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Abstract
This article addresses and examines two interrelated issues in the history of Christian philosophy within a unified context: (1) the unconscious substitution by Christians of the intratheistic ontology of Jesus Christ with a theistic one within Christian orthodoxy; and (2) the consequent search for the immanentization of the theistic absolutization of the transcendence of the Christian God in Eastern patristics. The author, alongside K. Jaspers, views Christ as one of those teachers of humanity who "set the standard" and became the foundation of powerful philosophical movements. It is shown that the Christ of scholars and philosophers, on the one hand, and the Christ of official Christianity, on the other, are different; that the God of Jesus exists both beyond creation and within it (including within humans). Christianity, however, divided the Creator and the created by the dogma of their difference in nature, thereby complicating the central issue of Christian philosophy – the union of humanity with God. Drawing on theological and philosophical texts of Greek patristics, primarily those of the hesychasts, the author traces the evolution of two main historical forms of this imma-nentization: (1) the Christ-like “theocentric monism,” and (2) the dominant theistic dualism, with its strict adherence to the dogma of the unmixable nature of God and humanity. Origen is identified as the founder of the first form, and Athanasius of Alexandria as one of the chief proponents of the second. The leading role in immanentization is revealed to belong to the "experimenters" of Christianity – the hesychast monks. Their texts reveal the tension between experiential knowledge of God and theistic dogma – a tension that reached its peak in the controversies surrounding the "Divine Hymns" of Symeon the New Theologian and was eventually resolved – convincingly for some, uncon-vincingly for others – in the philosophical-theological system of Gregory Palamas.
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