In the East, of course, the rule came into force. It was believed that the pope had previously recognized the elevation of the bishops of Constantinople. 1) If the Council of 381 in Rome was not recognized as ecumenical, then why was it kept silent for 70 years? Later, after all, all the popes recognized him. 2) Why in 449 did the legates of the pope at the Council of Ephesus demand from Dioscorus the second place for Constantinople and were offended by the fifth place, to which Flavian was placed by Dioscorus? 3) Why did Anatolius of Constantinople sit in second place in Chalcedon in 451? Consequently, this right of honor was recognized by the legates.

In the subsequent history of the Western Church, not only tacitly, in fact (which, in fact, is sufficient for church reception), but also formally, conciliarly, the force of the 28th Chalcedonian Canon was recognized by Rome. If we do not mention the 36th canon of the Council of Trullo (only temporarily and with hesitation recognized by the ancient popes), then under Pope Nicholas I (the case of Photius and Ignatius) in 869, at the Council of Constantinople (for Rome it is the "VIII Ecumenical Council"), the 21st canon recognized the primacy of the Patriarch of Constantinople after the Roman one. When, under Pope Innocent III, the Latins took Constantinople (1204) and placed their Latin patriarch on the cathedra there, the Lateran Council (the "Twelfth Ecumenical") decreed: "Renewing the old privileges of the patriarchal sees, by the consent of the holy universal council, we determine that after the Roman Church there should be the first place of Constantinople, the second of Alexandria, the third of Antioch, and the fourth of Jerusalem, with the preservation of each of them its dignity." Finally, the Council of Florence of 1438 decreed in a decree on the union: "The Patriarch of Constantinople will be second after the Most Holy Pope of Rome, the Patriarch of Alexandria the third, then the fourth of Antioch, and the fifth of Jerusalem, with the preservation of all their privileges and rights." And, finally, in the Roman Corpus juris canonici, the 28th canon of the Council of Chalcedon is printed in its place.

The conclusion is clear, the Roman Church approved this rule. And it could not be otherwise. By rejecting this fact (and not fiction), the Roman Church would have undermined the fact of its primacy. The attempt of Pope Leo, prompted by his legate Bishop Lucentius, to turn the wheel of history to the 6th canon of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (when the See of Constantinople did not yet exist and when the first place after Rome was given to Alexandria) was unnatural and anti-canonical madness. The canons were built on facts and customs. In this way the entire administrative system of the Church is built: all the metropolises, dioceses, patriarchates, applied to the political and living centers of life, and not to the sedes apostolicae. For in Phrygia, and in Pamphylia, and in Philippi, and in Corinth, and in Crete, there were dozens of episcopal sees founded by the apostles, and they were ruled by the bishops of the capitals, dioceses, and metropolises. The glory of the "Apostolic See" was only an additional to the actual power, an increase in authority and an adornment.

* * *

Let us return, however, to the summit point of the Fourth Ecumenical Council, to its Christological oros. What is its living, undying and ever-growing significance for the modern Christian religious consciousness, mainly Eastern Orthodox, and, perhaps, especially for the Russian Orthodox?

This is a grateful topic for entire systems of Christian philosophy, mysticism, ethics, asceticism. It is our duty here to make only the most general indications, or rather, only hints at how, in what refractions, we are now experiencing Christological dogma, the salvific directive which the oros of the Fourth Council has given us.

It seems to us that even then, in the fifth century, when Christological dogma was blazing like an inextinguishable fire in the brains of the Hellenized Eastern peoples, a purely philosophical, theoretical interest in it was realized, strictly speaking, only in the school-enlightened minority, i.e., among the leading theological elite. In wide circles and in the mass consciousness, interest in it was nourished by the subconscious, but no less ardent sphere of religious feeling, i.e., by the dominant tone of Eastern piety. This piety, the feeling, so to speak, by touch, of what is holy and what is not holy, what leads to God and what leads away from Him, is characterized by a keen sense of the opposite, the polarity of God and the world, not only as Creator and creation, Infinite and finite, but also as Pure and impure, Holy and Sinful, almost as Good and Evil in the ontological sense. This is the subsoil that favors the imperceptible distortion of the dogma of the Incarnation. It is characteristic that in the period of Christological disputes, monastic armies in the figurative and even literal sense of the word come to prominence. The zealots of asceticism were not primarily inspired by the kenotic ideal of the debasement of God to the image of man, but, on the contrary, by the elevation of the carnal nature to the fire and light of the divine nature, which sublimates the flesh to its complete transformation and even absorption. Thus, on the basis of asceticism, piety of the Monophysite tone arose, and after it heretical theology.

In contrast to this extreme Monophysite deviation, the positive, calm thought of Rome, through the mouth of Pope Leo, supported the healthy aspiration of Antiochian theology and saved the proper balance in the affirmation of the reality of the two natures in Christ. Through this sound and sober theology, a sound criterion was established for determining the norm of catholic church piety. It was guarded against the danger of heretical, anti-cosmic, Buddhist spiritualism. In other words, in the atmosphere of Orthodox-catholic Christology, i.e., a comprehensively harmonious theology about the reality of the two natures in Christ, the moral and practical side of the life of both the individual Christian and the whole Church instinctively fit into a healthy channel, alien to heretical extremism. And this Orthodoxy is not in a distinct theoretical consciousness, accessible only to a theological minority, but Orthodoxy in practice, in the vital practical instinct of the masses, and is and still remains a new, undying experience of the same ancient Chalcedonian dogma. In the movement of centuries and the changes of the historical environment, only the forms of its comprehension, only its theological armature, changed.

In addition to the positive Roman dogmatic help to the East, which had fallen ill with Monophysite distortion, the East's own Church-wide experience also served as a counterbalance and antidote on the spot at the present moment and in the following centuries. This was the theocratic principle of the blessed connection of the church with the Roman Empire and its culture for the sake of historical service to the kingdom of God. In this dogmatically substantiated and meaningful theocratic ideal of the "symphony" of church and state, both natures are given in perfect fullness and in perfect unity, without diminishing one at the expense of the other. The earthly, defective nature of the state, with its sinful human and cosmic materials, and the heavenly, divine, miraculous nature of the church, with its mystical essence of the Body of Christ, are irrationally united in the image of the mystery of the Incarnation, without confusion and mutual absorption. This is the Chalcedonian dogma in the life of the Church, embodied in its practice, in its morality and sanctifying and liturgical theurgy. For what is quite normal and even perfect by humanitarian and ethical standards does not satisfy the Church's conscience. According to the wise teaching of the Church, ethically perfect only that which is sustained in the liturgical atmosphere of the Church, which has passed through the crucible of its sanctifying actions and has become mystically transfigured for us, no longer just natural, profane, but holy. With the eyes of faith and in spiritual experience, we are vouchsafed to behold, by analogy with the essence of the Chalcedonian dogma, the truly Orthodox path of the inevitable, heroic (because antinomian) combination of the divine and the human, the absolute and the relative, the eternal and the temporal, the holy and the profane. And this is not only in the mystagogy of personal Christian podvig, but in the feat of social and cultural-creative, world-historical, universal, i.e., truly universal.

This practical experience of the Chalcedonian dogma in the task of theocratic creation of the symphony of the church and the churched empire with the inclusion in this concept of the churching of all life and culture, was carried by the ancient church through the Middle Ages to the modern ones, when the theocratic task encountered its great, also universal opponent, i.e., non-religious humanism, or secularism, that great all-pervading heresy of modern times. This is Monophysitism turned upside down: the elimination or expulsion from the field of activity of the state and humanistic earthly culture of any religion, of all mystical, divine principles of the Church. The formula of this heresy begins with the tolerant slogan of the separation of church and state, with the admission of religion as a personal, private affair of everyone (Privatsache).

Further, it dialectically passes into open struggle and persecution. This new persecution of the Church is the result of a new-pagan, monistic sui generis "theologizing," of idolatry before the materialistically understood cosmic being. This is materialistic Monophysitism.

The Chalcedonian Problem in the Understanding of Russian Thinkers.

Has the Church of our epoch, of our modern times, worked out a clear answer to this Monophysite heresy in the form of monism, a doctrinal answer, a response of theoretical theology? It must be admitted that we do not yet have a clear, church-approved, generally accepted catechetical answer. But the search for it has irresistibly begun and will continue, perhaps, for centuries, if some acute drama in the life of the Church does not induce it to give another conciliar teaching directive for the solution of this question.