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Vl. Lossky

CAPPADOCIANS *

In the fourth century, in the era of the struggle against the Arians, the reaction against Origenism in the dogmatic realm enters a new phase. This anti-Originian reaction, which emerges through all the vicissitudes of the struggle against Arianism, is not so easy to define, especially since among the defenders of consubstantiality there were, for example, theologians such as St. Alexander of Alexandria or Didymos the Blind, to one degree or another adhered to the way of thinking of Origen. It would be wrong to see in Origen's subordinationism the very source of the Arian heresy; however, there is no doubt that the radical answer to the question posed by the teachings of Arius was to be stopped once and for all by subordinationism. If the Logos is consubstantial with the Father, it is no longer possible to speak of the Father as a simple substance, as God “predominant”. Now, when one speaks of the essence or nature of God, it is no longer the "abyss" (βαθος) of the Father, which we would comprehend through the Son and which, being united in the Son, we would contemplate together with Him. Now, when one speaks of God, one essence appears to the mind in three Hypostases—the indivisible Trinity.

Even in the theology of Didymus the Blind (313-393), who considered himself a follower of Origen, the unknowability of God no longer refers to the Personality of the Father, but to the Divine essence as such, to the ousia of the Most Holy Trinity. To define this unknowability of ousia, Didymus uses terms that are more categorical and precise than Clement and Origen. “Invisible, incomprehensible even to the eyes of the seraphim, it cannot be contained in any thought, in any place, indivisible in strength, impalpable, having neither magnitude nor depth [against Clement and Origen. for whom the Logos is "majesty" and the Father is "the abyss"], neither width nor form ... far exceeding in its radiance every light of heaven, and, we can say, infinitely exceeding all the highest, and also surpassing every mind, in the strength of His spiritual nature" 1 .

If there is anything left for Didymus from Origen, it is his tendency to intellectualize spiritual feelings. If God is light, then not eyes, but thought (νοησις) sees His radiance 2 . Speaking of God, it is necessary to move away from all the expressiveness of biblical anthropomorphism. So the “Person” is the Deity (θειοτης) that preexisted before the creation of the world. "Spin" is the creation of the world and providential actions in which God reveals Himself. However, if Didymus has an intellectual vision of God, if his knowledge is mental knowledge, then the essence or nature of the Divine is no longer an intelligible simple substance, as in Origen. but the essence or nature is superessential 3 , and in this sense this nature of the Most Holy Trinity remains inaccessible to any created cognition, even to the cognition of an angel.

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* The fourth chapter from the book: Vladimir Lossky. Vision de Dieu. Neuchatel (Suise), 1962. Translation from French. Foreword to this book by Prof.-Prot. John Meyendorff published in "B. tr., 8, p. 231-232; Chapter I: The Tradition of the Fathers and Scholasticism and Chapter II: The Vision of God in the Biblical Way of Thought and the Theological Thought of the Fathers of the First Ages, are published in B. tr., 18, p. 118-135; chapter III: Alexandria - printed in "B. tr., 24, p. 214-241; chapter VIII: "The Vision of God" in Byzantine theology, and chapter IX (the last in the book): The Palamite Synthesis, are printed in "B. tr., 8, p. 187-203.

1 De Trinitate, I, 16. PG 39, col. 332 WITH .

2 In Ιο ., PG 39, col. 1645 C.

3 De Trin., IV, 4, col. 484A.

fishing and archangels 4 . So, the intellectualism of Origen in the way of thinking of his follower, the anti-Arian theologian, who professes God as the Trinity of Consubstantiality, if not completely surpassed in the 4th century, then at least it is limited.

Origen's intellectualism finds a suitable ground in the teaching of Arius, in which subordinationism degenerates into a radical dissimilarity between the Father and the Son, according to which the Divine nature is identified with the Father, and the Son is removed into the realm of the created. The extreme faction of Arianism, the teaching of the "Anomeans", is distinguished by a sharpened intellectualism in the problem of knowledge of God. It is precisely for this reason that the disputes against Eunomius (between 365-385) were of such significant importance both in general for the whole of Christian epistemology, and, of course, for all doctrines of the vision of God.

For Eunomius, the Father is a perfect monad, God is infinitely one, allowing no participation in His Divinity, no way out of the one ousia to the three Hypostases. The “eternal birth” would be a distortion of a simple essence, therefore it cannot be anything other than a creation. The absolute simplicity of the ousi does not allow any distinction, even the distinction of divine attributes. One might suppose that such a notion of "simplicity" would naturally lead to agnosticism. And indeed, Arius, proceeding from the same thought, denies even the Son the possibility of knowing the Father. But Eunomius preached epistemological optimism, prompting him to assert that, as the historian Socrates narrates, he knows the divine essence as well as himself, and, referring to his opponents, he refers to John the Theologian: “You do not know what you bow to, but we know what we bow to” (4, 22).

For Eunomius, there are two kinds of names denoting objects of knowledge. Firstly, the names are fictitious, generated by human thought, reflection; these are fictitious names, conventional signs that do not represent any objective value, do not give any knowledge about the object itself. If one had to resort only to such names, a person would turn out to be mute, incapable of expressing anything real. But there are other names which are not the fruit of human thought. These are names, so to speak, objective, expressing the very essence of objects, names equivalent to rational revelation. Analyzing this type of names, we find a concept that reveals their intelligible content, that is, the very essence of things. Since the true name is that which reveals the essence of any being, only God can give things their names. This is the philosophy of language, and at the same time a theory of knowledge, substantiated by Platonism in its combination with the teaching of the Stoics about the “spermatic logos”. Words, the commands by which the God of Genesis creates the world, are logical names that produce substances, and at the same time they are names sown in the human soul. A similar doctrine is formulated by Cratylus in Plato's dialogue of the same name.

Applied to the knowledge of God, the epistemology of Eunomius reveals his intellectualism brought to the extreme, in which even the religious element characteristic of the Platonists is absent; it is a purely rationalist dialectic operating with abstract ideas. The whole point is to find God a proper name that would express His essence. All the names by which we call God appear to Eunomius either as empty signs, human fiction, κατ’ επινοιαν, or as synonyms for that “predominant” name, which most perfectly expresses what God is by His nature. Eunomius finds this objective name in the term αγεννητος - Unborn, and in the concept of "unbornness" he sees "unbornness". This name does not signify a relation that opposes the unbegotten Father to the begotten Son. Nor is it a negative definition of God "not being." For Eunomius, “unbornness” has a positive meaning: to exist by Itself, according to its own sufficiency, and, if we take the scholastic term, then this is a substance that exists independently, as containing the self-justification of its being, a self-existing substance. Thus the term "unborn" gives an adequate concept of the very essence of God, and we can therefore say that God can know nothing more about His essence than we already know about it.

The stormy reaction against Eunomius, the lively controversy that was waged against him - above all - by the great Cappadocians, shows how deeply the fathers of the fourth century were aware of the danger of intellectualism in the knowledge of God.

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4 De Trin., I, 36, col. 440A; II, 4, col. 481 a.

* * *

Saint Basil the Great (330-379), in his struggle against Eunomius, criticizes him primarily on a philosophical plane, refuting his theory of knowledge. He decisively refutes the difference between the essential names of objects and the names generated by the understanding - κατ' επινοιαν. All the names by which we define an object are found by our thought; but this does not mean that this reflection is fruitless and does not correspond to any objective reality. Any body seems to us, at first glance, simple, but reflection gradually reveals in it the size, color, density, shape, and many other properties. This enables us to formulate concepts, thus to penetrate into the whole complexity of given objects, and to give them names, whether expressing their qualities, or their relation to other objects; and yet we can never exhaust in concepts the whole content of any being. There always remains some unidentified "residue", some existential basis, if we apply this modern term to the thinking of St. Basil, something that eludes all intellectual analysis. This means that there is not a single object that would be comprehensible in its essence, in why it is this way and not another. It should not be imagined that Basil the Great, who denied the possibility of the essential knowledge of things, preached epistemological pessimism. On the contrary, he contrasts the intellectualized and impoverished world of Eunomius with a world extremely rich and inexhaustible for thought: he opposes all the effectiveness and activity of human cognition and at the same time all its objectivity to the passive essential revelation imprinted by God in souls. And we perceive precisely the real properties of objects, even if the names by which we define them do not express what they are in their essence.

If such a position is true for the cognition of created things, then it refers even more to the essential content of the divine reality, which cannot be expressed by any concept. The names by which we call God reveal a known reality that we contemplate. But among all the divine names there is not one that would express what God is in His essence. Negative names, pointing to the fact that God "does not exist", thereby impose a ban on our use of concepts that are alien to God. Other names speak of what we should keep in mind when we think about God. But both one and the other of the divine reality “follow”, they are “following” God. This is all the more true because, in contrast to the knowledge of things, in which only human activity is involved, the knowledge of God presupposes, in addition to it, a frank action on the part of God Himself. All the divine names that we find in Holy Scripture show us God as He reveals Himself to created beings.

God manifests Himself through His actions or energies. “Asserting that we will know our God in His energies, we by no means promise to approach Him in His very essence. For if His energies descend to us, His essence remains inaccessible,” says St. Basil the Great. This passage from the letter to Amphilochius 5, along with other texts of Against Eunomius, will be of paramount importance in the doctrine of the vision of God. Byzantine theologians, in formulating a distinction between an inaccessible essence - ουσια - and its natural processes - ενεργειαι - or manifesting actions, will often refer to the authority of these texts.

Eunomius also speaks of "actions" and calls them energies. But in his teaching, in which the transcendental force of the Father is based on the absolute simplicity of the Unbegotten (αγεννητος), every distinction becomes a separation, a contrast between created and uncreated natures. Therefore, "energy" in the view of Eunomius is the will or creative force given to the Son, the Only Being created directly by the Father. This energy is by no means a manifestation of God: it is a created effect, something created by the Father in the Son, "not similar" to the Father (ανομοιος). We can here ascertain the Arian distortion of the concept, characteristic of the theology of the first centuries, which, in its perception of the Son as a manifestation of the Father, often deviated into subordination, thereby turning the Son into an instrument for creation. After the Fathers of the 4th century, exalting the Trinity over all manifestational economy, proclaimed the Son as an absolute Manifestation, a Manifestation in itself, not to

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5 Letter 234. PG 32, col. 869.

6 I, 6. PG 29, col. 521-524; II, 4, col. 577-580; II, 32, col. 648.

7 Apology. PG 30, col. 859.

to whom not converted, as the Absolute Reality of the Divine Being, the Manifestation of God outside, in being created, in post-Nicene theology began to be presented as the common energy of the Consubstantial Trinity. This idea will find its development in later patristic teaching, and in St. Basil the Great, it is only outlined with the aim of affirming, against Eunomius, the perfect objectivity of the divine names, found by thought, by which we express a certain concept of God, but we will never be able to grasp His very essence with reason.

But along with the names denoting the manifestations of God “outside”, there are others that we apply to intra-trinitarian relationships, to the existence of God in Himself, regardless of His creative or providential actions. Thanks to the incarnation of the Word, we can, as it were, partially see through these relationships, the transcendence of which surpasses the natural abilities of our thinking; we consider them in a very imperfect way, using terms that our thought can operate in order to designate, in relative language, absolute relations in which the relation itself is no longer relative. Thus, the theology of the Trinity becomes a predominant theology, in which speculation is inseparable from contemplation, in which thought goes beyond the boundaries of concepts, but leaves behind its own ability - the ability of reasoning and discrimination. Origen already distinguished θεολογια, or the knowledge of God in the Logos, from φυσικη θεωρια, the knowledge of everything created in the aspect of providence, in the aspect of the manifestation of God in created beings. For Origen, "theology" was a contemplation, a vision through the Logos of the abyss of the Father; for Byzantine thinking, as we shall see, it will become the theological thought of the Most Holy Trinity, inherited from the Fathers of the 4th century, independent of economy, i.e., the doctrine relating to the external manifestations of God in the created: creation, providence, redemption, and all-sanctification.

Now, instead of contemplating ousia, the object of theology is the cognition of the Most Holy Trinity. “Simplicity” no longer dominates if reasoning, discerning the internal relations of the Divine Being, directs contemplation towards something that exceeds intelligible ousia or supra-intelligible unity. Therefore, the gnosis of Clement and Origen will give way to communion with God the Trinity, to a communion that will no longer express itself in terms relating exclusively to knowledge. S.v. Basil the Great speaks of "heartfelt intimacy with God", of "union through love" 8 . Where Clement and Origen spoke of gnosis or deifying contemplation, St. Basil the Great will speak about the Holy Spirit. “God alone is God in essence. When I say "One," I refer to the essence of God, holy and uncreated." “Being God by nature, the Holy Spirit deifies with grace others who still belong to nature, subject to change” 9 . “They make the ascension of hearts, the deification of the weak, the improvement of those who are advancing. It is He who, shining in those who have cleansed themselves of all impurity, makes them spiritual through communion with Himself.” It is in the Holy Spirit that we can contemplate God: “Just as the sun, when it meets a clear eye, [the Holy Spirit] will show you in Himself the image of the Invisible. In the blissful contemplation of this image, you will see the inexpressible beauty of the Prototype. In the Holy Spirit we see the image of the Son, and through the Son we see the Archetype of the Father. Every vision of God is threefold: in the Holy Spirit, through the Son, to the Father.

* * *

Saint Gregory the Theologian, Nazianzus (328-390) spoke more than anyone else about the contemplation of the Holy Trinity. Unlike his friend Basil the Great, who even in the field of theology always remained an organizer, always descending to concepts, striving to build the Church, strengthening with clear terminology the path along which a person’s thought should follow, St. Gregory the Theologian, even when he argues and discusses, he constantly rises to contemplation. It is always sublime and, as it were, trembling from a deep feeling of speech; often it is a rhyming song, a poetic contemplative prayer. At the end of his life, he wishes to be “where my Trinity is in the full splendor of Her radiance.... The Trinity, even the obscure shadow of Which fills me with excitement” 11 . He says that to see God is to contemplate the Trinity, participating in the fullness of Its light: “They will be co-heirs of the perfect light

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8 Horn, quod est Deus, 6. PG 31, col. 344 AT .

9 Contra Eun., Ill, 5. PG 29, col. 665 Sun.

10 De Spiritu Sancto, IX, 23. PG 32, col. 109.

11 Self-poems, 11. PG 37. col. 1165-1167.

and contemplation of the Most Holy Sovereign Trinity, those who are perfectly united with the perfect Spirit, and this will be, as I think, the Kingdom of Heaven” 12.

The divine splendor that we can contemplate in the created world is only a small ray of that great light. No man has ever revealed God "as He is" in His essence or nature, and never will; or, rather, he will discover God when his mind, conformable to God, rises to its Archetype, unites with what is close to him, when we know it as we ourselves are known. This is the Kingdom of Heaven, face to face vision, the knowledge of the Trinity in all the fullness of its light. However, “the primary and most pure nature is known only by Herself, that is, by the Most Holy Trinity 14. Essence is "the Holy of Holies, hidden even from the seraphim, and the glorified Tri-Holy, which converges into one Lordship and Godhead" 15 . On earth, we converse with God “in the cloud,” like Moses, for God placed darkness between Himself and us, so that we would cling more strongly to the light gained with such difficulty. He hides more from our sight than he appears to us. But the rock behind which Moses stands already represents the humanity of Christ, and the radiance of light, manifested in His human form, shows the three apostles His Divinity, that which was hidden by the flesh 16 .

St. Gregory the Theologian often speaks of light, of trinity illumination. For him, darkness is something that must be overcome, like a barrier to light; "darkness" for him is not a condition for the highest knowledge, when knowledge becomes ignorance. But, despite this, although he says that the Kingdom of God is the contemplation of the Most Holy Trinity, for him the union with God exceeds gnosis: “if it is already bliss to know, then how much greater is that which you know?” “If it is so beautiful to be subject to the Trinity, what would dominion be?” 17 . “The divine nature transcends reason, and even contemplating the Trinity, even receiving the fullness of Her light, human minds, and even those standing closest to God and illumined by all His splendor, angelic powers, cannot know God in His nature” 18.

To accurately express the teaching of St. Gregory the Theologian about the mode of God-vision is difficult. He then denies the possibility of knowing the divine essence, not allowing this possibility even for angels, then he uses such expressions that seem to assure us that we cognize precisely the very nature of God when we contemplate the Trinity, when we are completely “united” (“mixed ”) with the entire Trinity. But one thing remains undoubted: here we are not talking about intellectual contemplation, striving to embrace some primary simplicity, to the unity of a simple substance. The object of contemplation of St. Gregory the Theologian - "three Lights that form One Light", the "united radiance" of the Most Holy Trinity - even from the seraphim the secret of the Trinity is hidden.

Just like Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian transcends the intellectualistic or super-intellectualistic mysticism characteristic of the Alexandrian school. This is no longer the Trinity of Origen, subordinated and similar to the Trinity of Plotinus, when you rise from step to step, in order to contemplate the “Abyss of the Father” at the end of the ascent, or, as in Plotinus, to identify with the One. Now thought comes into contact with a mystery that transcends the mystery of the primary “One”: now it distinguishes between absolute ratios, but is not able to fully “catch” the trinity: “I have not yet begun to think about the Unit, as the Trinity illuminates me with its radiance. As soon as I began to think about the Trinity, the One embraces me again. When One of the Three appears to me, I think that it is a whole, so full of it is my vision, and the rest eludes me; for in my mind, too limited to understand the One, there is no more room for the rest. When I unite the Three in one and the same thought, I see a single light, but I cannot separate or consider the united light.

This is not a vision of God, but, strictly speaking, it is no longer a speculative reflection. We can say that this is a meditation on the Trinity "grafted" into contemplation, an intellectual revelation in a light that transcends understanding. St. Gregory the Theologian, more than two other Cappadocians, received the Alexandrian heritage through Didyma. Therefore, the contemplation of the Holy Trinity, which replaces

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12 Or. XXI, 9. PG 35, col. 945 C .

13 Or. XXVIII (On theology 2nd). PG 36, col. 48-49.

14 Ibid., col. 29AB.

15 In Theophan. or. XXXVIII. I . PG 36, col. 320 VS.

16 Or. XXXII, 16. PG 36, col. 193.

17 Or. XXIII. M. PG 35. col. 1164.

18 Or. XXVIII, 4. PG 36, col. 32.

19 In sanctum baptisma, Or. 40, 41. PG 36, col. 417.

he has a vision of ousia, which is the central theme of his doctrine of the vision of God, if one can speak of a doctrine at all, since the very nature of this vision has not been clarified.

* * *

St. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-399) took an ardent part in the dispute with Eunomius, as evidenced by his twelve books Against Eunomius. Just like his brother Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa argues that we are not able to know or comprehend the essence of things, even created ones. Our mind reveals the "proper things" to the exact extent that it is necessary for our life. If we could comprehend the validity of things, we would be blinded by the creative power of those who created them. Our mind is always in motion, when by reflection it discovers properties not yet known to it; but things in themselves remain inexhaustible for discursive cognition. Words, names found by the mind are necessary in order to fix the concepts of things in our memory so that we can communicate with other human personalities. The word loses all its value at the tone of the edge, where cognition stops, where thought becomes contemplation. "There is only one name that defines the Divine nature: the amazement that seizes us when we think about God" 20 .

The active role of thought, reflection, applicable to the knowledge of God, the ability to discern - this is a common feature in the Theological thinking of the three Cappadocians. St. Basil the Great, preoccupied primarily with dogmatic questions, uses it to consolidate clear concepts, as if mental milestones; St. Gregory the Theologian transforms it into an admiring contemplation of inexpressible Divine relationships; St. It gives Gregory of Nyssa the opportunity to transcend the intelligible and then find a more sublime path to union with God.

Like St. Basil the Great, St. Gregory of Nyssa distinguishes between denying and affirming names applicable to God. Names that deny, without revealing to us the divine nature, remove from it everything that is alien to it. And even names that seem affirmative to us, in fact, have a negative meaning. Thus, when we say that God is good, we are only stating that there is no place for evil in Him. The name "beginning" means that He is without beginning. Other names that have a purely positive meaning refer to divine actions or energies; they give us the knowledge of God not in His inaccessible essence, but in that which is "around it." “Thus it is at the same time true that a pure heart sees God and that no one has ever seen God. Indeed, what is invisible by nature becomes visible through His actions, which are revealed to us in His known environment.

In the same word, dedicated to the question of seeing God (after all, the 4th beatitude says: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”), St. Gregory of Nyssa asks himself whether one contemplation of the Divine properties is enough for them to give bliss. After all, it is not enough to know the cause of your health, you need to live in health itself in order to really be happy. Likewise, happiness does not consist in knowing something about God, but in having Him in oneself. St. Gregory of Nyssa prefers the latter to face-to-face vision: “It seems to me that not seeing God face to face is offered here to one whose spiritual eye is cleansed; but what is offered to us in this marvelous formula is perhaps what the Word expressed in clearer terms, addressing others when it says, "The kingdom of God is within you," in order that we might understand that, having cleansed our hearts of all creatures and of any carnal inclination, we see in our own beauty the image of divine nature ... So, the way of contemplation corresponding to you is in yourself ... the sun in the brilliance of a mirror is no less than those who look at the solar disk; likewise, you, blinded by the light of God, if you return in yourself the grace of the image laid in you from the very beginning, then you will receive what you are looking for. Deity is really purity, dispassion, removal from all evil. If these things are in you, then God is in you. When your mind is not involved in any evil, free from passions, removed from all impurity, you are blessed from the sharpness of your vision, for, as a purified one, you know what is invisible to the impure, and since the carnal fog has been removed from your spiritual eyes, you contemplate boundlessly in the pure air of the heart it is a blissful sight (το ι ακαριον ϑεαμα) 22 .

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20 In Cant. Cant. XII. PG 44, col. 1028

21 Word 6 about the beatitudes. PG 44, col. 1269.

22 Ibid., col. 1272 VS.

Father Danielou remarks that this expression (το μακαριον θεαμα) is reminiscent of the passage from the Phaedrus, when the spectacle of a beatific vision (μακαριον οψιν και θεαν) opens before the souls walking through the vault of heaven. Father Danielou believes that this is an entry into oneself, θεωρια (contemplation), which reveals itself, as St. Gregory of Nyssa, in a purified heart, in the mirror of the soul, marks a complete reversal of the Platonic perspective. Intellectual θεωρια, this Platonic νοητά (intelligible), for Gregory of Nyssa is no longer the peak in the ascent to the divine. She is the pinnacle, but only in relation to the created world. Indeed, among the Platonists (and to some extent with Origen) κοσμος νοητος, the intelligible world, belonged to the sphere of the divine; he, opposing himself to the world of the senses, was co-natural with God for Clement and Origen. In Gregory of Nyssa, on the contrary, the demarcation line runs between the created world and the Divine Being. Thus, the sensual and intelligible world (cosmos) is concentrated in the soul, contemplating, as in a mirror, in its purified reflection, deifying energies, in which, first of all, contemplative beings participate - angels, pure images, to which the human soul is likened. Consequently, the heavenly "journey of the soul" (a theme common to all Platonists) becomes an inner journey; it is an inner ascent: the soul finds its fatherland, that which is co-natural with it, in itself, in its newly acquired, primordial state. This is the pinnacle of contemplation, θεωρια, the pinnacle of vision. But God remains unknowable in Himself, elusive in His nature. In his interpretation of the Song of Songs, St. Gregory of Nyssa tells us about the soul seeking its Beloved: “she rises again and with her mind surveys the intelligible and supra-cosmic world, which she calls the city, in which the Principalities, Dominations, Thrones, destined for the Authorities: she passes through the totality of heavenly forces, which he calls "place," and their innumerable multitude, which he calls "path," seeking among them his Beloved. Looking for him, she passes through the whole angelic world and, not finding the One whom she is looking for among the bliss, she says to herself: “Perhaps at least they can catch the One whom I love?”. But they, not answering this question, are silent, and by their silence they make it clear that whom she is looking for is elusive for them. And then, having run through the entire over-cosmic city with the activity of her mind and not recognizing the One Whom she desires among the intelligible and incorporeal, leaving everything acquired, she recognizes the One Whom she seeks, only by the fact that she does not catch what He is.

In his 6th sermon on the Beatitudes, St. Gregory of Nyssa asks himself how we can achieve the eternal life promised to pure hearts, reach the vision of God, if the vision of the divine nature is impossible. If God is life, then he who does not see God will not see life. He cites other scriptures in which "to see" (voir) means "to possess" (posseder, avoir). To not see something means not to have a part of it, not to participate. Thus, beyond the limits of contemplation (θεωρια), beyond the limits of vision, a new path opens before the soul entering darkness. As we saw above, for St. Gregory the Theologian, darkness (γνοφος, σκοτος) is what separates us from the light of the Most Holy Trinity. For Gregory of Nyssa, the darkness into which Moses penetrated on the Sinai peak, on the contrary, is a mode of communication with God, exceeding the contemplation of light, in which God appeared to Moses in a burning bush at the beginning of his journey. That is why, developing his doctrine of spiritual feelings, which, as he believes, was outlined by Origen, St. Gregory of Nyssa attaches the least importance to vision, “a feeling, the most intellectual,” notes Fr. Daniel.

If God appears first as light and then as darkness, then for Gregory of Nyssa this means that there is no vision of the Divine essence and the union appears to him by a path that surpasses vision or θεωρια, a path that passes beyond the boundaries of reason, where knowledge is destroyed and one remains love, or rather where gnosis becomes agape. Desiring God more and more, the soul constantly grows, surpassing itself, emerging from itself. And as she unites more and more with God, her love becomes more fiery and insatiable. Therefore, the beloved of the Song of Songs reaches her Bridegroom in the consciousness that there will be no end to the union, that the ascent to God has no limits, that bliss is an endless progress along the boundless path ...

Our essay on the doctrine of the vision of St. Gregory of Nyssa would be incomplete if we did not note one more aspect, which was especially emphasized in his book

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23 Word 6 about the beatitudes. PG 44, col. 893.

ge 24 o. Daniel: the soul is the abode of the Word, the Word dwells in it, and mystical experience is only an ever-increasing consciousness: the spiritual experience of the presence of Christ in us, entering into ourselves, and the ecstatic experience in a fit of love, going out of ourselves to the Word, Such as He is is in Himself, in other words, to the "elusive" nature of God.

The theological thought of the Fathers of the 4th century marks a decisive stage in the Christian transformation of the Alexandrian Hellenism of Clement and Origen. This is especially evident on the purely dogmatic plane, in which the Trinity no longer leaves room for God—a mere Monad, an intelligible or super-intelligible substance, and the source of spiritual being. At St. Gregory of Nyssa, we see to what extent this transcendence of Platonic concepts is also carried out in the sphere of spiritual life. However, in this particular area, Origen's influence will be more stable and will be felt for a long time under the influence of Evagrius of Pontus, who introduced Origen's intellectual gnosis into the closed world of Christian ascetics and monks. But before moving on to the aspect of God-seeing in ascetic and spiritual tradition, we need to cast a cursory glance at the theology of vision among other Fathers of the 4th and 5th centuries, in order to then penetrate, together with Dionysius the Areopagnt, into the sphere of Byzantine God-thought proper.

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24 Danielou. Platonism and th e ologie mystic. Paris, 1944.

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CAPPADOCIANS

CAPPADOCIANS

(great Cappadocians, "three luminaries of the church from Cappadocia")

so called Greek. church fathers: Basil the Great, his brother Gregory of Nyssa and his friend from Naziana Gregory the Theologian; all three are natives of Cappadocia, a country located between the upper reaches of the Euphrates in the east, the salt lake Tuz in the west, the Tabriz Mountains in the south and the Black Sea in the north.

Philosophical Encyclopedic Dictionary. 2010 .

CAPPADOCIANS

CAPPADOCIANS (Great Cappadocians, “Three Lights of the Cappadocian Church”) - three great Church Fathers, younger contemporaries of Athanasius of Alexandria, active in the 2nd half. 4th century: Basil the Great, his younger brother Gregory of Nyssa and his associate and friend Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzen), natives of Cappadocia, a region in Asia Minor. The Cappadocian Fathers had an enormous influence both on the internal church and on the position of the Church in secular culture. They were able to express the Orthodox dogma of the trinity of God in terms of Greek philosophy, which in turn changed it. The balanced terminological formula “one-three hypostases” developed in the course of the controversy with intellectualizing Arianism (anomeism) helped to overcome the church schism of the period of trinitarian disputes and entered the so-called. Niceno-Tsaregradsky faith, adopted at the II Ecumenical Council and recognized as the only true confession of faith. One of the literary merit of the Cappadocians may be the compilation of the Philokalia, an anthology of selected places from Origen, by Basil the Great and Gregory of Nazianzus. In addition, the Cappadocians gave mystical monasticism (Gregory of Nyssa) and carried out the writing of two editions (long and short) of the “Monastic Rules” (Basil the Great together with Gregory the Theologian), the charter of which contributed to the churching of the monastic movement, influencing Cenobitic monasticism also in the West ( Benedict of Nursia).

A. V. Mikhailovsky

New Philosophical Encyclopedia: In 4 vols. M.: Thought. Edited by V. S. Stepin. 2001 .

See what "CAPPADOCIANS" is in other dictionaries:

View of the Uchhisar fortress, carved into the rock (inhabited in the Byzantine and Turkish periods) Cappadocia (Greek Καππαδοκία, Persian کاپادوکیه (Katpatuka, “Country of beautiful horses”), lat. Cappadocia, Tur. Kapadokya) the historical name of the area on ... ... Wikipedia

MOSCH or CAPPADOCIANS A people descended from Mosoch, the son of Japheth, who lived in Cappadocia, in Asia Minor. Dictionary of foreign words included in the Russian language. Chudinov A.N., 1910 ... Dictionary of foreign words of the Russian language

See Cappadocia… Encyclopedic Dictionary F.A. Brockhaus and I.A. Efron

Cappadocians- kappadok eytsy, ev, units. h. yets, yyts, creative. p. eytsem ... Russian spelling dictionary

The collective name of the church fathers of the second half of the 4th century, who completed the formal dialectical processing of the churchly devoted dogma of the Holy Trinity. These usually include fellow countrymen and associates who originated from Cappadocia: Basil ... ... Wikipedia

Cappadocian Fathers- fathers / cappadocians / eggs, father / in cappadocians / eggs ... merged. Apart. Through a hyphen.

THE GOD- [Greek. θεός; lat. deus; glory. related to ancient Ind. lord, distributor, endows, divides, ancient Persian. lord, name of a deity; one of the derivatives of the common Slav. rich]. The concept of God is inextricably linked with the concept of Revelation. Subject... ... Orthodox Encyclopedia

- Adoration of the Magi. Byzantine fresco in the cave church, Göreme The culture of the historical region of Cappadocia dates back to ancient times. The main parameters that influenced its development was the geographical position on the crossroads ... Wikipedia

Basil the Great Great Cappadocians is the collective name of the church fathers of the second half of the 4th century, who completed the formal dialectical processing of the ecclesiastical devotional dogma of the Holy Trinity. These usually include countrymen and associates, ... ... Wikipedia

NAME OF GOD- [heb. , ; Greek ὄνομα τοῦ θεοῦ]. I. B. in the books of the VZ The Old Testament understanding of the meaning and meaning of the name is fundamentally different from the modern one. the use of names. In the OT, the name was treated not just as an identifying mark or name, but as ... ... Orthodox Encyclopedia

Books

• Great Cappadocians, Viktor Alymov. The novel "The Great Cappadocians" is a continuation of the novel about Athanasius the Great. The struggle of Athanasius against the heretic Arians was picked up and continued by his brilliant followers: Basil...
• Cappadocian Fathers. Basil the Great. Gregory the Theologian. Grigory Nissky, Mikhailov P. B., Khoshev A. Yu., Dobrotsvetov P. K. The main goal of this series is to tell about the life of outstanding representatives of humanity who have dedicated themselves to serving the high ideals of Christian spirituality. The life of these amazing people left ...

Lecture delivered by Serbian Bishop Athanasius (Jevtich) at Sretenskaya Theological Seminary on October 30, 2001

Today there is great joy - the Cappadocian fathers, as I promised.

First of all, a little geography.

Cappadocia is an area of ​​90 km, resulting from volcanic activity. On it is a large mountain Argeos - 4500 meters, in the past it was a volcano. From this Argeos and to another mountain - Dac, the distance is more than a hundred kilometers, here is the place of Northern Cappadocia, where the city of Arianz was located, the episcopal chair of Gregory the Theologian. There is a Turkish tradition that some holy Christians spoke one from one mountain, and the other from another, and both heard each other. This is a legend about Saints Basil and Gregory. I have been to those places, there are beautiful ancient churches and frescoes dug into these small mountains. Most of them have been destroyed, but some even have frescoes from the pre-iconoclast period. Then they were closed and during the iconoclasm only flowers were painted... And the Christians lived together. Which of you was in Greece, saw Meteora? It's something like that. In general, there is now a lot of tourism there, Turkey is interested in this, and we even served in the same church ...

In the 7th century, the invasion of the Arabs and then the Seljuks forced Christians to hide in underground cities, I even served on the eighth floor underground. Well, what kind of floor is this - one and a half meters in total, and the church in the form of a cross has been preserved there. In it, we served secretly from the Turks: we paid upstairs, where others dealt with money, cigarettes, etc., and at that time we served downstairs.

Basically Cappadocia. The place where our fathers Basil the Great and his brother Gregory of Nyssa were born, and his best friend Gregory the Theologian and Gregory's cousin Amphilochius of Iconium. They were born around 330, Gregory a little older - maybe in 329. Basil the Great was born from the father of Basil and the mother of Emmelia (which means: melodic). The family had ten children, one died at an early age. The eldest was St. Macrina. This family is very interesting. St. Macrina was an ascetic and better than St. Vasily knew the Holy Scriptures and did not separate from her mother in any way. Mother even said: "I drove away all the children, but I could not Makrina." And Macrina then attracted her mother to monasticism.

Gregory's father was Gregory, and he was from a group seeking the true God, one might even say a sect, ipsistarii, who were pagans, polytheists, but still somehow found the Most High God. And Nonna, mother of St. Gregory, having married him, although he was older than her, prepared him for his baptism, which took place when the fathers of the Nicene Council returned home in 325 - there were many bishops at his baptism. And Gregory was soon himself ordained a bishop and for a long time ruled his flock in Nazianzus, a city in the west of Cappadocia. And Basil, by origin, was from Neocaesarea in Pontus, where the river Iris flows. There are big rains. Now the Turks call this city Kaizara, you can even see preserved temples there, because the Greeks lived there until 1923. Even a place called Vasiliada is now known, where there was a monastery founded by St. Basil, where he gathered many monks on the outskirts of the city.

The future fathers first studied in Neocaesarea, since it was then a very large city, and then they went to the Palestinian Caesarea, and Gregory went to Alexandria, and Basil went to Athens, but Gregory went to Alexandria earlier and, having completed his studies there, also then went to Athens and there he and Vasily met. There was such a story. Students from the eastern provinces - Asia Minor, Cappadocia had their own circles, as it were, and had the custom of accepting new students there with a special rank. This happens even now. But Grigory knew that Vasily was too serious, he was left without a father early and he was the eldest, although not by birth, but as a male person, in the family. And he was already then called "great", that is, the oldest. He had four brothers and five sisters.

And so, when Vasily arrived, Grigory said: don't do it, otherwise he will get angry and leave, he does not like such jokes, he is always serious. Vasily was tall, black-haired, thin and very sickly - due to the fact that he lived too selflessly. There, in Athens, they studied with the best teachers; in total, their training lasted about twenty years, in fact, they studied in Athens for four or five years, Gregory stayed even longer. They learned everything that could be obtained from the education of that time, but they only went to church, of course, there was a church in Athens. And they returned - first Vasily, and then Gregory, Gregory was chosen there even as a teacher, because he spoke so well - like the Christian Demosthenes.

I translated seven of his talks for holidays (45 in total) - for Christmas, for Epiphany, for Epiphany, for Pentecost and for the second Sunday after Pascha, a new Sunday. And some places, important parts, coincide in them, namely, when it is described how God created the world and man, how Christ was incarnated, this is all theology here. And I translated them together with the commentaries of St. Maximus to difficult places concerning theology, and a word was added to the Maccabees.

When he returned, Vasily met with his sister, and his brother Gregory of Nyssa writes about this that his sister is St. Macrina gave a lecture on the Holy Scriptures. So it was then: Scripture was studied later, after everything. When you pass everything in school, then you can already proceed to Scripture and theology. After living at home for a while, Basil went from Cappadocia for two years to Syria, Palestine and Egypt. This is very easy to do from Cappadocia: you just have to cross Cilicia, between Tavros and Antitavros there is a pass, and all roads from east and east pass through it. The Arabs subsequently invaded through it.

And St. Basil went to Tarsus, then visited Antioch, then Syria, Palestine and Egypt, where he studied monasticism for two years. And he collected spiritual experience from all the monasteries he saw, like a bee collects honey, and then wrote his monastic rules. It is possible that at the same time he met St. Athanasius (St. Gregory, when he studied in Alexandria, also apparently met him, because there are some details in his laudatory word to Athanasius that give reason to assume that St. Gregory saw him personally, he loved him very much). And he went to asceticize on the river Iris, in the north of Pontus, Gregory also came, but the Church was then in need, and in 360 Dianius, Bishop of Caesarea, made Basil a deacon. Basil had a great interest in theology, and at that time there were many Councils in the east.

And so, I will make some introduction. Your good researcher A. Spassky has an excellent book written before the revolution: "The History of Theological Disputes of the 4th Century", an explanatory book. Bolotov even earlier in his excellent "History", and Spassky later even more deeply, shed light on the essence of the events taking place then. Kartashev in his story simply repeats Bolotov and sometimes even spoils it. I don't know who teaches the history of the Church to you, but if he follows Bolotov, and not only him, but the documents of the era, then this is the most important thing. What's the matter? It may seem strange to you, but you need to learn history the way it was.

The First Ecumenical Council took place. The fathers agreed against Arius, who was very cunning, and the bishops who studied with him and under the influence of Aristotelian philosophy said that the Son of God, to put it simply, was either “born”, or “created”, but still “was the time when He was not." He even crossed out the word: "time", but simply: "it was when He was not." So he has become. He is the work of God ("God produced"), the second God. And He is not of the essence of God, because nothing can be said about the essence of God. And the new Arians - Eunomius and Aetius, even said that we can know the essence of God, it is unborn (agenesia). This is what we say about the Father, that He is unborn as a Person. And the Son is born, which means the Son is different, completely different (anomyos). It was the heresy of the Anomeans - even more strict Arians than Arius himself. But the fathers at the Council in Nicaea were forced to simply put in the Creed: born, uncreated ... "Uncreated" - a word specifically against Arius. But it is not enough to say: uncreated, consubstantial with the Father (homusion to Patri). This word "consubstantial" has caused great controversy. And why? There was danger in the word "consubstantial." Florensky in his work "The Pillar and Ground of Truth" said that they were "of the same nature" - but he probably did not know history well. "Consubstantial" was an expression condemned by the Church in 268 in the case of Paul of Samosata, the monarchist heretic, Sabellius had previously been condemned, but he was in Rome and Sabellius did not practice as subtly as Paul of Samosata did in Antioch.

What is omousios - "consubstantial"? Here is a cloud. It comes out rain and snow. And they are identical with each other. One is rain - the Father, and the other is the Son, and now they are consubstantial with each other, which means that there is no Trinity, but there is one being and that which manifests itself from it. In Sabellius, God manifests itself as modes - in the Old Testament as the Father, in the New - as the Son, and then - as the Spirit; this is modalistic monarchianism, unitarism, antitrinitarianism, which means there is no Trinity, but there are manifestations of one Deity. We return even worse than to Judaism. And Paul of Samosatsky began to speak further. Sabellius had energies as actions, while this one had them as modes. And Sabellius used the word prosopon, "face" in Latin, so it was not enough to say that Three Persons, as we now say: Three Persons of the Holy Trinity, this was not enough, this expression from the theater when an actor takes on some kind of mask, prosopon is "mask", in Latin persona. That is, a role is not a personal being. And Paul of Samosata was very crafty; from 262 to 268 there were several Councils, they did not have time to seize him, he was very learned and very cunning, until finally they condemned him, and they condemned the word "consubstantial" in this sense: that the Father and the Son are consubstantial, that is, they come out of one being, but are not the Trinity. There has never been a problem about understanding the Holy Spirit. Origen fought against this, in this respect Origen is not an Arian and not a forerunner of Arianism, I told you that Bolotov shows this well in his great work, he has other weaknesses, but he was against anti-trinitarians, against monarchists, and he emphasized three hypostases . True, in order to avoid the danger of tritheism, so as not to return to polytheism, Origen says that the Son is subordinate to the Father, and the Spirit to both the Father and the Son, that is, subordination. But this is not degradation, as with Arius, but simply subordination, subordination, and this was later used by the Arians and Doukhobors.

In general, after the Nicene Council, everyone except Arius and two more bishops, strict Arians, abandoned this false doctrine and returned to Orthodoxy, signing the Nicene confession of faith, and even Arius returned, as you know, in 336, he had to return to Alexandria, and St. Athanasius didn’t want to accept him in any way, and Alexander of Constantinople had to accept him, he prayed to God - and Arius got a rupture of his stomach, apparently he had catarrh or cancer or gluttony, since he went to the toilet, everything poured out from him with blood and he stayed there. So God did that Arius died and did not accept him.

The Arians then became, as it were, all Orthodox, and as long as Constantine was alive, they could do nothing against a signed confession of faith. But intrigues began against the bishops, and, unfortunately, such scholars as Marcellus of Ancyra appeared among the Nicenes, who began to write Asterius the Sophist, an Arian scholar who continued to defend Arianism after Arius. Then in the East, against him and against Athanasius, whom the Arians remembered at the Council as a deacon in discussions on the sidelines of the Council (in fact, at the Council the deacons were not allowed to discuss much, even at the Seventh, and in 328, when he was 30 years old, he was elected Bishop of Alexandria ), the persecution began. The Arians considered him dangerous and persecuted him, but never for his faith, but under various far-fetched pretexts. Five times, as you know, Athanasius was expelled from his diocese. And he began to write, in defense of himself, of his Nicene confession.

Athanasius is even forced to stand up against such Nicaeans as Markell of Ancyra and Apollinaris of Laodicea - a great theologian, one hundred percent Nicene. When Apollinaris began to defend Christ against Arius, he began to say that He was so "closely embodied" that there was no longer a human mind and soul, and even reason, but only a vegetative soul, a moving soul that animated the body. And here's what's important - I'll tell you as young people - when someone holds too much of a certain position, without understanding, without understanding, he may end up out of business. Apollinaris and Markell held on to Nicaea, and it turned out in the end that they had surrendered Nicaea. And the Easterners, who were against Nicaea, raised such great ones as Basil, Gregory and other fathers - they actually defended Nicaea, and it turned out that at the Second Ecumenical Council the real, true Nicene faith triumphed, but in the explanation and interpretation of the Cappadocians .

“Consubstantial” was accepted, but it was accepted in such a way that it was easy to say later that the Father and the Son were of the same essence, while Basil and Gregory insisted that the Father and the Son were special hypostatic beings. Latin could not convey the content that is in Greek, and in the West it turned out that "essence" was called substantia (there was no word essentia yet), and "hypostasis" when translated into Latin also turned out to be substantia. And it turned out that the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit have one substance, and They are one hypostasis. It was pure monarchianism. In addition, and I wrote about it, and Filioque has its roots in this enduring essentialism. Cappadocians: Basil, Gregory - emphasized the personality, personal existence of the Father, Son and Spirit. For Basil, the name "Father, Son and Spirit" is more important than any other names. "We were baptized," he says, "in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." This is the first. This means that for the Eastern tradition, first of all, "Father, Son and Spirit" was significant, and then we already know that He is one God, because the Father is one, Who gave birth to the Son and from Him - the Holy Spirit.

This is Cyril of Jerusalem, who, because of his youth, was not at the Council of Nicaea, he only became a bishop in 348, that is, twenty years later, but you will never find the word "consubstantial" in his works. But he was completely Orthodox. This means that it is possible to profess faith without "consubstantiality", but in the sense of consubstantiality. And the word "omiusios" appeared instead of "omousios": only one signature iota comes between "omo" and "usios". "Omousisos" means "tasting", literally, in Slavonic. This means that the Father and the Son together have one and the same essence. And "omiusios" means that Their existence is "similar". And so the fathers chose new words: "The Son is the indistinguishable icon of the Father, the face of the Father." “Similar” and “like in essence” mean that the Son is in no way different from the Father in relation to essence, but He is special, like a Person, like a hypostasis. This means that trinitarian theology was developed, starting with Basil and Gregory, in order to emphasize the three hypostases, and Basil gave such a brief formula: "Our faith is that the three hypostases are one nature." Vasily loved the word "nature" (fisis) more, but one could say three hypostases - one essence. But the word "essence" since the time of Origen was perceived as a rather philosophical word - it is something abstract, and the word "nature" is more specific: "phisis" in Greek, like "nature" in Slavonic, is a folk word. Nature is to give birth, kind. The Slavs even had a deity - Rod. Nature is at the very root of what is born.

This means that the Father, as Gregory said, has a "fruitful nature", he is not God barren, He gives birth to the Son and produces the Spirit. This is not the "sterile monotheism" of Israel, but this is the Living God-parent. Of course, in God there is no process, no birth, in the sense that Arius thought: if there is a birth, then this is a process, a movement, which means a transition from some pre-eternal state. But no - as Athanasius taught, the nature of God is that in eternity it is like this: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, God, They have one nature, and so it always is. One can even say that this is more of an intra-divine relationship, when we say: "Father, Son and Holy Spirit", this is not like Thomas Aquinas, where the Godhead is a kind of integrity, fullness, in which there are three points, like in an atom, such essentialism , the dominant of the essence of God (this prevailed in Latin theology, and since then even they have emphasized: "one, one, one, one" - and forgot that, as Basil said, "we have one God because the Father has one in eternity, what He is - His Deity, and He, in giving birth to the Son, supplies Him with the same essence, and also the Holy Spirit, and They are Three").

What Lossky emphasized in his "Mystical Theology" came to the fore: in the East, the personal aspect of the Trinity, the trinity, dominates. As Basil writes: "There is one God, because He is the Father." This means that the unity of the Godhead is primarily among the Fathers, and then, in the second degree (although this is a bad, inaccurate expression), one can say that They have one essence, while in the Latin West there is no - one Godhead, and then there is the Father, the Son, and The spirit, as it were, is secondary. And so Filioque says that the Spirit is born from the essence of the Father and the Son: since the essence dominates, He essentially proceeds from the Father and the Son. But then the question arises: what - is it not the essence of the Spirit? What then does He, Himself, also proceed from Himself? This is the result of an inexhaustible, unreinterpreted faith; they blindly adhered to the Nicene consubstantiality.

In 1986, we had a meeting with Croatian and Slovenian theologians, and a good theologian, Shagibunic from Croatia, acted as a consultant, and we parted ways, he says: "No, no, we start from one Deity, and then we come to the Trinity," and I I say: "But we don't. We confess: Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and then we state that They are one." This is the same case when Christ says in the New Testament: I and the Father are one(John 10:30). And in general, a personal, hypostatic approach. Basil developed it and Athanasius even recognized his enemies, instead of Marcellus of Ankira, the Easterners chose Basil of Ankira, a doctor, from whom only one work has survived - "On Virginity", he was a very good ascetic, and he was the leader of the Eastern, "omiusians", and how Deacon Basil was with him at the Council of 362, when, unfortunately, the line of Omians, "similars", those who were led by Constantius, the son of Tsar Constantine, who just wanted to balance - that there are extreme Nicaeans, that there are extreme Arians, won, it is better to find a compromise , as always, the authorities want not to fall into "extremes", but it is better to choose the middle, and he chose these Omians. But among the Omians there were those who thought in the Orthodox way, and there were those who believed in a completely Arian way, they simply did not talk about it. So the Omian movement won, and not only in the East in 362, but after Romanius and at the Council in Seleucia, where Athanasius was secretly, listened and saw that there were Orthodox and confessed that brother Basil of Ancyra, whom he visited as a young deacon, Basil of Cappadocia, that he is Orthodox, he confesses the same as we do, only in different words. It was a big deal for Athanasius, Gregory speaks of this.

Two years earlier, Athanasius convened a Council during the time of Julian the Apostate, when he temporarily allowed freedom and allowed all the bishops to return, but slyly: so that the bishops who were expelled and the bishops appointed in their place quarreled among themselves and the Church weakened, so that later it would be easy to impose paganism. So he did: he allowed everyone to return, except for Athanasius. And Julian collaborated and corresponded with Aetius, the new leader of the Arians, who later died and his work was continued by the student Eunomius. It is very interesting that heretics have always got along well and get along well with the pagans. For example, the Gnostics, of which no one was hurt. And all the current communists, atheists, Westerners, and so on, say that the Church persecuted heretics ... No, it was they who persecuted the Church, and the Church itself only excluded heretics: please, if you do not want to join us, ruin the faith and embarrass the people, then do your own thing. , go away. And that means an exception. No more persecution. Later, the state sometimes began to persecute heretics, but the state persecuted the Orthodox much more: Athanasius was expelled for no reason, for example, he simply saw St. Constantine, that because of him there were big quarrels and decided that something was not good there, he did not want to inflate this matter, but said that they should not put a new bishop in the place of Athanasius, and when Constantius said: return everyone, and Athanasius, he returned in 339.

In 337, the pious king Constantine died, and his son Constantius supported the Arians, and convened a Council in 362 to approve this heresy. Basil of Ancyra did not agree and was expelled, this leader of the East, but the rest were signed, not under violence, by the Bishop of Basil the Great, Deanius of Caesarea, and the father of Gregory the Theologian, Gregory the Elder. Great sadness was for Basil and Gregory, they returned from their desert and there even, as Basil says, Deanius repented, and Gregory made his father repent, but in general, Constantius went to the West and did at the Milan Cathedral 364- 365 years so that all the western bishops signed, except for some: Hilary of Pictavia, Lucifer of Calabria, Eusebius of Verchel (near Torino, in Italy) - they did not sign. Signed, my dears, and Pope Liberius. St. Hilarius wrote three times: "Anathema to you, Liberius!" So the Western Father anathematized the pope. If the pope is infallible, how did he sign the Arian creed?

A new exile of Athanasius was connected with this Council. And Athanasius was very sorry that the old man Hosea of ​​Kordub had signed the confession, this, so to speak, the mythological personality of the Nicene struggle, he was at the Council in Nicaea, then, in 343 in Sardica, but the old man, perhaps confused, not realizing, signed the semi-Arian confession of faith , and Liberius also signed the condemnation of Athanasius. And the great soul of little Athanasius said: "Liberius, of course, fell." But he forgave him - Athanasius, a great soul, realized that it was under pressure.

And the easterners gathered in Sirnum (this is in Serbia near Belgrade 100-120 kilometers to the west in the direction of Zagreb) and made sure that the right confession of faith returned. And thanks to this, in the East, Basil replaced his bishop Deanias in 370, who repented and died. Vasily was then very young, only 32 years old, and he needed 40 years for a bishop, but he was chosen, because how could one not choose such a person? Eusebius was chosen - well, and Eusebius lived until 370, and when in the fall they chose Eusebius' heir, the majority of bishops did not want Basil, and only by one vote of old Gregory Sr. did they choose him. Here is such a story. So do not be afraid if the history of the Church is turbulent, you are young people, but if you believe that the Holy Spirit leads the Church, then you will be calm.

And when Basil was elected bishop, during the time of Emperor Valens, the persecution of the Orthodox began, who were already with Meletios in 362, and when Athanasius recognized the Easterners that they were Orthodox, of course, and many of them had already begun to recognize both "homousios" and the Nicene confession, then the right confession had already been restored, and in the West it turned out that all the bishops, except for these exiled three or four, signed the Arian confession of faith. It was a downfall, because the sly, very cunning bishops from the East, ours, Ursachius from Belgrade and Valens from Murcie Zosek and Sirmiumnian Germinius (from Mitrovica), friends with the king, ensured that they immediately signed the Arian. They said: can't you profess faith without this word "homousios", which is not found in Holy Scripture? Give me another word then. And it so happened that all 400 bishops signed at the Council of Rimina (Northern Italy) in 358. Subsequently, most of them repented and returned to Orthodoxy.

And in the East, a sensible reaction began to the fact that Arianism and the same Sabellianism, monarchianism, won, and Athanasius was no longer judged in the East. But earlier they condemned him because of other deeds, as if he cut off the hand of some priest and performed magic with it, and Athanasius brought this priest Arseny with him to the Cathedral when there was a trial. The saint dressed Arseny in a large robe so that his hands could not be seen, and asked the accusers: "Which hand did I cut off him?" They say "left". He: "raise your left", and Arseniy shows his whole left hand. They say: "then the right one", he raises his right one, and Athanasius says: "do not look for a third, a person does not have a third hand." And after that he was not judged.

On the sixth day of the Council of Alexandria in 362, at which there were Western confessors and representatives of the East from Meletius and others, Athanasius recognized their confession of three Hypostases in the meaning of three Persons - the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, as Orthodox. Thus it gradually came to the Second Ecumenical Council, which finally gave victory to the Council of Nicaea. At the Second Council, the Council of Nicaea triumphed. There the fathers, as you remember, said: "born of the Father", that is, from the essence of the Father. On the Second they said the same thing, but more clearly. They left out "consubstantial" and added that the Son has a Kingdom: "His Kingdom will have no end." During Nicaea, some taught that the Son came out of the essence of the Father, became Jesus Christ, completed His work and returned to the Father, handed over the Kingdom, went into the essence of the Father - and nothing more. This is blasphemy, this is Sabellianism. It means dominance over the face. He misunderstood Corinthians 1, which really says that Jesus Christ will do everything and hand over the kingdom to the Father. But He will hand over the Kingdom as the Savior, as the God-man, but He always reigns as the Son. He completed the divine-human work, and as the God-man says to the Father: I commit everything to You, but I remain in co-reign with the Father. So, thanks to the fathers, first of all, to Basil, who was in the chair for only less than nine years, from 370 to 379, and also to Gregory, who continued his work, the truth triumphed.

In order to weaken Basil, Emperor Valens divided the metropolis of Caesarea, establishing new sees - he was Basil's enemy. Even Uncle Basil was against him, and the other bishops were against him when young Basil rose to become a bishop. The minor bishops, the so-called chorepiscopes, were against him. And Vasily, when he became a metropolitan, did not persecute anyone. He created many new dioceses, new bishoprics, and in one of them - a small place Sasina, he appointed Gregory, he was already a priest and helped his father. But Grigory got angry and did not go, saying: what is there Sasina? It's a place where horses rest, dogs fight over bones, I won't go. And didn't go. Even when he became a priest on Epiphany in 360, he ran away after his consecration, lived at home as an ascetic, and was afraid of the priesthood. And then he returned at Pascha and asked for forgiveness and wrote at the same time an excellent apologia for the priesthood, and before Chrysostom expounded the doctrine of the priesthood. And also, having become a bishop, he did not go, but helped his elder father, and did a lot.

But Basil, when he was dying, told Meletios to the Archbishop of Antioch, whom he loved very much: you need to go to Constantinople, the Arian Demophilus is there, Arianism dominates in the capital, send Gregory there. And so, Gregory went there at the beginning of 379, and two years before the start of the Second Ecumenical Council of 381, St. Gregory did a miracle. In the small church of Anastasia, which was the daughter or grandson of Amphilochia and which was given as a gift, Gregory served there and spoke his beautiful theological words there. He renewed Orthodoxy, returned the Trinity to the city. This is proof that one ascetic, even a mystic, although this word is inaccurate, but, in general, a great ascetic and hesychast, being sick, can become such an active figure. And he came to him from Alexandria, where after Athanasius Peter was, and then Timothy, and they did not recognize Meletios in Antioch, but recognized Peacock. And there was a split. Meletius had a majority, Meletius was persecuted, he was not recognized in the West, and even then Apollinaris made a third bishop, the Arians tried to put their own, Zoilus. Antioch was a large city, more than 200 thousand lived in it in the 4th century. And since Gregory went to Constantinople, he did not want to recognize Gregory, and sent such an ascetic from Alexandria, and Maxim Cynicus, a philosopher who defended Orthodoxy in Alexandria, he came to Gregory and became his friend, Gregory baptized him, ordained a priest. .. And then at one moment he left and was made a bishop by the Bishop of Alexandria and sent to take away the Orthodox flock and the church from Gregory, at a time when Gregory was lying sick in bed. But then the people rose up, drove them out, then there was a great excitement ...

But when the ruler Theodosius arrived and studied the matter, he saw that they were Orthodox. Yes, it could not be otherwise, because the life of the Church overcomes by the Holy Spirit. This victory can only be delayed by the will of the authorities. But, thank God, Theodosius was pious: he recognized Gregory, recognized Meletius and led Anastasius out of the small church to the Church of the Holy Apostles (the cathedral church of Constantinople at that time), drove Demophilus out of the walls of the city and Gregory became Bishop of Constantinople. And Meletia also admitted. And he also convened a Council in Constantinople, which at the beginning was not conceived as an Ecumenical one, but the Macedonian bishops and Lyra and invited Alexandrian and Egyptian bishops came from the Balkans, but they were a little late. Westerners were not invited. But this Council became Ecumenical by virtue of its right confession.

Meletios died during the Council. And then Gregory became chairman. They said: we need to choose a new bishop for Antioch. And Gregory offered to recognize this Peacock in order to heal the schism, and the Easterners scolded him for this position: should this one, who was against Meletius, now be rewarded so that he would be the heir of Meletius? Never! And the fathers were right. Gregory wanted in a good way, let's, they say, recognize this Peacock in order to heal the split, he was already old, he would not live long (and it’s true, he died three years later), but the fathers did not agree and chose Nectarius, who was the mayor city, even unbaptized, but was a Christian. Just as a few years later, in Mediolanum, instead of Auxentius the Arian, they elected the mayor of the city, also still unbaptized, Ambrose.

But Gregory wanted peace in the Church, he was a man of the world, he even has a few words about the world. Meanwhile, the bishops of Alexandria came and began to scold him: you are not a canonical bishop of Constantinople. And Gregory delivered such an abusive sermon: Farewell, city, farewell, Anastasia, I leave you your intrigues, I leave you your thrones... After all, he suffered a lot, the Arians beat him, they even tried to kill him. And he left the Cathedral. And he helped in his diocese in Nazianzus, so that a bishop was chosen instead of him. And he went to the springs in the depths of Asia Minor, where Armenia, Isauria, there is a spring of the holy martyr Thekla in those parts, and there is a monastery where St. Gregory was treated and lived there until 390, and there he wrote his poems and songs.

As for the contributions of St. Gregory of Nyssa, he is less significant, although he wrote more than those two combined. But our theology of the Trinity is the theology of Basil and Gregory. They never claimed anything new - as Basil said, "only what I received from my grandmother Macrina," who was a student of St. Gregory of Neocaesarea, a disciple of Origen. When he came to Neocaesarea in 260, there were only 17 Christians in that large city, and when he died, the whole city and the whole diocese were Christians, and only 17 remained unbaptized. He received from St. John the Theologian by revelation the Symbol of Faith in the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. And Vasily always said: I studied with Makrina the grandmother, and she studied with Grigory. There was no new faith.

One could, of course, say that the Nicene "consubstantial" is an innovation, but it wanted to emphasize to Arius that the Son has the same essence as the Father. And Gregory of Nazianzus further developed the theology of the Trinity, since the Doukhobors appeared, and Athanasius began to fight against them. But the Nicene Symbol said, "and in the Holy Ghost" - that's all, period. And then the Fathers of the Second Council continued: “The life-giving Lord ...”, but did not put the “consubstantial” a second time, it was already enough that He was called the Lord, Who proceeds from the Father, Who with the Father and the Son worshiped and glorified - this is from Basil's essays on the Holy Spirit. "Omotimos" ("single honored") replaced here "homousios".

Until that time, the formula "Glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit" was more common - here the economic order is reflected, God is revealed through the Son in the Spirit, and a little gradation is obtained, as it were. And Vasily focused more on the formula that existed before him, it was not he who introduced it: "Glory to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit." "Who is worshiped and glorified with the Father and the Son" - these three "s", syn in Greek, firmly bound that we glorify Him as God. And Gregory then says: if the Spirit is not God, then let Him go and become God Himself, and then make me a god. He had such boldness in confessing the Holy Spirit.

In addition, the Cappadocian Fathers established a good organization of church life, monasticism, and holidays. As one historian says, Valens was going to drive Basil away and tried to do it. The emperor had the right to come to the Holy Gates and put his gift on the throne: the cross, the Gospel, bread, etc. And so he tried: if Vasily does not accept his gift due to the fact that the emperor is not entirely Orthodox, then he kicks him out. And when he went to church, he saw a huge mass of people: when Basil says to be baptized, then all the people are baptized, when Basil bows, all the people bow, and the emperor was afraid, he simply went, left the gift and left, it was a miracle of God.

The Liturgy of Basil the Great also remains. The Copts say that they have the text of the Liturgy of Gregory, but this is a later revision, with Monophysite additions. But the Liturgy remained from Basil, and it can be seen there that the prayers were composed according to the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.

These were deeply liturgical fathers, church organizers, organizers of monasticism, preachers, interpreters of Holy Scripture, and great theologians and hierarchs. Then the fathers added John Chrysostom to them, because, after all, Gregory of Nyssa did not have such significance as Chrysostom. In their center is the All-Holy Trinity, in the center is Christ, in the center is the Holy Spirit, in the center is the Church and Christian life and liturgy. And with all this, these fighters for Orthodoxy were personally very humble people, deeply churchly, ready to forgive, love enemies and fight for the purity of the faith. In general, God forbid that we follow our fathers a little bit.

(25 votes : 4.5 out of 5 )

Hypostasis- (from the Greek ὑπόστασις (hypostasis) hypostasis) - 1) a theological term denoting a specific person, individual, object in which real and concrete way is carried out; 2) basis, implementation ().

The concept of "hypostasis" in everyday language meant simply existence. Getting into philosophy, it began to take on the meaning of individual being. The meaning of this concept was transformed by the Orthodox theology of the Great Cappadocians: St. , St. and St. .

First of all, the Great Cappadocians consistently delimited the meaning of the concepts "essence" (nature, essence) and "hypostasis". Following their understanding, the difference between essence and hypostasis is the difference between the general and the particular (private).
“In the Holy Trinity, there is something general, and another particular: the general is attributed to the essence, and the hypostasis means the peculiarity of each Person,” teaches St. Basil the Great. "First," says St. Gregory the Theologian, - means the nature of the Deity, and the latter - the personal properties of the Three. St. Gregory of Nyssa explained that the three Hypostases refer to what is different in God, but is the name of a single and indistinguishable essence.

Having identified the Person and the Hypostasis, the Great Cappadocians introduced a new concept - "personality", which the pagan world did not know. Following their thought, a person is not a part of essence or nature, is not reduced to natural being, is not conceived in natural categories.

Divine Persons, according to the student of the Great Cappadocians, St. , is a way of being of the Divine nature. This means that the one God of Christianity is not the impersonal essence of philosophical speculation, is not an abstraction devoid of a living personal relationship to man. He has a concrete Personal (Hypostatic) existence, His nature exists personally, it is a living personal being. At the same time, the personal existence of the God who created the world exceeds the human mind. The human mind is created, and the God who created it infinitely surpasses the created nature, revealing itself to man in the incomprehensible unity of the inseparable Divine Persons, which is the Beginning of everything, the Creator of the world.

What is essence, hypostasis?

A. M. Leonov
Teacher of Dogmatic Theology (SPb PIriCI)

Hypostasis is a dogmatic term denoting a person, an individual, an object (a specific object), considered as a representative of one or another of the most species (lower) species (that is, a species that is not subdivided into other species), in which nature (essence, nature).
Essence - being, characterized by certain essential differences, realized in the hypostases of one or another of the most specific species.
At one time, the famous philosopher of Antiquity, a student of Plato, Aristotle Stagirite, exploring the general and particular that characterizes the objects of being, thought: “The first essence is the one that each thing has its own, which is not inherent in another, and the universal is common: , which by its nature is inherent in many things. Therefore, what will it be the essence of? Or all the things [which are embraced by it], or one. But for everyone it cannot be an entity. And if it [be it] in one, then all the rest will be this thing; after all, if something has one essence, and the essence of being is one, then such things themselves are one ... After all, all the same, the universal will be the essence of something, just as a person is the essence of [that individual] person in which he is located .. The universal will be the essence (let's take an animal as an example) - in that in which it is located as inherent in itself.
Understanding that absolutely every representative of one or another species (for example: a man, a dog, a horse), along with a common forming principle, has something special (private), Aristotle remarked: “it is impossible and absurd that this thing and essence, consisting of something, would not consist of essences and that which is given independently... , can never represent one thing in the same state. To put it more easily (and, moving on to an example): if we admit that each person has a purely individual essence, peculiar only to him, then it turns out that people are heterogeneous (how many people - so many essences), or, in other words, have different generators and formative "beginnings" and not one. But then the question arises: why are we all (equally) people, why do we all have something single, common, characteristic of each (of us) (due to which we, in fact, are called people)? On the other hand, if we admit that we are all exclusively an essence, and at the same time do not take into account that any person, along with a common and common human essence for all, contains and is something special, how to explain , why do we represent a multitude, and not some one and only essential substratum, and at the same time, each one is unique? So, in any representative of one species or another, be it a man, a dog or a horse, there is something in common, which, in general, unites them into a single species; but there is also something special that distinguishes one individual from another (others). Because of this, one can say about every person, dog or horse as a representative of the species: “so-and-so is a person; this is a dog; this is a horse” and, again, we can say in another way: “this is Peter, different in this and that from Paul and other people; this is Belka, which differs in some way from Strelka and other dogs; this is Bucephalus (Βουκεφάλας), differing in this and that from other horses "...
Later, with the advent of the Redeemer into the world and the formation of the Church, it became necessary to answer a much more sublime and demanded question: how is God single and at the same time trinity, because “three” is not “one”, “one” is not “three” ? It was precisely this problem that the Holy Fathers sought to resolve by introducing the concepts of “essence”, “nature”, “nature”, “individual”, “person”, “hypostasis” into theological usage. Here is what St. John of Damascus writes on this occasion: “Pagan philosophers ... distinguished between substance (essence - Greek ουσια) and nature (φυσις). Namely, substance they called being in general, while nature is substance, formed by essential differences and possessing, along with being in general, the qualitative certainty of being: rational or unreasonable, mortal or immortal, or, as we say, that most immutable and immutable beginning, the cause and the power invested in each species by the Creator for movement ... This they called nature, that is, the lowest species, for example: an angel, a man, a dog, an ox, etc., as more general than hypostases, and covering them, consisting in each hypostasis covered by them in an equal and unchangeable way. So they called hypostasis more private; but the more general and embracing hypostases they called nature; finally, they called existence in general substance. But the Holy Fathers, refusing lengthy word disputes, called what is common and about many subjects, that is, the lower kind, substance (ουσιαν), nature (φυσιν) and form (μορφην), for example, an angel, a man, a dog, etc. ... They called the individual the individual (άτομον) (note: the term “individuum” was introduced into scientific use by Cicero as the Latin analogue of the Greek equivalent - A.L.), face, hypostasis, for example, Peter, Paul. The hypostasis, however, must have a substance with accidents, exist in itself and be contemplated through sensation or actuality (ενεργεια)” . It should be added to the above that the concept of "prosopon" - a person, a person, is not applicable to all hypostases, but only to rationally free ones: to God, angels, people and demons.
So, the common unchanging "beginning", embracing individuals representing one or another lower species, and uniting them as a species, is called nature, essence or essence. In this sense, “kind” and “nature” are synonyms (cf. Rev.: “according to the holy fathers, a person or hypostasis is something special in comparison with the general, for nature is a certain general principle in every thing, and hypostases are separate individuals” , and also: Theodore Abu-Kurra: "Every thing that is defined as the most specific species, after naming the species, is called nature and essence. Therefore, everything that equally shares it is called one-natural and consubstantial, for example, "man "". For it is defined as the most species-specific species. Therefore, at the same time as the species is called, nature and essence are called for what they characterize ... Hence, all who equally belong to him are of the same nature and consubstantial ".). In this context, the “beginning” is the “essential logos” - Divine ideas about a particular nature, contemplated by the Almighty from eternity, actualized and implemented in specific hypostases (of one or another) of the most species type (for example, human nature is realized in specific individuals -people, angelic in angels). Hypostasis, as the saint believes: “There is not an indefinite concept of essence, which, according to the generality of the signified, does not stop at anything, but such a concept that depicts and outlines the general and indefinite in some object with visible distinctive properties.”
From all of the above, it is clear: nature possesses real or real being, being realized in hypostases, individuals, persons (see, for example, St. John of Damascus: “Nature is seen either by speculation alone (for it does not exist by itself), or together in all homogeneous hypostases, linking them, and [then] is called nature, seen in the genus, or it is holistically with the addition of incoming signs in one hypostasis and is called nature, seen in an indivisible being (individual - A. L) ".
Individual hypostatic differences that characterize one or another representative of the species are called "accidents" (from the Latin "accidentia" case, chance). According to the testimony of St. John of Damascus: “Two hypostases cannot but differ from each other by accidents, since they differ from each other in number. It should be noted that the distinctive properties are accidents that characterize the hypostasis. Let us note that the Persons of the Most Holy Trinity also have personal or hypostatic features: God the Father is without beginning, neither is born nor proceeds from anyone; The Son is eternally (timeless) born of God the Father; The Holy Spirit eternally proceeds from the Father. These features are called personal or hypostatic properties. However, they are not called accidents, because in God there is nothing superficial or accidental (“God is not a man to lie to Him, and not a son of man to change Him. Will he say and will not do? Will he speak and will not do?” (