Глава III. Бог-Троица

Апофатизм, свойственный богомыслию Восточной Церкви, не тождествен безличностной мистике, опыту абсолютной Божественной внебытийности, в которой исчезают как человеческая личность, так и Божественное Лицо.

Предел, которого достигает апофатическое богословие, если только можно говорить о пределе и завершении там, где речь идет о восхождении к бесконечному, этот бесконечный предел не есть какая-то природа или сущность; это также и не лицо, это - нечто, одновременно превышающее всякое понятие природы и личности, это - Троица.

Святой Григорий Богослов, которого часто называют "певцом Пресвятой Троицы", говорит в своих богословских поэмах: "С тех пор, как, отрешившись от житейского, предал я душу светлым небесным помыслам, и высокий ум, восхитив меня отсюда, поставил меня далеко от плоти, скрыл меня в таинницах небесной скинии, осиял мои взоры светом Троицы, светозарнее Которой ничего не представляла мне мысль, Троицы, Которая с превознесенного престола изливает на всех общее и неизреченное сияние, Которая есть начало всего, что отделяется от превыспреннего временем, с тех пор я умер для мира, а мир умер для меня" [54]. Под конец своей жизни он выражает желание быть "там, где моя Троица в полном блеске Ее сияния... Троица, даже неясная тень Которой наполняет меня волнением" [55].

Если само начало тварного бытия есть изменяемость, переход из небытия в бытие, если тварь по самой природе своей условна, то Троица есть абсолютная неизменяемость. Хотелось бы даже сказать: "абсолютная необходимость совершенного бытия", но идея необходимости неприложима к Троице, ибо Она - за пределами антиномии необходимого и случайного. Совершенно личностная и совершенно природная, в Ней свобода и необходимость - едины, или вернее они не могут иметь места в Боге. У Троицы - никакой зависимости от тварного: акт сотворения мира ни в чем не определяет того, что принято называть "вечное происхождение Божественных Лиц". Тварного могло бы и не быть, Бог и тогда был бы Троицей - Отцом, Сыном и Духом Святым, ибо сотворение есть акт воли, происхождение Лиц - акт природы ( ?????????? ) [56]. В Боге - никакого внутреннего процесса, никакой диалектики трех Лиц, никакого становления, никакой трагедии в Абсолюте, для преодоления или разрешения которой потребовалось бы троическое развитие Божественного существа. Подобные вымыслы, свойственные романтическим теориям немецкой философии прошлого века, совершенно чужды догмату о Пресвятой Троице. Если мы и говорим о происхождении, о внутренних действиях или самоопределениях, эти выражения, предполагающие понятия времени, становления, намерения, только показывают, до какой степени наш язык и даже сама наша мысль бедны и недостаточны применительно к изначальной тайне Откровения. Мы снова принуждены обратиться к апофатическому богословию, чтобы освободиться от понятий, свойственных нашему мышлению, и будем превращать их только в точки опоры, с которых мы поднимались бы к созерцанию той Реальности, Которую не может вместить в себя тварный ум.

This is what St. Gregory the Theologian has in mind in his Homily on Baptism: "I have not yet begun to think of the One, when the Trinity illumines me with His radiance. Scarcely had I begun to think of the Trinity when the One embraced me again. When One of the Three appears to me, I think that this is the whole, so much so that my gaze is filled with Him, and the rest eludes me; for in my mind, which is too limited to understand the One, there is no more room for the rest. When I unite the Three in one and the same thought, I see a single light, but I cannot divide or consider the united light."[57] Our thought must move unceasingly, running from One to Three, and return again to Oneness; must oscillate incessantly between the two terms of this antinomy in order to arrive at the contemplation of the royal rest of this threefold Unity. How can the antinomy of unity and trinity be enclosed in one image? Is it possible to grasp this mystery without the help of concepts of motion or development that do not correspond to it? And the same Gregory the Theologian deliberately borrows the language of Plotinus, which can only mislead the minds of limited minds, unable to rise above rational concepts, the minds of "critics" and "historians" who are engaged in searching for "Platonism" and "Aristotelianism" in the works of the Holy Fathers. St. Gregory speaks to philosophers as a philosopher, in order to "acquire philosophers for the contemplation of the Holy Trinity: the One is moved by His richness, the Dual is overcome, for the Godhead is above matter and form. The Trinity is closed in perfection, for it is the first to overcome the composition of the dual. Thus the Deity is not limited, but neither does it extend to infinity. The first would be inglorious, and the second would be contrary to order. The one would be completely in the spirit of Judaism, and the second in the spirit of Hellenism and polytheism" [58]. Here, as it were, the mystery of the number "three" shines through: the Godhead is not singular and not multiple; Its perfection transcends the multiplicity rooted in duality (recall the infinite dyads of the Gnostics and the dualism of the Platonists) and finds its expression in the Trinity. The words "finds His expression" do not really fit here: the Godhead does not need to express His perfection either to Himself or to others. It is the Trinity, and this fact cannot be deduced from any principle, cannot be explained by any "sufficient" cause, for there is neither a beginning nor a cause preceding the Trinity.

????? (three) - this "name unites that which is united by nature, and does not allow that with the disintegration of the number the indestructible should be destroyed" [59], says St. Gregory the Theologian. Two is the dividing number, three is the number that transcends division: the one and the plural are gathered together and inscribed in the Trinity: "When I name God, I name the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Not because I am suggesting that the Deity is scattered—that would be to return to a tangle of false gods; and not because I consider the Deity gathered together, but because it would mean impoverishing Him. Thus, I do not want to fall into Judaism for the sake of Divine autocracy, nor into Hellenism, because of the multitude of gods" [60]. St. Gregory the Theologian does not try to justify the Trinity of Persons before human reason; it simply indicates the insufficiency of any number other than the number "three." But the question arises: Is the concept of number applicable to God, and do we not thus subordinate the Godhead to one of the external determinations, one of the categories peculiar to our thinking, namely, the category of the number three? St. Basil the Great responds to this objection in the following way: "We do not count from one to plurality by addition, saying one, two, three, or first, second, third, for 'I am the first, and I am the last, and besides Me there is no God' (Isa. 44, 6). Never before has it been said: "the second God", but worshipping God from God, confessing the difference of hypostases, without dividing nature into multiplicity, we remain in unity of command" [61]. In other words, it is not a question of a material number, which serves for counting and is in no way applicable to the spiritual realm, in which there is no quantitative increase. In particular, when this number refers to the inseparably united Divine Hypostases, the totality of which (the "sum", to use not quite suitable language) is always equal only to one (3 = 1), the threefold number is not a quantity, as we usually understand it: it denotes in the Godhead His ineffable order.

The contemplation of this absolute perfection, this Divine fullness, which is the Most Holy Trinity, is God the Person, but not a person enclosed in Himself, the very thought of which is only a "pale shadow of Him" - and this raises the soul of man above the changeable and clouded being, giving it stability in the midst of passions, a clear impassibility (???????), which is the beginning of deification. For creation, changeable by nature, must by grace attain a state of eternal tranquility, partaking of eternal life in the light of the Most Holy Trinity. For this reason, the Church zealously defended the mystery of the Holy Trinity against the natural tendencies of the human mind, which tried to eliminate this mystery by reducing the trinity to one unity and transforming it into the "essence" of the philosophers, manifested in three modes (Sabellian modalism), or by dividing it into three distinct beings, as Arius did.

The Church expressed by the term omoousios the consubstantiality of the three Persons, the mysterious identity of the monad and the triad, and the simultaneity of the identity of the one nature and the difference of the three hypostases. It is interesting to note that the expression "omousion" is found in Plotinus [62]. The Trinity of Plotinus consists of three hypostases of one essence: the One, the Mind and the Soul of the world. However, their consubstantiality does not rise to the Trinitarian antinomy of Christian dogma: it appears to us as a descending hierarchy and manifests itself in the continuous emanation of hypostases, which, passing from one to another, are reflected from one to the other. This shows once again how erroneous is the method of historians who want to express the thought of the Church Fathers by interpreting the terms they use in the spirit of Hellenistic philosophy. Revelation opens the gap between the Truth it proclaims and the truths that can be discovered by philosophical speculation. If human thought, which, as a vague and uncertain faith, was led to the Truth by some instinct, could grope outside of Christian teaching to form some ideas that would bring it closer to the Trinity, then the very mystery of God the Trinity remained closed to it. What is needed here is a "change of mind," ???????? ; the word also means "repentance," like Job's repentance when he came face to face with God: "I have heard of you with the ear of my ear; but now my eyes see Thee. Therefore I deny and repent in the dust" (Job 42:5-6). The mystery of the Trinity becomes accessible only to ignorance, which rises above all that can be contained in the concepts of philosophers. However, this ignorance, not only wise, but also merciful, again descends to these concepts in order to change them, transforming the expressions of human wisdom into instruments of Divine Wisdom, which for the Greeks is madness.

It took the inhuman efforts of such Church Fathers as Saints Athanasius the Great, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and many others to purify the concepts inherent in the Hellenic way of thinking, to destroy their impenetrable partitions, introducing into them the beginning of Christian apophaticism, which transformed rationalistic reasoning into the contemplation of the mysteries of the Most Holy Trinity. It was necessary to find a terminological distinction that would express unity and difference in the Godhead, without giving predominance to either one or the other, without allowing the idea of deviating either into the unitarianism of the Sabellians or into the tritheism of the pagans.

The Fathers of the IV, the "Trinitarian" century for the most part, in order to lead minds to the mystery of the Trinity, most willingly used the terms "ousia" and "hypostasis". The term ousia is often used by Aristotle and defines it in Chapter V of his Categories as follows: "That which cannot be said of any (other) individual and that which is not found in any (other) individual, for example, 'this man, this horse', is called ousia mainly. Secondary "ousia" (???????????????) are species in which the first "ousia" exist with the corresponding genera; thus 'this man' is man in kind, and animal in kind" [63]. In other words, the first "ousia" denote "individual existences", the existing individual, the second "ousia" denote "essences" in the realistic sense of the term. The term "hypostasis", having no significance as a philosophical term, denoted in ordinary language that which really exists, "existence" (from the verb ????????? ). St. John of Damascus in his "Dialectic" gives the following definition of the conceptual meaning of both terms: "Substance (ousia) is a self-existent thing that does not need anything else for its existence. Or again: substance is that which in itself is hypostatic (????????????) and has no existence in another, that is, that which does not exist through another, and does not have its being in another, and does not need another for its existence, but exists in itself, and in which accident derives its being" (Chapter 39). "The word 'hypostasis' has two meanings. Sometimes it denotes simple being. According to this meaning, substance (ousia) and hypostasis are one and the same. That is why some of the Holy Fathers said: "natures or hypostases." Sometimes the term "hypostasis" denotes being in itself, being independent. According to this meaning, it is understood as an individual who differs from others only numerically, for example: "Peter, Paul, some particular horse" (ch. 42) [64]). Thus, both terms seem to be more or less synonymous: "ousia" denotes an individual substance, although it may denote an essence common to certain individuals; "hypostasis" is existence in general, but can also be applied to individual substances. According to the testimony of Theodoret of Cyrus, "for secular philosophy there is no difference between ousia and hypostasis. For "ousia" means that which is, and "hypostasis" means that which exists. But, according to the teaching of the Holy Fathers, there is the same difference between the ousia and the hypostasis as there is between the general and the particular" [65]. The genius of the Holy Fathers here lay in the fact that they used both synonyms to distinguish in God that which is general - "ousia" - substance or essence, and what is particular - "hypostasis" or Person.

As for the term "persona" (Greek ????????), which was popular mainly in the West, it provoked vehement protests from the Eastern Fathers. Indeed, this word, far from having the modern meaning of "personality" (e.g., human personality), denoted rather the appearance of an individual, appearance, mask ("mask"), or the role of an actor. St. Basil the Great saw in the application of this term to the teaching of the Holy Trinity a tendency characteristic of Western thought, which had already once expressed itself in Sabellianism, making of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit three modalities of a single substance. In turn, the Westerners saw in the term "hypostasis," which they translated by the word "substantia," an expression of tritheism and even Arianism. In the end, all misunderstandings were removed: the term "hypostasis" passed into the West, giving the concept of personality its concrete meaning, and the term "person" or ???????? was accepted and properly interpreted in the East. In this way, the catholicity of the Church was manifested, freeing minds from their natural limitations, which depend on different ways of thinking and different cultures. If the Latins expressed the mystery of the Holy Trinity in terms of a single essence (essentia) in order to arrive from it to the three Persons, while the Greek Fathers preferred as a starting point the concrete, the three Hypostases, and saw in them a single nature, this was one and the same dogma of the Holy Trinity, which was professed by the whole Christian world before the division of the Churches. St. Gregory the Theologian, combining both points of view, says: "When I pronounce the word 'God', you are illumined by a single and threefold light - threefold in relation to particular properties, or to Hypostases (if anyone likes so), or to Persons (let us not argue in the least about names, so long as the words lead to the same thought) - I say 'one' in relation to the concept of essence (ousia) and, consequently, the Divinity. God is divided, so to speak, inseparably and is united separately; for the Divinity is One in Three, and one is the Three, in Whom is the Divinity, or, more precisely, which is the Divinity" [66]. In another word, he briefly expounds his teaching, distinguishing the characteristic features of the Hypostases: "To be unbegotten, to be begotten, and to proceed" gives the names: the first to the Father, the second to the Son, the third to the Holy Spirit, so that the non-union of the three Hypostases is preserved in the one nature and dignity of the Godhead. The Son is not the Father, because the Father is one, but the same as the Father. The Spirit is not the Son, though from God (for the Only-begotten is one), but the same as the Son. And the Three are one in Divinity, and the One is three in personal qualities, so that there is neither one in the sense of Sabellius, nor three in the sense of the present evil division" (i.e., Arianism) [67].