15 main theologians of the Russian land • Arzamas

How did Christians appear?

What is the good news, why did it spread so quickly after the gospel events and how did it take root in ancient soil?

Pavel Kuzenkov

What is the good news, why did it spread so quickly after the gospel events and how did it take root in ancient soil?

36 minutes

2/9

Christian theologians of the High Middle Ages.

Peter Abelard (1079-1142)
Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109)
Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153)
Albertus Magnus (c. 1200 – 1280)
Bonaventure (1221-1274)
Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274)
Meister Eckhart (1260-1328)
William of Ockham (1285-1347)

How Orthodox and Catholics quarreled

What prevented the final victory of Christianity and how the two main Christian traditions were formed - Greek and Latin

Pavel Kuzenkov

What prevented the final victory of Christianity and how the two main Christian traditions were formed - Greek and Latin

22 minutes

4/9

Christian theologians of the New Time.

John Calvin (1509-1564)
John of the Cross (1542-1591)
Erasmus of Rotterdam (1469-1536)
Richard Hooker (1554-1600)
John Knox (c. 1513 – 1572)
Ignatius of Loyola (c. 1491 – 1556)
Martin Luther (1483-1546)
Philip Melanchthon (1497-1560)
Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531)
Menno Simons (1496-1561)
Jacob Arminius (1560-1609)
Richard Baxter (1615-1691)
Jacob Boehme (1575-1624)
Fenelon (1651-1715)
John Milton (1608-1674)
Hugo Grotius (1583-1645)
John Owen (1616-1683)
Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758)
Charles Wesley (1707-1788)
John Wesley (1703-1791)
George Whitefield (1714-1770)
Nikolai Berdyaev (1874-1948)
William Booth (1829-1912)
Adam Clarke (1762-1832)
Charles Grandison Finney (1792-1875)
Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930)
Charles Hodge (1797-1878)
Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855)
Frederick Denison Maurice (1805-1872)
John Miley (1813-1895)
John Henry Newman (1801-1890)
Heinrich Paulus (1761-1851)
Philip Schaff (1819-1893)
Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834)
Charles Spurgeon (1834-1892)
James Strong (1833-1913)
William Temple (archbishop) (1881-1944)
Walter (1811-1887)
Richard Watson (1781-1833)
Franz Delitzsch (1813-1890)

How Rus' became part of the Christian world

What Rus' learned from the newest intellectual movement of its time and how its life changed after Epiphany

Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov

What Rus' learned from the newest intellectual movement of its time and how its life changed after Epiphany

24 minutes

5/9

Theologians

The publishing house of the Sretensky Monastery is preparing to publish a book by Archimandrite Tikhon (Shevkunov). It included real stories that happened in different years, which were later used in sermons and conversations delivered by the author.

Archimandrite John (Peasant)

Once, an important young man, a graduate of the theological academy, approached Father John (Krestyankin), and, introducing himself, among other things, declared:
“I am a theologian!”

Father John was very surprised and asked:

- How - fourth?

- What is “fourth”? – the academician did not understand.

Father John readily explained:

– We know three theologians in the Church. The first is Saint John the Theologian, apostle and beloved disciple of the Savior. The second is Gregory the Theologian. And the third is Simeon the New Theologian. It was only for them that the Holy Church, throughout its two-thousand-year history, decided to adopt the name “Theologian.” So you are the fourth?

But still, to whom and how does the Lord send spiritual wisdom? In fact, in order to be a theologian, it is not at all necessary to wear a cassock and graduate from theological academies. “The spirit breathes where it wants!” - Apostle Paul exclaims in amazement.

One day, the choir of our Sretensky Monastery and I were in the Far East at a military base for strategic long-range aviation. After the service and the choir concert, the officers invited us to dinner. This Orthodox service was the first in a distant military town. It is clear that the local people looked at us with interest, as if we were looking at something completely outlandish. Before the meal, as usual for Christians, we read the “Our Father” prayer. The respected general prayed and was baptized with us. About two hours later, towards the end of the feast, the officers turned to him:

- Comrade General! We saw that you were baptized. We respect you. But we don’t understand! You've probably changed your mind about a lot of things that we haven't thought about yet. Tell me, over the years that you have lived, how did you understand what is most important in life? What is its meaning?

It is clear that such questions are asked only after people have sat well, in Russian, at a hospitable table. And they were imbued with trust and goodwill.

And the general, a real army general, thought a little and said:

– The main thing in life is to keep your heart pure before God!

I was shocked! In terms of depth and theological accuracy, only a true outstanding theologian—a theologian-thinker and a theologian-practitioner—could say this. But I think the army general had no idea about this.

In general, our brother, the priest, can sometimes be taught a lot, or even shamed, by people who seem far from theological sciences.

During negotiations on reunification with the Russian Church Abroad, Archbishop Mark of Germany admitted to me that a certain incident that happened to him in Russia made him believe that spiritual changes in our country are not propaganda, but real reality.

Once a priest was driving him in his car around the Moscow region. Vladyka Mark is German, and it was very unusual for him that even though there were signs on the highway limiting the speed to ninety kilometers, their car was rushing at a speed of one hundred and forty. Vladyka suffered for a long time and finally delicately expressed his bewilderment. But the priest only grinned at the naive simplicity of the foreigner.

– What if the police stop you? – the ruler was surprised.

“Everything is fine with the police too!” – the priest confidently answered the amazed guest.

And indeed, after some time they were stopped by a traffic police officer. Having lowered the window, the priest good-naturedly greeted the young policeman:

- Good afternoon, boss! Sorry, we're in a hurry!

But the policeman did not react to this greeting:

- Your documents! – he demanded dryly.

- Come on, come on, boss! – the father became worried. – Don’t you see?.. Well, in general, we’re in a hurry!

- Your documents! – the policeman repeated.

The priest was both offended and ashamed in front of the guest, but there was nothing left to do - he handed the policeman his license and registration certificate, but at the same time could not resist and caustically added:

- Okay, take it! Of course, your job is to punish. It is our business to have mercy!

To which the policeman, looking at him with a cold gaze, said restrainedly:

– Well, first of all, it’s not us who punish, but the law. And it is not you who have mercy, but the Lord God!

And then, as Bishop Mark said, he realized that if the police on Russian roads now think in similar categories, then in this incomprehensible country everything has changed again. But, apparently, this time not for the worse.

How Russia became the main Orthodox country

How did the Russian Empire go towards the emergence of its own theological tradition and when did the golden age of Russian religious thought begin?

Archpriest Georgy Mitrofanov

How did the Russian Empire go towards the emergence of its own theological tradition and when did the golden age of Russian religious thought begin?

36 minutes

7/9

Christian theologians of the twentieth century.

Thomas Altizer (born 1927)
Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905-1988)
Karl Barth (1886-1968)
Emil Brunner (1889-1966)
Sergei Bulgakov (1871-1944)
Gordon Clark (1902-1985)
John B. Cobb (born 1925)
Dorothy Day (1897-1980)
Millard Erickson (born 1932)
Justo Gonzalez (born 1937)
Gustavo Gutierrez (born 1928)
Adolf von Harnack (1851-1930)
Carl Henry (1913-2003)
Robert Jenson (born 1930)
E. Stanley Jones (1884-1973)
Katherine Keller (born 1953)
George Eldon Ladd (1911-1982)
Edwin Lewis (1881-1959)
Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984)
Martin E. Marty (born 1928)
Thomas Merton (1915-1968)
John Murray (1898-1975)
Rudolf Otto (1869-1937)
Johannes Pedersen (1883-1977)
Karl Rahner (1904-1984)
Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI)
Dorothy Sayers (1893-1957)
Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984)
Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965)
Fulton Sheen (1895-1979)
Albert Benjamin Simpson (1843-1919)
Frank Stagg (1911-2001)
John Scott (1921-2011)
Thomas F. Torrance (1913-2007)
John Walvoord (1910-2002)
Karol Wojtyla (Pope John Paul II) (1920-2005)
Billy Graham (born 1918)

What did the revolution do to the Church?

What the Russian Orthodox Church was like on the eve of 1917, what it was going to become and how the political religion of the Bolsheviks prevented this

Alexey Beglov

What the Russian Orthodox Church was like on the eve of 1917, what it was going to become and how the political religion of the Bolsheviks prevented this

26 minutes

8/9

Christian theologians of the 21st century.

Marilyn McCord Adams (born 1943)
James Alison (b. 1959)
Alistair Begg (b. 1952)
Marcus Borg (1942-2015)
Gregory Boyd (b. 1957)
Don Carson (b. 1946)
William Lane Craig (b. 1949)
Mark Dever
Sinclair Ferguson
Roger T Forster (b. 1933)
Norman Geisler
Bob Goss
Scott Hahn
Michael Horton
Eric Hovind
Kent Hovind
Robert Jenson
Elizabeth Johnson
John Lennox
John F. MacArthur (b. 1939)
Alistair McGrath (b. 1953)
Josh McDowell
Richard A. Mueller
George Newlands (b. 1941)
Thomas K. Auden (b. 1931)
Eugene Peterson (b. 1932)
Clark Pinnock
John Piper
Alvin Plantinga
John Polkinghorne
Douglas Stewart
Elizabeth Stewart
Stephen Tong
Daniel B. Wallace (b. 1952)
Graham Ward (b. 1955)
Keith Ward (b. 1938)
Dallas Willard
Y. Rodman Williams
William Willimon (b. 1946)
Nancy Wilson
Ravi Zachariah

Church writers and theology of the ante-Nicene period. Doctrine of Logos

The doctrine of the Logos became an organic part of Christian revelation, since it had points of contact with the text of the Old Testament. We are talking about the use of the term “word” and the understanding of personified Wisdom. In the first part of the Bible there is a teaching about the creation of the world by the word. It was through the word that many prophets received revelation from God, whose written texts often contain the formulas: “And the word of the Lord came,” “And God said.”

The God of the Old Testament is a speaking God, which is why the Jews called the Holy Scripture itself the Holy Word, and Christians began to call it the Word of God. However, it should be noted that the name “Sacred Word” appeared among Jewish writers (Aristobulus, Philo) in the Hellenistic period in connection with the development of allegorical interpretation. This term was used by ancient authors in relation to the mystery Greek and barbarian texts128. Therefore, ancient Christian writers would tend to avoid it.

The Old Testament constantly emphasizes power, effectiveness (“My word that comes out of my mouth does not return to me void, but it accomplishes what I please, and accomplishes the thing for which I sent it” (Is. 55:11 ); “Is not My word like fire, and is it not like a hammer that breaks a rock” (Jer. 23:29); “He will send His word, and everything will melt” (Ps. 147:7)), permanence, eternity (“ The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever" (Is. 40:8); "Forever, O Lord, your word is established in the heavens" (Ps. 119:89)) the words of God, which guides and guides man (" Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path” (Ps. 119:105)).

The Word is, in a sense, a mediator between God and the world. That is why in the targums, the authors of which sought to emphasize the idea of the incomprehensibility, the transcendence of God, instead of the name of God, among other substitutes, the term “word-memera (God)” is used129. In the Targums we meet the personification of Memera. The personification of Memera is also found in the Book of Enoch (II–I centuries BC). “Come Enoch to My holy Word,” says the Lord with His lips (Book of Enoch,

14)130. The Talmudic Memera creates the world, provides for it, deals with the salvation of the chosen people, and appears as a personal being.

Of particular interest when considering the teachings about the Logos is the Old Testament Wisdom, which the Christian exegetical tradition firmly connected with the Divine Word, identifying Sophia of the Old Testament with the Second Hypostasis of the Holy Trinity.

In the book of Proverbs of Solomon, which can be dated to the 6th–5th centuries BC, Wisdom (chochma, sophia) is used in several senses. This is a human quality or action, and a quality or action of God, and a certain suprahuman, but close to man, phenomenon, and, what is most important for us, a special independent phenomenon Next to God. In the book of Proverbs, Wisdom is personified; two speeches are put into her mouth: Proverbs. 1:22–33 and Proverbs. 8:4–3b. In the first speech, she may well simply personify the commandments and virtues. But the second speech paints a very unusual portrait of her. She appears not only as possessing truth and power, but also as a source of power, as something that was with God before any creation, was a participant in the creation of the world, acting as the artist of everything. Finding it and obeying it gives life. If the teaching of Wisdom can be understood as a didactic personification, her own words about her cosmic, demiurgic role go beyond the limits of such personification, noted S. Averintsev. -...Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs is a figure that goes beyond a simple metaphor; we are talking, perhaps, not about the face, but about the essence131.

The book of Job also speaks about Wisdom, which is hidden from the eyes of all living things, which was at the creation of the world and was revealed at this creation (Job 28:20–28).

But Wisdom is most expressively spoken of in the book of the Wisdom of Solomon, which dates back to the 1st century BC. Wisdom in this book is a reasonable, holy, only-begotten, all-seeing spirit, which passes through and penetrates everything. She is the outpouring of the glory of the Almighty, renewing all things (Wis. 7:22-30). She gives immortality, pleasure, wealth, intelligence, good fame (Wis. 8:17-18). She knows the works of God, she was with God at creation (Wis. 9:9). In Prem. 9:1–2, which emphasizes that God created all things by His word and formed man by Wisdom, Wisdom is practically identified with the Logos, since verses 1 and 2 form a construction with parallelism. It was she who manifested herself in the history of the forefathers, forefathers and people of God (Wis. 10–19).

According to S. Trubetskoy, Wisdom in this book “is a cosmic principle, the principle of universal reason and moral law, like the Stoic logos; at the same time, like the logos of subsequent theology, it is the beginning of revelation.”132 Such Wisdom is already almost identical to the Logos of Christians. It is curious, but reading this book, one might think that its author, like John the Theologian, wanted to attract educated pagans familiar with Stoic philosophy to his side. The Greek word “Sophia” itself fully corresponded to the doctrine of Wisdom as an active creative force. Sophia in its original sense and usage is not just awareness in the sciences, but a practical skill, ability, dexterity (cunning), creative activity133.

Thus, the establishment of faith in the Christian Logos was facilitated not only by the ancient philosophical tradition, but also by the idea of the Wisdom-Word, fertilized by this tradition.

Modern theologians: 107 books - download to fb2, txt for Android or read online

The five-year voyage around the world (1831-1836) of the British ship Beagle forever changed the face of world science. During the expedition, 22-year-old ship naturalist Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) made discoveries that radically changed first his personal scientific views, and then the ideas of all mankind about the origin of life on Earth.

Heredity, variability, natural selection – the three concepts of Darwin’s evolutionary theory, which we learned in school, are “three sources and three components” of modern knowledge about the animal world, to which we all have the honor of belonging. Now even the Catholic Church has come to terms with this: in connection with the scientist’s 200th anniversary, the Vatican admitted that “Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory does not contradict the biblical version of the creation of the world and living organisms.”

And it all started casually and simply. Charles Darwin did poorly at school. But at the age of 8 he became interested in nature: he began collecting plants, minerals, shells, insects, fishing, and hunting birds. After school, he studied medicine in Edinburgh and theology in Cambridge, but did not become either a doctor or a theologian.

Instead, he went on a trip around the world. During the five years of sailing, the young ship naturalist made so many discoveries that they were enough for 22 years of study and comprehension. It should be noted that Darwin was generally distinguished by a manic tendency to systematize and catalogue: he even carefully recorded observations of his own children.

The result of this quarter-century of scientific feat is known: his famous theory of the origin of species was born. But even before the publication of “The Origin of Species,” in 1839, the description of the circumnavigation brought to your attention was published.

Darwin's book contains descriptions of South America, replete with entertaining details: Patagonia, Tierra del Fuego, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay; Australia, Tasmania, the islands of Tenerife, Galapagos, Cocos, Cape Verde, their exotic nature and population.

Since then, many plants, animals and tribes have disappeared from the face of the Earth and their descriptions can only be found on the pages of this book. “The body may die, but the messages we send while we are alive remain,” said Nobel laureate and distinguished neuroscientist (and therefore Darwin’s scientific “granddaughter”) Rita Levi-Montalcini in a recent interview on the occasion of her centenary.

The message that Darwin left us can be formulated as follows: life and the world order can be accepted without studying, but you can try to understand - and then real miracles will be revealed to us. The electronic publication includes all the texts of Charles Darwin's paper book and basic illustrative material.

But for true connoisseurs of exclusive publications, we offer a gift classic book. Hundreds of illustrations, drawings, paintings; travel maps and drawings by direct participants of the expedition made up the illustrative series of this gift edition.

This book, like the entire Great Journeys series, is printed on beautiful offset paper and elegantly designed. Editions of the series will adorn any, even the most sophisticated library, and will be a wonderful gift for both young readers and discerning bibliophiles.

Orthodox theology in the modern world1

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit loses a lot if it is considered abstractly. This seems to be one of the reasons why so few good theological works are written about the Holy Spirit, and why even the Fathers speak almost exclusively of Him either in opportunistic polemical works or in writings on the spiritual life. However, neither patristic Christology, nor the ecclesiology of the early centuries, nor the concept of salvation itself can be understood outside the basic pneumatological context. I will try to illustrate this point of view with five examples, which also seem to me to be precisely the issues that make the Orthodox witness relevant to the modern theological situation. These five examples are the basic statements of patristic and Orthodox theology.

. – The world is not divine and needs saving.

. – Man is a theocentric being.

. – Christian theology is Christocentric.

. – True ecclesiology is personalistic.

. – The true concept of God is threefold.

1. – The world is not divine”

. In the New Testament, and not only in the writings of the Apostle John, there is a constant contrast between “the Spirit who proceeds from the Father” (John 15:26), “whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him, but knows Him” (John 14). , 17), and “spirits”, which are subject to testing “if they are from God” (1 John 4:1). In the Epistle to the Corinthians, the whole world is described as subject to powers and dominions, “the elements of the world,” opposing Christ, although “all things were created by Him and in Him” (Col. 1:16; 2:8). One of the most characteristic innovations of Christianity was that it demystified, or, if you like, secularized the cosmos: the idea that God dwells in the elements, in water, in springs, in the stars, in the emperor, was initially and completely rejected by the Apostolic Church. But at the same time, this same Church condemned all Manichaeism, all dualism: the world is not bad in itself; the elements must proclaim the glory of God; water can be blessed; you can dominate space; the emperor can become a servant of God. All these elements of the world are not a goal in themselves, and seeing a goal in them means exactly what their deification meant in the ancient pre-Christian world; but they are determined in the very depths of their being by their connection with their Creator, as well as with man, the image of the Creator in the world.

Therefore, all the rites of consecration, which Orthodox Byzantine worship loves so much (as well as all the other ancient services), necessarily include:

a) elements of a spell, exorcism (“You crushed the heads of the nesting serpents there” in the rite of the great blessing of water on the feast of the Epiphany);

b) Invocation of the Spirit “coming “from the Father”,” that is, not from the world;

c) The assertion that in its new, sanctified existence, matter, reoriented towards God and restored to its original relationship to the Creator, will now serve man, whom God has made master of the universe.

Thus, the act of blessing and consecrating any element of the world “frees” a person from dependence on it and puts it at the service of man.

Thus, ancient Christianity demystified the elements of the material world. The task of the theology of our time is to demystify “Society”, “Sex”, “State”, “Revolution” and other modern idols. Our modern prophets of secularization are not entirely wrong when they speak of the secularizing responsibility of Christians: the secularization of the cosmos was a Christian idea from the very beginning; but the problem is that they secularize the Church and replace it with a new idolatry, the worship of the world: man thereby again abandons the freedom given to him by the Holy Spirit and resubmits himself to the determinism of history, sociology, Freudian psychology or utopian progressivism.

2. – Man is a geocentric being.”

. To understand what “freedom in the Holy Spirit” is, let us remember first of all the very paradoxical statement of Saint Irenaeus of Lyons: “The perfect man consists of the union and combination of the soul that receives the Spirit of the Father, and the mixture of this bodily nature, which is also formed in the image of God” ( Against Heresy 5, 6, 1). These words of Irenaeus, as well as some passages of his writings parallel to them, should be assessed not according to the clarifications later introduced by post-Nicene theology (with such a criterion they give rise to many problems), but according to their positive content, which, in other expressions, is also expressed by the entire body of patristic tradition: what makes a person truly human is the presence of the Spirit of God.

Man is not an autonomous and self-sufficient being; his humanity consists first of all in his openness to the Absolute, immortality, creativity in the image of the Creator, and then in the fact that God, when creating man, went towards this openness, and therefore communication and participation in the divine life and its glory is “natural” for man .

Later patristic tradition constantly developed the idea of St. Irenaeus (but not necessarily his terminology), and this development is especially important in connection with the doctrine of human freedom.

For Gregory of Nyssa, the fall of man consisted precisely in the fact that man fell under the power of cosmic determinism, whereas initially, when he participated in the divine life, when he retained the image and likeness of God, he was “truly free.” Thus freedom is not opposed to grace, and grace, that is, the divine life itself, is neither the means by which God compels us to obedience, nor an additional element imposed on top of human nature to give greater weight to human good works. Grace is that “environment” in which a person is completely free: “But when they turn to the Lord, then this veil is removed. The Lord is Spirit; and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. But we all, with unveiled face... beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory...” (2 Cor. 3:16-18).

This passage from the Apostle Paul, as well as the anthropology of St. Irenaeus and St. Gregory of Nyssa, suggests a basic statement: nature and grace, man and God, the human spirit and the Holy Spirit, human freedom and the presence of God “are not mutually exclusive.” On the contrary, true humanity in its true creative ability, in its true freedom, original beauty and harmony appears precisely in participation in God or when, as both the Apostle Paul and Saint Gregory of Nyssa proclaim, when it ascends from glory to glory, never exhausting neither the riches of God, nor the capabilities of man.

It has now become a commonplace to say that in our time theology must become anthropology. The Orthodox theologian can and even must accept dialogue on such a basis, provided that an “open view” of man is accepted from the very beginning. Modern dogmas of secularism, human autonomy, cosmocentricity or sociomagnetism must first of all be discarded as dogmas. Many of these modern dogmas have, as we have already said, very deep roots in Western Christianity's ancient fear of the idea of "belonging" (usually equated with emotional mysticism), in its tendency to regard man as an autonomous being. But these dogmas are false at their very core.

Even now, the prophets of “godless Christianity” first of all misinterpret “man.” Our younger generation is not inclined towards secularism, they are desperately trying to satisfy their natural thirst for the “other”, the transcendental One True, by resorting to such ambiguous means as Eastern religions, drugs or psychedelic slogans. Our age is not only the age of secularism; it is also the age of the emergence of new religions or surrogates of religions. This is inevitable because man is a theocentric being: when he is deprived of the true God, he creates false gods.

3. – Christocentric theology"

. If the patristic understanding of man is correct, then theology must be Christ-centered. Christocentric theology, based, as it often was, on the idea of external redemption, "satisfaction," justifying grace added to autonomous human existence, is often contrasted with pneumatology. Indeed, there is no place for the action of the Spirit in it. But if our God-centered anthropology is true, if the presence of the Spirit is what makes man truly human, if man's destiny is to restore "communion" with God, then Jesus, the new Adam, is the only man in Whom true humanity was manifested because He was born in history “from the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary,” is undoubtedly the center of theology, and this centrality in no way limits the place of the Holy Spirit.

Theological Christocentrism in our time is under strong attack from Bultmann's hermeneutics. If every phenomenon is a myth because it does not follow the laws of empirical science and experience, then the “appearance-Christ” loses its absolute uniqueness, because this uniqueness is actually subjectified. Nevertheless, Christocentrism is still strongly asserted not only by supporters of Barthian neo-orthodoxy, but also by Tillich. It also exists in the writings of theologians who, like John McCurry, try to reconcile the demythologization of events such as the Resurrection and Ascension with the general classical presentation of theological themes. However, even among these comparatively traditional or semi-traditional authors there is a very clear inclination towards a Nestorian or adoptionist Christology.

For example, Tillich expresses this explicitly when he writes that without the concept of restoration, Christ “would have been deprived of His ultimate freedom; for a being that has changed its form has no freedom to be anything other than divine. This position reveals the old Western idea that God and man, grace and freedom, are mutually exclusive; for Tillich these are remnants of a “closed” anthropology, which excludes Orthodox Christology.

The rehabilitation of Nestorius and his teacher Theodore of Molsuetsky has been undertaken by both historians and theologians since the last century in the name of human autonomy. This rehabilitation has even found prominent Orthodox followers who also have a clear preference for the “historicity” of the Antiochene school, which postulates that history can only be human history. To be a "historical" being, Jesus had to be a man not only entirely, but also in some way "independently." The central assertion of Cyril of Alexandria that the Word Himself became the Son of Mary (who is therefore the Mother of God), or the theopaschytic expressions officially proclaimed as criteria of Orthodoxy by the Fifth Ecumenical Council in 553, seem to them to be at best terminological abuses or “baracco” theology. . How can the Logos, that is, God Himself, “die” on the cross according to the flesh, since God, by his very definition, is immortal?

There is no need to enter here into a detailed discussion of the theological concepts associated with the doctrine of hypostatic union. I would only like to emphasize with all my force that the theopaschytic formula of St. Cyril of Alexandria, “The Word suffered according to the flesh,” is one of the greatest existing Christian affirmations of the “authenticity” of humanity. For if the Son of God himself, in order to identify himself with humanity, to become “like us in every way, even unto death”—human death—died on the cross, then he thereby testified with greater majesty than any human imagination could imagine, that humanity is truly the most precious, most vital and enduring creation of God.

Of course, the Christology of St. Cyril presupposes the “open” anthropology of the early and late fathers: the humanity of Jesus, although it was hypostasized into the Logos, was nevertheless humanity in its entirety because the presence of God does not destroy man. In fact, one might even say that Jesus was more fully human than any of us. Let us quote here the words of Karl Rahner (who among modern Western theologians in this regard is closest to the main current of the patristic Tradition): “The human being is a reality completely open upward; a reality that reaches its highest perfection, the realization of the highest possibility of human existence when in it the Logos Himself begins to exist in the world10. It can also be said that Christology, which includes theopaschism, also presupposes “openness” in the existence of God. Thus, it is against the background of this Christology that one can agree that theology is necessarily also anthropology, and conversely, that the only truly Christian understanding of man - his creation, fall, salvation and final destination - is revealed in Jesus Christ, the Word of God, crucified and risen .

4. – Personalistic ecclesiology"

. If the presence of the Holy Spirit in a person sets him free, if grace means liberation from slavery to the deterministic conditions of the world, then being a member of the Body of Christ also means freedom. Freedom ultimately means personal existence.

Our worship teaches us very clearly that being a member of the Church is a highly personal responsibility. Catechization, pre-baptismal dialogue, the development of penitential discipline, the evolution of the practice of communion - all this shows the personal nature of accepting Christian obligations. It is also well known that in the New Testament the term “member” (meloz) when applied to Christians as “the uds of Christ” (1 Cor. 6:15), or “we will udud one another” (Eph. 4:25), refers only to individuals , and never to corporate units, such as local Churches. The local church, the eucharistic community, is a body, and membership is an exclusively personal act.

It is extremely unpopular to talk about “personal Christianity” and “personal” faith in our time, and this is largely because in the West religious personalism is immediately associated with pietism and emotionality. Here again we see the same old misunderstanding of real participation in the divine life: when "grace" is understood either as something bestowed by the institutional Church, or as a kind of gift of God's just and impartial omnipotence towards all mankind. Then the manifestation of personal experience of communion with God becomes either pietism or emotional mysticism. Meanwhile, while many Christians today have a great need to identify their Christian faith with social activism, with group dynamics, with political convictions, with utopian theories of historical development, they precisely lack what is the center of New Testament evangelism: personal lived experience communication with a personal God. When the latter is preached by evangelical revivalists or Pentecostals, it does often take the form of emotional superficiality. But this is only because it has no basis in either theology or ecclesiology.

Therefore, Orthodoxy has a special responsibility: to realize the enormous importance of the spiritual and patristic understanding of the Church as a body that is both a “sacrament,” containing the objective presence of God in a hierarchical structure, regardless of the personal dignity of its members, and “a community of living, free individuals,” and their personal direct responsibility before God, before the Church and before each other. Personal experience finds both its reality and its authenticity in the sacrament, but the latter is given to the community so that personal experience is possible. The paradox contained in this is best illustrated by the great Venerable Simeon the New Theologian, perhaps the most “sacramental” of the Byzantine spiritual writers, who, however, considers the greatest heresy the opinion of some of his contemporaries that personal experience of communion with God is impossible11. All saints, both ancient and modern, affirm that this paradox is at the very center of Christian life in the present age.

Obviously, it is in this antinomy between the sacramental and the personal that the key to understanding the authority of the Church is found. And here, too, Orthodoxy’s responsibility is almost the only one. In our time it is becoming increasingly clear that the problem of authority is not just a peripheral issue between East and West, expressed in the mid-century dispute between Constantinople and Rome, but that the greatest drama of all Western Christianity lies precisely in this question. That authority which for centuries wrongly considered itself to be solely responsible for the truth and managed with amazing success to educate all members of the Church in the virtue of obedience, while freeing them from responsibility, is now openly called into question. In most cases, this is done for false reasons and in the name of false goals, while this authority itself tries to defend itself from the position of the obviously indefensible. In reality, salvation can come not from authority, since faith in authority is clearly no longer there, but from theological “restoration.” Will there be anything to say here to Orthodox theology, which rightly claims to have maintained a balance between authority, freedom and responsibility for the truth? If not, then the real tragedy will not be in the loss of our denominational pride, for self-confidence is always a demonic feeling, but in the consequences that may arise from this for the Christian faith as such in the present world.

5. – The true concept of God is trinitarian"

. When we mentioned above the Christological formula of St. Cyril, “one of the Holy Trinity suffered in the flesh” - that formula that we sing at every liturgy as part of the hymn “Only Begotten Son” - we affirm that it is first of all an acknowledgment of humanity a value so high for God Himself as to bring Him down to the cross. But this formula presupposes the personal or hypostatic existence of God.

Objections to this formula are all based on the identification of the existence of God and His essence. God cannot die, said the Antiochian theologians, because He is immortal and unchangeable in nature or essence. The concept of "death of God" is logically such a contradiction of terms that it cannot be true either in a religious or philosophical sense. At best it is, like the term "Our Lady" applied to the Virgin Mary, a pious metaphor. Nevertheless, in Orthodox theology, the formula of St. Cyril was not only recognized as true in both a religious and theological sense, but was also made a criterion of Orthodoxy.

God is not bound by philosophical necessities or by the properties given to Him by our logic. The patristic concept of upostasiz, unknown to Greek philosophy (it used the word upostasiz in a different sense), distinct in God from His unknown, incomprehensible and therefore indefinable essence, presupposes in God a certain openness, thanks to which the divine Person, or hypostasis, can become entirely human. She goes towards that “openness upward” that characterizes a person. Thanks to it, it is possible that God does not “abide there above” or “in heaven,” but actually descends down to mortal humanity; but not in order to consume him or abolish him, but in order to save and restore his original communication with Himself.

This “condescension” of God, according to patristic theology, occurs in the hypostatic, or personal existence of God. If this happened in relation to the divine nature or essence (as some so-called "kenotic" theories have asserted), then the Logos, approaching death, would become, so to speak, less and less God and would cease to be Him at the moment of death. The formula of St. Cyril, on the contrary, assumes that to the question “who died on the cross?” there is no other answer than “God,” because in Christ there was no other personal being other than that of the Logos, and that death is inevitably “personal.” » act. Only “someone” can die, not something.

“In the tomb carnally, in paradise with the thief, on the throne with the Father and the Spirit you were, Incomprehensible.” This is what the Church proclaims in her Easter hymn: the union in a single hypostasis of the main features of both natures - divine and human - and each remains what it is.

Human reason cannot object to this teaching on the basis of the properties of the divine essence because this essence is completely unknown and indescribable, and also because if we know God directly, it is precisely because the Person of the Son assumed a “different nature” than nature divine, “burst” into created existence and spoke through the human lips of Jesus, died a human death, rose from the human tomb and established eternal communion with humanity, sending down the Holy Spirit. “No one has seen God anywhere: the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, is the one who confesses” (John 1:18).

It would obviously be too easy to establish a parallel between modern theologians who preach the “death of God” and St. Cyril of Alexandria. Both the context and the task of theology are completely different here and there. However, it is indeed possible and absolutely necessary for Orthodox theologians to affirm that God is not a philosophical concept, not an “entity with properties,” not a concept, but that He is what Jesus Christ is, that knowing Him is, first of all, a personal encounter with Him in Whom the apostles recognized as the incarnate Word; meeting also with That “Other” Who was sent after as our Comforter in the present expectation of the end; that in Christ and by the Holy Spirit we are raised to the Father Himself.

Orthodox theology does not proceed from proof of the existence of God, does not convert people to philosophical deism: it confronts them with the Gospel of Jesus Christ and expects from them a free response to this challenge.

It has often been asserted that when the Eastern Fathers speak of God, they always begin with the three Persons and then prove their consubstantiality, while the West, starting with God as one essence, then also tries to point out the difference between the three Persons. These two trends are the starting point of the Filioque debate and they are also very relevant in our time. In Orthodox theology, God is Father, Son and Spirit as Persons. Their common divine essence is completely unknown and transcendental, and its very properties are best described in negative terms. However, these Three act personally and make it possible to participate in Their common divine life (or energy). Through baptism “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” new life and immortality become a living reality and experience available to man.