"Протоиерей Иоанн Мейендорф. Byzantine Theology " - читать интересную книгу автораmust preserve what is defined by common ecumenical decisions, but a
particular opinion of a Church Father or a definition issued by a local council can be followed by some and ignored by others..." He then refers to such issues as shaving, fasting on Saturdays, and a celibate priesthood and continues: "When faith remains inviolate, the common and catholic decisions are also safe. A sensible man respects the practices and laws of others; he considers that it is neither wrong to observe nor illegal to violate them."15 Photius' concern for the "common faith" and "ecumenical decisions" is illustrated in the Filioque issue. Since modern historical research had clearly shown that he was not systematically anti-Latin, his position in the dispute can be explained only by the fact that he took the theological issue itself seriously. Not only he did place the main emphasis on the Filioque in his encyclical of 866, but even after ecclesiastical peace restored with Pope John VIII in 879-880 and after his retirement from the patriarchate, Photius still devoted many of his last days to writing the Mystagogy of the Holy Spirit, the first detailed Greek refutation of the Latin interpolation of Filioque into the Creed. As the Mystagogy clearly showed, Photius was equally concerned with this unilateral interpolation into a text, which had won universal approval, and with the content of the interpolation itself. He made no distinction between the canonical and theological aspects of the issue and referred to the popes, especially to Leo III and to John VIII, who had opposed the interpolation, as opponents of the doctrine of the "double procession." The Mystagogy makes clear the basic Byzantine objection to the Latin simple essence in which personal or hypostatic existence is reduced to the concept of mutual relations between the three Persons. If the idea of consubstantiality requires that the Father and the Son together are the one origin of the Spirit, essence in God necessarily precedes His personal existence as three hypostases. For Photius however "the Father is the origin [of the Son and of the Holy Spirit] not by nature but in virtue of His hypostatic character."16 To confuse the hypostatic characters of the Father and the Son by attributing to them the procession of the Spirit is to fall into Sabellianism, a modalist heresy of the third century, or rather into semi-Sabellianism; for Sabellius confused the three Persons into one, while the Latins limited themselves to the Father and the Son, but then fell into the danger of excluding the Spirit from the Godhead altogether.17 Thus, Photius clearly demonstrates that behind the dispute on the Filioque two concepts of the Trinity lie: the Greek personalistic concept, which considers the personal revelation of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit as the starting point of Trinitarian theology, and the Latin, Augustinian approach to God as a simple essence within which a Trinity of persons can be understood only in terms of internal relations. In opposing the Latin view of the Trinity, Photius does not deny sending of the Spirit through the Son to the world in the "economy" of salvation as the link between the deified humanity of Jesus and the entire body of the Church and of creation.18 Michael Psellos (1018-1078). |
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