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

Christianity, could be preserved only clandestinely in Syrian or Armenian
translations while the Greek original survived only in fragments scattered
in the catenae. But the tradition of Antiochian exegesis survived in the
exegetical works of Theodoret, which were never prohibited, and even more so
in the writings of Theodore's friend John Chrysostom, by far the most
popular of all Greek ecclesiastical writers. His definition of typology, as
opposed to allegory, as "a prophecy expressed in terms of facts"2 and his
concern for history served as safeguards against the spiritualizing excesses
of the Alexandrian tradition in late-Byzantine exegetical literature, while
still leaving room for theory, i.e., fundamentally a Christ-oriented
typological interpretation of the Old Testament.

Philosophical trends.

The philosophical trends in post-Chalcedonian Byzantium were determined
by three major factors: (1) the patristic tradition and its implications -
the transfer, for example, of the Cappadocian Trinitarian terminology to the
problem of the hypostatic union of the two natures in Christ, (2) the
ever-reviving Origenism with its implied challenge to the Biblical doctrine
of creation and to Biblical anthropology, and (3) the continuing influence
of non-Christian Neo-Platonism upon intellectuals (Justinian's closing of
the University of Athens put a physical end to a centre of thought and
learning only recently adorned by the last major figure of pagan Greek
philosophy, Proclus, 410-485). In all three cases, the basic issue implied
was the relation between ancient Greek thought and Christian Revelation.
Some modern historians continue to pass very divergent judgments on the
philosophy of the Greek Fathers. In his well-known Histoire dc la
philosophic, Emile Brehier writes, "In the first five centuries of
Christianity, there was nothing that could properly be called Christian
philosophy and would have implied a scale of intellectual values either
original or different from that of the pagan thinkers."3 According to
Brehier, Christianity and Hellenic philosophy are not opposed to each other
as two intellectual systems, for Christianity is based on revealed facts,
not on philosophical ideas. The Greek Fathers, in accepting these facts,
adopted everything in Greek philosophy, which was compatible with Christian
Revelation. No new philosophy could result from such an artificial
juxtaposition. A seemingly opposite view, more in line with the classical
appraisal of Adolf Harnack, has been expressed by H. A. Wolfson whose book
on The Philosophy of the Church Fathers presents the thought of the Fathers
as "a recasting of Christian beliefs in the form of a philosophy, [which]
thereby produc[ed] also a Christian version of Greek philosophy."4 Finally,
the monumental work of Claude Tresmontant La Metaphysique du Christianisme
et la naissancc de la philosophic chretienne (Paris: Editions du Seuil,
1961) strongly maintains the historical existence of a Christian philosophy,
which the Fathers consistently defended against the Hellenic synthesis. This
philosophy implies basic affirmations on creation, on unity and
multiplicity, on knowledge, freedom, and all other incompatible with
Hellenism, and is fundamentally Biblical. "From the point of view of
metaphysics," he writes, "Christian orthodoxy is defined by its fidelity to
the metaphysical principles found in Biblical theology."5 Therefore, if the