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

hand of the Father having acquired characteristics, which "naturally" belong
to God alone: immortality and glory. Through Christ's humanity deified
according to its hypostatic union with the Logos, all members of the Body of
Christ have access to "deification" by grace through the operation of the
Spirit in Christ's Church.
The essential elements of Maximian Christology provided the permanent
terminological and philosophical framework for Byzantine thought and
spirituality. They were adopted with the Trinitarian doctrine of the great
Cappadocian Fathers together in the Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith
of John of Damascus (first half of the eighth century), which served as a
standard doctrinal textbook in Byzantium. They also provided the most
authoritative frame of reference in most of the doctrinal controversies,
which arose in the East during the Middle Ages.
The following chapter, which is concerned with iconoclasm, will show
that the Christological issue recurred indirectly in the eighth and ninth
centuries. But even later, Christological debate was reopened quite
specifically, especially in the Comnenian period, and conciliar decisions on
the matter were included in the Synodikon.
Around 1087, a Constantinopolian monk named Nilus, who was involved in
theological discussions with the Armenians, was condemned for holding that
the humanity of Christ was united with God "by adoption" (thesei) only.2 The
Monophysite Armenians were of course maintaining the concept of a union "by
nature" (physei). In opposing them, Nilus had apparently weakened the
Orthodox doctrine of "hypostatic" union to the point of making it sound
Nestorian. In 1117, the Synod of Constantinople dealt with the similar case
of Eustratius, Metropolitan of Nicaea, who like Nilus had engaged in
polemics with Armenians and expressed orthodox Christology in terms very
similar to those of Theodore of Mopsuestia. The humanity by Christ was
assumed not only distinct from His divinity but found itself in a position
of "servitude;" it was in a position of "worshipping God," of being
"purified," and to it alone belongs the human title of high-priest, a term
unsuitable to God. In condemning the opinions of Eustratius, the synod
reiterated the decisions of the Fifth Council against the Christology of the
Three Chapters.3
The very Cyrillian conclusion of the council against Eustratius led to
further Christological debates, which this time centred on the meaning of
the Eucharistic sacrifice. The deacon Soterichos Panteugenos,
Patriarch-Elect of Antioch, affirmed that the sacrifice could not be offered
to the Holy Trinity, for this would imply that the one Christ performs two
opposing actions, the human action of offering and the divine action of
receiving, and would mean a Nestorian separation and personalizing of the
two natures. Nicholas, Bishop of Methone in the Peloponnese, a major
Byzantine theologian of the twelfth century, responded to Soterichos with an
elaboration of the notion of hypostasis based on the ideas of Leontius of
Byzantium and Maximus the Confessor. The hypostatic union is precisely what
permits one to consider God as performing humanly in the act of offering
while remaining God by nature and therefore receiving the sacrifice. To
Soterichos, Nicholas opposed the conclusion of the prayer of the
Cheroubikon, whose author, as modern research shows, is none other than
Cyril of Alexandria himself, but which is a part of both Byzantine liturgies