The state of the teaching on the Holy Scriptures. In the first three centuries. The Appearance of the Doukhobor Heresy at the End of the Third Century. Macedonia and the renewal of this heresy in the fourth century. Macedonia's attitude to anomaeism; the teaching of Macedonius about the Holy Scriptures. Spirit; whether this teaching was only a further development of the principles of anomaeism and the application of these principles to the third hypostasis of the Holy Scriptures. Trinity? The unpreparedness of the Fathers of the fourth century for the defense and revelation of the Orthodox teaching on the Holy Scriptures. Spirit. Refutation of Doukhoborism by St. Athanasius of Alexandria. The teaching of Eunomius about the Holy Spirit. The refutation of this teaching by St. Basil the Great. The insufficiency of the defense and disclosure of the Church's teaching on the Holy Scriptures. Athanasius and Basil the Great, and the development of Doukhoborism. The defense and disclosure of the teaching about the Holy Scriptures. Gregory of Nyssa; the peculiarities of his teaching on the Holy Scriptures. In comparison with the teaching of Athanasius of Alexandria and Basil the Great. The foundation of the personal independent existence of the Holy Spirit. The teaching of Gregory of Nyssa about the Holy Spirit as the "kingdom" of the Father and the "anointing" of the Son; the meaning and scientific and theological significance of this teaching. The teaching of St. Gregory on the personal attitude of St. The Spirit to God the Father and God the Son. The teaching of the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the analogies used by St. Gregory to clarify this teaching. The teaching of Gregory of Nyssa on the mediating activity of the Son between the initial activity of the Father and the final activity of the Holy Father. Spirit; meaning and significance of this teaching. The teaching of Gregory of Nyssa on the consubstantiality and equality of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is with God the Father and God the Son. General conclusion.

Simultaneously with the teaching about the Son of God, St. Gregory of Nyssa also revealed the Orthodox teaching about the Holy Trinity. Spirit; but if the revelation of the first teaching was made by him in the highest degree of detail, and even in detail can be recognized as completely satisfactory, then the revelation of the teaching on the Holy Scriptures is not the same. The spirit cannot be called either particularly complete or particularly satisfactory. The reason for this phenomenon lies in the fact that the Orthodox theologians of the fourth century in this case had almost no positive or negative historical preparation for themselves, because the Fathers and teachers of the Church of the first three centuries clearly spoke only about the personal existence of the Holy Spirit. The question of His nature and His relationship to God the Father and to God the Son was either not raised at all, or if it was, it was resolved extremely generally and indefinitely. All their attention was mainly riveted by the historical Personality of the God-Man. They felt too vividly the work of salvation of people accomplished by Him, and this immensely majestic work seemed to overshadow in their religious consciousness all other truths of faith, so that they knew and wanted to know only Christ, crucified and glorified, and glorifying others in His eternal kingdom. In striving for this knowledge, they touched upon the teaching of the Holy Scriptures. Only insofar as His house-building activity for the human race was inseparably linked with the same activity of the Son of God, i.e., in other words, insofar as it was impossible not to touch Him. They spoke, for example, about St. The Spirit, as prophesied about Christ [469] — they spoke of the Spirit of grace as continuing in the church the work of salvation of people accomplished by Christ [470] — according to the commandment of the Saviour, they confessed in the symbols of baptism faith in the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, as the third Person with the Father and the Son [471] — and this was enough. Of the ancient ecclesiastical writers, only Athenagoras raised the question of the attitude of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit to the Father and the Son, but he solved it very briefly and far from definitely. "We affirm," he says, "that the Holy Spirit, working in the prophets, proceeds from God like a ray of sunshine, flowing from Him and returning to Him," and then, refuting the pagan accusation of Christians of godlessness, he remarks that Christians "confess God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, and acknowledge their unity in power and difference in order" [472]; but how exactly this "unity and difference" is to be thought of — Athenagoras did not explain it more or less thoroughly and definitely. Even Origen himself did not in the least attempt to grasp the teaching of the Holy Scriptures more broadly. In the spirit and to put more deeply at least the main points of this teaching, although he had the most urgent motives for this. In his commentary on the Gospel of John, he reports that in his time there were two equally incorrect opinions about the Holy Scriptures. Some said that He was created through the Son, others asserted that He was not created, but only because they recognized Him as the simple, impersonal power of the Father (473). Emphatically declaring his disagreement with the second opinion, Origen noticeably hesitated about the first: sometimes he said that the Spirit was created by the divine Logos, and sometimes, on the contrary, he taught that He "truly proceeds from God Himself" and is "a partaker of the Father and the Son in honor and dignity." Obviously, Origen did not know how to really teach about the Holy Scriptures. Spirit; He sincerely tried to listen to the voice of the church, but the church was silent.

In view of this silence of the Church, on the one hand, and the complete vagueness of the teaching on the Holy Scriptures. On the other hand, at the end of the third century there appeared and began to spread the teaching that the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is incomparably inferior to the Father and the Son, which He fulfills in relation to the first two Persons of the Holy Spirit. Trinity is a purely official purpose. that He also received His being through creation from the Father through the Son of God [474]. But even at this time the church was silent. The fourth century came; Arianism gradually prepared, opened up, and in a very short time embraced the whole East. Mankind again directed all the efforts of its thought to the understanding of the divine Person of its Saviour, and as a result the revelation of the teaching about the Holy Spirit. The spirit was again pushed into the future. The Ecumenical Council of 825, which expounded in detail the Church's teaching on the Son of God, on the Holy Spirit. The Spirit only briefly remarked: "We believe also in the Holy Spirit." The Fathers of the Council, engaged in the struggle against Arianism, did not yet see the urgent need to formulate more precisely the teaching on the Holy Scriptures. Because the Arians at first did not touch this teaching at all. But as soon as the first fervor of the Arian struggle had passed, the question of the Holy Spirit, on a par with the question of the Son of God, became the subject of lively and heated theological disputes. The main representative of the Doukhobor movement was now the Arian bishop of Constantinople, Macedonius.

Macedonius did not belong to the strict, i.e., consistent, Arians. In his convictions he was a pure Omiusian, and it seems that he separated himself so sharply from the strict Arians that he was ready to join the Orthodox rather than agree with the former that the Son of God is not God and is not equal to the Father. At least, the strict Arians suspected Macedonius of Arian injustice, and in 361 deprived him of the episcopal cathedra [475]. This fact undoubtedly shows that Macedonius, as not a strict, consistent Arian, touching upon the teaching of the Holy Scriptures, is not a Arian. Spirit, did not at all think of continuing the work of Arius. Accepting the monarchian principle of Arianism, he unconditionally rejected all conclusions from it and even, contrary to all logic, thought contrary to it. If, however, he deliberately avoided the ready-made conclusions drawn by others, if he deliberately departed from that anti-Christian abyss into which others fatally led him, then all the more could he not draw these conclusions and throw himself into this abyss voluntarily, he could not do this unconditionally, because, adhering to the strictly Arian or Anomaic principle, it was possible to pass to the teaching of the Holy Scriptures. Only after applying this principle to the teaching about the Son of God, and Macedonius resolutely rejected this application. It is clear that the teaching of Macedonius about the Holy Spirit. The spirit had its root not in Arianism. We have already noticed that before the appearance of Arianism, at the end of the third century, the teaching on the ministerial attitude of the Holy Spirit appeared and began to spread. The Spirit to the Father and the Son, and about His created origin by the will of the Father and the power of the Son. Arianism, which concentrated all its attention on the revelation of the doctrine of the Son of God, for a time suppressed the Doukhobor movement that had begun, but as soon as the first fervor of the Arian struggle had passed, this movement resumed again and found a champion in the person of the Constantinople bishop Macedonius. Macedonius fully agreed that the Holy Spirit is incomparably inferior to God the Father and the Son, that in relation to the first Persons He is only διάκονος και ύπηρέτης, that He does not have the same glory and honor of worship as Them, and that in general He is not God and should not be called God. Thus, Macedonius did not continue Arianism and did not begin a new heresy, but simply accepted and resumed the teaching of the Doukhobors at the end of the third century. He is remarkable only for the fact that by his participation he gave the Doukhobor movement a special strength, and thereby finally forced Orthodox theologians to pay due attention to this teaching. But it was here that it turned out that Orthodox theologians were poorly prepared to defend and reveal the Church-Orthodox teaching on the Holy Scriptures. Spirit. They clearly and expressively confessed their faith in the true divinity of the Holy Spirit. And they were not able to reveal and defend this faith to the same degree satisfactorily as they revealed and defended the Orthodox teaching about the Son of God. This is true even in relation to such pillars of Orthodoxy as St. Athanasius of Alexandria and St. Basil the Great.

At the basis of its revelation of the teaching about the Holy Spirit. St. Athanasius of Alexandria posits the concept of the Trinity. "If," he says, "there is a Trinity, and faith (η πίστις – Christianity) is based on the Trinity, then let them say; whether it has always been a Trinity, or whether there was a time when it was not a Trinity: and if the Trinity is eternal, then the Spirit, eternally coexisting (συνον) with the Logos and existing in Him (ον), is not a creature, because there was a time when there were no creatures" (477). Bearing in mind the Omiusians, who agreed to recognize the true divinity of the Son of God and unconditionally rejected the divinity of the Spirit, St. Athanasius argues his position by posing the following dilemma: either the Trinity, in the confession of the Father and the Son and in the denial of the Spirit, must be transformed into a duality, or it is the real Trinity; but in this case the Holy Spirit is no longer a creature, but a Divine Person, equal to the Father and the Son [478]. That He is indeed the Divine Person, St. Athanasius confirms by the testimony of the commanded formula of baptism, in which the Lord Himself numbered the Holy Trinity. The Holy Spirit to God the Father and the Son, and thereby clearly showed that the Holy Spirit. The Trinity is not composed of Him who created and created, but that Her divinity is one (μία ταυτης η θεότης εστι) [479]. Thus, the Holy Spirit must necessarily be recognized as the true God, and indeed, according to the teaching of St. Athanasius, He possesses a perfect divine nature: He is immutable and unchangeable [480], eternal and incorruptible [481]; He is and is called the Spirit of sanctification and renewal [482]; He is the life-giving and creative Spirit [483] — He is the true God.

But if the nature of St. The Spirit is undoubtedly divine, and He is a special, independent Person of the uncreated divine Trinity, then in what relation should He be thought of to God the Father and the Son of God? The Omiusians reasoned on this question in the following way: if the Holy Spirit has His being directly from the Father, then He is the brother of the Son of God, who has His being from the same Father; but if He does not come from the Father directly, but through the Son, then He is the son of the Son of God and the grandson of God the Father. Orthodox theologians considered this reasoning to be the most obvious absurdity, but nevertheless in its essence it undoubtedly has a serious, albeit negative, meaning. It clearly shows that the simple concept of the Trinity alone is not enough to think of the Holy Trinity. The Spirit is the third Person in the Godhead, that for this thinking it is necessary to know in what relation the Holy Spirit stands to God the Father and the Son of God, and how exactly the very concept of the Trinity can and should be conceived. The naïve sophism of the Omiusians clearly exposes their complete inability to answer these necessary questions; they understood very well that it was necessary to confess the Holy Scriptures. Trinity, but they did not know at all how exactly to confess Her. Ordinary human considerations led them to the destruction of the Trinity, although they did not want this destruction at all, as is most convincingly proved by all the Omiusian aspirations to equate the Father and the Son, in spite of the contrary requirements of the Arian principle. Therefore, the sophism presented by them had to be taken as seriously as possible, and this was very well understood by such deep Orthodox minds as St. Athanasius of Alexandria; But in view of the fact that the question posed by the Arians had never been raised before and the Church had never solved it, it was difficult to give a clear and definite answer to it, especially in those turbulent times, when one careless word could entail innumerable disasters for the Church and Orthodoxy. This explains precisely the circumstance that St. Athanasius of Alexandria, speaking of the attitude of St. The Spirit to God the Father and the Son, is expressed very briefly and indefinitely. He says in general that the Holy Spirit is "most of all proper to the Son and not alien to God," "proper to the Logos and the divinity of the Father," "proper to the essence of the Logos, proper to God" (484) — all expressions that in no case can be called particularly clear and fully expressing the essence of Orthodox teaching, although St. Athanasius apparently considered them so. They require an obligatory explanation: what exactly is this closeness of the Holy Spirit? The Spirit to God the Father and God the Son? We do not find a clear answer to this question in St. Athanasius. He only says that "the Son is the image of the invisible Father, and the Spirit is the image of the Son; and as the Son dwells in His own image, in the Spirit, so also the Father in the Son" [485]. By these vague expressions, of course, he only wanted to indicate that the Holy Spirit is in an essentially intimate relationship, both with the Father, from Whom He proceeds, and with the Son, with Whom and in Whom He exists.

While St. Athanasius of Alexandria tried to correct the error of the semi-Arians, the teaching about St. Athanasius of Alexandria At last, turn to the Spirit, strict Arians. However, they did not have to talk much in this case. Their basic principle and teaching about the Son of God predetermined in advance everything that could be said to them about the Holy Spirit. And therefore they limited themselves to only a brief, as if fleeting, exposition of their Doukhobor teaching. Eunomius, presenting the Son of God as the "one and only" product of the direct activity of the unborn Father, naturally could no longer admit the same direct descent from the Father and the Holy Father. The Holy Spirit, even if it is an act of simple creation. In his opinion, the Holy Spirit received existence through creation from the Son; The Father participated in this creation only by commanding the Son to create the Spirit, and He, in obedience to the Father's command, by His own power and creative activity brought into being His "first and best, greatest and most beautiful creation, the Holy Spirit." Spirit. "One," says Eunomius, "is the Holy Spirit, the first and best of all the works of the Only-begotten, created by the command of the Father, by the activity and power of the Son" (488). As a result, the Spirit, who is completely incomparable with the Father, stands infinitely lower than the Son as his creator: "Neither according to the Father nor with the Father is He numberable, because God is one and only Father over all; nor is He comparable with the Son, because He is the only begotten and has not a single begotten brother" [489]. If the Holy Spirit. deserves any veneration, but only because He is a supreme creature, created for the special purpose of enlightening and teaching other rational creatures; but by His own nature He has nothing in common with the Godhead,[490] although, incidentally, He has nothing in common with other creatures, because He surpasses all the other works of the Son, "in essence and in natural dignity" (491).

Thus taught about the Holy Spirit. The Spirit of Eunomius. His opponent was St. Basil the Great, who defended the Church's teaching about the true divinity of the Holy Trinity. In the third book of his "Refutation of the Defensive Speech of the Wicked Eunomius," and especially in his extensive epistle, "On the Holy Spirit," to Bishop Amphilochius of Iconium.

The main foundation on which St. Basil the Great affirms the Orthodox teaching on the Holy Trinity. The same on which St. Athanasius of Alexandria relied. This is the formula commanded by the Saviour: baptism in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, as three Persons of one Godhead. In the opinion of St. Basil the Great, the combination in this formula of the name of the Spirit with the names of the Father and the Son undoubtedly indicates the commonality and unity of His nature with the Father and the Son, so that those who reject the true divinity of the Holy Spirit are not the same. In essence, they resist the clear command of God [492]. In the same way, the main evidence in favor of the recognition of the Holy Scriptures. The true God, equal to the Father and the Son, is again the same in St. Basil, which was used by St. Athanasius of Alexandria. This is the concept of the Trinity, which is not reduced to duality and is not composed of different natures. In the divine Trinity there is and cannot be anything alien to the divine essence, because in Her there is nothing interchangeable; It is one and indivisible, and as a consequence the Divine Persons, although each of them has an independent existence, are all together inseparably united with each other, forming by Themselves "a certain ineffable and inconceivable, both communion and separation" (493). Wishing to define more precisely what this inconceivable communion and division consists in, St. Basil turned to the teaching of the way of being of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit in comparison with the way of being of the Father and the Son of God. According to the teaching of the Bible, he says that the Holy Spirit has His personal, independent existence not from Himself, but from the common source in the Godhead – God the Father – but not through birth, as the Son, but through the procession (έκπορευσίς). To the question of how this act of divine procession should be conceived, St. Basil replies that "the image of the procession remains inexplicable," and as a result does not make a single attempt to reveal it. It was only out of necessity that he touched upon this question when he began to define the personal attitude of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit to God the Son. In his opinion, the Son of God occupies an intermediary place between the being of the Father and the existence of the Holy Spirit. The Spirit, so that the Spirit "through one Son is united to one Father" [494]; but what exactly consists in and how this intermediary activity of the Son is expressed, St. Basil the Great nowhere says.

Both St. Athanasius and St. Basil the Great quite clearly, precisely and definitely confessed their faith in the true divinity of the Holy Trinity. The Spirit and into His essential, inner communion with God the Father and the Son of God; but in this clear confession both of them did not answer those fundamental questions which served as the main source of all perplexities concerning the Church's teaching on the Holy Scriptures. Spirit, as one of the Persons of the indivisible divine Trinity. Our great Church Fathers not only did not solve these important questions, but did not even formulate them clearly: they taught, not revealed; they repeated the primordial content of direct faith, and did not indicate its obligatory, rational foundations. Hence, their writings about the Holy Scriptures. They did not have such a tremendous influence on Christian society as their writings about the Son of God had. If, according to the consciousness of St. Basil the Great, [495] at the beginning of the seventies of the fourth century, "many mouths were opened against the Holy Spirit. And many tongues were contrived in blasphemy against Him"; then by the end of this period, according to the testimony of St. Gregory the Theologian, the Doukhobor movement had developed to such an extent that even among the members of the Orthodox Church there were those who "were pious only in their hearts," i.e., although they did not dare to deny the divinity of the Holy Spirit. But on the other hand, they did not dare to openly confess Him. It was not long before the Second Ecumenical Council, when St. Gregory of Nyssa came out in defense of Christian truth.

Since the predecessors of St. Gregory solved the main question in great detail and thoroughly: whether to recognize St. Gregory. The Spirit as an independent Person in the Godhead, or to consider Him alien to the divine essence of the Father and the Son, then it is self-evident that there is an urgent need for a new detailed exposition of the same Church teaching on the Holy Spirit. There was no Spirit, and therefore St. Gregory does not do it. He had in mind another task, or, to be more precise, he wanted to continue the solution of the task that St. Athanasius and Basil had taken upon themselves in their time, but which they did not have time to solve. Continuing this task, St. Gregory of Nyssa naturally had to ask himself the question: why exactly should every Christian teach about the Holy Scriptures? In the same way as the Orthodox Church believes, and as Athanasius and Basil expounded this faith? This question had not yet been thoroughly resolved by Orthodox theologians, and yet it was mainly put forward by the opponents of Orthodoxy. Not knowing how to solve it correctly, and not having the desired answer from those who knew this decision, they concluded from this that it was impossible to think about the inner attitude of the Holy Spirit. And expressed this imaginary impossibility in their constant sophistic objection to the Orthodox teaching: is not the Spirit a brother to the Son and a grandson of the Father? In view of this, the question raised by St. Gregory about the rational foundations of the Orthodox understanding of the teaching on the Holy Scriptures. The spirit was put forward in an urgent way and demanded a serious decision. Since in this decision it was necessary to give a proper answer to all the heretical perplexities regarding the Church's faith in the Holy Spirit as an independent Divine Person equal to the Father and the Son, St. Gregory, in his successive revelation of the foundations of this faith, posed the following three questions: a) why, with the existence of the Father and the Son, is the Holy Spirit still needed, as a third Person in the Godhead? b) in what relation the Holy Spirit stands to the first and second Persons of the Godhead? and (c) why should He be recognized in all things as equal to God the Father and the Son?

Answering the first question, St. Gregory expounded his teaching on St. Gregory. The Spirit, as "for the kingdom of the Father and for the anointing of the Son." This very original teaching, for its originality alone, should deserve the fullest attention on the part of modern theologians, but unfortunately it is not expounded by St. Gregory quite clearly and too briefly, so that it is rather difficult to understand its true meaning and to clarify its dogmatic meaning.

This teaching is based on the well-known words of the Lord's Prayer: according to the Gospel of Matthew, the Lord's Prayer, that kingdom come, and according to the Gospel of Luke, the Lord's Prayer... may thy Holy Spirit come upon us and cleanse us [497]. The removal of these parallel expressions gave St. Gregory a direct basis for saying that "the Holy Spirit is the kingdom (πνεύμα, τό άγιον βασιλεία έύτίν)" [498]. But since the kingdom does not exist by itself and for itself, but only with the king and for the king, it is self-evident that the Holy Spirit, as a kingdom, must also be the kingdom of someone, i.e., it must exist inseparably with the King and for the King. Who is this king now, whose majesty, power, and glory rest in the Holy Spirit? According to the clear indication of the Gospel text, this king is God the Father Himself; consequently, in the Holy Spirit rests the royal majesty of God the Father Himself. But since in reality the life of the Father is never in a state of Sabellian dead rest, but He gives birth from eternity to the Son of one essence with Him, so the Holy Spirit, as the bearer of the royal glory of Boshe, crowns with this glory the Son of God, who is born of the Father. This activity of the Holy Scriptures. The anointing activity of the Spirit, and therefore He Himself, being the kingdom of God the Father, in relation to the Son of God, is the anointing (Χρισμα), with which God the Father has anointed His only-begotten Son from eternity. It is precisely this inner divine activity of life that the Prophet points to when he says: "Anoint thee, O God, thy God with the oil of joy, more than a partaker of thy joy," denoting with these words the anointing Father, the anointing of the Spirit, and the anointed Son. The Apostle points to this same inner activity of life even more clearly when he directly remarks that God anointed Him (the Lord Jesus) with the Holy Spirit and power (Acts X, 28). Anointing is a symbol of the kingdom; but the only-begotten Son of God, as one in essence with the Father and King by nature, naturally needed to have in Himself all the fullness of the royal majesty of the Father, and therefore it was necessary for Him to have the anointing of the Spirit. By virtue of this anointing, He exists from eternity as Christ and King, because He is endowed with the royal glory of the Spirit from eternity, which is precisely what His anointing consists in [500]. On this basis, St. Gregory considered it possible to define the internal relationship of the divine Persons as the relationship of glory. "Eternally glorious," he says, "is the Father who exists before the ages, and the glory of the Father is the pre-eternal Son, and even the glory of the Son is the Spirit of Christ" (501). The Spirit constitutes the glory of the Son, the Son, having the glory of the Father, glorifies the Father in Himself, so that in the divine life there is an eternal mutual transfer of glory from one divine Person to another: "The Son is glorified by the Spirit, the Father is glorified by the Son; on the contrary, the Son receives glory from the Father, and the Only-begotten is made the glory of the Spirit, because what will the Father be glorified but the true glory of the Only-begotten, and in what will the Son be glorified, if not in the greatness of the Spirit?" [502].