"Протоиерей Иоанн Мейендорф. Byzantine Theology " - читать интересную книгу автора

But consonance with Hellenism was not the only element, which
contributed to the widespread use of allegory in exegesis. The method
provided an easy weapon against Gnosticism, the main challenge of
Christianity in the second century. The major Gnostic systems - especially
those of Valentinus and Marcion - opposed the Demiurge, the Yahweh of
Judaism, to the true God manifested in the New Testament. Christian
apologists used allegory to "redeem" the Old Testament and counteracted the
Gnostic dualism with the idea that the Old and the New Testaments have the
same "spiritual" meaning and reflect a continuous Revelation of the same
true God.
Origen also made use of this concept of the "spiritual meaning" in his
notion of Tradition. The Spirit, which had inspired the Biblical writers,
was also present in the "spiritual men" of the Christian Church. The saint
alone therefore could decipher the authentic meaning of Scripture.

The Scriptures [Origen writes] were composed through the Spirit of God,
and they have not only that meaning which is obvious, but also another,
which is hidden from the majority of readers. For the contents of Scripture
are the outward forms of certain mysteries and the images of divine things.
On this point, the entire Church is unanimous, that while the whole Law is
spiritual, the inspired meaning is not recognized by all, but only by those
who are gifted with the grace of the Holy Spirit in the word of wisdom and
knowledge.1

Although it raises the important problem of authority in exegesis, this
passage certainly expresses a view largely taken for granted in Medieval
Byzantine Christendom and explains the concern for a consensus patrum
expressed in a formal way in the canon of the Council in Trullo quoted at
the beginning of this section.
In addition to Alexandrian allegorism, the Byzantine tradition of
exegesis incorporated the more sober influence of the School of Antioch. The
opposition between Alexandria and Antioch -, which found a well-known and
violent expression in the Christological debates of the fifth century -
should not be exaggerated on the level of exegesis. The chief minds of the
Anti-ochian school - Diodore of Tarsus (ca. 330-ca. 390), Theodore of
Mopsuestia (ca. 350-428), and Theodoret of Cyrus (ca. 393-ca. 466) - did not
deny the possibility of a spiritual meaning in Biblical texts; yet they
reacted strongly against the elimination of the literal, historical meaning
and against an arbitrary allegorism based on Platonic philosophical
presuppositions foreign to the Bible. Thus, the notion of theory
("contemplation"), which implied the possibility of discovering a spiritual
meaning behind the letter of the text, was not rejected, but the emphasis
was placed upon what actually happened or said historically as well as upon
the moral or theological implications of the text.
The theological authority of the School of Antioch was shattered by the
condemnation of Nestorius, a pupil of Theodore of Mopsuestia, at Ephesus in
431 and by the anathemas against the Three Chapters (Theodore of Mopsuestia,
and the anti-Cyrillian writings of Theodoret of Cyrus and Ibas of Edessa)
pronounced by the Second Council of Constantinople in 553. After 553, the
scriptural commentaries of Theodore, one of the greatest exegetes of early