"Old Testament Trinity": description of the icon. About different icons of the Holy Trinity

Twice in the entire history of mankind the Trinity was revealed to the bodily human gaze - the first time to Saint Abraham at the Oak of Mamre, signifying the great mercy of God towards the human race; the second time - on Russian soil to the holy venerable monk. What this appearance meant to the New Testament saint - we will not dare to answer. Let us only strive to honor this land, that monastery that was erected in the north of the Russian land at the behest of God the Trinity and the “New Testament Abraham” himself - our venerable father and wonderworker Alexander.

The Monk Alexander is one of the few Russian saints who was canonized shortly after his righteous death - namely, 14 years later. His disciples and many of his admirers were still alive, so the Life of St. Alexander was written, as they say, “hot on the heels” and is particularly authentic; it contains no “pious schemes,” it reflects the unique face of the holiness of “all Russia, the wonderworker Alexander.”

Brief life of the Monk Alexander of Svir, the wonderworker.

Compiled by monk Athanasius. 1905 July 12 days. Alexander-Svirsky Monastery, Olonets province.

Dogma of Trinity- the main dogma of Christianity. God is one, one in essence, but three in persons.

(The concept “ face", or hypostasis, (not face) is close to the concepts of “personality”, “consciousness”, personality).

The first Person is God the Father, the second Person is God the Son, the third Person is God the Holy Spirit.

These are not three Gods, but one God in three Persons, the Trinity Consubstantial and Indivisible.

St. Gregory the Theologian teaches:

“We worship the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, dividing the personal attributes and uniting the Godhead.”

All three Persons have the same Divine dignity, there is neither elder nor younger between them; Just as God the Father is true God, so God the Son is true God, so the Holy Spirit is true God. Each Person carries within Himself all the properties of the Divine. Since God is one in His being, then all the properties of God - His eternity, omnipotence, omnipresence and others - belong equally to all three Persons of the Holy Trinity. In other words, the Son of God and the Holy Spirit are eternal and omnipotent, like God the Father.

They differ only in that God the Father is not born from anyone and does not come from anyone; The Son of God is born from God the Father - eternally (timeless, beginningless, infinite), and the Holy Spirit comes from God the Father.

The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are eternally with each other in continuous love and constitute one Being. God is the most perfect Love. God is love in Himself, because the existence of the One God is the existence of the Divine Hypostases, existing among themselves in the “eternal movement of love” (St. Maximus the Confessor).

1. Dogma of the Holy Trinity

God is one in Essence and threefold in Persons. The Dogma of the Trinity is the main dogma of Christianity. A number of great dogmas of the Church and, above all, the dogma of our redemption are directly based on it. Due to its special importance, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity constitutes the content of all the symbols of faith that have been and are used in the Orthodox Church, as well as all private confessions of faith written on various occasions by the pastors of the Church.

Being the most important of all Christian dogmas, the dogma of the Holy Trinity is also the most difficult for limited human thought to assimilate. This is why the struggle about no other Christian truth was as intense in the history of the ancient Church as about this dogma and the truths directly related to it.

The dogma of the Holy Trinity contains two basic truths:

A. God is one in Essence, but threefold in Persons, or in other words: God is triune, trinitarian, Trinity Consubstantial.

B. Hypostases have personal or hypostatic properties: The father is not born. The Son is born from the Father. The Holy Spirit comes from the Father.

2. About the Unity of God - the Holy Trinity

Rev. John of Damascus:

“Therefore, we believe in one God, one beginning, beginningless, uncreated, unborn, incorruptible, equally immortal, eternal, infinite, indescribable, limitless, omnipotent, simple, uncomplicated, incorporeal, alien flow, impassive, unchangeable and immutable, invisible, - the source of goodness and truth, mental and unapproachable light, - in a power that is indefinable by any measure and can only be measured by one’s own will, - for everything that pleases can be done - the creator of all creatures, visible and invisible, all-embracing and preserving, providing for everything, all-powerful , over all, ruling and reigning with an endless and immortal kingdom, having no rival, filling everything, not encompassed by anything, but all-encompassing, containing and exceeding everything, which penetrates all essences, remaining pure itself, is outside the limits of everything and is excluded from the range of all beings as the most essential and above all existing, pre-divine, most good, full, which establishes all principalities and ranks, and itself is above all superiority and rank, above essence, life, word and understanding, which is light itself, goodness itself, life itself, essence itself , since it does not have from another either existence or anything that exists, but itself is the source of being for everything that exists, life - for everything living, reason - for everything rational, the cause of all goods for all beings - in a power that knows everything before the existence of everything, one essence, one Divinity, one force, one will, one action, one principle, one power, one dominion, one kingdom, in three perfect hypostases, cognizable and worshiped by one worship, believed and revered by every verbal creature (in hypostases), inseparably united and inseparably divided, which is incomprehensible - into the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, in whose name we were baptized, for this is how the Lord commanded the Apostles to baptize, saying: “baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit" (Matt. 28, 19).

...And that there is one God, and not many, this is beyond doubt for those who believe in the Divine Scripture. For the Lord at the beginning of His law says: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, so that you will have no gods other than Me” (Ex. 20:2); and again: “Hear, O Israel: The Lord your God, the Lord is one” (Deut. 6:4); and in Isaiah the prophet: “I am God first and I am hereafter, besides Me there is no God” (Is. 41:4) - “Before Me there was no other God, and after Me there will not be... and is there no God” (Isaiah .43, 10–11). And the Lord in the Holy Gospels says this to the Father: “Behold, this is the eternal life, that they may know Thee the one true God” (John 17:3).

With those who do not believe the Divine Scripture, we will reason this way: God is perfect and has no shortcomings in goodness, wisdom, and power - beginningless, infinite, everlasting, unlimited, and, in a word, perfect in everything. So, if we admit many gods, then it will be necessary to recognize the difference between these many. For if there is no difference between them, then there is one, and not many; if there is a difference between them, then where is the perfection? If perfection is lacking either in goodness, or in power, or in wisdom, or in time, or in place, then God will no longer exist. Identity in everything indicates one God rather than many.

Moreover, if there were many gods, how would their indescribability be preserved? For where there was one, there would not be another.

How could the world be ruled by many and not be destroyed and upset when war broke out between the rulers? Because difference introduces confrontation. If someone says that each of them controls his own part, then what introduced such an order and made a division between them? This would actually be God. So, there is one God, perfect, indescribable, Creator of everything, Sustainer and Ruler, above and before all perfection.”
(An accurate statement of the Orthodox faith)

Protopresbyter Michael Pomazansky (Orthodox dogmatic theology):

“I believe in one God” are the first words of the Creed. God owns all the fullness of the most perfect being. The idea of completeness, perfection, infinity, all-inclusiveness in God does not allow us to think about Him other than as the One, i.e. unique and consubstantial in Himself. This requirement of our consciousness was expressed by one of the ancient church writers with the words: “if there is not one God, then there is no God” (Tertullian), in other words, a deity limited by another being loses its divine dignity.

All New Testament Holy Scripture is filled with the teaching of one God. “Our Father, who art in heaven,” we pray in the words of the Lord’s Prayer. “There is no other God but One,” expresses the fundamental truth of the faith of the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 8:4).”

3. About the Trinity of Persons in God with the unity of God in Essence.

“The Christian truth of the unity of God is deepened by the truth of Trinitarian unity.

We worship the Most Holy Trinity with one indivisible worship. Among the Fathers of the Church and in divine services, the Trinity is often called “a unit in the Trinity, a Trinitarian unit.” In most cases, prayers addressed to the worship of one Person of the Holy Trinity end with a doxology to all three Persons (for example, in the prayer to the Lord Jesus Christ: “For thou art glorified with Thy Beginning Father and with the Most Holy Spirit forever, Amen”).

The Church, turning prayerfully to the Most Holy Trinity, calls on Her in the singular, and not in the plural, for example: “For You (and not You) are praised by all the powers of heaven, and to You (and not to You) we send glory, to the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit , now and ever and unto ages of ages, Amen."

The Christian Church, aware of the mystery of this dogma, sees in it a great revelation that elevates the Christian faith immeasurably above any confession of simple monotheism, which is also found in other non-Christian religions.

…Three Divine Persons, having pre-eternal and pre-eternal existence, were revealed to the world with the coming and incarnation of the Son of God, being “one Power, one Being, one Divinity” (stichera on the day of Pentecost).

Since God, by His very Being, is all consciousness and thought and self-awareness, then each of these threefold eternal manifestations of Himself as the One God has self-awareness, and therefore each is a Person, and Persons are not simply forms or individual phenomena, or properties, or actions; Three Persons are contained in the very Unity of God's Being. Thus, when in Christian teaching we talk about the Trinity of God, we are talking about the mysterious, hidden inner life of God in the depths of the Divine, revealed - slightly revealed to the world in time, in the New Testament, by the sending from the Father into the world of the Son of God and the action of the miracle-working, life-giving, saving power of the Comforter - the Holy Spirit."

“The Most Holy Trinity is the most perfect unity of three Persons in one Being, because it is the most perfect equality.”

“God is Spirit, a simple Being. How does the spirit manifest itself? In thought, word and deed. Therefore, God, as a simple Being, does not consist of a series or of many thoughts, or of many words or creations, but He is all in one simple thought - God the Trinity, or in one simple word - Trinity, or in three Persons united together . But He is all and in all that exists, passes through everything, fills everything with Himself. For example, you read a prayer, and He is all in every word, like Holy Fire, penetrating every word: - everyone can experience this for themselves if they pray sincerely, diligently, with faith and love.”

4. Testimony of the Old Testament about the Holy Trinity

The truth of the trinity of God is only hiddenly expressed in the Old Testament, only slightly revealed. The Old Testament testimonies about the Trinity are revealed and clarified in the light of the Christian faith, just as the Apostle writes about the Jews: “... to this day, when they read Moses, the veil is on their hearts, but when they turn to the Lord, this veil is taken away... it is taken away by Christ"(2 Cor. 3, 14-16).

The main Old Testament passages are as follows:

Life 1, 1, etc.: the name "Elohim" in the Hebrew text, having a grammatical plural form.

Life 1, 26: " And God said: Let us make man in our image and likeness"The plural indicates that God is not one Person.

Life 3, 22: " And the Lord God said: Behold, Adam has become like one of Us, knowing good and evil"(words of God before the expulsion of our first parents from paradise).

Life 11, 6-7: before the confusion of tongues during pandemonium - " One people and one language... Let's go down and mix their language there".

Life 18, 1-3: about Abraham - " And the Lord appeared to him at the oak grove of Mavre... he lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men stood opposite him... and bowed down to the ground and said:... if I have found favor in your sight, do not pass by your servant" - "You see, instructs Blessed Augustine, Abraham meets Three, and worships the One... Having seen the Three, he understood the mystery of the Trinity, and having worshiped as the One, he confessed the One God in Three Persons."

In addition, the Church Fathers see an indirect indication of the Trinity in the following places:

Number 6, 24-26: The priestly blessing indicated by God through Moses, in threefold form: " May the Lord bless you... may the Lord look upon you with His bright face... may the Lord turn His face upon you…".

Is. 6.3: The doxology of the seraphim standing around the Throne of God, in threefold form: "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts".

Ps. 32, 6 : "".

Finally, we can point out places in the Old Testament Revelation that speak separately about the Son of God and the Holy Spirit.

About Son:

Ps. 2, 7 : " You are My Son; Today I have given birth to You".

Ps. 109, 3: "... From the womb before the morning star your birth was like dew".

About Spirit:

Ps. 142, 10 : " Let Your good Spirit lead me to the land of righteousness."

Is. 48, 16: "… The Lord and His Spirit have sent me".

And other similar places.

5. Testimonies of the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament about the Holy Trinity

The Trinity of Persons in God is revealed in the New Testament in the coming of the Son of God and in the sending of the Holy Spirit. The message to earth from the Father God the Word and the Holy Spirit constitutes the content of all New Testament writings. Of course, the appearance of the Triune God to the world is given here not in a dogmatic formula, but in a narrative about the appearances and deeds of the Persons of the Holy Trinity.

The appearance of God in the Trinity took place at the baptism of the Lord Jesus Christ, which is why baptism itself is called the Epiphany. The Son of God, having become man, received water baptism; The Father testified about Him; The Holy Spirit, by appearing in the form of a dove, confirmed the truth of the voice of God, as expressed in the troparion of the feast of the Baptism of the Lord:

“In the Jordan I was baptized to Thee, O Lord, the Trinitarian adoration appeared, for the voice of the Parents testified to Thee, naming Thy beloved Son, and the Spirit, in the form of a dove, announced the affirmation of Thy words.”

In the New Testament Scriptures there are sayings about the Triune God in the most concise, but at the same time accurate form, expressing the truth of the Trinity.

These sayings are as follows:

Matt. 28, 19: " Go therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit". - St. Ambrose notes: "The Lord said: in the name, and not in names, because there is one God; not many names: because there are not two Gods and not three Gods."

2 Cor. 13, 13 : " The grace of our Lord (our) Jesus Christ, and the love of God (the Father), and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen".

1 John 5, 7: " For three bear witness in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one"(this verse is not found in surviving ancient Greek manuscripts, but only in Latin, Western manuscripts).

In addition, St. explains the meaning of the Trinity. Athanasius the Great follows the text of the letter to Eph. 4, 6 : " One God and Father of all, who is above all ( God the Father) and through all (God the Son) and in us all (God the Holy Spirit)."

6. Confession of the dogma of the Holy Trinity in the ancient Church

The truth about the Holy Trinity has been confessed by the Church of Christ from the beginning in all its fullness and integrity. Clearly speaks, for example, about the universality of faith in the Holy Trinity St. Irenaeus of Lyon, student of St. Polycarp of Smyrna, instructed by the Apostle John the Theologian himself:

“Although the Church is scattered throughout the entire universe to the ends of the earth, from the apostles and their disciples she received faith in one God, the Father Almighty... and in one Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who became incarnate for our salvation, and in the Holy Spirit, who through the prophets proclaimed the economy of our salvation ... Having accepted such a preaching and such a faith, the Church, as we said, although scattered throughout the whole world, carefully preserves it, as if living in one house; about this he teaches and conveys, as if having one mouth. Although there are numerous dialects in the world, the power of Tradition is the same... And of the primates of the Churches, neither the one who is strong in words nor the one who will weaken the Tradition will say anything contrary to this and will not weaken the Tradition. unskilled in words."

The Holy Fathers, defending the Catholic truth of the Holy Trinity from heretics, not only cited the evidence of the Holy Scriptures, as well as rational and philosophical grounds for refuting heretical wisdom, but they themselves relied on the testimony of the early Christians. They pointed to examples of martyrs and confessors who were not afraid to declare their faith in the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit before the tormentors; they referred to the Scriptures of the apostolic and ancient Christian writers in general and to liturgical formulas.

So, St. Basil the Great gives a small doxology:

“Glory to the Father through the Son in the Holy Spirit,” and another: “To Him (Christ) with the Father and the Holy Spirit be honor and glory forever and ever,” and says that this doxology has been used in churches since the very time the Gospel was proclaimed . Indicates St. Basil also gives thanksgiving, or evensong, calling it an “ancient” song, passed down “from the fathers,” and quotes from it the words: “we praise the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit of God,” to show the faith of ancient Christians in the equality of the Holy Spirit with the Father and Son.

St. Basil the Great also writes, interpreting the Book of Genesis:

“Let us make man in our image and likeness” (Genesis 1:26)….

You learned that there are two persons: the Speaker and the One to whom the word is addressed. Why did He not say: “I will create,” but “Let us create man”? So that you know the highest power; so that, recognizing the Father, you do not reject the Son; that you may know that the Father created through the Son, and the Son created at the command of the Father; so that you glorify the Father in the Son and the Son in the Holy Spirit. Thus, you were born as a common creation to become a common worshiper of One and Another, not making divisions in worship, but treating the Divine as one. Pay attention to the external course of history and to the deep internal meaning of Theology. “And God created man. - Let's create it! And it is not said: “And they created,” so that you would not have reason to fall into polytheism. If the person were multiple in composition, then people would have reason to make for themselves many gods. Now the expression “let us create” is used so that you may know the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.

“God created man” so that you recognize (understand) the unity of the Divine, not the unity of the Hypostases, but the unity in power, so that you glorify the one God, without making distinctions in worship and without falling into polytheism. After all, it is not said “the gods created man,” but “God created.” A special Hypostasis of the Father, a special Hypostasis of the Son, a special Hypostasis of the Holy Spirit. Why not three Gods? Because there is only one Divinity. Whatever Divinity I contemplate in the Father is the same in the Son, and whatever Divinity is in the Holy Spirit is the same in the Son. Therefore, the image (μορφη) is one in both, and the power emanating from the Father remains the same in the Son. Because of this, our worship and also our glorification are the same. The foreshadowing of our creation is true Theology.”

Prot. Mikhail Pomazansky:

“There is also much evidence from the ancient fathers and teachers of the Church that from the first days of its existence the Church performed baptism in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, as three Divine Persons, and denounced heretics who attempted to perform baptism either in the name of the Father alone, considering the Son and the Holy Spirit by lower powers, or in the name of the Father and the Son and even the Son alone, humiliating the Holy Spirit before them (testimonies of Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Irenaeus, Cyprian, Athanasius, Hilary, Basil the Great and others).

However, the Church experienced great turmoil and endured enormous struggles in defending this dogma. The struggle was aimed mainly at two points: first, to establish the truth of the consubstantiality and equality of the Son of God with God the Father; then - to confirm the unity of the Holy Spirit with God the Father and the Son of God.

The dogmatic task of the Church in its ancient period was to find such exact words for dogma that would best protect the dogma of the Holy Trinity from misinterpretation by heretics.”

7. About the personal properties of Divine Persons

The personal, or hypostatic, properties of the Most Holy Trinity are designated as follows: Father - unborn; The Son is pre-eternally born; The Holy Spirit comes from the Father.

Rev. John of Damascus expresses the idea of the incomprehensibility of the mystery of the Holy Trinity:

“Although we have been taught that there is a difference between birth and procession, we do not know what the difference is and what the birth of the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father are.”

Prot. Mikhail Pomazansky:

“All kinds of dialectical considerations about what birth consists of and what procession consists of are not capable of revealing the inner secret of Divine life. Arbitrary speculation can even lead to distortion of Christian teaching. The expressions themselves: about the Son - “born of the Father” and about the Spirit - “proceeds from the Father” - represent an accurate rendering of the words of Holy Scripture. It is said about the Son: “only begotten” (John 1:14; 3:16, etc.); Also - " From the womb, before the right hand, Thy birth was like dew."(Ps. 109:3); " You are My Son; Today I have given birth to You"(Ps. 2:7; the words of the psalm are given in Hebrews 1:5 and 5:5). The dogma of the procession of the Holy Spirit rests on the following direct and precise saying of the Savior: " When the Comforter comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me."(John 15:26). Based on the above sayings, the Son is usually spoken of in the past grammatical tense - “born”, and the Spirit is spoken of in the grammatical present tense - “comes forth”. However, different grammatical forms of tense do not indicate any relationship to time: both birth and procession are “eternal,” “timeless.” In theological terminology, the present tense form is sometimes used: “eternally born” from the Father; however, the most common expression of the Holy Fathers is “born.”

The dogma of the birth of the Son from the Father and the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father points to the mysterious internal relationships of Persons in God, to the life of God in Himself. These pre-eternal, pre-eternal, timeless relationships must be clearly distinguished from the manifestations of the Holy Trinity in the created world, distinguished from providential actions and appearances of God in the world, as they were expressed in the events of the creation of the world, the coming of the Son of God to earth, His incarnation and the sending of the Holy Spirit. These providential phenomena and actions took place in time. In historical times, the Son of God was born from the Virgin Mary through the descent of the Holy Spirit on Her: " The Holy Spirit will come upon You, and the power of the Most High will overshadow You; therefore the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God"(Luke 1:35). In historical time, the Holy Spirit descended on Jesus during His baptism from John. In historical time, the Holy Spirit was sent down by the Son from the Father, appearing in the form of tongues of fire. The Son comes to earth through the Holy Spirit; the Spirit is sent down Son, according to the promise: "" (John 15:26).

To the question about the eternal birth of the Son and the procession of the Spirit: “When is this birth and procession?” St. Gregory the Theologian answers: “before the very when. You hear about birth: do not try to know what the manner of birth is. You hear that the Spirit comes from the Father: do not try to know how it comes.”

Although the meaning of the expressions “birth” and “origin” is incomprehensible to us, this does not diminish the importance of these concepts in the Christian teaching about God. They point to the perfect Divinity of the Second and Third Persons. The existence of the Son and the Spirit rests inseparably in the very being of God the Father; hence the expression about the Son: " from the womb... gave birth to you"(Ps. 109:3), from the womb - from the being. Through the words “begotten” and “proceeds” the existence of the Son and the Spirit is opposed to the existence of every creature, everything that is created, which is caused by the will of God from non-existence. Genesis from the essence of God can to be only Divine and Eternal.

What is born is always of the same essence as that which gives birth, and what is created and created is of another essence, lower, and is external in relation to the creator.”

Rev. John of Damascus:

“(We believe) in one Father, the beginning of all things and the cause, not begotten of any one, who alone has no cause and is not begotten, the Creator of all things, but the Father by nature of His one Only Begotten Son, Lord and God and Savior our Jesus Christ and the maker of the All-Holy Spirit. And in one Only Son of God, our Lord, Jesus Christ, begotten of the Father before all ages, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, uncreated, consubstantial with the Father, through whom all things came into being. Speaking about Him: before all ages, we show that His birth is timeless and without beginning; for it was not out of non-existence that the Son of God was brought into being, the radiance of glory and the image of the Hypostasis of the Father (Heb. 1:3), living wisdom and power, the hypostatic Word, the essential, perfect and living image of the invisible God; but He was ever with the Father and in the Father, from Whom He was born eternally and without beginning. For the Father never existed unless the Son existed, but together the Father, together also the Son, begotten of Him. For the Father without the Son would not be called Father; if he had ever existed without the Son, he would not have been the Father, and if later he began to have a Son, then he also became a Father after not being a Father before, and would have undergone a change in that , not being the Father, became Him, and such a thought is more terrible than any blasphemy, for it cannot be said of God that He does not have the natural power of birth, and the power of birth consists in the ability to give birth from oneself, that is, from one’s own essence, a being, similar to oneself by nature.

So, it would be impious to assert about the birth of the Son that it happened in time and that the existence of the Son began after the Father. For we confess the birth of the Son from the Father, that is, from His nature. And if we do not admit that the Son initially existed together with the Father, from Whom He was born, then we introduce a change in the hypostasis of the Father in that the Father, not being the Father, later became the Father. True, creation came into existence after, but not from the being of God; but by the will and power of God she was brought from non-existence into existence, and therefore no change occurred in the nature of God. For birth consists in the fact that from the essence of the one who gives birth, that which is born is produced, similar in essence; creation and creation consists in the fact that what is created and created comes from the outside, and not from the essence of the creator and creator, and is completely unlike in nature.

Therefore, in God, Who alone is impassive, unchangeable, immutable and always the same, both birth and creation are impassive. For, being by nature dispassionate and alien to flow, because He is simple and uncomplicated, He cannot be subject to suffering or flow, either in birth or in creation, and has no need for anyone’s assistance. But birth (in Him) is beginningless and eternal, since it is the action of His nature and comes from His being, otherwise the one who gives birth would have suffered a change, and there would have been God first and God subsequent, and multiplication would have occurred. Creation with God, as an action of will, is not co-eternal with God. For that which is brought from non-existence into being cannot be co-eternal with the Beginningless and always Existing. God and man create differently. Man does not bring anything from non-existence into existence, but what he does, he makes from pre-existing matter, not only having wished, but also having first thought through and imagined in his mind what he wants to do, then he acts with his hands, accepts labor, fatigue, and often does not achieve the goal when hard work does not work out the way you want; God, having only willed, brought everything out of non-existence into existence: in the same way, God and man do not give birth in the same way. God, being flightless and beginningless, and passionless, and free from flow, and incorporeal, and one only, and infinite, and gives birth flightless and without beginning, and passionless, and without flow, and without combination, and His incomprehensible birth has no beginning, no end. He gives birth without beginning, because He is unchangeable; - without expiration because it is dispassionate and incorporeal; - outside of combination because, again, he is incorporeal, and there is only one God, who has no need for anyone else; - infinitely and unceasingly because it is flightless, and timeless, and endless, and always the same, for what is without beginning is infinite, and what is infinite by grace is by no means without beginning, like, for example, the Angels.

So, the ever-present God gives birth to His Word, perfect without beginning and without end, so that God, who has a higher time and nature and being, does not give birth in time. Man, as it is obvious, gives birth in the opposite way, because he is subject to birth, and decay, and expiration, and reproduction, and is clothed with a body, and in human nature there is a male and female sex, and the husband has a need for the support of his wife. But may He be merciful who is above all and who surpasses all thought and understanding.”

8. Naming the Second Person with the Word

Orthodox dogmatic theology:

“The name of the Son of God, which is often found among the holy fathers and in liturgical texts, as the Word, or Logos, has its basis in the first chapter of the Gospel of John the Theologian.

The concept, or the name of the Word in its sublime meaning, is repeatedly found in the Old Testament books. These are the expressions in the Psalter: " Forever, O Lord, Your word is established in heaven"(Ps. 119, 89); " He sent His word and healed them"(Ps. 106:20 - verse talking about the exodus of the Jews from Egypt);" By the word of the Lord the heavens were created, and by the breath of his mouth all their host"(Ps. 32:6). The author of the Wisdom of Solomon writes: " Thy almighty Word came down from heaven from the royal thrones to the middle of the perilous earth, like a formidable warrior. It carried a sharp sword - Your unchangeable command, and, having become, filled everything with death, it touched the sky and walked on the earth"(Wis. 28, 15-16).

The Holy Fathers make an attempt, with the help of this divine name, to somewhat understand the mystery of the relationship of the Son to the Father. St. Dionysius of Alexandria (a student of Origen) explains this attitude as follows: “Our thought spews out a word from itself according to what was said by the prophet: “ A good word poured out from my heart"(Ps. 44:2). Thought and word are different from each other and occupy their own special and separate place: while the thought abides and moves in the heart, the word is on the tongue and in the mouth; however, they are inseparable and not for a minute are deprived of each other. Neither a thought exists without a word, nor a word without a thought... in it, having received being, a thought is, as it were, a hidden word, and the word is a revealed thought, passes into the word, and the word transfers the thought to the listeners. In this way, thought, through the medium of the word, takes root in the souls of those who listen, entering them together with the word. And thought, being from itself, is, as it were, the father of the word, and the word is, as it were, the son of thought; it is impossible before thought, but also not from where; or it came from the outside together with thought, and penetrated from it itself. So the Father, the greatest and all-encompassing Thought, has a Son - the Word, His first Interpreter and Messenger" ((quoted from St. Athanasius De sentent. Dionis., n. 15). )).

In the same way, the image of the relationship of word to thought is widely used by St. John of Kronstadt in his reflections on the Holy Trinity (“My life in Christ”). In the above quote from St. Dionysius of Alexandria's reference to the Psalter shows that the thoughts of the Church Fathers were based in the application of the name "Word" on the Holy Scriptures not only of the New Testament, but also of the Old Testament. Thus, there is no reason to assert that the name Logos-Word was borrowed by Christianity from philosophy, as some Western interpreters do.

Of course, the Fathers of the Church, like the Apostle John the Theologian himself, did not ignore the concept of Logos, as it was interpreted in Greek philosophy and by the Jewish philosopher, the Alexandrian Philo (the concept of Logos as a personal being mediating between God and the world, or as an impersonal divine force) and opposed their understanding of the Logos is the Christian teaching about the Word - the Only Begotten Son of God, consubstantial with the Father and equally divine with the Father and the Spirit.”

Rev. John of Damascus:

“So this one and only God is not without the Word. If He has the Word, then He must have a Word that is not hypostatic, having begun to be and having to pass away. For there was no time when God was without the Word. On the contrary, God always has His Word, which is born from Him and which is not like our word - non-hypostatic and spreading in the air, but is hypostatic, living, perfect, not outside of Him (God), but always abiding in Him. For where could He be outside of God? But since our nature is temporary and easily destructible; then our word is non-hypostatic. God, as ever-present and perfect, and the Word will also be perfect and hypostatic, Who always exists, lives and has everything that the Parent has. Our word, coming from the mind, is neither completely identical with the mind, nor completely different; for, being from the mind, it is something else in relation to it; but since it reveals the mind, it is not completely different from the mind, but being by nature one with it, it is distinguished from it as a special subject: so the Word of God, since it exists in itself, is distinguished from the one from whom it has hypostasis; since it manifests in itself the same thing that is in God; then by nature there is one with him. For just as perfection is seen in the Father in all respects, so the same is seen in the Word begotten of Him.”

St. rights John of Kronstadt:

“Have you learned to envision the Lord before you as an omnipresent Mind, as a living and active Word, as a life-giving Spirit? The Holy Scripture is the realm of the Mind, Word and Spirit - God of the Trinity: in it He manifests himself clearly: “the verbs that I spoke to you are spirit and life” (John 6:63), said the Lord; the writings of the holy fathers - here again is an expression of the Thought, Word and Spirit of the hypostases, with greater participation of the human spirit itself; the writings of ordinary secular people are a manifestation of the fallen human spirit, with its sinful attachments, habits, and passions. In the Word of God we see face to face God and ourselves, as we are. Recognize yourself in him, people, and always walk in the presence of God.”

St. Gregory Palamas:

“And since perfect and all-perfect Goodness is Mind, then what else could come from It, as from a Source, if not the Word? Moreover, It is not like our spoken word, for this word of ours is not only the action of the mind, but also the action of the body set in motion by the mind. It is not like our inner word, which seems to have an inherent disposition towards the images of sounds. It is also impossible to compare Him with our mental word, although it is silently carried out by completely incorporeal movements; however, it needs intervals and considerable periods of time in order, gradually proceeding from the mind, to become a perfect inference, being initially something imperfect.

Rather, this Word can be compared with the innate word or knowledge of our mind, which always coexists with the mind, due to which we should think that we were brought into being by Him who created us in His own image. This Knowledge is predominantly inherent in the Highest Mind of all-perfect and super-perfect Goodness, Which has nothing imperfect, for except for the fact that Knowledge comes from It, everything related to it is the same unchangeable Goodness as She Itself. That is why the Son is and is called by us the Highest Word, so that we know Him as Perfect in our own and perfect Hypostasis; after all, this Word is born from the Father and is in no way inferior to the Fatherly essence, but is completely identical with the Father, with the exception only of His being according to Hypostasis, which shows that the Word is divinely born from the Father.”

9. On the procession of the Holy Spirit

Orthodox dogmatic theology:

The ancient Orthodox teaching about the personal properties of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit was distorted in the Latin Church by the creation of the doctrine of the timeless, eternal procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son (Filioque). The expression that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son originates from Blessed Augustine, who, in the course of his theological reasoning, found it possible to express himself this way in some places of his writings, although in other places he confesses that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father. Having thus appeared in the West, it began to spread there around the seventh century; it was established there as mandatory in the ninth century. At the beginning of the 9th century, Pope Leo III - although he himself was personally inclined towards this teaching - forbade changing the text of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed in favor of this teaching, and for this purpose ordered the Creed to be inscribed in its ancient Orthodox reading (i.e. . without Filioque) on two metal boards: on one in Greek, and on the other in Latin, and exhibited in the Basilica of St. Peter with the inscription: “I, Leo, erected this out of love for the Orthodox faith and to protect it.” This was done by the pope after the Council of Aachen (which took place in the ninth century, presided over by Emperor Charlemagne) in response to the request of that council that the pope declare the Filioque a general church teaching.

Nevertheless, the newly created dogma continued to spread in the West, and when Latin missionaries came to the Bulgarians in the middle of the ninth century, Filioque was in their creed.

As relations between the papacy and the Orthodox East worsened, the Latin dogma became more and more strengthened in the West and was finally recognized there as a generally binding dogma. This teaching was inherited from the Roman Church by Protestantism.

The Latin dogma Filioque represents a significant and important deviation from Orthodox truth. He was subjected to detailed analysis and denunciation, especially by Patriarchs Photius and Michael Cerullarius, as well as Bishop Mark of Ephesus, a participant in the Council of Florence. Adam Zernikav (XVIII century), who converted from Roman Catholicism to Orthodoxy, in his essay “On the Procession of the Holy Spirit” cites about a thousand evidence from the works of the holy fathers of the Church in favor of the Orthodox teaching about the Holy Spirit.

In modern times, the Roman Church, for “missionary” purposes, obscures the difference (or rather, its significance) between the Orthodox teaching about the Holy Spirit and the Roman one; For this purpose, the popes left for the Uniates and for the “Eastern Rite” the ancient Orthodox text of the Creed, without the words “and from the Son.” Such a reception cannot be understood as a half-renunciation of Rome from its dogma; at best, this is only a covert view of Rome that the Orthodox East is backward in the sense of dogmatic development, and this backwardness should be treated leniently, and that dogma, expressed in the West in a developed form (explicit, according to the Roman theory of “development of dogmas”), hidden in Orthodox dogma in an as yet undiscovered state (implicite). But in Latin dogmatics, intended for internal use, we find a certain interpretation of the Orthodox dogma about the procession of the Holy Spirit as “heresy.” In the Latin dogmatics of Doctor of Theology A. Sanda, officially approved, we read: “The opponents (of this Roman teaching) are the schismatic Greeks, who teach that the Holy Spirit proceeds from one Father. Already in 808, Greek monks protested against the Latins introducing the word Filioque into Symbol... It is unknown who was the founder of this heresy" (Sinopsis Theologie Dogmaticae specialist. Autore D-re A. Sanda. Volum. I).

Meanwhile, the Latin dogma does not agree with either the Holy Scriptures or the Holy Church Tradition, and does not even agree with the most ancient tradition of the local Roman Church.

Roman theologians cite in his defense a number of passages from Holy Scripture, where the Holy Spirit is called “Christ”, where it is said that He is given by the Son of God: from here the conclusion is drawn that He also proceeds from the Son.

(The most important of these passages cited by Roman theologians: the words of the Savior to the disciples about the Holy Spirit the Comforter: " He will take from Mine and tell you"(John 16:14); words of the Apostle Paul: " God has sent the Spirit of His Son into your hearts"(Gal. 4:6); the same Apostle" If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he is not His"(Rom. 8, 9); Gospel of John: " He blew and said to them: Receive the Holy Spirit"(John 20, 22)).

Likewise, Roman theologians find passages in the works of the Holy Fathers of the Church where they often speak of the sending of the Holy Spirit “through the Son,” and sometimes even about “the procession through the Son.”

However, no reasoning can cover up the absolutely definite words of the Savior: “ Comforter whom I will send to you from the Father"(John 15:26) - and next to it - other words: " The Spirit of Truth Who Proceeds from the Father"(John 15:26). The Holy Fathers of the Church could not put anything else into the words “through the Son” other than what is contained in the Holy Scriptures.

In this case, Roman Catholic theologians confuse two dogmas: the dogma of the personal existence of the Hypostases and directly related to it, but special, the dogma of consubstantiality. That the Holy Spirit is consubstantial with the Father and the Son, that therefore He is the Spirit of the Father and the Son, is an indisputable Christian truth, for God is a Trinity, consubstantial and indivisible.

Blessed Theodoret clearly expresses this thought: “It is said about the Holy Spirit that He does not have existence from the Son or through the Son, but that He proceeds from the Father, and is peculiar to the Son, as being called consubstantial with Him” (Blessed Theodoret. On the Third Ecumenical Council) .

And in Orthodox worship we often hear words addressed to the Lord Jesus Christ: "By Your Holy Spirit enlighten us, instruct, preserve...” The expression “Spirit of the Father and the Son” is also Orthodox in itself. But these expressions refer to the dogma of consubstantiality, and it must be distinguished from another dogma, the dogma of birth and procession, which indicates, in the words of the holy fathers , the existential Cause of the Son and the Spirit. All Eastern Fathers recognize that the Father is monos - the only Cause of the Son and the Spirit. Therefore, when some Fathers of the Church use the expression “through the Son,” it is precisely with this expression that they protect the dogma of procession from the Father and inviolability. dogmatic formula “proceeds from the Father.” The Fathers speak of the Son “through” in order to protect the expression “from,” which refers only to the Father.

To this we should also add that the expression “through the Son” found in some holy fathers in most cases definitely refers to the manifestations of the Holy Spirit in the world, that is, to the providential actions of the Holy Trinity, and not to the life of God in Himself. When the Eastern Church first noticed the distortion of the dogma of the Holy Spirit in the West and began to reproach Western theologians for innovations, St. Maximus the Confessor (in the 7th century), wanting to protect the Westerners, justified them by saying that with the words “from the Son” they mean to indicate that the Holy Spirit “through the Son is given to creation, appears, is sent,” but not that the Holy Spirit has its being from Him. St. himself Maximus the Confessor strictly adhered to the teaching of the Eastern Church about the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father and wrote a special treatise on this dogma.

The providential sending of the Spirit by the Son of God is spoken of in the words: " I will send him to you from the Father"(John 15:26). So we pray: “Lord, who sent down Your Most Holy Spirit at the third hour to Your apostles, do not take that Good One away from us, but renew it in us who pray to You.”

By mixing the texts of Holy Scripture that speak of “procession” and “sending down,” Roman theologians transfer the concept of providential relationships into the very depths of the existential relationships of the Persons of the Holy Trinity.

By introducing a new dogma, the Roman Church, in addition to the dogmatic side, violated the decree of the Third and subsequent Councils (Fourth - Seventh Councils), which prohibited making any changes to the Nicene Creed after the Second Ecumenical Council gave it its final form. Thus, she also committed a sharp canonical offense.

When Roman theologians try to suggest that the whole difference between Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is that the first teaches about the procession “and from the Son,” and the second “through the Son,” then in such a statement lies at least a misunderstanding (although sometimes our church writers, following the Catholic ones, allow themselves to repeat this thought): for the expression “through the Son” does not constitute a dogma of the Orthodox Church at all, but is only an explanatory device of some holy fathers in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity; the very meaning of the teachings of the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church are essentially different.

10. Consistency, equal divinity and equal honor of the Persons of the Holy Trinity

The three Hypostases of the Holy Trinity have the same essence, each of the Hypostases has the fullness of divinity, boundless and immeasurable; the three Hypostases are equal in honor and equally worshiped.

As for the fullness of the divinity of the First Person of the Holy Trinity, there were no heretics who rejected or belittled it in the history of the Christian Church. However, we encounter deviations from the truly Christian teaching about God the Father. Thus, in ancient times, under the influence of the Gnostics, it invaded - and in later times, under the influence of the so-called idealistic philosophy of the first half of the 19th century (mainly Schelling) arose again - the doctrine of God as the Absolute, God, detached from everything limited, finite (the word itself “absolute” means “detached”) and therefore has no direct connection with the world, which needs a Mediator; Thus, the concept of the Absolute came closer to the name of God the Father and the concept of the Mediator to the name of the Son of God. This idea is completely inconsistent with the Christian understanding, with the teaching of the word of God. The Word of God teaches us that God is close to the world, that “God is Love” (1 John 4:8; 4:16), that God - God the Father - so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, so that everyone who believes in Him had eternal life; To God the Father, inseparably with the Son and the Spirit, belongs the creation of the world and the constant providence for the world. If in the word of God the Son is called the Mediator, it is because the Son of God took on human nature, became the God-man and united the Divinity with humanity, united the earthly with the heavenly, but not at all because the Son is the supposedly necessary connecting principle between the infinitely distant from the world by God the Father and the created finite world.

In the history of the Church, the main dogmatic work of the holy fathers was aimed at establishing the truth of consubstantiality, the fullness of divinity and the equivalence of the Second and Third Hypostases of the Holy Trinity.

11. Consubstantiality, equal divinity and equality of God the Son with God the Father

Rev. John of Damascus writes about the consubstantiality and equality of God the Son with God the Father:

If we say that the Father is the beginning of the Son and is greater than Him (John 14:28), then we do not show that He takes precedence over the Son in time or in nature; for through Him the Father made the eyelids (Heb. 1, 2). It does not take precedence in any other respect, if not in relation to the cause; that is, because the Son was born from the Father, and not the Father from the Son, that the Father is the author of the Son by nature, just as we do not say that fire comes from light, but, on the contrary, light from fire. So, when we hear that the Father is the beginning and greater than the Son, we must understand the Father as the cause. And just as we do not say that fire is of one essence, and light is of another, so it is impossible to say that the Father is of one essence, and the Son is different, but (both) are one and the same. And just as we say that fire shines through the light coming out of it, and we do not believe that the light coming from fire is its service organ, but, on the contrary, is its natural power; So we say about the Father, that everything that the Father does, he does through His Only Begotten Son, not as through a ministerial instrument, but as through a natural and hypostatic Power; and just as we say that fire illuminates and again we say that the light of fire illuminates, so everything that the Father does, the Son creates in the same way (John 5:19). But light does not have a special hypostasis from fire; The Son is a perfect hypostasis, inseparable from the Father’s hypostasis, as we showed above.”

Prot. Mikhail Pomazansky (Orthodox dogmatic theology):

In the early Christian period, until the Church’s faith in the consubstantiality and equality of the Persons of the Holy Trinity was precisely formulated in strictly defined terms, it happened that those church writers who carefully guarded their agreement with the universal Church consciousness and had no intention of violating it in any way with their personal views, they sometimes allowed, next to clear Orthodox thoughts, expressions about the Divinity of the Persons of the Holy Trinity that were not entirely accurate and did not clearly affirm the equality of the Persons.

This was explained mainly by the fact that the pastors of the Church put one content into the same term, while others put another. The concept of "being" in Greek was expressed by the word usia, and this term was understood by everyone, in general, in the same way. As for the concept of “Person,” it was expressed in different words: ipostasis, prosopon. The different uses of the word “hypostasis” created confusion. This term was used by some to designate the “Person” of the Holy Trinity, while others designated the “Being”. This circumstance made mutual understanding difficult until, at the suggestion of St. Athanasius, it was not decided to definitely understand by the word “hypostasis” - “Person”.

But besides this, in the ancient Christian period there were heretics who deliberately rejected or belittled the Divinity of the Son of God. Heresies of this kind were numerous and at times caused strong unrest in the Church. These were the heretics in particular:

In the apostolic age - the Ebionites (named after the heretic Ebion); The early holy fathers testify that St. Evangelist John the Theologian wrote his Gospel;

In the third century, Paul of Samosata, denounced by two councils of Antioch, in the same century.

But the most dangerous of all heretics was - in the 4th century - Arius, presbyter of Alexandria. Arius taught that the Word, or Son of God, received his beginning of being in time, although first of all; that He was created by God, although later God created everything through Him; that He is called the Son of God only as the most perfect of created spirits and has a different nature than the Father, not Divine.

This heretical teaching of Arius excited the entire Christian world, as it captivated so many. The First Ecumenical Council was convened against him in 325, and at it 318 high priests of the Church unanimously expressed the ancient teaching of Orthodoxy and condemned the false teaching of Arius. The Council solemnly pronounced anathema on those who say that there was a time when there was no Son of God, on those who claim that He was created or that He is from a different essence than God the Father. The Council drew up the Creed, which was subsequently confirmed and supplemented at the Second Ecumenical Council. The Council expressed the unity and equality of the Son of God with God the Father in the Creed with the words: “consubstantial with the Father.”

The Arian heresy after the Council split into three branches and continued to exist for several more decades. It was subjected to further refutation, its details were reported at several local councils and in the writings of the great Church Fathers of the 4th century, and partly of the 5th century (Athanasius the Great, Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, John Chrysostom, Gregory of Nyssa, Epiphanius, Ambrose of Milan, Cyril Alexandria and others). However, the spirit of this heresy later found a place for itself in various false teachings, both of the Middle Ages and of modern times.

The Fathers of the Church, responding to the Arians' reasoning, did not ignore any of the passages of Holy Scripture that the heretics referred to to justify their idea of the inequality of the Son with the Father. In the group of sayings of the Holy Scriptures that speak, as it were, about the inequality of the Son with the Father, one must keep in mind the following: a) that the Lord Jesus Christ is not only God, but became Man, and such sayings can refer to His humanity; b) that, in addition, He, as our Redeemer, was in a state of voluntary humiliation during the days of His earthly life, " humbled himself by becoming obedient even to death"(Phil. 2:7-8); therefore, even when the Lord speaks about His Divinity, He, as sent by the Father, as having come to fulfill the will of the Father on earth, places Himself in obedience to the Father, being consubstantial and equal to Him, as The Son, giving us an example of obedience; this subordinate relationship does not relate to the Being (usia) of the Divine, but to the action of Persons in the world: the Father is the sender; the Son is the sent. This is the obedience of love.

This is the meaning, in particular, of the words of the Savior in the Gospel of John: " My Father is greater than Me"(John 14:28). It should be noted that they were said to the disciples in a farewell conversation after words expressing the idea of the fullness of Divinity and the unity of the Son with the Father -" He who loves Me will keep My word: and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make our abode with him."(John 14:23). In these words, the Savior unites the Father and Himself in one word “We” and speaks equally on behalf of the Father and on His own; but as sent by the Father into the world (John 14:24), He puts Himself in a subordinate relationship to the Father (John 14:28).

When the Lord said: " No one knows about that day or hour, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father ts" (Mark 13:32), - said about Himself in a state of voluntary humiliation; leading in Divinity, He humbled Himself to the point of ignorance in humanity. St. Gregory the Theologian interprets these words in a similar way.

When the Lord said: " My Father! If possible, let this cup pass from Me; however, not as I want, but as you"(Matthew 26:39) - showed in Himself the human weakness of the flesh, but coordinated His human will with His Divine will, which is one with the will of the Father (Blessed Theophylact). This truth is expressed in the words of the Eucharistic canon of the liturgy of St. John Chrysostom about the Lamb - the Son of God, "who came and fulfilled everything for us, giving himself up in the night, even more so, giving himself up for the worldly life."

When the Lord cried on the cross: " My God, My God! Why did you leave Me?"(Matthew 27:46) - he cried out on behalf of all humanity. He came into the world in order to suffer with humanity its guilt and its separation from God, its abandonment by God, for, as the prophet Isaiah says, He bears ours and suffers for us" (Isa. 53: 5-6). This is how St. Gregory the Theologian explains these words of the Lord.

When, departing to heaven after His resurrection, the Lord said to His disciples: " I ascend to My Father and your Father, and to My God and your God“(John 20:17) - he did not speak in the same sense about His relationship to the Father and about their relationship to the Heavenly Father. Therefore, he said separately: not to “our” Father, but “ To my Father and your Father". God the Father is His Father by nature, and ours by grace (St. John of Damascus). The Savior’s words contain the idea that the Heavenly Father has now become closer to us, that His Heavenly Father has now become our Father - and we are His children - by grace. This was accomplished by earthly life, death on the cross and resurrection of Christ." See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God"- writes the Apostle John (1 John 3: 1). After the completion of our adoption to God, the Lord ascends to the Father as the God-man, i.e. not only in His Divinity, but also in Humanity, and, being of one nature with us , adds the words: " to my God and your God", suggesting that He is forever united with us by His Humanity.

A detailed discussion of these and similar passages of Holy Scripture is found in St. Athanasius the Great (in words against the Arians), in St. Basil the Great (in Book IV against Eunomius), in St. Gregory the Theologian and others who wrote against the Arians.

But if there are implicit expressions similar to those given in the Holy Scriptures about Jesus Christ, then there are numerous, and one could say countless, places that testify to the Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Gospel taken as a whole bears witness to Him. Of the individual places, we will indicate only a few, the most important ones. Some of them say that the Son of God is the true God. Others say that He is equal to the Father. Still others - that He is consubstantial with the Father.

It must be remembered that calling the Lord Jesus Christ God (Theos) in itself speaks of the fullness of the Godhead. “God” cannot be (from a logical, philosophical point of view) - a “second degree”, a “lower category”, a limited God. The properties of the Divine nature are not subject to conditionality, change, or reduction. If “God”, then wholly, not partially. The Apostle Paul points to this when he speaks of the Son that " For in Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily"(Col. 2:9). That the Son of God is the True God says:

a) directly calling Him God in the Holy Scriptures:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It was in the beginning with God. Everything came into being through Him, and without Him nothing came into being."(John 1, 1-3).

"The great mystery of piety: God appeared in the flesh"(1 Tim. 3:16).

"We also know that the Son of God has come and given us (light and) understanding, so that we may know (the true God) and may be in His true Son Jesus Christ: This is the true God and eternal life."(1 John 5:20).

"Theirs are the fathers, and from them is Christ according to the flesh, who is above all God, blessed forever, amen"(Rom. 9:5).

"My Lord and my God!" - exclamation of the Apostle Thomas (John 20:28).

"Take heed therefore to yourselves and to all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of the Lord and God, which He purchased with His own blood."(Acts 20:28).

"We have lived godly in this present age, awaiting the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ."(Tit. 2, 12-13). That the name “great God” here belongs to Jesus Christ, we verify this from the structure of the speech in Greek (a common term for the words “God and Savior”) and from the context of this chapter.

c) calling Him “Only Begotten”:

"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth, and we saw His glory, the glory as the only begotten of the Father"(John 1, 14,18).

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life"(John 3:16).

On the equality of the Son with the Father:

"My Father is working until now, and I am working"(John 5:17).

“For whatever He does, the Son also does also” (John 5:19).

"For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so the Son also gives life to whomever He will."(John 5:21).

"For just as the Father has life in Himself, so He gave to the Son to have life in Himself."(John 5:26).

"That all may honor the Son as they honor the Father"(John 5:23).

On the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father:

“I and the Father are one” (John 10:30): en esmen - consubstantial.

"I am in the Father and the Father is in Me"(is) (John 24:11; 10:38).

"And all that is mine is yours, and yours is mine"(John 17:10).

The Word of God also speaks about the eternity of the Son of God:

"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, says the Lord, who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty"(Rev. 1:8).

"And now glorify Me, O Father, with You, with the glory that I had with You before the world was."(John 17:5).

About His omnipresence:

"No one has ascended into heaven except the Son of Man, who is in heaven, who came down from heaven.”(John 3:13).

"For where two or three are gathered in My name, there am I in the midst of them"(Matthew 18:20).

About the Son of God as the Creator of the world:

"All things came into being through Him, and without Him nothing came into being that was made."(John 1, 3).

"For by Him all things were created, that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible: whether thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers - all things were created by Him and for Him; And He is before all things, and by Him everything is worth"(Col. 1, 16-17).

Likewise, the word of God speaks about other Divine properties of the Lord Jesus Christ.

As for the Holy Tradition, it contains quite clear evidence of the universal faith of Christians of the first centuries in the true Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. We see the universality of this faith:

From the Creeds, which were used in every local church even before the Council of Nicaea;

From the confessions of faith compiled at the Councils or on behalf of the Council of Shepherds of the Church before the 4th century;

From the writings of the apostolic men and teachers of the Church of the first centuries;

From the written evidence of persons external to Christianity, reporting that Christians worship “Christ as God” (for example, a letter from Pliny the Younger to Emperor Trojan; the testimony of the enemy of Christians, the writer Celsus and others).

12. Consistency, co-existence and equality of the Holy Spirit with God the Father and the Son of God

In the history of the ancient Church, the belittlement of the Divine dignity of the Son of God by heretics was usually accompanied by the belittlement on the part of heretics of the dignity of the Holy Spirit.

In the second century, the heretic Valentin taught falsely about the Holy Spirit, saying that the Holy Spirit does not differ in His nature from the angels. The Arians thought the same. But the head of the heretics who distorted the apostolic teaching about the Holy Spirit was Macedonius, who occupied the archbishopric see of Constantinople in the 4th century, who found followers among the former Arians and Semi-Arians. He called the Holy Spirit a creation of the Son, serving the Father and the Son. The denouncers of his heresy were the Fathers of the Church: Saints Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian, Athanasius the Great, Gregory of Nyssa, Ambrose, Amphilochius, Diodorus of Tarsus and others, who wrote works against heretics. The false teaching of Macedonius was refuted first at a number of local councils and, finally, at the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople (381). The Second Ecumenical Council, in defense of Orthodoxy, supplemented the Nicene Creed with the words: “(We believe) also in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Life-Giving One, who proceeds from the Father, who with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, who spoke the prophets,” as well as by further members , included in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed.

Of the numerous testimonies about the Holy Spirit available in the Holy Scriptures, it is especially important to keep in mind such passages that a) confirm the teaching of the Church that the Holy Spirit is not an impersonal Divine power, but the Person of the Holy Trinity, and b) affirm His consubstantiality and equal Divinity dignity with the first and second Persons of the Holy Trinity.

A) Evidence of the first kind - that the Holy Spirit is the bearer of a personal principle - includes the words of the Lord in his farewell conversation with his disciples, where the Lord calls the Holy Spirit the “Comforter”, who will “come”, “teach”, “convict”: “ When the Comforter comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth, who proceeds from the Father, He will testify of Me."(John 15:26)..." And He, having come, will expose the world about sin, and about truth, and about judgment. About sin, that they do not believe in Me; About the truth that I go to My Father, and you will no longer see Me; About the judgment, that the prince of this world is condemned"(John 16:8-11).

The Apostle Paul clearly speaks of the Spirit as a Person when, discussing the various gifts from the Holy Spirit - the gifts of wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, miracles, discerning of spirits, different tongues, interpretation of different languages - he concludes: " Yet the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He pleases."(1 Cor. 12:11).

B) The words of the Apostle Peter, addressed to Ananias, who hid the price of his property, speak about the Spirit as God: “ Why did you allow Satan to put the thought into your heart of lying to the Holy Spirit...You lied not to people, but to God"(Acts 5:3-4).

The equality and consubstantiality of the Spirit with the Father and the Son is evidenced by such passages as:

"baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit"(Matthew 28:19),

"The grace of our Lord (our) Jesus Christ, and the love of God (the Father), and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all"(2 Cor. 13:13):

Here all three Persons of the Holy Trinity are named equally. The Savior Himself expressed the Divine dignity of the Holy Spirit in the following words: " If anyone speaks a word against the Son of Man, it will be forgiven him; if anyone speaks against the Holy Spirit, it will not be forgiven him either in this age or in the next"(Matthew 12:32).

13. Images explaining the mystery of the Holy Trinity

Prot. Mikhail Pomazansky:

“Wanting to bring the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity at least somewhat closer to our earthly concepts, the incomprehensible to the comprehensible, the Church Fathers resorted to similarities from nature, such as: a) the sun, its ray and light; b) root, trunk and fruit of a tree; c) a spring with a spring and a stream gushing out from it; d) three candles burning one next to the other, giving one inseparable light; e) fire, the shine from it and the warmth from it; f) mind, will and memory; g) consciousness, subconscious and desire, and the like.”

The life of St. Cyril, the enlightener of the Slavs, tells how he explained the mystery of the Holy Trinity:

“Then the Saracen wise men asked Constantine:

Why do you, Christians, divide the One God into three: you call it Father, Son and Spirit. If God can have a Son, then give Him a wife, so that there may be many gods?

“Do not blaspheme the Divine Trinity,” answered the Christian philosopher, “Which we learned to confess from the ancient prophets, whom you also recognize as holding the circumcision together with them.” They teach us that the Father, Son and Spirit are three hypostases, but their essence is one. A similarity to this can be seen in the sky. So in the sun, created by God in the image of the Holy Trinity, there are three things: a circle, a light ray and warmth. In the Holy Trinity, the solar circle is the likeness of God the Father. Just as a circle has neither beginning nor end, so God is beginningless and endless. Just as a light ray and solar warmth come from the solar circle, so the Son is born from God the Father and the Holy Spirit emanates. Thus, the solar ray, illuminating the entire universe, is the likeness of God the Son, born of the Father and manifested in this world, while the solar warmth emanating from the same solar circle along with the ray is the likeness of God the Holy Spirit, Who, together with the begotten Son, is pre-eternal comes from the Father, although in time it is sent to people by the Son! [Those. for the sake of Christ's merits on the cross: “for the Holy Spirit was not yet on them, because Jesus was not yet glorified” (John 7:39)], as for example. was sent to the apostles in the form of tongues of fire. And just as the sun, consisting of three objects: a circle, a light ray and heat, is not divided into three suns, although each of these objects has its own characteristics, one is a circle, another is a ray, the third is heat, but not three suns, but one, so the Most Holy Trinity, although it has Three Persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, is not divided by the Divinity into three gods, but there is One God. Do you remember what Scripture says about how God appeared to the forefather Abraham at the oak of Moor, from which you keep circumcision? God appeared to Abraham in Three Persons. “He (Abraham) lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men stood opposite him; when he saw them, he ran towards them from the entrance of the tent and bowed to the ground. And he said: Master! If I have found favor in Your sight, do not pass by Your servant "(Gen.18, 2-3).

Please note: Abraham sees three men before him, but speaks as if with one, saying: “Lord! If I have found favor in your sight.” Obviously the holy forefather confessed One God in Three Persons.”

To clarify the mystery of the Holy Trinity, the holy fathers also pointed to man, who is the image of God.

Saint Ignatius Brianchaninov teaches:

“Our mind is the image of the Father; our word (we usually call the unspoken word a thought) is the image of the Son; our spirit is the image of the Holy Spirit. Just as in the Trinity-God three Persons unfused and inseparably constitute one Divine Being, so in the Trinity-man three Persons constitute one a being, without mixing with each other, without merging into one person, without dividing into three beings, our mind gave birth and does not cease to give birth to a thought, a thought, having been born, does not cease to be born again and at the same time remains born, hidden in the mind. thought cannot exist without the mind. its own separate spirit, every book has its own spirit. Thought cannot exist without spirit, the existence of one is certainly accompanied by the existence of the other. In the existence of both is the existence of the mind.”

St. rights John of Kronstadt:

“We sin in thought, word and deed. In order to become pure images of the Most Holy Trinity, we must strive for the holiness of our thoughts, words and deeds. Thought corresponds in God to the Father, words to the Son, deeds to the Holy Spirit who accomplishes everything. Sins of thought in a Christian are an important matter, because all our pleasing to God lies, according to the testimony of St. Macarius of Egypt, in thoughts: for thoughts are the beginning, from them come words and activity - words, because they either give grace to those who hear, or they are rotten words and serve as a temptation for others, corrupting the thoughts and hearts of others; things are even more so because examples have the strongest effect on people, attracting them to imitate them.”

“Just as in God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are inseparable, so in prayer and in our life thought, word and deed must be just as inseparable. If you ask God for anything, believe that what will happen will be done according to your request, as God pleases; If you read the word of God, believe that everything that is said in it was, is and will be, or has been done, is being done and will be done. Believe so, speak so, read so, pray so. Great thing is the word. The great thing is the soul, thinking, speaking and acting, the image and likeness of the Almighty Trinity. Human! know yourself, who you are, and behave in accordance with your dignity.”

14. The incomprehensibility of the mystery of the Holy Trinity

The images offered by the Holy Fathers help us get somewhat closer to understanding the mystery of the Holy Trinity, but we must not forget that they are not complete and cannot explain it to us. Here's what he says about these attempts at similarity Saint Gregory the Theologian:

“No matter what I examined with myself in my inquisitive mind, what I enriched my mind with, where I looked for similarities for this sacrament, I did not find anything earthly (earthly) that could compare God’s nature. Even if some small similarity is found , then much more slips away, leaving me below along with what was chosen for comparison. Following the example of others, I imagined a spring, a spring and a stream and reasoned: are not the Father similar to one, the Son to another, and the Holy Spirit to a third? For the spring, the spring and the stream are inseparable by time, and their coexistence is continuous, although it seems that they are separated by three properties. But I was afraid, firstly, so as not to allow some kind of flow in the Divinity, which never stops; such similarity cannot introduce numerical unity. For the spring, the spring and the stream are one in relation to number, but they are different only in the image of representation. But here too there is a fear that in a simple nature one cannot imagine. - the complexity noted in the sun and in what is from the sun. Secondly, so that, having ascribed essence to the Father, he would not deprive other Persons of the same independent essence and make them the powers of God, which exist in the Father, but would not be independent. Because the ray and light are not the sun, but some solar outpourings and essential qualities of the sun. Thirdly, so as not to attribute to God both existence and non-existence (to which conclusion this example can lead); and this would be even more absurd than what was said before... And in general I don’t find anything that, upon examination, would stop the thought on the chosen similarities, unless someone, with due prudence, takes one thing from the image and discards everything else. Finally, I concluded that it is best to abandon all images and shadows, as deceptive and far from reaching the truth, but to adhere to a more pious way of thinking, focusing on a few sayings, to have the Spirit as a guide, and whatever insight is received from Him, then, preserving until end, with Him, as with a sincere accomplice and interlocutor, to go through the present century, and, to the best of our ability, to convince others to worship the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the one Divinity and the one Power.”

Bishop Alexander (Mileant):

“All these and other similarities, while somewhat facilitating the assimilation of the mystery of the Trinity, are, however, only the faintest hints of the nature of the Supreme Being. They leave a consciousness of insufficiency, of inconsistency with the lofty subject for which they are used. They cannot remove from the doctrine of the Triune God the cover of incomprehensibility and mystery with which this doctrine is clothed for the human mind.

In this regard, one instructive story has been preserved about the famous Western teacher of the Church - Blessed Augustine. One day, immersed in thoughts about the mystery of the Trinity and drawing up a plan for an essay on this topic, he went to the seashore. There he saw a boy playing in the sand and digging a hole. Approaching the boy, Augustine asked him: “What are you doing?” “I want to pour the sea into this hole,” the boy answered, smiling. Then Augustine realized: “Am I not doing the same thing as this child when I try to exhaust the sea of God’s infinity with my mind?”

In the same way, that great ecumenical Saint, who for his ability to penetrate with thought to the deepest mysteries of faith is honored by the Church with the name of the Theologian, wrote to himself that he speaks about the Trinity more often than he breathes, and he admits the unsatisfactoryness of all comparisons aimed at comprehension of the dogma of the Trinity. “No matter what I looked at with my inquisitive mind,” he says, “no matter what I enriched my mind with, no matter where I looked for similarities for this, I did not find anything to which God’s nature could be applied.”

So, the doctrine of the Most Holy Trinity is the deepest, incomprehensible mystery of faith. All efforts to make it understandable, to introduce it into the usual framework of our thinking, are in vain. “Here is the limit,” notes St. Athanasius the Great, “that cherubim cover their wings.”

St. Philaret of Moscow answering the question “is it possible to comprehend the trinity of God?” - writes:

“God is one in three persons. We do not comprehend this inner mystery of the Divinity, but we believe in it according to the immutable testimony of the word of God: “No one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 2:11).”

Rev. John of Damascus:

“It is impossible for an image to be found among creatures that in all similarities shows in itself the properties of the Holy Trinity. For what is created and complex, fleeting and changeable, describable and imageable and perishable - how can one accurately explain the all-important Divine essence, which is alien to all this? And it is known that every creature is subject to most of these properties and, by its very nature, is subject to decay.”

“For the Word there must also be breath; for our word is not without breath. But our breathing is different from our being: it is the inhalation and exhalation of air, drawn in and exhaled for the existence of the body. When a word is pronounced, it becomes a sound that reveals the power of the word. And in God’s nature, simple and uncomplicated, we must piously confess the existence of the Spirit of God, because His Word is not more insufficient than our word; but it would be wicked to think that in God the Spirit is something that comes from outside, as is the case in us, complex beings. On the contrary, when we hear about the Word of God, we do not recognize It as hypostatic, or as one that is acquired by teaching, pronounced by voice, spreads in the air and disappears, but as one that exists hypostatically, has free will, is active and omnipotent: thus, having learned that the Spirit God accompanies the Word and manifests His action; we do not consider Him to be a non-hypostatic breath; for in this way we would degrade the greatness of the Divine nature to insignificance, if we had the same understanding about the Spirit that is in Him as we have about our spirit; but we honor Him with a power that truly exists, contemplated in its own and special personal existence, emanating from the Father, resting in the Word and manifesting Him, which therefore cannot be separated either from God in Whom it is, or from the Word with which it accompanies, and which does not appear in such a way as to disappear, but, like the Word, exists personally, lives, has free will, moves by itself, is active, always wants good, accompanies the will with force in every will and has neither beginning nor end; for neither the Father was ever without the Word, nor the Word without the Spirit.

Thus, the polytheism of the Hellenes is completely refuted by the unity of nature, and the teaching of the Jews is rejected by the acceptance of the Word and the Spirit; and from both of them there remains what is useful, that is, from the teachings of the Jews - the unity of nature, and from Hellenism - one difference in hypostases.

If a Jew begins to contradict the acceptance of the Word and the Spirit, then he must be rebuked and his mouth blocked with Divine Scripture. For about the Divine Word David says: For ever, Lord, Thy Word abideth in heaven (Ps. 119:89), and in another place: Sent forth Thy Word, and healed me (Ps. 106:20); - but the word spoken by the mouth is not sent and does not remain forever. And about the Spirit the same David says: Follow Thy Spirit, and they will be created (Ps. 103:30); and in another place: By the Word of the Lord the heavens were established, and by the Spirit of His mouth all their power (Ps. 32:6); also Job: the Spirit of God created me, and the breath of the Almighty taught me (Job 33:4); - but the Spirit sent, creating, confirming and preserving is not a breath that disappears, just as the mouth of God is not a bodily member: but both must be understood in a way that is fitting for God.”

Prot. Seraphim Slobodskaya:

“The great secret that God revealed to us about Himself - the mystery of the Holy Trinity, our weak mind cannot contain or understand.

…St. Augustine speaks:

“You see the Trinity if you see love.” This means that the mystery of the Most Holy Trinity can rather be understood with the heart, that is, with love, than with our weak mind.”

15. The dogma of trinity indicates the fullness of the mysterious inner life in God: God is Love

Orthodox dogmatic theology:

“The dogma of trinity points to the fullness of the mysterious inner life in God, for “God is love” (1 John 4:8; 4:16), and the love of God cannot only extend to the world created by God: in the Holy Trinity it is also turned inward Divine life.

Even more clearly for us, the dogma of trinity indicates the closeness of God to the world: God is above us, God is with us, God is in us and in all creation. Above us is God the Father, the ever-flowing Source, in the words of the church prayer, the Foundation of all existence, the Father of generosity, loving us and caring for us, His creation, we are His children by grace. With us is God the Son, His birth, who, for the sake of Divine love, revealed Himself to people as Man, so that we would know and see with our own eyes that God is with us, “sincerely,” i.e. in the most perfect way “who has become part of us” (Heb. 2:14).

In us and in all creation - with His power and grace - the Holy Spirit, who fills everything, the Giver of life, the Life-Giving, the Comforter, the Treasure and the Source of good things.”

St. Gregory Palamas:

“The Spirit of the Highest Word is, as it were, some ineffable Love of the Parent for the Inexpressibly born Word Himself. The Beloved Son Himself and the Word of the Father use this same Love, having It in relation to the Parent, as having come with Him from the Father and resting unitedly in Him. From this Word, communicating with us through His flesh, we are taught about the name of the Spirit, which differs in hypostatic existence from the Father, and also about the fact that He is not only the Spirit of the Father, but also the Spirit of the Son. For He says: “The Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father” (John 15:26), so that we may know not only the Word, but also the Spirit, which is from the Father, not begotten, but proceeding: He is also the Spirit of the Son who has Him from the Father as the Spirit of Truth, Wisdom and Word. For Truth and Wisdom are the Word corresponding to the Parent and rejoicing with the Father, according to what He said through Solomon: “I was and rejoiced with Him.” He did not say “rejoiced,” but precisely “rejoiced,” because the eternal Joy of the Father and the Son is the Holy Spirit as common to both, according to the words of the Holy Scriptures.

That is why the Holy Spirit is sent by both to worthy people, having its being from the Father alone and proceeding from Him alone in being. Our mind also has the image of this Highest Love, created in the image of God, [feeding it] to knowledge that constantly abides from Him and in Him; and this love is from Him and in Him, emanating from Him along with the inner Word. And this insatiable desire of people for knowledge serves as clear evidence of such love even for those who are not able to comprehend the innermost depths of themselves. But in that Prototype, in that all-perfect and superperfect Goodness, in Which there is nothing imperfect, except for what comes from It, Divine Love is completely Goodness Itself. Therefore, this Love is the Holy Spirit and another Comforter (John 14:16), and is so called by us, since He accompanies the Word, so that we may know that the Holy Spirit, being perfect in a perfect and own Hypostasis, is in no way inferior to the essence of the Father , but is invariably identical in nature to the Son and the Father, differing from Them in Hypostasis and presenting to us His magnificent procession from the Father.”

Ep. Alexander Mileant:

“However, despite all its incomprehensibility, the doctrine of the Holy Trinity has important moral significance for us, and, obviously, that is why this mystery is revealed to people. Indeed, it elevates the very idea of monotheism, puts it on solid ground and eliminates those important, insurmountable difficulties that previously arose for human thought. Some of the thinkers of pre-Christian antiquity, rising to the concept of the unity of the Supreme Being, could not resolve the question of how the life and activity of this Being in itself, outside of His relationship to the world, actually manifests itself. And so the Divinity was either identified in their minds with the world (pantheism), or was a lifeless, self-contained, motionless, isolated principle (deism), or turned into a formidable rock, inexorably dominating the world (fatalism). Christianity, in its teaching about the Holy Trinity, has discovered that in the Trinitarian Being and in addition to His relationship to the world, the endless fullness of inner, mysterious life has been manifested from time to time. God, in the words of one ancient teacher of the Church (Peter Chrysologus), is one, but not alone. In Him there is a distinction of Persons who are in continuous communication with each other. “God the Father is not begotten and does not come from another Person, the Son of God is eternally begotten from the Father, the Holy Spirit is eternally emanating from the Father.” From time immemorial, this mutual communication of Divine Persons consists of the inner, hidden life of the Divine, which before Christ was closed with an impenetrable veil.

Through the mystery of the Trinity, Christianity taught not only to honor God and revere Him, but also to love Him. Through this very mystery it gave the world that joyful and significant idea that God is boundless, perfect Love. The strict, dry monotheism of other religious teachings (Judaism and Mohammedanism), without rising to the frank idea of the Divine Trinity, cannot therefore rise to the true concept of love as the dominant property of God. Love by its very essence is unthinkable outside of union and communication. If God is one-person, then in relation to whom could His Love be revealed? To the world? But the world is not eternal. How could Divine love manifest itself in pre-worldly eternity? Moreover, the world is limited, and God’s love cannot be revealed in all its boundlessness. The highest love, for its full manifestation, requires the same highest object. But where is he? Only the mystery of the Triune God provides a solution to all these difficulties. It reveals that the love of God has never remained inactive, without manifestations: the Persons of the Most Holy Trinity have been with each other from eternity in continuous communion of love. The Father loves the Son (John 5:20; 3:35), and calls Him beloved (Matthew 3:17; 17:5, etc.). The Son says about Himself: “I love the Father” (John 14:31). The brief but expressive words of St. Augustine are deeply true: “The mystery of the Christian Trinity is the mystery of Divine love. You see the Trinity if you see love.”

Abram is given a new name: Abraham is the father of a great multitude. In the Holy Scriptures there are several examples of how a person’s name is changed. The meaning of this event is at least threefold: first, someone wants to show his power, as, for example, Pharaoh changes the name of Eliakim to Joachim, second, as an indication of some purpose, as, for example, the Lord Jesus Christ says to Simon, “ you will be called Cephas", and the third - in memory of some event, for example, after some mysterious duel, Jacob is given a new name Israel. So it is here: as a sign of Abraham’s submission to God and in memory of the conclusion of this covenant, and as a sign of the foreshadowing of the future fate of Abraham’s descendants, this new name is given to him. Sarah becomes Sarah, which means “lady.”

“I will bless her and give you a son by her; I will bless her, and nations will come from her, and kings of nations will come from her. And Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, “Shall a son be born to a man who is a hundred years old?” and Sarah, ninety years old, will she really give birth? And Abraham said to God: Oh, that Ishmael were alive before You! God said: It is Sarah your wife who will bear you a son, and you will call his name Isaac; And I will establish my covenant with him as an everlasting covenant [and] to his descendants after him” (Gen. 17:16-19). These words have features reminiscent of the Annunciation. Before the miraculous birth of a son, a name is already given and an eternal covenant is promised.

2.8. The sixth appearance of God to Abraham. Revelation of the Holy Trinity

The sixth theophany occurred at the oak grove of Mamre (i.e., which belonged to Mamre, an Amorite, an ally of Abraham - Gen. 14:13), where Abraham settled after separation from Lot.

“And the Lord appeared to him at the oak grove of Mamre, as he sat at the entrance to the tent, during the heat of the day. He lifted up his eyes and looked, and behold, three men stood against him. Seeing, he ran towards them from the entrance to the tent and bowed to the ground and said: Master! If I have found favor in Your sight, do not pass Your servant by” (Gen. 18:1-3). During this appearance, Abraham receives confirmation that it is from Sarah that a son will be born in less than a year.

Saint Ambrose of Milan believed that the three persons of the Holy Trinity appeared in the form of three angels - it seems that this is the only such patristic opinion. St. Augustine believed that these were just three angels. And, finally, a number of fathers - Justin the Philosopher, Irenaeus of Lyons, St. John Chrysostom - believed that this was the appearance of two angels and the Son of God. One of the main arguments in favor of this opinion is that after this Epiphany it is said that two husbands “Let's go to Sodom; Abraham still stood before the Lord."(Gen. 18:22). And also that it is with the Second Person of the Holy Trinity - with the face of the Son in Scripture that the name of the angel is associated. We will see some confirmation of this in subsequent books.

Saint Philaret of Moscow says that “the custom of the Church to represent on icons the mystery of the Holy Trinity in the form of three angels who appeared to Abraham shows that pious antiquity is exactly number These angels were considered to be a symbol of the Holy Trinity, for, however, one cannot look for this symbol in their faces; no one has ever represented God the Father and God the Holy Spirit in the image of angels.” It is no coincidence that the famous icon of St. Andrei Rublev shows the similarity of the faces of three angels, so that interpreters sometimes offer different explanations of which angel represents which face of the Holy Trinity. This fact confirms the validity of the opinion of St. Philaret.

2.9. Circumstances of the death of Sodom and Gomorrah

In connection with the history of the death of Sodom and Gomorrah, I would like to make the following comments. “And the Lord said, Shall I hide from Abraham what I want to do?”(Gen. 18:17). These words shed light on the mystery of the prophetic ministry. Why not hide it? This is His will. “For the Lord God does nothing without revealing His secret to His servants the prophets.”(Amos 3:7). “I no longer call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have told you everything that I have heard from My Father.”(John 15:15). So, Abraham is a friend of God.

Pay attention to another circumstance. When God is about to strike Sodom and Gomorrah, He seems to show some indecisiveness and ignorance of all the circumstances of the case. This should no longer surprise us, since this is not the first time such a situation has appeared on the pages of the book of Genesis. And each time it is connected with the fact that a person is thereby given some new opportunity. In this case, thanks to this “indecisiveness,” Abraham gets the opportunity to act as an intercessor for God’s mercy. He prays to the Lord to spare the city, and for the sake of ten righteous people the Lord agrees to have mercy on Sodom and Gomorrah, but even ten are not there, although the cities, it would seem, were large. So each of us must take care of his own righteousness, in case he turns out to be the tenth person who is not enough.

In Sodom and Gomorrah, not even ten righteous people were found. Only Lot and his daughters, from whom the Moabites and Ammonites originate, escaped from there.

The image of the Holy Trinity is revered by Orthodox Christians around the world. Prayers in front of this icon can protect your life from all evil and worries.

History of the icon

The Icon of the Holy Trinity, otherwise called “Hospitality of Abraham,” was painted in the 15th century by the famous icon painter Andrei Rublev.

According to legend, the pious husband Abraham one day met three strangers near his house who did not give their names. Abraham received the travelers and offered them rest and food. During the conversation, three mysterious people told Abraham that they were messengers of the Lord, His three angels, and reported the imminent birth of their son Isaac. After the prophecy, two angels went to destroy the city of Sodom, which had provoked the wrath of the Lord, and the third angel stayed and talked with Abraham.

Where is the icon

The icon of the “Holy Trinity” is of great value. Currently, the image is in the Tretyakov Gallery.

Description of the icon

On a vertical base there are three angels closing a circle near the table. The table is set, there is a bowl on it and grape branches lie on it. Angels sit under the shade of a sacred tree and mountain, symbolizing the eternal life and love of the Lord.

The image of three angels indicates to the Orthodox the unity of the Lord in three persons and the sacred, sacred content of this number. The light, love and forgiveness contained in the image of each angel indicate the possibility of coming to the Kingdom of Heaven along one of these paths.

What does an icon help with?

They pray to the Icon of the Holy Trinity, wanting to comprehend the full power of God's grace. This image is able to protect home and family, guide a person who has gone astray onto the right path and show him all the greatness and beauty of divine creations.

They pray to the Icon of the Holy Trinity:

to receive healing of physical and mental illnesses;
about restoring justice and protecting from enemies;
asking for guidance on the right path in life;
about getting rid of melancholy and sadness.

Prayers to the icon of the Holy Trinity

“Most Holy Trinity, I humbly pray to You: just as the Father, Son and Holy Spirit are united into a single force that protects true faith and humility, so the power of love, faith and truth of the Lord will not leave me. May I not fall into the fiery abyss of Gehenna, may I not perish in sin and unbelief. Do not leave me, messengers of God and His fair Judgment. Amen".

“The sacred Trinity, a symbol of the generosity and power of the Lord, with its power punishing the infidels, bringing great joy to the servant of the Lord! I pray to you, do not leave me in sadness and grief, protect my belly and my spirit from all evil. Amen".

This prayer can protect you from danger and physical threat.

The Day of Remembrance of the Icon of the Holy Trinity is celebrated on the 50th day after the Resurrection of Christ. At this time, any prayers to the Lord have special power and can lead you to inner balance and joy. We wish you peace in your soul and strong faith in God. Be happy and don't forget to press the buttons and

02.06.2017 06:07

Orthodox Trinity is a great holiday for Christians. This holiday is as important as Christmas and Easter. ...

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Testimony of a resident of the village of Olgino, Tumakova Varvara Vasilievna, born in 1925, or as everyone in the village affectionately calls her: Baba Varya.
Around the beginning of the twentieth century there was an amazing incident at the Holy Spring "Skorizh". My father, Vasily Matveevich Krivchenkov, born in 1894, says Baba Varya, communicated directly with the priest who served in the church to which “Skorizh” was assigned and the sexton who lived on Olgovka. So they told their father about a very surprising incident.
Since the Holy Spring "Skorizh" from the moment of its formation was revered by local people as a source in the Name of the Most Holy Trinity, then directly on the Feast of the Holy Trinity, or Pentecost, there were especially many people praying at the source. There was a Chapel on the Skoryzh, and a church in the neighboring village of Lugan, where all the Olgovskys went to services. On the Feast of the Holy Trinity, a religious procession was held from this nearby church in the neighboring village of Lugan to the Skorizh spring. There was a church service at the source and then people stood under the waterfall.
It was the day of the Holy Trinity. After the service, the sexton who lived on Olgovka invites the priest to his home for the sake of such a Great Holiday. The priest came to visit the sexton, the sexton’s wife set the table. The sexton tells his wife to go to the spring for fresh water. The wife took the jug, because at that time they went to Skorizh with jugs for water, and went. And when she approached a steep hill, at the bottom of which the Holy Spring flows and there is a Chapel, she heard church singing coming from the source. The woman was very surprised, because she thought to herself: “Who can serve, after all, the priest and the sexton are in her house.” She began to go down to the source and when she walked around the bend of the mountain and the bushes that had previously prevented her from seeing who was singing, she was so stunned.
He sees three elders standing at the well with white, white and long beards. And that’s why they all seemed white themselves. The elders stood at the frame of the well, facing west and from this they were visible from the waist up. A thick candle was burning in front of each elder and each was holding a book in his hands. This singing frightened and surprised the sexton’s wife; it echoed in the sky, both fear and tenderness from him. She only remembered the words that the elders sang: “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men...”.
The three elders didn’t even look at her. Backing away from fear, the woman went around the spring behind the bushes, where the water flows into the river, scooped up water with a jug and hurried home to tell the priest and sexton about everything. When she came and told about everything, everyone hurried to the Skorizh. And when they ran to the source, the elders were no longer there, but three candles remained burning on the frame of the well, and next to each candle there was a book that each elder read.
And looking into the well they saw an icon of the Holy Trinity lying at the bottom, but after a moment the icon was no longer visible.
It is still unknown what the names of the priest, sexton and his wife were.

The mentioned words are heard in a church hymn called the “Great Doxology.” To better imagine the solemnity of the event being described, listen to this chant performed by the Fraternal Choir of the Holy Dormition Svyatogorsk Lavra.