LECTURE No. 7. Christianity

1. Structure of Revelation in Christian Scripture

The revelation of God, begun in the Old Testament, is completed in the New Testament. It has a stepped or multi-level character, in its communicative structure resembling a "story within a story", including "one more story" and included "into another story". At the same time, the words "message", "word", "speech", "message", "conversation", "parable", "sermon" in Scripture are obviously polysemantic, and the boundaries between the "story" and "the story framing it" are emphatically removed.

The communicative triad of "participants in communication" (God - the Messenger of God - People), to whom the Revelation of God is addressed, becomes more complicated in the New Testament. Each "participant of communication" appears in several images.

On the one hand, God is not only Jehovah, God the Father, but also God the Son, he is also the incarnate Word of God, and, in addition, God the Holy Spirit (which can act in various bodily forms, for example, in the form of a dove at the baptism of Jesus or the fiery tongues that descended on the apostles on the day of Pentecost).

On the other hand, the functions of messenger, mediation between God and people in the New Testament are also carried out in several planes. First, the Messenger is God himself, that is, the Son of God and the incarnate Word of God. However, and this is typical of the humanistic pathos of the New Testament, Jesus calls his listeners to become sons of our Heavenly Father. Secondly, the mediators between Christ and people are those of his 12 disciples whom Jesus chose and called apostles, including the evangelists Matthew and John, and then other disciples, including those who themselves had not seen Christ (in including the evangelists Mark and Luke).

It is natural that the third “participant” in the transmission and reception of Revelation - people - is no longer as uniquely monolithic as God’s chosen people of the Old Testament. In the gospels, these are the inhabitants of Galilee, Cana, Jerusalem, men and women, they have names, they have different ages, occupations... They are to varying degrees firm in the faith and faithful to the Teacher: they are “just” people, not prophets.. But among them Jesus finds beloved disciples who are able to continue the good news of the Teacher.

To present the structure of Revelation in Christianity, let's try to answer three questions.

What is the direct speech of God the Father in Christian Scripture? First, this is Revelation, inherited by Christianity from the Old Testament: God's Covenant with Noah, the Covenant with Abraham, the appeal to Jacob, the Ten Commandments and the laws given to Moses on Mount Sinai. Secondly, according to the New Testament, the Word of God sent to people is the Son of God Jesus Christ: He is the Word made flesh. This is the last mystery of the Word of God and the mystery of Jesus Christ, revealed by the Evangelist John: “His name is the Word of God” (Rev 19:13). Being the Word, Jesus existed eternally in God and he himself was God, through whom everything came into being: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... All things came into being through him, and without Him nothing was possible.” began to be, that began to be." According to Christian theology, “the love of the Father, witnessed to people by the message of His Son, is the main Revelation brought by Jesus.”

What is the direct speech of Jesus Christ? First, the instructions and parables of the Sermon on the Mount, which supplements the Old Testament Ten Commandments (i.e., obedience to the faith and fidelity to the Law) with the commandments of love, meekness, and humility, which constitute the ethical ideal of Christianity. Secondly, other gospel parables (besides those included in the "Sermon on the Mount"), speeches and sayings of Jesus, among which his "Farewell speeches and prayers" are sometimes singled out as a definite whole.

What does the word gospel mean in the New Testament? (Greek euangelion - good, joyful news; gospel)? Firstly, this word is included in the title of the four canonical Gospels (the first four books of the New Testament): "The Gospel of Matthew", "The Gospel of Mark", "The Gospel of Luke" and "The Gospel of John". Therefore, in these contexts, the Gospel is the narration of the adherents of Christ about the earthly life and death of the Master. Secondly, in the New Testament "Epistle to the Romans of the Apostle Paul" "the gospel of Christ" is called the appeal to the people of Christ himself and the Christian doctrine as a whole. "In him the truth of God is revealed from faith to faith." Third, since the subject matter of all four Gospels is the Word of God (Jesus Christ), the Gospels represent a particular form of God's Revelation.

Thus, the "separate" Revelations, embodied in the Gospels, are included in the Revelation, as it were, of a higher order (in terms of composition) - in the "Gospel of Christ" - and are reflected in it, as in a mirror. But then they all become part of an even wider or more general Christian Revelation, uniting the Revelations of the Old and New Testaments.

2. Canonization of Christian texts

In Christianity, work on determining the canonical text of the books of the New Testament began in the XNUMXnd century BC. Famous Christian theologian and philosopher Origen (185-254), the son of a Greek who lived in Alexandria and Palestine, made a systematic, grand comparison of six different texts of the Bible. (Hence the generally accepted name for the resulting set of six parts: “Hexapla” - Greek hexaplasion - sixfold, folded six times). On wide parchment sheets in six parallel columns (columns) were written texts in Hebrew, its Greek transliteration and four different Greek translations of the Bible, including the legendary Septuagint. (This is the name given to the first complete translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew into Greek, completed in the third and second centuries BC by Hellenized Jews in Alexandria. The text of the Septuagint formed the basis of the Christian canon of the Old Testament. Latin septuaginta means “seventy.” According to legend, there were so many translators (interpreters) who created the Septuagint. Each of them independently translated the text of the Old Testament and then it was discovered that all 70 translations coincided letter for letter. Origen consistently marked with special signs all omissions, discrepancies and distortions of the text. several versions of one text subsequently made it possible to reconstruct the text of the Bible as close as possible to its original form. V. S. Solovyov wrote about Origen’s “Hexaple” that for Christian theologians it served for four centuries as “the main source of biblical erudition.” It is known that Origen’s work relied on the translator of the Old Testament into Latin Blessed Jerome (creator of the famous Vulgate in 390-405).

Origen's Hexapla burned down in 633 in Caesarea, when the city was taken by the Arabs. However, the philological ideas of Origen, the very technique of his analysis were widely and brilliantly developed in European humanism, during the Renaissance and Reformation, especially in the publishing and philological practice of Erasmus of Rotterdam.

In fact, Origen became the founder of that branch of philological research, which is now called criticism of the text, or textual criticism. Textual analysis of a work, based on the study of its history, sources, and circumstances of creation, seeks to clear the text of the mistakes of copyists and publishers that have accumulated over the centuries, to understand the original meanings of words and to get closer to its original meaning. If a work has been preserved in several copies or versions (edition), then a textologist, preparing a monument for scientific publication, examines the relationship between copies and editions in order to understand as accurately as possible the composition of the text, the original meaning of what was written and the subsequent history of its changes.

3. Holy Fathers of the Church and Patristics. Scripture or Tradition

According to Christian biblical studies, the New Testament (actually the Christian part of the Holy Scriptures) was written by four evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke и John) and apostles James, John, Jude и Paul, i.e. eight people (the Apostle John the Theologian, the author of two “Epistle” and “Revelation”, and the author of the “Gospel of John” - one and the same person). In the hierarchy of Christian authorities, the authors of the New Testament occupy the top place, and when it comes to the apostles and evangelists, the apostles are called first - they were revered above the evangelists, since the apostles were direct disciples and messengers of Jesus Christ and knew him personally. They could more accurately convey what Christ taught. Their interpretation and development of teaching was accepted primarily according to the principle of “ipse dixit” - “he said it himself”: everything that came from the apostles and evangelists was indisputable and accepted as Truth.

But now the time of "apostolic men" is over. Christianity expanded in cities and countries, gradually turning from a persecuted sect into a state religion, the Christian church was built and strengthened, the doctrine developed intensively and in different directions. On the one hand, there was a codification of the doctrine: the composition of the works of the Christian canon was determined, a system of fundamental, ideally unchanged, principles of doctrine (dogmas) was developed, the logical-theoretical and philological foundations for the interpretation of Scripture and the acceptance of new knowledge by the church were laid; the principles of church building and the relationship between the clergy and the world were developed. On the other hand, a comprehensive Christian picture of the world was created: the doctrine of space, nature, man, the Christian concept of history, state, politics, and law.

This huge semantic, informational, meaningful increment to the original Christianity took place over the course of six centuries - from the XNUMXnd to the XNUMXth centuries. the work of many generations of scribes. The developed powerful layer of new information, in order to be accepted by society, needed a general recognition of the authority of the creators of information. The reference "ipse dixit" - "said himself" - should have been extended from the apostles to new authors. They began to be called the fathers of the church or the holy fathers of the church, and their works - patristic creations, or patristics (lat. Pater - father). (Compare the Jewish parallel - the men of the great assembly in relation to the famous codifiers of the Talmud). Already in the early Middle Ages, the fame and prestige of the Church Fathers in the Christian world was significant and continued to grow over time.

This is how the second (after the apostles and evangelists) circle of Christian authorities, the Church Fathers, was formed, and the patristic writings became the second most important (after the Holy Scriptures) corpus of Christian doctrinal texts - Sacred Tradition. The patristic exposition and explanation of the Christian faith is accepted by the church for guidance.

It should be noted that the combination church fathers - this is a terminological, that is, a special and somewhat conditional expression. Although the church did not adopt a special canonical decree on who should be considered the fathers of the church, there were still certain criteria. Not Every Famous Christian Author II-VSH Centuries. recognized as the father of the church. In particular, the fathers of the church must necessarily be canonized. Therefore, such outstanding theologians as Origen, Eusebius of Caesarea, Tertullian are not considered church fathers, but only church writers. For the same reason, the list of Western (who wrote in Latin) and Eastern fathers (who wrote in Greek) does not coincide.

The pinnacle of Eastern (Byzantine) patristics are the works of the so-called Cappadocian circle - IV century. (Cappadocia - a Byzantine province in Asia Minor) - theologians and poets - Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian и Gregory of Nyssa, “the three lights of the Cappadocian church,” as contemporaries spoke of them. However, not only contemporaries and compatriots: six or seven centuries later, the apocrypha was popular among the Orthodox Slavs: “The Conversation of the Three Hierarchs,” of which two saints were the Cappadocian fathers Basil the Great and Gregory the Theologian, and the third was a famous preacher and also the father of the church, Constantinople Archbishop John Chrysostom. The most prominent representative of Latin patristics was the Bishop of Hippo (North Africa) St. Augustine Aurelius (354-430), recognized by subsequent tradition as the “teacher of the West.”

The Byzantine theologian, encyclopedist St.

John of Damascus (650-754) and dad Gregory the Great (540-604), initiator of the Christianization of England, compiler of the ecclesiastical legal code for the clergy "Pastoral Rule" and author of "Interpretations on Job or XXXV books on morality."

The corpus of patristic writings is almost boundless. The most complete, but unfinished, edition was undertaken in Paris in the middle XIX in. Abbot J.P. Minem (Migne). It contains almost 400 volumes: Paztologiae cursus completes, series Graesa (166 volumes) and Partologia cursus completes, series Latina (221 volumes). The new edition of the Latin Fathers of the Church "Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum" lasts more than a century: begun in 1867 BC it continues to this day, with 80 volumes.

В 1843-1893 The Moscow Theological Academy published 58 volumes of "The Works of the Holy Fathers, in Russian Translation". Some of the works in this series were published in 1917 BC - at the same time, not as monuments to the history of religion, but as quite relevant reading for believers. Now the publications of patristic writings are being resumed.

Christian Holy Tradition, like the Tradition of Judaism ("Talmud"), is characterized by an encyclopedic breadth of content. The Talmud and patristic writings were created in those centuries when it was assumed that Holy Tradition would “complete” Holy Scripture to a complete corpus of everything that could and should be known to a believing people. The most significant thematic differences between patristics and the Talmud are connected, firstly, with the significantly less development of legal problems in patristics and, secondly, with the fact that patristics is distinguished by greater attention to the logical-theoretical and doctrinal aspects of theology. The second feature was especially characteristic of the Christian West.

Two main lines are clearly visible in the development of patristics.

First, there was a structural codification of Christian teaching: the main thing in the teaching was separated from the secondary, the generally accepted and obligatory - from the individual and optional, the logical system of teaching - from descriptions and narratives. At the ecumenical and local councils, generally binding provisions of the doctrine were formulated, which were fixed in special consolidated texts (the Symbols of Faith, later also in catechisms); official church definitions, rules of church service, rules for pastors and laity, as well as conciliar rules for understanding (i.e., interpreting) the most important and difficult verses in Holy Scripture were developed. Secondly, there was a kind of extensive development of the doctrine; Christian essays were written on the main branches of medieval humanitarian knowledge - such as philosophy and ethics, logic, grammar, the doctrine of the soul, the world, civil history, church history, etc.

The rules, dogmas and canonical definitions developed by patristics played an exceptionally important role both in the church and in the life of medieval society as a whole. In many cases, the significance of Holy Tradition seemed to be higher than the significance of Holy Scripture: the Creed or catechism, the decrees of a council or changes in the Missal invaded life, worried people more than Holy Scripture. As a result, there was a contradiction between the status and role of Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition: the Bible was the primary source of teaching, but actually found itself in the shadows; dogmas and church statutes were secondary and dependent on the Bible, however, determining the actual content of the teaching and the life of the church, they actually overshadowed the Bible.

In the history of Christianity this contradiction has been and is being resolved in different ways. In official Orthodoxy and in the Catholic Church, especially with the strengthening of conservative-protective tendencies, the actual significance of Tradition increases. Meanwhile, freethinkers and heretics, religious reformers and religious philosophers, mystics and God-seekers have always turned to Scripture - the primary source of teaching and, to one degree or another, argued with Tradition.

In Catholicism, the significance of the Holy Tradition is significantly higher than in Orthodoxy. This is due to the more centralized and legally more rigid organization of the Roman Catholic Church. The papal bulls proclaimed the monopoly of the Church in the interpretation of Scripture. The Bible was inaccessible to the bulk of believers. At various levels of the Catholic hierarchy, bans have been issued more than once for the laity to have the Bible in the house and read it on their own (these bans intensified as the texts of Scripture spread, especially with the beginning of printing). Thus, instead of the Bible, the true source of faith, tendentious abbreviations were offered to believers. Over time, not even the teachings of the Church Fathers and not the Ecumenical Councils began to determine the life of the Church, but the orders of the papal office, preoccupied with relations with secular sovereigns, the struggle for property and power. The decline of morality was clearly reflected in such a disgusting phenomenon as the sale of indulgences and church posts (simony). The critics of the papacy had every reason to say that Rome had forgotten the Bible and therefore lost the purity of the Christianity of apostolic times.

It is no coincidence that the most important principles of Protestantism were the priority of Scripture over Tradition, the availability of Scripture to the laity, including women, the translation of Scripture into the vernacular, the right of everyone to interpret and understand Scripture in their own way. To return to the Bible and return the authority of the first book of Christianity to the Bible - this was called for by the ideological predecessor of Anglicanism, the Oxford theologian John Wycliffe (1320-1384) and mastermind of the Czech Reformation Jan Hus (1371-1415).

Leader of the German Reformation Martin Luther, entering into a fight with the Vatican, saw the goal of Protestantism as restoring the purity of apostolic times in Christianity. To do this, he taught, one must return to the words of Jesus himself and not listen to self-serving Roman interpreters. “I decided to know nothing except Jesus Christ, and him crucified,” “I counted everything as loss, as rubbish, in order to gain Christ,” wrote Luther. In the Catechism he compiled (1520) says: "We can learn from the Holy Scriptures alone what to believe and how we should live." Thus, Protestants saw in the writings of the Church Fathers or conciliar decisions not Sacred Tradition, but only documents of human history.

The preference for Scripture or Tradition (in its various later and dissected forms) in Orthodoxy and the Catholic Church could be a kind of indicator, a diagnostic indicator of the general theological and even political orientation of this or that hierarch, religious thinker, organizer of education.

Historian of Russian theology G. P. Florovsky, naming the archimandrite Afanasia Drozdova (XIX century) “a convinced and consistent obscurantist,” and this was pessimistic obscurantism, bases such a characterization on evidence speaking about Athanasius’ attitude to Scripture and Tradition. “At the Academy, Athanasius was entrusted with the leadership of all teachers... The entire emphasis was now focused on the curriculum... And the first topic around which a dispute began, written and oral, was about Holy Scripture...” Athanasius was not content with that he considered two sources of doctrine - Scripture and Tradition - as equivalent and seemingly independent. He had a clear tendency to denigrate Scripture. And some kind of personal pain is felt in the passion and irresponsibility with which Athanasius proves the insufficiency and outright unreliability of Scripture...

Athanasius preaches: "For me, the confession of the Grave and the Pilot is everything and nothing more." He believed in church books more than in the word of God: "With the word of God you will not be saved yet, but with church books you will be saved" (Florovsky).

4. Christian theological thought and dogmatic theology

In Christianity, theological theory was developed to a much greater extent than in other theistic religions (Judaism and Islam). Due to geographical conditions, Christianity spread in those lands and countries where there were processes of active assimilation and development of the logical-philosophical and legal traditions of European antiquity. The achievements of ancient thought had a decisive influence on Christian theology - on its themes, methods, style.

Of course, Christianity itself was a powerful generator of theological knowledge. The mysterious and paradoxical world of Christian ideas, its living connections and disputes with Judaism and Greco-Roman polytheism - all this gave rise to many questions, and even more conflicting answers. The speculative and verbal (verbal) nature of theological disputes, the impossibility of their empirical resolution led to an avalanche-like growth of theological doctrines and discussions, as well as corresponding writings.

An additional factor in the development of theology in early Christianity was the fight against heresies - passionate polemics, stubborn and at the same time, in the first Christian centuries, still relatively peaceful.

In addition, the development of theology in Christianity, as in the history of other religions, was stimulated by the mystical search for religiously gifted individuals. Mysticism, this fermenting and living principle, as a rule, irrational, often led to the development of precisely theoretical ideas about God. Mystics need theology, although they are usually ill aware of it. As wrote R. Bastide, “it is the doctrine, as it improves, that gives precision to very vague sensations, creates new shades of them, gives rise to various schemes, and gives meaning to disordered forces.”

Theology, being a speculation about God, is in principle one of the secondary formations in relation to faith and Holy Scripture. However, in Christianity, the beginning of theology is already presented in Scripture - in the fourth of the canonical Gospels in a number of apostolic letters. It is in the Gospel of John, which is perceptibly dependent on the ideas of Gnosticism and the Neoplatonic doctrine of the logos, that Jesus Christ is first called the Living God. Thus, one of the main themes of Christian theology arose - the doctrine of the divine and human nature of Jesus Christ. The problems and thematic boundaries of Christian theology were defined by the Church Fathers.

The first theologian after the apostles, the Christian Church calls St. Irenaeus, contemporary of the Apostle John and Bishop of Lyons, martyred in 202 d. His main work, entitled "The Refutation and Refutation of a Doctrine Falsely Calling Itself Gnosis" (however, it became widely known under the title "Against Heresies"), contained an extensive polemic with Gnosticism and demonstrated the methods of scientific defense of faith: philosophy, dialectics, abundant quoting.

Tertullian (160-220), presbyter of Carthage, was the first to formulate the principle of the trinity of God and introduced the concept of persons ("hypostases") of the Trinity. Among other problems of theology, his paradoxical mind was especially occupied with the question of the relationship between faith and reason. “Faith is higher than reason,” Tertullian argued, “Reason is not able to comprehend the truth that is revealed to faith.” His formula “Probable because it is absurd” (“Credibile est guia ipertum”) became a proverb in a distorted form: “I believe because it is absurd” (“Credo, guia absurdum”). Tertullian was the first to define what seven deadly sins. This list (pride, greed, fornication, envy, anger, gluttony, laziness) was approved by church councils and was included in the initial Christian teaching of the law of God, in catechisms and primers.

Origen (185-253 or 254) headed a Christian school in Alexandria, and after church condemnation - in Palestine (in the city of Caesarea), however, in the XNUMXth century. was declared a heretic. His contribution to speculative teaching is associated with the development of Christology (the doctrine of the nature of Christ) and the doctrine of salvation. His concept of salvation is characterized by a kind of “eschatological optimism” (S.S. Averintsev): Origen argued the inevitability of complete salvation, the merging of all souls with God and the temporary torment of hell. In his essay on the nature of Christ the term appears for the first time God-man.

St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (354-430), developed an ontological proof of the existence of God; the concept of faith as a prerequisite for all knowledge; the doctrine of sin and grace; for the first time raised the so-called anthropological questions of Christianity (the relationship of man to God; the relationship of church and state). Augustine formulated that addition to the Creed that distinguishes the Catholic version of the Creed from the Orthodox (the so-called filioque). The beginning of religious intolerance in Christianity is associated with the name of Augustine.

Dad Gregory the Great (c. 540-604) went down in history as an outstanding church organizer and politician. In the field of theology, the doctrine of purgatory is associated with his name - something that would later become one of the points of dogmatic differences between Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

St. John of Damascus (c. 615-753), completer of patristics, Byzantine philosopher and poet, for the first time compiled a systematic and complete theology under the title “The Source of Knowledge.” This encyclopedic work at the turn of IX and X Centuries. was translated into Old Church Slavonic by the Bulgarian scribe John Exarch of Bulgaria.

However, already in early Christianity, the rapid development of theology met with intra-confessional restrictions and prohibitions. Theological searches and disagreements were allowed, but only as long as they did not contradict Scripture and the authorities of the Church Fathers. A deep conflict arose between the progressive development of theological thought and such powerful "preservatives" of religious communication as the principle "ipse dixit" - "he said himself", and the religious canon, i.e. the corpus of standard texts (Scripture and Tradition), "surpass" which not allowed.

The resolution of the conflict was found in ranking theological knowledge according to the degree of general obligatory nature of one or another of its components (doctrines, categories, provisions, etc.).

Those doctrinal positions, judgments or opinions that were recognized by the Ecumenical Councils as universally binding Christian truths of the "first rank" received the status of dogmas, and their systematic exposition and justification constituted the subject of a special theological discipline - dogmatic theology. "All other Christian truths - moral, liturgical, canonical - are important for a Christian, depending on the dogmas of paramount importance. The Church tolerates in her bowels sinners against the commandments, but excommunicates all dogmas that oppose or exclude her."

A brief set of basic dogmas is the Creed - the main text, repeating which believers testify to their Christian faith.

Beyond dogmatic theology are the so-called theological opinions. These are private, personal judgments expressed by church fathers or later theologians. “The theological opinion must contain a truth that, at a minimum, does not contradict Revelation. <...> The category of theological opinions can include, for example, statements about the two or three components of human nature; about how the incorporeality of angels and human souls should be understood; about image of the origin of souls." From the point of view of dogmatics, theological opinions are “not essential for our salvation,” and, as Gregory the Theologian noted, in such subjects “it is safe to make mistakes.”

The Christian Church has always been cautious about the free discussion of dogmas. Modern Orthodoxy follows the authorities here John of the Ladder (VI century) и Barsanuphius the Great (VI century): “The depth of dogma is unsearchable... It is not safe for anyone who has any passion to touch theology”; “You shouldn’t talk about dogmas, because it’s above you” (Dogmatic Theology).

However, liberal Russian theologians emphasized the need for a lively and creative attitude to dogmas.

At the beginning of the XX century. professor at the Moscow Theological Academy A. I. Vvedensky wrote that behind every dogma, first of all, you need to hear the question to which it answers. “Then dogma will come to life and will be revealed in all its speculative depth. It will be revealed as a Divine answer to a human request... Dogmatics, moving towards modern demands, must therefore, as it were, re-create dogmas, transforming the dark coal of traditional formulas into transparent and self-luminous stones of true faith.” (Florovsky).

The communicative meaning of the category of dogmas was to create and introduce into the tradition one more information "preservative" (along with such regulators as the "ipse dixit" principle and the religious canon), designed to ensure the stability and continuity of religious communication. From a functional point of view, the Christian institution of dogmas, interpreted as absolute and indisputable truths of doctrine, was no less a strong "string" and a connecting thread of tradition than the Islamic isnad.

5. What Every Christian Should Know

As the doctrine spreads in breadth and as it develops, a certain hierarchy of meanings develops - the distinction between the main and the secondary and tertiary. On the other hand, new questions, new topics, new and often controversial decisions arise, which gives rise to discussions, polemics, a struggle of opinions and new questions... In other words, the usual process of increasing knowledge, in this case theological, is underway.

The Christian Church quite early felt the need to define a body of the main, generally accepted and generally binding truths of the doctrine - dogmas. They were adopted at the Ecumenical Councils in IV-VIII Centuries. Their systematic presentation, justification and explanation constituted the subject of a special church discipline - dogmatic theology. However, books on theology were difficult and inaccessible to the masses of believers. Ordinary people needed a kind of alphabet of doctrine - a brief, understandable and accurate presentation of the fundamentals of faith. At the same time, the source of this knowledge must be an indisputable authority in the eyes of the people.

There are two main genres of such texts in Christianity:

1) creed (listing in the established sequence of 12 articles of faith);

2) catechism (statement of the foundations of faith in questions and answers). In the Creed and the catechism the church sees extremely responsible, policy documents.

(Catechism - from the Greek katecheo - to announce, orally instruct, teach). In early Christianity catechism is an oral instruction to those who were preparing to be baptized. Preparing for Baptism (catechesis) in Russian church tradition was called announcement, and those who underwent such training were called announced. There was also the word catechumen - a book of teachings for those who are preparing to accept Christianity and the expression announced words - "Teachings for the catechumens."

Their peculiarity is that this is not a simplification or adaptation of some more important or more responsible texts.

These texts are just a concentrated expression of the most important knowledge, and universally important - that which the church considers the necessary foundation of the faith of each person.

The creed, still canonical for Orthodoxy, was compiled by the fathers of the I and II Ecumenical Councils, in the city of Nicaea (in 325 d.) and in Constantinople (381 g.), which is why it is called Nikeo-Constantinople (or Nikeo-Constantinople). Subsequent changes (in particular the filioque) were accepted only by Western Christianity.

As for the catechism, in early and patristic Christianity its genre form, as well as its content, was quite free - not necessarily question-and-answer, as it is strictly understood now. Catechism in the modern terminological meaning of the term (as a dogmatically accurate statement of the foundations of faith in questions and answers) appears in the Reformation, when the Protestants needed a new, not according to the fathers of the church, presentation of the foundations of Christianity.

The first Protestant catechism - "Summary of the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer" - compiled Martin Luther in 1520 Then came Luther's Small and Large Catechisms, as well as the catechisms of Calvin, Melanchthon, followers of Zwingli and other Protestant leaders. As a Catholic reaction, elaborate and rigorously dogmatized Jesuit catechisms emerged. There are not many Catholic versions of the catechism known, however, in terms of the number of editions and circulations, the catechism was the most massive of the doctrinal books. For example, the catechism Petra Canisia founder of the Jesuit order in the German-speaking countries, in 1529-1863 withstood more than 400 editions, that is, for 234 years almost every year two editions of the Catholic catechism were published.

In the East Slavic tradition, the first catechism, and not in Church Slavonic, but in the folk language (simple move), was published by the famous Belarusian Protestant Simon Budny (Nesvizh, 1562). His “Catechism, that is, the ancient xpictian science, collected from the light of writing for ordinary people of the Russian language in torture and refusal” was written in great dependence on Luther’s publications.

The first Orthodox catechism among the Eastern Slavs was developed by a "didaskal" (teacher) of the Lviv fraternal school Lavrenty Zizaniy.

This catechism Lavrentiy and his son brought to 1627 BC to Moscow, to the Sovereign's Printing Yard for printing. After a debate for three February days and a translation into Church Slavonic, the Catechism of Zizanias was printed in Moscow, however, the circulation was immediately confiscated and almost completely destroyed (several defective copies remained). With the name of Lavrenty Zizaniy and his brother Stefan, researchers associate several more printed (not preserved) and handwritten catechisms of the end XVI - first third of the 17th century., known in the Ukrainian-Belarusian lands of that time.

After Zizania among the Eastern Slavs until the XNUMXth century. There were two Orthodox catechisms:

1) "Orthodox Confession of the Catholic and Apostolic Church of the East" by the Metropolitan of Kyiv, the famous rector of the Kyiv Academy Petra Mogila (Kyiv, 1640; short version in 1645 BC, Moscow editions translated into Russian in 1645 BC и 1696);

2) "Various Christian Catechism" of the Moscow Metropolitan Filareta (Drozdova) 1823 BC (2nd edition 1827 BC reprinted several times).

As you can see, catechisms are compiled (or sanctioned) by church leaders-reformers and higher hierarchs. Such is the "requirement" of the genre, the condition for the general confessional acceptance of the catechism as a set of indisputable doctrinal truths.

The so-called symbolic books, or confessions of faith, are functionally close to the Creed and the catechism. They contain a strictly dogmatic interpretation of the Creed, the main prayers and lists of the main concepts of Christianity: the Ten Commandments of God, the Two Commandments of Love, the Main Truths of Faith, the Seven Holy Sacraments, the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Seven Major Sins, the Three Virtues, the Three Final Moments of Man (1 2. God's judgment 3. Heaven or hell). In Russia in XVII century. This kind of enumeration of the main categories of Christianity, together with the creed and catechism, was often published in primers of the Church Slavonic language, and later in prayer books, explanatory prayer books, manuals on the Law of God and in other similar books introducing the confession of faith. The Creed includes a list of the dogmas of Christianity, which briefly, without justification or commentary, as if only in a “symbolic” form, outline the fundamentals of faith. Each of the 12 dogmas included in the Creed is called a member of the Creed. In all languages, the Christian Creed begins with a verb meaning “to believe, to believe” in the 1st person singular: Lat. credo, church - glory.

I believe in one God the Father Almighty <...>, that is, the believer, on his own behalf, personally, as it were, declares or declares what he believes. When an infant is baptized, the Creed is read “for him” by his recipient (godfather). The adult receiving baptism is required to recite the Creed out loud in church. In addition, the Creed is read as a prayer in church and at home; in the Orthodox Church it is sung by a choir, echoed by all those praying.

Below is the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, canonical for Orthodoxy.

1 I believe in one God the Father, the Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth, of everything visible and invisible.

2. And into one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the only begotten of the Father before all ages: as Light from Light, true God from true God, and not created, having one essence with the Father, and by whom all things were created.

3. For us people and for our salvation, who descended from heaven and took on human nature from the Virgin Mary through the influx of the Holy Spirit upon Her, who became a man.

4. Crucified for us under Pontius Pilate and suffering and buried.

5. And Risen on the third day according to the Scriptures.

6. And ascended into heaven and is at the right hand of the Father.

7. And again He who has to come with glory to judge the living and the dead, whose kingdom will have no end.

8. And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, who gives life to all, who proceeds from the Father, who is honored and glorified equally with the Father and with the Son, who spoke through the prophets.

9. And into one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.

10. I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins.

11. I look forward to the resurrection of the dead.

12. And the life of the next century. Truly, yes.

The Western change in the Creed - the filioque (“and from the Son”) was added - reflects a different, according to S. S. Averintsev, more subordinate, understanding of the structure of the trinity in the Holy Trinity. According to St. Augustine, the Holy Spirit proceeds not only from the Father, but also from the Son. Local Cathedral in Toledo (589 d.) included this combination - and from the Son - in the 8th article of the Creed:

8. And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, who gives life to all, from the Father and from the Son, proceeding, honored and glorified on a par with the Father and the Son, who spoke through the prophets.

It is this dogmatic divergence, expressed in the Western addition of the words and from the Son, it became later (in 1054) partial cause and reason for the division of Christianity into the Western (Roman Catholic) Church and the Eastern (Greek Orthodox) Church.

6. The cycle of readings in the Christian church. Missal, Typicon, Menaion, Trebnik

All Christian joint services, including the main of them - the liturgy - include common prayers, singing and reading passages from sacred books (Old and New Testament writings of the church fathers).

Liturgy (Greek letourgia - common or public service, service) - worship, during which the sacrament of the Eucharist (thanksgiving), or the communion of believers to God, is performed. Liturgy established by Jesus Christ in last supper (church. - glory.

dinner - "supper"): "This do My remembrance" and retains the features of a joint sacred meal, which connects those gathered with God. Hence the folk-Christian names of the liturgy: Russian. dinner, lat. missa - "mass", literally "cooked; dish, meal", to which Eng. mass, germ. die Messe, Polish msza, Belarusian. (Catholic) gmsha).

The composition and sequence of prayers, chants and readings depends on three time coordinates that determine the place of a particular service in three cycles:

1. In daily worship (in relation to Vespers, Matins, Liturgy).

2. In the church year (in relation to the so-called twelve, or immovable holidays, as well as holidays in honor of saints, icons and days of remembrance).

3. In the Easter cycle, i.e. in relation to Great Lent, Holy Week mobile, or transitional holidays (Easter, Ascension, Pentecost, Spiritual day).

The composition of the texts of the daily cycle, as well as the rites, that is, the order of the prayers, chants and readings, was determined by the church fathers. At the same time, the rite of the liturgy was distinguished by particular complexity. In the Orthodox Church, a special genre of liturgical books for the priest and deacon was developed - the Missal, which contains the rites of Vespers, Matins and Liturgy (as well as some other materials: priestly prayers, including priestly secret prayers (i.e., spoken in a whisper), hymns, the church calendar, the order of some sacraments, etc.).

In the V-VI centuries. in Palestine, rules were developed for conducting services by months and days of the week for the whole year, as well as rules for services to saints and in honor of holidays. The book of such rules is called Typicon (Greek typikon - image, type), or Charter. It also contains rules about fasting, rules of monastic community life, a church calendar with rules for calculating Easter and other similar information.

On church holidays and on the days of memory of certain saints, special chants, prayers and readings dedicated to the corresponding holiday or saint are included in the service. There are special liturgical books that contain the texts of such additions, arranged in calendar order, by months - this Menaion (Greek menaios - monthly).

The circle of those texts that are read and sung in Christian worship includes almost all the texts of the New Testament (excluding the "Revelation of John the Theologian" - Apocalypse), a number of texts of the "Old Testament" (especially widely "Psalter"), further prayers and hymns of apostolic times , Creed, patristic hymns and prayers, excerpts from lives. We can say that these are selected texts from Scripture and Tradition, ordered in relation to the rite of worship, in accordance with ideas about the mystical communication of people with God, with a certain consideration for the peculiarities of oral perception. The canonicity of the text was not a prerequisite for its inclusion in the circle of church readings. So, in particular, the canonical "Apocalypse" was never read in the temple - because of the frightening gloominess of its prophecies and the metaphorical complexity ("multiple meaning") of its artistic language. On the other hand, the Orthodox service includes a number of borrowings from the non-canonical "Book of Wisdom of Solomon".

Every service has a fixed component that is required by all services, and a variable component that is required by some or even just one service. This variable component depends on what day of the week and year the service is performed. Each service changes 7 times a week and 355 times a year. Therefore, the books used in Christian worship are numerous and form a complex and rather strict system.

According to the composition of texts and composition, those books of Holy Scripture that are read in divine services differ significantly from the extra-liturgical books of the Christian canon. In the Orthodox Church, the Gospels and the Epistles of the Holy Apostles are divided into fragments of different lengths (10-50 verses) - the so-called conceptions. A separate conception is a certain semantic unity (for example, an episode of sacred history or a parable of Christ). It is precisely such semantic passages from Scripture that are read during the service.

In addition to the fact that all the books of the New Testament read in the temple are divided into conceptions, liturgical books spread from Byzantium, in which fragments from the Holy Scriptures are arranged in the order in which they should be read at certain services, in accordance with the Missal and the church calendar ( weekly and daily).

The most important of these "repackaged" books are Aprakas Gospels, or gospel-aprakos (from the Greek apraktos - non-working, festive), i.e. "festive Gospel". All types of Aprakos Gospels (Sunday, short and full) are opened with readings relying on Holy Week - the first verses from the first chapter of the Gospel of John: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Full Aprakos contains daily readings for the whole year, excluding non-holiday days of Great Lent (until Passion Week).

In addition to the Aprakos gospels, the Church Slavonic book also contains the Aprakos "Apostles". The "Gospels" and "Apostle", which together make up almost the entire "New Testament" (excluding the "Revelation of John the Theologian" - Apocalypse), are completely read in the church in one year.

Another genre of liturgical books, compiled from selected fragments of Scripture, is Paremiynik (from the Greek. paroimia - "saying, proverb; parable"). It is a collection of proverbs, i.e., stories, parables, maxims from the Old or New Testaments, which are read at the evening service, mainly on the eve of the holidays. Paroemias contain prophecies about the celebrated event, an explanation of its meaning, praise of the celebrated saint, etc.

Of the books of the "Old Testament" in Christian worship, the "Psalter" is most widely used. Most of the most ancient Christian liturgical hymns, evening and morning prayers go back to it. In Orthodox worship, the Psalter is read in full every week. For liturgical needs, the Psalter itself is often combined with the Book of Hours (a collection of prayers and hymns dedicated to the hours of doliturgical worship). Such an expanded version of the "Psalter" in the Church Slavonic tradition is called the "Followed Psar". In pre-Petrine Russia, according to the Psalter and the Book of Hours, they often taught elementary Church Slavonic literacy.

Among the important liturgical books should also be named trebnik. This is a manual for priests, containing the rites and prescribed prayers in the rites of the so-called private worship - such as baptism, wedding, funeral service, confession, blessing of oil, tonsure, various prayer services (blessing of a house, well, etc.).

7. "Sermon on the Mount" and early Christian homily. The fate of church eloquence

The famous "Sermon on the Mount", which sets forth the essence of Christian ethics, is both a parallel, an addition, and an antithesis to the Old Testament "Decalogue" - the Ten Chief Commandments of Judaism. The new ethics of the Sermon on the Mount continues the Old Testament and argues with it. "Think not that I came to destroy the law or the prophets; I did not come to destroy, but to fulfill," says Jesus.

However, a number of passages are precisely the denial of the commandments of the Old Testament: “You have heard that it was said to the ancients: “You shall not kill; whoever kills will be subject to judgment." But I tell you that everyone who is angry with his brother without cause will be subject to judgment. <...> You have heard that it was said: “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say you: do not resist evil. But whoever hits you on your right cheek, turn the other to him; and whoever wants to sue you and take your shirt, give him your outer garment too <...>", etc.

If the Ten Commandments of the "Old Testament" in their genre-communicative nature is a "quote", "fragment" from the Revelation given by God, then the New Testament "Sermon on the Mount" of Jesus Christ is both the Revelation of God and the Sermon of the Teacher (just as Jesus Christ is both God and Man. In terms of semantic importance, the Sermon on the Mount is Revelation, the main commandments of God, but in terms of genre, in terms of the nature of communication (which this text recreates), in terms of the activity of the speaker in an effort to convince listeners, this is a sermon.

The Sermon on the Mount allows us to present the features of early Christian preaching: the universal and eschatological scale of the sermon, its preoccupation with the "last questions" of being; its simplicity, naturalness, sincerity; its emphatically non-bookish, "street" and purely oral, unlearned character ("the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees" is what the followers of Jesus must transcend, preaching teaches); natural expressiveness of excited, arguing and persuasive speech; its communicative-rhetorical power and skill, most likely not prudent, but spontaneous and therefore all the more effective (with an appeal to expressive images, special means of activating the attention of listeners and inducing them to certain decisions and actions).

Historical sources testify that in the first centuries of Christianity, a sermon was a common accompaniment to the actual service to God (liturgy) and collective prayers. St. Justin, one of the early church fathers (XNUMXnd century), describes the Sunday meeting of Christians and its components as follows - they read Scripture, then a sermon, prayers, the liturgy itself (rituals of thanksgiving and communion): "On the so-called day of the Sun - Sunday - we have a meeting in one place of all those living in cities and villages, and read, as much as time allows, the sayings of the apostles or the writings of the prophets.Then, when the reader stops, the primate, by means of a word, gives instruction and exhortation to imitate those beautiful things.

Then we all get up and send prayers. When we finish the prayer, as I said above, bread, and wine, and water are brought; and the primate also sends up prayers and thanksgivings as much as he can. The people express their consent with the word amen, and there is a distribution to everyone and communion of the Gifts, over which Thanksgiving was performed, and those who have not been sent through deacons. community, conversation, teaching).Later, the term homiletics arose - "the rules for compiling sermons; the science of ecclesiastical eloquence." Information has been preserved that the practical guides to homiletics were, among other things, Origen (185-254), famous theologian and biblical scholar.

Sunday preaching in medieval Western Christianity, especially in large churches, was quite common. At the same time, normative guidelines for preaching were absent for a long time. It was believed that the pastoral word about God did not need rhetorical embellishments and that sincere faith would prompt the right word. In part, such views were supported by the apparent simplicity, compositional "disorder" of the "Sermon on the Mount" or the epistles of the Apostle Paul. Therefore, no special attention was paid to the technique of preaching. One of the fathers of the Western Church is Pope Gregory the Great in The Pastoral Care (c. 591 g.) wrote: “Whoever the Lord has filled, he immediately makes eloquent” (cited from the work: Gasi 1986, 99). However, with the development of European rhetoric, with the growing popularity of guides on how to compose letters and business papers, XIII-XIV centuries textbooks also appear on church eloquence (lat. arspraedicandi - the art of preaching).

In the universities, in the faculties of theology, they taught the so-called "thematic" sermon, distinguishing it from the homily as a sermon "free", unsophisticated. In a "thematic" sermon, it was required, according to certain logical and rhetorical rules, to develop the "theme" stated in the title of the sermon. The “topic” could be a line from Scripture, praise for a holiday or a saint (on whose memorial day a service is being held), an interpretation of the saint’s name or any name in general, a discussion of an event whose anniversary falls on the day of the service, etc. Such sermons were read in temples, that is, they were a type of oral public solemn speech, however, they were prepared in advance, that is, they also existed in written form, and were often subsequently printed as works of independent theological, journalistic and aesthetic value.

"Thematic" sermon (it was also called "university") for several centuries was felt as the pinnacle of church-rhetorical learning.

Among the famous manuals on learned ecclesiastical eloquence and Ukrainian homiletics is "Science, Albo the Way of Evil of Kazan" (1659) by Ioanniky Galyatovsky, rector of the Kyiv Collegium, erudite and polemicist. He published this treatise in the book "The Key of Understanding" - a collection of exemplary tales (sermons) intended as a practical guide for preachers. The author talks in detail and simply about two genres of sermon - for the resurrection and for the funeral. Homiletics is written as advice from an experienced preacher to beginners - about how to choose and develop a topic, how to make a sermon coherent, how to get the attention of listeners, how, when speaking about unrighteous wealth, not to embarrass and frighten the rich too much, how not to drive people into despair with a tombstone, etc. This is the first printed rhetoric among the Eastern Slavs. In the XNUMXth century it was reprinted twice more in Kyiv and Lvov, translated into Church Slavonic for Muscovite Russia, and was a reference book for many generations of priests.

Sermon, in a certain sense, is opposed to worship proper (liturgy). If the order of services is strictly prescribed by the Missal and the Typicon, then preaching is a free genre, "less responsible, less obligatory, and therefore giving the preacher the opportunity of a certain choice of content and method of pastoral teaching communication with the faithful (the choice, of course, within certain limits). New trends in It is enough to say that the entry of folk languages ​​into the temple began with a sermon, then the reading of passages from Scripture in the folk language was allowed, later - new prayers, chants, and only lastly the folk language was allowed into the liturgy.

There is unpredictability in preaching and therefore the risk of being unorthodox. Therefore, the Orthodox and Catholic churches, especially in the past, in one way or another, limited the possibilities of preaching. For example, in Orthodoxy the right to preach liturgical sermons is given only to bishops and presbyters (priests), but not to deacons.

Protestants, on the contrary, actively developed preaching, seeing in free preaching a return to the purity and religious creativity of early Christian times. Having renounced all the sacraments except baptism and communion, it was precisely in the sermon that the Protestants strove to see a kind of new sacramentum sacra-mentum audibile, that is, an audible sacrament. Indirectly, this contributed to the development of preaching among Catholics and Orthodox. The flourishing of Catholic preaching, especially Jesuit preaching in the era of the counter-reformation, was partly a reaction to the successes of Protestant preaching, the search for "its own" counterbalance to what attracted Christians to Protestantism.

Among the Orthodox Eastern Slavs, a learned liturgical sermon was part of church life starting from XVII century., while overcoming significant resistance from conservative clerical circles.

Meletius Smotrytsky in 1629 wrote that until recently the Orthodox exclaimed: "Oh, damned sermon!". The defense or encouragement of preaching has always been fraught with reproach in Protestantism. Similar motifs are still heard today: for example, the Moscow priest Father Georgy Kochetkov is accused of Protestantism primarily for regular and lengthy sermons.

8. Christian exegesis and hermeneutics. Explanatory gospels and psalms

The terms exegesis and hermeneutics go back to Greek words with a similar meaning (albeit distant roots) and therefore are translated almost the same way: exegesis (from the Greek exegetikos - explaining) is an explanation, interpretation; hermeneutics (from the Greek. hermeneutikos - explaining, interpreting) - the art, the technique of interpreting classical texts.

Sometimes these terms are understood in the same way (for example, in the Soviet Encyclopedic Dictionary). Sometimes they see a difference between them, and there are two main interpretations of these differences.

1. Exegesis interprets the text with maximum regard for the specific historical conditions of its creation, while hermeneutics is concerned with interpreting a historical source from today's perspective.

2. Hermetics seeks to understand the text "from itself" - through an exhaustive analysis of its vocabulary, grammar and expressive-stylistic qualities, while exegesis actively draws on "external" data (historical news, testimony from independent sources, etc.). Sometimes, hermeneutics is understood as the fundamental principles of interpretation, and exegesis as an explanation of a particular text. However, of course, no one pair of terms, however, like two or three, will be enough to designate all those aspects and levels of understanding of the text that modern psychology and philosophy distinguish in this process. Therefore, the ambiguous and indistinct use of these terms is still unavoidable and, in general, tolerable.

In the Christian tradition, commenting on Holy Scripture begins already in the "New Testament", in particular, in cases where the speech of the narrator or character contains a "deaf" reference to the "Old Testament", and then the evangelist gives its detailed interpretation, while in the margins of the text over time, they began to abbreviate the place in the Bible to which this verse refers.

Here is Jesus in Jerusalem driving out the merchants and money changers from the temple. “And he said to those who sold doves, “Take this from here, and do not make My Father’s house a house of trade.” Jesus' words are an allusion to Psalm 68: "For zeal for Your house consumes me, and the reproaches of those who slander You come upon me." But the reader may not notice the hint, so the evangelist reveals it and at the same time speaks about the reaction of the disciples to what is happening: “At the same time, His disciples remembered that it was written: “Zeal for Your house consumes Me.” At the same time, they began to place references to the desired verse in the margins 68 psalm, and also indicate parallel passages in other biblical books.

Further, interpretations of certain verses of Scripture were common in sermons - both in the artless homily of early Christians, and in later learned sermons, which were often built precisely as a detailed interpretation of the biblical maxim. Later, they began to create consistent (verse by verse) interpretations of individual books of Holy Scripture. The first such interpretations were made by the Byzantine church fathers in the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries. Interpretations were required for preaching and catechesis, for the training of priests, as well as for the more general and broad tasks of developing theology and comprehensively comprehending Scripture. Gradually, in Eastern Christianity, interpretations were created (in Greek) and translated into Church Slavonic on all the main books of the New Testament, as well as on some books of the Old Testament - primarily on those that were read during worship.

As a result, a special type (or genre) of canonical texts has developed - the Explanatory Gospel, the Explanatory Psalter, the Explanatory Apostle. Books of this type included the biblical text and commentaries on it. The Orthodox Slavs, even in pre-print books for the "Psalter" and "Song of Songs", had several sensible versions (in Church Slavonic), however, there were no interpretations for some books (including for the "Pentateuch of Moses" there was an interpretation only for the first chapters " Genesis, which spoke of the creation of the world.

In modern times, Christianity has developed interpretations of all the books of the Old and New Testaments. In the Russian tradition, such works may have varying genre designations: "The Revelation of the Lord about the Seven Asian Churches (An Experience of Explanation of the First Three Chapters of the Apocalypse)" by A. Zhdanov, "The Apocalypse and the False Prophecy denounced by it" by N. Nikolsky, "Collection of Articles on Interpretive and Edifying Reading Apocalypse" by M. Barsov, etc.

The style and character of the modern interpretation of Scripture can be judged from the following passage from the commentary on the Apocalypse (the commentary refers to the words about the Book in the right hand of Him who sits on the throne, written within and without, sealed with seven seals (Rev. 5,1:24): "Books in ancient times consisted of pieces of parchment rolled into a tube or wound on a round stick. A cord was threaded inside such a scroll, which was tied on the outside and attached with a seal. Sometimes a book consisted of parchment, which was folded in the form of a fan and was pulled together at the top, imprinted with seals on each fold or fold of the book. In this case, opening one seal made it possible to open and read only one part of the book. Writing was usually done on one, inner, side of the parchment, but in rare cases they wrote on both sides. According to the explanation of St. Andrew of Caesarea and others. , the book seen by St. John should be understood as the “wise memory of God,” in which everything is inscribed, as well as the depth of Divine destinies. Consequently, all the mysterious definitions of God’s wise providence regarding the salvation of people were inscribed in the book. The seven seals mean the complete and unknown affirmation of the book, or the economy of the probing depths of the Divine Spirit, which none of the created beings can resolve. The book also refers to prophecies, about which Christ Himself said that they were partially fulfilled in the Gospel (Luke 44:1991), but that the rest will be fulfilled in the last days. One of the powerful Angels cried out in a loud voice for someone to open this book, opening its seven seals, but no one was found worthy “neither in heaven, nor on earth, nor under the earth” who would dare to do this. This means that none of the created beings has access to knowledge of the secrets of God. This inaccessibility is further strengthened by the expression “below to see,” that is, “even to look at it.” The seer grieved a lot about this...", etc. (Archbishop Averky. "Apocalypse, or Revelation of St. John the Theologian: History of writing, rules for interpretation and analysis of the text." M.: Original, 31. P. XNUMX).

В 1904-1912 in Russia, as an appendix to the journal "Strannik", a 12-volume "Explanatory Bible or commentary on all the books of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament" was published in Russian. AT 1987 BC a reprint of this edition in 3 volumes was published by the Institute for Bible Translations in Stockholm.

Commentaries on the books of Holy Scripture are a universal, multipurpose genre of theological literature. They rely on a huge preparatory theological and philological work and in many ways complete it.

Stylistically, the interpretations gravitate toward that simplicity, certainty, and "transpersonality" of exposition, which are inherent in manuals on dogmatic theology. Interpretations are democratic and are therefore used in oral preaching and in catechesis. At the same time, interpretations are studied by theologians, philosophers, and historians of spiritual culture. On the whole, interpretation is a responsible, representative and, in its own way, final genre of biblical philology.

The total volume of studies on the interpretation of biblical texts is enormous, their directions are diverse, and the results largely determined the very profile of humanitarian knowledge in the Christian world. Studies in biblical exegesis have led to concomitant outstanding methodological discoveries (for example, of such rank as the teaching of Philo of Alexandria on four levels of interpretation of the text); to the emergence of entire branches of humanitarian knowledge, unknown to antiquity (for example, lexicography and, in particular, explanatory lexicography; translation theory; textual criticism). In the circle of historical and philological studies related to certain regions and eras (such as European classical philology, exploring European antiquity; like Germanic philology; Slavic; Old Indian; Romance; Finno-Ugric, etc.), biblical studies (biblical philology) is oldest and most developed discipline. Due to the outstanding religious and cultural value of the monuments that it studies, biblical philology surpasses all other philologies in the quantity and quality of the research work "invested" in the study of each source. The successes of world biblical studies have made it possible to carry out critical (scientific) editions of the Christian Holy Scriptures, which represent the highest achievements of the publishing culture of modern mankind.

9. The fate of canon law in Christianity

Unlike Judaism and Islam, in Christianity the most important principles of law are contained not in confessional, but in secular texts dating back to pre-Christian sources. Christian peoples, once subject to Rome, as civilization developed, gradually began to accept the greatest achievement of ancient culture - Roman law, carefully codified and developed in detail in the most vital areas - in civil and criminal law.

Legal topics in the confessional literacy of Christians are associated with a special area of ​​law - with church, or canon law. Issues of internal church organization, some family and marriage and property relations were subject to the jurisdiction of canon law.

If in Judaism and Islam the basic principles of confessional law (as well as civil law) are contained in Holy Scripture - in the Tanakh and the Koran, then the sources of canon law among Christians are associated not with Scripture, but with Tradition. These are the rules of the Church Fathers, decisions of ecumenical and local councils, papal decrees.

Church laws are connected in one way or another with secular legislation and secular power and are generally more dependent on local conditions (than, say, Christological disagreements). Therefore, in the field of church law, long before the official (in 1054) The division of the Christian Church into Catholic and Orthodox began to take shape, which deepened the differences between Eastern and Western Christianity.

In Byzantium, the first codification of church rules was carried out by an outstanding lawyer, before being tonsured - by an Antiochian lawyer, and then by the Patriarch of Constantinople John Scholasticus (565-571).

The collection of church rules and imperial decrees concerning the church prepared by him was called "Nomocanon" (from the Greek nomos - "law" and kapop - "norm, rule"). "Nomocanon" in the edition of Patriarch Photius (IX century) was translated Old Church Slavonic of St. Methodius (brother of St. Cyril-Constantine). This edition formed the basis of the Russian Pilot's Book. (XII c.) - collections of church rules and state regulations relating to it (from "Russian Truth", princely charters, "Measure of the Righteous" and other legal sources). "The Pilot Book" in Russia is known in several editions, most of its lists refer to XIV-XVI centuries; latest printed editions 1804 и 1816

In the West, the first collection of church laws was compiled in the VI century. and confirmed Charlemagne в 802 BC The first codification of various codes was carried out in the KhP century. The most complete collection of church laws was the collection "Corpus juris canonisi" 1582 BC

In the Catholic world in the Middle Ages, including in European universities, canon law existed and competed with civil law (Jus canonise against jus civile, canonists against civilists, or legalists). With secularization, the scope of canon law in all Christian countries gradually narrowed down to church life.

10. The dogma of the Holy Trinity and the "Arian heresy"

The Christian doctrine of the Trinity of God developed in the XNUMXth century, in heated disputes with religious differences. The dogma of the Holy Trinity is recognized as the basis of Christian doctrine and the main theological problem of Christianity. At the same time, the dogma of the Holy Trinity "is a dogma that is mysterious and incomprehensible at the level of reason" (Dogmatic theology).

According to Christian teaching, the Holy Trinity is the three persons (three hypostases) of God: God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. They are "uncreated" and "unborn", "consubstantial", i.e. they have one Divine Essence, and "equilibrium".

Arius (256-336), a priest from Alexandria, taught that the Son of God was created by God the Father, that is, he is the creation of God, and, therefore, not God. But the Son is “honored by the Divinity,” endowed with Divine power, and therefore can be called the “second God,” but not the first. According to Arius, the Spirit is the highest creation of the Son, just as He Himself is the highest creation of the Father. Arius called the Holy Spirit “grandson” (Dogmatic Theology).

Theology recognizes that the teaching of Arius arose as a result of the fact that the texts of Scripture, which speak of the subordination of the Son to the Father, were attributed inappropriately high importance. (This refers to the New Testament contexts, which say that the Son of God after the Incarnation is not only God, but also the Son of Man; that the Son comes from the Father, that is, that the Father is the Hypostatic Beginning of the Son: "My Father is greater than Me"; "[Son] Whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world"; "[Christ] humbled Himself, being obedient even unto death." In other words, the "Arian heresy" that shook the Eastern Church is a misreading, an inadequate interpretation of the sacred text.

Arius was condemned by the First Ecumenical (Nicene) Council in 325 and died in exile. New anti-Arian decisions were made at the Second Ecumenical (Constantinople) Council in 381. The "Arian heresy" was a bogey back in the XNUMXth century. for Russian Old Believers.

Arianism as a current of Christian thought to the VI century. has lost its meaning. However, disagreements in understanding the Trinity in the Holy Trinity continued to excite theologians.

Differences between Western and Eastern Christianity in the interpretation of the Trinity led to the emergence of two different editions of the Christian Creed.

The Western change in the Creed - the filioque (and from the Son) was added - reflects a different, not "equilibrium", more subordinate understanding of the Trinity: the Son is younger than the Father, the Father and the Son are the sources of the Spirit. This opinion was advocated by St. Augustine, separating the Father from the Son as sources of the Spirit. To the former formula: The Spirit proceeds from the Holy Father. Augustine added: And from the Son. The Local Council of Toledo (589) included this combination - and from the Son - in the 8th article of the Creed:

8. And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, who gives life to all, who proceeds from the Father and from the Son, who is honored and glorified equally with the Father and with the Son, who spoke through the prophets.

It was this dogmatic divergence, expressed in the Western addition of the words and from the Son, that later (in 1054) became a partial reason and reason for the division of Christianity into the Western (Roman Catholic) Church and the Eastern (Greek Orthodox) Church.

It is difficult to say that for St. Augustine and his followers were symbolized by the filioque. But the more striking are the dialectical consequences that the Russian philosopher of the 1991th century connects with the filioque. "Religion in the West, which includes in its doctrine the dogma ofilioque, i.e. the doctrine of the appearance of the Holy Spirit both from the Father and from the Son, contains a distortion of the main foundation of Christianity. Indeed, such a doctrine assumes that the Holy Spirit appears "from that in which the Father and the Son are one": in this case there is a special unity not in substance or person, but in the supra-personal. It follows that the Holy Spirit is lower than the Father and the Son, but this means "blasphemy against the Holy Spirit" But, apart from the Holy Spirit, the creature cannot be deified, and therefore the humiliation of the Holy Spirit leads to the humiliation of Christ in his humanity and to the idea that empirical existence cannot be fully deified or become an absolute. between the absolute and the relative, knowledge is recognized as limited If a person admits the weakness of his mind and will, he needs undoubted truth on earth and an invincible earthly church, hence the earthly organization arises in the form of a hierarchical monarchy with the pope at the head, who has secular power. Further, this leads to the denial of heavenly life, to a focus on worldly well-being, to the flourishing of technology, capitalism, imperialism, and, finally, to relativism and destruction" (Lossky, XNUMX).

Confessional approved truths of Revelation (dogmas) reflect a strictly defined understanding of the main religious categories. It is assumed that believers assimilate such an understanding of Revelation, and not so much with the mind, as with the "heart" of a person, his believing soul.

However, historically changing interpretations of Revelation, as well as changes in the form of its presentation, lead to the idea of ​​the relativity of historical, human differences in the understanding of Revelation. It is natural, for example, that such an apologist for freedom and creativity as N. A. Berdyaev said about himself that "he could never accept Revelations from the outside, from history, from tradition" (Hereinafter in this paragraph, "Self-knowledge (Experience of philosophical autobiography)" Berdyaev (1949) according to the Moscow edition of 1991; pages are indicated in brackets.). Berdyaev saw the human limitations of the existing historical forms of Revelation; "Historical Revelation is only a symbolization of the mysteries of the spirit, and it is always limited by the state of consciousness of people and the social environment" (p. 169). "In the language of the Gospels themselves there is human limitation, there is a refraction of divine light in human darkness, in the rigidity of man" (p. 300).

Berdyaev saw the same human, historical limitations in dogmatic institutions. Considering that "super-confessionalism" is characteristic of Revelation, he rejected narrow-confessional orthodoxy, the dogmatically accepted truths of Revelation: "I have a real aversion to theological-dogmatic strife. I feel pain reading the history of Ecumenical Councils" (p. 314). For Berdyaev, God's word is an opportunity for new readings: "Historical Revelation was secondary to me in comparison with spiritual Revelation" (p. 183). "Revelation presupposes the activity of not only the Revealer, but also the perceiver of Revelation. It is two-part" (p. 178).

Author: Pankin S.F.

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