other people and with the whole world in general as an area of the development of sin. Consequently, in order to destroy the possibility of sinful temptations, man must not only transform himself, but also transform the entire world in which he lives, i.e. for this he must either do an obviously impossible deed, or move otherwise in the circle of a meaningless situation: he can undoubtedly destroy his sin, but only by his martyrdom for the truth; and he can always save himself from martyrdom for the truth, but only in order to perish in the end because of his sinfulness. From this situation, left to himself, man obviously could not and would never get out of it. But he was saved from perdition by the death of Jesus Christ on the cross, which destroyed all the sin of a person who really wanted to destroy his sin, and absolved him of all guilt in sin, which is recognized and condemned by man as sin, but nevertheless remains on him because it is impossible to destroy it.

In view of the fact that Christ Himself did not commit or had any sin upon Himself, His death was not necessary for Him, because it is necessary only as a necessary consequence of human sinfulness. In fact, people die only because from the time of the first crime they have subjected their spiritual nature to the law of material existence, and as a consequence they can exist only according to the law of the physical life of the material world. Meanwhile, in the human nature of Jesus Christ there was no such abnormality: in Him it was not the spirit that served by nature the mortal body, but the body was the organ of moral life by the nature of the immortal spirit. Therefore, it was He who could not die, i.e. in other words, He could not die because of the general necessity of death for all other people. Nevertheless, however, He accepted death, and He accepted martyrdom for the truth of His moral service to God in spirit and truth. This submission to the physical law of death, by His own explanation, was a necessary means to the accomplishment of the special purpose of His activity as the activity of God's promised Christ. We know that from the very first apostolic confession of Him as Christ, the Son of God, He clearly and positively began to tell His disciples and apostles that He must suffer much and be killed (Matt. 16:15-21), because for this reason He came into the world, that He might give His life as a ransom for many (Matt. 20:28). Consequently, His martyrdom, according to the clear word of His teaching, was necessary, in fact, not in relation to Himself, but in relation to the world infected with sin. Obviously, it was the very deed that the world of sinful beings had to do in order to annihilate their sins, but which in reality the world could not do, since it would destroy not only all unrighteousness in the world, but also the entire living world of sinners themselves. Therefore, it was for the destruction of sin in the world that Christ gave His own sinless life. I give My life, – He said to the Jews, – in order to receive it again, no one takes it away from Me, but I Myself give it (John 10:17-18). He pointed to this self-sacrifice as the work of God's exclusive love for the world, as the work of God's salvation of the world through the death of the only-begotten Son of God. God, – he said in explanation of His death to His secret disciple Nicodemus, – so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life (John 3:16). Therefore, according to His own word of teaching, He voluntarily offered Himself as an atoning sacrifice in order to save the life of the sinful world from destruction by His innocent death, and thus to fulfill the holy will of His Father.

This significance of Christ's death on the cross as an expiatory sacrifice for the sins of the world is the basic dogma of the apostolic doctrine. The whole essence of the apostolic preaching consists in the exposition of the faith of the apostles that the blood of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, cleanses us from all sin, because in His death on the cross, precisely as the Son of God, He was the real propitiation for our sins, and not only for our sins, but for the sins of the whole world (1 John 1:7; 2:2). According to the teaching of the Apostles, the death of Jesus Christ took place precisely because it was appointed by God even before the creation of the world for the redemption of man from the transgressions of his vain life (1 Peter 1:18-20; Ephesians 1:3-7; Rev. 13:8). It was precisely before the creation of the world that God truly knew that sin would enter the world and that as a result of this the world would become unworthy of its Creator and would even cast a shadow of imperfection on His good and all-wise creative activity; and yet God nevertheless fulfilled His idea of creating the world, because the only-begotten Son of God also deigned to take upon Himself its future sin even before the creation of the world (Heb. 10:5-LO), and therefore at a certain time He actually appeared in the world for the destruction of sin by His sacrificial blood (Heb. 1:2-3). By virtue of the special purpose of His appearance in the world, it was naturally not some miraculous revelation of Him in the fullness of His divine glory, but, on the contrary, His manifest self-abasement in His human birth from the Virgin Mary; for the Infant Jesus born of it is precisely the Saviour of the world – the only-begotten Son of God (Gal. 4:4-5; 1 John 4:9-15), Who gave Himself up in an hour as an offering and sacrifice to God (Ephesians 5:2), in order to deliver the hour from all iniquity (Titus 2:14).

Anticipating possible objections to faith in Jesus of Nazareth as the promised Christ of God and to faith in the promised Christ of God as God's own and only-begotten Son, the apostles pointed to the revelation by Jesus of Nazareth of the mystery of the actual salvation of the world from evil, unknown to the world, and to the actual realization of this salvation in the person of Jesus Christ. The amazing content of Christ's Gospel, which serves as a temptation to some and madness to others, undoubtedly could not have been created by human thought, and indeed it could not have been created by the limited thought of any created being; because, according to the Apostle's assertion, not only sinful people, but even the holy angels of God had no idea how the sinful world could be freed from its sins (1 Peter 1:12; Ephesians 3:10), although on the basis of God's providence for the world, and especially for the human race, they certainly did not doubt in the slightest that the salvation of the world is possible and that it will certainly be realized in the world. And it was indeed possible and truly accomplished in the world. It was possible not by the power of man's righteous deeds, but exclusively by the power of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross, i.e. by the power of the very deed the necessity of which was first proclaimed to people by the Gospel preaching of Jesus of Nazareth and which Jesus of Nazareth actually accomplished as His own work on earth (Romans 3:19-26). This means that in the content of the Gospel preaching to people is proclaimed not some invention of the human mind, but the unconditional truth of God's wisdom (1 Cor. 2:6-8), and therefore Jesus of Nazareth, who proclaimed to people this hidden mystery of God's mind, obviously did not proclaim it with a human mind, and consequently – if He took upon Himself the work of the salvation of the world, He did not accept it self-appointed (Heb. 5:11). 5-10).

On the basis of these propositions, it can be quite seriously proved, and the Apostles strenuously proved this, that Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead, and that this Christ is Jesus (Acts 17:3), Whom the Jews ignorantly crucified, but Whom the Apostles knew for certain that He really was Christ – the Son of God. but in fact He revealed to them in Himself the truth of the real salvation of people; for, crucified on the cross and undoubtedly dead, He rose from the dead, and for many days appeared to those who ate and drank with Him (Acts 10:41), and they saw with their own eyes His glory as the glory of the only-begotten of the Father (John 1:14), and they saw His wondrous ascension, and finally experienced the saving power of His grace, since He regenerated them and made them different people with new spiritual strength and with new means for a victorious struggle for the truth of God's kingdom in the world. If He had only communicated to people the true doctrine of salvation, in the name of the truth of this doctrine He would have wished to offer Himself as an atoning sacrifice for the sins of the world, and if then all that had actually happened in the sight of all people had happened, i.e. that He died on the cross and was placed in the tomb, and then His body mysteriously disappeared from the tomb, then on this basis it would be necessary to recognize Him as the true teacher of the salvation of the world, and, bearing in mind His immaculate life and innocent death, it would be possible to believe in Him as the real Savior of the world. If, in fact, it was the case that He revealed to men the truth as the knowledge of the mind, and at the same time realized this truth as a fact of reality, then it was equally compelled for the apostolic mind both to recognize the truth of His teaching about the way of the actual salvation of the world from evil, and to confess Him Himself as the real Saviour of the world; because in this case, the true content of the religious thought of the Apostles, obviously, was not the theoretical explanation of the true concept of salvation, but the actual cognition of the reality of salvation, i.e. the actual cognition of the reality of Christ's sacrifice on the Cross.

The concept of truth without cognition of its factual reality can, of course, only be probable, and the fact of reality without cognition of its meaning and significance in the general connection of all other real facts can naturally appear to thought only as impossible. Therefore, the apostles of Christ, as long as they did not know how the real salvation of the world could be accomplished, did not believe in the reality of Christ's resurrection, and tried to explain His posthumous appearances to them as deceptions of the senses, as ghosts. When they understood that the salvation of the world could not really be accomplished in any other way than that of which Christ spoke to them, i.e. except for the sacrifice on the cross for sin on the part of the only-begotten Son of God, then the incomprehensible facts became completely intelligible to them, and therefore from that time on, the posthumous appearances of the living Christ were not only sensuously perceived by the apostles as facts, but they were also recognized by them as actual appearances of the risen Christ, i.e. as real facts.

That is why it was the Apostles who were able to declare so decisively to their listeners: "We have seen and testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world" (1 John 4:14), for we have proclaimed to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, not following cunning fables, but being eyewitnesses of His majesty (2 Peter 1:16; cf. Acts 2:32; 4:20; 5:30-32; 13:31).

All other people, of course, are in a different position in relation to this point of the apostolic preaching. As they were not eyewitnesses of Christ's greatness, they, of course, cannot positively know that Christ really accomplished the work of saving the world by His death on the cross. But they can discuss Christ's teaching about the salvation of the world, and the historically authenticated desire of Joseph.

Unbelief is indeed possible, and even more, faith in the truth of the apostolic preaching is absolutely impossible when the main point of the apostolic doctrine – the teaching about the salvation of the world – is questioned or directly denied. If, for example, we can think in a pagan way that the abolition of sin is absolutely unnecessary for man, because God can forgive man all his sins for some personal virtues of man himself, or simply out of His infinite mercy, and that the simple forgiveness of sins is absolutely sufficient for man to be saved from sin, then we, of course, cannot believe in the truth of the apostolic preaching; for in this case no sacrifice for sin on the part of man is evidently required, and consequently the teaching of J.

And in the same way, if we can think in a pagan way that the immortal spirit of man, after his death, having been freed from the deceptions of the sinful body, can of itself take the path of true life and can truly make all the sins of his present life only the former sins of his former life, then for the same reasons we will certainly inevitably come to the same conclusions in this case. But if, on the contrary, we reach such grounds from the point of view of which Christ's teaching about the salvation of the world will appear to us to be undoubtedly true and the only true one, then, even if the Apostles said nothing about the resurrection of Christ, we could believe in Him as the real Savior of the world on the basis of His own communication about His actual accomplishment of the work of salvation. True, in this case the degree of consistency of our faith would be very low; but since the very fact of its undoubted possibility unconditionally removes all improbability from the apostolic testimony to the resurrection and glorification of Christ, the content of this testimony would not only supplement the basic content of our faith, but also raise the degree of its validity to full confidence in its truth, i.e. to the decisive impossibility of denying it. In fact, the apostolic witness is in full harmony with the positive foundations of the Christian faith: with the knowledge of the only possibility of the real salvation of the world and with the Gospel story of the life and person of Christ. Therefore, in the essence of what we know for certain and what we can recognize as true in the teaching and life of Jesus Christ, we cannot have the slightest reason to reject the apostolic witness to Him. By acknowledging this testimony precisely as the testimony of eyewitnesses, we thereby obtain in it a factual proof of the full truth of the faith, i.e., we obtain a proof of the highest possible character; because in order to weaken the significance or completely refute this proof, it is not enough to say unfoundedly that the apostles could not see and therefore did not see the risen Christ and were not eyewitnesses of His greatness, but it is necessary first to refute the very foundations of the Christian faith.

In fact, the Christian faith, even among the apostles themselves, arose not from the vision of the risen and glorified Christ, but from the knowledge of the truth of Christ's teaching and work, from the knowledge of the very truth that for the destruction of sin in the world a redemptive sacrifice for sin is really necessary, and that Christ Himself, as the true conqueror of sin, can indeed serve as this redemptive sacrifice. Consequently, the posthumous apparitions of Jesus Christ, in fact, did not create an apostolic faith in Him as the true Saviour of the world, but only increased the degree of consistency of their faith, because they showed the apostles the factual reality of what in terms of the content of the rational foundations of faith could logically be affirmed by them only in the sense of a simple possibility.

And for this reason the Apostles themselves, confirming their preaching about Christ by the miracle of His glorious resurrection, nevertheless explained this miracle itself by the miracle of the saving cross of Christ. The whole essence of their preaching consisted in the news of the cleansing of sins by the redemptive power of Christ's death on the cross: a man guilty of sin is guilty of death (James 1:15; Romans 6:23), but Christ replaced all transgressors with Himself and voluntarily took upon Himself their necessary death (1 John 3:16; Romans 8:32; Ephesians 5:2; 2 Corinthians 5:5). 21; Hebrew. 2, 9); therefore, every person who wishes to replace his necessary death with the innocent death of Christ is washed by His living blood and cleansed from all his sins (Heb. 9:12-14; Rev. 1:5), and with this cleansing of all the sins of man, of course, all his guilt for these sins is removed (1 John 2:2; 4:10; Rom. 3:24-25; Col. 1, 14), and therefore every person who has washed himself with the sacrificial blood of Christ is a completely new creature of God, with a new hope and the power of real justification before God (1 Cor. 5:7-8; 2 Cor. 5:17; Eph. 2:10; 4:24; Col. 3:9-10). This content of the apostolic preaching determined the basic content of the religious faith of Christians.

Ancient Christian teachers in expounding their doctrine usually limited themselves to the pious call of Christians to reverent contemplation of the holy image of Christ and to the understanding of the mystery of His holy cross: "Let us look to the Lord Jesus Christ, Whose blood was given for us... let us look attentively at the blood of Christ and know how precious His blood is in the sight of God, because, shed for the sake of our salvation, it has acquired the grace of repentance for the whole world"[304] – in this teaching of St. Clement of Rome the whole Christian theology is abbreviatedly expressed. Christianity was apparently assimilated not as a doctrine, but as a living fact of the religious history of the world, i.e. it was assimilated not by the dry logic of human reason, but by a living consciousness of the moral forces and needs of the spirit, and therefore it was completely understandable to those people who, in the depths of their spirits, painfully thirsted for God's truth, while in their conscience only exposed themselves in the obvious wrongs of life. Whoever was aware of his sinfulness and his inability to free himself from sin, for him this very consciousness made the necessity of an expiatory sacrifice for sin completely understandable. And whoever heard the apostolic sermon about the holy life of Jesus Christ, and could vividly imagine the striking picture of His sufferings on the Cross, and could reverently bow down before the feat of His voluntary death for the sake of the destruction of sin, for this very greatness of the Gospel image of Jesus Christ served as an absolutely sufficient basis for faith that His innocent death was indeed a redemptive sacrifice for the sins of people. Therefore, there could be no need for a logical treatment of the Christian faith for the Christian believers themselves, and for this reason the Christian teachers strove not for a rational explanation and justification of their faith, but only for the most accurate exposition of it in the spirit and letter of the New Testament writings. In full agreement with the revealed teaching, they looked at the death of Jesus Christ on the cross as a means for the salvation of the sinful world accepted by God before eternity, because the world cannot be saved in a natural way, and God deliberately allowed the turn of world history to take place in order only to show people this very impossibility. Therefore, when it became sufficiently clear that people could not enter the kingdom of God of their own accord and could not make the law of necessary death meaningless in relation to themselves, God then revealed the ineffable riches of His love and wisdom and saved the world from destruction by the sacrifice of His only-begotten Son. Ancient Christian theologians explained God's choice of this very method of saving the world from the essence of salvation as the redemption of the world, because redemption consists precisely in the fact that God preserves the life of the sinful world, having destroyed its sins, by virtue of which it is necessarily guilty of death, the death of His Son. Consequently, from the concept of redemption it follows directly and obviously that the death of the God-Man was necessary – not, of course, by virtue of any obligation of God to save the sinful world, but by virtue of His free will for the salvation of the world: so that the work of salvation was undoubtedly the work of God's free will, but since God was pleased to take upon Himself the accomplishment of this work, He could not accomplish it in any other way. only by the incarnation and death of His divine Son[306].