Life Z

Revelation does not tell us how long the blissful life of the first people in paradise lasted. But this state already aroused the evil envy of the devil, who, having lost it himself, looked with hatred at the bliss of others. After the fall of the devil, envy and thirst for evil became characteristics of his being. All goodness, peace, order, innocence, obedience became hateful to him, therefore, from the very first day of man’s appearance, the devil strives to dissolve man’s grace-filled union with God and drag man along with him into eternal destruction.

And so, in paradise the tempter appeared - in the form of a serpent, who " was more cunning than all the beasts of the field" (Genesis 3:1). At this time, Eve was near the forbidden tree. An evil and insidious spirit, having entered the serpent, approached her wife and said to her: " Is it true that God said: You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?" (Genesis 3:1). This question contained an insidious lie, which should have immediately pushed the interlocutor away from the tempter. But she, in her innocence, was not able to immediately understand the insidiousness here and at the same time was too curious to immediately stop the conversation. However, the wife understood the lie of the question and answered that God allowed them to eat from all the trees except one, which is in the middle of paradise, because they could die from eating the fruits of this tree. Then the tempter aroused distrust of God in the wife . He tells her: " No, you will not die, but God knows that on the day you eat them, your eyes will be opened and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil."(Genesis 3:4-5). The insidious word sank deep into the woman’s soul. It aroused a number of doubts and mental struggle. What is good and evil that she can recognize? And if people are blissful in their present state, then in what bliss will they be when they become like gods? In anxious excitement, the wife turns her gaze to the forbidden tree, and it is so pleasant to the eye, probably the fruits are sweet to the taste and especially tempting due to their mysterious properties. This external impression resolved the internal struggle, and the woman " she took of its fruit and ate, and gave it also to her husband, and he ate"(Gen. 3:6).

The greatest revolution in the history of mankind has taken place - people violated the commandment of God. Those who were supposed to serve as the pure source of the entire human race poisoned themselves with the fruits of death. The wife obeyed the serpent-tempter, and the husband followed his wife, who, from being seduced, immediately became a temptress. The consequences of the first people’s violation of God’s commandments were not slow to be felt: their eyes, indeed, were opened, as the tempter promised, and the forbidden fruit gave them knowledge. But what did they learn? They found out that they were naked. Seeing their nakedness, they made themselves aprons from leaves. They were now afraid to appear before God, to whom they had previously strived with great joy. Horror seized Adam and his wife, and they hid from the Lord in the trees of paradise. But the loving Lord calls Adam to himself: “[Adam], where are you"(Genesis 3:9). With this question the Lord asks not about where Adam is, but in what state he is. The Lord calls Adam to repentance, gives him the opportunity to bring sincere repentance. But sin has already darkened the spiritual powers of man, and the calling voice of the Lord evokes in Adam only a desire to justify himself. Adam answered the Lord with trepidation from the thicket of trees: “ I heard Your voice in paradise and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself." (Gen. 3:10) - " Who told you that you are naked? have you not eaten from the tree from which I forbade you to eat?" (Gen. 3:11). The Lord asked the question directly, but the sinner was not able to answer it just as directly. He gave an evasive answer: " The wife whom You gave me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate"(Gen. 3:12). Adam blames his wife and even God Himself. The Lord turned to his wife: " What did you do??" The wife follows Adam's example and deflects the blame: " The serpent seduced me and I ate" (Gen. 3:13). The wife told the truth, but the fact that they both tried to justify themselves before the Lord was a lie.

Then the Lord pronounced His righteous judgment. The serpent was cursed by the Lord in front of all the animals. He is destined for the miserable life of a reptile on his own belly and feeding on the dust of the earth. The wife is condemned to submission to her husband and to severe suffering and illness during the birth of children. Addressing Adam, the Lord said that for his disobedience the land that feeds him would be cursed. " It will produce thorns and thistles for you... by the sweat of your brow you will eat bread until you return to the ground from which you were taken, for dust you are and to dust you will return."(Gen. 3:18-19).

The punishment for breaking God's commandment was terrible. But the merciful Lord did not leave the primitive people without consolation. He then made a promise that was supposed to support them in the days of subsequent trials and tribulations of a sinful life. This is the promise "of the seed of the woman." The Lord promises people that a Savior will be born from a woman, who will crush the head of the serpent and reconcile man with God.

This was the first promise of the Savior of the world. In honor of His future coming, animal sacrifice was established, the slaughter of which was supposed to foreshadow the Great Lamb for the sins of the world.

Inspired by the hope of the coming of the Redeemer, Adam and Eve, at the command of God, left the boundaries of paradise.

20) After the founding of his church by the Lord, Jesus Christ, as a visible instrument for the salvation and sanctification of man, he established sacred rites called sacraments. It is through the church sacraments that the old man is put off and clothed with the new.

The sanctification of a person in the church can be accomplished in numerous ways. Worship, divine rites, prayers, and various services serve, to a certain extent, as conductors of spiritual grace. However, among all these means, the Church recognizes some special sacred rites, which bear the term sacraments, as more perfect and effective weapons of sanctification. “God, who promised to be with us until the century,” says the Letter of the Eastern Patriarchs, “although he remains with us under other forms of grace and sacred benefits, however... communicates with us in a special way, is present and unites with us through the sacred sacraments.”

Orthodoxy (tracing paper from the Greek ὀρθοδοξία - literally “correct judgment”, “correct teaching” or “correct glorification”) is a direction in Christianity that took shape in the east of the Roman Empire during the 1st millennium AD. e. under the leadership and with the main role of the department of the Bishop of Constantinople - New Rome. Orthodoxy professes the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed and recognizes the decrees of the seven Ecumenical Councils. Includes the totality of teachings and spiritual practices contained in the Orthodox Church, which is understood as a community of autocephalous local churches that have Eucharistic communion with each other. The founder of the Orthodox Church is considered to be Andrew the First-Called (he founded the church in Byzantium in 37). In addition, in modern Russian vernacular the word “Orthodoxy” is used in relation to anything related to the ethnocultural tradition associated with the Russian Orthodox Church

Sacrament (Greek. mysterion - secret, sacrament) - sacred actions in which the invisible grace of God is communicated to believers in a visible way.

The word "Sacrament" has in the Holy Scriptures multiple values.

1. A deep, intimate thought, thing, or action.

2. Divine economy of salvation of the human race, which is portrayed as a mystery, incomprehensible to anyone, even to the Angels.

3. Special action of God's Providence in relation to believers, due to which the invisible grace of God incomprehensibly communicated to them in visible.

When applied to church ceremonies, the word Sacrament embraces the first, second, and third concepts.

In the broad sense of the word, everything performed in the Church is a Sacrament: “Everything in the Church is a holy sacrament. Every sacred ceremony is a holy sacrament. - And even the most insignificant? “Yes, each of them is deep and saving, like the mystery of the Church itself, for even the most “insignificant” sacred action in the Theanthropic organism of the Church is in an organic, living connection with the entire mystery of the Church and the God-Man Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ” (Archim. Justin (Popovich )).

As noted by Rev. John Meyendorff: “In the patristic era there was not even a special term to designate “sacraments” as a special category of church acts: the term misterion was used at first in the broader and more general sense of “the mystery of salvation,” and only in the second auxiliary sense was it used to designate private actions that bestow salvation,” that is, the Sacraments themselves. Thus, by the word sacrament the Holy Fathers understood everything that relates to the Divine economy of our salvation.

But the tradition that began to take shape in Orthodox theological schools starting from the 15th century distinguishes from the numerous grace-filled sacred rites the seven Sacraments themselves: Baptism, Confirmation, Communion, Repentance, Priesthood, Marriage, Blessing of Anointing «.

All seven Sacraments share the following necessary signs:

1) divine establishment;

2) invisible grace taught in the Sacrament;

3) visible image (following) of its completion.

External actions (“visible image”) in the Sacraments do not have meaning in themselves. They are intended for a person approaching the Sacrament, since by his nature he needs visible means to perceive the invisible power of God.

Directly The Gospel mentions three Sacraments(Baptism, Communion and Repentance). Indications about the divine origin of other Sacraments can be found in the book of Acts, in the Apostolic Epistles, as well as in the works of the apostolic men and teachers of the Church of the first centuries of Christianity (St. Justin Martyr, St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, St. Cyprian and etc.).

In each Sacrament, a certain gift of grace is communicated to the Christian believer.

1. B Sacrament of Baptism a person is given grace that frees him from his previous sins and sanctifies him.

2. B Sacrament of Confirmation the believer, when parts of the body are anointed with Holy Myrrh, is given grace, putting him on the path of spiritual life.

3. B Sacrament of Penance he who confesses his sins, with a visible expression of forgiveness from the priest, receives grace that frees him from his sins.

4. B The Sacrament of Communion (Eucharist) the believer receives the grace of deification through union with Christ.

5. B The Sacrament of Anointing when anointing the body with oil (oil), the sick person is given the grace of God, healing mental and physical infirmities.

6. B Sacrament of Marriage spouses are given grace that sanctifies their union (in the image of the spiritual union of Christ with the Church), as well as the birth and Christian upbringing of children.

7. B Sacrament of Priesthood Through hierarchical ordination (ordination), the rightly chosen one from among the believers is given the grace to perform the Sacraments and shepherd the flock of Christ.

The sacraments of the Orthodox Church are divided into:

1) unique- Baptism, Confirmation, Priesthood;

2) repeatable- Repentance, Communion, Blessing of Anointing and, under certain conditions, Marriage.

In addition, the Sacraments are divided into two more categories:

1) mandatory for all Christians - Baptism, Confirmation, Repentance, Communion and Blessing of Anointing;

2) optional for everyone - Marriage and Priesthood.

Performers of the Sacraments. It is obvious from the very definition of the Sacrament that the “invisible grace of God” can only be given by the Lord. Therefore, speaking about all the Sacraments, it is necessary to recognize that their Performer is God. But the co-workers of the Lord, the people to whom He Himself has granted the right to perform the Sacraments, are the properly appointed bishops and priests of the Orthodox Church. We find the basis for this in the letter of the Apostle Paul: So, everyone should understand us as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God(1 Cor. 4; 1).

22) Man was originally conceived by God as an immortal being: “God created man incorruptible; he created him in the image of His own nature,” but “through the envy of the devil, death entered the world: and those who belong to his inheritance experience it.” Adam and Eve could live forever and happily in Paradise, in which everything was permissible, except for one thing, which God warned them about, pointing to the tree of knowledge: “in the day that you eat from it, you will die.” We all know how this story ended, and when “the eyes of both of them were opened,” God brought down his wrath on them and said: “By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread until you return to the land from which you were taken, for dust you are and to dust you will return" they were expelled from heaven and became mortal. The very first death on Earth, as narrated in the Bible, was the death of Abel, who died at the hands of his brother Cain. Thus death entered the world. This moment is depicted in William Blake's famous painting "Adam and Eve at the Body of Abel."

Further, in the Old Testament, the prophets interpret death as the destruction of the possibility of any action, including for the glory of God. But, nevertheless, the words of the Old Testament prophets speak of the resurrection - in the book of Isaiah (26, 19), in the book of Job (19, 25) and in Ezekiel (37, 9-14). Daniel says that “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth will awaken, some to eternal life, others to everlasting reproach and disgrace” (12:2).

Attitudes towards death changed with the advent of Christianity. In Christianity, the understanding of the meaning of life, death and immortality comes from the Old Testament position: “The day of death is better than the day of birth” and the New Testament commandment of Christ “... I have the keys to hell and heaven.” On the one hand, death is an eternal punishment that each of us is forced to bear for a sin we once committed. But on the other hand, death is the liberation of a person from the shackles of a mortal body, from the vale of earthly sorrows, releasing his eternal soul to freedom. “Let us begin to tremble not before death, but before sin; it was not death that gave birth to sin, but sin that produced death, and death became the healing of sin” (36, 739). A person becomes immortal - the path to immortality is opened by the atoning sacrifice of Christ through the cross and resurrection.

Earthly life, full of sorrows and sorrows, is not highly valued in Christianity, but it is precisely this that prepares a person for eternal life. The idea of ​​the immortality of the soul and resurrection fills the life of a Christian with high meaning and gives him the strength to overcome incredible difficulties. Since a short human life is just a preparation for life beyond the grave, a true Christian must always “be sober” - “be prepared: for at an hour you do not think, the Son of Man will come.”

The immortality of the soul became a dogma at the Council of Nicea in 325, when, when approving the creed, the dogma of eternal life was included in it.

The ancient Christian Gnostic Church as a whole did not reject the idea of ​​​​transmigration of souls - at least it was tolerant of it, but in 553, at the Second Council of Constantinople, it was decided: “Whoever will defend the mythical doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul and the absurd assumption that follows from it her return is anathema.”

Christianity says both that the fear of death is natural and necessary for man, and that “The first definite sign that the life of God has begun to act in us will be our freedom from the feeling of death and its fear. A person living in God experiences a deep feeling that he is stronger than death, that he has come out of its clutches. Even when dying, he will not feel this - on the contrary, he will have a strong feeling of unceasing life in God” (Christian philosopher O. Matta el-Meskin.) Stop crying about death and cry about your sins in order to atone for them and enter Eternal Life (36, 75). (Christian), you are a warrior and constantly stand in the ranks, and a warrior who is afraid of death will never do anything valiant (36, 77).

Archbishop of Tauride and Kherson Innocent writes: “those who were at the death of the righteous people saw that they did not die, but seemed to fall asleep and leave in peace somewhere from us. On the contrary, the death of sinners is painful. The righteous have faith and hope, the sinners have fear and despair.” In the figurative expression of one of the hierarchs: “A dying man is a setting star, the dawn of which is already shining over another world.”

After death, the soul leaves the body, without interrupting its existence for a second, and continues to live the fullness of life that it began to live on earth. But already without a body. But with all the thoughts and feelings, with all the virtues and vices, advantages and disadvantages that were characteristic of her on earth. “The life of the soul beyond the grave is a natural continuation and consequence of its life on earth,” writes Archbishop Anthony of Geneva. “If a person was a true Christian during his life (kept the commandments, attended Church, prayed), then the soul will feel the presence of God and find peace. If the person was a great sinner, then his soul will yearn for God, it will be tormented by the desires to which it is accustomed the flesh, since it will be impossible to satisfy them, will suffer from the proximity of evil spirits.”

The soul, having left the body, is capable of reasoning, perceiving, realizing, but it is deprived of a shell and therefore cannot perform actions, it will no longer be able to change something, acquire something that it did not have while in the body. “There is no repentance beyond the grave. The soul lives there and develops in the direction that it began on earth,” writes Anthony of Geneva.

Archimandrite Cyprian writes: “Besides the torment and power of hell, something else confuses us in death: this is the uncertainty of our life. With the moment of bodily death there will be no break for the soul: the soul, as it lived until the last minute of earthly life, will continue to live until The Last Judgment. (...) In Orthodoxy there is no death, for death is only a narrow boundary between life here and death in the next century, death is only a temporary separation of soul and body. There is no death for anyone, for Christ has risen for everyone. There is eternity , eternal peace and eternal memory with God and in God."

After a person dies, his soul leaves the body. Having become free, the soul acquires something else - spiritual vision. She is able to communicate with the world of light spirits - angels, and dark spirits - demons, as well as with other souls. The soul after death is not at complete rest, but continues to develop. And the further development of the soul, according to the Church, will depend on which direction it will go at the moment of death: towards Light or Darkness. This is why the Church values ​​the sacrament of repentance so highly, especially before death, thanks to which a person, even in the last minutes of his life, can change a lot, if, of course, the repentance was sincere and complete. According to the Church, after death the soul is relatively free for two more days and remains near the body, then, on the third day, after the body is buried, it passes into another world.

When passing to the afterlife, the soul must meet evil spirits and pass their test. Before Jesus died, he said, “Now the prince of this world comes, but he has nothing in Me.” In this case, the Church advises not to give in to fear, but to trust in God, remembering that the fate of the soul is determined not by evil spirits, but by God. “If we have fear, we will not pass freely past the ruler of this world,” says Archimandrite Seraphim Rose. So, the soul makes a certain journey after death and approaches the throne of the Last Judgment not the same as it left the body. This period of growth is necessary, according to one of the saints, since “... she cannot bear the light that reigns there.” In the end, the Last Judgment will take place: “For the Son of Man will come in the glory of His Father with His angels, and then He will reward everyone according to his deeds.” Not all sinners face the same fate - the unrepentant and great will go to hell, while others can hope for God's mercy and eternal life. The Church believes that the prayers of the Church, as well as the prayers of family and friends, can help a sinful soul.

23)Private court

Are all the dead in the same place and in the same condition? The Orthodox Church testifies that after death a private judgment is carried out on the soul and it is sent to the place prepared for it to await the Last Judgment, which will be at the end of the world. The fate of the soul is determined after passing through the ordeal. The reality of private judgment is also revealed in the Holy Scriptures: “It is easy for the Lord to reward a person on the day of death according to his deeds... and at the death of a person his deeds are revealed” (Sir. 11:26-27). The Apostle Paul says: “...it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment” (Heb. 9:27). The parable of the rich man and Lazarus also indicates that after death there is immediately a known decision of fate, depending on the deeds of the deceased - hence, judgment.

Holy Scripture does not reveal how or when private judgment occurs. After meeting the other world, on the fortieth day, the soul is taken to the monastery where it will now be destined to live. A private trial, unlike the Last Judgment, does not take place solemnly and not in front of the whole world. A “sentence” is passed on a soul separated from the body, whereas at the Last Judgment this “sentence” will be passed on a soul united with a renewed body. A private court aims to determine the fate of the soul not for the whole of Eternity, like the Last Judgment, but only until the general resurrection. Therefore, retribution after a private trial is incomplete and incomplete. The final and already unchangeable decision will be made at the Last Judgment.

Souls separated from their bodies, after a private trial, move on to either joy or sorrow. They begin to live by different laws. The soul in the afterlife, until the general resurrection, does not have independence, in the sense that it cannot itself change its fate and therefore needs the prayerful help of the people remaining on earth. According to the teachings of the Church, a sinful soul can be cleansed and move to the Heavenly abodes through the intercession of Christians praying for it, both living and those in the Kingdom of Heaven. There are many stories in hagiographic literature about how useful prayer is for souls who have moved to the afterlife. So, in the life of St. Macarius of Egypt mentions such a case. One day the monk, walking through the desert, stopped and picked up a human skull (it turned out that it had once been the head of a pagan priest), who told him that through the prayers of the monk, even pagans receive relief from suffering. Therefore, our prayer and diligent offering of alms for the souls of the dead are of invaluable importance. Remembering our ancestors also gives us hope that our sinful souls will not be forgotten by our descendants.

“Imagine how the soul will be seized with trembling until the determination is made over it. This time is a time of sorrow, a time of uncertainty. The holy forces will stand face to face against hostile forces, presenting the good deeds of the soul in contrast to the sins presented by the enemies. Imagine what fear and trembling torment a soul that is in the midst of these opposing forces, until the judgment over it is decided by the Righteous Judge! If the soul turns out to be worthy of God’s mercy, then the demons are put to shame, and the Angels accept it. Then the soul will calm down and will live in joy, for, according to Scripture, “Thy dwellings are desired, O Lord of hosts!” (Ps. 83:2). Then the words will be fulfilled that there is no longer any illness, no sorrow, no sighing. Then the liberated soul ascends into that unspeakable joy and glory in which it resides. If the soul is caught in a careless life, it will hear a terrible voice: let the wicked be taken, let him not see the glory of the Lord! Then a day of wrath will come upon her, a day of sorrow, a day of darkness and gloom. Consigned to utter darkness and condemned to eternal fire, she will endure punishment for endless ages... If so, then how holy and pious our life should be! What love we must acquire! What should be our treatment of our neighbors, what should be our behavior, what should be diligence, what should be prayer, what should be constancy. “As you look forward to this,” says the apostle, “be diligent to appear before Him undefiled and blameless in peace” (2 Pet. 3:14), so that we may be worthy to hear the voice of the Lord saying: “Come, you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from creation of the world" (Matthew 25:34) forever and ever" (St. Theophilus of Antioch).

The afterlife of sinners and righteous people
And these (sinners) will go away into eternal torment, and the righteous into eternal life.
Matt. 25, 46

When a person enters eternity, the form of his existence changes. The material shell dies off, and the soul already lives according to spiritual laws. Nothing material is any longer an obstacle to him. Now the past is visible to him as the present, and the future is not as hidden as before, and for him there are no longer hours, days, or years, no distances - neither small nor large. What does he see and feel?

The revealed eternity strikes him with inexpressible horror; its infinity absorbs his limited being; all his thoughts and feelings are lost in infinity. He sees phenomena for which we have neither images nor names; hears what cannot be depicted on earth by any voice or sound; his contemplations and sensations cannot be expressed by us in any words. He finds light and darkness, but an unearthly light, before which our bright sun would shine no less than a candle before the sun; a darkness before which our darkest night would be clearer than day. He meets creatures similar to himself there and recognizes in them people who have departed from the world.

But what a change! These are no longer local faces and not earthly bodies: these are only souls, fully revealed with all their internal properties, which clothe them with images corresponding to themselves. By these images, souls recognize each other, and through the power of feeling they recognize those with whom they became close in this life. The soul sees and, of course, recognizes terrible demons.

Further, the soul sees an endless sea of ​​incomprehensible light, in which even more powerful beings live: their nature and life are one immeasurable good, indescribable perfection, inexpressible love; Divine light fills their entire being and accompanies every movement...

So, in this wonderful light, the spirit of a person with the irresistible force of attraction of the world akin to it flies to that place, or, better to say, to the extent to which its spiritual powers allow it to be reached, and the whole is reborn. Is this the same spirit that lived in man on earth, a spirit limited and bound by the flesh, completely serving the flesh and enslaved by it in such a way that, apparently, it could not live or develop without a body! Now what happened to him? Now everything - both good and bad - is quickly revealed, with uncontrollable force. His thoughts and feelings, moral character, passions, aspirations of the will - all this develops in immense proportions. He himself can neither stop them, nor change them, nor defeat them. His shortcomings and weaknesses turn into great evil; his sorrows turn into boundless suffering.

The soul that suppresses and hides evil on earth will appear there as evil to infinity. A bad feeling, otherwise restrained here, if not eradicated by repentance, will turn into fury there. If you control yourself here, you won’t be able to do anything with yourself there: everything will go there with you and develop into infinity...

The human soul, detaching itself from the body, continues to develop in itself with repeated force the qualities that it acquired in earthly life...

It’s scary to think what will happen to a soul that has already sowed and nurtured the seed of malice and hatred on earth. The endlessly progressing evil within herself will become the source of her suffering.

But what about the good soul, what will happen to it?

The Orthodox Church teaches about the state of souls before the general resurrection: “We believe that the souls of the dead are blissful or tormented according to their deeds. Having been separated from the body, they immediately move on either to joy or to sadness and sorrow. However, they do not feel either perfect bliss or perfect torment, for everyone will receive perfect bliss or perfect torment after the general resurrection, when the soul is united with the body in which it lived virtuously or viciously.”

Will we still have the memory of our earthly life, and will we still have faith and hope? It must be borne in mind that immediately after death a person is in an intermediate state and does not have a body. But the picture from the Apocalypse (Rev. 6:9-11), which describes how the souls of the murdered cry out to God for vengeance under the altar, testifies to the fact that they retained the memory of the land they left behind. They remember the atrocities committed against them on earth. The rich man from the parable (Luke 16:28) remembered that he had five brothers left on earth, and asked to take care of their souls. Many will tell Christ “on that day” - on the day of meeting Him in another world - that in His name they prophesied, cast out demons and performed miracles (Matthew 7:22), and this speaks of their memory. Those redeemed from the earth sing a new song in heaven, which no one could learn except them (Rev. 14:3); also those who defeated the beast, his image, mark and number of his name, stand on the sea of ​​glass and sing the song of Moses and the Lamb (Rev. 15:1-3).

As for faith and hope, saving faith will disappear (2 Cor. 5:7), but faith as trust in God will remain (1 Cor. 13:13). And hope in the sense of waiting for the resurrection will also remain, because we hope to inherit glory in the Kingdom of God. Will we recognize each other in the afterlife? We will not only know, but also rejoice in fellowship and glorification of God together. We are created for communication, and the hope of seeing family and friends in another world is a completely natural, genuine human desire. Jesus himself describes heavenly joy, using the symbol of a feast, where everyone will “recline” at the same meal with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (Matthew 8:11): for the Jews who then listened to him, it was a great joy to be with their great ancestors , the firstfruits of the chosen people. In heaven we will see all the Old Testament heroes of the faith, the New Testament saints, our family and friends, and we will all recognize each other.

24)Air ordeals- in Orthodoxy, obstacles through which every soul must pass on the way to the throne of God for private judgment.

Two angels lead the soul along this path. Each of the ordeals, of which there are 20, is controlled by demons - unclean spirits who are trying to take the soul going through the ordeal to hell. Demons provide a list of sins related to a given ordeal (a list of acts of telling lies at the ordeal of lies, etc.), and angels provide good deeds committed by the soul during life. If good deeds outweigh evil ones, the soul passes to the next test. If the number of evil deeds exceeds good ones, and the angels have nothing to show to justify the soul, demons take the soul to hell. When the angels present good deeds for the justification of the soul and the evil spirits remember the same number of sins for its condemnation and there is balance, then God’s love for mankind wins. The same mercy of God sometimes makes up for the lack of good deeds against the preponderance of evil ones. The list of good deeds is kept by a guardian angel, which is given to every person at baptism; the list of sins is kept by a demon sent by Satan to every soul in order to lead a person to sin.

Elder Paisiy Svyatogorets describes what happens to a person during the ordeal:

Angels identify the children of God, take them with love and without fear lead them through the airy ordeals, and lead them to a tenderly loving Father, God.

In one of his letters, he clarifies that the criterion by which angels recognize the “children of God” and carry through the aerial ordeals without delay is love and humility.

Ephraim of Philotheus claims that the virtue of obedience is important when going through ordeals:

The good novice gets to the Throne of God by express train. He doesn’t even stop at the ordeal. They retreat far from his path because they have nothing to cling to in it.

On the other hand, Seraphim Rose, considering the ordeals to be real (not allegories), points out that some elements of their descriptions are metaphorical:

“This is a metaphor that the Eastern Fathers found appropriate to describe the reality that the soul faces after death. It is also obvious to everyone that some elements in the descriptions of these ordeals are metaphorical or figurative. But these stories themselves are not allegories or fables, but true stories about personal experience, presented in the language most convenient for the storyteller.”

The doctrine of ordeals is part of ascetic teaching and speaks of the final and decisive stage of the “invisible war” that a Christian wages on earth, when the demons who have tempted him all his life, at the end of it, launch their final attack, but have power only over those who I have not labored enough in the invisible battle in my life.

As Professor Osipov explains:

“At ordeals passions are laid bare. After death, when the flesh is cast off, the action of the passions is revealed in full force.<…>A person who did not struggle with passion during life, surrendered to it, in the face of a loving God and all the good that is associated with God, falls because he cannot give up passion.<…>as the Holy Fathers say, like is united with like, demons preside over every sin. The human soul is united with the corresponding spirit, that is, passion, which dominates in it.”

O. Daniil Sysoev, speaking about martyrdom:

“And if anything happens, go straight to heaven and without ordeal.”

Mentions and stories about ordeals are found

· in church services,

· in the ascetic works of the Holy Fathers and

· in the lives of saints.

The doctrine of posthumous ordeals of the soul is contained in the works of church writers of the 4th-5th centuries - John Chrysostom, Ephraim the Syrian, Macarius the Great, Cyril of Alexandria, etc. In the Russian church, the doctrine of ordeals was examined in detail and defended by Ignatius (Brianchaninov), Theophan the Recluse, Metropolitan Macarius of Moscow ,John of Kronstadt, John of Shanghai and San Francisco, Mikhail Pomazansky and many other teachers and theologians. The greatest emphasis was placed on it in the Serbian Church, where it occupies a place of honor in the third volume of Justin Popović's Dogmatic Theology.

Ignatius Brianchaninov quotes the words of one of the ancient Egyptian fathers, who teaches that it is necessary to “pray to God that He will grant the soul, upon its departure from the body, to pass harmlessly through the ordeals of the air and to be preserved from the air demons.”

Elder Joseph the Hesychast taught Archimandrite Ephraim of Philotheus and other monks and novices of his monastery about ordeals as a well-known reality.

25) In this chapter, the subject of our attention will not be the mental and sensory paradise described by the Old Testament, but mainly heaven and hell in the teaching of Christ and the holy apostles.

Heaven is spoken of in three places in the New Testament. The first place is the promise of Christ given to the thief crucified with Him: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). The paradise that Christ speaks of is the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God and heaven, which is very typical, are identified. The thief asks Christ: “Remember me, Lord, when You come into Your Kingdom!” (Luke 23:42) - and Christ promises him entry into heaven. The interpretation of Blessed Theophylact in this place is noteworthy: “For although the thief is already in paradise, or in the kingdom, and not only he, but also all those numbered by Paul, yet he does not enjoy the complete possession of goods” [ 1 ].

The second passage that speaks of heaven is found in the Epistle of the Apostle Paul; it is connected with his personal experience: “And I know about such a man (I just don’t know - in the body or out of the body: God knows) that he was caught up into paradise and heard unspeakable words, which it is impossible for a man to utter” (2 Cor. 12 , 3-4).

Interpreting this passage, the Monk Nicodemus the Svyatogorets says that “paradise is a Persian word meaning a garden planted with various trees...” At the same time, he says that the “rapture” of the Apostle Paul into paradise, according to some interpreters, means that "he was initiated into the mysterious and ineffable words about paradise, which are hidden from us to this day." As St. Maximus the Confessor says, during his contemplation the Apostle Paul ascended to the third heaven, that is, he passed through “three heavens” - active wisdom, natural contemplation and occult theology, which is the third heaven - and from there he was caught up into paradise. Thus he was initiated into the mystery of what the two trees were - the tree of life, which grew in the middle of paradise, and the tree of knowledge, into the mystery of who the cherub was and what the fiery sword with which he guarded the entrance to Eden was, and also into all the other great truths presented in the Old Testament [ 2 ].

The third place is in the Revelation of John. Among other things, the Bishop of Ephesus is told: “To him who overcomes I will give to eat from the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God” (Rev. 2:7). According to St. Andrew of Caesarea, the tree of life allegorically means eternal life. That is, God gives a promise to “participate in the blessings of the next century” [ 3 ]. And according to the interpretation of Aretha of Caesarea, “paradise is a blessed and eternal life” [ 4 ].

Therefore, heaven, eternal life and the Kingdom of Heaven are one and the same reality. We will not now delve into the analysis of the relationship between the concept of “paradise” and the concepts of “Kingdom of God” and “Kingdom of Heaven”. The main thing is obvious: heaven is eternal life in communion and unity with the Trinity God.

The word "hell" (Greek κολασε - torment) comes from the verb κολαζο and has two meanings. The first meaning is “to trim the branches of a tree”, the second is “to punish”. This word in Holy Scripture is used mainly in the second meaning. Moreover, in the sense that it is not God who punishes man, but man himself who punishes himself, because he does not accept the gift of God. Severance of communication with God is punishment, especially if we remember that man was created in the image and likeness of God, and this is precisely the deepest meaning of his existence.

Two passages of Scripture clearly speak of hell.

One of them is in the Gospel text, where Christ speaks about the future Judgment. Christ said: “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matthew 25:46). If this verse is connected with the previous one, “Depart from Me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41), then it becomes clear that hell is identified here with eternal fire, which is prepared not for man, but for the devil and his angels.

The second place in Holy Scripture that contains the word hell is in the letter of the Evangelist John: “Perfect love casts out fear, because in fear there is torment (κολασε). He who fears is imperfect in love” (1 John 4:18). Of course, here we are talking about hell not as a way of existence for sinners after the Second Coming of Christ, but as a state of torment that is alien to love and therefore associated with fear.

In addition, the state of hell is conveyed in the Holy Scriptures by the following words and expressions: “eternal fire” (Matthew 25:41), “outer darkness” (Matthew 25:30), “fiery hell” (Matthew 5:22) and etc. However, the analysis of these expressions is not our task now. We will return to them in another chapter, when we consider the conclusions that should be drawn from the teaching of the Church and the Holy Fathers about heaven and hell.

26)Second Coming of Christ- an event expected in most Christian churches, foreshadowed in the New Testament. One of the dogmatic provisions of the Church, recorded in the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, in its 7th member:

27) There will be a time when the Antichrist will reign on earth. His power will continue until the Day of Judgment, when the Second Coming of the Lord, the Judge of the living and the dead, will take place on earth. The second coming will be sudden. “As lightning comes from the east and appears to the west, so will be the coming of the Son of Man” (Matthew 24:27). “The honorable Cross will first appear at the Second Coming of Christ, as the honest, life-giving, venerable and holy scepter of the King Christ, according to the word of the Lord, who says that the sign of the Son of Man will appear in heaven (Matthew 24:30)” (Rev. Ephraim the Syrian). The Lord will abolish the Antichrist by the appearance of His coming. In the Holy Scriptures, the Savior spoke about the purpose of His coming to earth - about eternal life: “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life” (John 3:15-16 ).

The general resurrection of the dead is also spoken of in the eleventh article of the Creed. The resurrection of the dead, which we expect (expect), will follow simultaneously with the Second Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and will consist in the fact that the bodies of all the dead will unite with their souls and come to life. After the general resurrection, the bodies of the dead will change: in quality they will be different from the current bodies - they will be spiritual, incorruptible and immortal. Matter will change into a new state unknown to us and will have completely different properties than it does now.

The bodies of those people who will still be alive at the Second Coming of the Savior will also change. The Apostle Paul says: “A natural body is sown, a spiritual body is raised... we will not all die, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet: for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we (the survivors) will be changed.” (Shor. 15, 44, 51, 52). We cannot explain this future change in the living for ourselves, since it is a mystery, incomprehensible due to the poverty and limitations of our carnal concepts. According to the change of man himself, the entire visible world will change: from the corruptible it will turn into the imperishable.

Many may ask: “How can the dead be raised when the bodies of the dead turn to dust and are destroyed?” The Lord has already answered this question in the Holy Scriptures, figuratively showing the prophet Ezekiel the secret of the resurrection from the dead. He had a vision of a field strewn with dry human bones. From these bones, according to God’s word spoken by the Son of Man, human structures were formed in the same way as they were during the primitive creation of man, then they were revived by the Spirit. According to the word of the Lord, spoken by the prophet, first there was a movement in the bones, bone to bone began to connect, each in its place; then they were connected by veins, clothed with flesh and covered with skin. Finally, according to the second voice of God, the Spirit of life entered into them - and they all came to life, stood on their feet and formed a great multitude of people (Ezek. 37:1-10).

The resurrected bodies of the dead will be incorruptible and immortal, beautiful and luminous, strong and strong (they will not be susceptible to disease). The transformation of the living at the last day will be accomplished as quickly as the resurrection of the dead. The change of the living will consist in the same thing as the resurrection of the dead: our present bodies, corruptible and dead, will be transformed into incorruptible and immortal. God did not condemn us to death in order to destroy His creation, but in order to change it and make it capable of a future incorruptible life.

“At the voice of the Lord all the dead will rise. Nothing is difficult for God, and we must believe His promise, although it seems impossible to human weakness and human reason. How God, taking dust and earth, created as if some other nature, namely, a bodily nature, not like the earth, and created many kinds of natures: hair, skin, bones and veins; and how a needle thrown into fire changes color and turns into fire, while the nature of the iron is not destroyed, but remains the same; so on the Resurrection, all members will be resurrected, and, according to what is written, “a hair of your head will not perish” (Luke 21:18), and everything will become light-like, everything will be immersed and transformed into light and fire, but will not melt or will become fire, so that the former nature will no longer exist, as some claim (for Peter will remain Peter, and Paul - Paul, and Philip - Philip); each one, filled with the Spirit, will remain in his own nature and being” (Venerable Macarius of Egypt).

All matter will be renewed for the judgment that will be carried out on its spiritualized representatives - people. This court in Church Tradition is called the Terrible, because at that moment no creature will be able to hide from God’s justice, there will no longer be intercessors and prayer books for sinful souls, the decision made at this Court will never change.

We often hear the festive bell ringing - the bell. It depicts the Archangel's voice, which will sound at the end of the world. Blagovest reminds us of this end. One day, all people will suddenly hear a terrible voice: without any warning it will be heard, and after it - the Last Judgment, which will be solemn and open. The Judge will appear in all His glory with all the holy Angels and will carry out judgment in the face of the whole world - heavenly, earthly and beyond the grave. Two words will decide the fate of all humanity: “Come” or “Go away.” Blessed is whoever hears: “Come”: a joyful life in the Kingdom of God will begin for them.

Meanwhile, this blissful state of the righteous will not be interfered with in the least by their own bodily nature. The bodies after the resurrection will become dispassionate, spirit-like and completely obedient to the spirit. The bodily senses will acquire special sensitivity and will not be an obstacle to seeing God.

Sinners will be rejected from the face of God and will go into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels (cf. Matthew 25:41). These terrible conditions in which sinners will remain are depicted in Revelation under various images, especially under the image of pitch darkness and Gehenna with an undying worm and unquenchable fire (Mark 9, 44, 46, 48). About the undying worm, Saint Basil the Great († 379) put it this way: “It will be some kind of poisonous and carnivorous worm that will devour everything with greed and, never being satisfied with its devouring, will produce unbearable pain.” So, sinners will be given over to external, material fire, which burns both bodies and souls, and to which will be added the burning internal fire of a late awakening conscience. But the most terrible torment for sinners will be their eternal separation from God and His Kingdom.

The decision of the Last Judgment will be holistic - not for the human soul alone, as after a private trial, but for the soul and for the body - for the whole person. This decision will remain unchanged for all forever, and for none of the sinners there will be any possibility of ever being freed from hell. Moreover, the people themselves will clearly see everything they have done and recognize the indisputable righteousness of the Judgment and sentence of God. What will happen next? The last day will come, on which the final judgment of God will be carried out over the whole world, and the end of the world will follow. In the new heaven and new earth, nothing sinful will remain, but only righteousness will live (2 Pet. 2:13). The eternal Kingdom of Glory will open, in which the Lord Jesus Christ, together with the Heavenly Father and the Holy Spirit, will reign forever .

Related information.

In the Bible, often, on almost every page, it says talks about the reality that we usually callwe suffer from sin. Old Testament expressions related toof this reality are numerous; they usually strongly borrowed from human relationships: omission, lawlessness, rebellion, injustice, etc.; Judaism adds to this "debt" (in the sense debt), and this expression also applies in the New Testament; in an even more general order, a sinner is represented as one "who does evil in the sight of God's"; “righteous” (“saddiq”) is usually contrasted with “evil” (“rasha”). But true nature sin with its wickedness and in all its breadth appears primarily through biblical history; from her we also learn that this revelation about man is at the same time a revelation about God, about His love, which sin resists, and about His mercy, which is manifesteddue to sin; for the history of salvation is nothing else,like the story of God’s tirelessly repeated Creationthe number of attempts to tear a person away from his attachment aversion to sin. Among all the stories of the Old Testament, the story of sin the fall with which the history of mankind opens, already presents a teaching that is unusually rich in its own way content. This is where we need to start in order to understand what sin is, although the word itself has not yet been spoken here.

Adam's sin manifests itself essentially as disobedientshaniye, as an action by which a person consciously and deliberately opposes himself to God, shaya one of His commandments (Gen. 3.3); but deeperthis outward act of rebellion in Scripture the internal act from which it happens: Adam and Eve disobeyed becausethat, succumbing to the serpent’s suggestion, they wanted “to be like gods who know good and evil” (3.5), i.e., according to the most common interpretation is to put oneself in the place of God in order to decide what- good and what is evil; taking your opinion for measure, they claim to be the only ones points of your destiny and control yourself yourself at your own discretion; they refuse depend on the One who created them, pervertingt. arr. relationship that unites man with God.

According to Genesis 2, this relationship was not only in dependence, but also in friendship. Unlike the gods mentioned in ancient myths (cf. Gilga mesh), there was nothing that God would refuseman created “in His image and likeness”(Genesis 1.26 ff); He left nothing for Himself one, even life (cf. Wis. 2.23). And so, at the instigation of the serpent, first Eve, then Adam begin to doubt this infinitely generous God. A commandment given by God for the good of man (cf. Rom 7:10), seems to them only a means that God used to protect Their advantages, and added to the warning commandments are just lies: “No, you will not die; but God knows that on the day that you eat of it (the fruit of the tree of knowledge) it will be opened your eyes and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil” (Gen. 3.4 ff.). The man did not trust such a god, who became his rival. The very concept of God turned out to be perverted: the concept of infinitely demon selfish, for perfect, God, having no there is no shortage of anything and can only give, is replaced by the idea of ​​some limited, calculating being, entirely occupied in order to protect himself from his creation. Before pushing a person to commit a crime, sin corrupted his spirit, since his spirit was affected in the very relation to God, whose image man is, it is impossible to imagine a deeper perversion and one cannot be surprised that it entailed such grave consequences.

The relationship between man and God has changed: this is the verdict of conscience. Before being punished in the literal sense of the word (Gen. 3.23), Adam and Eve, previously so close to God (cf. 2.15), hide from his face between the trees (3.8). So, man himself has abandoned God and the responsibility for his offense lies with him; he fled from God, and expulsion from paradise followed as a kind of confirmation of his own decision. At the same time, he had to make sure that the warning was not false: away from God, access to the tree of life is impossible (3.22), and death finally comes into its own. Being the cause of the gap between man and God, sin also creates a gap between members of human society already in paradise within the original couple itself. As soon as the sin is committed, Adam fences himself off, blaming the one whom God gave him as a helper (2.18), as “bone from his bones and flesh from his flesh” (2.23), and this gap in turn is confirmed by punishment: “Your desire is for your husband, and he will rule over you” (3.16). Subsequently, the consequences of this gap extend to the children of Adam: the murder of Abel occurs (4.8), then the reign of violence and the law of the strong, sung by Lamech (4.24). The mystery of evil and sin extends beyond the human world. Between God and man stands a third person, about whom the Old Testament does not speak at all - in all likelihood, so that there is no temptation to consider him a kind of second god - but who, by Wisdom (Wis 2.24), is identified with the Devil or Satan and appears again in the New Testament.

The story of the first sin ends with the promise of some real hope to man. True, the slavery to which he doomed himself, thinking to achieve independence, is in itself final; sin, once entered into the world, can only multiply, and as it grows, life actually suffers, to the point that it completely stops with the flood (6.13 ff). The beginning of the break came from a person; it is clear that the initiative for reconciliation can only come from God. And already in this first narrative, God gives hope that the day will come when He will take upon Himself this initiative (3.15). The goodness of God, which man despised, will ultimately overcome - “he will overcome evil with good” (Rom 12.21). The Book of Wisdom (10.1) specifies that Adam was taken away from his crime." In Gen. It has already been shown that this goodness acts: it saves Noah and his family from general corruption and from punishment for it (Gen. 6.5-8), in order to begin through him, as it were, a new world; in particular, when “from among the nations mixed in the same mind of evil” (Wis. 10.5) she chose Abraham and brought him out of the sinful world (Gen. 12.1), so that “all the families of the earth would be blessed in him” (Gen. 12.2 ff., clearly providing a counterbalance to the curses in 3.14 sll).

The consequences of the Fall for the first man were catastrophic. Not only did he lose the bliss and sweetness of paradise, but the whole nature of man changed and became distorted. Having sinned, he fell away from the natural state and fell into the unnatural (Abba Dorotheos). All parts of his spiritual and physical makeup were damaged: the spirit, instead of striving for God, became spiritual and passionate; the soul fell into the power of bodily instincts; the body, in turn, lost its original lightness and turned into heavy sinful flesh. After the Fall, man became “deaf, blind, naked, insensitive in relation to those (goods) from which he fell, and in addition, became mortal, corruptible and meaningless,” “instead of divine and incorruptible knowledge, he accepted carnal knowledge, for having become blind with his eyes souls... he received his sight with his bodily eyes” (Reverend Simeon the New Theologian). Illness, suffering and sorrow entered human life. He became mortal because he lost the opportunity to eat from the tree of life. Not only man himself, but also the entire world around him changed as a result of the Fall. The original harmony between nature and man is broken - now the elements can be hostile to him, storms, earthquakes, floods can destroy him. The earth will no longer grow all by itself: it must be cultivated “by the sweat of the brow,” and it will bring “thorns and thorns.” Animals also become enemies of man: the serpent will “bite his heel” and other predators will attack him (Gen. 3:14-19). The whole creation is subject to the “slavery of corruption,” and now it, together with man, will “wait for liberation” from this slavery, because it was subjected to vanity not voluntarily, but through the fault of man (Rom. 8:19-21).

Exegetes who interpreted biblical texts related to the Fall sought answers to a number of fundamental questions, for example: is the story of Gen. 3 a description of an event that actually happened, or is the book of Genesis talking only about the permanent state of the human race, designated with the help of symbols? What literary genre does Genesis belong to? 3? Etc. In patristic writing and in studies of later times, three main interpretations of Genesis have emerged. 3.

The literal interpretation was mainly developed by the Antiochene school. It suggests that Gen. 3 depicts events in the same form as they occurred at the dawn of the existence of the human race. Eden was located at a certain geographical point on the Earth (St. John Chrysostom, Conversations on Genesis, 13, 3; Blessed Theodoret of Cyrrhus, Commentary on Genesis, 26; Theodore of Mopsuestia). Some exegetes of this school believed that man was created immortal, while others, in particular Theodore of Mopsuestia, believed that he could receive immortality only by eating from the fruits of the Tree of Life (which is more consistent with the letter of Scripture; see Gen. 3:22). Rationalistic exegesis also accepts a literal interpretation, but it sees in Gen. 3 kind of etiological legend designed to explain human imperfection. These commentators place the biblical story on a par with other ancient etiological myths.

Allegorical interpretation comes in two forms. Supporters of one theory deny the eventful nature of the legend, seeing in it only an allegorical description of the eternal sinfulness of man. This point of view was outlined by Philo of Alexandria and was developed in modern times (Bultmann, Tillich). Supporters of another theory, without denying that behind the behavior of Gen. 3 there is a certain event, decipher its images using the allegorical method of interpretation, according to which the serpent denotes sensuality, Eden - the bliss of contemplating God, Adam - reason, Eve - feeling, the Tree of Life - good without an admixture of evil, the Tree of Knowledge - good mixed with evil , etc. (Origen, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Gregory of Nyssa, Blessed Augustine, St. Ambrose of Milan).

Historical-symbolic interpretation is close to allegorical, but to interpret Holy Scripture it uses a system of symbols that existed in the Ancient East. In accordance with this interpretation, the very essence of the Genesis legend. 3 reflects some spiritual event. The figurative concreteness of the tale of the Fall visually, “icon-like,” depicts the essence of the tragic event: man’s falling away from God in the name of self-will. The symbol of the serpent was not chosen by the writer by chance, but due to the fact that for the Old Testament Church the main temptation was the pagan cults of sex and fertility, which had the snake as their emblem. Exegetes explain the symbol of the Tree of Knowledge in different ways. Some view eating its fruits as an attempt to experience evil in practice (Vysheslavtsev), others explain this symbol as the establishment of ethical standards independently of God (Lagrange). Since the verb “to know” in the Old Testament has the meaning of “to own,” “to be able to,” “to possess” (Gen. 4:1), and the phrase “good and evil” can be translated as “everything in the world,” the image of the Tree of Knowledge is sometimes interpreted as a symbol of power over the world, but such power that asserts itself independently of God, making its source not His will, but the will of man. That is why the serpent promises people that they will be “like gods.” In this case, the main tendency of the Fall should be seen in primitive magic and in the entire magical worldview.

Many exegetes of the patristic period saw in the biblical image of Adam only a specific individual, the first among people, and interpreted the transmission of sin in genetic terms (that is, as a hereditary disease). However, St. Gregory of Nyssa (On the structure of man, 16) and in a number of liturgical texts, Adam is understood as a corporate personality. With this understanding, both the image of God in Adam and the sin of Adam should be attributed to the entire human race as a single spiritual-physical superpersonality. This is confirmed by the words of the saint. Gregory the Theologian, who wrote that “through the crime of eating the whole Adam fell” (Mysterious Hymns, 8), and the words of the service speaking about the coming of Christ to save Adam. A dissenting opinion was held by those who, following Pelagius, believed that the Fall was only the personal sin of the first man, and all his descendants sin only of their own free will. Words of Genesis. 3:17 about the curse of the earth was often understood in the sense that imperfection entered into nature as a result of the Fall of man. At the same time, they referred to the Apostle Paul, who taught that the Fall entailed death (Rom. 5:12). However, the Bible itself’s indications of the serpent as the beginning of evil in creation made it possible to affirm the prehuman origin of imperfection, evil, and death. According to this view, man was involved in an already existing sphere of evil.

In the New Testament sin occupies no less space than in this Testament, and especially that the fullness of the revelation about done by the love of God for the victory over sin makes it possible to discern the true meaning of sin and at the same time its place in the general plan of God Wisdom.

The creed of the Synoptic Gospels from the very beginning The beginning represents Jesus among sinners. For he came for themand not for the sake of the righteous(Mark 2.17). When using expressions, we usually takeencouraged by the Jews of that time to remove the mate real debt. He compares vacation forgiveness of sins with removal of debt (Matt 6.12; 1 8.23 sll), which of course does not mean:sin is removed mechanically,regardless of the internal statea person who opens himself to grace for the renewal of his spirit and hearts . Like the prophets and like John the Baptist(Mark 1.4), Jesus preachesconversion, indigenous change of spirit , disposing a person to acceptGod's mercy, succumb to its life-giving effect: “The Kingdom of God is near; repent and believe in the Gospel" (Mark 1:15). To those who refuse to accept the light (Mark3.29) or thinks like a Phariseein the parable that does not need forgiveness (Luke 18.9sll), Jesus cannot give forgiveness. That is why, like the prophets, He denounces sin wherever there is sin, even among those who believethemselves righteous because they observe the dictates of the external law only. For sin is inside our heart . He came to "fulfill the law"in its fullness, and not at all to abolish it (Matthew 5.17); a disciple of Jesus cannot be satisfied with the "right" knowledge of the scribes and Pharisees"(5.20); of course, the righteousness preached by Jesus in the end ultimately comes down to a single commandment about love (7.12); but seeing how the Teacher acts, the student graduallylearns what it means to love and, on the other hand, what is sin that is opposed to love. He'll learn it, in particular, listening Jesus opening up to him sweetlyGod's kindness to the sinner. V NIt is difficult to find a place in the new Testamentshowing better than the parable of the prodigal son, To which is as close to the teaching of the prophets as sin hurtsGod's love and why God cannot forgivesinner without him remorse. Jesus reveals even more through His actions, than in His own words, God's attitude towards sin. He is not only accepts sinners with the same loveand with the same sensitivity as the father in the parable, without stopping in the face of possible indignation workers of this mercy, just as incapable of understanding it as the eldest son in the parable. But He also directly fightssin: He is the firsttriumphs over Satan during temptations; During His public ministry He had alreadypulls people out of that slavery to the devil and sin, which are illness and obsession, thereby beginning His service as a Child of Yahweh (Matt. 8.16), before “giving His soulas a ransom" (Mark 10.45) and "the blood of His New To pour out the covenant for many for the remission of sins” (Mt 26:28).

Evangelist John says not so much about the “remission of sins” by Jesus– although this is traditionalThe expression is also known to him (1 John 2.11), how much about Christ, “who takes away sin peace" ( John 1.29). For individual actions heexpects a mysterious reality that gives rise to them: a vulture hostile to God and His kingdom, towhich Christ opposes. This hostility manifests itself primarily specifically in voluntary rejection of the world. Sin characterized by the impenetrability of darkness: “The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light; for their deeds were evil” (John 3.19). Sinnerresists the light because he is afraid of it, fromfear, “lest his deeds be exposed.” Hehates him: “Everyone who does evil, hatesthe light is coming" (3.20). It's blinding– voluntary andself-righteous, because the sinner does not want to confessin him. “If you were blind, you would have no sin. Now you say: we see. Your sin remains."

To such an extent, persistent blindness cannot be explained except by the corrupting influence of Satan. Indeed, sin enslaves a person to Satan: “Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin” (John 8.34). Just as a Christian is the son of God, so a sinner is the son of the devil, who first sinned and does his deeds. Among these cases, John. He especially notes murder and lies: “He was a murderer from the beginning and did not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When someone tells a lie, he says what is characteristic of him, because his father is a liar. He was a murderer, bringing death to people (cf. Wis. 2.24), and also inspiring Cain to kill his brother (1 John 3.12-15); and now he is a murderer, inspiring the Jews to kill the One who tells them the truth: “You seek to kill Me - the Man who told you the truth, and I heard it from God... You do the works of your father... and want to do the lusts of your father yours" (John 8.40-44). Homicide and lies are born of hatred. Regarding the devil, Scripture spoke of envy (Wis 2.24); In. without hesitation he uses the word “hatred”: just as a stubborn unbeliever “hates the light” (John 3.20), so the Jews hate Christ and His Father (15.22), and by the Jews here one should understand the world enslaved by Satan, all who refuse to recognize Christ. And this hatred leads to the killing of the Son of God (8.37). This is the dimension of this sin of the world over which Jesus triumphs. This is possible for him because He Himself is without sin (John 8.46: cf 1 John 3.5), “one” with God His Father (John 10.30), and finally, and perhaps mainly, “love”, for “ God is love” (1 John 4.8): during His life He did not cease to love, and His death was such a deed of love, which is impossible to imagine, it is the “accomplishment” of love (John 15.13; cf. 13.1; 19.30). That is why this death was a victory over the “Prince of this world.” The proof of this is not only that Christ can “receive the life He gave” (John 10.17), but even more so that He includes His disciples in His victory: by accepting Christ and thanks to this becoming a “child of God” (John 1.12), a Christian “does no sin,” “because he is born of God.” Jesus “takes away the sin of the world” (John 1.29), “baptizing with the Holy Spirit” (cf. 1.33), i.e. communicating to the world the Spirit, symbolized by the mysterious water flowing from the pierced side of the Crucified One, like the source of which Zechariah spoke and which Ezekiel saw: “and behold, water flows from under the threshold of the Temple” and transforms the shores of the Dead Sea into a new paradise (Ezekiel 47.1 -12; Rev. John 22.2). Of course, a Christian, even one born of God, can fall into sin again (1 John 2. 1); but Jesus “is the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 2.2), and He gave the Spirit to the apostles precisely so that they could “forgive sins” (John 20.22 ff).

The greater abundance of verbal expressions allows Paul to even more accurately distinguish “sin” from “sinful deeds,” most often called, in addition to traditional figures of speech, “sins” or misdeeds, which, however, does not in any way detract from the seriousness of these offenses, sometimes conveyed in the Russian translation by the word crime. Thus the sin committed by Adam in paradise, about which it is known what significance the Apostle attributes to it, is alternately called “crime,” “sin,” and “disobedience” (Rom. 5.14). In any case, in Paul's teaching on morality, a sinful act occupies no less place than in the Synoptics, as can be seen from the lists of sins so often found in his epistles. All these sins exclude you from the Kingdom of God, as is sometimes directly stated (1 Cor 6.9; Gal 5.21). Exploring the depth of sinful actions, Paul points to their root cause: they are in the sinful nature of man an expression and external manifestation of a force hostile to God and His Kingdom, about which the apostle spoke. John. The mere fact that Paul actually only applies the word sin to it (in the singular) already gives it special relief. The Apostle carefully describes its origin in each of us, then the actions it produces, with accuracy sufficient to outline in basic terms the real theological teaching about sin.

This “power” seems to be personified to some extent, so that sometimes it seems to be identified with the person of Satan, “the god of this age” (2 Cor. 4.4). Sin is still different from it: it is inherent in a sinful person, in his internal state. Introduced into the human race by the disobedience of Adam (Rom 5.12-19), and from here, as if indirectly, into the entire material universe (Rom 8.20; cf. Gen. 3.17), sin entered all people without exception, drawing them all into death, into eternal separation from God, which the rejected experience in hell: without redemption, everyone would form a “condemned mass,” according to the expression of the blessed one. Augustine. Paul describes at length this state of a person “sold to sin” (Rom. 7.14), but still capable of “finding pleasure” in goodness (7.16,22), even “wanting” it (7.15,21) - and this proves that not all it is perverted - but completely incapable of “making it” (7.18), and therefore inevitably doomed to eternal death (7.24), which is the “end”, “completion” of sin (6.21-23).

Such statements sometimes bring upon the Apostle accusations of exaggeration and pessimism. The injustice of these accusations is that Paul's statements are not considered in their context: he describes the condition of people outside the influence of the grace of Christ; the very course of his proof forces him to do this, since he emphasizes the universality of sin and enslavement by it with the sole purpose of establishing the impotence of the Law and extolling the absolute necessity of the liberating work of Christ. Moreover, Paul recalls the solidarity of all humanity with Adam in order to reveal another, much higher solidarity that unites all humanity with Jesus Christ; according to the thought of God, Jesus Christ, as a contrasting prototype of Adam, is the first (Rom 5.14); and this is tantamount to asserting that the sins of Adam with their consequences were tolerated only because Christ had to triumph over them, and with such excellence that, before setting out the similarities between the first Adam and the last (5.17), Paul carefully notes their differences (5.15 ). For the victory of Christ over sin seems no less brilliant to Paul than to John. The Christian, justified by faith and baptism (Gal. 3.26), has completely broken with sin (Rom. 6.10); having died to sin, he became a new creature (6.5) with Christ who died and rose again - “a new creation” (2 Cor 5.17).

Gnosticism, which attacked the church in the 2nd century, generally considered matter to be the root of all impurity. Hence the anti-Gnostic fathers, such as Irenaeus, strongly emphasize the idea that man was created completely free and I lost my bliss due to my guilt. However, very early there is a divergence between the Eastand the West in building on these themes. WesternChristianity was more practicalcharacter, always supported eschatological ideas, thought about the relationship between Godand man in the forms of law and therefore occupying The study of sin and its consequences was much more than that of the East. Already Tertullian spoke of “damage”, arising from the first initial vice. Cyprian goes further. Amv Russia is already of the opinion that we all died inAdam. And Augustine finishes these thoughts toend: he resurrected Paul's experiences, his doctrine of sin and grace. And it was this Augustine that the Western Church had to accommodate. just when she was getting ready assert their dominance over the world of barbarians. WHO niklo original “clutch”opposites" - a combination in oneand the same church of ritual, law, politics, power with a subtle and sublime teaching about sin and grace. Theoretically difficult to connect twopractical directions found in life combination. The Church, of course, changed the content of Augustinianism and pushed it into the background. plan. But on the other hand, she always enduredthose who looked at sin and graceAugustine. Under this powerful influence standseven the Council of Trent: “ If anyone does not admit that he is the first man, Adam, when Bo's ban was violated alive..., immediately lost his holiness and righteousness, in which it was approved, ...and in relation to the body and souls have undergone a change for the worse, that yes will be anathema. And at the same time practicethe story supported a different order of views. Suppressed by thoughts of sinfulness in the Middle Ages God thought of God as a punishing Judge. Fromhere is an idea of ​​the importance of merit and satisfactions. In fear of punishment for sin, the laitynaturally thought more about punishments andmeans to avoid them than about eliminating sin. The punishment served not so much to gain the Father again in God, but rather to avoid God the Judge. Lutheranism is emphasized there was a dogma about original sin. Apology of the Augsburg Confession states: “After the fall, instead of morality, evil lust was innate to us; after the fall, we, as born from a sinful race, do not fear God. In general, original sin is both the absence of original righteousness and the evil lust that has come to us instead of this righteousness.” The Schmalkaldic members assert that the natural man is nothas freedom to choose good. If he allows If it is the opposite, then Christ died in vain, for there was no would be the sins for which he had towould die, or would he die only for the sake of the body, and not for the sake of the soul." Formula of consent quotes Luther: “I condemn and reject as a great error every teaching that glorifies our freedom bottom will and not calling for help andgrace of the Savior, for outside of Christ our lords death and death."

The Greek-Eastern Church did not have to endure such an intense struggle over questions of salvation and sin, which flared up between Catholicism and Protestantism. It is noteworthy that until the 5th century for The East turns out to be alien to the doctrine oforiginal sin. Here are religious claims and tasks remain very tall and bold for a long time yim (Athanasius the Great, Basil the Great). This and other circumstances created a shortage to certainty in the doctrine of sin. "Sin itself does not exist in itself, since it was not created by God.Therefore, it is impossible to determine what it is consists,” says the “Orthodox Confession” (question, 16). "In the fall of Adam man destroyedthe perfection of reason and knowledge, and his willturned towards evil rather than good” (question,24). However, “the will, although remained intactin relation to the desire for good and evil, however, has become more inclined towards evil, in others for good” (question 27).

The Fall deeply suppresses the image of God without distorting it. It is the similarity, the possibility of similarity, that is seriously affected. In Western teaching, “animal man” retains the foundations of a human being after the Fall, although this animal man is deprived of grace. The Greeks believe that although the image has not faded, the perversion of the original relationship between man and grace is so deep that only the miracle of redemption returns man to his “natural” essence. In his fall, man appears to be deprived not of his excess, but of his true nature, which helps to understand the statement of the holy fathers that the Christian soul, by its very essence, is a return to paradise, a desire for the true state of its nature.

The main causes of sin are hidden in the wrong structure in the wrong direction of the mind, in the wrong disposition of the feelings and in the wrong direction of the will. All these anomalies point to race structure of the soul, determine the stay of the soul in state of passion and are the cause of sin. In patristic writing, consider every sinappears as a manifestation of the passion living in a person. With an incorrect structure of the mind, that is, with a vicious view of the world, perceptions, impressions and desires acquire the character of sensual lust and pleasureDenia. An error in speculation leads to an error in planning.practical activities. Practical consciousness that has fallen into error affects the feelings and will and is the cause of sin. Saint Isaac the Syrian speaks of the ignition of the body with the fire of lust when looking at objects outside world. At the same time, the mind, designed to restrain, regulate and control the functions of the soul and lustflesh, he willingly stops in this state,imagines objects of passion, gets involved in the play of passions,becomes an intemperate, carnal, indecent mind.St. John Climacus writes: “The reason for passion isfeeling, and the misuse of feelings comes from the mind.” A person's emotional state can also because of sin and influence the intellect. In the statein the event of an inappropriate disposition of feelings, for example, in a relationship standing of passionate emotional arousal, whether the mind the ability to carry out realistically correct moral assessment of the situation and control over actions actions taken. Saint Isaac the Syrian points tosinful sweetness in the heart - a feeling that permeates everythinghuman nature and making him a prisoner of the sensual passions.

The most serious cause of sin is intentionalbut an evil will that deliberately chooses disorder andspiritual damage in your personal life and in the lives of others. Unlike sensual passion, which seeks timesgreat satisfaction, embitterment of the will makes a sinner even more heavy and gloomy, since it is a more constant source of disorder and evil. People became susceptible to sensual passion and prone to evil after committing ancestral sin, the instrumentwhich the devil was, therefore he can be considered an indirect cause of all sin. But the devil is not unconditionalthe cause of sin in the sense that it seems to force the human will to sin - the will remains free and even untouchable. The most I can do the devil is to tempt a person to sin by acting oninternal feelings, prompting a person to think about sinfulobjects and focus on desires, which promise forbidden pleasures. St. John Cassian the Roman says: “Neitherwho cannot be deceived by the devil, except the one who himself wishes to give him the consent of his will.”Saint Cyril of Alexandria writes: “Diathe ox is able to offer, but is not able to impose ourchoice” – and concludes: “We choose sin ourselves.” Saint Basil the Great sees the source and root sin in human self-determination. This thought found clear expression in the views of St. Mark the Hermit, expressed in his treatise “On the Holy Baptismnii": "We need to understand what sin makes us dothe reason lies within ourselves. Therefore, from ourselves depends on whether we listen to the dictates of our spirit and learn them, whether we should follow the path of the flesh or the path of the spirit... for in our the will to do something or not to do.”

See: Dictionary of Biblical Theology. Edited by Ks. Leon-Dufour. Translation from French. "Kairos", Kyiv, 2003. Pp. 237-238.

See: Dictionary of Biblical Theology. Edited by Ks. Leon-Dufour. Translation from French. "Kairos", Kyiv, 2003. Pp. 238; "Bible Encyclopedia. Guide to the Bible." RBO, 2002. Pp. 144.

Hilarion (Alfeev), abbot. “The sacrament of faith. Introduction to Orthodox Dogmatic Theology". 2nd edition: Klin, 2000.

See also: Alypiy (Kastalsky-Borodin), archimandrite, Isaiah (Belov), archimandrite. "Dogmatic Theology". Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra, 1997. Pp. 237-241.

Men A., archpriest. “Dictionary of bibliology in 2 volumes.” M., 2002. Volume 1. Page 283.

Men A., archpriest. “Dictionary of bibliology in 2 volumes.” M., 2002. Volume 1. Page 284-285.

"Dictionary of Biblical Theology". Edited by Ks. Leon-Dufour. Translation from French. "Kairos", Kyiv, 2003. Pp. 244-246.

"Dictionary of Biblical Theology". Edited by Ks. Leon-Dufour. Translation from French. "Kairos", Kyiv, 2003. Pp. 246-248.

See: "Christianity". Encyclopedia of Efron and Brockhaus. Scientific publishing house "Big Russian Encyclopedia", M., 1993. Pp. 432-433.

Evdokimov P. “Orthodoxy.” BBI, M., 2002. Pp. 130.

See: Plato (Igumnov), archimandrite. "Orthodox Moral Theology". Holy Trinity Sergius Lavra, 1994. Pp. 129-131.

God created man differently from other creatures. Before his creation, God, in the Most Holy Trinity, confirmed His desire, He said: " Let us create man in Our image and after Our likeness".

And God created man from the dust of the earth, that is, from the substance from which the entire material, earthly world was created, and blew into his face breath of life, that is, he gave him a free, rational, living and immortal spirit, in His image and likeness; and a man became with an immortal soul. This “breath of God” or immortal soul distinguishes man from all other living creatures.

God blesses the first people in paradise

Thus, we belong to two worlds: with our body - to the visible, material, earthly world, and with our soul - to the invisible, spiritual, heavenly world.

And God gave the first man a name Adam, what does “taken from the earth” mean? For him God grew on earth paradise, that is, a beautiful garden and settled Adam in it so that he would cultivate and keep it.

In paradise there grew all kinds of trees with beautiful fruits, among which there were two special trees: one was called tree of life, and the other - tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Eating the fruit of the tree of life had the power to protect a person from illness and death. About the tree of the knowledge of good and evil God commanded, that is, he commanded the man: “You can eat from every tree in paradise, but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because if you eat from it, you will die.”

Then, at the command of God, Adam gave names to all the animals and birds of the air, but did not find among them a friend and helper like himself. Then God caused Adam to fall into a deep sleep; and when he fell asleep, he took one of his ribs and covered that place with flesh (body). And God created a wife from a rib taken from a man. Adam called her Eve, that is, the mother of people.

God blessed the first people in paradise and told them: " be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it".

By creating a wife from the rib of the first man, God showed us that all people come from one body and soul, must be united- love and take care of each other.

2 , 7-9; 2 , 15-25; 1 , 27-29; 5 ; 1-2.

Life of the first people in paradise

The earthly paradise, or beautiful garden, in which God settled the first people - Adam and Eve, was located in Asia, between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

The life of people in paradise was full of joy and bliss. Their conscience was calm, their heart was pure, their mind was bright. They were not afraid of illness or death, and had no need for clothing. They had prosperity and contentment in everything. Their food was the fruits of the trees of paradise.

There was no enmity among the animals - the strong did not touch the weak, they lived together and ate grass and plants. None of them were afraid of people, and everyone loved and obeyed them.

But the highest bliss of Adam and Eve was in prayer, that is, in frequent conversation with God. God appeared to them in paradise in a visible way, like a father to children, and told them

everything you need.

God created people, as well as angels, so that they could love God and each other and enjoy the great joy of life in the love of God. Therefore, just like the angels, He gave them complete freedom: to love Him or not to love Him. Without freedom there can be no love. And love manifests itself in the joyful fulfillment of the desires of the one you love.

But, since people were less perfect than angels, the Lord did not allow them to immediately and forever make a choice: to accept or reject this love, as was the case with the angels.

God began to teach people love. For this reason, He gave people this small, not difficult commandment - do not eat fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. By fulfilling this command or desire of God, they could thereby demonstrate their love for Him. Gradually, moving from easy to more complex, they would strengthen in love and improve in it. Adam and Eve obeyed God with love and joy. And in paradise the will of God and God’s order were in everything.

NOTE: See the Bible in the book. "Genesis": ch. 2 , 10-14; 2 , 25.

Conversation about a person

When we say that a person consists of a soul and a body, we express by this that a person consists not only of dead substance - matter, but also of that higher principle that revives this matter, makes it alive. In reality, a person three-part and consists of body, soul And spirit. Ap. Paul says, “The Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the point of division. souls And spirit, joints and marrow, and to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart" (Heb. 4 , 12).

The human body was created by God “from the dust of the ground” (Gen. 2 , 7) and therefore it belongs to the earth: “you are earth and you will go back to earth” (Gen. 3 , 19), said to the first man after his fall. With his bodily life, a person is no different from other living beings - animals, and it consists in satisfying the needs of the body. The needs of the body are varied, but in general they all boil down to satisfying two basic instincts: 1) instinct of self-preservation and 2) instinct continued.

Both of these instincts are embedded by the Creator in the bodily nature of every living creature, with a completely understandable and reasonable purpose - so that this living creature does not perish or be destroyed without a trace.

To communicate with the outside world, the human body is endowed with five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, without which a person would be completely helpless in this world. This entire apparatus of the human body is extraordinarily complex and wisely designed, but in itself it would be only a dead machine without movement if it were not animated by the soul.

The soul is given by God as a life-giving principle in order to control the body. In other words, there is a soul life force man and every living creature; Scientists call it that: vitalistic (life) force.

Animals also have a soul, but it, together with the body, was produced by the earth. “And God said: Let the water bring forth living creatures... fish, reptiles. And God said: Let the earth bring forth living creatures... cattle, creeping things, wild beasts... according to their kinds: and it was so” (Gen. 1 , 20-24).

And only about man it is said that after creating his body from the dust of the ground, the Lord God “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2 , 7). This “breath of life” is the highest principle in man, i.e. his spirit by which he immeasurably rises above all other living beings. Therefore, although the human soul is in many ways similar to the soul of animals, in its highest part it is incomparably superior to the soul of animals, precisely because of its combination with the spirit, which is from God. The human soul is, as it were, a connecting link between the body and the spirit, representing itself, as it were, a bridge from the body to the spirit.

All actions, or rather movements of the soul, are so diverse and complex, so intertwined with each other, so lightning-fast changeable and often difficult to catch, that for ease of differentiation they are usually divided into three types, three categories: thoughts, feelings And desires. These movements of the soul are the subject of study of the science called "psychology."

1. The organ of the body with the help of which the soul produces its mental work, is brain.

2. Central authority feelings it is generally accepted heart. It is a measure of what is pleasant or unpleasant to us. The heart is naturally viewed as a certain center of human life, a center that contains everything that enters the soul from the outside, from which comes everything that is revealed by the soul outside.

3. Desires person to lead will, which does not have a material organ for itself in our body, but instruments for fulfilling its plans are our members, set in motion with the help of muscles and nerves.

The results of the activity of our mind and feelings generated by the heart exert this or that pressure on the will, and our body produces this or that action or movement.

Thus, the soul and body are closely related to each other. The body, with the help of external sense organs, gives certain impressions to the soul, and the soul, depending on this, somehow controls the body and directs its activities. In view of this connection between the soul and the body, this life is often called the general term: “mental-physical life.” However, it is still necessary to distinguish between: bodily life, as satisfying the needs of the body, and mental life, as satisfying the needs of the soul.

What physical life consists of, we have already said. It consists in satisfying the requirements of two main instincts: the instinct of self-preservation and the instinct of procreation.

Mental life consists of satisfying the needs of the mind, feelings and will: the soul wants acquire knowledge and experience certain feelings.

But human life is far from being exhausted by satisfying the above-mentioned needs of the body and soul alone.

Body and soul are not the whole person, or rather, not the complete person. Above the body and soul there is something higher, namely the spirit, which often acts as a judge of both soul and body and gives everything an assessment from a special, higher point of view. “Spirit,” says Bp. Theophan, “as a power emanating from God, knows God, seeks God, and finds peace in Him Alone. By some spiritual, intimate instinct, making sure of his origin from God, he feels his complete dependence on Him and recognizes himself as obligated to please Him in every possible way and to live only for Him and by Him." This is exactly what Blessed Augustine said: “You, God, created us with a desire for You, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.

The spirit in a person manifests itself in three forms: 1) fear of God, 2) conscience and 3) thirst for God.

1. "Fear of God" - this, of course, is not fear in our ordinary human understanding of this word: it is awe of the greatness of God, inextricably linked with unchanging faith in the truth of the existence of God, in the reality of the existence of God as our Creator, Provider. Savior and Giver. All nations , no matter what stages of development they are at, everyone has faith in God. Even the ancient writer Cicero, two thousand years before our time, said: “there is not a single people so rude and wild that they do not have faith in God, even if he did not know His being." Since then, says the scientist Goettinger, America and Australia have been discovered and explored, and countless new peoples have entered history, and his words still remain unshakable, unless even more than before became undoubted and completely obvious.Thus, as history counts the past centuries, so much evidence for this truth.

2. The second way the spirit manifests itself in a person is - conscience. Conscience shows a person what is right and what is not right, what is pleasing to God and what is displeasing, what he should and should not do. But he not only indicates, but also forces a person to fulfill what is indicated, and rewards with consolation for fulfillment, and punishes with remorse for non-fulfillment. Conscience is our internal judge - the guardian of God's law. It is not for nothing that our people call conscience the “voice of God” in the human soul.

3. The third manifestation of the spirit in man Ep. Feofan aptly named " thirst for God"And in fact, it is natural for our spirit to seek God, to strive for union with God, to thirst for God. Our spirit cannot be satisfied with anything created or earthly. No matter how many and how varied earthly blessings one of us possesses, he wants everything something more. This eternal human dissatisfaction, this constant dissatisfaction, this truly insatiable thirst shows that our spirit has a desire for something higher than everything that surrounds it in earthly life, for something ideal, as they say, and since nothing earthly can quench this thirst in a person, the human spirit is restless, not finding peace for itself, until it finds complete satisfaction in God, to living communication with Whom the human spirit always consciously or unconsciously strives.

These are the manifestations of the spirit in man, which should be the guiding principle in the life of every person, that is, to live in communion with God, to live according to the will of God and to abide in the love of God, and this means to fulfill one’s purpose on earth and inherit eternal life.

(Based on the article by Archimandrite Averky “Soulfulness and Spirituality.”
Munich 1949)

The Fall

The devil was jealous of the heavenly bliss of the first people and planned to deprive them of heavenly life. To do this, he entered the serpent and hid in the branches of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And when Eve passed not far from him, the devil began to inspire her to eat fruit from the forbidden tree. He cunningly asked Eve: “Is it true that God did not allow you to eat from any tree in paradise?”

“No,” Eve answered the serpent, “we can eat fruits from all trees, only fruits from the tree that is in the middle of paradise,” God said, “do not eat or touch them, lest you die.”

But the devil began to lie in order to seduce Eve. He said: “No, you will not die; but God knows that if you taste, you yourself will be like gods, and you will know good and evil.”

The seductive, devilish speech of the serpent affected Eve. She looked at the tree and saw that the tree was pleasant to the eyes, good for food and gives knowledge; and she wanted to know good and evil. She picked fruit from the forbidden tree and ate; then she gave it to her husband, and he ate.

People succumbed to the temptation of the devil, violated the commandment or will of God - sinned, fell into sin. This is how the fall of people took place.

This first sin of Adam and Eve, or the fall of people, is called original sin, since it was this sin that later became the beginning for all subsequent sins in people.

Eve gives Adam the forbidden fruit

NOTE: See the Bible in the book. "Genesis": ch. 3 , 1-6.

The consequences of the Fall and the promise of the Savior

When the first people sinned, they felt ashamed and afraid, as happens to everyone who does wrong. They immediately noticed that they were naked. To cover their nakedness, they sewed clothes for themselves from fig tree leaves, in the form of wide belts. Instead of receiving perfection equal to God's, as they wanted, it turned out the other way around, their minds became darkened, they began to be tormented, and they lost peace of mind.

All this happened because they knew good and evil against the will of God, that is, through sin.

Sin changed people so much that when they heard the voice of God in paradise, they hid among the trees in fear and shame, immediately forgetting that nothing could be hidden anywhere from the omnipresent and omniscient God. Thus, every sin removes people from God.

But God, in His mercy, began to call them to repentance, that is, so that people understand their sin, confess it to the Lord and ask for forgiveness.

The Lord asked: “Adam, where are you?”

God asked again: “Who told you that you were naked? Have you not eaten from the tree from which I forbade you to eat?”

But Adam said: “The wife whom You gave me, she gave me fruit and I ate it.” So Adam began to blame Eve and even God himself, who gave him a wife.

And the Lord said to Eve: “What have you done?”

But Eve, instead of repenting, answered: “The serpent tempted me, and I ate.”

Then the Lord announced the consequences of the sin they had committed.

God said to Eve: " You will give birth to children in illness and must obey your husband".

Adam said: “Because of your sin, the earth will not be fruitful as before. It will produce thorns and thistles for you. By the sweat of your brow you will eat bread,” that is, you will earn food through hard work, “ until you return to the land from which you were taken"that is, until you die." For you are dust and to dust you will return".

Expulsion from Paradise

And he said to the devil, who was hiding in the snake, the main culprit of human sin: " damn you for doing this"... And he said that there would be a struggle between him and people, in which people would remain winners, namely: " The seed of the woman will cut off your head, and you will bruise his heel.", that is, it will come from the wife Descendant - Savior of the World Who will be born of a virgin will defeat the devil and save people, but for this he himself will have to suffer.

People accepted this promise or promise of God about the coming of the Savior with faith and joy, because it gave them great consolation. And so that people would not forget this promise of God, God taught people to bring victims. To do this, He commanded to slaughter a calf, lamb or goat and burn them with a prayer for the forgiveness of sins and with faith in the future Savior. Such a sacrifice was a pre-image or prototype of the Savior, Who had to suffer and shed His blood for our sins, that is, with His most pure blood, wash our souls from sin and make them pure, holy, again worthy of heaven.

Right there, in paradise, the first sacrifice for the sin of people was made. And God made clothes for Adam and Eve from the skins of animals and clothed them.

But since people became sinners, they could no longer live in paradise, and the Lord expelled them from paradise. And the Lord placed a cherub angel with a fiery sword at the entrance to paradise to guard the path to the tree of life. The original sin of Adam and Eve with all its consequences, through natural birth, passed on to all their offspring, that is, to all of humanity - to all of us. That is why we are born sinners and are subject to all the consequences of sin: sorrows, illnesses and death.

So, the consequences of the Fall turned out to be enormous and grave. People have lost their heavenly blissful life. The world, darkened by sin, has changed: from then on the earth began to produce crops with difficulty; in the fields, along with good fruits, weeds began to grow; animals began to fear humans, became wild and predatory. Disease, suffering and death appeared. But, most importantly, people, through their sinfulness, lost close and direct communication with God; He no longer appeared to them in a visible way, as in paradise, that is, people’s prayer became imperfect.

The sacrifice was a prototype of the Savior's sacrifice on the cross

NOTE: See the Bible in the book. "Genesis": ch. 3 , 7-24.

Conversation about the Fall

When God created the first people, he saw that " there is a lot of good"that is, man is directed towards God with his love, that in created man there are no contradictions. Man is a complete unity of spirit, soul And body, - one harmonious whole, namely, the spirit of man is directed towards God, the soul is united or freely subordinated to the spirit, and the body is to the soul; unity of purpose, aspiration and will. The man was holy, deified.

The will of God, namely, is that man freely, that is, with love, strives for God, the source of eternal life and bliss, and thereby invariably remains in communion with God, in the bliss of eternal life. These were Adam and Eve. That's why they had an enlightened mind and " Adam knew every creature by name“, this means that the physical laws of the universe and the animal world were revealed to him, which we now partially comprehend and will comprehend in the future. But by their fall, people violated the harmony within themselves - the unity of spirit, soul and body, - upset their nature. There was no unity of purpose, aspiration and will.

It is in vain that some want to see the meaning of the Fall allegorically, i.e. that the Fall consisted of physical love between Adam and Eve, forgetting that the Lord Himself commanded them: “be fruitful and multiply...” Moses clearly narrates that “Eve sinned first alone, and not with her husband,” says Metropolitan Philaret. “How could Moses have written this if he had written the allegory that they want to find here?”

The essence the fall consisted is that the first parents, succumbing to temptation, stopped looking at the forbidden fruit as an object of God’s commandment, and began to consider it in its supposed relation to themselves, to their sensuality and their heart, their understanding (Ccl. 7 , 29), with deviation from the unity of the truth of God in the multiplicity of one’s own thoughts, one’s own desires not concentrated in the will of God, i.e. deviating into lust. Lust, having conceived sin, gives birth to actual sin (Jas. 1 , 14-15). Eve, tempted by the devil, saw in the forbidden tree not what it was, but what she herself wishes, according to certain types of lust (1 John. 2 , 16; Life 3 , 6). What lusts were revealed in Eve’s soul before eating the forbidden fruit? " And the wife saw that the tree was good for food", that is, she suggested some special, unusually pleasant taste in the forbidden fruit - this lust of the flesh. "And that it's pleasing to the eyes", that is, the forbidden fruit seemed most beautiful to the wife - this lust tous, or passion for pleasure. " And it is desirable because it gives knowledge", that is, the wife wanted to experience that higher and divine knowledge that the tempter promised her - this worldly pride.

First sin

Is born in sensuality- the desire for pleasant sensations, - for luxury, in heart, the desire to enjoy without reasoning, in the mind- the dream of arrogant polyscience, and consequently, penetrates all the forces of human nature.

The disorder of human nature lies in the fact that sin rejected or tore the soul away from the spirit, and the soul, as a result of this, began to have an attraction to the body, to the flesh and to rely on it, and the body, having lost this elevating power of the soul and as itself created from " chaos", began to have an attraction to sensuality, to "chaos", to death. Therefore, the result of sin is illness, destruction and death. The human mind became darkened, the will weakened, feelings were distorted, contradictions arose, and the human soul lost its sense of purpose towards God.

Thus, having transgressed the limit set by the commandment of God, man turned his soul away from God, true universal concentration and completeness, formed for her false center in her self, concluded her in the darkness of sensuality, in the coarseness of matter. The mind, will and activity of man turned away, deviated, fell from God to creation, from the heavenly to the earthly, from the invisible to the visible (Gen. 3 , 6). Deceived by the seduction of the tempter, man voluntarily “came close to foolish beasts and became like them” (Ps. 48 , 13).

The disorder of human nature by original sin, the separation of the soul from the spirit in man, which even now has an attraction to sensuality, to lust, are clearly expressed in the words of Ap. Paul: “I do not do the good that I want, but I do the evil that I do not want. But if I do that which I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me” (Rom. 7 , 19-20). A person constantly has “remorse” within himself, recognizing his sinfulness and criminality. In other words: a person can restore his nature, damaged and upset by sin, through his own efforts, without God’s intervention or help. impossible. Therefore, it took the condescension or coming of God Himself to earth - the incarnation of the Son of God (taking on flesh) - for re-creation fallen and corrupted human nature, to save man from destruction and eternal death.

Why did the Lord God allow the first people to fall into sin? And if he allowed it, then why didn’t the Lord simply (“mechanically”) return them after the Fall to their previous state of heavenly life?

Almighty God certainly could have prevented the fall of the first people, but He did not want to suppress them freedom, because it wasn’t for Him to disfigure people Your own image. The image and likeness of God is primarily expressed in human free will.

Prof. explains this question well. Nesmelov: “Due to the fact that the impossibility mechanical God's salvation of people seems very unclear and even completely incomprehensible to many; we consider it worthwhile to provide a more detailed explanation of this impossibility. It was impossible to save the first people by preserving for them the living conditions in which they were before their fall, because their death lay not in the fact that they turned out to be mortal, but in the fact that they turned out to be criminal. So while they were aware their crime, paradise was certainly impossible for them precisely because of their awareness of their crime. And if it happened that they would have forgotten about their crime, then by this they would only confirm their sinfulness, and therefore, paradise would again be impossible for them due to their moral inability to approach the state that expressed their primitive life in paradise. Consequently, the first people certainly could not regain their lost paradise - not because God did not want this, but because their own moral state did not and could not allow this.

But the children of Adam and Eve were not guilty of their crime and could not recognize themselves as criminals only on the grounds that their parents were criminals. Therefore, there is no doubt that, equally powerful to create a person and raise a baby, God could remove the children of Adam from a state of sinfulness and place them in normal conditions of moral development. But for this, of course, it is necessary:

a) God’s consent to the death of the first people,

b) the consent of the first people to cede to God their rights to children and forever renounce the hope of salvation and

c) the consent of children to leave their parents in a state of death.

If we admit that the first two of these conditions can somehow be considered at least possible, then it is still impossible to realize the third necessary condition in any way. After all, if the children of Adam and Eve actually decided that let their father and mother die for the crime they committed, then by this they would obviously only show that they are completely unworthy of heaven, and therefore - they would certainly have lost him."

It was possible to destroy sinners and create new ones, but the newly created people, having free will, wouldn’t they sin? But God did not want to allow the man he created to really be created in vain and, at least in his distant descendant, not to defeat the evil that he would allow to triumph over himself. For the Omniscient God does nothing in vain. The Lord God with His eternal thought embraced the entire plan of peace; and His eternal plan included the incarnation of His Only Begotten Son for the salvation of fallen humanity.

Precisely, it was necessary to recreate fallen humanity compassion, love so as not to violate the free will of a person; but so that a person of his own free will wants to return to God, and not under duress or of necessity, for in this case people could not become worthy children of God. And according to the eternal thought of God, people should become like Himself, partakers of eternal blissful life with Him.

So wise And good Almighty Lord God, not disgusted come down to the sinful earth, take upon ourselves our sin-damaged flesh, if only save us and return to the heavenly bliss of eternal life.

About the image and likeness of God in man

The Holy Church teaches, - under in the image of God, one must understand what God has given to man powers of the soul: mind, will, feeling; and under likeness of God you need to understand ability a person to direct the forces of his soul to become like God, - improve in the pursuit of truth and goodness.

It can be explained in more detail like this:

IMAGE3 OF GOD

: located in the properties and powers of the soul. God there is an invisible Spirit, Who penetrates everything in the world, animates everything, and at the same time He is a Being independent of the world; soul of a person, present throughout the body and reviving the body, although it has a certain dependence on the body, it remains to exist even after the death of the body. God eternal; soul human is immortal. God wise and omniscient; soul a person has the power to know the present, remember the past and even sometimes predict the future. God most kind (i.e. most kind, most merciful) - and soul a person is capable of loving others and sacrificing himself. God omnipotent, creator of all things; soul a person has the power and ability to think, create, create, build, etc. But, of course, there is an immeasurable difference between God and the powers of the human soul. The powers of God are limitless, but the powers of the human soul are very limited. God there is a Being absolutely free ; And soul person has free will . Therefore, a person may or may not want to be in the likeness of God, for this depends on the free desire of the person himself, on his free will.

SIMILARITY OF GOD

depends on directions of mental abilities. It requires a person’s spiritual work on himself. If a person strives for truth, for goodness, for the truth of God, then he becomes like God. If a person loves only himself, lies, is at enmity, does evil, cares only about earthly goods and thinks only about his body, and does not care about his soul, then such a person ceases to be the likeness of God (i.e., similar to God - his Heavenly Father), but in his life he becomes like animals and can finally become like an evil spirit - the devil.

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Anthropology of Seventh-day Adventists and Jehovah's Witnesses Daniil Sysoev

2. The Fall of Man and Its Consequences

2. The Fall of Man and Its Consequences

2.1. The Fall. Death of the Soul

As the Lord faithfully promised, on the very day that the first man ate of the tree of knowledge, he died. But death first overtook not his corruptible flesh (it suffered it 930 years after creation), but his indestructible soul.

Otherwise, we cannot understand the direct words of God (Gen. 2:17), if we do not want to recognize the lie of the serpent as fair. After all, God did not say: “after that day,” but: “in the day that you eat of it, you will die.” One can, of course, try to prove that here the word “day” means “an indefinitely long period of time,” but then the sectarians are forced to automatically admit the correctness of theistic evolutionists and supporters of the day-epoch theory, with which they (this objection, however, applies only to Adventists) categorically (and quite rightly) disagree. To get rid of an obvious contradiction, sectarians pretend that it simply does not exist. “On the day on which our first parents ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” write Jehovah’s Witnesses, “they were condemned by God and died in his eyes. They were expelled from Paradise and embarked on a path that ultimately led to death.” This explanation, of course, is completely helpless. Indeed, in the minds of sectarians, death is identical to complete non-existence. So, did Adam and Eve cease to exist for God after their condemnation? Who did He then expel from Paradise - decaying corpses? Their second phrase contradicts the first. If for God (Who is the only Source of objective knowledge) people are already dead, then how do they only begin to take a path that, as it suddenly turns out, will only someday (“eventually”) lead to death? The only way out of this impasse is the recognition of the Orthodox teaching that at the very moment of the Fall, man truly died spiritually. For the soul, life lies in the vision of God, and death in the loss of it, which, however, does not entail the loss of being itself, for the gifts of God are immutable (Rom. 11:29).

This understanding is perfectly confirmed by the biblical text itself. Immediately after the Fall, when the body has not yet had time to become ill or otherwise manifest the mortality hidden in it, the soul immediately shows signs of decomposition. - It begins with a feeling of nakedness, which, of course, was rooted not so much in bodily feelings as in the loss of the garment of grace that had hitherto enveloped and permeated the body.

Another sign of the death of the soul was that from the heights of wisdom it fell into the ocean of madness. Indeed, it is scary to read how Adam, who named the names of all the animals (and everyone can see how incredibly difficult this is), hides from the Omnipresent and Omniscient Creator under a bush! Is this not evidence of eternal death reigning in his heart? And how the love between the spouses, who previously represented a single whole, instantly disintegrated is evident from the fact that both Adam and Eve perceive each other as some kind of means that can be sacrificed.

God, through the prophet Ezekiel, warning people against becoming like Adam in his crime (Hos. 6, 7), says: “Behold, all souls are Mine: both the soul of the father and the soul of the son are Mine; the soul that sins will die” (Ezek. 18:4). Speaking first of all about the death of the very soul of the wicked, the prophet does not miss the death of the body that follows it, as stated in verse 13: “Whoever has done all such abominations will certainly die, his blood is on him.” It is worth dwelling on this verse in more detail, for it is almost always quoted by sectarians in polemics with God’s teaching on the immortality of the soul. Based on it, they claim that the soul here is the person himself, and therefore, since it is said that it dies, it means death absorbs him completely. Some polemicists (for example, Walter Martin) argue that it is better to translate this verse as “the soul that sins shall depart” - this more accurately conveys the meaning of the text. However, both the Greek translation and the context rather speak not of this, but of the death of the soul, which consists not in its destruction from existence, but about that “tribulation and distress for everyone who does evil” (Rom. 2:9), which the ap. speaks of. Paul. And it is a consequence of the rupture of grace-filled unity with God. If Jehovah's Witnesses and Adventists were right, then the entire 18th chapter of the prophet. Ezekiel is an example of blatant nonsense. After all, its main idea is to prove that each person is responsible only for his own sins, and not for the crimes of his father. And based on this thought, God says that since all souls, without exception, are His (Art. 4), then everyone will answer for himself: the righteous “will certainly live” (Art. 9), and the wicked “will certainly die, his blood will be on him" (Art. 13). If physical death is spoken of here, then, of course, our daily experience shows that the prophet is mistaken. After all, in relation to her, there really is “one fate for the righteous and the wicked” (Eccl. 9:2)! But if we talk about the state of the soul, then it is fundamentally different. For some, the soul actually lives (for example, for Abraham, the friend of God (James 2:23)), while for others it dies, falling away from the Creator (like the antediluvian giants - Gen. 6:3-5). They can say to this that all people have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:23) and therefore we are all sinners, doomed to die. But the prophet in this text does not speak at all about original defilement, but about personal virtue or lawlessness. Otherwise, one cannot understand the enumeration of sins (usury, untruth, oppression, etc.) and good deeds on which a person’s life depends. Moreover, the Lord speaks of the possibility of repentance for the wicked, which will lead him to life, but if we were talking about original sin here, then the recognition of the possibility of its cleansing without the Calvary Sacrifice makes the entire Gospel meaningless, even in its sectarian reading. So, in these so often quoted words there is no indication at all of the mortality of the soul in the sense of its complete destruction, but of its eternal dying, which begins on earth, but does not stop even after bodily death. And the death of the body itself is only the logical conclusion of this process for the wicked (and the righteous die, paying off Adam’s debt).

And describing precisely this terrible state of the death of the soul, which precedes the death of the body, the Apostle Paul says: “You, dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you walked, according to the course of this world, according to the will of the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now working in sons of disobedience, among whom we all once lived according to our carnal lusts, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and thoughts, and were by nature children of wrath, like others” (Eph. 2:1-3). As the saint rightly says. Theophan the Recluse, “sin, as soon as it becomes a ruler over a person, kills his spirit. Just as bodily death is the cessation of bodily life, so with the entry of sin into a person, the root of inner life is cut off - the life of the spirit, which comes from God. In a sinner given over to sin, sensual inclinations and spiritual passions increasingly take precedence over the highest spiritual demands and suppress them to the point that the light of spiritual life finally goes out. At the same time, bodily life also withers due to the violation of the integrity of human life and the suppression of its proper relationship to the supreme Source of being and life. Hence illness, suffering and early death. Thus, sin kills not only spiritually, but also physically, and not just an individual, but often an entire race, as long as it works diligently to sin.” And behind this terrible process of disintegration hides the will of “he who has the power of death” (Heb. 2:14), who deceives people who follow their own lusts (Gal. 5:17), and blackmails them with the fear of death, thereby keeping them in slavery.

It is about this death of the soul, which precedes the death of the body, that many other places that sectarians refer to to justify their position are spoken of. But we will talk about this below, considering the Old Testament texts on which sectarians are trying to rely.

From the book ABC of Orthodox Faith author Znamensky Georgy Alexandrovich

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From the book Dogmatic Theology author Voronov Liveriy

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From the book The Holy Biblical History of the Old Testament author Pushkar Boris (Bep Veniamin) Nikolaevich

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From the book Orthodox Understanding of the Book of Genesis author Seraphim Hieromonk

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§150. Pelagian system: the original position and freedom of man; The Fall of Man Original anthropological teachings, which Pelagius clearly understood and put into practice, which were dialectically developed by Celestius and most decisively defended by Bishop Julian,

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From the book Fundamentals of Orthodoxy author Nikulina Elena Nikolaevna

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The Fall and its consequences The serpent was more cunning than all the beasts of the field that the Lord God created. And the serpent said to the woman, Has God truly said, You shall not eat from any tree in the garden? 2 And the woman said to the serpent, We can eat the fruit of the trees, 3 Only the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, said

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III The Fall and its consequences. The location of paradise The stay of the first people in paradise was their stay in direct communication with God, which was the first and most perfect religion of the human race. The outward expression of this religion was the church, as a congregation

Purpose of the lesson – consider the biblical account of the fall of our ancestors and its consequences.

Tasks:

1. Give listeners information about the emergence of evil in the created world.
2. Consider the temptation of the first people, the essence of their fall and the changes that happened to them.
3. Consider God's conversation with people after the Fall as a sermon of repentance.
4. Consider the punishment of the first parents, the consequences of the Fall, the curse of the serpent and the promise of the Savior.
5. Consider the interpretations of leather garments presented in exegetical literature.
6. Consider the salutary value of the expulsion of the first people from paradise and the appearance of mortality.
7. Give information about the location of heaven.

Lesson plan:

1. Conduct a homework check, either by recalling together with the students the content of the material covered, or by inviting them to take a test.
2. Reveal the content of the lesson.
3. Conduct a discussion-survey based on test questions.
4. Assign homework: read chapters 4-6 of the Holy Scripture, memorize: read chapters 4-6 of the Holy Scripture, familiarize yourself with the proposed literature and sources, memorize: the promise of God about the Savior of the world (Gen. 3, 15).

Sources:

1. John Chrysostom, St. http://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Ioann_Zlatoust/tolk_01/16 http://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Ioann_Zlatoust/tolk_01/17
2. Gregory Palamas, St. http://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Grigorij_Palama/homilia/6 (date of access: 10/27/2015).
3. Simeon the New Theologian, St. http://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Simeon_Novyj_Bogoslov/slovo/45(access date: 10/27/2015).
4. Ephraim the Syrian, St. http://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Efrem_Sirin/tolkovanie-na-knigu-bytija/3 (date of access: 10/27/2015).

Basic educational literature:

2. Egorov G., Hierarch. http://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Biblia/svjashennoe-pisanie-vethogo-zaveta/2#note18_return(access date: 10/27/2015).
3. Lopukhin A.P. http://www.paraklit.org/sv.otcy/Lopuhin_Bibleiskaja_istorija.htm#_Toc245117993 (access date: 10/27/2015).

Additional literature:

1. Vladimir Vasilik, deacon. http://www.pravoslavie.ru/jurnal/60583.htm(access date: 10/27/2015).

Key concepts:

• devil;
• Dennitsa;
• temptation;
• fall from grace;
• leather garments (robes);
• First Gospel, the promise of the Savior;
• Seed of the woman;
• death.

Test questions:

Illustrations:

Video materials:

1. Korepanov K. The Fall

1. The emergence of evil in the created world

In the book of the Wisdom of Solomon there is this expression: “Death entered the world through the envy of the devil”(Wis.2:24). The appearance of evil preceded the appearance of man, namely, the falling away of Dennitsa and those angels who followed him. The Lord Jesus Christ says in the Gospel that “the devil is a murderer from time immemorial” (John 8:44), as the holy fathers explain, because he sees a person raised by God there, and even above what he had before and from which he fell . Therefore, in the very first temptation that comes upon a person, we see the action of the devil. Revelation does not tell us how long the blissful life of the first people in paradise lasted. But this state already aroused the evil envy of the devil, who, having lost it himself, looked with hatred at the bliss of others. After the fall of the devil, envy and thirst for evil became characteristics of his being. All goodness, peace, order, innocence, obedience became hateful to him, therefore, from the very first day of man’s appearance, the devil strives to dissolve man’s grace-filled union with God and drag man along with him into eternal destruction.

2. The Fall

And so, in paradise the tempter appeared - in the form of a serpent, who "he was more cunning than all the beasts of the field"(Gen. 3:1). An evil and insidious spirit, having entered the serpent, approached the wife and said to her: “Is it true that God said: You shall not eat from any tree in the garden?”(Gen. 3:1). The serpent approaches not Adam, but Eve because, apparently, she received the commandment not directly from God, but through Adam. It must be said that what is described here has become typical of any temptation by evil. The process itself and its stages are very clearly depicted. It all starts with a question. The serpent does not come and say, “Taste of the tree,” because this is clearly evil and a clear departure from the commandment. He says: “Is it true that God forbade you to eat the fruit?” That is, he doesn’t seem to know. And in upholding the truth, Eve does a little more than she should. She says: “We can eat the fruits of the trees, only the fruits of the tree which is in the middle of the garden, God said, do not eat them or touch them, lest you die. And the serpent said to the woman: No, you will not die."(Gen.3:2-4). There was no talk of touching. The confusion is already starting. This is a common satanic trick. At first, he does not lead a person directly to evil, but always mixes a small drop of untruth with some truth. Why, by the way, should one refrain from all kinds of lies; Well, just think, I lied a little there, it’s not scary. It's actually scary. This is exactly that small drop that paves the way for a much larger lie. After this, a larger lie follows, because the serpent says: “No, you will not die, but God knows that on the day you eat of them, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like gods, knowing good and evil.”(Gen.3:4-5). Here, again, the truth, but in different proportions, is mixed with untruth. Indeed, man was created to be a god. Being a creature by nature, he is called by grace to deification. Indeed, God knows that they will be like Him. They will be like God, but not like gods. The devil introduces polytheism.

Man was created to be a god. But for this, a certain path is indicated in communication and love with God. But here the serpent offers a different path. It turns out that you can become God without God, without love, without faith, through some action, through some tree, through something that is not God. All occultists are still engaged in such attempts.

Sin is lawlessness. The law of God is the law of love. And the sin of Adam and Eve is the sin of disobedience, but it is also the sin of apostasy from love. In order to tear a person away from God, the devil offers him in his heart a false image of God, and therefore an idol. And, having accepted this idol in the heart instead of God, a person falls away. The serpent represents God as deceitful and jealously defending some of His interests, His capabilities and hiding them from man.

Under the influence of the serpent’s words, the woman looked at the forbidden tree differently than before, and it seemed pleasant to her eyes, and the fruits were especially attractive due to the mysterious property of giving knowledge of good and evil and the opportunity to become a god without God. This external impression decided the outcome of the internal struggle, and the woman “ she took of its fruit and ate, and gave it also to her husband, and he ate"(Gen. 3.6) .

3. Changes in Man After the Fall

The greatest revolution in the history of mankind and the whole world has taken place - people violated the commandment of God and thereby sinned. Those who were supposed to serve as the pure source and beginning of the entire human race poisoned themselves with sin and tasted the fruits of death. Having lost their purity, they saw their nakedness and made aprons for themselves from leaves. They were now afraid to appear before God, to whom they had previously strived with great joy.

4. Offer of repentance

There is no other way to restore a person other than the path of repentance. Horror seized Adam and his wife, and they hid from the Lord in the trees of paradise. But the loving Lord called Adam to Himself: « [Adam,]where are you?"(Gen.3.9). The Lord did not ask about where Adam was, but about what state he was in. With this He called Adam to repentance. But sin had already darkened man, and the calling voice of God aroused in Adam only a desire to justify himself. Adam answered the Lord with trepidation from the thicket of trees: “ I heard Your voice in paradise and I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself."(Gen. 3.10) . – « Who told you that you are naked? have you not eaten from the tree from which I forbade you to eat?"(Gen. 3.11). The question was posed directly, but the sinner was unable to answer it just as directly. He gave an evasive answer: “ The wife whom You gave me, she gave me from the tree, and I ate"(Gen. 3.12). Adam placed the blame on his wife and even on God Himself, who gave him this wife. Then the Lord turned to his wife: “ What did you do?“But the wife followed Adam’s example and did not admit her guilt: “ The serpent seduced me and I ate"(Gen. 3.13). The wife told the truth, but the fact that they both tried to justify themselves before the Lord was a lie. By rejecting the possibility of repentance, man made it impossible for himself to further communicate with God.

5. Punishment. Consequences of the Fall

The Lord pronounced His righteous judgment. The serpent was cursed before all the animals. He is destined for the miserable life of a reptile on his own belly and feeding on the dust of the earth. The wife is condemned to severe suffering and illness when giving birth to children. Addressing Adam, the Lord said that for his disobedience the land that feeds him would be cursed. " It will produce thorns and thistles for you... by the sweat of your brow you will eat bread until you return to the ground from which you were taken, for dust you are and to dust you will return."(Gen. 3.18–19).

The consequences of the Fall of the first people were catastrophic both for man and for the whole world. In sin, people distanced themselves from God and turned to the evil one, and now it is impossible for them to communicate with God as it was before. Having turned away from the Source of life - God, Adam and Eve immediately died spiritually. Physical death did not immediately strike them (by the grace of God, who wanted to bring their first parents to repentance, Adam then lived for 930 years), but at the same time, along with sin, corruption entered people: sin - the tool of the evil one - gradually became aging destroys their bodies, which ultimately led the ancestors to physical death. Sin damaged not only the body, but also the entire nature of primordial man - that original harmony was disrupted in him, when the body was subordinate to the soul, and the soul to the spirit, which was in communion with God. As soon as the first people departed from God, the human spirit, having lost all guidelines, turned to spiritual experiences, and the soul was carried away by bodily desires and gave birth to passions.

Just as harmony was disrupted in a person, so it happened throughout the world. According to Ap. Paul, after the Fall " all creation has submitted to vanity"and since then has been waiting for liberation from corruption (Rom. 8.20–21). After all, if before the Fall all nature (both the elements and animals) was subordinate to the first people and without labor on the part of man gave him food, then after the Fall man no longer feels like the king of nature. The land has become less fertile, and people need to make great efforts to provide themselves with food. Natural disasters began to threaten people's lives from all sides. And even among the animals to which Adam once gave names, predators appeared that pose a danger to both other animals and humans. It is possible that animals also began to die only after the Fall, as many holy fathers say (St. John Chrysostom, St. Simeon the New Theologian, etc.).

But not only our first parents tasted the fruits of the Fall. Having become the ancestors of all people, Adam and Eve conveyed to humanity their nature, distorted by sin. Since then, all people have become corruptible and mortal, and, most importantly, everyone has found themselves under the power of Satan, under the power of sin. Sinfulness became, as it were, a property of man, so that people could not help but sin, even if someone wanted to. Usually they say about this state that all humanity inherited from Adam original sin. Here, original sin does not mean that the personal sin of the first people was passed on to the descendants of Adam (after all, the descendants did not personally commit it), but rather that it was the sinfulness of human nature with all the ensuing consequences (corruption, death, etc.) that was passed on from the first parents to all people. .). The first people, following the devil, seemed to sow the seed of sin into human nature, and in every new person born this seed began to germinate and bear the fruits of personal sins, so that every person became a sinner.

But the merciful Lord did not leave the primitive people (and all their descendants) without consolation. He then gave them a promise that was supposed to support them in the days of subsequent trials and tribulations of a sinful life. Speaking His judgment to the snake, the Lord said: “ and I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; it(translated as seventy - He) he will bruise your head, and you will bruise his heel"(Gen. 3.15). This promise about the “seed of the Woman” is the first promise about the Savior of the world and is often called the “First Gospel”, which is not accidental, because These brief words speak prophetically of how the Lord intends to save fallen humanity. That this will be a Divine action is clear from the words “ I'll put the enmity to rest“- a person weakened by sin cannot independently rebel against the slavery of the evil one, and here the intervention of God is required. At the same time, the Lord acts through the weakest part of humanity - through woman. Just as the conspiracy of the wife with the serpent led to the fall of people, so the enmity of the wife and the serpent will lead to their restoration, which mysteriously shows the most important role of the Most Holy Theotokos in our salvation. The use of the strange phrase “seed of the woman” indicates the unmarried conception of the Blessed Virgin. The use of the pronoun “He” instead of “it” in the LXX translation indicates that even before the birth of Christ, many Jews understood this place as indicating not so much the offspring of the wife as a whole, but rather a single person, the Messiah-Savior, who will crush the head of the serpent - the devil and will save people from his dominion. The serpent can only bite His “heel,” which prophetically indicates the Savior’s suffering on the Cross.

6. Leather clothes

Leather clothing, according to the interpretation of the holy fathers, is the mortality that human nature received after the fall. Smch. Methodius of Olympus emphasizes that “skin garments are not the essence of the body, but a mortal accessory.” As a result of this state of human nature, he became subject to suffering and illness, and his mode of existence changed. “In addition to foolish skin,” in the words of St. Gregory of Nyssa, a person perceived: “sexual union, conception, birth, defilement, feeding from the breast, and then food and throwing it out of the body, gradual growth, adulthood, old age, illness and death.”

In addition, leather clothes became a veil separating man from the spiritual world - God and angelic forces. Free communication with them after the Fall became impossible. This protection of a person from communication with the spiritual world is apparently beneficial for him, because many descriptions of a person’s meetings with both angels and demons found in literature testify that such an overt collision of a person with the spiritual world happens to him difficult to bear. Therefore, a person is covered with such an impenetrable cover.

The literal interpretation of leather clothes is that the first sacrifice was made after the expulsion from paradise, which Adam was taught by God Himself, and these clothes were made from the skins of sacrificial animals.

7. Expulsion from Paradise

After the people were clothed in leather garments, the Lord expelled them from paradise: “ And he placed a cherubim and a flaming sword that turned around at the east of the garden of Eden to guard the way to the tree of life."(Gen. 3.24), of which they, through their sin, have now become unworthy. The person is no longer allowed to see him, “ lest he stretch out his hand, and also take from the tree of life, and eat, and live forever"(Gen. 3.22). The Lord does not want a person, having tasted the fruits of the tree of life, to remain eternally in sin, because the bodily immortality of a person would only confirm his spiritual death. And this shows that the bodily death of a person is not only a punishment for sin, but also a good deed of God towards people.

8. The meaning of death

It is also worth dwelling on the question of the meaning of punishment: is a person’s mortality a punishment or a benefit for the person himself? There is no doubt that it is both, but punishment not in the sense of God’s vengeful desire to do bad things to man for being disobedient, but as a kind of logical consequence of what man himself has created. That is, we can say that if a person jumped out of a window and broke his legs and arms, he is punished for this, but he himself is the author of this punishment. Since man is not original, and he cannot exist outside of communion with God, death also places a certain limit on the possibility of developing in evil.

On the other hand, death, as is known from practical experience, is a very important instructive factor for a person; often only in the face of death is he able to think about the eternal.

And thirdly, death, which was a punishment for man, was also a source of salvation for him subsequently, since through the death of the Savior man was restored, and the lost communion with God became possible for him.

9. The location of paradise

With the expulsion of people from paradise, among them, among the labors and hardships of a sinful life, the very memory of its exact location was erased over time; among different peoples we encounter the most vague legends, vaguely pointing to the east as the place of a primitive blissful state. A more precise indication is found in the Bible, but it is also so unclear to us given the current appearance of the earth that it is also impossible to determine with geographic accuracy the location of Eden, in which paradise was located. Here is the biblical instruction: “And the Lord God planted a paradise in Eden, in the east. A river came out of Eden to water Paradise; and then divided into four rivers. The name of one is Pison; it flows around the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold, and the gold of that land is good; there is bdellium and onyx stone. The name of the second river is Tikhon (Geon): it flows around the entire land of Kush. The name of the third river is Khiddekel (Tigris); it flows before Assyria. The fourth river is the Euphrates” (Gen. 2:8-14). From this description, first of all, it is clear that Eden is a vast country in the east, in which paradise was located, as a smaller room intended for the habitation of the first people. Then the name of the third and fourth rivers clearly indicates that this Edenic country was in some neighborhood with Mesopotamia. But this is the extent of the geographical indications that are understandable to us. The first two rivers (Pison and Tikhon) now have nothing corresponding to themselves either in geographical location or in name, and therefore they gave rise to the most arbitrary guesses and rapprochements. Some saw them as the Ganges and the Nile, others as Phasis (Rion) and Araks, originating in the hills of Armenia, others as the Syr-Darya and Amu-Darya, and so on ad infinitum. But all these guesses are not of serious significance and are based on arbitrary approximations. Further defining the geographical location of these rivers are the lands of Havilah and Cush. But the first of them is as mysterious as the river that irrigates it, and one can only guess, judging by its metal and mineral wealth, that this is some part of Arabia or India, which in ancient times served as the main sources of gold and precious stones. The name of another country, Kush, is somewhat more specific. This term in the Bible usually refers to the countries lying south of Palestine, and the “Cushites,” as the descendants of Ham, from his son Cush or Cush, are found throughout the entire space from the Persian Gulf to southern Egypt. From all this we can only conclude one thing: that Eden was indeed in some neighborhood with Mesopotamia, as indicated by the legends of all the most ancient peoples, but it is impossible to determine its exact location. Since that time, the earth's surface has undergone so many upheavals (especially during the flood) that not only could the direction of the rivers change, but their very connection with each other could be broken, or even the very existence of some of them could cease. As a result of this, science is just as blocked from accessing the exact location of paradise as it was blocked for sinner Adam from eating from the tree of life in it.

Test questions:

1. What event in the created world caused the emergence of evil?
2. Why does the devil approach his temptation not to Adam, but to his wife?
3. What was the sin of the first people?
4. What changes occurred in man after the Fall?
5. Tell us about God’s conviction of sinners and God’s offer of repentance to them.
6. What punishment does a wife receive for sin?
7. What punishment does Adam receive for sin?
8. What was the curse of the serpent and what promise did it contain?
9. How should we understand leather clothing?
10. Why are expulsion from paradise and death saving for people?
11. What can you say about the location of heaven?

Sources and literature on the topic

Sources:

1. John Chrysostom, St. Conversations on the Book of Genesis. Conversation XVI. About the fall of the primeval ones. “And the devil was both naked, Adam and his wife, and were not ashamed” (Gen. 2:25). http://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Ioann_Zlatoust/tolk_01/16. Conversation XVII. “And she heard the voice of the Lord God, going into paradise at noon” (Gen. 3:8). [Electronic resource]. – URL: http://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Ioann_Zlatoust/tolk_01/17 (access date: 10/27/2015).
2. Gregory Palamas, St. Omilia. Omilia VI. Exhortation to Lent. It also briefly talks about the creation of the world. It was said during the first week of Lent. [Electronic resource]. – URL: http://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Grigorij_Palama/homilia/6 (date of access: 10/27/2015).
3. Simeon the New Theologian, St. Words. Word 45. P. 2. About the crime of the commandment and expulsion from paradise. [Electronic resource]. – URL: http://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Simeon_Novyj_Bogoslov/slovo/45 (access date: 10/27/2015).
4. Ephraim the Syrian, St. Interpretations of Holy Scripture. Genesis. Chapter 3. [Electronic resource]. – URL: http://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Efrem_Sirin/tolkovanie-na-knigu-bytija/3 (access date: 10/27/2015).

Basic educational literature:

1. Serebryakova Yu.V., Nikulina E.N., Serebryakov N.S. Fundamentals of Orthodoxy: Textbook. - Ed. 3rd, corrected, additional - M.: PSTGU, 2014. The Fall of the Forefathers and its Consequences. The promise of the Savior.
2. Egorov G., Hierarch. Holy Scripture of the Old Testament. Part one: Legal and educational books. Lecture course. – M.: PSTGU, 2004. 136 p. Section I. The Pentateuch of Moses. Chapter 1. Beginning. 1.6. The Fall. 1.7. Consequences of the Fall. 1.8. The meaning of punishment. 1.9. The promise of salvation. [Electronic resource]. – URL: http://azbyka.ru/otechnik/Biblia/svjashennoe-pisanie-vethogo-zaveta/2#note18_return (date of access: 10/27/2015).
3. Lopukhin A.P. Biblical history. M., 1993. III. The Fall and its consequences. The location of paradise. [Electronic resource]. – URL: http://www.paraklit.org/sv.otcy/Lopuhin_Bibleiskaja_istorija.htm#_Toc245117993 (access date: 10/27/2015).

Additional literature:

1. Vladimir Vasilik, deacon. Spiritual and psychological aspects of the Fall. [Electronic resource]. – URL: http://www.pravoslavie.ru/jurnal/60583.htm (access date: 10/27/2015).
2. Explanatory Bible, or Commentary on all the books of the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments: in 11 volumes / Edited by A.P. Lopukhina (vol. 1); publication of A.P.'s successors Lopukhin (vol. 2-11). St. Petersburg: Petersburg, 1904-1913. Commentary on the book of Genesis. Chapter 3.

Video materials:

1. Korepanov K. The Fall

2. Anthony of Sourozh (Bloom), Metropolitan. Conversation about the history of the Fall

3. Genesis. "The Death of the First World" Lecture 2 (chapters 1-3). Priest Oleg Stenyaev. Bible portal

4. Biblical history. Kupriyanov F.A. Lecture 1

5. Conversations on the Sixth Day. Being. Chapter 3. Victor Lega. Bible portal

6. Book of Genesis. Chapter 3. The Bible. Hieromonk Nikodim (Shmatko).

7. Genesis. Chapter 3. Andrey Solodkov. Bible portal.