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

In spite of its very great terminological accuracy in describing the
veneration of icons, Nicaea II did not elaborate on the technical points of
Christology raised by the iconoclastic Council of Hieria. The task of
refuting this council and of developing the rather general Christological
affirmations of Germanus and John of Damascus belongs to the two major
theological figures of the second iconoclastic period - the reigns of Leo V
(813-820), Michael а (820-829), and Theophilus (829-842) - Theodore the
Studite and Patriarch Nicephorus.

Orthodox Theology of Images: Theodore the Studite and Nicephorus.

Theodore the Studite (759-826) was one of the major reformers of the
Eastern Christian monastic movement. In 798, he found himself at the head of
the Constantinopolian monastery of Studios (the name of the founder), which
by then had fallen into decay. Under Theodore's leadership the community
there rapidly grew to several hundred monks and became the main monastic
centre of the capital. The Studite Rule (Hypotypеsis) in its final form is
the work of Theodore's disciples, but it applied his principles of monastic
life and became the pattern for large cenobitic communities in the Byzantine
and Slavic worlds. Theodore himself is the author of two collections of
instructions addressed to his monks (the "small" and the "large" Catecheses)
in which he develops his concept of monasticism based upon obedience to the
abbot, liturgical life, constant work, and personal poverty. These
principles were quite different from the eremitical, "hesychast," tradition
and derived from the rules of Pachomius and Basil. The influence of Theodore
upon later developments of Byzantine Christianity is also expressed in his
contribution to hymnography. Many of the ascetical parts of the Triodion
(proper for Great Lent) and of the Parakletike, or Oktoechos (the book of
the "eight tones"), are his work or the work of his immediate disciples. His
role in conflicts between Church and state will be mentioned in the next
chapter.
In numerous letters to contemporaries, in his three Antirrhetics
against the iconoclasts, and in several minor treatises on the subject,
Theodore actively participated in the defence of images.
As we have seen, the principal argument of the Orthodox against the
iconoclasts was the reality of Christ's manhood; the debate thus gave
Byzantine theologians an opportunity to reaffirm the Antiochian contribution
to Chalcedonian Christology, and signalled a welcome return to the
historical facts of the New Testament. From the age of Justinian, the
humanity of Christ had often been expressed in terms of "human nature"
assumed as one whole by the New Adam. Obviously, this platonizing view of
humanity in general was insufficient to justify an image of Jesus Christ as
a concrete, historical, human individual. The fear of Nestorianism prevented
many Byzantine theologians from seeing a man in Christ, for "a man" implying
individual human consciousness seemed for them to mean a separate human
hypostasis. In Theodore's anti-iconoclastic writings, this difficulty is
overcome by a partial return to Aristotelian categories.

Christ was certainly not a mere man; neither it is orthodox to say that
He assumed an individual among men [ton tina anthrеpеn] but the whole, the