In the Western theological (as well as historical and philosophical) tradition , patristics (Greek: rcaxfjp , Latin: pater, father) is usually called a conditional set of teachings of the fathers of the Christian church of the 2nd-8th centuries. Initially, a “father” was called a spiritual mentor who possessed a teaching authority recognized in the church. Subsequently, by the 5th century, four fundamental characteristics of the patristic model were finally established: 1) holiness of life; 2) antiquity; 3) orthodoxy of teaching; 4) official recognition by the church. The last “father” from the point of view of the Western, Catholic, theological tradition was John of Damascus (d. 753), but all other Christian authors who lived after him were called “church writers”. On the contrary, according to the Greek, Orthodox, tradition, sacred tradition, in essence, is not subject to any chronological specification: the Holy Spirit acts through people at all times; The Orthodox Church considers the main criterion in determining the degree of orthodoxy of the views of a particular father not to be antiquity, or even holiness in itself, but the spiritual closeness of the teaching in relation to the canons of the apostolic faith commanded by the church.
Evidence of the numerous difficulties and disagreements within the emerging Christian ecclesiastical and theological culture were the long disputes around the “catholicity” and “orthodoxy” of various currents and trends within the spiritual tradition of the emerging new (medieval) Europe, which was gradually and slowly becoming aware of the unity of its components – past, future and present. In particular, it is no accident that the teachings of many significant theologians (including such undoubted “masters of thought” as Tertullian and especially Origen) were rejected, persecuted and condemned by the early church as not meeting the requirements of orthodoxy.
Early Patristics (2nd – 3rd centuries)
The period of early patristics is traditionally divided into two stages. The first stage (2nd – early 3rd centuries) includes the work of the earliest thinkers of patristic theological culture, who laid the foundation for future Christian dogmatics (the “apostolic fathers” and early apologist fathers). The second stage (late 2nd – 3rd centuries) includes the work of a number of Christian writers – the authors of the first universal theological systems in the history of medieval European self-awareness (Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria and Origen). The beginning of patristics is marked by the appearance of the works of the so-called “apostolic fathers”, which usually include the names of six Christian authors of the first half of the 2nd century: Barnabas, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Polycarp of Smyrna, Hermas and Papias; and also one work by an unknown author under the conventional title “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles of Gili, according to the first word of the text, Didache, i.e. “teaching”)”. The “Apostolic Fathers” were considered either direct disciples of the Apostles or disciples of their closest successors. In general, the style of thinking of these fathers is characterized by a complete lack of systematicity, high religiosity and an intra-church orientation. In their writings, most often written on a specific occasion, Christian doctrine is presented with a predominance of moralizing elements over elements of abstract theological theory. The life and preaching of Christ are presented in these texts as a new law that came into this world to replace the ancient legislation and, with the coming of Christ, obsolete (“Old Testament”); Christian life in church communities is described as obedience to this law. The basis of salvation is the death and resurrection of Christ: through Him is given the forgiveness of sins and liberation from misfortunes. “Death to the world” and “following Christ” are proclaimed as the supreme moral imperatives. Sin is described as corruption and evil desire, ignorance and error; salvation is viewed as eternal life, freedom from death, and the attainment of truth. God is one, omnipotent, unknowable to man; he created this visible world and thereby revealed his grace, his will, and his righteousness. Christ is God incarnate in man; he has reigned in heaven secretly since the beginning of time and will appear on the appointed day as judge of the living and the dead.
The Apostolic Fathers are an important link between the time of Revelation and the era of tradition; their thinking represents the first experience of theoretical reflection, when Christian thought was only just beginning to recognize its own content and, as a rule, addressed itself exclusively to a small church audience. The Apostolic Fathers were the first to sense the importance and complexity of the task of cultural self-determination of Christianity at the end of ancient times, but the solution to this task required means that these writers did not possess.
By the middle of the 2nd century, separate groups of a few Christians lived in a society whose entire cultural structure and centuries-old traditions sharply contradicted the Christian worldview. In the Roman Empire of the second century, Christianity was declared an “illegal religion”: it was not included in the list of religious teachings permitted by law, and therefore even the slightest suspicion of a Roman citizen’s belonging to this considered false and harmful “sect” was sufficient legal grounds for persecution. In order for the new faith to acquire a legitimate character, the Christian church had first of all to come to terms with the syncretism (coexistence of many beliefs) that prevailed in Roman pagan society, i.e. to recognize Jesus Christ as “only” one of the gods of the Roman pantheon and agree to participate in the cult of the deified Roman emperor and the Roman gods. The fact that many Christians categorically rejected both served as sufficient grounds for the Roman imperial administration to accuse them of atheism. In this complex and difficult historical situation, the phenomenon of public, albeit one-sided, polemics between learned Christians and the enlightened pagan intelligentsia arose, which was called apologetics (Greek απολογία – “defensive speech”). Among the earliest apologist fathers of the 2nd half of the 15th century were: In the 2nd century, those who wrote in Greek included Quadratus, Aristides, Apollonius, Justin the Philosopher and Martyr (First Apology, Dialogue with Trypho), Tatian of Assyria (Speech Against the Hellenes), Athenagoras of Athens (Petition for Christians, On the Resurrection of the Dead), Theophilus of Antioch (Three Books to Autolycus on the Christian Faith), and Melito of Sardis; early apologetics also included to a significant extent Irenaeus of Lyons, who wrote in Greek, his student Hippolytus of Rome, and Origen in some of his works (Against Celsus); as well as the first Christian Latin-language authors of the late 2nd and early 3rd centuries, Minucius Felix (Octavis) and Tertullian (Apologetics, To the Pagans, On the Testimony of the Soul).
The writings of the apologists were first addressed to an external, pagan audience – significantly more prepared in theological and philosophical science than most early Christians. The apologists had to prove to the pagan world that 1) pagan beliefs were much more absurd and reprehensible than Christianity in the eyes of its opponents; that 2) Hellenic philosophy was drowned in contradictions and was incapable of giving the world a single universal truth; that 3) the best representatives of ancient pagan philosophy (primarily Heraclitus, Socrates, Plato and some Stoics) were close to Christianity; that 4) Christianity is in the proper sense the only true and suitable philosophy for all. The facts from the biography of Justin the Philosopher are indicative of the phenomenon of apologetics as a whole.(d. 165), which he himself reports in his Dialogue with Tryphon the Jew. Here Justin speaks of himself as a sincere admirer of all kinds of philosophical wisdom, the purpose of which is to serve as a basis for understanding God and being and, through knowledge of the highest principles, to lead man to happiness. In search of the best mentors, Justin turns alternately to the Stoics, then to the Peripatetic scholars, then to the mysterious Pythagoreans – but disappointment awaited him each time. Finally, he finds himself among the Platonists: “Plato’s doctrine of the incorporeal greatly delighted me,” Justin says, “and the theory of ideas gave wings to my thought; in a short time, it seemed, I became a sage, and in my recklessness I hoped to soon contemplate God himself, for such is the goal of Plato’s philosophy” (Justin. Dialogue with Tryphon, 2. Trans. P. A. Preobrazhensky). Following this, while in philosophical solitude, he meets a certain old man who begins to question the neophyte Platonist about the essence of God the Creator and the nature of the soul. When Justin expounded to his interlocutor Plato’s views on God and the theory of the transmigration of souls, the old man noted one obvious inconsistency: if the souls that have seen God forget everything after entering the body, then their bliss is illusory and does not bring peace; if those who, due to unworthiness, cannot see ideas and God, remain in material captivity as a punishment for their unworthiness, then this punishment is essentially useless, since they do not suffer from a sense of loss and do not know regret. If the soul of man is immortal and lives constantly, eternally, then this is not because the soul is immortal life, as Plato teaches, but because God wants it, such is His will. The elder advises Justin to read the writings of the ancient prophets and the books of the apostles, since only these writings contain the truth. “A fire immediately kindled in my heart, and I was seized with love for the prophets and those men who are friends of Christ; and, reflecting with myself on his words, I saw that this philosophy is the only one, solid and useful. In this way I became a philosopher” (Dialogue with Tryphon, 8. Translated by P. A. Preobrazhensky). From the point of view of the apologists, Christian doctrine is the true philosophy, and only the Christian faith is capable of answering all those questions that were left unanswered by the entire previous philosophical tradition. Only Christianity is capable of giving to the suffering what philosophers seek but cannot find, since the source of Christian wisdom is not the human mind, no matter how talented and sophisticated, but Divine Revelation.
In order to defend the foundations of Christian dogma from the attacks of pagan criticism, the apologists needed a universal and strong idea that would become a solid foundation for understanding and adequately presenting — in the face of educated opponents — the theoretical principles of the new doctrine. This idea in the teaching of the early apologist fathers was the idea of Reason — Logos (Greek λόγο ς — “speech”, “word”, “concept”, “reason”), identified by them, on the one hand, with Jesus Christ and the Wisdom of God — in accordance with the theological theory of Apostle John (John 1:1), and, on the other hand, with the paradigms of the early Stoic and Platonic philosophical traditions. God is understood by the apologists as an incomprehensible being, transcendental to the world, eternal, immutable and self-sufficient. The Second Person (hypostasis) of the divine Trinity — Logos, the Son of God, Christ — is present in God the Father as a kind of “rational potential” that receives its “energetic” and hypostatic (Greek: шботаоц — “implementation”) expression in the act of creation of the universe. In eternity, Logos was together with God as God’s own mind and providence (Greek: Х.о/о<; Ёу5ш9етос, — “inner logos”, a term of Stoic philosophy), after which, by the decision of God the Father, at the creation of the world, God the Logos (Christ) began to literally “manifest himself outwardly” (Greek: λόγο ς προφορικός “external logos”), thereby determining the direction of the implementation of the eternal plan. Logos is the Word born of the Father; Through Him all things were created.
A characteristic feature of the theology of the early apologists was subordinationism (the doctrine of the unequal importance of the hypostases of the Holy Trinity), which was completely overcome only in the works of the representatives of mature patristics, the so-called Cappadocians – Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and Gregory of Nyssa (second half of the 4th century). The fact is that the birth (i.e., entry into hypostatic existence) of the Son-Logos was considered by the apologists to be an event associated with the act of creation of the universe. As a result, it turned out that the Son of God is something that is “later” and “lesser” than the Father, i.e. is “not equal” to the Father, being a god-intermediary between God the Creator and the universe as a whole. By assuming the possibility of a difference between God the Father and the Logos-Son, which would be conditioned by the fact and time of the origin of the world, the apologists thereby introduced elements of development and change into the nature of the divine essence. The apologists did not write much about the third Person (hypostasis) of the divine Trinity – the Holy Spirit, and therefore it is not possible to speak of a complete and thought-out theology of the trinity in relation to these Christian writers.
Early Christian apologetics of the 1st to 3rd centuries was of great importance for the entire subsequent history of patristic thought: the apologists were the first to recognize the possibility of a profound synthesis of Christianity and Hellenic education and demonstrated its exceptionally productive nature. In addition, they were the first to welcome the emerging interest in Christianity on the part of the enlightened pagan intelligentsia; here it will be enough to mention the popular saying of the 2nd century Pythagorean Platonist Numenius of Apamea: “What is Plato if not Moses speaking Attic?” or the assumptions of Kells, a well-known critic of Christianity, that Jesus was certainly a reader of Plato’s works, and the Apostle Paul of Heraclitus (Origen. Against Kells, VI, 12; 16).
Another important attempt to give Christianity the character of an ordered philosophical teaching was Gnosticism, which was a conglomerate of numerous religious and philosophical movements of the 1st-4th centuries, in which a special role was played by the so-called gnosis (Greek: gnosis; – “knowledge”) – secret knowledge about the universe, God and man, revealed by a certain Savior (or saviors) and preserved by the esoteric tradition.
Possession of such knowledge in itself led to salvation. Until the end of the 19th century, Gnostic teachings were known only from the works of heresiologists – Christian authors who systematically refuted heresies and argued with the Gnostics. In the 19th century, several Gnostic works in Coptic translation were discovered in Egypt, the most significant of which is the so-called “Pistis Sophia”. In 1945, a Gnostic library was found in Egypt near the town of Nag Hammadi (ancient Henoboskion), including 52 works; they belong to different Gnostic movements and are written in the Coptic language. Various Gnostic sects are known: Ophites, Barbelognostics, Carpocratians and others. The names of many Gnostic teachers, creators of philosophical and religious systems, are also known: Simon Magus, Marcion, Theodotus, Mark, Menander, Satornilus, Carpocrates, Valentinus, Basilides and others. The purpose of higher knowledge (gnosis) is to answer a number of fundamental questions: “Who were we? Who have we become? Where were we? Where were we thrown? Where are we striving? How are we liberated? What is birth? What is rebirth?” (Clement of Alexandria. Extracts from Theodotus, 78, 2). The answers to these questions reveal the negative attitude of the Gnostics to the structure of the Universe, as well as to the creator of this world (“false god”) – the boastful and unreasonable Demiurge, who was usually identified with the Creator God of the Old Testament. Along with the conviction of the extreme inferiority of the Creator God and the entire universe, the Gnostics were also distinguished by the certainty that “at the very top,” outside the order of things, is the true God and Father, the Unknowable God—all-good and all-perfect.
At the very beginning of time, the Supreme God gives birth from his own essence to the Pleroma (Greek πλήρωμα — “fullness”, “abundance”, “multitude”) — the fullness of perfect being, consisting of pairwise connected hypostases-eons (Greek αιών — “age”, “period of time”, “eternity”, “time-limited world order”) — a kind of “ladder of being”, on the steps of which all the emanations of the eternal and perfect nature are hierarchically arranged. The last in the order of the eons, possessing a female nature (Sophia), guided by the audacious self-will “to be” (“to be by oneself”), intends to become like the Supreme God. As a result of this unreasonable impulse, Sophia gives birth to an absurd and ugly creature and, horrified by what she has done, literally “pushes” her offspring beyond the boundaries of super-existent being. The son of Sophia (often called Ialdabaoth), born as a result of error, is the embodiment of ignorance (Greek: ochg^^kpa) and folly; he appoints himself the only God and begins the creation of a world as flawed and ugly as its creator. He rules this world together with the archons (i.e., literally, “rulers”), whom he himself once created. When the turn comes for the creation of the first man, then the intervention of the higher – good and truthful – powers takes place invisibly, and then the man, called either Adam or Adam Kadmon, receives a particle of the true essence of the highest deity, which passes from him to posterity. By virtue of participation in a pure, immortal and unstained by falsehood nature, man is a wanderer and a stranger in this world; the true homeland for man is the Pleroma, and not the space and history of this world; the meaning and goal of human life should be salvation from it. Gnosis, secret knowledge, is precisely the awareness of man of his original divinity; the acquisition of gnosis in itself automatically signifies man’s salvation, his return to himself. The symbol and model for such self-knowledge and, as a consequence, liberation from everything specifically material and worldly, from the point of view of the representatives of Christian Gnosticism – Marcion, his closest disciple Apelles, Valentinus and Basilides (approximately the middle of the 2nd century), was Jesus Christ. In the life of Christ, from the point of view of Gnosticism, death and suffering, in essence, have no meaning, since Christ is, in fact, not a man, but a spiritual being, descended from the aeons. This Christ was never “born”, did not “live”, did not “die”, but, preaching the truth, only clothed himself for a time in a ghostly shell. The goal of Christ was the salvation of Sophia (Greek σοφία – “wisdom”), who had fallen into poverty, her return to pure being and the replenishment of the Pleroma to its original state; and, as a consequence, the liberation of human souls from the captivity of matter and their return to the “spiritual heavens”.
For more than half a century, Gnosticism successfully competed with the orthodox teaching of the church, trying in its own way to synthesize and generalize the achievements of Hellenic philosophical science and the content of the New Testament Gospel. Most of the outstanding theologians of the second half of the 2nd – early 3rd centuries devoted themselves to the fight against Gnosticism; among them, the names of Justin; Irenaeus of Lyons; Hippolytus of Rome and Quintus Septimius Tertullian stand out. Gnosticism as a special phenomenon of late antique religious and philosophical culture finally disappeared by the 5th century, but individual elements of the Gnostic teaching later formed the basis of Manichaeism (which arose in the 3rd century) and numerous heresies of the Christian Middle Ages (Paulicians, Bogomils, Cathars).
The first center of formation of speculative universal theological systems in the Christian East was the Alexandrian theological school. The first known head of this school was a certain Pantene; he left no works behind him. Pantene’s students were the greatest representatives of the school – Clement of Alexandria and Origen.
Titus Flavius Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – 216) was born into a pagan family and received an excellent education. After adopting Christianity and wandering for many years, Clement ended up in Alexandria (c. 180), where around 200 he replaced Pantene as the head of the local church (the so-called catechetical) school. In 202, due to the persecution of Christians that began in Alexandria, Clement was forced to secretly flee Egypt and go to Cappadocia (a region in the northern part of the Asia Minor peninsula), where he lived his last years.
Clement entered the history of patristic thought as the creator of the first universal system of Christian education and, at the same time, the first universal theoretical theological system. Clement’s goal was to transform Christian doctrine into a solid building of Christian science and to develop a methodology for its adequate assimilation. Clement’s main works constitute a kind of “trilogy” united by a common pedagogical concept. “Protrepticus” (or “Exhortation to the Greeks”) is studied at the preparatory stage; the task of this work is to turn away from superstition and bring closer to faith. “The Pedagogus” is the second stage, serving the healing of passions and the education of the soul. The highest stage, the stage of knowledge of God, is made up of “Stromata” (literally “patchwork covers”) – Clement’s most significant work; here the sum of Christian knowledge, the true “gnosis”, is set forth.
Developing the general principles of the apologists’ theology, Clement arrives at the thesis of harmony between faith and reason. Faith, according to Clement, is the first step to achieving perfection and an indispensable condition for advancing to “gnosis”: neither reliable knowledge nor a happy life are possible without faith. With the help of the method of interpreting allegories (the allegorical method), reason helps to clarify the content of faith. The purpose of philosophy is to make the transition from faith to true knowledge. The whole body of human knowledge about the world serves as a foundation for the construction of true philosophy, just as philosophy itself serves as an aid to the construction of true theology: “Philosophy was necessary to the Greeks for the sake of righteousness before the coming of the Lord, and even now it is useful for the development of true religion, as a preparatory discipline for those who come to faith through demonstration… For God is the source of all good: either directly, as in the Old and New Testaments, or indirectly, as in the case of philosophy. But it is even possible that philosophy was given to the Greeks directly, for it was the “schoolmaster” (Gal. 3:24) of Hellenism to Christ, just as the Law was for the Jews. Thus philosophy was a preparation that paved the way for man to perfection in Christ” (Clement of Alexandria. Stromata, I, 5).
True “gnosis” includes two components: knowledge of God (theology) and the achievement of the highest moral perfection. Knowledge of the essence of God in terms of positive, cataphatic theology (Greek κατάφασις – “affirmation”), from the point of view of Clement of Alexandria, is not achievable in its fullness; one can know with certainty about God only what God is not, and therefore, in order to express the essence of the inexpressible, there is a need for negative, apophatic theology (Greek άπόφασις – “negation”). God is above all that exists, above his very uniqueness; he is infinite, formless and has no name. God is cognizable only in his own Reason, i.e., the divine Logos, the Son, who is the “power” and “wisdom” of the Father; he exists from the beginning of time, is born, but not created. Logos-Christ is the “energy” of God the Father, the unchanging mediator between the Creator and the universe as a whole. Logos in the structure of the divine hierarchy is located below the Father, and the further down from Logos, the weaker the connection with the first-united origin becomes. According to Clement of Alexandria, reaching the highest level of knowledge of God is accompanied by moral perfection: in a true “gnostic” there is a fusion of theoretical sophistication and ascetic impeccability; the Platonic ideal of contemplation of essences (eternal and unchanging) is identified with the Christian ideals of faith, hope, love.
The second outstanding representative of the Alexandrian school was Origen (c. 185 – 263/264), who can be called without much exaggeration the founder of speculative Christian theology. Origen was born into a wealthy Christian family in Alexandria and from his earliest childhood began to attend the elementary grades of the famous school led by Pantene and Clement. Over time, Origen changed his initial negative attitude to philosophy: around 210, he became a student of the famous Pythagorean Ammonius Saccas (c. 175 – 242), who later taught Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism. Origen worked fruitfully in Alexandria for almost 30 years, after which, due to conflicts with the authorities, he left Egypt and went to Palestine, to the city of Caesarea, where he founded a new theological school. Origen died during the persecution of Christians during the time of Emperor Decius.
Origen’s personality and work have always been surrounded by extraordinary honor and respect. Many important elements of Origen’s theology were laid as the foundation for various teachings, both heretical and Orthodox. At the same time, much in this theory was questioned by church authorities, which ultimately led to the condemnation of the views of the Alexandrian theologian under Emperor Justinian (553). Of the 2,000 works written by Origen, some writings (the majority) were irretrievably lost, while others have come down to us in translations by enthusiastic students and admirers, who often distorted the meaning of his theological views.
Origen saw the pinnacle of Greek philosophy in Christian teaching: pagan Platonism became a model for it (as for all patristic thought after him). Here, Origen’s interest in a strict method of proof, mathematics, logic and numerical symbolism is explained. The allegorical method is proclaimed as the main means of interpreting the texts of Holy Scripture, distinguishing three levels of meaning in each fragment: literal (corporeal), mental (ethical) and spiritual (abstract-theological). The principles of theological theory are set out in the work “On the Principles”. The first book speaks of God as the eternal source of all that exists; the second – about the structure of the Universe and the creation of the world; the third – about man and his purpose; and, finally, the fourth book treats of Revelation and the ways of its comprehension. All truths of faith, according to Origen, are divided into essential (i.e. the most important principles of doctrine, summarized in the Creed) and non-essential (which are not stated clearly enough in Scripture or are not stated at all). With regard to the consideration of the first, essential truths, no freedom of judgment that leads to disagreement is admissible, whereas on particular issues (concerning created things of the imperfect universe), theologians are free to rely on their own reason. Origen’s God is a unity, or “monad”, which exceeds everything that can be said and thought about God. Origen also often uses the expression “Trinity” and, in his discussions of the relationships between the Persons of the Trinity, for the first time in the history of Christian theology, uses the concept of “consubstantial” (Greek: ομοούσιος). The Son of God, who is the Divine Wisdom and the divine Logos, is likened to a ray of light emanating from the eternal, inexhaustible source and at the same time containing (potentially) the entire universe. The Logos is the eternal reflection of the prototype, the super-existent “monad,” God the Father, but in relation to the created world he is the prototype, or “idea of ideas,” and all things are reflections of the Logos, but not of the supreme God. The Logos is, as it were, a mediator between God and the world, through whom God, i.e. the “monad” — super-existent and super-thinkable — unfolds into multiplicity. The Holy Spirit is located at the very bottom of the hierarchy of divine hypostases and permeates the entire universe. The action of God the Father extends to all that exists, God the Son (Christ) — to the rational, God the Holy Spirit — to the holy (Origen. On Principles, 1,2-3). Just as in the teaching of the Neoplatonists the Mind is eternally born from the One, so in the teaching of Origen the second Person (hypostasis) of the divine Trinity is eternally born, flows from the first. The act of creation of the world, like the birth of the Son from God the Father, is also necessarily eternal: God can be neither the Creator nor the Almighty. The true world is the world of “intellects” (angels, souls, pure minds), and not matter – self-identical and unitary. The created, sensory world exists in time and is neither constant nor even unique: worlds constantly replace each other (Origen.On the Principles, II, 1; III, 5), and rational souls (minds, “intellects”) are capable of migrating from one created world to another (Origen. On the Principles, II, 8). The soul is something between flesh and spirit (Greek πνεύμα). It is capable, on the one hand, of approaching God and becoming pure spirit, mind (“intellect”), and can, on the other hand, incline towards matter, pure non-existence. Both of its states are conditioned by the fact that any rational being is endowed by nature with the ability to choose – between abundance and deficiency, good and evil, etc. Evil is a falling away from the fullness of being to non-existence (Origen. On the Principles, II, 8; III, 1), i.e., a consequence of a false, but free choice. Evil, misfortune, injustice, vice, non-existence and matter, says Origen, are not something that arose through the thoughtlessness of God – the good and omnipotent; all these things are the consequence of the false choice of created minds endowed with freedom. In the sensory world there can be no substantial good and evil (evil and good are inherent in things accidentally), and therefore there is not a single ultimately fallen and doomed creature in the universe; even the devil, according to Origen, is capable of good (Origen. On Principles, I, 8). All rational beings together form a single hierarchy of being, the place in which depends on the degree of moral perfection. The goal for every person – that is, the mind (“intellect”), mired in the impurity of the material world – is a gradual return to the original state of knowledge of God, unity with God, salvation, “restoration” (Greek: αποκατάστασις), which is ultimately assumed to be inevitable for the entire universe.— is a gradual return to the original state of knowledge of God, unity with God, salvation, “restoration” (Greek: αποκατάστασις), which is ultimately assumed to be inevitable for the entire universe.— is a gradual return to the original state of knowledge of God, unity with God, salvation, “restoration” (Greek: αποκατάστασις), which is ultimately assumed to be inevitable for the entire universe.
Among the Christian Latin-language writers of the early patristics period, the name of a native of Carthage, Quintus Septimius Florentus Tertullian (c. 160 – after 220), stands out. In his youth, Tertullian, born into a noble pagan Roman family, received a comprehensive secular education – rhetorical, philosophical and legal. After adopting Christianity (between 185 and 197), Tertullian was a priest and lawyer for some time (with legal practice in Rome and Carthage). In the very beginning of the 200s, he became a passionate adherent of Montanism (the “Phrygian heresy”) – a heretical sect with a strict charter and heightened attention to prophetic and ecstatic states. After leaving the Montanists, Tertullian became the founder of his own sect in Carthage. Approximately c. 240 he dies. Among the numerous (more than thirty) surviving works of Tertullian, the most important are “Apologetic”, “On the Testimony of the Soul”, “On the Soul”, “On the Prescription against Heretics”, “On the Flesh of Christ”, “On the Resurrection of the Flesh”, “Against Hermogenes”, “Against Praxeas”, “Against Marcion”. The tone of his works – sharp, passionate and polemical – is typical of many ancient African writers, who, like him, possessed an original and complex character, in which severe sobriety was combined with an ardent desire for truth and merciless irreconcilability towards enemies.
Unlike the apologists, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, or (later) Augustine, Tertullian refuses to see in Christianity a “new philosophy”: “What is there in common between a philosopher and a Christian? Between a student of Greece and a student of Heaven? Between a seeker after truth and a seeker after eternal life?” (Tertullian. Apologetic, 46); “What are Athens to Jerusalem? What is the Academy to the Church? What are heretics to Christians?” (On the Prescription against Heretics, 7). Philosophy is the source of all heresies, alien and secretly hostile to the truth of Revelation. God is above the laws, distinctions, and definitions that philosophical natural reason wants to impose on him; the questions “why?” and “why?” are inapplicable to God. Only the human soul, which, in Tertullian’s words, “is Christian by nature” (anima naturaliter Christiana), can know God by the power of faith. In order to truly appear, God must be understood in a deliberately non-philosophical, paradoxical, and non-“natural” way: “The Son of God was crucified – this is not shameful, for it is worthy of shame; and the Son of God died – this is absolutely certain, for it is absurd; and, having been buried, he rose again – this is certain, for it is impossible” (On the Flesh of Christ, 5). Many of his paradoxes were subsequently reduced to the formula, later attributed to Tertullian in absentia, “I believe, because it is absurd” (credo quia absurdum).
Faith has both a value and a logical priority over knowledge: it is faith that sets the goals, object, and boundaries of rational comprehension (On the Prescription Against Heretics, 7; Against Hermogenes, 4-5). In accordance with this principle, Tertullian distinguishes two main types of knowledge: revealed and natural. Any empirical knowledge begins with sensory perception; primary ideas about the universe, God, the soul, good and evil, etc. naturally arise in the soul (On the Resurrection of the Flesh, 3; 5), which, in turn, resembles the Stoic view of the nature of general concepts. Chronologically, natural knowledge may precede familiarization with the text of Holy Scripture, which, being the main source of the commanded truth, must be learned in the process of Christian education. The formal criterion of truth is authority (Latin auctoritas); the fundamental source of authority is Holy Scripture, apostolic tradition and church succession.
The general principles of Tertullian’s theology directly go back to Stoic physics. Everything that exists is corporeal, nothing incorporeal exists, and there is no third. God is the one, eternal, supreme, omnipotent and all-good Being. He is the Creator of the universe, existing outside the universe and having created it from nothing. At the same time, God, like all existing things, is substantially corporeal: “Who will deny that God is a body, although He is Spirit? For the Spirit is a kind of body in its own image (corpus sui generis in sua effigie)” (Against Praxeas, 7). In the same way, according to Tertullian’s teaching, the human soul is a specific “body”. The essence (substantia) of the three divine hypostases is the same: God, in accordance with the principle of “consubstantiality”, is simultaneously triune and one. “Unity, producing from itself the Trinity, is not destroyed, but is ordered” (Against Praxeas, 3). Christ is the Son of God, the divine Reason (Logos) and the divine Wisdom (Sophia). The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and from the Son. Along with the assertion of the principle of “consubstantiality”, Tertullian also introduces the concept of “distribution” (distributio, dispositio): “The Father is the whole substance, the Son is the derivative and part” (Against Praxeas, 9). Tertullian seeks to emphasize that the Trinity of God originally existed in potentiality, and was actually revealed at the creation of the world through the Logos-Son and the Holy Spirit (Against Praxeas, 26; Against Hermogenes, 3; 18). As a result, Tertullian’s teaching on the Logos acquires features of subordinationism (the introduction of a hierarchical relationship between the Persons of the Trinity), which is a common characteristic of almost all early apologists.
The main question of Tertullian’s Christology is the relationship between the two natures in Christ, the divine and the human. Christ is “a man united to God” (Apologetics, 21; On the Flesh of Christ, 15). The union of these substances should be understood as “a twofold nature, not mixed, but united in one Person” (Against Praxeas, 27). Man is a rational and free being, created in the image and likeness of God. The image of God is the soul, the likeness is in the good disposition of the soul (On the Resurrection of the Body, 6; Against Marcion, II, 9). In the soul, as in God, “body” and “spirit” are distinguished – two different, but corporeal substances. The soul is defined as “the breath of God, created from the Spirit (flatus Dei factus ex Spiritu)” (On the Soul, 11), is located in the heart and is identified with the “leading” and “life-giving” principle (On the Soul, 5; 15; On the Resurrection of the Flesh, 15; 28). Reason is a special “structure” of the soul, manifested in it after birth (On the Soul, 12). The soul is generated bodily, as if passed on by inheritance; the new soul inherits the characteristic properties of the parent souls. The birth of man is the union of the soul with the flesh, death is their separation. As such, the soul is immortal (On the Soul, 9; On the Resurrection of the Flesh, 1; 16; 35; 53) and has “natural” knowledge of God and its own secret nature.
The founders of the new speculative theological science (Christian) – the Alexandrians and Tertullian – laid the foundation for the building of Christian dogmatics erected by the church. Representatives of the following generations of Christian thinkers were able to build the building to the end and bring order to this house.
Mature Patristics (IV-V centuries)
Mature patristics is the era in the history of Christian theology between the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea (325) and the Fourth Council of Chalcedon (451). At this time, the Christian Church became the state church for the first time (380), and patristics reached its highest flowering. The history of theological teachings of the 4th century is, first of all, a complex and colorful picture of numerous disputes and disagreements around the most popular heresy of that time – Arianism. The teaching of the Alexandrian presbyter Arius (d. 335) did not contain anything specifically new in light of the earlier theological searches of the 2nd – 3rd centuries. The God of Arius is a “monad”, self-sufficient and perfect. By virtue of his unique nature, God is not able to convey or communicate his essence to anything at all. Consequently, Arius reasoned, the second and third divine hypostases are not consubstantial with the first. Since the “monad” cannot generate anything from its own essence, the divine Logos (Christ) is not born by God the Father, but is literally created from nothing, like the entire universe. Arius consistently denies the Logos-Son the character of a co-eternal being with God the Father and calls Him “deity” only by way of honorific naming.
The undisputed primacy in the struggle against Arianism belongs to St. Athanasius of Alexandria (c. 293 – 373). In the Trinitarian question, St. Athanasius was an adherent of the formula of “consubstantiality” and put forward against Arius, among others, the following arguments: 1) if Christ is a created being and is not consubstantial with the Father, then salvation is impossible, for only one God saves, who descended to humanity in New Testament times in order to thereby elevate it to himself, or, more precisely, “deify” it; 2) from the teaching of Arius follows the worship of created things and polytheism. For Athanasius, the meaning of salvation is closely connected with creation. God the Creator and the Savior (Christ) are different hypostases of the consubstantial Deity. According to Athanasius, the almighty Creator himself performs salvation, the purpose of which is to raise a created being that has fallen into sin back to its original purpose. For example, man was created at the beginning of time “in the likeness of God,” but subsequently fell and lost his participation in the Creator, becoming subject to death and decay. Salvation, according to Athanasius, is accomplished after the Son of God, the divine Logos, descends to human nature and thereby “renews” it, i.e., brings it back into the divine “image.” The Trinity for Athanasius is an indivisible essential unity; it is not divided into parts—into a created thing and a Creator—but is entirely creative. Logos is eternally born from the divine essence of God the Father, and not simply from the fact of the divine will, which at a certain moment (according to the teaching of Athanasius, completely freely, i.e. without any necessity) creates the entire sensory world from non-existent non-being.
The most authoritative representatives of Greek mature patristics were the Cappadocian Fathers: Basil the Great (Archbishop of Cappadocia), Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzus) and Gregory of Nyssa. The most important stage in the formation of Christian dogma is associated with the Cappadocians. Among their most significant achievements is the final confirmation and clarification of the meaning of the formulations of the Nicene Creed.
The leader of the Cappadocians was St. Basil the Great, Bishop of Caesarea (c. 330-379). Basil was born in Caesarea of Cappadocia, into a Christian family. He received his education in Constantinople and Athens, where around 350 he became acquainted with two young men – Gregory (Nazianzus) and Julian – the future Emperor Flavius Claudius Julianus (the Apostate) (331-363). He was baptized
Basil, at the age of 25 and captivated by the monastic life, set out on a long journey through the monastic centers of Egypt and Palestine. Returning to Caesarea, he founded a small community here together with Gregory Nazianzus, whose members were engaged in the study of theology, and especially Origen. In 370, Basil the Great was elected Archbishop of Cappadocia and took on the full burden of the struggle against the Arians and Arianism.
Basil’s theological views are set out in his main works – “Against Eunomius”; “On the Holy Spirit”; “Hexaemeron” (a commentary on the first chapter of the Book of Genesis, dedicated to the “six days of creation”). The problem of knowledge of God, that is, the possibility of knowing God and communicating with Him, is discussed in the polemical book “Against Eunomius”. Eunomius of Cappadocia was an Arian, and in his theology, as in the teachings of Arius, the influence of Greek philosophy prevailed, which was largely incompatible with the mystery and truth of Christian Revelation. The main points of Eunomius’s theological views are as follows. Firstly, knowledge of God is possible at the level of created being, that is, through His (completely accidental) manifestations in the world. This knowledge, Eunomius asserts, is indirect, “figurative,” “symbolic,” because we, moving in the world of things, do not comprehend God, not the essence of the eternal Deity, but only briefly learn about His being, as if reading a book. Secondly, Eunomius asserts, the human mind, having purified and elevated itself, is capable of achieving an understanding of the highest and most significant characteristic of God the Father — “unbegotten” (Greek: άγέννητος). The Supreme God has no source of being, he is “unbegotten” and alone eternal; this is precisely what distinguishes Him from all being created by Him, including Christ, who is just as “begotten” (created) as everything else.
Basil disagreed with Eunomius on all of the above points. First, God used His own Reason (the divine Logos) in the creation of the world in a very real way, and therefore eternal life is really present in the world and in all created things. Basil believes that by observing the divine world order, man has access to real knowledge of God the Father, God the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and not just symbols and “unreal images” (Greek φαντάσματα). Second, Basil asserts, the human mind cannot comprehend the entire divine essence—the mind tends to “become satiated” without going beyond its limitations. Third, the “begottenness” of Christ does not mean His “createdness.” In this case, he draws attention to the difference between two similar adjectives: Greek φαντάσματα. άγέννητος and άγένητος. The first word means “unborn”, and the second – “unbecoming”. The Son is born of the Father, but at the same time did not become, did not arise, did not happen, the Son did not come into being from non-being, but is eternally born. The question of the divine essence was directly related to the theme of the trinity. In the system of Eunomius, God was identified with the concept of “essence”, “eternal, unborn being”, from which followed His simplicity, indivisibility. From the point of view of Cappadocian theology, much more important in God is the paradoxical connection of the three divine hypostases – God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit – according to Aristotle, the three “first essences”, each of which has a separate, personal, “substantial” being. Their generic, “second,” universal essence is one for all—in this sense, the concept of the triune God is applicable to the divine Trinity. The source of the difference between the Persons of the Trinity, Basil asserts, is not in the essence (God has one essence); it lies in their hypostatic relationship. In this way, Cappadocian thought freed the doctrine of the divine Trinity from both Arian subordinationism (that is, inequality, subordination of the Persons) and from relativistic modalism (in which the Persons of the Trinity are considered as different expressions of one and the same essence).
One of the most famous works of Basil of Caesarea, the Hexaemeron, is devoted to explaining the creation and structure of the universe. In this work, Basil demonstrates the richest erudition, repeatedly using the works of numerous authors (among others, Plato and Aristotle) and using the allegorical method and numerical symbolism at every step. The world is the creation of God, who created everything from nothing at a certain initial period of time, or, more precisely, simultaneously with time, since before the “first day,” Basil explains, there was no time, just as there was nothing. Discussing the meaning of the “first day” of the creation of the universe, the author uses numerical symbolism, traditional for ancient, “antique” natural philosophy. For example, “seven” in Scripture symbolizes the sensory world, Basil asserts, which was created at the beginning of time in exactly the same number of days as this number signifies. The “eight”, on the contrary, symbolizes eternity, or the world renewed in the future.
Basil the Great’s friend St. Gregory Nazianzus (c. 330-390) was the son of the bishop of Nazianzus. He was educated in Caesarea in Cappadocia, Caesarea in Palestine (where the school founded by Origen was located) and finally in Athens, where he met Basil. Having become Bishop of Caesarea, Basil appointed his friend as bishop of the small city of Sasima (c. 370). In 378 his friends summoned him to Constantinople. After the Second Ecumenical Council, which he presided over, Gregory, due to significant disagreements with the local episcopate, returned to Cappadocia, where he died. Among the Cappadocians, Gregory stood out for his poetic gift and mastery of eloquence, accompanied also by an ability for dialectical constructions.
In the question of knowledge of God, Gregory, together with other Cappadocians, proved the absolute inaccessibility of the divine essence to the human mind. For philosophers, God is a concept that is definite and definable by the human mind. However, according to the teaching of the Cappadocians, any judgment about the Deity – positive, “definite” – ultimately serves to limit Him impiously and often leads to idolatry. The essence of God surpasses the human mind, but, on the other hand, the human experience of a direct encounter with Christ, Gregory asserts, is possible because He is a Person (not the Absolute, not an abstraction), and we sense and recognize His presence in the world and in human life as a Person. God is one (by nature, by essence, by being), but is different in three hypostases, each possessing its own property (for example, unborn, origin, sending). For Gregory the Theologian, the concepts of “hypostasis” or “Person” are not philosophical categories, but divine names.
The most theoretically equipped father among the Cappadocians was St. Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335-394). Gregory’s Christian upbringing and education was handled by Basil the Great, who in 371 appointed his younger brother bishop of the Cappadocian city of Nysa. In the methodical and systematic nature of his theoretical constructions, Gregory most closely resembles Origen, whom he zealously revered. His main works are: “The Great Catechism” (or “The Great Catechetical Discourse”); “Against Eunomius” (12 books); “Dialogue on the Soul and Resurrection”; “On the Works of Man”; “The Hexaemeron”; commentaries on the Holy Scriptures.
In the spirit of Alexandrian theology, Gregory seeks to support faith with reason (of course, the primacy of faith was not questioned): strict methods of dialectics are indispensable in theological reasoning. According to Gregory of Nyssa, faith finds its explanation in the wise and perfect structure of the universe. The world was created by God not out of necessity, but from an abundance of love. The possibility of God’s creation of matter (out of nothing) is explained by the fact that matter is only a unity of qualities devoid of corporeality, only in thought decomposable into a multitude. Man, created in the image and likeness of God, is the pinnacle (“the crown of the universe”) and master of all that exists. By nature, he is a partaker of the divine essence, but because of the fall, which occurred as a result of man’s free choice to non-existence, materiality, evil (which is, according to Gregory, Origen, and the Neoplatonic philosophers, only “the deprivation of good”), man fell to a despicable existence unworthy of his own essence. Gregory of Nyssa often likens the divine image within man to a reflection in a mirror. A mirror can break, become cloudy, become crooked, etc. In the same way, man can lose the image of God within himself, cease to be a divine reflection, but at the same time the opportunity to return to his own essence, to regain this image always remains for each person. Man’s salvation comes from God, who took on human nature. Knowledge of God, according to Gregory of Nyssa, is carried out in three stages. The first stage is the stage of purification (Greek: κάθαρσις), which presupposes victory over all passions, as well as further deliverance from everything that, according to Gregory, “did not come from God.” The second stage of ascent to God provides an opportunity for the mind, freed from passions, to gain a clearer vision of created things (the so-called “natural” or “natural”): according to Gregory, in the world illuminated by “natural vision,” every little thing, every detail acquires its unique outlines and is understood by man as the proper and best embodiment of God’s perfect plan. The third stage is actual knowledge of God: here man achieves what, according to Gregory, is called theosis (Greek: θέωσις). The way we see created things, Gregory asserts, God cannot be seen, since he exceeds any capacity of our contemplation: “No one has ever seen God” (John 1:18). Nevertheless, in our desire (uncontrollable) to see the Creator – eternal and incomprehensible – at some point we “break through ourselves”, leave our mind “far behind” and go “outside” to the dazzling truth of the center of the universe. This intimate experience of our contact with the essence of the eternal Deity, i.e. “ecstasy” (Greek έκστασις – “frenzy”, “exit”), in the texts of Gregory of Nyssa is often accompanied by the word “love” (Greek έρως), since “knowledge is realized by love”.
The greatest Latin-language thinker of the mature patristics period was Aurelius Augustine (354-430). The main sources of information about Augustine are his own works (primarily the Confessions) and the text of his biography compiled by Possidius. Aurelius Augustine was born on November 13, 354 in Numidian Tagaste to a family of Roman citizens, people of modest means, but quite respected and educated. Augustine received his primary education in Tagaste and in neighboring Madaura. Seeking to introduce Augustine to the traditions of ancient Latin (classical) literary culture, as well as the complex science of oratory, his father sent him (in the fall of 370) to Carthage, the center of local higher education. Here, probably in the winter of 372/373, Augustine enthusiastically read Cicero’s dialogue Hortensius. This work, which encouraged everyone to find the truth in constant study of philosophy, produced a real revolution in Augustine’s soul: “I suddenly became disgusted with all empty hopes; I desired immortal wisdom in my incredible heartache” (Augustine. Confessions, III, 4, 7). His first search for truth leads him to the Manichaeans, the disciples and followers of Mani (c. 215 – 277), a Persian who taught that the universe is a battlefield of two eternal substantial principles – Light and Darkness, and that salvation for man lies in observing the rules of asceticism, in maximum liberation from everything specifically “dark”, material. For nine years, Augustine was under the strong influence of the Manichean doctrine. The slowly maturing process of alienation from Manichaeism culminated in a conversation at a meeting with the then famous Manichaean cleric Faustus, who had come to Carthage in 383 to preach (Confessions, V, 6-7). Being extremely disappointed with the results of this conversation, Augustine decides to change the environment and goes to Rome to teach rhetoric. Soon Augustine submits a petition for the vacant position of court rhetorician in Mediolanum (Milan), where the residence of the Roman emperor was located at that time. The issue was resolved positively, and therefore in the autumn of 384 Augustine moves to Mediolanum. Here he has his famous meeting with Ambrose of Milan (c. 340-397), an outstanding Christian writer and preacher, which became one of the most important events of his entire life. The main works of Ambrose (sermon cycles) – “On Faith”; “On the Holy Spirit”; “On the Good of Death”; “On Isaac, or On the Soul”; “The Hexaemeron” – with their general moral and practical orientation, repeatedly contain evidence of the author’s knowledge of a number of the most important teachings of classical Neoplatonism (Plotinus, Porphyry).
Apparently, it was from his communication with the Bishop of Milan that Augustine, who by that time was fascinated by the philosophy of the skeptics, came to the conviction that there was a philosophy superior to skepticism (and even more so to Manichaeism), and at the same time much closer to Christianity – Platonism. Augustine became acquainted with the texts of the first Neoplatonists (in 386) in the translations of the famous rhetorician Marius Victorinus (d. c. 363). Augustine read these texts with great inspiration: “And enlightened by these books, I returned to myself and, guided by You, entered into my very depths … I examined everything that stands below You, and saw that it cannot be said of it either that it exists or that it does not: it exists, because everything is from You, and it does not exist, because it is not what You are. “Only that which remains unchanged truly exists… And for You there is no evil at all, not only for You but for all Your creation, for there is nothing that could break in from without and destroy the order You have established… I looked back at the created world and saw that it owes its existence to You and is contained in You, but in a different way, not as if in space; You, the Almighty, hold it in your hand, in Your truth, for everything that exists is true, insofar as it exists. Nothing is illusory, except that which we consider to exist, whereas it does not exist. And I saw that everything corresponds not only to its place but also to its time, and You, the One Eternal, did not begin to act after countless centuries: all the centuries that have passed and that will pass would not have gone and would not have come if You had not acted and abode” (Confession, VII, 10-15. Translated by M. E. Sergeenko). At the same time, another turning point was brewing in his soul: under the influence of Ambrose’s sermons, his initial acquaintance with the text of the Epistles of the Apostle Paul (which had almost more significance for Augustine than the works of the Neoplatonists) and constant communication with his pious mother, Augustine decided to accept the Christian faith.
In order to test himself and prepare for the act of baptism, Augustine, accompanied by his mother and friends, went to the small estate of Cassiciacum near Milan (in August 386), where, over the course of six months, regularly communicating with his friends, he composed his first philosophical works, namely the dialogues “Against the Academicians” (3 books), “On Order” (2 books) and “On the Blessed Life”; a little later he wrote the dialogue “On the Immortality of the Soul” and an essay entitled “Monologues” (2 books). In the spring of 387, he returned to Milan, where he was baptized by Ambrose. After the death of his mother, which occurred in the same year, Augustine went to Rome, where he began, among other things, the dialogue “On Free Will” and the treatise “On the Morals of the Manichaeans”. Apparently, at the same time, the idea was born in Augustine to devote himself in the future to the cause of serving the church. In the autumn of 388 he returned to Thagaste, sold his parents’ house and gave the money to the poor. For himself he kept only a small house, where he lived a monastic life with his friends. During the few years of his life in Thagaste Augustine wrote the works “On the Teacher”, “On Music” (6 books), “On the Morals of the Manichaeans” (2 books), “On the Quantity of the Soul”; work continued on an extensive treatise in dialogical form “On Free Will”. Gradually Augustine gained fame in Thagaste and in the cities located in the neighborhood. At the end of 390, at the request of the inhabitants of Hippo, Bishop Valerius ordained Augustine as a priest; at that time Augustine moved to Hippo. In the winter of 395/396 Augustine was ordained a bishop and replaced Valerius in Hippo, who had fallen seriously ill at that time. Augustine remained in this position until his death. In the first years of his episcopate, Augustine began working on the important treatise On Christian Doctrine (Book 4) and completed his most significant anti-Manichaean treatise, Against Faustus the Manichaean (Book 33). By this time, he also completed work on the following works: On True Religion, Explanation of Certain Propositions from the Epistle to the Romans, On Eighty-Three Different Questions, and the dialogue On Free Will (Book 3). Also included is the treatise On Different Questions to Simplician (Book 2), which laid the foundation for Augustine’s theory of original sin. From 397 to 401, Augustine wrote his famous Confessions (Book 13). Around 399, he began working on one of his most important theoretical works, the treatise On the Trinity (15 books), which was written with significant interruptions over about 20 years. In 401-414, Augustine created his most extensive commentary, On the Book of Genesis Literal (12 books). The last 20 years of his life were devoted by Augustine to resolving two fundamental problems: writing the grandiose work On the City of God (22 books), work on the text of which began under the influence of information about the fall of Rome in 410 under the blows of the hordes of Visigoths of Alaric, and polemics with the Pelagians. According to the founder of the heresy, Hieromonk Pelagius (d. c. 418),the sin committed by Adam is not transferred to posterity, and therefore sin is not a generational curse at all, but a consequence of the personal choice of each person. In this sense, a person does not need any supernatural help to be freed from sin, and “grace” should be called the natural property of an ordinary person to acquire good for himself through his own feat and asceticism. In contrast to the assertions of the Pelagians, Augustine developed his own view on the nature of sin and divine grace, human will and supernatural Providence in numerous works from 413 to 430. In his last years, Augustine began to feel an ever-increasing sense of fatigue. Age no longer allowed him to combine the burden of episcopal service with the daily writing of multi-page treatises. In 426, he retired from business in order to devote all his time only to scholarly pursuits. During these years, he finally completed the treatises “On Christian Doctrine” and “On the City of God” and shortly before his death he decided to revise his main works with the aim of correcting the false and improving the proper. Thus, the important treatise “Revisions” (Book 2) appears, in which Augustine seems to sum up his many years of searching. In the summer of 430, the Vandal armies, having previously crossed Gibraltar, reach Hippo. In August 430, Augustine dies in the besieged city.
For Augustine, the path of knowledge is the ascent of reason, guided by faith, to God. Knowledge begins with sensory perception – since God is known through His creation (On the Trinity, XV, 6, 10) – and, as if by a ladder, rises to the Truth. At the same time, knowledge as such arises only as a result of the reflection of the understanding on the content of the senses. Reason, in turn, judges itself (On Free Will, II, 6, 13 – 8, 24); by virtue of this, it is immediately obvious to it that it exists. Here, Augustine to some extent anticipates Descartes’ famous thesis: “I think, therefore I am.” In Augustine, such reasoning is presented in the form: “I doubt (or, for example, “I am mistaken”), therefore I exist” (On Free Will, II, 3, 7; Monologues, II, 1, 1; On True Religion, 39, 73; On the Trinity, X, 10, 14; On the City of God, XI, 26). The culmination of knowledge is the mystical touch of reason on divine Truth. God is the sun, whose light makes the universe visible and transparent for both external and internal contemplation (Monologues, I, 6, 12; Confessions, VII, 9, 13; On the Book of Genesis Literally, XII, 31, 59). He is the totality of ideas (On Eighty-Three Different Questions, 46). The human mind is an organ capable of perceiving divine light (City of God, XII, 3). Rising to God, the mind is, as it were, saturated with this light and itself is enlightened (On the Teacher, 4, 20). Returning to its Source, the soul simultaneously cognizes itself. God and one’s own soul are the main goals of all speculation: “I want to know God and the soul. — And nothing else? — Absolutely nothing” (Soliloquies, I, 2, 7). The entire soul comes to God, or the “inner man,” to use the expression of the Apostle Paul: “Do not strive outward, return to yourself: in the inner man the truth is hidden” (On True Religion, 39, 72). In the philosophical teaching of Augustine, as in the work of the Neoplatonists, ontology is actually identified with theology, since the doctrine of the Supreme Principle is the doctrine of the Supreme Being. God possesses the highest and truest being (vere summeque est: On Free Will, H, 15, 39; On the Trinity, VIII, 2, 3). The fundamental characteristic of true being is its immutability. God, according to Augustine, is an absolute Person (Persona Dei: On the Trinity, III, 10, 19-20), i.e. thereby the substantial unity of three persons-hypostases (una essentia vel substantia, tres autem personae, “one essence, or substance, and, at the same time, three Persons”: On the Trinity, V, 9, 10). The structure of the human personality (“I”) is a likeness of the absolute Personality. The mind is the center of human essence – this is what makes a person different from a simple animal being. A person is defined as “a rational soul using a mortal and earthly body” (On the Morals of the Manichaeans, I, 27, 52), or, more precisely, as “a rational being consisting of soul and body” (On the Trinity, XV, 7, 11).The mind knows itself and is entirely in itself; therefore, for a rational being, its personal being is the original evidence. Since the mind knows itself, it loves itself, i.e., it strives for itself, loves the knowledge of itself, and through this primary knowledge loves all knowledge in general (On the Trinity, IX, 4, 4); this is why man loves his own being, i.e., himself, or his own reason (On Free Will, III, 6, 18-7, 20). If, further, the mind knows itself and, as a consequence, loves itself and strives for itself as an object of knowledge and attraction, then, accordingly, the mind desires itself, i.e., its own knowledge (On the Trinity, X, 3, 5; On the City of God, XI, 27). The will, therefore, is the same immediate evidence as being and knowledge (On Free Will, I, 12, 25; Confessions, VII, 3, 5). Since the mind is constantly directed at itself, it remembers its being, remembers all its knowledge, all states. Memory is, to some extent, the person himself (Confessions, X, 8, 14-17, 27), since it is memory that guarantees the uniqueness of personal experience. The structure of the human “I”, which ensures the self-identity of personal self-consciousness for each person, manifests itself, according to Augustine, as the unity of mind / being, memory / knowledge and will (On the Trinity, X, 11, 18-19, cf. Confessions, XIII, 11, 12). Reason, says Augustine, “understands” all three hypostases of the human personality, the will “directs” them, and memory “encompasses” them. Thus the self-identity of man is preserved – “a trace of the mysterious Unity” (Confessions, I, 20, 31).
Along with the concept of being as the identical immutability of the truly existing (the world of ideas), Augustine also borrowed from the Neoplatonic philosophers the idea of world order and the understanding of evil as the absence, the diminution of good. Augustine devotes many pages of his numerous works to the substantiation of these fundamental ideas. The essence of his statements, as a rule, is as follows: “Every nature that can become worse is good” (On Free Will III, 13, 36; cf. Confessions, VII, 12, 18); what can be metaphorically called “evil” in the world of things is not actually such, since not only does it not violate the harmony of the universe, but is directly presupposed by it (On Free Will, III, 9, 25; City of God, XI, 18-19). Augustine’s greatest attention, however, was drawn to moral evil, i.e. evil in the most precise (original) meaning of the word. In his early writings (primarily in the great dialogue On Free Will, 388-395), Augustine held the view that the source of evil and misfortune in the entire universe is evil will; that the principle of freedom of the moral individual consists in consciously subordinating all one’s actions to the necessity of following the good; that the highest justice always rewards everyone according to their deserts. In the texts of Augustine’s later writings, this concept is replaced by a new theory, at the center of which is the principle of the mutual relationship of divine grace and divine predestination. In this case, Augustine relies on the well-known fragment from the Epistle of Apostle Paul to the Romans (Rom., 7: 14-24). Adam, having given himself over to sin of his own free will, lost immortality and ceased to be able to strive for good, guided by his own impulse. This sin (original), having spread in the order of birth and to subsequent generations, became the ancestral curse of all mankind. New sins were added to this first sin over time, the “mass of sin” constantly grew, until finally all mankind turned into one hopeless and sinful “mass” (Latin massa peccati, “mass of sin”: On the Eighty-Three Different Questions, 68, 3). Sinful mankind either does not know the divine commandments, or knows them, but cannot fulfill them. According to Augustine, man himself is not capable of taking the true path. A kind of “split will” occurs: man aimlessly wastes his strength in the struggle with himself. Only divine grace is capable of healing a sick soul and imparting unity and integrity to a perverted will. Grace cannot be compared with any merits of man and is given to him on completely unknowable grounds. Man, says Augustine, is chosen and predestined for salvation by the unsearchable divine wisdom. This decision of God cannot be understood: His justice can only be believed. Faith is the only unclouded pure source of truth and salvation: “Let us believe, if we cannot understand” (On Various Questions to Simplician, I, 2, 22).Faith has the highest authority; it is logically “more important” than knowledge: “Faith questions, reason reveals” (On the Trinity, XV, 2, 2, cf. On the Eighty-Three Different Questions, 48). The rule for guiding the knowledge of things is the requirement: “Believe in order to understand” (Sermons, 43, 3, 4; 118, 1). It follows that for a Christian the main danger lies in his own egoism, in the desire to live “according to himself” and not “according to God” (On the City of God, XIV, 3, 2, etc.). The duty and goal of every believer is to overcome with all his might the main temptation of the devil, which seduced the first man, Adam: selfishness. “Every man, insofar as he is a man, must be loved for God’s sake, and God for His own sake” (On Christian Doctrine, I, 27, 28, cf. On
City of God, XIV, 7, 1). Augustine does not imagine sacred history cyclically, but as a progressive movement toward the greatest possible moral perfection, toward the time when grace will triumph and people will attain the state of “impossibility of sinning.” Augustine, probably not without the influence of Aristotle (through the mediation of Cicero), defines the human state as an aggregate of people united by a common agreement regarding the object of their aspiration. The community of the righteous is the invisible City of God, or the invisible True Church. The earthly city, or the City of the Devil, is all people living according to the dictates of pride: “Thus, two Cities are created by two kinds of love, namely: the earthly — by love for oneself to the point of neglecting God, the Heavenly — by love for God, to the point of forgetting oneself” (City of God, XIV, 28). As long as the human “age” (Latin saeculum) continues, the two Cities are indistinguishable to the gaze of all mankind; in the history of the world they exist in “confusion” and will reveal themselves with obviousness only after “the end of this age,” i.e., during the Second Coming of the Savior.
Probably, in the circle of the Monophysite Patriarch Severus of Antioch (or, according to an alternative version, from under the hand of the Bishop of Maiuma Peter Iver, d. 491) one of the most important and at the same time most mysterious documents of patristics was born – the collection of works of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite(late 5th – early 6th century) (the so-called Corpus Areopagiticum). The texts of the collection are divided into four treatises: “On the Divine Names”; “On Mystical Theology”; “On the Celestial Hierarchy”; “On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy”; and ten epistles. In his works, the author deliberately calls himself by the name of the legendary Dionysius the Areopagite (1st century AD), a disciple of the Apostle Paul (Acts 17:34), whom many also considered the first bishop of Athens (Eusebius of Caesarea. Church History, IV, 23, 4), and without undue fear proclaims himself an eyewitness to the eclipse on the day of the Savior’s death on the cross, as well as a witness to the Dormition of the Mother of God. Among the addressees of his works are, in particular, authors of the 1st – 2nd centuries – Gaius, Timothy, St. Polycarp of Smyrna and St. John the Theologian. For a long time, there was no doubt about the authenticity of the texts of Ps. Dionysius. Their authority at all times was so high that the figure of their author, already legendary, was repeatedly the subject of numerous speculations. All the greatest theologians of the era of “high scholasticism” (13th century) – Albert the Great, Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas – repeatedly refer to the works of Ps. Dionysius and write multi-page commentaries on them. The very first suspicions regarding the authorship of Dionysius appeared in the 15th century (Lorenzo Valla, Erasmus of Rotterdam). The reasons for various doubts were obvious inconsistencies of style (not typical for Christian writers of the 1st-2nd centuries) and obvious anachronisms, especially in the book “On the Church Hierarchy”, where, for example, the discussion often turns to elements of church worship that appeared only in the 5th-6th centuries – such as the rite of monastic tonsure or the reading of the Creed at the Liturgy. Apparently, the author used the name of Dionysius the Areopagite to give more weight to his theological apologetics, the goal of which was to unite the Christian system with the hierarchical world of the Neoplatonists. The latter, especially Proclus, are constantly quoted by Ps. Dionysius. Thus, for example, following Proclus, the author of the treatises consistently distinguishes two varieties of theology – cataphatic and apophatic. In relation to cataphatic theology, all sorts of “created” names of the Supreme Principle (“Goodness,” “Unity,” etc.) are listed, which are spoken of in Scripture as symbols of divine “processions” (Greek: πρόοδοι), i.e., of how the Creator manifests himself beyond his own essence. In the context of apophatic theology, the superrationality of the Supreme Principle is proclaimed, mental contact with which is likened to mystical ignorance (Greek: άγνωσία): “Divine darkness is that unapproachable light in which, according to Scripture, God dwells; this light is invisible because of its excessive clarity and unattainable because of the excess of the super-essential light-pouring, and into this darkness enters everyone who has been granted to know and contemplate God precisely through non-vision and ignorance, and truly rises above vision and knowledge, knowing only this, that God is in everything sensory and in everything conceivable, and proclaiming together with the Psalmist:“Your knowledge is too marvelous for me, it is so high that I cannot attain to it (Ps. 138:6)” (Ps. Dionysius the Areopagite. Epistle Fifth, to Dorotheus. Trans. S. S. Averintsev). Both of these approaches agree in the third and highest stage of knowledge of God – mystical theology, according to which all “created” names are applied to God in a super-thinkable, super-human sense, since He, in essence, is “Super-Unity”, “Super-Goodness”, “Super-Being”, etc. God, remaining “Super-Essential”, is external to all being, and, as a consequence, in His own essence is unknowable: “As for the sensory, the mental is elusive and invisible, and for that endowed with form and image – simple and without image, and for that formed in the form of bodies – the imperceptible and formless formlessness of the incorporeal, so, according to the same word of Truth, above essences is the super-essential uncertainty” (Ps. Dionysius the Areopagite. On Divine Names, 1, 1). According to the Platonic-Origenist tradition, the mind, in order to attain knowledge of God, must rid itself of its fallen state and of the existing things that surround it; in other words, it must return back to its own essence, i.e., identify itself with itself again. According to Ps. Dionysius, this practice of “casting off the shackles” is not enough; the mind must first rid itself of itself, i.e., go beyond its own limits, since knowledge of God “surpasses both reason and all understanding.” The mind is granted a special way of comprehension – “through ignorance.” Ps. Dionysius thus unconditionally rejects two extremely essential Platonic postulates: the natural divinity of the mind and the knowability of the divine essence.to go beyond one’s own limits, since the knowledge of God “surpasses both reason and all understanding.” The mind is granted a special path of comprehension – “through ignorance.” Ps. Dionysius, thus, unconditionally rejects two extremely essential Platonic postulates: the natural divinity of the mind and the knowability of the divine essence.to go beyond one’s own limits, since the knowledge of God “surpasses both reason and all understanding.” The mind is granted a special path of comprehension – “through ignorance.” Ps. Dionysius, thus, unconditionally rejects two extremely essential Platonic postulates: the natural divinity of the mind and the knowability of the divine essence.
The God of Pseudo-Dionysius is the biblical eternal and omnipotent Creator of the universe, and not the One of the Neoplatonists, which, of course, does not exclude communication between God and created beings; on the contrary, this communication, in fact, is the meaning and purpose of the existence of all created things. God “descends”, “comes out of Himself” in order to become knowable and accessible; created beings “ascend”: first they acquire “likeness to God”, that is, the ability to participate in divine virtues, then, “coming out of themselves”, they partake of God’s being (but not of the divine essence) and thereby “return” (Greek επιστροφή – “return”) to God. The logic of the “descent” and “ascent” of every existing being allows us, according to Ps. Dionysius, to judge the differences in relation to the super-rational, all-perfect Deity, which serve as a sufficient basis for His omnipresence and all-causality. This is precisely the main theme of the treatise On the Divine Names: “The Deity is Super-Good (το ΰπεράγαθον), Super-Divine (το ΰπέρθεον), Super-Essential (το ϋπερούσιον), Super-Living (το ύπέρζωον), Super-Wise (το ύπέρσοφον), because It does not fit into our concepts of good, of the divine, of the essential, of the living and of the wise, and we are forced to apply to It all these expressions of negation, which presuppose superiority; since He is also the true cause of everything that exists; “one can apply to Him the names Good, Beautiful, Existing, Source of life, Wise, since all this pertains to the gracious gifts of the Deity, who is therefore called the Cause of every Good” (Psalm Dionysius the Areopagite. On Divine Names, 2, 3). One can say, according to the testimony of Psalm Dionysius, that the Creator literally “permeates” the entire universe, that the ideas of goodness, beauty, perfection, etc., which we judge by created things, directly introduce us into communication with God. However, one should not forget that God in his essence does not coincide with either the world of ideas or, of course, with the world of things: God always remains beyond the boundary of any specific existence, being in himself the super-rational cause of any specific being.
Psalm Dionysius is also the founder of the later classical classification of angelic powers, which includes nine “ranks” (Greek: τάξις), divided into three triads. The first triad, “sitting immediately around God, in greater proximity than all the others” and “in contact with the eternal radiance of the thearchy”, are the Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones; the second heavenly triad is the Dominions, Powers and Forces; the last consists of the Principalities, Archangels and Angels. If for Origen the hierarchy of created beings – angels, people, demons – is a consequence of the fall, then for the author of the Areopagitica it is an inviolable and divine order, through which “likeness to God and union with Him” is achieved (Psalm Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Celestial Hierarchy, 3, 2). Each “rank” participates in the divine life “according to its ability”, but this opportunity to participate is granted through the next highest “rank”, from top to bottom. According to Ps. Dionysius, the heavenly hierarchy corresponds to the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which is a continuation and reflection of the heavenly. It, for its part, is divided into two triads: the first – of those who initiate, corresponding to the clergy (bishops (“hierarchs”), priests and deacons), and the last – of those who are initiated, or laymen (monks, laymen (“sacred people”) and catechumens (sinners). The Church hierarchy was preceded by the Old Testament “hierarchy from the Law” (Greek: κατά νόμον ιεραρχία), the purpose of which was to manifest in sensory images and symbols the intelligible realities of the heavenly hierarchy. The structure of the Church represents a “more perfect initiation”, also called “our hierarchy” (Greek: ή καθ’ ημάς ιεραρχία), which is “at the same time both heavenly and legal and, being between them, participates in both, sharing with the heavenly hierarchy mental contemplation, and with the legal – the use of various kinds of sensory symbols, through which it is sacredly elevated in the direction of the divine” (Ps. Dionysius the Areopagite. On the Church Hierarchy, 5, 2).
After Pseudo-Dionysius, the tradition of Byzantine theology is not interrupted, and significant figures appear, such as Maximus the Confessor (7th century). Byzantium remains the sole custodian of Hellenic education until the fall of the empire in 1453; the works of Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, and Proclus continue to be copied and read in Greek. Although the Orthodox Church occupies a dominant position in the sphere of ideology, attempts are made from time to time to appeal to the still living tradition of Greek philosophizing. And the churchmen themselves, in their denunciations of dissenters, try to use elements of the philosophical argumentation of the ancients. After the fall of the Byzantine Empire, it is the Greeks who bring manuscripts of ancient writers and knowledge of the language in which they were written to the Latin West. Thus, the deceased Byzantium passes on all that was most valuable to the “Renaissance of the Sciences and Arts” emerging in the West.