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

Greek Fathers were orthodox, they were not, properly speaking, "Greek."
Actually, in modern historical and theological writing, there is no term
more ambiguous than "Hellenism." Thus, Georges Florovsky makes a persistent
plea for "Christian Hellenism" meaning by the term the tradition of the
Eastern Fathers as opposed to Western Medieval thought,6 but he agrees
fundamentally with Tresmontant on the total incompatibility between Greek
philosophical thought and the Bible, especially on such basic issues as
creation and freedom.7
Therefore, Tresmontant's and Florovsky's conclusions appear to be
fundamentally correct, and the usual slogans and clich©s, which too often
serve to characterize patristic and Byzantine thought as exalted "Christian
Hellenism," or as the "Hellenization of Christianity," or as Eastern
"Platonism" as opposed to Western "Aristotelianism" should be avoided.
A more constructive method of approaching the issue and of establishing
a balanced judgment consists in a preliminary distinction between the
systems of ancient Greek philosophy - the Platonic, the Aristotelian, or the
Neo-Platonic - and individual concepts or terms. The use of Greek concepts
and terminology were unavoidable meanings of communication and a necessary
step in making the Christian Gospel relevant to the world in which it
appeared and in which it had to expand. But the Trinitarian terminology of
the Cappadocian Fathers and its later application to Christology in the
Chalcedonian and post-Chalcedonian periods clearly show that such concepts
as ousia, hypostasis, or physis acquire an entirely new meaning when used
out of the context of the Platonic or Aristotelian systems in which they are
born. Three hypostases united in one "essence" (ousia) or two "natures"
(physeis), united in one hypostasis cannot be a part of either the Platonic
or Aristotelian systems of thought and imply new personalistic (and
therefore non-Hellenic) metaphysical presuppositions. Still the Trinitarian
and Christological synthesis of the Cappadocian Fathers would have dealt
with a different set of problems and would have resulted in different
concepts if the background of the Cappadocians and the audience to which
they addressed themselves had not been Greek. Thus, Greek patristic thought
remained open to Greek philosophical problematics but avoided being
imprisoned in Hellenic philosophical systems. From Gregory of Nazianzus in
the fourth century to Gregory Palamas in the fourteenth, the representatives
of the Orthodox tradition all express their conviction that heresies are
based upon the uncritical absorption of pagan Greek philosophy into
Christian thought.
Among the major figures of early Christian literature, only Origen,
Nemesius of Emesa, and pseudo-Dionysius present systems of thought, which
can truly be defined as Christian versions of Greek philosophy. Others,
including even such system-builders as Gregory of Nyssa and Maximus the
Confessor, in spite of their obvious philosophical mentality, stand too
fundamentally in opposition to pagan Hellenism on the basic issues of
creation and freedom to qualify as Greek philosophers. Origen and
pseudo-Dionysius suffered quite a distinct posthumous fate, which will be
discussed later, but the influence of Nemesius and of his Platonic
anthropological "system" was so limited in Byzantium, in contrast to its
widespread impact on Western Medieval thought, that the Latin translation of
his work Peri physeos anthropou (De natura hominis) was attributed to