St. Tikhon of Zadonsk and His Teaching on Salvation

Preface

The year 1983 marked the 200th anniversary of the blessed repose of the great luminary of the Russian Church, St. Tikhon, Bishop of Voronezh and Yeletsk.

The literary theological heritage of St. Tikhon of Zadonsk is extensive and multifaceted in its subject matter. The saint considered the main goal of man's existence on earth to be the salvation of the soul. The idea of salvation runs like a red thread through all his creations. A Christian will find here answers to many questions that arise on his path to eternity. The letters of the Holy Father, which are included in the collection of his works, almost always end with the words: Be saved!", "Save yourself in the Lord!", "Save yourself in Christ Jesus!"

As a spiritual-life process, salvation is the work of both God and man. In other words, there are objective and subjective sides in this process. Everything that the Lord has given to man for salvation is the objective side of salvation; the efforts of man himself, with the grace of God that helps him, constitute the subjective side. Both of these aspects are clearly reflected in the works of the Voronezh saint. In addition, in them the inner richness of his highly moral personality is fully revealed, and the revelation of this wealth makes it possible to present the theological views of the Holy Father more clearly and completely. The facts of the biography of St. Tikhon also help to understand the spirit and meaning of his works. "Reducing the feats of the saint to general features," says one of his biographers, "we find that in his life... the living relation of dogma to life and their mutual connection are revealed, i.e., how Christian dogmas, vividly and constantly recognized by the believing mind, should be expressed in the corresponding dispositions of the heart and free actions of the will" [1].

On the basis of this, this work is divided into two parts: the first gives a biography of St. Tikhon, and the second reveals the central theme of his teaching – the salvation of man. Speaking in more detail about the content of the work, we note, in particular, the following key points.

First of all, the preface gives a critical analysis of some of the main works and studies on St. Tikhon.

The introduction describes the initial period in the history of the Voronezh diocese, preceding the life of St. Tikhon.

In the first part of the work, on the basis of all the carefully worked out and critically analyzed literature published at different times and by various persons, as well as archival documents about the Holy Father, a complete life of St. Tikhon was compiled to the best of his ability, covering all aspects of his life and work at the cathedra and in retirement. At the end of this part, the editions of the works of the saint are considered and a brief description of each of these works is given.

In the second part of the work, in the light of the statements of St. Tikhon, the Orthodox teaching on salvation is revealed and, in particular, the teaching of the saint concerning the creation of the world and man, as well as key issues of anthropology, Christology and soteriology, is analyzed.

At the end of the work, there is an extensive bibliography (a total of 654 titles of various books, articles and notes). All literature that had a direct or indirect relationship to the life and work of St. Tikhon had to be divided into three sections. In the first section there are editions of the works of St. Tikhon [2]. In the second section, there is literature about St. Tikhon [3]. The third section contains the names of encyclopedias, reference books and dictionaries that were used in writing the work.

At present, there is a fairly extensive literature on the life and works of the saint. A list of this literature in alphabetical order is placed in the bibliography attached to this work. Some of the sources of the biography of the Holy Father should be noted especially.

The life of St. Tikhon was first described by his cell-attendant Ivan Efimov (later Hieromonk Tikhon, a monk of the Usman monastery).

At the request of Archpriest Evfimy Bolkhovitinov, he compiled his memoirs in the form of notes, in which he recorded individual episodes from the life of St. Tikhon without any sequence. For example, the notes begin with a detailed description of the vestments of the body of the deceased saint, which is most remembered by the cell-attendant. Yefimov himself says that he collected in his notes everything "that he saw and heard from the lips of the bishops", what "came to mind" [4].