Fundamentals of Orthodox teaching about man. tragedy of sin

Over the past decade, regular church-wide conferences devoted to the most important and current theological topics have become a good tradition. Such meetings make it possible to unite the efforts of theologians, church scientists, professors of theological schools of our Church and other Churches. Together we discuss the ways of development of theological science in the modern historical period, taking into account the best achievements of the past. This work is necessary for the Holy Church to fruitfully carry out its witness in the world.

The organizer of church-wide conferences is the Synodal Theological Commission of the Russian Orthodox Church, formed by decision of the Holy Synod in 1993. As is known, its immediate task is to study current problems of church life and coordinate scientific and theological activities. On the eve of the two thousandth anniversary of the coming of Christ the Savior into the world, the Commission turned to the bishops of our Church and the rectors of theological schools with a request to express their opinion on the most important theological problems for the Church. Having brought the received feedback into the system, the Commission builds its work precisely on this basis, also fulfilling some other instructions of His Holiness the Patriarch and the Holy Synod. Plenary meetings of the Commission are held regularly, and, as necessary, extended meetings are held at which issues of a theological nature relating to the daily life of the Church are discussed.

Taking this opportunity, as Chairman of the Synodal Theological Commission, in the face of such a representative meeting of theologians and scientists, I express my filial gratitude to the Primate of our Church, His Holiness Patriarch Alexy of Moscow and All Rus', for his tireless attention to the work of the Commission and for supporting its initiatives throughout the entire ten-year period of our activity and inspiring us assessment of our work is far from perfect.

In 2000, at the next conference, the conciliar mind gave a general assessment of the state and prospects for the development of Orthodox theology on the threshold of the new century. Then thematic conferences were held dedicated to theological anthropology: the Church’s teaching about man and, together with the International Society of Christian Philosophers, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. For several years, the Theological Commission has regularly held joint seminars with the Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, during which a fruitful dialogue between philosophers and theologians takes place on issues of common interest.

The process of work of the Theological Commission led us to the need to turn to the topic that will be discussed at the current meeting: “Orthodox teaching about the Church”.

One can hardly doubt how important this topic is in modern conditions of church life.

Relevance of ecclesiology

Self-understanding of the Church

Ecclesiology, as is known, represents a section of theological science within the framework of which the Church comprehends itself, that is, the self-understanding of the Church is formed. This task for theological thought is difficult not only because this scientific discipline is complex and includes, to one degree or another, all aspects of theology. The difficulty of the ecclesiological approach is also due to the fact that essentially the entire life of Christians, including the activity of the believing mind, is church, for it happens in the Church.

On the other hand, the Church itself in its visible, earthly aspect is the community of Christ’s disciples. This is a gathering of the faithful, which in the Sacrament of the Eucharist - through Communion of the life-giving Body and Blood of the Savior - is itself transformed into the Body of Christ, so that the head of the Church is the God-man and our Lord Jesus Christ.

The theanthropic nature of the Church means that the task facing ecclesiology is a theological task par excellence. Ecclesiology cannot be reduced to issues of external church structure, to the rules of church life, to the rights and responsibilities of clergy and laity. These questions fall within the realm of canon. At the same time, without clear theological criteria it is impossible to discuss the forms and methods of the Church fulfilling its calling in the world. Ecclesiology precisely identifies such criteria, turning to Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition, analyzing the historical experience of the Church and being in dialogue with the theological tradition as a whole.

In connection with the question of the place and significance of ecclesiology in the system of theological sciences, attention should be paid to the following circumstances.

It is rightly said that, turning to the era of classical patristics, we are faced with a kind of “ecclesiological silence.” There is no doubt that some of the works of the Holy Fathers can be called ecclesiological in content, but in general theology ancient Church does not single out ecclesiology as a separate direction, as a special section of church science.

This is due to the fact that during the period of widespread Christianity, everything was perceived in a new light and precisely through the prism of churchliness. For Christians, the Church was a great divine-human, cosmic event and embraced the whole world, in which the saving act of God took place in Christ Jesus.

Later, during the Middle Ages, the Church also for a long time did not feel the need to define itself. At that time, the need had not yet matured to single out the actual church from the general life of the world, society and culture, which has already become Christian. The situation changed in modern times, when non-Christian, secular and quasi-religious worldview systems began to be present in society, and sometimes even dominate.

The paradox of secularization

In the 19th and especially in the 20th centuries, inter-Christian ties intensified; In the last century, a regime of militant state atheism was established in a number of historically Orthodox countries. In such conditions it arose urgent the need to formulate Orthodox teaching about the Church. In this regard, much has already been done, but today the need for further development of Orthodox ecclesiology, taking into account the theological results of the past, is felt even sharper. Globalization processes are intensifying in the world; The world is becoming increasingly smaller and interconnected. In public space, not only different Christian denominations meet face to face, but also different religions- both traditional and new.

At the same time, today it is necessary to realize and comprehend what can be called paradox of secularization. On the one hand, the secularization of culture in the historically Christian part of the world is an indisputable fact. We Christian theologians must soberly assess the reality with which we are dealing. In the field of political decision-making, cultural creativity, public life secular values ​​and standards dominate. Moreover, secularism is often understood not as a neutral attitude towards religion, but as anti-religion, as a basis for ousting religion and the Church from public space.

However, on the other hand, it can be argued that secularization - as a process of de-Christianization of culture, and ultimately the complete destruction of religion - did not take place. Many people are believers, although not all of them actively participate in church life. The Church continues to live and fulfill its mission in the world, and in some countries and regions there are signs of religious revival. The role of the religious factor in politics and international relations is increasing. In this situation, which is characterized by new historical circumstances, the responsibility of the Church also increases.

Practical meaning of ecclesiology

The Church is always identical to itself - as a Divine-human organism, as a Path of salvation and a place of communion with God. At the same time, the Church resides in history and is called to fulfill its missionary task in the specific social and cultural conditions in which it carries out its witness. Therefore, ecclesiology has not only theoretical, but also practical, missionary significance.

The general theological task in the field of ecclesiology is to build a coherent system of ideas in which all aspects of church life would find their place. This is the task of socio-theological synthesis.

The core of the ecclesiological concept should be the dogmatic teaching about the Church. At the same time, it is important to emphasize the exclusivity of Christianity as a religion. Only in Christianity, if we consider it in comparison with other religious traditions, there is both the institution of the Church and the phenomenon itself called the Church. Strictly speaking, Christianity from its inner meaning there is a Church. In other words, as Hieromartyr Hilarion (Trinity) formulated in the title of his famous work, “there is no Christianity without the Church.” This is the Orthodox point of view, and it needs to be clearly expressed, as well as consistently explained and disseminated in society. After all, one of the results of secularization and the prolonged persecution of the Church was the loss in culture, in society, and even in the minds of many people who consider themselves Orthodox, of the correct understanding of the Church, its nature and mission.

From a missionary point of view, it is important to show the dynamic nature of the Church, to draw attention to the fact that the establishment, or better yet, the spiritual birth of the Church was an event in Sacred history, that it was a revelation of the Divine will for the salvation of the world in Christ. The Church living in history is The Kingdom of God Coming in Power(Mark 9:1) into this world for the sake of its transformation. Despite its two thousand years of age, the Christian Church is still a place of renewal of the old man, it is eternally young and always shows the world the newness of the Gospel, because in its essence the Church is always a “modern” meeting of God and man, their reconciliation and communication in love.

From a theological point of view, the Church cannot be reduced to a “religious institution,” to a national-cultural custom, to a ritual. God Himself acts in the Church; it is the House of God and the Temple of the Holy Spirit. Scary place cue, because the Church is a judgment seat in which we must give an answer about our lives before the face of God. The Church is also a hospital in which, by confessing our sinful illnesses, we receive healing and gain unshakable hope in the saving power of God’s grace.

Aspects of ecclesiology

How does the Church, headed by the Savior, carry out its saving ministry in the world? The answer to this question should be that part of the ecclesiological concept, which provides a theological interpretation of various aspects not just of church practice, but of church existence itself.

Firstly, there is the liturgical aspect.

It includes church sacraments and other sacred rites. However, they should not be viewed in an abstract scholastic way, but rather as stages and recurring events in the sacramental life of the Church: entry into the Church, the Eucharist as a revelation of the conciliar and theanthropic nature of the Church, the daily, weekly and annual liturgical rhythm, and other sacramental actions. Ecclesiology reveals the theological meaning of both public and private worship, paying attention to its catholic, general church significance.

Secondly, this is a canonical, church-legal aspect.

In this case we're talking about on the theological understanding of the canonical tradition of the Orthodox Church. Only in light of that dogma about the Church, which ecclesiology identifies and formulates, we will be able to resolve many problems of the modern church structure and canonical regulation of church life on the scale of both Local Churches and Ecumenical Orthodoxy.

It is known that many church rules were adopted in the very distant past and in various historical circumstances. At the same time, we feel the need for our church life to be built on solid canonical foundations. Therefore, today the question arises about the need to begin serious work on the creation of a pan-Orthodox ecclesiastical legal code.

Undoubtedly, it is impossible to carry out such work without a preliminary theological understanding of the nature and functions of church laws as such. And this relates to the field of ecclesiology.

Thirdly, this is the moral and ascetic aspect.

Theological thought faces many problems when missionary tasks are taken into account. Briefly they can be described as follows.

Ecclesiology must compare, connect, and, where necessary, distinguish between different forms of churchliness. Individual asceticism, deeply personal spiritual work, on the one hand, and conciliar liturgical service, the joint participation of Church members in the Eucharistic sacrament of communion with God, on the other.

The spiritual and moral efforts of a Christian, aimed at coordinating his sinful will with the will of God, must be coupled with his participation in the Sacraments of the Church, in which the believer is given the assisting grace of the Holy Spirit. For without the perception of the grace of God, according to the teaching of the Fathers, neither the creation of good nor the transformation into the image of the God-man Jesus Christ, our Lord, is possible.

In other words, ecclesiology is intended to warn Christians against becoming confined to individual religious experiences. The Church is a common being. In the church All included in the love of God, which embraces everyone people All humanity. God addresses each person personally, but at the same time creates, builds a single Church, in which everyone finds his place - in the community of believers and faithful.

Therefore, we can talk about one more thing - social-aspect of Orthodox ecclesiology. The Church in this world is a community of people who are united not by pragmatic interests, not simply by the unity of “beliefs and views,” not by common blood or cultural tradition. Christians are united by their shared experience of life in communion with God. And therefore, the Church, as a community of Christ’s disciples, is called to show the world the possibility and reality of transformation of both man and society by the power of God’s grace, according to the word of the Savior: So let your light shine before people, so that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven.(Matthew 5:16).

Alas, Christians do not always fulfill this God-ordained mission to the extent that they should fulfill it. But without understanding this maximum task given to us by God, it is impossible to comprehend the essence of the Church.

The paradoxical being of the Church

What is this essence of the Church, which can be called paradoxical?

The fact is that the Church in its sociological capacity, that is, as a community of Christians, is not separated from society as a whole and is part of it, since it is made up of full members of society.

But at the same time, the Church is not public organization, but something immeasurably greater: this is a human community, the member and Head of which is the God-Man and the Lord Jesus Christ, who is still among the faithful. For where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them(Matthew 18:20), says the Savior. - I am with you always, even to the end of the age.(Matthew 28:20).

The Church lives and acts in the world and in society, but at the same time offers the world its own social ideal. This was well expressed by the late Metropolitan Anthony of Sourozh: “One can imagine the construction of a society where everyone could get along, but the City of God, which should grow out of the city of man, has a completely different dimension. The City of Man, which could open up so as to become the City of God, must be such that its first citizen could be the Son of God, who became the Son of Man - Jesus Christ. No human city, no human society, where God is cramped, can be the City of God.” .

Ecclesiology as “applied” theology

Thus, modern ecclesiology is called upon to reflect the multidimensional reality of the Church: both its essential theological characteristics and its missionary activity and church service to the world. We must avoid the biggest mistake - inattention to what is happening today in society, in culture, in the minds of people living in conditions of secularism, sometimes aggressive.

Therefore, we need, so to speak, applied ecclesiology, that is, the theology of culture, social theology, even, perhaps, the theology of management or economics. The starting point for such a theological approach can be precisely the doctrine of the participation in the history of mankind of God and man, that is, the Church as a community of the faithful.

In the Church and through the Church, God participates in the life of the world. Through the incarnation of the Son of God, He entered the complex fabric of the historical existence of human society, not violating human freedom, but calling him to spiritual deepening, to the realization of his superior dignity. And the earthly Church is a response to the call of God. The Church is that place- as a rule, unnoticed by the world - where the Creator and Provider enters into real communication with the inhabitants of the world, giving them abundant grace that transforms man and the world around him.

But we would be theologically inconsistent if we limited ourselves to these general considerations. Our ecclesiological task is to provide answers to many particular questions that can only be satisfactorily resolved from a general theological perspective.

This is the question of how the church community should be built correctly and what is the importance of the laity in it compared to the importance of the clergy. And in a broader sense - the question of collaboration and joint service of the hierarchy, clergy and laiks as the people of God in a single church organism.

This is a question about the special ecclesiological status and vocation of monasticism and monasteries, which must acquire new meaning in the modern situation.

This is also the question of what church worship should be like in modern cities and towns so that it corresponds to the pastoral and missionary calling of the Church.

This is a problem of clergy and counseling, that is various forms spiritual nourishment of believers, which is aimed at strengthening their faith and knowledge of the will of God.

Finally, this is a more general problem of overcoming phyletism, that is, the identification of the church community with the ethnic and national one, which occurs in different countries and is the cause of church schisms and intra-church confrontations.

In a short introduction it is impossible to list all the specific issues of an ecclesiological nature that concern us. Their discussion is precisely the task of our conference. For my part, I would like to once again emphasize the main thing: the theological understanding and comprehension of the Church should be oriented towards helping to resolve specific, pressing problems of church life, in particular, overcoming internal church discord.

The significance of any theory, including theological, lies in its vitality, that is, in the ability to provide answers to the demands of the time, based on the eternal, enduring laws of the existence of the world and man. This, in fact, is the meaning of the church theology.

The development of ecclesiology is a pan-Orthodox task

In conclusion, I would like to say one more thing. Among us are representatives of the Local Orthodox Churches, hierarchs and theologians. We are grateful to them for considering it possible to take part in our work. It is very important that we can exchange views on the issues under discussion. However, the most significant thing in this case is something else.

The development of modern Orthodox ecclesiology, based on fidelity to Tradition and at the same time oriented towards church service to the world, is impossible within the confines of one Local Church. This is a pan-Orthodox task.

Its “ecumenical” character becomes even more obvious if we remember that, as a result of historical cataclysms and mass migrations, Orthodox communities now exist throughout the world, far from the canonical boundaries of the Local Churches. These communities live in different socio-political and cultural conditions, they belong to different ecclesiastical jurisdictions, but at the same time they are parts of the single Catholic Orthodox Church. Ecclesiology must take into account this new scale of Orthodox presence in the world and place special emphasis on the unity of world Orthodoxy.

In the face of globalization processes, cultural unification and new conflicts on religious grounds, Ecumenical Orthodoxy must consolidate. The Orthodox Churches must resume constant consultations - both on theological and on church-practical issues. It is necessary to return to the process of preparing a pan-Orthodox Council, regardless of when and how such a Council can take place.

Concluding my speech, I would like to express a few thoughts regarding the work of our conference. Let me be clear: we did not gather for a diplomatic reception or to make ritual speeches. Our task is to openly and honestly identify the most acute, pressing problems of the daily life of the Church, but from the point of view of their theological understanding.

I invite all participants to a free exchange of opinions and to express different points of view on the issues under consideration. The significance of the current conference for the life of the Church will depend on the productivity of our discussion, on the depth and balance of arguments and assessments.

I appeal to all its participants for God’s help in the upcoming labors.

Internally in touch to varying degrees with all previous issues, the book “Salvation and Faith According to Orthodox Teaching” stands in the greatest connection both with issues devoted to clarifying the question of the Church (issue 16, 17, 19), and with those in which it is clarified the path of saving experimental knowledge of God (issues 1, 2, 3, 28, 29 and 30). - At the same time, this book is, in a certain sense, an introduction to a whole series of subsequent issues aimed at the same goal: to delimit from different sides the Divine region of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church (Orthodox) from the sphere of the Catholic schism and Protestant sectarianism that falsely imagines themselves as bearers and possessors of genuine Christian Truth. Revealing the Orthodox teaching about salvation, this fundamental issue of living religious consciousness, the proposed issue outlines part of the circle within which is inscribed: the One Church of Christ. This circle should close as the following issues are released, each striving, for its part, to set milestones around the pasture of Christ, on the quiet waters flowing into eternal life of which the Chief Shepherd Lord Jesus grazes His verbal flock. Each of the coming releases, negatively or positively, or in both ways, will draw a boundary between the Church of God and human societies, arbitrarily appropriating the name of the Bride of Christ, and thereby erect a fence around the New Testament Tabernacle of Christ, so that both those living inside Her and rooted there , and only those seeking the precious beads - Christ, did not stray into the crossroads “outside the church walls”, where the sheep wander, not properly knowing the One Shepherd - Jesus, who dwells in His Church, “having forsaken Him, the fountain of living water” and falling with parched lips to “broken cisterns that cannot hold water” (Jer. 2:13).

For there is one faith, one baptism and one Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, “having no spot or wrinkle,” this “pillar and affirmation of the Truth.”

I. General concept of salvation

Salvation, in common language, is the deliverance of a person from sin, curse and death. This definition can equally be accepted by both the Orthodox and the follower of the legal worldview. But the whole question is what each of them considers the most important and essential in salvation.

A selfish person will, of course, put in first place the consequences of sin for a person’s well-being, i.e. suffering and death. The curse, the alienation from God, also seems to him harmful, again because it leads to suffering. It is clear that he will explain salvation to himself as deliverance from suffering caused by sin. Further, since the essence of sin and its undesirability in itself elude the consciousness of the self-lover, it is natural that the very method of deliverance appears to him incorrectly, one-sidedly. Not understanding why sin leads to death, etc., the selfish person explains this to himself only externally, by saying that God is angry and therefore punishes. Therefore, he understands salvation only as a change from God’s wrath to mercy, and imagines it in the form of an action that takes place only in the Divine consciousness and does not concern the human soul. And since salvation, or, more precisely, justification is a supernatural work of Divine consciousness, then the consequence of justification is sanctification is quite consistently attributed to the same Divine decision.

Of course, human consciousness would have to rebel against such a perversion of mental life: after all, the soul is not some kind of substance for such an involuntary transformation to be possible in it. But the mind often does not prescribe, but obediently follows the feeling and will - and so it is here. Since all the attention of a sinful person is directed towards not suffering, in order to obtain a comfortable life of self-pleasure, he does not think much about how this opportunity to be eternally happy is achieved. Moreover, an involuntary transformation of his soul would be even more desirable for him. He does not like goodness, he does not understand working on himself for the sake of holiness and is afraid, sacrificing a sin that is dear to him is difficult and unpleasant for him. What would be better if, without any effort on his part, without unpleasant tension and struggle with himself, he was suddenly made to love goodness and do the will of God, and for that to be blissful? This is exactly what his selfish and self-pitying nature needs.

Meanwhile, for the Orthodox consciousness, sin itself, in addition to all its disastrous consequences, constitutes the greatest evil, and even it alone is “evil in its own sense,” as St. Basil the Great, “real evil.” However, everything that is considered evil only “from the painfulness of the sensation”, from the point of view of self-pity - all this for the Orthodox is “only imaginary evil, having the power of good.” Death in itself is not scary for an Orthodox Christian; he is afraid of “death hiding inside, in the heart,” afraid of “inner death,” because only that is “true death” for him. To free a true follower of Christ from all the consequences of sin, but not to free him from sin itself, means not only not to save him, but also to subject him to the most bitter and terrible fate that he can imagine: to live forever and sin forever - this is worse for him Gehenna. “If,” says Clement of Alexandria, “we could imagine that someone proposed to a Gnostic (true) whether he would choose the knowledge of God and eternal life, and if these two things, which are completely identical, were separated, then A Gnostic would, without the slightest hesitation, choose to know God, recognizing that the possession of faith, which rises from love to knowledge, is desirable in itself." A true Christian would prefer to be a saint - and suffer, than to be eternally blissful - and sin. From this it is obvious that in the concept of salvation, the Orthodox will put in first place liberation from sin in oneself, and will accept deliverance from torment and suffering as a simple consequence, which in essence does not add anything to the benefit received - it is so insignificant compared to the benefit in in its own sense. Salvation for the Orthodox, first and foremost, is deliverance from sin. Thus, indeed, the Holy Scriptures and the Fathers of the Church teach about him.

Old Testament Doctrine of Salvation

The Old Testament was, of course, a time of shadows and fortune-telling: Old Testament man imagined the bright time of deliverance more under the guise of the restoration of the Jewish kingdom in the promised land. However, the best people did not forget that we are talking primarily about the kingdom of God, that the Lord was restoring this kingdom for His own sake (Is. 48:11), and not for the sake of the complacency of the Israelis themselves. Therefore, when describing the future Savior and the future kingdom, the prophets did not forget to indicate where it was necessary that the Savior would lead His people to nothing other than holiness, that the joy of the future would be concentrated in the opportunity to always be with God, to please before His face and offer sacrifices acceptable to Him. “The Lord brought forth His people in joy, His chosen ones in gladness. And He gave them the lands of the nations, and they inherited the labor of foreigners (but all this) so that they might keep His statutes and keep His laws” (Ps. 104:43-45 ), to establish the kingdom of goodness among them. Therefore, asking the Lord to “please Zion with favor and build the walls of Jerusalem,” the prophet immediately, as a particularly noticeable feature of future prosperity, points out that “then you will be pleased with the sacrifice of righteousness, the wave offering and the burnt offering, then they will lay the bullocks on Your altar” (50, 20-21), i.e. the future kingdom must be a kingdom of piety, a union with God, which (the union) was so often violated by the sin-loving Israelites. Union with God, as the end of salvation, consists not only in the fact that a person here finds eternal peace for his soul, an undisturbed sense of security, but also in the fact that the Lord will “guide him on the path of righteousness,” which keeps him not only from external evil, but also moral (Ps. 23:2,5,3).

The Holy Prophet Isaiah depicts the bright day of Jerusalem and the reign of the branch of Jesse as the kingdom of peace. “Then,” says the prophet, “the wolf will live with the lamb, and the leopard will lie down with the kid; and the calf, and the young lion, and the wolf will be together, and a little child will lead them. And the cow will graze with the bear, and the cubs will They will lie down together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox. And the child will play in the asp’s den, and the child will stretch out his hand into the viper’s nest. They will not harm or harm on My holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord. as the waters cover the sea" (Is. 11:6-9). This is the essential feature of the kingdom of the branch of Jesse - knowledge of God and holiness. “The sun will no longer be the light of day, nor the brightness of the moon to give you light; but the Lord will be your everlasting light, and your God your glory.” The people of God will then not think about themselves, about their well-being; the Lord will be their light, the only content of their life, the highest joy. A necessary sign of this bliss in union with God will be that the whole people will be righteous" (Is. 60:1,16,19-21. Wed. 29:22-24; 33:5-6). "Then those who remain Zion and those who survived in Jerusalem will be called saints, all written in the book of life in Jerusalem, when the Lord will wash away the filthiness of the daughters of Zion and cleanse the blood of Jerusalem from the midst of it with the spirit of judgment and the spirit of fire" (Isa. 4:3-4). These are the properties. the kingdom of the Lord will be distinguished, and this is the final purpose of the restoration of Zion.

Foresaw the coming of the righteous Branch of David and St. The prophet Jeremiah depicted this coming in the same terms. “This is His name by which they will call Him: “The Lord is our justification” (Jer. 33, 4, 5, 6). Therefore, the whole kingdom will be a kingdom of holiness and righteousness. “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: henceforth, when I I will bring back their captivity (when I save them), they will speak in the land of Judah and in its cities this word: The Lord bless you, habitation of righteousness, holy mountain" (Jer. 31:23. Comp. 3:1-19; 24:6 -7).

St. foresaw the same thing. Prophet Ezekiel. The eternal kingdom, which the Lord will open in Zion, will be established on the closest, inner communication of the people with God, and this in itself already presupposes a righteous life. “And they will no longer defile themselves with their idols, and with their abominations, and with all their vices, and I will free them from all their places of residence where they have sinned, and I will cleanse them”... This cessation of sin will unite Israel into one indivisible people and will make his communication with God eternal. “And they will be My people, and I will be their God. And My servant David will be King over them and Shepherd of them all, and they will walk in My commandments and will keep My statutes and do them. And they will live in the land that I have given My servant Jacob, in which their fathers dwelt; there they will live, and their children, and their children’s children forever; and my servant David will be a prince among them forever. And I will make a covenant of peace with them, an everlasting covenant will be with them. And I will build them and multiply them and place My sanctuary among them forever. And My habitation will be with them, and I will be their God, and they will be My people" (37:23-27. Cf. 11:17-20; 36:24- 28).

The prophets depict in the strongest terms the future triumph of Israel over the nations, describe the restoration of Jerusalem and the kingdom of Israel, describe future wealth, prosperity, etc. However, these features do not absorb all of their attention; Moreover, these features speak more about the beginning of the kingdom, and not about its essence. But as soon as the prophets move on to describe how and what Israel will enjoy in the future kingdom, immediately in their speeches the main, main feature of this kingdom is its holiness, pleasing to God, freedom from all sin. The Messiah, through the very fact that He will free the people from captivity, will give them the opportunity to live holy and in communion with God. Of course, foreign slavery was hard, the whole misery of life was hard, but the main oppression that oppressed the moral consciousness of true Israel was still sin. Therefore, getting rid of it was the main content of the concept of salvation.

This main idea of ​​the prophecy is remarkably clearly expressed at the turn of the two Testaments by the father of John the Baptist, the priest Zechariah. “Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, that he hath visited his people, and has wrought deliverance unto them; and hath raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David, as he declared by the mouth of his holy prophets that have been of old, that he will save us from our enemies, and from the hand of all them that hate us , will show mercy to our fathers, and remember His holy covenant, the oath which He swore to Abraham our father, to give us, without fear, after being delivered from the hand of our enemies, to serve Him in holiness and righteousness before Him, all the days of our life.” Therefore, the calling of the newborn Forerunner will be “to make the people of God understand salvation,” namely, “in the forgiveness of sins”; the goal of “visiting the East from above” will be “to enlighten those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet on the path of peace” (Luke 1:68-75,77-79).

New Testament Doctrine of Salvation

The time has finally come for the East itself to be born again. An angel appears to Joseph in a dream and commands him to name the baby being born Jesus. “For,” says the Angel, “He will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21). The Lord Jesus Christ Himself placed His calling in this salvation from sins. “Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” In the rite of tonsure it is added: “burdened with sins, and this addition is fully justified by the further course of speech. What is the repose offered by Christ? “Take My yoke upon you, and learn from Me: for I am meek and lowly in heart: and you will find rest for your souls.” (Matt. 11:28-29). Peace, salvation - in a change of morals. Faithful to His calling to “seek and save what was lost,” the Son of Man comes to the house of Zacchaeus and says: “Today salvation has come to this house, because he (Zacchaeus) ) son of Abraham." These words were spoken in response to the exclamation of Zacchaeus: "Lord, I will give half of my property to the poor, and if I have offended anyone, I will repay him fourfold" (Luke 19:10,9,8). The publican, a lover of money in his own right his situation, he is suddenly freed from the bonds of his passion, and the Lord calls this salvation.

St. Apostle Peter urges his readers to complacently endure all the sorrows of this life in order to “finally achieve, through faith, the salvation of souls.” “Following the example of the Holy One who called you, be yourselves holy in all your conduct... knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, silver or gold, from the futile life handed down from your fathers, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot” (1 Pet. 1). ,9,15,18-19).

St. Apostle Paul describes the salvation accomplished by Jesus Christ in this way: The revealed grace of God is “saving to all men” because “it teaches us that, having denied ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live chastely, righteously and honestly in this present age.” This is both the goal and the meaning of the work done for us by Jesus Christ, since “He gave himself for us (precisely for this purpose) that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify for himself a special people, zealous for good works” (Tit. 2:11-12:14) to “deliver us from this present evil age” (Gal. 1:4). Salvation consists in the fact that God “delivered us from the power of darkness”; and this darkness was our alienation from God and sinful life. “By our disposition to evil deeds,” we were hostile to God and thereby “alienated” from Him (to a self-lover, anyone who sets a limit to his desire appears to be an enemy). “Now God has reconciled us... to present us holy, and blameless, and blameless before Him.” But all this, of course, is subject to this indispensable condition if we remain in our calling: “If you continue strong and steadfast in the faith and do not lose heart from the hope of the gospel which you have heard” (Col. 1:13,21-23), otherwise our enmity against God will rise again.

The main thing in the question of salvation is considered by the sacred writers to be sin in itself, even regardless of its consequences. Suffering is not evil for a person - sin is evil; the people of the Old Testament were eager to get rid of it; Christ preached freedom from it with His apostles in the New.

The teaching of St. Fathers

The Church Fathers also understood salvation as salvation primarily from sins. “Our Christ,” says St. Justin Martyr, “redeemed us, immersed in the gravest sins we had committed, through His crucifixion on a tree and through the sanctification of us with water, and made us a house of prayer and worship.” “We,” says St. Justin, “while still given over to fornication and every vile deed in general, have drawn into ourselves by the grace given by our Jesus according to the will of His Father, all the unclean and evil things in which we were clothed. The devil rises up against us, always acting against us and wanting to attract everyone to himself, but the Angel of God, that is, the power of God sent down to us through Jesus Christ, forbids him, and he moves away from us. And we are as if snatched from the fire, because we have been delivered from the former sins, and from the torment and flames that the devil and all his servants are preparing for us, and from which Jesus the Son of God again delivers us.” Thus, St. Justin does not forget the consequences of sin, but deliverance from them seems to him to be a consequence of salvation, and not its essence and main goal (“again delivers”). The essence of salvation is that the Lord Jesus Christ has given us the power with which we overcome the attacks of the devil attacking us and remain free from our former passions.

“I,” says St. Ephraim the Syrian, “have been saved from many debts, from a legion of sins, from the grave bonds of unrighteousness and from the snares of sin, I have been saved from evil deeds, from secret iniquities, from the filth of corruption, from the abomination of errors. I have risen from this of the mire, who came out of this pit, came out of this darkness; heal, O Lord, according to Thy false promise, all the infirmities that You see in me.” In these words, Rev. Ephraim not only expresses the essence of salvation from the side of its content, but makes it clear also its very form, the way in which it is accomplished: it is not some kind of external judicial or magical action, but a development that is gradually accomplished in a person by the action of God’s grace, so that there may be degrees of atonement. “A perfect Christian,” the Holy Father expresses the same thought, “produces every virtue and all the perfect fruits of the spirit that surpass our nature... with delight and spiritual pleasure, as natural and ordinary, without fatigue and easily, no longer struggling with sinful passions, as completely redeemed by the Lord."

The same idea can be found in very clear form in St. Athanasius of Alexandria, “Since,” he says, “human nature, having undergone a change, abandoned the truth and loved lawlessness, the Only Begotten became man, so that, having corrected this in Himself, he would instill in human nature to love truth and hate lawlessness.”

Christ “is called, in the words of St. Gregory the Theologian, “Deliverance” (1 Cor. 1:30), as freeing us, held under sin, as having given Himself for us as an atonement, as a cleansing sacrifice for the universe.”

The Essence of Salvation

So, from the Orthodox point of view, the essence, meaning and final goal of a person’s salvation is to deliver him from sin and to give him eternal holy life in communion with God. The Orthodox does not forget about the consequences of sin, death, suffering, etc. is ungrateful to God for getting rid of them - but this deliverance is not the main joy for him, as it is in the legal understanding of life. Like the Apostle Paul, the Orthodox lament not so much that he is threatened with punishment for sin, from which (sin) he cannot in any way free himself, but rather that he cannot “get rid of this body of death” in which “another law” lives , who fights against the “law of the mind” that delights him (Rom. 7:22-25). It is not fear for oneself, but the desire for holiness, for life according to God, that makes a true ascetic of piety grieve.

If this is the essence of salvation, then the very method of it becomes definite for us.

If you think only about freeing a person from suffering, then it is completely indifferent whether this deliverance is free or not free on the part of the person. But if a person needs to be made righteous, it is necessary to free him from sin, then it is not at all indifferent whether the person will only be a passive object for the action of supernatural power, or whether he himself will participate in his own deliverance.

Salvation is certainly accomplished with the participation of human consciousness and freedom; it is a moral matter, not a mechanical one.

That is why, in Holy Scripture and in the works of the Fathers of the Church, one notices a constant desire to convince a person to work out his own salvation, because without one’s own efforts no one can be saved. Holiness, if it is an involuntary property of nature, will lose its moral character and turn into an indifferent state. “You cannot be kind out of necessity” (I. Chrysostom).

Therefore, it is equally wrong to imagine salvation as a matter both imputed to a person from the outside and occurring within a person apart from the participation of his freedom. In both cases, a person would turn out to be only a weak-willed subject of someone else’s influence, and the holiness he received in this way would be no different from innate holiness, which has no moral dignity, and, therefore, not at all the highest good that he seeks. Human. “I,” says St. I. Chrysostom, “have heard many who said: “Why did God create me autocratic in virtue?” - But how can we raise you to heaven, dozing, sleeping, devoted to vices, luxury, gluttony? would you not give up your vices? “A person would not accept the holiness forcibly imposed on him and would remain the same. Therefore, although the grace of God does a lot in the salvation of a person, although everything can be attributed to it, it “also needs a believer, like a writing cane or an arrow in an active one” ( Cyril of Jerusalem). “The salvation of man is prepared not by violence and arbitrariness, but by conviction and good nature. Therefore, everyone is sovereign in his own salvation" (Isidore Pelusiot). And this is not only in the sense that he passively perceives the influence of grace, so to speak, exposes himself to grace, but in the fact that he meets the salvation offered to him with the most ardent desire that he “zealously directs his eyes to the light” (of God) (Irenaeus of Lyons). “He is an ascetic,” says the Rev. Ephraim the Syrian, - is always ready to give you His right hand and restore you from your fall. For as soon as you are the first to stretch out your hand to Him, He will give you His right hand to raise you up." And this determination to accept grace-filled help necessarily presupposes that in the subsequent moment, at the moment of the very influence of grace, a person does not remain idle, does not feel only his own salvation, but “contributes to the grace acting in him.” Every good thing that happens in a person, every moral growth, every turning point that occurs in his soul, is necessarily accomplished not outside of consciousness and freedom, so that not someone else, but “man himself changes himself, turning from the old into the new.” Salvation cannot be some external judicial or physical event, but is necessarily a moral action, and, as such, it necessarily presupposes, as an inevitable condition and law, that man He himself performs this action, albeit with the help of grace.Grace, although it acts, although it does everything, but certainly within freedom and consciousness. This is the basic Orthodox principle, and it should not be forgotten in order to understand the teaching of the Orthodox Church about the very method of human salvation.

Teaching of Holy Scripture

Holy Scripture, indeed, speaks of a radical moral change in a person in baptism. The Apostle Paul calls baptism the death of sin. “We,” he says, “died to sin: how can we live in it?” What does this death consist of? “Do you not know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”... “Our old man was crucified with Him, so that the body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin” (Rom. 6:2-4,6). Further, the conviction to be faithful to one’s calling, to remain alien to sin, makes it clear that death to sin itself is also accomplished in a moral way, an act that is as “mysterious as it is freely willing.” “Death,” says Rev. Theophan in his interpretation of the quoted words of the Apostle Paul, “is, of course, not physical, but moral, consisting in rejection of all sin and hatred of it. For how do they approach the Lord? - By repenting and being baptized,” as St. Peter on the day of Pentecost asked: “What shall we do?” - “Repent, and let everyone be baptized in you,” he answered (Acts 2:38). And what does it mean to repent? - To say in your heart: I have sinned, I have not I will. This will not be and is death to sin." In other words, baptism, according to the Apostle Paul, was the same “promise to God of a good conscience” as it was according to the Apostle Peter (1 Pet. 3:21).

According to Holy Scripture, Sts taught. Fathers and Teachers of the Church, describing the justification of man and the gracious effect of the sacraments of baptism and repentance. Let's start with more ancient witnesses.

WITHV. Justin Martyr

St. Justin Martyr in his “Conversation with Tryphon” very clearly distinguishes the Christian non-imputation of sin from the ordinary, only external, so to speak, condonation of sin. “All who wish,” says St. Justin, “if they repent, can receive mercy from God,” and Scripture calls them blessed, saying: “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin,” i.e., having repented of his sins, he will receive forgiveness from God for them, but not as you deceive yourselves and some others like you in this, who say that although they are sinners, they know God, and the Lord will not impute sin to them. As a proof of this , we have one crime of David, which occurred from his pride, which was later forgiven when he cried and grieved as it is written.If such a person was not given forgiveness before repentance, but only when he, the great king, was anointed and The prophet cried and behaved like this, then how can the unclean and extremely criminal, if they do not grieve and cry and do not repent, hope that the Lord will not impute sin to them?

Thus, forgiveness does not consist in covering or forgiving an existing sin - such forgiveness does not exist in Christianity. A person receives forgiveness only when he grieves over the sin he has committed and repents of it, i.e. decides not to sin in the future, he promises to God, and then he is forgiven. St. Justin, indeed, expresses this thought when describing St. baptism. “Whoever is convinced and believes that this teaching and our words are true, and is promised that he can live in accordance with it, they are taught that with prayer and fasting they ask God for forgiveness of past sins, and we pray and fast with them. Then we We bring them to where there is water, and they are reborn in the same way as we ourselves were reborn, that is, they are then washed with water in the name of God the Father and the Lord of all, and our Savior Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit."

II. Forgiveness of sins and moral change of man

The essence of baptism or the sacrament of repentance consists in a radical revolution accomplished in a person’s soul, in a change in his entire life. Man was a slave to sin, fulfilled the lusts of the devil, was an enemy of God - now he decides to stop sin and be in communion with the Holy Lord. This decision, of course, is a matter of human freedom, but it is accomplished in the soul only under the influence and with the help of grace, which is communicated in the sacrament. “Baptism,” asks the Reverend Theophan, “what does it impart?” “It strengthens this decision of the will with grace and gives strength to persevere in this decision.” Before accepting grace, a person only wanted to follow Christ and do His will. But sin continued to be pleasant to him. The grace of God strengthens a person’s resolve so much that he begins to hate sin, i.e. finally considers it an evil for himself, as he previously considered it his good. This means that a person completely went over to the side of the Lord and became His faithful servant (Rom. 6:17-18). The grace of the sacrament, entering, so to speak, into the soul of a person and certainly “dissolving with human zeal” (Isidore Pelusiot), consolidates and carries out the moral revolution accomplished by the will of a person and gives a person the strength to resist the decision made (unless, of course, the person turns away again from grace). This very radical change in the direction of life brings about the “destruction of everything that was before” (Cyril of Jerusalem).

Every sinful fall puts a certain stamp on a person’s soul and in one way or another affects its structure. The sum of sinful actions thus constitutes a certain past of a person, which influences his behavior in the present and attracts him to certain actions. The mysteriously free revolution consists in the fact that the thread of a person’s life is, as it were, interrupted, and the sinful past that has formed in him loses its defining coercive force, is, as it were, thrown out of the soul, and becomes alien to the person. Whatever this past may be, whether it be an inheritance from parents (original sin), or the consequences of the actions of the person being baptized, all this is equally crossed out in a person’s life, if only he sincerely turns away from it, if only he finally breaks with this past connection . A new man emerges from the font, without determination to sin, but with zeal strengthened by grace to do the will of God and never abandon God. Sin is not forgotten and is not imputed to a person due to some reasons extraneous to a person’s soul - sin literally moves away from a person, ceases to be part of his internal content and relates to the past that has been lived, which, thus, is with the present human has nothing in common. And since there is no sin in the present, there is, therefore, no alienation from God, man is “reconciled and reunited with the Church,” the holy kingdom of God and God, sin is truly forgiven to man.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem

Directly concerns the issue of the baptism of St. Cyril of Jerusalem, whose very works: “Catechetical Teachings,” directly answer our question. St. Cyril clearly represents the rebirth of a person in baptism in the form of a vital and at the same time morally free revolution in the soul. A person approaching baptism must quite sincerely and decisively cast aside his former life according to the elements of the world and determine himself for good. This is a decision or will that radically changes a person and makes a person “called,” i.e. in reality, and not just in the imagination, it brings him into communication with God and to the beginning of a new life.

In order for a new life to begin, it is necessary that the old one be actually rejected. The Lord gives his wonderful saving seal only where he sees a “good conscience,” i.e. not just a verbal promise, but a sincere desire to be kind. “Just as those who begin recruiting warriors enter into research about the age and physical constitution of those recruited, so the Lord, inscribing souls into His army, tests the wills. And, if anyone has hidden hypocrisy, he rejects this person as incapable of true service in the army. And if he finds someone worthy, he readily gives him grace. But “a saint does not give with a dog” (Matthew 7:6). Where a good conscience sees, there he gives a wonderful seal of salvation, which demons tremble and which angels know." Therefore, a real, consciously free spiritual change is necessary for the sacrament to fully benefit a person. Without free assistance, without the aforementioned turning point, a person only tempts the Lord in vain. This thought was in the eyes of St. Cyril is so important that he returns to it several times in his Announcements, trying to imprint it as strongly as possible in the minds preparing for enlightenment.

“If,” says the Saint in the “Word of Preface,” at the very beginning, “you are here with your body (i.e., you receive the sacrament), but not here with your mind, then there is no benefit in this. And Simon the Magus once approached this font. And was baptized, but was not enlightened; washed the body with water, but did not enlighten the heart with the Spirit; the body was immersed in water and came out of the water, but the soul was not buried with Christ, and was not resurrected with Him. I present examples of falls, so that you do not fall... We , servants of Christ, we accept everyone and, as if correcting the position of the doorkeepers, we leave the doors unlocked. There is no prohibition for you to enter if your soul is defiled by sins and your intentions are unclean... If you remain with an evil will, the one who precedes you is not guilty, "But don't expect to receive grace. The water will receive you, but the Spirit will not."

From this point of view, accepting the sacrament of baptism seems to be a great test of a person’s conscience, such a turning point in a person’s life that if he misses it, he will not be able to improve his situation in any way. “(The Holy Spirit) tests the soul, does not “cast pearls before swine.” If you are a hypocrite, then people will baptize you now, but the Spirit will not baptize. But if you came by faith, then people serve in the visible, but the Holy Spirit gives the invisible ".

Thanks to this revolution in a person’s soul, his sins are left behind. “Do not ask: “How will my sins be blotted out?” I tell you: by will, by faith. What is this in short? But if your mouth says what you wish, but your heart does not say it, then the Knower of the Heart will judge you. From now on, abandon every worthless deed. Let not your tongue utter obscene words, let not your gaze sin, and let not your thoughts wander over what is useless.” “Prepare,” says St. Cyril in another place, “a spiritual vessel so that you may become a son of God, an heir of God, a joint heir with Christ (Rom. 8:17), if only you prepare yourself to receive it, if you come with faith to "In order to become faithful, if of your own free will you put off the old man. For whatever you have done will be forgiven you." Thus, one’s own will to leave the old man is a condition for the gracious effectiveness of the sacrament: the old man actually dies, and the former life is forgiven to the person. There is no will, the old man does not die, then there is no forgiveness.

St. Basil the Great

According to St. Basil the Great, acceptance of the sacrament is our reconciliation with God, Who previously forgave the sins of all people. “How can a soul undoubtedly be convinced that God has forgiven its sins? - If it perceives in itself the disposition of the one who said: I have hated and detested iniquity (Ps. 118): because God, having sent down His only begotten Son for the forgiveness of our sins, on His part previously forgave the sins of all ".

What is the assistance on our part to the grace of God? - The fact that we “are in the likeness of His death, having been buried by Him through baptism.” - “What is the image of burial? And why is such imitation useful? - Firstly, it is necessary that the order of the previous life be stopped. And this, according to according to the word of the Lord, it is impossible for one “who is not born again" (John 3:8). For rebirth, as the name itself shows, is the beginning of a new life. Therefore, before the beginning of a new life, it is necessary to put an end to the life that preceded it. As with those who run back and forth in the field, the two opposite movements are separated by a certain stop and rest: so, with a change in life, it turned out to be necessary for death to serve as a medium between one life and the other, ending the previous life and laying the beginning of the next life.” It is this suppression of the order of former life that constitutes the essence of the mysteriously free influence of the sacrament of baptism on the soul. The symbol of this death to sin is immersion in water. “How do we perform a descent into hell? - Imitating the burial of Christ in baptism; because the bodies of those baptized in water are, as it were, buried. Therefore, baptism (i.e. immersion, the visible form of baptism) symbolically means the rejection of carnal deeds (the inner side of baptism, as a sacrament ), according to the word of the Apostle, who says: “circumcision was made quickly with a circumcision made without hands, in putting off the body of sin of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ, being buried with Him through baptism” (Col. 2:11-12). It is, as it were, a cleansing of the soul from the defilement produced in her with carnal wisdom, according to what is written: “Wash me, and I will be whiter than snow" (Ps. 50:9). The forgiveness of man’s sins is the basis for the indicated death to sin, this is the suppression of the order of the former life. Without suppression, then there can be no forgiveness "In what case are spiritual sins forgiven? - When virtue, having prevailed over the soul and completely protected it with its lessons, produces in it an aversion from the opposite disposition... Whoever is so disposed, as a result of skill (i.e., as a result of a finally formed decision), may be forgiven of previous untruths... Who This is how he healed himself by adopting a disposition that is contrary to sin, for which the grace of forgiveness is also useful... It is impossible for anyone without God’s forgiveness to indulge in a virtuous life (grace-filled help is needed to fulfill the decision). Therefore, the all-wise Steward of our life wants someone who has lived in sin and then vows to rise to a healthy life to put an end to the past, and after committing sins to make some beginning, as if renewed to life through repentance.”

St. Gregory of Nyssa

St. Gregory of Nyssa constantly pursues the idea that a person can be reborn only under the condition of a free decision not to sin, which makes it possible for him to accept grace. In his "Catechetical Word", he, like St. Cyril of Jerusalem insists on the idea that without this free decision, the acceptance of the sacrament is not at all beneficial.

“If, according to the word of the prophet, having washed ourselves in this mysterious bath (baptism), we became pure in our wills, having washed away the wickedness from our souls (Is. 1:16): then we became better and were transformed into the best. If the bath served the body, but the soul did not cast off passionate impurities from herself - on the contrary, life according to the secret action is similar to life before the secret action - then, although it would be bold to say, I will nevertheless say and will not deny that for such people water remains water.”

If a person does not decide to completely give up sin and if he does not try with all his strength to maintain this decision, then he accepted the sacrament in vain: he participated in it only with his body, but the soul did not receive anything from this participation. This is understandable. The essence of baptism is the “cessation of the continuity of evil”; if a person does not make this suppression, then why be baptized? “In the image of killing, represented by water, the destruction of the mixed vice is carried out, although not a complete destruction, but some suppression of the continuity of evil, with the confluence of two aids to the destruction of evil: the repentance of the sinner and the imitation of death, by which a person somewhat renounces the union with evil, repentance being brought into hatred of vice and alienated from it, and through death bringing about the destruction of evil.” Thus, the destruction of evil in man occurs precisely through the free alienation of man from vice and vicious life. “If the free movement of our will breaks off relations with the non-existent (which is evil in essence) and draws closer to the Existing, then what is now in me, no longer having being, will not have the ability to remain in me at all, because evil ", taken outside of will, does not exist in itself." This is the basic law of attitude towards evil. The same law also applies to the destruction of evil in baptism.

St. Gregory the Theologian

For St. Gregory the Theologian, the remission of sins in baptism was by no means an external event, independent of the free determination of a person: if God forgives the sins of the baptized person, then for this remission to be effective, it is necessary to “purify oneself”, to create in oneself a “skill for good”, i.e. . resolutely determine oneself towards a good life. Only then can one be assured that baptism will not be just a form or a fruitless talent, but will actually “provide redemption for a person.” “Those who approach baptism carelessly and without preparation and do not provide redemption through practice in goodness must first cleanse themselves. For although this grace provides remission of past sins, then all the more reverence is required from us so as not to return to the same vomit.” “The font,” says St. Gregory in another place, “gives remission of sins committed, not those committed (not those that still dominate the soul). It is necessary that the cleansing not be done for show, but penetrate you, so that you become brighter completely, and not embellished (only) on the outside, so that grace does not serve as a cover for sins, but as liberation from them.” And this depends on the person to whom St. The father makes an admonition.

St. John Chrysostom

St. John Chrysostom compares the forgiveness of sins accomplished in baptism with ordinary royal forgiveness and finds between them the fundamental difference that royal forgiveness is an external matter, while God's forgiveness in baptism significantly changes a person. “It is possible for God alone to forgive sins, leaders and kings, although they forgive adulterers and murderers, they only free them from real punishment (the essence of forgiveness from a legal point of view), and do not cleanse their sins themselves; and even if they elevated those forgiven to the highest ranks , even if they clothed them in purple, even if they put a diadem on them, and then they will make them kings, but they will not free them from sins; this is done by God alone. He does this in the bath of rebirth; for grace touches the soul itself and uproots from "Therefore, the soul of one forgiven by the king may be unclean, but the soul of one baptized cannot be; it is purer than the very rays of the sun and is the same as it was in the beginning, and even much better; for it receives the Spirit, which completely enkindles it and makes it holy. Just like you “When you melt down iron or gold, you make it pure and new again, just as the Holy Spirit, refining the soul in baptism, as if in a furnace, and destroying sins, makes it purer and more brilliant than any gold.”

How, however, does this cleansing of the soul, the destruction of sin in baptism, take place? “Although,” the saint teaches, “sin truly dies in us through baptism, it is necessary that we ourselves contribute to its mortification.”

This assistance is described by St. John: Chrysostom in "Discourse on the Epistle to the Hebrews." “Whoever intends to turn to virtue must first renounce vices, and then enter into a virtuous life. Repentance could not make believers pure; therefore, they were immediately (however, after repentance) baptized, so that, what they could not do on their own, "This can be achieved through the grace of Christ. Consequently, repentance is not enough for cleansing, but one must accept baptism. One must approach baptism by first renouncing one’s sins and condemning them." Graceful help, therefore, is necessary in order to complete what we ourselves are not able to do. But this directly assumes that we tried to do the best we could.

St. Cyril of Alexandria

It also reveals the essence of Divine forgiveness of sins and St. Cyril of Alexandria. “When,” he says, “we stop sinning and, with the help of an inclination for the better, we seem to lead the soul to the choice of what is useful, then we remove from ourselves the ugliness of previous sins (the basic law of forgiveness) and, having destroyed the stench of sin with the fragrance of subsequent good affairs, we will again enter the camp of the saints, that is, the church of the firstborn.” Therefore, the Father “accepts the lost (under one condition only) if they turn out to be clean from the wicked seeds that have infested them and if they do not bring with them any remnant of the abomination that led them astray.” A necessary condition forgiveness is the renunciation of sin; only thanks to him can a person be accepted by the Father. “Only having decided to renounce a life addicted to pleasure and worldly life, and trying with the greatest zeal to follow the laws of God, but not yet being enriched with grace through holy baptism, are we not very strong or capable of the work of suffering and enduring labor for the sake of virtue.” The essence of baptism, therefore, is that a person, as it were, sacrifices himself to God, “mentally undergoes a sacred death,” while grace makes up for what a person’s decision and his greatest zeal cannot do: grace makes a person’s decision unshakable - no forward sin. This same decision serves in turn as the basis for forgiveness.

St. Ephraim the Syrian

Rev. Ephraim the Syrian represents the forgiveness of sins as a very significant action, accompanied not by the imputation of sin alone or not by the oblivion of the latter, but by its direct, decisive destruction. A forgiven person not only does not fear punishment, but also receives strength to lead a virtuous life. Forgiveness is a change in a person. “As soon as Your gaze, Lord of all, turns to the darkness of my sins, it disappears before me, and without hindrance, with all zeal, I begin to walk the path of Your commandments, I am strengthened by hope in You and freed from the darkness of error.” However, in what way exactly does the forgiveness of sins renew a person? “I’ll tell you,” answers St. Ephraim the Syrian, “how a person becomes perfect through repentance, so that, having learned the very method, you will not have an excuse. Listen. Do you repent for poisoning others? Destroy every trace of this, only leave the implicit, but not practice in secret. You have stopped killing people, keep your tongue from slander, from slander, from gossip... You are refining yourself, sinner, you are raising yourself from the dead. Therefore, if you do something half-heartedly, then you are causing offense to yourself. If a little and a little bit of unfinished work is insufficient and imperfect, then how much more is a half done thing?.. If you do not repent completely, then you become half righteous.” This is the inner, essential side of the destruction of sin in a person: a person must give up sin himself, and to the extent that he gives up it in his own will, so much will grace free him from sin. That is why, after the forgiveness of sins, he turns out to be a zealot for good deeds.

So, according to Orthodox teaching, the forgiveness of sins in the sacrament of baptism or repentance does not occur in an externally judicial way; it does not consist in the fact that God from that time ceases to be angry with a person, but in the fact that as a result of a radical change, as grace-filled as and voluntary, a life determination appears in a person, completely opposite to the previous, sinful one, so that the previous sin ceases to influence the spiritual life of a person, ceases to belong to the soul - it is destroyed. Therefore, man is reconciled with God, and the mercy of God becomes available to man.

Bishop's thoughts Feofana

It is very instructive to read the explanation of the inner side of the sacrament in the writings of the late Rev. Feofan, deeply imbued with paternal teaching (especially where he, leaving his school uniform, moves on to life, truly paternal soil).

According to the presentation of Rev. Theophan, the inner essence of the mysterious renewal of man is his voluntary and final determination of himself to please God. “This decision,” says Rev. Theophan, “is the main point in the matter of conversion, fundamental, imprecise.” The effectiveness of revival depends on this fundamental moment. “If a person (after baptism) does good, then this is because he comes from the font as a zealot for good deeds, endowed with power to do them. But this zeal was voluntarily perceived by him in moments of contrite sorrow for sins and seeking mercy; the grace of God, having come then she strengthened it and made it powerful." “In the mortification of sin through baptism, nothing happens mechanically, but everything is accomplished with the participation of the morally free decisions of the person himself. The essence of the mortification of sin is always the same: it is an aversion from sin, a mortal hatred of it. Where is it in baptism? - Right there, in spirit of the one being baptized. - For what does the one being baptized do before being immersed in the font? - Denies Satan, and all his works, and all his ministry; and this is the same thing that turns away from sin and hates it. When then, in this spirit of disgust and hatred towards sin, he is immersed in the font, then the grace of God, descending inside, strengthens these dispositions and decisions of the will and gives them living and effective power. To the baptized, all previous sins are forgiven, and from future ones he will be protected by this power that descended into him in baptism. He and is truly dead to sin." A person has abandoned his previous sins, and therefore they are not considered to him, but instead of sin, he now has the decision to serve God.

III. Putting a Person on Christ

Teaching of Holy Scripture

According to the clear teaching of the Word of God, a person is saved by being in the closest union with Christ, like a branch with a vine. “I,” says the Lord, “am the true vine, and My Father is the Husbandman. Every branch of Me that does not bear fruit He cuts off; and he cleanses every one that bears fruit, so that it may bear more fruit... Abide in Me, and I in you. Just as a branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it is in the vine, so neither can you unless you are in Me. I am the Vine and you are the branches; He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. Whoever does not abide in Me will be cast out like a branch and wither; and such branches are gathered into the fire, and they are burned" (John 15:1-6). But to remain in Christ means to remain faithful to His teaching, it means to have "His word abiding" in us (John 15:7), to fulfill It commandments (John 15:10). Consequently, the one who strives to be like Christ, who decides to do His will (the essence of baptism), he becomes a branch, united with Christ in the most intimate and mysterious way. This unity, on the one hand, gives a man of strength, strengthens his determination to observe the will of Christ, and on the other hand, requires diligence from him (otherwise there is nothing to strengthen if there is no determination). If he is zealous for likeness to Christ, the Heavenly Husbandman will not cut him off from eternal life. He will lose zeal for Christ , then the help of God will also be lost, and then the likeness of Christ will dry up, and the end of this impoverishment of spiritual life is eternal destruction. If the merit of Christ remains only an external event for a person’s spiritual life, then he cannot be saved. “I am not telling you that I will ask the Father for you: for the Father Himself loves you (why? Is it for the sake of My merit as such? no), because you loved Me and believed that I came from God" (16:26-27). What does it mean to love Christ? - Only one who loves goodness and is ready to sacrifice everything for the sake of the law of God can love Christ. To love Christ means to devote oneself to serving Christ, it means to strive to become like Christ, to consider Him as your teacher and example (1 Pet. 2:4-5).

Therefore, it is necessary to assimilate the merit of Christ in life, i.e. in spiritual communion with Christ, the assimilation of the moral dispensation that Christ had and which can make us capable of perceiving eternal bliss. So, indeed, it is.

The teaching of St. Fathers

Through baptism, people “cling to the true Vine”, become Its branches, not only in the sense that they “are dressed in the bright and precursor of Christ’s righteousness, like royal purple” (St. Tikhon of Zadonsk), but they perceive Christ within themselves, within according to their dispositions their souls become Christ's (1 Cor. 15:23), conformed to Him. “Here,” says St. Macarius of Egypt, “is the foundation of the path to God: with great patience, with hope, with humility, in spiritual poverty, with meekness to walk the path of life; by this a person can acquire justification in himself, and by justification I mean Himself Gentlemen." Here we are talking about life after baptism, but this life, as we will see, serves only as a development of what was received at baptism. At baptism, a person does not assimilate only what the Lord has done, but perceives by decision the shrine, i.e. life according to the will of God. “The confession that (a person) will not accept more sinful mud and will not touch earthly filth on the path of life is, according to St. Gregory of Nyssa, the entrance of the shrine into the soul thus prepared; the shrine is the Lord.” The soul does not outwardly participate in the fruits of death or the righteousness of Christ, but perceives Christ within itself, puts on Him.

“Having put off the old man and having taken away the veil of the heart, the soul,” continues St. Gregory of Nyssa, “opened the entrance to the Word, and when It entered, it makes Him its garment, according to the leadership of the Apostle, who commands the one who has put off the carnal garment of the old man to put on a robe.” ", created according to God in honor and righteousness (Eph. 4:24). He calls Jesus a garment."

Putting on Christ consists in the fact that a person firmly follows the path of Christ, not yielding in the least to the temptations of the world and the flesh. “You cannot be Christ without being righteous, pure, truth and the absence of all evil; you cannot be a Christian (clothed in Christ) without showing in yourself an affinity with these names.” To put on Christ means, therefore, to adopt Christ's disposition and way.

St. Cyril of Alexandria says: “God and the Father honors and recognizes His vision (i.e., eternal bliss) only to those who (not the merit of Christ want to appropriate for themselves, but) have a spiritual affinity with the Son and have been enriched from Him and through Him spiritual rebirth." The initial stage of this assimilation to Christ occurs at baptism and consists in the fact that the believer cleaves to Christ. “He is the Vine; and we have grown together with Him like rods, bound to Him through sanctification by union in the Spirit” (cf. John 15:1,2,5). However, this cleaving cannot be imagined otherwise than as a free deed, or, more precisely, as free as it is grace-filled; and this is because we can only be “speaking in the spirit and aflame with the love of God” when we “cleave to Christ by faith and conduct good and in accordance with the law,” i.e. freely following the law of Christ. “The Communion of Christ infuses holy and pure souls, but in souls that are not so inclined, it cannot be affirmed at all: “The Holy Spirit of punishment will flee the flatterer,” according to what is written, “he dwells below in the body guilty of sin” (Wis. 1, 5, 4 ") So, by providing services to the offended and by deeds of love, driving away the grief of the brethren, let us rid ourselves of all guilt and obtain remission in Christ." Thus, to receive “release in Christ” or for the sake of Christ, in other words, to assimilate Christ’s righteousness, is possible only for those who have freed themselves in advance from all guilt, who, i.e. “through faith and good conduct and in accordance with the law, he will cleave to Christ” and become like Him, akin to Him. Clothing in the truth of Christ is possible only through likeness to Christ.

St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, in whose works one can find many apparent indications of the mere external meaning of the righteousness of Christ, himself gives the key to how these external definitions should be understood. “By Baptism,” says the Saint, “everyone is renewed and the most holy disposition of Christ is accepted upon themselves, and thus they are included in the Holy Church.” How does this assumption of the character of Christ take place? This is explained in the following words: “We need to now, with difficulty, diligence and feat, seek that which has been given to us from God without effort and without our labor (i.e., the primitive purity and righteousness of the soul). Then, seeing Christ, such diligence and care of the soul and labor, by its mercy, takes away the ugliness from it and gives the kindness and beauty of His image. For this reason He came into the world, as the Church sings: “Christ is born before the fallen to raise up the image.” And this is - “set aside for us, according to to the first life, the old man, which is decaying in the lusts of delightful desires, to be renewed in the spirit of our mind, and to put on the new man, created according to God in righteousness and in the likeness of the truth" (Eph. 4:22-24), for which no small diligence and labor and a feat is required." This is the basic law by which the consequences of the Fall are destroyed in us: work, diligence, and moral efforts of the person himself are necessary. Only in this way can a person restore in himself the image of God, or - which is the same thing - “the character of Christ” or “the image of Christ.” “Let us seek, O Christians,” says St. Tikhon, “our goodness and beauty in Christ, which is in Adam lost: we will look for it while it is found, and here we will take it in our souls, and at the coming of Christ we will appear with it before Him and the whole world, which then will not only be in our souls, but will also appear on our bodies; and Christ, the righteous Judge, seeing in us the image of God and us conforming to Himself, He will recognize us as His own and glorify us with Himself.”

So, according to the mind of St. Fathers, a person is clothed in baptism with the righteousness of Christ in the sense that he takes upon himself “the character of Christ”; and this disposition makes him akin to the eternal kingdom of God and, thus, capable of perceiving it in future life when this kingdom will open in its entirety.

Assimilation of the truth of Christ according to Ep. Feofan

Again, we consider it not superfluous to compare these conclusions of ours from the testimonies of our fathers with the same conclusions of Rev. Feofan. The latter very often resorts to the external representation of a person’s mental life and, in particular, salvation, which is usual in school dogma. In the same way, the righteousness of Christ, by which a person is saved, is often in the mouth of the Right Reverend. Theophanes, apparently, turns into an external event, for the sake of which God ceases to be angry with the sinner. “When a person,” says Rev. Theophan, “became a transgressor of the law, he could not hope to achieve his goal (i.e., communication with God) otherwise than through assimilating someone else’s righteousness. This assimilated righteousness makes up for the lack of legality in our lives and gives us the opportunity to be close to God."

“In the death of the Lord on the cross there is the cleansing power of sin. Whoever is baptized - immersed - in the death of Christ is immersed in the cleansing power of sin. This power, in the very action of immersion, consumes every sin, so that not a trace of it remains. The same thing happens here , as if someone had prepared such a chemical composition in which, when some unclean linen is immersed in it..., all uncleanness will be consumed. So the death of Christ, as the cleansing power of sin, consumes all sin, as soon as someone is immersed in this death by baptism "No trace of sin remains in the baptized: it is dead to him."

Here someone else would see the most extreme idea of ​​justification in terms of its materiality. Obviously, in these all too tangible images, Rev. Theophan wanted to expound the doctrine that for the death of Christ a person’s sins are forgiven. However, following this description, Rev. Theophan hastens to make a reservation: “But,” he says, “one must keep in mind that in this mortification of sin through baptism nothing happens mechanically, but everything is accomplished with the participation of the morally free decisions of the person himself.”

In “Letters to a Person in St. Petersburg” we read: “In order for the salvation of each person to be accomplished, in particular, it is necessary that the needs of salvation, combined in the person of the Lord, pass into everyone and be assimilated by them. This last is accomplished by the Holy Spirit The word of the gospel awakens faith in the power of the Lord’s death on the cross and in the baptismal font washes the believer and from original sin and from all arbitrary ones, renewing at the same time his spiritual life and making it strong to resist sin and succeed in goodness. Both needs are fulfilled at once. He who comes from the font of baptism is both justified and righteous, all guilt of sin is removed from him, and he desires only one good thing pleasing to God and is strong to do it. This is the vestment in Christ, in which what is needed for salvation from Christ the Lord is transferred to the believer who is baptized and is acquired not nominally, but essentially. While he believes only in Christ, these needs are his, but only nominally, as determined to him and ready for him, but in the baptismal font they essentially become his property." Thus, the righteousness of Christ is not credited only to the baptized, but is essentially accepted by him: he now “desires only one good thing and is strong to do it.”

The mere external recognition of a sinner as righteous can, of course, console him, but it can excite him to do good, strengthen him in the righteousness received involuntarily only when the person desires it, i.e. when there is a turning point in his soul, a turning from evil to good.

Human freedom in assimilating the truth of Christ

Salvation and, in particular, justification for the Orthodox is a free moral state, although it can only be achieved with the help of God’s grace. To be regenerated by grace, a person must himself contribute to his rebirth. “Coming to the good Doctor,” writes St. Ephraim the Syrian, - the sinner must, for his part, “bring tears - this is the best medicine. For this is what the heavenly Physician wants, so that everyone heals himself with his own tears and is saved,” and not involuntarily undergo only salvation.

“Wash yourself thoroughly with tears, as a dyer washes out waves, surrender to humility and reduce yourself in everything; for, having thus pre-purified yourself, you will approach God ready to receive grace. Some of the repentant return to sin again, because they did not know what was hidden in them the serpent, and even if they knew, they did not completely remove him from themselves, for they allowed traces of his image to remain there, and he soon, as if conceived in the womb, again restores the full image of his malice. When you see someone who repents and sins again, then understand, that he has not changed in his mind, because all the creeping things of sin are still in him. The sign of one who brings firm repentance is a collected and stern lifestyle, the putting aside of arrogance, conceit, as well as the eyes and mind, always directed towards the longed-for Jesus Christ, with desire, by the grace of Christ, to become a new man, just as a wave becomes purple or cloth of blue or hyacinth color.”

Thus, the effectiveness of the sacrament depends on the degree of free participation of the person himself in it. In order to emerge from the sacrament as a new person, he must himself strive to be new and, as far as he has the strength, must destroy in himself the slightest remnants of the previous sinful dispensation. That is why the Fathers of the Church insist that the free decision and effort of man is just as necessary, although insufficient in itself, a condition for justification in baptism, as is the grace-filled help of God. “If there is no will,” says St. Macarius of Egypt, “God Himself does nothing, although He can according to His freedom. Therefore, the accomplishment of a work by the Spirit depends on the will of man.”

The rebirth of man is accomplished in a moral way, with the free-conscious assistance of man himself. “Renewal of life takes place in a person,” says Rev. Theophan, “not mechanically (that is, not in such a way that the grace of God expels sin from a person’s soul, as something independent of the will of a person, and settles in its place, also against the will righteousness), but according to internal voluntary changes or decisions; this is also done in baptism because the one being baptized in advance loved to live this way. Therefore, before immersing ourselves in the font, we, having renounced Satan and his works, are united to Christ the Lord in order to devote our entire lives to Him. This the location in the font is sealed by the grace of God and the power takes on to be effective. Coming out of the font with him, the baptized one is thus completely new, renewed in his moral and spiritual life - he is resurrected. Just as Christ the Lord was resurrected, and the baptized one, immersed into the font, dies, and, coming out of the font, is resurrected: he dies to sin and is resurrected for righteousness, for a new and renewed life. It is this mysterious and at the same time freely willing change that St. speaks about in this place. Apostle Paul: “We were buried... that we might walk in newness of life.”

Therefore, giving full power and meaning to the grace-filled influence on the human soul, the Fathers of the Church depicted the sacrament of baptism in the form of a covenant with God, i.e. such an action that directly presupposes freedom not only for the perception of grace, but in the very fruits of grace. “In short, by the power of baptism,” notes St. Gregory the Theologian, “we must understand a covenant with God about entering into another life and maintaining greater purity”; and this presupposes the desire to be kind, and the decision to be one, and in fact, work on oneself, and the free efforts of a person under the most mysterious influence.

A person can keep himself on the path of good only by direct efforts of his will, by forcing himself to do good. “That in baptism our previous sins are buried - this, according to St. I. Chrysostom, is a gift of Christ; and in order to remain dead to sin after baptism, this must be a matter of our own zeal, although in this feat, as we will see, "God helps us most of all. For baptism has the power not only to blot out past sins, but also to protect us from future ones. Just as you used faith to blot out past sins, so that you will not be defiled by sins after baptism, show a change in disposition." Although grace-filled help is always ready for the baptized, although he is in sincere union with Christ, only with the assistance of his will can a person take advantage of this grace-filled help. “The Evangelist,” says the same Holy Father, “nowhere gives place to coercion, but shows the free will and independence of man; he expressed this even now. For in these mysteries (rebirth, etc.) one thing belongs to God - to bestow grace, and It is another for a person to show faith. But then a lot of care is required from a person: for in order to maintain purity, it is not enough for us to just be baptized and believe, but if we want to acquire perfect lordship, then we must lead a life worthy of it. And God has provided this to us ourselves. Mysterious rebirth and our cleansing from all previous sins is accomplished in baptism; but to remain pure in the subsequent time and not allow any defilement in ourselves again - this depends on our will and care."

It is the same in baptism, and it is the same with every other sacrament: human freedom is always preserved. “The honest blood of Christ,” says St. Cyril of Alexandria, “delivers us not only from destruction, but also from all impurity hidden within us, and does not allow us to cool to the point of indifference, but, on the contrary, makes us burning in spirit.” However, this is only with the voluntary efforts of the person himself: “it is necessary and useful that those who have once been worthy to receive communion of Christ should try firmly and unswervingly to adhere to a holy life”; so even on the most higher degrees Thanks to the grace of illumination, a person still remains the cause of his actions and can always take a completely opposite path. “And those filled with the Holy Spirit,” according to St. Macarius of Egypt, “have natural thoughts within themselves and have the will to agree to them.”

Therefore, the Fathers of the Church have always taught that the grace of justification is to a certain extent a temporary phenomenon, i.e. temporarily felt and temporarily hidden from the consciousness that it may finally turn out to be lost for a person. “Even the perfect,” says St. Macarius of Egypt, “while they remain in the flesh, are not freed from worries (i.e. about their salvation) because of freedom and are under fear; which is why temptations are allowed against them.” And only “when the soul enters that city of saints, then only will it be able to remain without sorrows and temptations.” Righteousness is a fire that has kindled within us, which threatens to go out at the slightest inattention on our part. “The fire that we have received by the grace of the Spirit,” says St. I. Chrysostom, “if we want, we can strengthen, but if we don’t want, we will immediately extinguish it. And when it goes out, there will be nothing left in our souls but darkness. Just as when a lamp is lit, great light appears, so when it is extinguished, nothing remains but darkness. Therefore it is said: “Do not quench the Spirit” (1 Thess. 5:19)."

However, there is no need to imagine a person’s subsequent life in such a way that his entire task will consist only in not somehow losing this righteousness he received.

The Rudimentary Character of Baptismal Righteousness

In baptism, a person gained the first and, one might say, decisive victory over sin. But in order to finally triumph over sin, it is necessary to completely expel it from one’s nature, one must completely cleanse one’s soul and body from the slightest signs of the old man. Only then will the “fetters” of sin finally fall away, and man will fully assimilate eternal life. “The Lord accepts the one who approaches Him with repentance and faith, forgives him all his previous sins and, sanctifying him with the sacraments, supplies him with the power to overcome the sin that lives in him, but does not drive out the sin itself, entrusting it to the person himself to drive it out with the help of the grace given to him for this purpose” ( Bishop Theophan).

As a result of this, the positive side of rebirth - putting on Christ - is also only embryonic and imperfect. Man is conformed to Christ, but only in the sense of a common idea and the beginning of life in the sense that he chose Christ henceforth as His Lord and Teacher, and not at all in the sense of complete similarity to nature. Man has only determined himself to serve Christ, but has not yet fulfilled his determination, has not yet assimilated for himself in the fullness of that life, which he henceforth called to be his duty and his highest good. The soul, even in rebirth, has only just turned and entered into the Divine life; it is rather only ready to perceive this life, rather than enjoying it. “Baptism is only the beginning of the resurrection from hell” (Efrem the Syrian). “In Christians, as children of God,” says St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, “there must be a complete image of God, with which they must be like their Heavenly Father.” “God sowed a good seed in the human heart, and made him good, and helps him and strengthens him to do good.” This seed is more specific than St. Tikhon calls it “living faith,” i.e. precisely by defining oneself according to Christ. So, man has only the “first fruits of the Spirit” (Rom. 8:23), or “the beginning of the image of God,” has only the seed.

If the righteousness received by a person in baptism is rather a possibility than a reality (in the sense, of course, of the complete likeness of nature), if it is only a seed, then further life becomes very clear and understandable.

“Holy baptism, in the words of St. Athanasius of Alexandria, opens for us (only) the path to enlightenment,” only giving us the opportunity to begin our salvation. “He who has taken the bath of rebirth,” says St. Gregory of Nyssa, “is like a young warrior who has just been included in the military lists, but has not yet shown anything warlike or courageous. Just as he, having tied a belt and put on a mantle, does not immediately consider himself brave and, when approaching the king, do not speak boldly to him, like an acquaintance, and do not ask for the favors distributed to those who have labored and struggled, so you, having received grace, do not think of living with the righteous and being counted among them, unless you endure many troubles for piety “, you will not fight with the flesh, then with the devil, and you will not courageously resist all the shootings of evil spirits.”

Man received grace and was determined to do good; but the habitual element of sin remains before consciousness as a tempting principle and finds more or less sympathy for itself in human nature. Therefore, if there is inattention on the part of the baptized person, the mortified enmity against God and His holy kingdom can rise again and make the reception of the sacrament in vain. The kingdom of grace was conceived in man, but has not yet conquered his entire nature, has not assimilated it completely to itself. “It happens,” says St. Macarius of Egypt, “that in others there is grace, but the heart is not yet pure.” Something similar occurs with the sacrament; a person will have to struggle with the remnants of his former existence, with sinful habits, p. the habit of generally living according to the elements of the world. Only after this struggle, when the possibility of sin is erased, can a person’s goal be considered achieved and his salvation completely complete. “If you need,” says St. John Chrysostom, “to receive the Kingdom of Heaven, then it is not enough to free yourself from sin, but you also need to practice a lot in virtues. For you need to refrain from vicious actions only in order to free yourself from Gehenna (this is the meaning of life with legal point of view); but in order to inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, it is necessary to acquire virtue."

The task of a person’s life after baptism

Whoever has been freed from sin in baptism will, of course, not be punished for previous sins; but even if he is satisfied with this cleansing, he still will not enter the Kingdom of Heaven. It is necessary to work on oneself even after baptism, since otherwise all a person’s promises, all his desires from now on to be righteous will turn out to be just an empty phrase: having rejected the previous life, a person must start a new one, and not remain indifferent. “As soon as,” says St. Gregory of Nyssa, “the soul hates sin, adopts as much as possible a virtuous way of life and accepts the grace of the Spirit, translating it into life, then it will become entirely new and recreated.” It is not enough, therefore, to hate a sinful life and renounce it; it is necessary to uproot the slightest remnants of it; It is not enough to determine oneself to live according to Christ - it is necessary to translate the received grace into life. In this sense, we can say that the grace of baptism can be increased or decreased. “Spiritual grace,” says St. Cyprian of Carthage, “which in baptism is equally accepted by believers, then by our behavior and actions either decreases or multiplies, just as in the Gospel the seed of the Lord is sown equally, but according to the difference in the soil, some are depleted and others multiplies in varied abundance, bringing forth thirty, sixty, or a hundred times more fruit."

Therefore, a long feat of gradual purification, further improvement, or ascent from infancy to the age of a perfect husband is necessary; the end of this ascent is Godlikeness or holy communion with God, i.e. immortal life. “As soon as,” says St. Macarius, “the soul has loved the Lord, it is snatched from the snares (of the world) by its own faith and diligence, and together with help from above, it is made worthy of the eternal Kingdom, and, having truly loved the latter, by its own will and with the help the Lord's, will no longer be deprived of eternal life."

Let us conclude this section with the words of Rev. Theophan, to whom we have turned more than once to check our understanding of the teachings of St. Fathers. “He who has fulfilled all the commandments,” writes the late Saint, “beautifully adorns his soul with all sorts of virtues and makes his heart a temple worthy of being the abode of the Lord. He (the Lord) dwells in him then. He is in him from the moment of holy baptism and will commune even more sincerely with him in Holy Communion. But, helping him in the life of the saint, he still does not completely calm down in him, because until all the virtues are established in the soul through the fulfillment of the commandments, traces of passions still remain in it, an unpleasant smell to the Lord sin. He does not rest in it, as if not trusting it and is still only making a resting abode for Himself in it. When the soul is sanctified by virtues, then He safely enters it, as into a house, and dwells calmly, undisturbed by movements that are unpleasant to Him. sin and passions." The subsequent life, therefore, is not a mechanical, collateral appendage, but a necessary addition to the freely willing and at the same time mysterious revolution experienced by a person in baptism.

On the other hand, with the Orthodox concept of the essence of rebirth, one can easily explain the phenomenon that people who die not only immediately after baptism, without actively declaring their faith, are saved, but also before baptism (the so-called baptism of blood).

If the essence of the sacrament is to strengthen a person’s zeal for good, then it is completely clear that this zeal still makes him a member of the Kingdom of Heaven and gives him the ability to assimilate the bliss of holiness, even if in real life a person had to limit himself to only one verbal promise to live holy. When a person after baptism does nothing to improve himself, although he has the opportunity, this is a sign that he has only half accepted baptism, that he actually does not have a love for goodness and a desire for holy communion with God. It is natural for such a person to be deprived of the reward promised to him: according to the mood of his soul, he is alien to the Kingdom of God. But if a person did nothing only because he could not, or because death did not allow him to fulfill his promise, then, of course, the Kingdom of Heaven is open to him: he desires it with all his soul, with all his soul he wants to be a saint and with saints, he wants follow Christ. His soul, therefore, is ready for the contemplation of the all-holy God and for communion with Him; This communication will therefore be his desired destiny. “The robber,” says St. Ephraim the Syrian, “having confessed verbally, is saved, because he did not have time to actually repent; by his change (a revolution from enmity towards Christ to love for Him, from joy at the reproach of the Righteous One to reverent recognition of him holiness and the desire to at least be remembered in the Kingdom of the Desecrated) he showed in himself the desire to convert and actively, if time had been given to him; just as one can be condemned for wickedness for a word, so one can be found pious for a word.” And this is precisely because God does not seek external actions, not merits on the part of man, so as not to give him bliss in eternal communion with Himself for nothing, but seeks only the ability to perceive this communication and gives it, no matter how much He Himself can or wants to give, and how many people can it accommodate? “A person,” according to the thought of St. Macarius of Egypt, “will enjoy the promise to the extent that, having believed, he loved it, and not to the extent that he labored. Since the gifts are great, it is impossible to find worthy labors. But faith and hope must be great ", so that reward is measured by them, and not by labor. The foundation of faith is spiritual poverty and immeasurable love for God." Since this love for God exists, since a person recognizes in his soul his insignificance without God and sincerely strives towards Him with all his soul, then salvation will be granted to him, even if by deeds he did not have time to declare his irrevocable decision. “Only one who wishes well, but encounters some obstacle to doing it. ., according to the disposition of the soul, no less than the one who proved his will by deeds" (Gregory of Nyssa).

Therefore, even rejection of the sacrament in the established form may not harm a person, since this essence of true Christianity has been formed in him - the desire for the Kingdom of Christ. He who, for reasons beyond his control, did not have time to fulfill his desire to unite with Christ, is nevertheless accepted on an equal basis with the baptized. “Consent (in this case) is valued as the deed itself, because (in this case too) the basis of the deed is laid down by will” (Efrem the Syrian). Baptism with blood replaces the sacramental baptism with water, of course, not with its external form, not with washing instead of water with blood, for there is martyrdom even without the shedding of blood; it is identical with it in its internal meaning: both this and that come from the irrevocable decision to serve Christ and the renunciation of one’s sinful desires.

Thus, the salvation of each individual person, according to Orthodox teaching, is not an event that occurs in the Divine consciousness alone, not a matter of legal imputation, according to which the Lord would award a person this or that fate on the basis of some external circumstances, i.e. on the basis of either the merits of Christ or the person’s own merits. Salvation is necessarily mediated by man’s transition from sin and selfishness to the Kingdom of goodness and love, which is anticipated by man here and will be inherited in its entirety in the next century. This transition begins at baptism, when a person, by the power of God, is confirmed in his decision to be a true Christian; continues in the form of natural (free-grace-filled) development of the laid seed of eternal life after baptism; and ends with a person’s entry into a place where he has prepared himself with the help of the means given to him, for which he has developed sensitivity in himself, i.e. Heavenly Kingdom of light, truth and love. A person “goes where the mind has its goal and what it loves” (Macarius of Egypt).

IV. Faith as a condition of salvation

Salvation is a person’s free and grace-filled transition from evil to good, from life according to the elements of the world and from enmity against God to a selfless life and to communion with God. What is the condition for such a transition?

In the proper and strict sense, such a condition or productive cause can only be faith in Christ.

No matter how successful a person is in doing good, no matter what feats he undertakes, if he does not have faith in Christ, he himself will never comprehend the truth that God forgives him. Before the consciousness of man stands his countless sins and the inexorable law of truth, demanding satisfaction. God Himself appears to him, therefore, only in the form of a formidable, punishing Judge; appears to be hostile to humans. Having nothing to say in his own defense, a person only trembles at God and is ready to quickly give up any thought about his salvation and surrender to atheism. He will not understand God’s love on his own and will not turn to it. “How to call upon Him in whom they have not believed”? (Rom.10:14). How to turn with a plea for help and forgiveness to the One whose love they do not know? “Our crimes and our sins are upon us, and we melt away in them: how can we live?” (Ezek.33:10).

A sinner can ask God for mercy only when he knows that the Lord treats a person “according to His great mercy and the multitude of His mercies,” only in this case can a person ask for the cancellation of God’s righteous sentence for sins (Ps. 50:3, 6). The law of righteousness is presented to the consciousness of man in all its inexorable clarity: “I acknowledge my iniquities, and my sin is always before me. I have sinned against you, you alone, and have done what is evil in your sight.” This consciousness cannot be erased. Where is the salvation?

Faith in Christ as a means to knowledge of God's love

“God is nowhere to be seen”; Therefore, no one can know by himself that He is love. He was revealed to humanity by the “Only Begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father” (John 1:18). “We know (God’s) love in this, that He laid down His life for us” (John 3:16). Thus, only those who believe that Jesus, who suffered and crucified, is truly the Son of God can know the love of God. And since someone believes that Christ really suffered for our sake, can there remain any trace of fear of God and alienation from Him? “If God is for us,” says the believer, “who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how will He not with Him also freely give us all things?” (Rom.8:31-32). Man recognizes himself infinitely guilty before God, but if God gave His Son to “draw all to Himself” (John 12:32; Col. 1:20-22), if for one lost sheep He left His ninety-nine unlost, - therefore, this sheep, with all its sinfulness, with all its alienation from God, continues to be dear to Him - with all its sinfulness. God came to earth for her and calls her to Himself. Sin, therefore, no longer lies between God and man. God gave His Son to convince man of His love for him and of His forgiveness. “Who (after this) will accuse God’s elect?” God, God Himself, does not remember their sin, “God justifies them.” - "Who condemns?" who can threaten them with judgment and punishment? - “Christ Jesus died, but also rose again” (Rom. 8:33-34). This is the eternal and most undoubted proof of God’s love for the sinner.

Thus, faith in Christ is the means through which a person recognizes the love of God, i.e. the fact that the sin committed does not at all prevent the rapprochement of God with man, that God has forgiven sin and directs all His economy to somehow return sinful man to Himself. “The robe of Christians, which covers the ugliness of our sin, is faith in Christ,” says St. Basil the Great. Once a person believes in Christ, he, therefore, believes in the love of God and is not at all afraid, for the sake of his previous sins, to approach God with a prayer for forgiveness and help, knowing that the love of God is just waiting for his conversion.

In this sense, one can say to the Orthodox that faith serves as an organ of perception of the grace and mercy of God. A believer knows and believes in the all-forgiving goodness of God - and therefore is not afraid of death.

Once such faith appears in a person, then the relationship between him and God immediately changes. Until now, God's love has not found its counterpart in man. Fearing the righteous judgment of God, man distanced himself from God and, instead of love, treated Him with enmity. Now his consciousness becomes clearer: he sees that God is not a formidable Master, but a Father, that He did not spare His Son just to reconcile man to Himself. It is natural that enmity against God and alienation from Him disappears in man. Instead of alienation, he begins to strive for God and respond to His love with love. God is no longer a stranger to him, he calls Him his own. "My Lord and my God!" - says the believing Thomas. “The property of heartfelt faith,” says St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, “is to call God your God from the heart; thus David says: “Lord my God... I will love Thee, O Lord, my fortress! The Lord is my strength and my refuge, my deliverer, my God, my helper, and I trust in Him; my protector and the horn of my salvation" (Ps. 17:2-3)" Such boldness of faith is also depicted in Psalm 90: "He who lives in the help of the Most High," etc. So Damascene, rejoicing in spirit and playing, sings in his Songs to God: “You are my strength, Lord! You are my strength! You are my God! You are my joy!” - and the reason for this joyful appropriation of himself to God by Damascus is precisely that he recognized the love of God revealed in coming into the world Son of God: “Do not leave the bosom of the Father and visit our poverty.” Instead of alienation, a person responds with all his soul to the love of God, rushes to its call. The closest moral union, unity, is established between God and man.

This is what St. says. Apostle John the Theologian: “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God” (1 John 4:15). It is not the utterance of certain words, of course, that attracts God into a person’s soul. The Apostle further gives several instructions on how this spiritual union of man with God is accomplished... He further says that believers came to know the love of God in the death of Christ. “God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God in him. In love there is no fear, but perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:16,18). Therefore, believers no longer fear judgment. “Let us love Him, because He first loved us” (v. 19). Thus, confession is salutary because it is necessarily accompanied by love for God, which casts out fear and unites a person with God. “God,” St. I. Chrysostom describes this state, “has called us not to destroy, but to save. How can we see that He wants exactly this?” “He gave His Son,” it is said, “to eat” for us (John 3:16). He so desires our salvation that He gave His Son, and not just gave, but to death. From such reflections hope is born. Do not despair, man, when you come to God, Who did not spare even His own Son for your sake. Do not be afraid of real disasters. He who betrayed the Only Begotten in order to save you and snatch you from Gehenna, will he spare anything else for your salvation? Therefore, we must expect all good things. After all, we would not be afraid if we had to appear before a judge who has to judge us, who would show such love for us that he would sacrifice his son for us. So, let us wait for everything good and great; because we have received the main thing if we believe (the burden no longer frightens us and does not drive us away from God, love God is recognized). But we see an example; therefore we too will love Him. After all, it would be extreme madness not to love the One who loved us so much." From the knowledge of Divine love follows the destruction of fear and boldness, and then the union of love, a feeling of mutual closeness, appropriation to each other.

There is no longer a depressing fear in the consciousness of a person: God is not alien to him, a threatening Judge, inexorable in His justice - God is his loving Father, who will not remember his previous sins, will not reprimand him why he did not come for so long, where he squandered the property given to him. He, seeing him from afar, will come out to meet him and, without asking, will order him to be dressed in the best clothes and will rejoice at the salvation of the sinner.

Why is it so difficult for a natural, sinful person to believe?

The presence of faith already shows the beginning of a person's conversion; because, as St. Athanasius of Alexandria, “faith is a sign of spiritual will.” To come to the conclusion that God is not angry for man’s past sins, that He, with all His holiness, is love, for this you must first of all feel a lot in your soul, you need to understand the severity of sin, recognize yourself as perishing and worthy of destruction. Only after the soul has suffered is this consciousness possible, and the described faith in the love of God, this moral union, filling a person with such joy, is possible. He who does not understand the gravity of sin will not understand the sweetness of being undeservedly forgiven: just as he did not feel the wrath of God then, so now he cannot feel love. The beginning of faith is in repentance, in the feeling of one’s sinfulness. “Through its own fault, covered with a cloud of untruth, the soul,” says St. Ephraim the Syrian, “wanders in sins, not knowing what it is doing, does not notice the darkness surrounding it and does not understand its deeds (this is the state before the inspiration of faith). But how soon a ray of all-vivifying grace touches her, the soul comes into horror, remembers what it has done, and returns from a dangerous path, from its evil deeds... She sighs with great sorrow, complains piteously, shedding streams of tears, and begs that it may be possible she can return to her former state through good deeds... Tears flow from her eyes for her lost beauty; her purulent scabs are numerous, and because she sees her great vileness, she runs away from it and seeks the protection of all-generous grace."

Thus, turning to grace presupposes a whole complex path of awakening from a sinful life, hating it, and an attempt, or at least a desire, to return to a virtuous life. Believing in Christ is a very complex matter, embracing the entire spiritual life of a person, requiring not only attentiveness to the sermon, but also renunciation of oneself, or at least diverting attention from oneself. There is no doubt that the grace of God contributes to this attraction of man. “To believe in Christ,” says St. Tikhon of Zadonsk, “is nothing else than having learned from the law and heartily acknowledged one’s poverty and wretchedness, which comes from sin and the subsequent righteous wrath of God, and from the Gospel having known the grace of God, open to everyone, to resort to Him alone under the protection - to recognize Him alone as the Deliverer and Savior from that calamity and to have, in Him alone, all eternal salvation, also in the feat against the devil, the flesh, the world and sin, during life, at death and after death, hope must be unswervingly and relentlessly affirmed, as if it were the undoubted and unshakable foundation of eternal salvation.” “To truly believe,” therefore, “is characteristic of a courageous soul” (Nile of Sinai), “sincerely disposed towards God” (I. Chrysostom) and His holy law and kingdom.

The meaning of faith in the free and grace-filled act of human rebirth

But with all its complexity, with all its depth, the state of the believer can no longer be more than a threshold and preparation for salvation or justification, and not salvation or justification itself. A person, however, reaches faith through repentance and self-denial. In order to draw a conclusion about your personal relationship with God from simple knowledge about Christ, about God, you need to mourn your sinful existence. But what happens when a person makes this conclusion? What happens is that a person learns about God’s love for himself, learns that there is no wall between him and God except his own sinful alienation from God. A person begins to love God and feel that God's love responds to this love, to feel the full possibility and actually enter into union and communion with God. But this state is in any case only contemplative. And, as such, it cannot regenerate a person without his will, it cannot be that self-propelled principle in the soul that would do good deeds for a person. In the same way, the grace of God, although present, although it contributes to the enlightenment of a person, cannot act by force on the sole ground that a person has learned about the possibility of receiving this grace and wants to receive it. “Assistance from above also requires our will” (Neil of Sinai). To actually turn from sin and accept grace, to enter into union with God, for this it is not enough only to be sincerely convinced of the mercy and nearness of God, but also to really give up sin and turn to God. A person is convinced that his salvation lies only in God, but let him himself stretch out his hand to take the right hand of God that helps him. Otherwise, he will remain with only one conviction. It is not enough to wish, even sincerely, to live according to God’s law; it is necessary to actually begin it.

“Faith, deeds of virtue, the Kingdom of Heaven, if you do not,” says St. Basil the Great, “ask with difficulty and much patience, you will not receive; because you must first wish, and, having wished, really seek in faith and patience, using with on your part, everything you need, so that your own conscience does not condemn you in anything, as if you were asking either carelessly or lazily; and then you will receive it, if it pleases God.” This free aspiration of man towards the grace and love of God and towards a holy life, pure from sin, is accomplished by man, as we saw above, in rebirth through the sacrament. In this rebirth, man no longer sees only the possibility of union with God, but actually unites with God. By the power of God, his hitherto imperfect determination is strengthened - to no longer live for himself, but for God, sin is destroyed, and man, thus, no longer in the form of a possibility, but in fact, “understands the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Eph. 3:19 ). As long as a person only believes, he is convinced that God will forgive him. After rebirth, he actually experiences this forgiveness. Previously, man only hoped that God would not reject him. Now he actually sees that God has not rejected him. Thus, along with the affirmation of a person’s determination to no longer sin and serve God, his faith is confirmed, and with faith that joy in God, which delights in the tested and undeserved love of God, and love for God in response to His love, and desire to be with God, to make the newly concluded union even stronger. Thus, indeed, faith saves a person, but not by the fact that it contemplates God, and not by the fact that it reveals Christ to man, but by the fact that through this contemplation it awakens the will of man.

This moral power of faith lies in its great, central significance during rebirth. Indeed, we have seen that the essence of regeneration is the determination to serve God here and there. This determination is confirmed by grace. In it the mysterious union of grace and human freedom takes place. By faith it is Christ who dwells in the heart of the baptized (Eph. 3:17). It is by the power of faith that a person makes his irrevocable decision to be with God, to unite with Christ. “Faith,” says St. I. Chrysostom, “reveals to us what is true, and from sincere faith love is born; because the one who truly believes in God will never agree to move away from love.” In faith, therefore, the very essence of regeneration is mediated.

Faith also presupposes the beginning of a new life in a person, life in communion with God. Love for God becomes the basic law of life, it determines all the doing and all the walking of a person. Therefore, both the aversion from sin and the conversion to a holy life rises to a new level. If previously a person feared sin more than he desired righteousness, now, having come to know the love of God, he begins to love the law of God for God’s sake, in order to respond to love with love. The desire to be holy in order to avoid destruction turns into a desire for God in order to be pleasing to Him. The person’s personality is even more relegated to the background, and complete self-denial becomes the beginning of life. Thus, a person moves from fear of his destruction to faith, which, in turn, opens the way to love for him.

That is why a true believer will never refer to his labors, will never demand a reward for them: his whole soul is filled with the contemplation of Divine love, love that is selfless and undeserved by man. Therefore, the thirst to be pleasing to God, to do His will, has no limits in a believer. “Ask,” says St. Isaac the Syrian, “from God to let you come to the measure of faith. And if you feel this pleasure in your soul, then it is not difficult for me to say that there is nothing to turn you away from Christ. And it is not difficult every hour you should be taken into captivity far from earthly things, and hide from this weak world and from the memories of what is in the world. Pray for this without laziness, ask for this with fervor, beg for this with great zeal until you receive it. And one more thing "Pray so as not to faint. You will be worthy of this if, with faith, you force yourself to cast your care on God, and replace your care with His providence." (This is complete renunciation of oneself to the will of God). - “And when God sees this will in you, that with all the purity of your thoughts you trusted God Himself more than yourself and forced yourself to trust in God more than in your soul: then this unknown power will dwell in you - that power, which, having felt in themselves, many go into the fire, and are not afraid, and, walking on the waters, do not hesitate in their thoughts for fear of drowning; because faith strengthens spiritual feelings, and a person feels in himself that as if something invisible convinces him not to heed seeing terrible things and not looking at the vision that is unbearable for the senses.”

Thus, faith, showing a person the love of God, morally makes a person akin to God. Man sees in God a Father who is ready to accept him. This moral rapprochement ends in baptism, in which a person, confirmed in the love of God or in the consciousness of this love, is truly united with Christ and comes out of the font “created for good works.” The enmity against God is destroyed, the oath is lifted, and between God and man there is a very close relationship of love. The salvation has been accomplished. The soul is betrothed to Christ, and everything belongs to Him. After this, even if a person died immediately, his salvation is guaranteed: like a thief, the Lord says to him: “Today you will be with me in paradise” (Luke 23:43). This is the state in which a person “has the desire to be with Christ” (Phil. 1:23). - This is the state of a person who has emerged from the font of rebirth.

Christian faith after baptism

The further life of a person, as we saw above, consists in the development of that seed of eternal life, which is laid in baptism. A person is gradually cleansed of sin, gradually improved and strengthened in goodness, and rises to the age of a perfect husband. However, even then, “the beginning of his life” (Isaac the Syrian), that “salt that keeps a person safe,” continues to be faith. “Faith is the mother of every good deed, and with it a person achieves the fulfillment of the promise of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, according to what is written: “without faith it is impossible to please God” (Efrem the Syrian). Even if a person were to fall: let him only watch his faith - the disturbed harmony of his soul will be restored, his scattered forces will be gathered again and will rush against sin with new energy. “Faith,” says St. I. Chrysostom - there is a head and a root; if you keep it, then, even though you have lost everything, you will gain everything again with greater glory." "Faith is power for salvation and strength for eternal life" (Clement of Alexandria).

On the other hand, it is clear what will happen if a person loses faith. “Without oil the lamp cannot burn,” without roots every tree will wither. “Without Me,” said the Lord, “you cannot do anything.” Once faith is taken away, all meaning of life and all power to do good is taken away. There is no focus that would connect a person’s efforts and comprehend them. Man does not feel the closeness of God, cannot understand His goodness, God is again for him only the punisher of untruth. Will such a person turn to God? And if he does not convert, then he cannot accept God’s help and His grace. So, having lost this “eye that enlightens every conscience” (Cyril of Jerusalem), his faith, a person loses all his spiritual wealth - and perishes. Remarkable in this regard are the features with which the Lord portrays the righteous and sinners at the final judgment. Meanwhile, the righteous, who have kept their faith, are amazed at the mercy of God: “When did I see You with hunger and drink?” - To sinners, God’s sentence seems unjust: “When did I hunger for the sight of You, and did not serve You?” God appears to be either hostile to them, willing, looking for an excuse to condemn them, to deprive them of eternal bliss. The first lived in faith, and therefore their whole soul is filled with a feeling of God’s undeserved mercy, and even now they confess their unworthiness. The latter have lost faith, do not recognize God’s mercy, lived only for themselves, and therefore even now they rise to defend their “I.” The first in their faith always saw the path to God open for themselves, because they saw the mercy of God. Seeing this, they always strived for God and were constantly in spiritual unity with Him: this unity, naturally, becomes their lot even after leaving this life. The latter, having lost faith, naturally lost the strength for spiritual unity with God, became alienated from God: therefore, even after the transition to the future world, they do not have the ability to surrender to God, their lot is in the dark kingdom of selfishness, which gnashes its teeth about its destruction , not finding the strength to come to terms with this, at least, like a righteous man, in the thought that he suffered according to the will of God (Rom. 9:3).

So, faith revived a person, faith developed and educated him in spiritual life, and faith will lead him to eternal bliss. By believing, man here accepted the grace of God and could accept communion with God, despite the fact that until then he had lived in sin. This same faith in the love of God will give a person the opportunity to maintain this communion with God in the coming kingdom. “On the day of judgment,” says St. Neil of Sinai, “we ourselves will be our own accusers, convicted by our own conscience. Therefore, in this extremity, will we find any other protection or help other than faith in the most loving Lord Christ? This faith is our great defense, great help, safety, and boldness, and an answer for those who have become unrequited due to the unspeakable multitude of sins."

Saving faith is free and active

In order to avoid misunderstandings, it is necessary to repeat here once again that the Orthodox Church, believing that all the bliss of man is in faith and considering faith to be the reason for the spiritual growth of man, never imagines this faith in the form of some kind of self-acting force, which, as something extraneous, would almost force man to a virtuous life and to communion with God. Of course, a believer perceives the grace of God, with which he goes out to fight sin. However, the instrument for perceiving this grace is not the knowledge or contemplation of God’s mercy and His readiness to forgive and help, but certainly the free desire and decision of a person. In the same way, faith is “a doer of good, the basis of righteous behavior” only because it “is the free consent of the soul” (Clement of Alexandria). Faith only inspires a person's will, but does not at all free him from efforts on himself. “You must not only believe in Christ,” said St. Macarius of Egypt, “but also suffer, according to what is written: “For it was given to you... not only to believe in Christ, but also to suffer for Him” (Phil. 1:29 Believing only in God is characteristic of those who think earthly things, not to say even the unclean spirits who say: “We know You who are the Son of God” (Mk. 1:24; Matt. 8:29). With faith, a free choice of good and a decision to do it are necessary.

Not with its contemplative side, not as the state of the perceiver, faith saves a person, so that a person can only experience his salvation inactively, Faith saves with its active side, the constant participation of good will in it (John 7:17). A believer in his faith finds the boldness to turn to God and, thus, enters into communication with God, accepts this communication. The believer, strengthened by the power of God, rushes towards a holy life and thereby begins it. Faith in this sense is “the beginning of our hope and the beginning of Divine mercy towards us, like a door and a path” (Cyril of Alexandria).

Faith and works

In order to bring into focus precisely this vital (and not formal) meaning of salvation, and precisely where it is necessary to protect itself from Protestant fabrications, our Church chooses from two formulas developed in the West the one that attributes salvation not to faith alone, but to faith with works . “We believe,” says the 13th member of the “Epistle of the Eastern Patriarchs,” “that a person is justified not simply by faith alone (that is, as can be seen further, not by its theoretical, perceptual side), but by faith promoted by love (by faith, as active force, in that it produces love), i.e. through faith and works”... “Not a ghost,” the fathers explain even more clearly, “only faith, but the faith that is in us through works justifies us in Christ.” Thus, faith undoubtedly justifies a person, but only real, true faith, the one that leads a person to true life, forces him to work out his salvation. This is the meaning of the teaching of Rev. Theophan that faith saves by works. “Salvation,” says the Saint, “comes from good deeds; but it is impossible to succeed in good deeds, as one should, without faith. Faith motivates one to do good deeds, faith indicates them, faith leads to obtaining strength to do good deeds. Therefore, faith is an accomplice to good deeds. The main thing is deeds, and she is a benefit." Salvation, then, lies in the fact that man works it out himself, but he comes to this work only by faith.

An Orthodox person should not understand this definition in a Catholic way, i.e. so that by works a person earns his salvation. Deeds in themselves, as external actions or individual exploits, have no meaning in Christianity. Behavior here is valued only as an expression of the corresponding mood of the soul, a certain direction of the will, although, in turn, it influences the formation of this mood. The entire Conversation on the Mount is built on the idea of ​​the insufficiency of external good deeds alone and the need for internal change, which is actually how a person acquires the Kingdom of Heaven. Therefore, mercy shown to a prophet or disciple is only valued when it is shown “in the name of the prophet or disciple,” in the name of faith (Matt. 10:41-42). “If,” says St. Apostle Paul, “I give away all my property, and give my body to be burned, but do not have love, it does me no good” (1 Cor. 13:3). You can't look at the outside. The Apostle explains in more detail: the essence of salvation is not in exploits, such as such, not in external zeal; both exploits and zeal must flow from a regenerated, changed soul; otherwise they are nothing before God (Rom. 4:2). Therefore, it may happen that two mites brought by a widow will outweigh the entire multitude of offerings from the rich, and the sinful publican will turn out to be closer to God than the righteous Pharisee; those who came at the eleventh hour and did nothing will receive equal rewards with those who worked all day and endured the heat of the day. From a legal point of view, this cannot be explained: more work requires more reward (unless we generally deny the possibility of any good deed on the part of man). With the Orthodox, this does not require explanation: the Lord equally wants to save everyone and the All strives equally towards everyone, but one has more desire for God, the ability to perceive His communication, while another has less. In this case, it may happen that a newly converted person who has done nothing will be equal or even higher in reward than someone who has grown old in the faith and accomplished feats. The Kingdom of God is not a reward for one’s labors, but a mercy offered to the tuna and received according to the acceptability of each.

The question, therefore, is where the soul is directed, what it wants, how it lives. If its desire is for God, if it does not live for itself, then, in addition to its external deeds, it is justified; this is the guarantee of future pardon, and exploits and labors are important only for the return and strengthening of this desire. “Reward,” says St. Isaac the Syrian, “is no longer for virtue, and not for labor for it, but for the humility that is born from them. If it is lost, then the first will be in vain.”

The soul is saved not from its external deeds, but because its inner being is renewed, that its heart is always with God. Of course, at the final judgment the book of everyone’s life will be opened, and everyone will give an answer for every deed and word, for every thought, no matter how insignificant and fleeting it may be: the perfect cannot be called imperfect. But this revelation of life for some will only be a source of humility, will only lead them to the realization that pardon is undeserved, and will tie them even more closely to God; for others, conviction of conscience at the trial will bring despair, and will finally separate them from God and the Kingdom. “And these go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into everlasting life.” Whoever’s soul is directed where, goes there.

Thus, in faith is all the bliss of a Christian. Faith is not only the reason, the driving force in the spiritual development of a person, it is, rather, the focus, the very heart of spiritual life. As faith grows, love grows, as love grows faith: the moral development of a person finds both its expression and its fruit in the strengthening and growth of faith. Faith promotes works, and faith is perfected by works (James 2:22). Faith truly is the alpha and omega of moral life, like the Lord Himself, whom it reveals to man. Leading to love, which is the essence of eternal life (1 John 3:14; John 17:26), faith thereby gives a person the opportunity here on earth to begin eternal bliss. Upon transition to the future world, faith turns into knowledge, and the love that connected a person with God continues into eternity.

Notes
1. Borrowed with abbreviations that do not distort the meaning from the work of Archbishop (of Finland) Sergius: “Orthodox teaching on salvation.” Ed. 4. St. Petersburg. 1910 (pp. 140-155, 161-191, 195-206, 216-241).
2. The legal worldview, which arose on the basis of Roman law, was adopted by the Christian West and affirmed by Catholic and Protestant theologians. Its presentation and assessment from the point of view of Holy Scripture and Holy Tradition will be presented in the next issue.
3. The baby, as not yet using its own will at all, is renewed under the indispensable condition of being raised in Christianity.
4. Wed. The rites of confession.
5. This will not be contradicted by those numerous passages of patristic literature where, apparently, only an external judicial meaning is attributed to forgiveness. All such passages must be supplemented, according to the basic rule of any interpretation: the less clear must be supplemented with the more clear. Once the essential (real) side of this phenomenon has been clarified, it is not difficult to agree on the external side. Cutting back the first for the sake of the second will not only be wrong, it will be a direct distortion of the truth.
6. That is necessary for salvation.
7. “Living faith is a gift of God, and is like a certain Divine seed, which is infused into everyone who is baptized at baptism.” T.1 71.
8. This central meaning of faith is presented very well and correctly by Rev. Feofan in the second part of his “Inscriptions of Christian Moral Teaching”. The meaning of life, so to speak, its main spring, rests here in the constant vision of God, in the consciousness of one’s spiritual union with Him. This presupposes a certain degree of moral development, and in turn serves as a spring from which all the diversity of spiritual life is born.

“What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?”(Matt. 16:26)

One of the questions that a person suffering from a serious illness asks in his soul is, why am I doing this? why is this happening to me? He receives the answer by understanding the meaning of suffering in general and illness in particular.

Christianity sees sin as a violation of the laws of existence established by the Creator as the main cause of disease. Our sinfulness, passion only for earthly things, obscures the Divine - the Source of true being and perfection. Therefore, according to St. Gregory Palamas, “Sometimes it is better for sinners to be sick than to be healthy, when illness contributes to their salvation.”

Deprived of communication with God, the soul weakens and, what is most dangerous, becomes defenseless against the temptations of the one whom the Holy Scripture calls a murderer, the father of all lies.

Healings by the Lord Jesus Christ are associated with the power of faith, the spiritual revival of the soul through touching the source of the highest absolute life in Christ. All this is accompanied by a deep, often painful rethinking of one’s previous life.

The nature of man and his calling

In order to describe such a complex problem as the causes of disease, it is necessary to go beyond the problem itself. To do this, we must give clear answers to the questions: what is a person and what is his purpose in the world? What is good and what is evil? Orthodox doctrine provides complete and clear answers to these questions. The Orthodox teaching about man not only does not contradict the data of modern sciences, as has been repeatedly testified by outstanding scientists, including non-believers, but in many issues it can significantly complement these sciences.

For example, modern science - the general theory of pathology - has relatively recently come to understand the causes of the pathological (abnormal) state of any living organism. This reason, in her opinion, is the fragmentation and disunity of its constituent systems. But this understanding has long been known to Christianity, which sees the cause of a person’s abnormal state in the disunity of two sides of his life - soul and body (hence: healing - restoration of integrity). This is one example. The most important thing is that modern sciences cannot give an answer at all to some of the worldview-level questions related to the problem of man - not only because of their insufficient development, but because these questions are not included in the subject of its study.

All this served as the basis for us to begin our conversation about the problem of diseases and health with a work in which we will try to outline the foundations of the Orthodox teaching about man. Professor V.V. Zenkovsky, a student of the famous psychologist G.I. Chelpanov, emphasizes that without the biblical Revelation about man as the image and likeness of God accepted by faith, we cannot correctly understand his nature.

What does the Orthodox faith say about man? - Man is dual in composition, and his life consists of soul and body, which were initially in complete harmony.

The body has its own functions: the need for sleep, food, maintaining a certain metabolism, etc. Through mental activity we experience certain feelings, have judgments, form behavior to satisfy current needs. Mental life manifests itself in the activity of the mind, feelings, will and is connected with our empirical experience and does not go beyond it.

The human soul, being God's breath (Gen. 2:7), strives for the spiritual world. Therefore, as the classic of psychiatry S.S. Korsakov wrote in 1901, Every mentally healthy person has a religious feeling. Spiritual life is nothing other than life in the Holy Spirit. This is not the disclosure of any “reserve” capabilities, as occultists teach, nor the disclosure of creative potential and not erudition. Religious need is a search and an unquenchable thirst for communication with one’s primary source - God. . Religion cannot be reduced to neurosis or collective unconsciousness, emphasized our contemporary, psychiatrist, founder of the Third Vienna School of Psychology, W. Frankl. He also claimed that “the spiritual dimension cannot be ignored... it is what makes us human.”

Orthodox anthropology shows that It is in the soul that the basis of our individuality is laid - self-awareness. Here a person discovers an unexplored depth within himself, a reflection of the Absolute, the image of God in man. Awareness of your “I” is foreign, it is not born from the depths of consciousness, it timeless and uncausal . But it is precisely here that lies the possibility of moral improvement, the possibility of transformation. Exactly self-awareness contains our personality as a theme of creative disclosure . The image of God in man is God-like properties (freedom, intelligence, will, creativity), and similarity is the possibility of transformation. That's why personal goal , according to the testimony of the Holy Fathers, - becoming like God through the acquisition of the Holy Spirit - i.e. "deification".

The spiritual core of the individual contains the desire to find meaning in one’s own life; which is the primary motivating force behind human behavior. It is important not to replace the highest spiritual aspirations with ordinary ones. Spiritual reality, its nature and values ​​cannot simply be projected onto the psychological plane. The mistake of psychologism lies in the substitution of these concepts and reflects the tendency to devalue the highest truth.

The spiritual is manifested in mental life through the voice of conscience. Conscience is a universal form of moral consciousness, it is a reality, a law that everyone encounters within themselves. According to the testimony of the Holy Fathers, this is a means for the unmistakable choice of good, a protection that does not allow a person to plunge into the abyss of sin.

Thus, having received a spiritual nature from the Creator, man becomes a being that connects the whole world and occupies a royal position in the world. “In man lies the unity of opposites between the higher and the lower, the heavenly and the earthly, the rational and the unreasonable, the free and the unfree, spirit and matter.”(St. Gregory of Nyssa).

Tragedy of Sin

However man lost his royal position through the Fall , Orthodox teaching testifies. Sin is the abuse of one's free will, an attempt to do without God, and even rebellion against Him. Violation of God's will led man to a break with his Creator and with the spiritual world.

Evil has a personal nature, and its carrier is the devil and the world of fallen spirits. Schema-Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov) writes: “Evil, like good, exists only where there is a personal form of being. Outside of this kind of life there is no evil, but only determined natural processes.”

The important point is that the sinful principle cannot be derived either from the needs of the body or from social conditions: its source is in the spiritual sphere. Sin has poisoned human nature and gives us an inclination toward evil. Sin is a real moral disease, it cannot be replaced by psychological trauma, stress and similar concepts: mistakes and blunders.

Sin is a complex and multifaceted damage that manifests itself through:

Errors in terms of value orientations, a person’s deviation from the goal, from the true and eternal destiny, which requires the individual to overcome the inertia of the will; uncontrollability of feelings; distorted perception of reality; turning towards an imaginary good, while the highest meaning of human existence is replaced by fleeting and illusory interests;

Violation of moral norms that determine a person’s attitude towards natural life, to the people around you and to God. And this, in turn, manifests itself in selfishness, hostility towards people and deviation from divine grace;

Submission of the soul to the body and its needs. “The unreasonable flesh began to rule the mind, and the mind began to live according to the desires of the flesh. Man from being spiritual has become carnal. Thus, the God-established hierarchy of values ​​has been turned upside down in human consciousness.”(Archimandrite Alypius, Archimandrite Isaiah “Dogmatic Theology”, Holy Trinity-Sergius Lavra, 1994, p. 239).

With the Fall, human nature was distorted. The unity of soul and body fell apart, spiritual needs froze. With the Fall, death, illness, and sorrow entered the human world. Thus, evil, according to the Christian worldview, is not in the nature of the world, but in the perversion of this nature.

“Woe to the body when it stops in its nature, because it collapses and dies. Woe to the soul if it stops at its own nature and trusts only in its own works, without having communion with the Divine Spirit; because he dies without being worthy of eternal Divine life. Just as they despair of the sick when their body can no longer take food, and all their relatives, friends, relatives and loved ones cry for them: so God and the Holy Angels recognize those souls who do not taste the heavenly food of the Spirit as worthy of tears.”(Venerable Macarius of Egypt, “Spiritual Conversations”, Holy Trinity-Sergius Lavra, 1994, p. 4).

After the Fall, objective norms, attitudes and practices of moral life are distorted. Passions are born. A person’s physical desires manifest themselves in an exaggerated form.

Rev. Abba Isaiah writes: “Passion is the name given to human properties in their painful state, produced by the Fall. Thus, the need to eat turns into a tendency to overeat and indulge in treats; the power of desire is in whim and lust; the power of anger, or mental energy, - into temper, rage, anger, hatred; the ability to grieve and be sad - into cowardice, despondency and despair; the natural property of despising evil - into contempt for one’s neighbors, into pride, and so on.”

A passionate person is vulnerable, tormented, fickle, irritated.

That's how Rev. Macarius of Egypt describes the state of the sinful soul: “Just as in a dark and deep night some cruel wind blows and causes all the plants and seeds to move, confuse and shake, so man, having fallen under the power of the dark night - the devil - and staying in the night and darkness, is terribly blowing by the wind of sin he is brought into oscillation, shaking and movement, his whole nature, soul, thoughts and mind are in turmoil, all his bodily members are in turmoil. Not a single member of soul or body is free and cannot help but suffer from the sin that lives in us.”(ibid., p. 16). Therefore, the souls of sinners in Holy Scripture are also compared to a raging sea: “The wicked are like a troubled sea that cannot calm and whose waters throw up mud and dirt.”(Isa.57:20).

The damage to human nature by sin in the life of the spirit is manifested by the confusion of truth and error, spiritual and mental. And as a sign of spiritual ill health, a search for miracles and signs, acute spiritual sensations as the goal and content of life appears. Spiritual energy has dried up, man has fallen into empiricism, sensual knowledge. Instead of a holistic knowledge of the world, a limited and varied knowledge of phenomena came. The mind, scattered over the objects of the world, began to wander in its speculations and fantasies.

At the spiritual level, a feeling of emptiness appears, a loss of the meaning of life, one’s own inferiority is felt, a painful insensibility of the soul is formed, a muffled conscience, melancholy, anxiety, up to the development of mental illness.

The feeling of inner emptiness is filled with an unbridled desire for pleasure, pleasure, and thrills. However, the experience of pleasure quickly dulls, and increasing efforts are required to maintain it. A benefit, when achieved, soon loses its attractiveness for a person. Following the intoxicating pleasure comes a feeling of “weariness with life”, “worldly sorrow”, so characteristic of modern man. Awareness of the short duration of life, the inevitability of suffering and impending death weakens individual moments of pleasure and gives rise to indifference to life, pessimism and even complete despair.

Since the middle of the 20th century, psychiatry began to identify a new type of neurosis - existential, noogenic, which is caused by the loss of the meaning of life and is observed in 20% of Europeans. This is why many mental health experts explain the increasing number of suicides - even in countries with favorable socio-economic conditions.

After the Fall, our bodily composition was also damaged, as a result of which it is susceptible to various diseases. St. John Chrysostom explains: “The depravity of the soul is the cause of bodily illnesses.”

Modern medicine confirms the significant influence of psycho-emotional disorders in the development of somatic pathology. “The brain cries, and tears drip into the heart, into the liver, into the stomach...”- this is how the famous scientist A.R. Luria spoke figuratively. In general, psycho-emotional disorders are often the result of spiritual and moral ill-health. A whole direction has been formed in medical science - psychosomatics. True psychosomatic diseases include coronary heart disease, bronchial asthma, peptic ulcer, neurodermatitis and others. According to psychotherapist D. A. Avdeev, psychosomatic pathology is a somatic resonance of mental processes.

“The loss of Love and the spirit of Freedom leads to the experience of a person’s alienation from the world around him, to loneliness. This dramatic consequence of sin dooms a person to a deep experience of moral and psychological disorder and duality, the loss of the value of oneself and the world. Consciousness suffocates in the meaninglessness and hopelessness of its state. A person plunges into the darkness of value emptiness and absolute loneliness, from which they cannot escape external environment and the natural world"(Archimandrite Plato. Moral theology. Publishing house of the Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra, 1994).

Thus, the reason for all these sad phenomena is a departure from the will of God. Man's inclination towards both good and evil forms a deep contradiction - the tragedy of the human personality after the Fall. Man is doomed to fight with himself.

Resolution of moral dual personality is impossible within the framework of empirical existence. Human free will is combined with helplessness in saving the soul.

Complete overcoming of contradictions in the life of the human soul and the life of society can never be overcome in the conditions of earthly life. “Under the conditions of earthly life, only their symbolic overcoming is possible through the manifestation of human mutual assistance, sacrifice, love and heroism, which always reveals to us both the moral height and nobility available to a person in this life, and the real ontological “gap” that exists between our world and the world of the highest human calling. This reflects the inescapable tragedy of human existence.”(V.N. Katasonov “The National-State Idea of ​​Russia: Fidelity to the Historical Vocation”, Zh. Moscow, N5, 1997).

The internal transformation of the human soul takes place in the divine-human order - with the combination of the free aspiration of the human soul towards God and grace-filled help from above, replenishing human nature.

M. Medvedev, T. Kalashnikova

The road to recovery

The damage to human nature turned out to be so deep that salvation became possible only through the accomplishment of the redemptive feat of the Only Begotten Son of God, our Lord Jesus Christ, through His incarnation. On the Calvary Cross, the connection between the creature and the Creator, the Source of eternal life, broken by the Fall, was restored. “Father! I commend my spirit into Your hands"(Luke 23:46) are the last words of our Savior, by His example calling man to bow in humility and love before the will of the Creator of the world. Irresistible and the fatal power of sin was crushed by the Lord’s feat in its deepest core. It is in Him, the New Heavenly Adam, who united in Himself all the fullness of divine and human perfection, that our liberation from the captivity of sin and death occurs.

“The divine-human nature of Christ is an ontological possibility and task for the moral perfection of man. It is realized through spiritual “smart doing” by a person of himself, constantly adjusted by the “divine center of life.” The goal for the Christian is the restoration of his God-like identity in Christ, in whom he dies to sin and is reborn to a new life leading to the Kingdom of Heaven. At the same time, a deep and holistic change in views on the world occurs, which is associated with one of the most important concepts of moral recovery - concept of repentance .

Archimandrite Plato (Igumnov) defines repentance as the line that lies between captivity to sin and moral freedom. Repentance is the true rebirth of the soul . “A truly repentant person voluntarily and consciously decides to break his previous union with sin and turn with his whole being to God, the Source of perfect Good. Repentance is a decisive change for the better, a turning point in the will, turning away from sin and turning to God... This is a painful turning point in the will.”(St. Theophan the Recluse. “The Path to Salvation”, p. 72).

As Professor S. M. Zarin defines (“Asceticism according to Orthodox teaching,” M., 1996, p. 551), psychologically the state of repentance contains the following points:

Decisive and painful condemnation of one’s present reality;

Positive consciousness and a sense of confidence in the existence of a higher ideal, as another perfect reality;

The desire for real change, for a radical reworking of the content of one’s life - in the sense of possibly completely coordinating it with the content of the known Ideal.

The essence of the moral revolution in repentance consists primarily in the transfer of the life center from oneself to God, which is associated with the renunciation of one’s sinful will, according to the Lord: “If anyone wants to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow Me.”(Matt. 16:24).

Overcoming sin in oneself leads to freedom from the shackles of evil, in which the Holy Spirit helps a person: “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is Freedom”(2 Cor. 3:17). Moral freedom is much more than the power to do what you want. Moral freedom is the ability of an individual to dominate his feelings and desires, to subordinate them to a moral ideal.

In the state of inner freedom of the righteous, moral choice loses its drama. A person in a state of holiness wants to choose and do only good. Doing evil becomes disgusting. This freedom is more complete and perfect than the imaginary freedom of a sinner blinded by passion.

The moral Gospel law is a Divine task that far exceeds the natural capabilities of man. The supernatural nature of the commandments testifies to other norms of existence. Moreover, the Gospel commandments establish not so much norms as conditions, rules, by entering into the internal structure of which and fulfilling them, a heavenly state is achieved. Gospel ideal: “Be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect”(Matt. 5:48).

By defeating vicious states (passions), which give rise to one another and mutually strengthen each other, a person establishes a symmetrical crystal of virtues in his soul. We can imagine sins and their opposite virtues in the following way:

Pride - Humility

Love of money - Mercy

Fornication - Chastity

Anger - Meekness

Intemperance - Fasting

Envy - Brotherly love

Dejection - Hope

Selfishness - Love

One of the main principles of asceticism is self-restraint - reasonable and feasible. This is first of all fight against hypertrophied disordered drives (passions).

The world in this case ceases to be an object intended to satisfy lusts. Ascetic feat leads to fulfillment main goal Christian life - the closest unity with God in an inextricable union of love with neighbors. On this path we find a joyful unity of individuals in a union of love. The modern way of life, generated by the so-called mass culture, on the contrary, affirms the unity of monotony, when people lose interest in each other.

Modern psychologists also testify to the need for self-restraint. The creator of genetic psychology, J. Piaget, claims that a person’s cognitive qualities are determined by his ability to self-restraint; it is this ability that allows him to turn his vague fantasies into objective understanding.

In conclusion, we will try to formulate the most important features Orthodox teaching about man, which will determine the direction of our further conversation about the problem of health and treatment.

Orthodox revealed teaching considers man in the unity of his being, starting with his creation by God, through the Fall, death, restoration of fallen man in Christ, future bodily resurrection and immortality. In the light of this teaching it becomes possible to see the true goal of life and the destiny of man - transformation in Christ, acquisition of the grace of the Holy Spirit, filling the soul with new incorruptible content and thereby gaining an eternal, completely joyful existence - the Kingdom of Heaven. Here the Orthodox view of man differs in essence from modern ones. These views limit their consideration of the existence of man to his temporary stay on earth. They consider the state of a person affected by sin and morally sick as normal.

In accordance with the purpose of existence and his destiny, man, as a created being, is called to become like his Creator - about O marriage - through overcoming one's shortcomings and imitation of Christ as a moral ideal. Seeing the true picture of sinful corruption, the depth of its influence on a person, becomes possible only when he gains faith, for only divinely revealed faith reveals to a person what he was like before the Fall and what he should become.

Overcoming the deep damage of human nature, transforming the soul by the forces of man himself is impossible. The condition for the rebirth of the human soul into a new true life, free from sin and death, is the interaction of human free will and the grace of the Holy Spirit, their synergy.

The Orthodox teaching about man objectively reflects mental and physical reality and cannot be refuted by the data of empirical sciences. The Orthodox view of man not only does not contradict objective scientific views and data, but makes it possible to significantly deepen these views, to comprehend scientific data in the light of the enduring, eternal values ​​of existence.

The Orthodox view of man may contradict certain concepts of personality that are accepted as scientific in modern psychology. These concepts, which go beyond the scope of the scientific method, represent a kind of “psychotheologies” or “psychoreligions”, or rather pseudo-religions and false beliefs.

The introduction of a modern person, including a specialist in the field of medicine, psychology, pedagogy, to Orthodox teaching allows him to see modern teachings, often having an occult-demonic character, in the true light and make your choice conscious and free in favor of Truth, Love and Eternal Life.

Choice of treatment method

There is no doubt that the choice of treatment method is a problem at the ideological level. The starting point is a person, his place in the world, his understanding of the purpose, purpose and meaning of Existence.

When a person measures his life from the date of birth to the date of death , believing that “I” is only my body, my desires, thoughts and feelings - and all this is transitory and destructible, then he will live in a system of values, among which one of the defining , Most likely, there will be a desire for success in earthly life . Achieving internal and external comfort can become an end in itself of his aspirations. Therefore, when a person is sick, any method of healing is acceptable.

With a Christian worldview, when a person realizes himself as a creation of God, the bearer of an immortal soul and sees this temporary earthly life as preparation for eternal, heavenly life, as a path of testing, the values ​​in his consciousness will be different. “Bless the fleeting time. Every hour, every moment brings us closer to eternity. New sorrow, new gray hair - the essence of the messenger of the world to come... For the eternal kingdom is drawing near, where there are no tears, no sighing, but joyful singing.” In these words of the akathist about the repose of the departed, the breath of eternity is palpable, and this breath of eternity gives rise to that bright optimism that is one of the distinctive aspects of Christianity. Accordingly, the entire way of life of an Orthodox Christian, his understanding of the meaning and purpose of life, his attitude towards suffering, illness and death are completely different. In contrast to ideology modern society, according to which a person sees the meaning of life in satisfying needs, faith gives a person the opportunity to understand his needs, determine which ones are really important and which ones should be sacrificed. The Christian faith teaches abstinence, from which the human soul strengthens and flourishes. For a believer, gospel words “What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loses his soul?” are also guiding in their choice of treatment method.

The believing consciousness is also characterized by a tireless search for answers to questions that for an atheist are insignificant and secondary: "Who am I?" “why am I here?” “Where am I going and why?” Was this life the result of chance or was it bestowed upon me for an intelligent purpose by a Higher Power? Earth sciences are not able to answer these questions.

Not paying attention to your inner life By suppressing her highest aspirations, man accordingly doubts the existence of God. He willingly accepts on faith the hypothesis of the random origin of life from dead matter, irrational, but in some strange way giving birth to intelligence, and groundlessly calls this belief a scientific theory. With amazing ease, he renounces his heavenly origin - his godlikeness, his royal inheritance - and looks for his ancestors among monkeys and microbes. He does not believe in the rationality and expediency that underlie all existence, but he believes in the mysterious influence of dreams, fortune telling, and signs of the Zodiac on his life.

On the contrary, through the need for a deeper and more reasonable answer to the question about the highest goals of existence and one’s life, a person develops a desire for in-depth inner perception. This is a sign of the spiritual principle awakening in him. Internal perception, with great difficulty, begins to break through a huge layer of captivating souls, infinitely diverse external impressions... And, in the words of the Gospels "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek and you will find, knock and it will be opened to you." the seeker necessarily begins to grope for the correct answer. “A person, by the subtlety of his internal perception, begins to feel that he is not looking for the true goals of his life in the phenomena of the external world, and realizes that in order to solve the problem, he must rise to the Source of being.”(L. A. Tikhomirov. Religious and philosophical foundations of history, M., 1997, p. 24).

Faith is a path that marks the stages of the human spirit in its striving for the Highest Meaning, true goodness, true rational life, Eternity.

Patristic teaching on diseases

Health has always been considered as God's gift. However, bodily well-being has never been the goal of devotees of piety. For an Orthodox Christian, the state of the body means less than the state and fate of the immortal soul in Eternity. “What is the use of having a healthy body, but a weakened and weak soul” (St. Tikhon of Zadonsk).

A Christian believes that any event in his life (joy, consolation, sorrow, illness) always arises providentially. The believer perceives suffering, including illness, as an inevitable part of temporary life. But for those who love God, all things work together for good, and therefore illness can become a saving grace.

According to the Orthodox ascetic, “just as wax that is not warmed and softened cannot accept the seal placed on it, so a person, unless he is tempted by labor and illness, cannot accept the power of Christ”. “...My strength is made perfect in weakness”, says the Lord (2 Cor.12:9).

Suffering is an inevitable fact of our lives , and dreams of their complete elimination would be a utopia. Suffering always accompanies the life process; in labor and struggle the development of all living things takes place. This is the law of life itself. Suffering is to a certain extent mixed with the pleasures themselves, and it is rare to find a state of pure, unclouded joy. “What joy in life is not associated with sadness,”- says the funeral rite. Thus, achieving a life without suffering is a rather dubious proposition.

The Holy Fathers clearly point out spiritual causes of illnesses: illnesses are given as punishment, as admonition, as a test of faith, but they are a legacy of sins, starting with original sin. St. John of Kronstadt wrote: “Experience testifies that sin and passions destroy the health of the soul and body, and victory over passions brings heavenly peace to the soul and health to the body. Keep peace of mind within yourself and do not be indignant, do not be irritated by any opposition, insults, injustices, untruths - and you will always enjoy health, mental and physical. Unrest, indignation, the fire of passions, various vices, give rise to many mental and physical illnesses in us.”

Serious illnesses , the Holy Fathers teach us, - one of the means used by the All-Good God to heal our spiritual ailments . “God often punishes the body with diseases so that from punishing the lower part, the higher part receives healing.”"(St. John Chrysostom). How often, taking advantage of flourishing health, a person indulges in the pleasures of the flesh, sensual pleasures, not noticing the pitiful state of his soul, and indulges in spiritual carelessness.

When the body suffers, the outside world loses its seductiveness. Grandiose plans seem futile. Illness exposes earthly pleasures from their captivating appearance and shows their illusory nature.

Many examples can be given of how In the face of a serious illness, a person’s inner content, his value orientation, and lifestyle change. A person renounces earthly attachments, and his heart is softened for the gospel teaching and love.

Thus, illness is not only a consequence of damage to our nature by sin, but also a God-given means of our salvation.

But it is not the diseases themselves that bring one into heaven. The point is not in grief itself, but in our acceptance of it. In illness, we recognize our weakness, get rid of worldly pride, illness reminds us of the inevitability of death, and after it - God's judgment and retribution. Therefore, the ascetics of Orthodoxy teach us to have a humble, uncomplaining attitude toward illness. And, on the other hand, it is precisely this perception of diseases that gives the internal strength to endure them.

In our time, selfless labor is a rare thing. Therefore, patience, replacing largely voluntary asceticism, becomes increasingly necessary as a practical implementation of humility. However, patience is useful only when a person justifies God’s Providence and perceives his suffering as deserved. Thus, patience is not a passive quality - it is a struggle with one’s own painful feelings.

God is a good Father to His children and has provided in advance all the necessary measures for healing: He has given the opportunity to return to the natural state of inner purity and beauty for a person, and He has given strength to fight sin. Orthodoxy teaches that mental and physical healing , first of all, accomplished by spiritual means . First, the spiritual and moral state of a person must change, and a change in physical well-being only reflects these spiritual changes. And first of all, the Lord grants man repentance - awareness of the depth of his moral damage - and a thirst for reunification with Him - the Source of life. Through the struggle with passions, in fasting, prayer, and by communing with the grace of the Holy Spirit in the Sacraments of the Church, a person receives true healing, mental and physical.

However, this does not negate the need for medical science. Doctors and medicines are provided by God.

“The Lord created medicine from the earth, and a prudent man will not neglect it,”- we read in the Holy Scriptures. Therefore, the holy fathers advise not to neglect doctors. “To leave everything to God is a matter of perfection,- writes St. Barsanuphius the Great, - and the task of the weak is to show himself to the doctor..., realizing at the same time that without God even the doctor cannot do anything.”

Christian Path to Recovery

Bishop Varnava gives the following instructions to the sick person: to repent of one’s sins without any self-justification or shielding, to make a promise to correct one’s life, to call a priest and consolidate and sanctify these new spiritual dispositions in the sacraments of Repentance and Communion. Humble yourself under the strong Hand of the Almighty and call for help from an earthly doctor, and upon recovery thank God for showing mercy to us.

One touch of Divine Grace can heal all our infirmities at once.

It is known that the basics of medical knowledge were brought to Russia along with the Christian faith from Greece and the first disseminators of medicine were monks mainly from Mount Athos. Such ascetics of piety as the Monk Anthony, saints Damian Olympius and Agapit of Pechersk, Pimen the Faster and others were famous for their gift of healing and healing the sick. There is a lot of evidence that medical books were compiled with the assistance of clergy. Hospitals were built at the monasteries for “free healing of all parish residents.” And the history of Russian medicine is closely connected with the life of monasteries and churches. Much later, the secular type of doctor and secular hospital was formed. But even then, any medical institution had a home hospital church.

Today there is a need for a partnership between a doctor and a pastor. When considering a disease, the doctor will look for a biological cause, and the priest will help overcome the spiritual and moral sources of the disease. At the same time, the Christian approach does not replace the medical-biological one, but complements and enriches it.

Orthodox worship itself, even its external side, has a beneficial effect on a person, being a synthesis of many arts. The architecture of the temple, the plastic movements of the clergy, the shimmer of brocade, the incense from censing, the flickering of candles, the rhythmic structure of the temple action, the participation of singers in it, the saturation of the service with the true element of liturgical poetry and music - everything is subordinated to a single goal - catharsis (purification).

Church singing penetrates deep into the heart. Each part of the service has its own internal rhythm and tempo. All melodies are divided into 8 voices, 8 different moods. The voices assigned to certain weeks become a calendar concept. Replacing each other throughout the year, they set a certain emotional rhythm for a person who regularly visits the temple. That is why liturgical singing can be called a special discipline of body, soul and spirit. The beneficial psychophysiological influence of music is not a discovery of today. This is how psychiatrist Father Dmitry Baibakov assesses the impact of worship on the state of mind.

N.V. Gogol wrote: “The effect of the Divine Liturgy on the soul is great: it is performed visibly and with one’s own eyes. And if only the one who prays reverently and diligently follows every action, obedient to the calling of the deacon, the soul acquires a high mood, the commandments of Christ become fulfillable for him, the yoke of Christ becomes good, and the burden becomes light.”

The sacrament of confession leads to a deep analysis of life. A person examines his mistakes, bad deeds, and correlates them with what the Gospel teaches. He does this carefully, with spiritual effort. Confession before the priest, and invisibly before God, frees the conscience from sin and removes the burden from the soul. Church confession is so healing, so beneficial for the soul, because a person conscientiously, without any self-justification, feeling himself an imperfect, deeply damaged creature, realizing his spiritual weakness in overcoming his current condition, tries to look at himself objectively and, with the help of God, heal spiritual ulcers, in including the main thing - pride, narcissism.

During confession, the priest shares with the confessor his spiritual experience in overcoming passions and vices, and helps him find the right path in life. It is no coincidence that F. M. Dostoevsky and N. V. Gogol spent a lot of time in monasteries, talking with spiritually experienced elders. And today, a sermon, a conversation in confession, acting on reason and logic, help a person find himself, overcome problems, and make a decision. Thus, a rational component is added to the emotional, sensory perception of worship.

The main difference between confession and rational psychotherapy is that in church a person receives spiritual insight and grace-filled power that helps him take the good path. At confession, he is morally healed, the integrity of the spirit is restored in him.

True Miracle Healings - unlike false ones - are performed only by faith in Him Whom the Church calls “the Doctor of our souls and bodies.” True miracles were performed by the Savior Himself while He walked the earth. Such miracles were performed by His disciples. To those of little faith, skeptics, and doubters, it seems that time miraculous healings passed along with the era of graceful early Christian times: what can one expect from the vain age of doubt - the age of “steamships and railways"? But if the Lord is truly the Lord of all ages, if the Church praising God truly sings to Him: “A thousand years have passed before Your eyes like yesterday.” If now the Holy Spirit adorns and preserves the Church in the same way as in ancient times, then He cannot but impart the gift of miracles to God’s chosen ones. “Your faith has saved you...”- and now sounds in the world.

M. Medvedev, T. Kalashnikova

Orthodox Society "Panagia" (Perm)

With the blessing of Archbishop Athanasius of Perm and Solikamsk

Site library Christian psychology and anthropology

How does the Evangelical Protestant doctrine differ from the Orthodox one? As a minister of the Evangelical Church, I often encounter such questions. These questions have become especially relevant in recent years, among believers who have little understanding of the essence of the Evangelical faith. Seeing the main difference between churches in the area of ​​traditions and forms of worship, they often miss the point. Traditions and forms of worship are not directly prescribed by Scripture, and therefore may change at different periods of history in different places. They are not the basis, but an expression of faith. The foundations of faith lie in the area of ​​theological principles that explain who God is, who man is, what the results of sin are, and how man can be saved. It is in the theological sphere that the most significant difference between the teaching of the Orthodox Church and the teaching of the Evangelical Churches lies. This article focuses on one such important issue—the doctrine of salvation. It presents an attempt at a critical analysis of the book by Sergius of Starogorodsky “Orthodox Doctrine of Salvation.” I hope that this article will help the reader see the key differences between the two systems of doctrine of salvation and compare them with what is presented in Scripture.

Introduction

Obviously, the question of salvation is the central point of most religions. Every denomination and virtually every church has developed its own approach to this issue, and, as a result, its own theology about salvation. While recognizing the authority of the Bible as a whole, many Christian churches have different approaches to interpreting passages Holy Scripture related to this topic. This gives them the opportunity to find a certain kind of support for their views and positions on this issue.

The Western theological world is well aware of the basic soteriological concepts that have been developed, carefully studied and criticized from various angles during the two thousand year history of the Christian Church. Among them are Roman Catholic Theology, Reformed Theology, Arminianism, Liberal Theology, Neo-Orthodox Theology, and various subsystems within these major soteriological schools. However, there is another fairly common soteriological position that is still insufficiently studied by theologians of the Western world. This is the doctrine of salvation put forward by the Orthodox Church.

Evangelical theologians, most often, consider the positions of the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches on the issue of salvation to be identical, thus uniting them into one soteriological system. However, most theologians within the Orthodox Church itself consider their own approach to the doctrine of salvation to be radically different from that of the Roman Catholic Church. They, in turn, consider the entire range of soteriological teachings presented in the world as divided into two camps. On the one hand, this is the Orthodox teaching on salvation, which is adhered to by various movements of the Eastern Orthodox Church. On the other hand, there is Western soteriology, which, according to Orthodox theologians, includes both the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church and the teaching of various Protestant Churches. The soteriology of the Evangelical churches is considered by Orthodox theologians as a derivative of the Roman Catholic teaching on salvation and a failed attempt to resolve the obvious problems of the latter.

The purpose of this article is to characterize the doctrine of salvation of the Orthodox Church in comparison with the main existing soteriological systems and, finally, with the position of the Bible itself. Eastern Orthodox theologians have written many works on the subject of salvation. However, due to the lack of systematization in theology and the mystical nature of Orthodoxy in general, most of these works were not written systematically, which greatly complicates the task of presenting a comprehensive picture of all aspects of Orthodox teaching, including soteriology. For this reason, this research work focuses primarily on one book, which, in the opinion of the author, represents one of the best explanations of the doctrine of salvation of the Orthodox Church. This book was written by Archbishop Sergius of Starogorodsky at the end of the nineteenth century and republished by the official publishing house of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow in 1991. The title of the book is “Orthodox Teaching on Salvation.” This work was originally written by Archbishop Sergius as a thesis for his master's thesis in theology. Later, apparently, it was published in book format.

Key elements of the book

In his book, “Orthodox Doctrine of Salvation,” Archbishop Sergius of Starogorodsky tried to present a study of the Orthodox doctrine of salvation, relating it to similar teachings of the Roman Catholic and Protestant denominations. Finding some similarities in the provisions of Roman Catholic and Protestant theology, the author tries to present the main shortcomings of the Western approach to theology in general and to the problem of saving the human soul in particular. In contrast, he asserts the apparent superiority of the Orthodox position on this issue. Among the long list of doctrinal weaknesses of Catholics and Protestants given in the book, three points play a dominant role: the author especially emphasizes the method of forming Orthodox theology through the prism of accumulated experience, insisting on its superiority in theology. Second key element, put forward by him, is located in the very source of Orthodox theology (oral tradition, in his opinion, more accurately conveys the true essence of Christian life than the written word). These two elements, (despite the fact that they reveal the author's understanding of the subject quite well) are only mentioned and briefly assessed in this work. In fact, they have more to do with issues related to the field of theology and bibliology. The third key element of the book is the author's argument that the Orthodox doctrine of salvation is superior to Roman Catholic and Protestant soteriological positions simply because the latter are based on a legal model of worldview, while the former is based on a moral or ethical model. This position clearly prevails in Orthodox theology. It was this that became the main point of the book of the Archbishop of Starogorodsky, and will be studied in more detail in this article.

Experience confirms theology

As is customary among theologians of the Orthodox Church, already at the very beginning of the book the author emphasizes that his approach to the issue of salvation will not be theoretical in its basis. Accusing Western theologians and philosophers of speculating on speculative conclusions that are far from real life, he argues that the truth of any worldview can and should be confirmed only by the practical result of the life of its follower. In other words, every doctrine must reflect the reality of life that it explains. If this does not happen, then the entire system of doctrines is wrong. “Life” in the understanding of Archbishop Sergius is the highest arbiter who makes a determination about the viability or failure of any theological or philosophical system. He writes: “Life is the best means for determining and clarifying the true worldview of a person or one or another philosophical system, as well as for evaluating this worldview.” The author finds support for this opinion in 1 John 2:4 “Whoever says, ‘I know Him,’ but does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.”

At first glance, his position seems correct: theology should bring real fruit to the lives of believers. Starting from this obvious fact, the author, however, concludes that life experience is something more than just a reflection or fruit of correct theology, it is its essence and measure. In other words, theology as he understands it must relate to and correspond to life experience. Jesus clearly taught that commandments and doctrine should influence and shape the lives of believers. At the same time, this statement, being true in one part (a person’s theology influences the way he lives), is false in another (it is wrong to reshape one’s theology in order to fit it to certain aspects of life).

The Canonical Authority of the Church Fathers

The second element of the author's argument is based on the assertion of the high authority of oral tradition, especially such an aspect as the life of the church fathers. He considers this tradition a more accurate reflection of real Christianity than any discussion of Christian doctrine.

"We know that Jesus Christ brought us first and foremost new life and taught it to the apostles, and that the task of church tradition is not only to transmit teaching, but to convey from generation to generation precisely this life conceived with Christ, to convey precisely that which is not transmitted by any word, by any letter, but only by direct communication of individuals.”

Again, as with experience and theology, this idea is sound enough on its face. Indeed, it is true that Jesus Christ did not bring the dead letter of some speculative doctrine. He brought real life from God, which found its practical expression in the life and ministry of His disciples. However, to claim that Jesus' words did not express the fullness of God's revelation to people, that there was something else that complemented His word that made Christianity real, is to create some serious problems. (1) First of all, this approach is in direct opposition to the clear teaching of Scripture. The Bible declares in a tone that cannot be contradicted that the written word of God is the only and absolutely sufficient source of true Christian life (John 17:17; 2 Timothy 3:16-17; 1 Peter 1:23-25). (2) The second problem is that the author’s understanding of the life and teachings of the church fathers also comes from written works (which, at the same time, are not inspired by God, unlike biblical texts). A fair question arises: if certain truths could not be written down by the apostles of Christ at the dawn of the church, then on what basis did this become possible thanks to the later participation of the church fathers? Turning to the teaching or life experience of the church fathers, the author continues to draw information from the same written sources. Moreover, these works are less authoritative and therefore much more limited in conveying truth than the biblical text. This makes the author's argument about the superiority of oral tradition in the process of forming correct theology completely meaningless.

Moral model of worldview versus legal model

As mentioned above, the main argument used by the author of the “Orthodox Doctrine of Salvation” is a worldview model based on an ethical rather than a legal approach. This is how it is presented in his book:

“Before me stood two completely different worldviews, not reducible to one another: legal and moral, Christian. I called the first legal, because the best expression of this worldview is the Western legal system, in which the individual and his moral dignity disappear, and only individual legal units and relations between them. God is understood mainly as the first cause and Ruler of the world, closed in his absoluteness - His relations with man are similar to the relations of a king with a subordinate and are not at all similar to a moral union."

Archbishop Sergius of Starogorodsky correctly defines the essence of Christian life: “My general conclusion is this: the true life of a person is in communion with God.” It is true that the Christian life is not simply the result of a court decision officially exonerating a person. Christian life consists of a radical change in the state of the human heart, its essence; this is what connects a person with his Creator and God in an inextricable union. The main question is how does this happen? How to correlate these things: the inner change of a true Christian and the righteousness of Christ, His death and His resurrection. Answering this question, Sergius Starogorodsky downplays the role of justification in the process of salvation in its legal sense and insists on the absolute primacy of the moral aspect, i.e. moral transformation of man. It is this, in his opinion, that plays the leading role in the process of salvation:

It is possible to be a partaker of this eternal life only through assimilation to God (hence the need for good deeds, that is, spiritual and moral growth), but this assimilation is possible only when God comes to man, and man recognizes and accepts God.

The purpose of this article is to evaluate the position of Orthodox theology on the nature of salvation, comparing it with biblical teaching, both in its legal and moral aspects. What is the biblical understanding of the role of the legal aspect of salvation? How does it relate to the moral aspect of salvation? These and other related questions form the essence of our conversation.

Overview of the Orthodox position

Although Orthodox theology is quite isolated from the rest of the religious world, it did not develop in a vacuum. The culture and philosophy of the eastern peoples, with their traditions and worldview, significantly influenced the formation of Orthodox theology. One of the key differences between Orthodox theologians and their Catholic and Protestant colleagues is their open rejection of the legal or judicial aspect of justification. The role of law and legal institutions, in general, is minimal in Eastern countries. This is clearly seen in cultural and political life. Russian society, in which the majority of the population is always skeptical of the law and the legislative system, preferring to believe in a “good” king or ruler more than in justice. This perception also influenced the formation of an experimental approach in Orthodox theology, which downplays the role of legal relations between people and exalts the ethical, moral component, contrasting this with everything else.

Disadvantages of the legal approach in soteriology

To demonstrate the superiority of Orthodox teaching on the issue of salvation, Sergius Stargorodsky begins his book with a long argument of why the legal approach to the question of salvation is incorrect. He gives several reasons: (1) the legal approach was a consequence of the Roman socio-political system; (2) it is contrary to Scripture; (3) it goes against our conscience.

Historical and theological issues

Sergius Stargorodsky sees the first problem in historical development Western churches. He believes that the main reason The adoption of the judicial model of salvation by Western churches lies in the high status of law and the dominant position of a highly developed legal system in Roman society. The legal system of Rome was so deeply ingrained in the Western way of life that it inevitably affected the Christian local church.

From its very first historical steps, Christianity collided with Rome and had to reckon with the Roman spirit and the Roman way or way of thinking, while ancient Rome, rightly, is considered the bearer and exponent of law, the law. Law was the main element in which all his concepts and ideas revolved: law was the basis of his personal life, it also determined all his family, social and state relations. Religion was no exception - it was also one of the applications of law. Becoming a Christian, the Roman tried to understand Christianity precisely from this side - he sought in it, first of all, legal consistency.

His logic is simple: Christianity spread throughout the Roman Empire, among a population in whose life a highly developed legal system played a significant role. This attitude towards civil justice in society was transferred to religious life, which formed their doctrine of salvation. The legal approach to the issue of spiritual justification, adopted from Roman society, according to the author, became not just a mistake of the West, but introduced confusion into the entire theology of Catholics, and later Protestant churches.

In his book, the Archbishop of Stargorod insists that the judicial approach is not only erroneous, but also very dangerous. In his opinion, Western theology is concerned only with the legal status of man, and not with his moral, i.e. present state. If we assert that a person is justified on the basis of a legal procedure occurring outside him, then he does not require any moral change. The Western focus on achieving the status of righteousness before God, instead of focusing on living a righteous life, makes the entire Christian experience, according to Stargorodsky, a fake. When people believe themselves to be justified before God, but in reality their inner essence has not been changed, when they do not practice godliness of heart, expressed in the good works of their souls, they only deceive themselves, believing that they are saved, when in fact they are not saved. Sergius Stargorodsky considers the moral and legal aspects of salvation as mutually exclusive:

The moral union requires moral conformity and penetrates with its demands and instructions into the very sanctuary of human conscience. The legal system never penetrates there, being content with observing the externally agreed framework and leaving a person as a complete master within himself...

The adoption of a legal theory of salvation instead of a moral one, according to the author, ultimately leads the Western Church to incorrect theology. He believes that judicial justification, and by extension the theology based on this idea, goes against the reality of spiritual experience and the conscience of man.

Without penetrating into the inner work of those being saved, the mind stops at the external side and bases its conclusions on it alone. It is not surprising if in this way he arrives at positions that are absurd from the point of view of spiritual experience and before the judgment of human conscience

Rejecting the legal view of justification, Sergius Stargorodsky considers both the Catholic and Protestant doctrines of salvation to be erroneous because they are both based on a legal worldview. In his opinion, the theology of both views salvation as a legal act, and not as a moral transformation of the soul. The difference between Catholic and Protestant doctrines of salvation is only a different interpretation of who pays the price for human sin. The author believes that Protestants and Catholics have the same problem: while Catholics insist that a person is obliged to do good deeds in order to at least partially pay for his sin; Protestants claim that Christ Jesus was the one who paid the full price for human sin on the cross. The latter is considered by the author as worse and more dangerous than the first. “If Christ paid for our sins even more than they were worth, why still think that we need to work for this satisfaction ourselves?” Quoting the German theologians of his time, Brettschneider and Hollatz, Sergei Stargorodsky presents the Protestant position as follows:

"Justification is not understood as physical sense, and in external and judicial. It does not mean to make the wicked righteous, but in the judicial sense to declare righteous, to consider righteous, to declare, and this for the sake of the merit of Jesus Christ, i.e. for the sake of an extraneous event that has no connection with my inner being. Justification is thus a completely external act, an act that acts not in a person, but outside and around a person. Therefore, the consequence of this act can only be a change in the relationship between God and man, but man himself does not change. We are primarily sinners, but God treats us by virtue of Christ’s merits, as if we had not sinned, but, on the contrary, fulfilled the law, or as if Christ’s merit were ours.”

In his approach to the theological understanding of salvation, Sergei Stargorodsky, like most Orthodox theologians, says that real salvation must grow from the internal moral change of a person in the process of achieving righteousness as an integral property of his soul. Instead of seeking outward righteousness, man must work hard to change the inner being, beginning with the germ of "good" that resides in everyone, and trusting that the grace of Christ will provide all necessary assistance in the process. He believes that all other ways of salvation, whether declaring a person righteous based on the merits of Christ (Protestants) or on the merits of a person (Catholics), ultimately deal with an external factor.

Sergei Stargorodsky considers all attempts to combine imputed righteousness with the internal process of moral transformation of the soul to be a useless addition that does not change anything. Since a person is not actually righteous, but is only considered righteous, this is nothing more than self-deception. Catholics and Protestants must be mistaken simply because the positions of both have as their starting point only an external recognition of righteousness, which in reality is not connected with the internal transformation of a person.

Contradiction to Scripture

Sergius Stargorodsky considers the second problem of the non-Orthodox view of salvation to be its alleged inconsistency with Scripture. This is an interesting question, because, as a rule, Orthodox theologians themselves much more often refer not to the Bible as such, but to the works of the church fathers. It must be admitted that, although the author himself does not often turn to the interpretation of the Biblical text, he does consider several passages of Scripture that, in his opinion, speak of a moral rather than a legal model of salvation. However, even these few texts are mostly either taken out of context or quoted from the writings of the church fathers, looking at these passages through their eyes and interpreting them according to the arguments of the church fathers. Most of the texts that, in his opinion, support the Orthodox position testify to the need for sincere performance of good deeds and the need for a heart directed towards God. These include passages such as Matthew 11:12 “From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and those who use force take it by force...”, Gal.6:7-10, Matt. 24:24, Rom.13:10, Matt. 25:34, Isa. 66:1-4, etc. All these verses focus on internal state of the human heart and the importance of expressing godliness in his relationship with God. Although none of these passages directly teach that sincerely doing good works will lead to salvation, and there are many other passages that directly teach the opposite, the author still comes to the desired conclusion by looking at these passages of Scripture through the eyes of the church fathers. All this is the basis for the claim of Sergius of Stargorod that Scripture supports his position.

Contradiction of conscience and religious experience

Sergius Stargorodsky finds the next reason for refuting the legal approach to salvation in what he calls the contradiction with the voice of conscience and religious experience. He believes that the best part of the human soul is always looking for real life and salvation and therefore will never be satisfied with a formal judicial justification, which in fact is only an external declaration of righteousness, not related to its inner goodness and fear of God. This, according to the author, is confirmed in the religious experience of many saints, “and experience and tradition alone said that good deeds are necessary not only in the sense of a consequence, but also in the sense of a condition of salvation.” He views Catholic theology as an attempt to combine the meaning of tradition and religious experience with his legal worldview. In his opinion, they created a system that, although it leaves room for human participation in salvation, but due to the Western legal worldview, is still focused on external works, which are regarded as the price in the transaction for human righteousness. Regarding the Protestant doctrine of good works as the result or fruit of righteousness, he says that connecting good works with imputed righteousness in any case would contradict the very essence of the Protestant idea of ​​substitutionary justification. If Protestants allow this to some extent, they do so only because they are unable to resist the pressure of the voice of conscience and the demands of human nature, which cannot be silenced. He is convinced that this is truism that a righteous or holy person must actually be a saint, and not just be called a saint. Sergius Stargorodsky believes that if good deeds coming from the heart are not a vital part of salvation, then salvation becomes simply an external declaration of a person’s righteousness, which does not reflect the actual state of his heart. Contrary to this statement, the need for good deeds remains unfounded, because in this case the motivation for a God-fearing life comes not from salvation itself, but from outside: from the call to duty, from the need to thank God, etc. This leads him to the conclusion that the personal desire to do good must be an integral part of human salvation.

The Excellence of the Moral Approach in Theology

Instead of an external, legal model of salvation, which, according to Sergius of Stargorodsky, only declares, but does not make a person truly righteous, Orthodox theology takes a position that concentrates on the moral state of a person. The main meaning of human salvation, according to Sergius of Stargorod, is the knowledge of God, and this is not just an intellectual understanding of certain facts, but a personal, intimate knowledge of God, which comes through cleansing oneself from sin and through communication with God. As a person grows in the knowledge of God, he learns to live morally and godly, becoming more and more godlike. By learning the essence of good deeds, a person comes to know God through his own experience as He is. This leads Sergius of Stargorod to the conclusion: “The concepts of Godlikeness and virtue, thus, ultimately turn out to be identical.” Following the affirmation of this principle, he takes the next step: “Cleansing yourself from sinful filth, achieving heartfelt purity, therefore, means preparing yourself, becoming capable of God-knowledge and God-likeness.” Thus, the logic is simple, since God is just and righteous, a person can become righteous only through achieving godlikeness. Since achieving Godlikeness and doing good deeds are equivalent ideas, in order for a person to truly become righteous, he needs to focus on doing good deeds, which is only possible with the assistance of God's grace. Salvation, therefore, becomes a gradual process of growth in Godlikeness that brings more and more of God's righteousness into the life of the Christian.

Receiving eternal life does not mean moving from one area of ​​existence to another, but means acquiring a certain spiritual disposition. Eternal life, therefore, does not work out, but gradually grows in a person.

Since the process of salvation is aimed at making a person righteous, and not simply at declaring him so, it must include his full, free and voluntary participation and cooperation. If this happens against or regardless of his will, then he will not be truly righteous, i.e. God-like. Thus, the only way for a person to be saved is through his personal conscious efforts, which, with God's help, will ultimately make a person a saint.

If a person is to become righteous, he must become free from sin. Therefore, it is very important whether he will be simply a passive recipient of the influence of supernatural power, or whether he will participate in his own liberation. This is why the Holy Scriptures and the works of the church fathers reflect a constant desire to convince a person to achieve his salvation, because without personal efforts, the salvation of not a single person is possible.

The logic of the above leads the author to a direct denial of the possibility of the substitutionary nature of salvation. Since, real holiness must be built on the moral virtue of a person: it requires the voluntary rejection of evil and personal, constant choice of good. This makes him godlike and therefore holy and righteous. Sergius Stargorodsky says:

Holiness, if it is an involuntary property of nature, will lose its moral character and turn into an indifferent state. You can't be kind out of necessity. Therefore, it is equally wrong to imagine salvation as a matter imputed to a person from the outside, as well as a supernatural transformation occurring in a person apart from the participation of his freedom.

He continues:

“Every good thing that happens in a person, every moral growth, every turning point that occurs in his soul, is necessarily accomplished not outside of consciousness and freedom, so that it is not someone else, but the person himself who changes himself, turning from the old into the new. Salvation is not may be some external judicial or physical event, but necessarily it is a moral action; and, as such, it necessarily presupposes, as an inevitable condition and law, that a person himself performs this action, albeit with the help of grace...

Thus, starting with the obvious need for moral transformation of the sinner for his salvation, Orthodox theologians move on to the complete denial of Christ's imputed righteousness and substitutionary sacrifice, making human efforts essentially the foundation of salvation.

An assessment of the Orthodox teaching on salvation. General observations

Comparison of Orthodox soteriology with the doctrine of salvation of the Pelagians and Catholics

Although the soteriological positions of the Eastern Orthodox Church appear similar to the Pelagian doctrine of salvation, there are nevertheless some significant differences. While the Pelagians completely deny the destructive effect of Adam's sin on man, Orthodox theologians believe that the fall of Adam affected all humanity, making it difficult for them to come to God. Another important difference is that Orthodox theology is not based on self-realization or self-righteousness, as in Pelagian teaching, but on man's voluntary desire to imitate and reflect God's righteousness expressed in His goodness.

This is why, when speaking about good deeds, Orthodox theologians talk more about the inner aspiration of the human heart towards God and His will, which is recognized as the highest good. Unlike Catholics, they focus not so much on the fact of external fulfillment, but on the importance of growing in God's likeness through imitation of His virtue and piety, the desire for which is truly present in the heart of every person.

Comparison with Protestants

To evaluate the Orthodox doctrine of salvation in comparison with the Protestant or evangelical position, it is first necessary to make several important observations. Perhaps the biggest and most important difference between these two theological approaches lies precisely in their position in relation to Adam's sin and its effect on man. While Protestants are convinced that every person has inherited a sinful nature and personal guilt before God, Orthodox theologians insist that the guilt of Adam's sin is not passed on to subsequent generations, because otherwise God would have to punish people for their guilt another person (in this case for the sin of Adam). Another aspect of the difference of opinion regarding the influence of sin is that, according to the Orthodox position, although man was seriously wounded by sin, he did not become dead as a result of the Fall.

Apart from these differences in assessing the influence of sin, the Orthodox, unlike Protestants, do not make much of a distinction between the three main stages of salvation: conversion - rebirth, sanctification and glorification. Without making this distinction, Orthodox theologians interpret the texts of Scripture that speak of sanctification as speaking of the initial stage of salvation. Those passages that Protestants consider as an appeal to regenerate people, speaking about the importance of good works and piety in their growth in salvation (as in 1 Peter 1:9; 2:1-3), Orthodox theologians interpret as a general characteristic of the process of salvation, which thus becomes directly dependent on human efforts. Archbishop Sergius of Stargorod presents the Orthodox position of the inseparability of the process of salvation as follows:

“Thus, the whole work of salvation is presented in the following form: a person here on earth works, works on himself, creates the kingdom of God in himself, and through this now begins, little by little, to become a partaker of eternal life, to the extent that he has the strength and ability for this communion ".

Another important element of Orthodox soteriology lies in their artificial separation of the moral aspect of salvation from its legal and other aspects. When speaking about salvation, Scripture covers this issue from different angles. Salvation certainly clearly entails a moral or ethical transformation of a person, however, at the same time, it has its legal or legal side, which deals with the consequences of a person's crime and his guilt. In addition, Scripture speaks of salvation as a restoration of family ties, as a matter of repentance, conversion and spiritual rebirth. Other passages speak of salvation as a matter of faith and sanctification. Focusing on one (moral) element of salvation and downplaying others makes the approach of Orthodox theologians to this issue one-sided. To gain a complete understanding of salvation, it would be logical to try to obtain a complete picture that would take into account all aspects of salvation as they are presented in the Bible.

Another important observation that needs to be made is that Sergius of Stargorodsky at times misrepresents the Protestant doctrine of salvation. Therefore, speaking against the Protestant doctrine of salvation, Archbishop Sergius of Stargorod often fights against a view that, although some Protestants adhere to, in reality this view cannot characterize all evangelical believers, or even the majority of them, and, of course, it cannot be presented as Biblical view. Arguing against the supposedly incorrect position of Protestants regarding the process of salvation, he presents a point of view that certainly cannot express the position of evangelical believers:

According to Protestant teaching, it turns out that God was angry with man all the time, all the time he could not forgive him for the insult that man inflicted on Him through sin. Then, suddenly, seeing a person’s faith in Jesus Christ, God is reconciled with the person and no longer considers him his enemy, although the person may still sin after this, but with impunity.

Misunderstanding the Nature of Sin

One of the main elements on which Orthodox soteriology is based concerns their view of the nature of sin. What is the root of the problem from which man must be saved? Orthodox theologians believe that although sin had bad influence on a person, he continues to retain within himself a source of goodness, a kind of inner desire seek God and seek fellowship with our Creator. The sin inherited from Adam makes human life difficult, but despite this, he has enough of his own internal abilities to turn to God. The second relevant question is: is man guilty before God? What is the nature of the conflict between God and man? Is there only enmity on the human side or also anger on the divine side in this conflict? Representing the Orthodox position, Sergius Stargorodsky decisively rejects the possibility of God's wrath and with the same conviction defends the opinion that a person is capable of independently turning to God:

Is it possible to imagine that God would be at enmity against a person for his sin, so that God could not be reconciled with a person, even though the latter thirsted for God with all his soul and prayed for communion with Him? Remaining faithful to the Word of God and the teachings of the fathers, we can only say: no.

Explaining this thesis, he points to God's patient work with fallen man throughout human history, quoting John Chrysostom: "God is never at enmity with us, it is we who oppose Him." Sergius of Stargorodsky also finds support for this position in some texts of the Old Testament, such as Is.57:15-16, which speaks of the need for humility of the human spirit as a prerequisite for God’s relationship with man. After quoting Isaiah 57:15-16, he writes:

Therefore, God’s love does not place sin as an absolute obstacle to the rapprochement of God with man; Wherever there is a humble and contrite person, where there is a noticeable desire to give up sin and be with God, God’s love does not leave without help.

Although such a conclusion seems quite logical for the Archbishop of Stargorod, it can hardly have support in Holy Scripture. Yes, indeed, God loves a humble and contrite heart. However, the Bible is very clear that the true essence of sinful man is the pride and stubbornness of his heart.

Sinful man is spiritually dead

In describing the condition of fallen man, the Bible teaches that he is neither more nor less than dead in his sins and trespasses (Eph. 2:1-2). God warned Adam on the day of his creation about the inevitable consequences of sin. This warning was expressed with a strong statement: “You will die.” At this point, the Bible talks about death for the first time. Death is clearly presented in Genesis as an inevitable consequence of sin. The Apostle Paul in Romans 6:23 speaks of death as the wages of sin, i.e. as its direct result. Recognizing that the Bible clearly teaches about spiritual death as a result of the Fall, but also not wanting to deviate from the belief that a person remains “good” within himself, Orthodox theologians define the mortality of a sinful person more as the ability to die physically, but not as a spiritual inability to create good. Orthodox theologian John Meyendorff writes: “The inheritance of the Fall is essentially the inheritance of physical mortality, not sinfulness.” However, this definition of spiritual death, with reference to Genesis 2:17, contradicts some clear passages of the Bible that teach that spiritual death actually means a person's lack of desire and ability to choose good. The meaning of Adam's sin was that he began to consider himself "god", thus the essence of sin was manifested in an attempt to achieve independence from God and place himself at the center of everything. Human selfishness has become the main element of his fallen nature. This selfish nature of man has no need of God. Man's self-centeredness after the fall is simply incompatible with the desire to recognize God as Master and Master. It is unnatural for fallen man to thirst for God and seek a relationship with Him. Even if this selfish person accepts the obvious existence of God, he will do everything possible to suppress the truth. (Rom. 1:18). In order for a sinful person to want to seek God, his very essence must change. This is why Jesus clearly teaches the absolute necessity for man to be born again. (John 3:5). Thus we can conclude that fallen man is self-centered in his natural tendencies. To leave his position of superiority, he must die to himself and be born again, which the Bible teaches is accomplished in him, through the work of the Holy Spirit.

Sinful man is guilty before God

The Orthodox Church rejects much of the idea that Adam's sin was passed on to his descendants. It teaches that humanity is guilty only in the sense that in sinning it imitates Adam and thus acquires its own guilt. Supporting this position, Sergius of Starogorodsky argues that it is impossible for God to be angry with a person. God loves man, he says, and the problem of enmity between man and God lies only in man's enmity towards God, which he must change. Recognizing that God hates sin, the Archbishop of Stargorod, nevertheless, insists that despite this, God loves sinners: “The sinner, as a person, has never ceased and will never cease to be the subject of strong love God's."

The main problem with this approach is that sin is seen as a certain kind of object that a person possesses; he has the right to keep it or throw it away. However, the Bible teaches that the essence of human sin lies not so much in anything a person has or does, but in who he is. This is a characteristic of his fallen nature. Sin is a state of rebellion against God. As was shown above, human sin, his self-centeredness, his rebellion against God, all this shows the main characteristic of his fallen nature. This makes it impossible to separate a person from his sin. From this follows the following conclusion: God's holiness does not tolerate sin in any of its manifestations, and it will not tolerate the sinner either.

One of the reasons why Orthodox theologians cannot accept the reality of God's wrath towards sinful man is due to a misunderstanding of the nature of His wrath. They rather view it as divine dissatisfaction with what man is doing. However, the Bible teaches that God's warmth is a response of His absolute holiness, which does not tolerate anything sinful or rebelling against Him. Sergius of Stargorodsky presents God's wrath only as God's dissatisfaction with man, as a kind of whim that needs to be satisfied. Having such a caricatured view of God's wrath, he says that He cannot be characterized by such feelings. Defining God's anger as an ordinary emotion, Sergius of Stargorod is convinced that since God's love is greater than His displeasure with man, He will easily step over this feeling when man turns to Him. He can forgive, forget and pretend that nothing happened, if only a person changes his attitude towards God. This means that there is no need for reconciliation and atonement to satisfy God's just wrath.

To understand this aspect more clearly, it is necessary to return again to the topic of the nature of sin. The Bible does not present sin as a specific passive condition or disease inherited from Adam. She rather describes it as active resistance to God! Yes, if sinfulness were only a passive state in which man was born, then the punishment of man for the sin of his forefathers would be dishonest and unjust. However, man inherited from Adam an active position of opposition to God. This means that everyone who comes from Adam's family is full of self-centeredness and claims to their own divinity, and actively opposes the true God, challenging their rights as opposed to God's sovereignty. Thus, man's sinful condition is not simply something that man (or his forefathers) did in the past, and therefore God must simply forget it. Since God is a perfect and absolute being (Matthew 5:48), His holiness protects His perfection, and therefore, without proper protection, it is impossible for sinful man to approach Him. Because man's sin cannot be separated from his nature, man must inevitably die, because "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins" (Heb. 9:22). That is why the perfect sacrifice of Christ was so necessary when He took upon Himself the sin of man and with it God's wrath for this sin. A correct understanding of man's guilt before God is not only critical to understanding the need for Jesus' substitutionary sacrifice, but it also explains why God holds man responsible for his unbelief when he himself is unable to believe. He is deprived of the ability to believe, not because God created him that way, but because he himself openly and actively rebels against his Creator.

Misunderstanding the Nature of Salvation

As shown above, the Orthodox understanding of the issue of salvation is based not on declaring a person righteous, but on the basis of his internal moral change. The problem of separating two such important questions will be considered in this chapter a little later, but now it is necessary to look at how Orthodox theologians explain the starting point in the process of salvation. One of the key questions in this regard is: what made it possible for a sinful person who is at enmity with God to admit his guilt, turn to God and begin to change into His image? Archbishop Sergius of Stargorod is convinced that this kind of change occurs at the moment of the sacrament of baptism.

The essence of baptism or the sacrament of repentance consists, therefore, in a radical revolution accomplished in the soul of a person, in a change in his entire life. Man was a slave to sin, fulfilled the lusts of the devil, was an enemy of God - now he decides to stop sin and be in communion with the Holy Lord. This decision, of course, is a matter of human freedom, but it is made in the soul, only under the influence and with the help of grace, which is communicated in the sacrament.

This quote quite accurately illustrates the general view of the Orthodox Church on salvation. Such salvation is undoubtedly rooted in man himself. If you follow the logic of Sergius of Stargorod, man was an enemy of God and then simply decided to become His friend. With this desire, he turned to the church, which provides him with access to the grace of God, which in turn helps him in his path to please God. Man-initiated and man-centered salvation, along with the artificial separation between its moral and legal aspects, plays a major role in the formation of Orthodox soteriology.

Is salvation rooted in man or in God?

The man-centered approach to the question of salvation stems from the desire to find something in a person that will prompt God to help him on his path to salvation. The Orthodox believe that there must have been something in man's pre-Christian life that made his coming to God possible. Sergius of Stargorod presents the classic view of Orthodox theology on the relationship between salvation and human life before conversion. He, like many other Orthodox theologians, insists that life before conversion should be the determining factor in this story. Its basic premise is the belief that all people must have equal access to salvation, otherwise God would be an unjust God. Disagreeing with the Roman Catholic understanding of righteousness earned by works, Sergius of Stargorod attempts to create a system that could help him avoid recognizing human works as some kind of merit and basis for salvation, and, at the same time, would justify God saving only some, in while the rest are doomed to destruction. Here's how he reveals the reason for this:

In fact, if the grace of justification is the action of God in man, independent of man, then how to explain its appearance in man? Why does God renew one and deprive another of this mercy? Catholics, as we have seen, did not want and did not have the right to recognize the basis for this as the previous life of a person, since this, translated into legal language, would be salvation through one’s own merit, and not through the merit of Christ. To avoid this, it was necessary to recognize all people without distinction as undeserving of salvation and justification by an exclusively Divine work, as Catholics do. But in this case, why does God renew those and not others?

Rejecting the Roman Catholic view that people can earn their salvation by living before conversion, the Orthodox insist that God does not seek external reasons in order to save a person, but a certain disposition of the heart precedes his salvation.

The Bible, however, presents salvation in exactly the opposite way. She says that fallen man is completely enslaved by his sinful desires. Bruce Demarest summarizes the Bible's teaching on conversion and repentance, calling it nothing more and nothing less than "a change of mind, absolute consecration, and conduct by which a person who has not yet become a Christian turns from sin to God." To become a Christian, a person requires a complete inner change. As was shown above, this kind of change is completely unnatural for fallen man. His natural desires are aimed at establishing himself, and he does not condemn these desires. Therefore, there must be some factor external to man that would come and revive his soul, making him able to respond to God’s call. This truth is clearly demonstrated in the Old Testament history of God's dealings with His people Israel. Jeremiah 31:31-33 explains this:

“Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; that covenant They broke mine, although I remained in covenant with them, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law within them, and write it on their hearts, and I will be their God. and they will be My people."

The history of God's first covenant with Israel showed that when that covenant was dependent on the behavior of the people, they broke it, and as a result the covenant was broken. Terer, God promises the coming of a new covenant, which will differ from the old one in that God will make a major change in the heart of man. He said, “I will put My law within them and write it on their hearts.” This verse says that God will take the initiative and change the inner being of a person, making him able to have a relationship with Him. This proclamation was repeated in several other passages of the Old Testament (Jer. 32:40; Ezek. 11:19; 36:26, etc.), and is also clearly presented in the New Testament as the fulfillment of these prophetic words (Heb. 10:16 ). Jesus presents salvation as the second birth (John 3:5), which is initiated by the Father (John 6:44). Paul repeatedly points out that salvation is God's work in the human heart. (Rom. 2:4; 2 Tim. 2:25)

It is quite obvious that there are enough texts in the Holy Scriptures to support the belief that salvation cannot be brought about by fallen man, but is given by God. The only explanation why Orthodox theologians adhere to a man-centered approach to the question of salvation is their absolute conviction that salvation must be based on moral change in man, which seems impossible to them within the framework of a God-centered model. This is mainly because they view human moral transformation as self-initiated, most significant, and completely divorced from other aspects of salvation.

The problem of separating the moral and legal aspects of salvation

According to Sergius of Stargorod, the asserted superiority of the Orthodox doctrine of salvation lies in the fact that it is based on the moral transformation of the believer, which, with the help of grace, makes him truly righteous. The legal approach to salvation, in his opinion, focuses only on declaring a person righteous, thanks only to the externally imputed righteousness of Christ to the sinner, without the real need for a change of heart of the sinner. In his opinion, these two positions are mutually exclusive and, therefore, cannot be true at the same time. However, Biblical teaching presents a completely different opinion. The Bible does not look at salvation only from a moral or legal perspective; it takes into account a number of different factors. When dealing with such a wonderful idea as salvation, man is limited by the lack of words in his language and ideas in his imagination, which makes him unable to present heavenly concepts like salvation in a complete, comprehensive picture. For this reason, the biblical authors, when explaining various aspects of the complex truth of salvation, presented each of these aspects from different angles, as an inseparable part of the overall picture. Thus, when speaking of salvation, the Bible speaks of atonement, conversion, renewal, repentance, comparing it to the restoration of the family, the second birth, death and resurrection, etc. Indeed, salvation involves the moral change of a person, but there are also many passages of Scripture that teach about salvation as a legal act (Rom. 3:28; 4:2-6; 10:10; 1 Cor. 1:30; 2 Cor.5:21; Phil.3:8-9, etc.). This means that one provision does not need to be pitted against another, but rather that one provision is intended to complement the other. To see in salvation only the aspect of moral change in the inner essence of a person means to oversimplify this issue, ignoring other extremely important components.

The Biblical Nature of Salvation

As has been mentioned many times in this work, the real meaning of salvation lies in the liberation of man from sin and its conditions. Archbishop Sergius of Stargorod, along with many other Orthodox theologians, believes that in order to get rid of sin, a person must humble himself, turn to God and begin the process of acquiring piety in achieving godlikeness. This sounds attractive and understandable enough, but it creates a bit of a problem. The Bible teaches that it is only possible for a person to become truly humble, to deny himself and turn to the service of God, if he is already freed from sin. This puts him in a vicious circle that he is unable to break. Being by his fallen nature filled with sin, selfishness, self-centeredness and enmity with God, man is simply unable to even experience the right desire to be saved. In order to gain the desire for salvation, he needs a radical change, which can only be accomplished by God alone. This is why Jesus taught that man needs a new nature and a new birth (John 3:5). The old sinful nature must die, and a new nature given by God himself must be born (John 1:12-13). This is why the Old Testament prophets foretold that the time would come when God would establish a new covenant, which would be based on a change of heart (Jer. 31:31-33). Both the Old Testament prophets and also Jesus Christ clearly show that this process is initiated and carried out by God. During the Old Testament, God already gave man a chance to build and maintain a relationship with Him. However, man turned out to be unfaithful, breaking his covenant with God. It is for this reason that God establishes a new covenant, which does not depend on sinful man, but is established in the unchangeable God (Jer. 32:40). Recognition of the dominant role of God in the matter of salvation, in the author’s opinion, reconciles all possible disagreements in the best possible way. However, even after such a rather lengthy discussion, there are still a number of questions that require explanation. One of these questions is: “Why does God save some and not others?” It must be recognized that, of course, there are things that we are not able to understand while living here on earth. The process of salvation itself is a great mystery. Therefore, there will inevitably be tension in man's attempt to understand salvation in all its minute details. Anyone who has attempted to combine all the elements of the doctrine of salvation has been forced to admit in the end that some of these elements are an inexplicable mystery. Thus, Sergius of Stargorodsky, presenting the Orthodox doctrine of salvation, begins from the very beginning with a certain tension:

“We believe that we are saved by Jesus Christ alone, that only through Christ alone can we be accepted by God, but we also believe (and of this we find constant testimony in our conscience) that God honors everyone with a portion according to his good works.”

However, the constant witness of the Bible as God's word must surely take precedence over the constant witness of such a subjective phenomenon as one's conscience.

© Alexey Kolomiytsev, www.site

Orthodox teaching, 17.

Ibid., 21.

Orthodox teaching, 24.

Ibid., 25

The idea of ​​likeness to God or theos plays a leading role in pre-Glorious theology. This is well presented by Christopher of Stavropol in “Partakers of Divine Nature” In Eastern Orthodox Theology, A Contemporary Reader, ed. Daniel B. Clendenin (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 1995), 183-192.

Orthodox teaching, 20.

Ibid., 38.

This definition is not true for all Protestants. There are some evangelical groups that agree with this statement to some extent. Similar ideas can be found in those Protestant circles where the Lordship of Christ is not accepted in salvation. Zane Hodges believes that the essence of saving faith is limited only by the mental acceptance of the fact of Christ's substitutionary sacrifice. In no case can this be associated with human works, otherwise salvation will be made somewhat dependent on works, and not be entirely a gift of grace. Zane Hodges, Absolutely Free! (Dallas: Redencion Viva, 1989).

This is stated in many texts of Holy Scripture. One of these is Isa. 6:1-7.

The most important sources of Orthodox doctrine are the Holy Scriptures and Holy Tradition. Holy Scripture is the Bible (the books of the New and Old Testaments - which contain a description of the revelation of God). The Bible in Orthodoxy is understood only in the context of tradition, i.e. the works of the Holy Fathers, in the texts of divine services, dogmatic definitions and decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, rules or canons of the Church. All this together is called Tradition and explains how it should be Orthodox person understand all the fundamentals of faith. The entire spiritual life of Orthodoxy rests on Tradition.

The main content of Orthodoxy is faith in God the Trinity - the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Church teaches that God is one in Essence, but threefold in persons: God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, and all three Persons of the one God are equal in their Divine nature and reside in indivisible unity, so that no action of God is happens without the joint participation of the Three Persons of the Divine Trinity. God is the Creator of the entire existing world, visible and invisible (i.e., the physical world and the spiritual world). God created the world freely, not needing creation, but out of His Love. According to Orthodox teaching, everything created was created perfect and sinless, and sin and evil appeared in the world only after the supreme angel Lucifer (Latin - Light-Bearer), possessing free will, imagined himself equal to God and, becoming proud, opposed himself to the Creator. Thus, Lucifer himself fell away from God and took some of the angels with him. Thus, evil in the Orthodox understanding is not something existing in itself, but is a distortion of the world created by God. Evil is the absence of good, a distortion of truth. The first man Adam, together with his wife Eve, were also sinless and holy from creation, but Satan deceived Eve, and through her her husband Adam, into disobedience to God, which led to the fall of the first people and their loss of holiness, and as a consequence, to no longer able to be in close proximity to God. The atonement of this original sin was accomplished through the incarnation of God the Son from the Ever-Virgin Mary, who, being a Virgin, through the action of the Holy Spirit, conceived in her womb a son, who was given the name Jesus by birth. This is how the great mystery of the Incarnation took place. By His earthly life and suffering on the cross, Jesus Christ redeemed man from the power of sin weighing on him, and elevated the previously fallen nature of the human race above angelic dignity.

The Orthodox profess faith “in the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.” The Church, in the Orthodox understanding, is a divine-human organism headed by the Lord Jesus Christ, revealed in the visible world as an established society of people from God, united by the Holy Spirit, the Orthodox Faith, the Law of God, the hierarchy and the Sacraments. The founding day of the Church is the day of Pentecost - the fiftieth day after the resurrection of Jesus Christ, when the Holy Spirit descended on the apostles. Composing one spiritual body, having one Head - Christ and animated by one Holy Spirit, the Church is called United. The separate existence of local Orthodox churches in different countries, for example, Constantinople, Antioch, Jerusalem, Russia, etc., does not violate the unity of the Church of Christ, since they are all parts of the One Church. This unity is manifested in the common confession by all Orthodox Christians of the dogmatic foundations of the Orthodox Faith, in the common Sacraments of the Church, in the unity of the episcopate, in brotherly love and communication.

The Orthodox Church has a hierarchy. In the sacrament of priesthood, or ordination, a person is given grace to perform the sacraments and serve God. The highest and most important rank is the rank of bishop. The bishop represents the entirety of the Church, he heads a large church community in a certain territory (diocese), and spiritually leads the believers of his diocese. It is the bishop who performs the sacrament of the priesthood, that is, ordains clergy, while the bishop is ordained by the council of bishops. In the person of bishops, the Church preserves apostolic succession - a series of ordinations that continuously goes back to the apostles who received grace from Jesus Christ Himself. All bishops are equal in the grace given to them, but according to the degree of seniority, archbishops and metropolitans are also distinguished. The patriarch is a bishop appointed as the head of a large local church. Presbyters, or priests, the next rank of the hierarchy, perform all sacraments (except ordination) with the blessing of their bishop. Deacons do not perform divine services themselves, but assist the bishop or priest. The clergy is divided into white and black. White clergy - priests and deacons who have their own families. Black - monastics, that is, those who have taken special vows of service to God, including a vow of celibacy. Monks may not take holy orders, or they may be ordained to the rank of deacon (hierodeacon) or priest (hieromonk). The abbots of monasteries bear the rank of abbot or archimandrite. Bishops are supplied only from monasticism.

However, this church hierarchy does not imply that the highest church leadership is free from deserved criticism from all other members of the Orthodox Church. Any Orthodox Christian must absorb the spirit of Orthodox tradition. Loyalty to God is, first of all, fidelity to Tradition, fidelity to the patristic norms of spiritual life and faith. Therefore, any person who deviates from the Orthodox Faith, regardless of what place in the hierarchy he occupies, can and should be criticized by any other member of the Church. We see that this is an orientation towards fundamental internal spiritual freedom for members of the Orthodox Church. In the history of Orthodoxy there are many examples of how even the highest leadership of the Church, metropolitans and patriarchs, were subjected to the strictest criticism from other members of the Church in cases where they deviated into heresy.

The grace-filled succession of the priesthood is, as it were, visible evidence of the succession of spiritual life that we find in the Church. The continuity of spiritual life is spoken of even in the epistles of the apostles. So, for example, the Apostle John the Theologian says in his epistles that he can tell his addressees a lot, but he does not want to write about it on paper, but wants to speak word of mouth. This continuity - the continuity of spiritual life - is observed to this day. It is expressed in the so-called eldership, when spiritual people who can occupy any place in the church hierarchy (they can be bishops, simple monks, and even laymen), by the special grace of God, are leaders of spiritual life for other people, mentors. But, in turn, they themselves were taught by other confessors. And this line of succession stretches continuously from apostolic times, since every confessor, every elder has such a succession: each was taught the basics of spiritual life from another elder, another confessor.

Orthodox Tradition is expressed in such sources as Holy Scripture, interpretation of Holy Scripture compiled by the Holy Fathers, theological writings of the Holy Fathers (their dogmatic works), dogmatic definitions and acts of the Holy Ecumenical and Local Councils of the Orthodox Church, liturgical texts, iconography, spiritual continuity expressed in the works of ascetic writers, their instructions on spiritual life. The tradition of the Church is available to every person who can study what the Orthodox Church teaches, what truths it preaches, and, through free choice, decide how acceptable the Orthodox faith is for him.

The most important principles of Orthodoxy are openness to all of the Orthodox Faith and freedom of the human person. Orthodoxy teaches that man is initially free, and the meaning of man’s entire spiritual life is for man to gain this true freedom, freedom from passions, freedom from sins by which man is enslaved. To achieve this freedom, according to Orthodox teaching, is difficult; this can only be accomplished by a great feat. But at the same time, salvation is possible only as a free act of the person himself. The Holy Fathers of the Church teach that for salvation a person needs two things: firstly, this is the action of God’s grace, secondly, this is the free will of man, his own work. Thus, the Orthodox Church insists on the fundamentally free acceptance by man of the truths of the Gospel. The Orthodox Church teaches that freedom is the most important quality in a person’s personality. Man is, first of all, a person, and personality, according to the teaching of the Holy Fathers, is a great mystery, for it is the image of God within man himself. And no one can encroach on this God given to a person freedom. It is in human freedom that lies the possibility of salvation, for salvation is the improvement of man to such an extent that he becomes like God, freely accepts and chooses life according to God’s commandments. This is precisely what the salvation of man consists of, his union with God, the subordination of his will to the will of God. We find completely different teachings in other Christian denominations, where the legal understanding of salvation dominates. According to this understanding, a person’s salvation depends on whether he is able to appease the strict judge—God—with his good deeds, faith and repentance.

The Orthodox Church teaches that there are two ways to save a person. One path is the path of solitude, renunciation from the world, the monastic path. This is the path of a person’s intense struggle with sins, with vices, subordinating his will entirely and completely to the will of God. This is the path of asceticism and special service to God, the Church and neighbors. The other path is the path of service in the world. This is the way of family life. The family is considered by the Orthodox Church as one of the most important institutions of social life and at the same time as a path for human salvation. A family is called in church language a small church or a home church. It is with the family that a person’s entry into the greater Church begins, his path to salvation. It is in the family that the basic norms of human social behavior are learned with the understanding that each member of society and each family member bears special obedience. Thus, the husband is the head of the family, and the wife is her husband’s assistant. The husband must devote all his worries and all his strength to his wife and his family. The Christian family is built on love, on the self-denial of a person, on his sacrifice in relation to other members of his family. This is the love of the elders towards the younger, and the younger towards the elders.

The same principles underlie Christian Orthodox statehood. The Orthodox Church pays great attention to issues of state life. Once upon a time, Christianity began under conditions of persecution of the Christian Church by the Roman Empire. But even at that time, the Apostle Paul commands Christians to pray for power and to honor the king not only for the sake of fear, but also for the sake of conscience, knowing that power is an institution of God. Any power is an image of God's order on Earth, as opposed to disorder, as opposed to the kingdom of human arbitrariness. Even godless power is like that. The ideal is the Orthodox Kingdom - an autocratic monarchy. Many works of the Holy Fathers and the Orthodox Tradition contain the idea that the Orthodox Kingdom is an image of the Kingdom of Heaven. The king is the first prayer book for the entire people. The king is entrusted with power from God in order to monitor, first of all, the moral and spiritual state of his people, not allowing evil and sin to spread unhindered among the people, and taking care of the standard of living and well-being of his people.

Defense of the Fatherland, defense of the Motherland is one of the greatest ministries of a Christian. The Orthodox Church teaches that any war is evil because it is associated with hatred, strife, violence and even murder, which is a terrible mortal sin. However, war in defense of one's Fatherland is blessed by the Church and military service is revered as the highest service. The Orthodox Church glorifies many holy warriors. These are ancient warriors, primarily early Christian martyrs, and many warriors of Holy Rus', such as the holy prince Alexander Nevsky. The service of a warrior is understood as the fulfillment of Christ’s commandment: “There is no greater love than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”

National Russian culture is the culture of people primarily associated with the Orthodox Church. The Gospel Commandments, which the preaching of the Orthodox Church brought into human life, formed the basis of all life, the entire way of life of the Russian people, which was recorded in all the features of traditional national Russian culture: songs, dances, rituals, morals. Orthodoxy is closely connected with national culture.

The goal of Orthodox life is union with God. According to the Orthodox Faith, this is accomplished in prayer and in church sacraments. In the sacraments, a person can be united with God in the most intimate way. Of all the sacraments, the most important is the sacrament of the Eucharist or communion, the sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, in which a person joins the Divine itself. The sacrament of baptism and confirmation is a sacrament through which a person enters the Church, becomes part of the Body of Christ, gets rid of sin and gets the opportunity to start a new life. The sacrament of marriage is a sacrament in which a person is united with another person in order to remain one union, to live as one whole, one family. In the sacrament of consecration of oil or unction for a person, forgiveness of all his sins, including forgotten ones, is requested, and a request for the cure of a person from illnesses. The sacrament of repentance is the most important in the spiritual life of the Orthodox Church. In this sacrament, a person is truly forgiven for the sin he has committed, subject to sincere repentance of this sin and confession of this sin in the sacrament of confession. The sacrament of confession is also one of the most important sacraments, because it is through frequent confession of one’s sins that a person receives a grace-filled opportunity, grace-filled strength and support to get rid of, cleanse himself from sin and learn not to commit it in the future. The sacrament of the priesthood is a sacrament in which a person is taught the grace of the Holy Spirit for performing the sacraments, for performing divine services, that grace that was once taught by Christ the Savior himself to his apostles.

In prayer, a person combines with God himself, turning to him. Prayer can be general and home. In home prayer, a person faces God alone and opens his heart to Him. And church prayer is a common prayer in which all members of the Church participate, not only those who are visibly and visibly present at the divine service, but also those who are invisibly present, including saints and angels who intercede and pray with us , and the head of the Church of Jesus Christ himself. The Church teaches that prayer should be carried out in sobriety, so that it is alien to any spiritual exaltation, and the Church warns a person against delusion - a state of deceptive spirituality, when a person, believing that he has reached some special spiritual heights, thinking of communicating with angels, with saints and with God himself, but in fact he pleases his own pride, his own selfishness. This is how the Church warns a person against temptations - dangerous breakdowns for the human psyche.