Cappadocian School in the History of Christian thought

This textbook includes a course of lectures delivered by the author at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Moscow State University in 2008–2009. It contains a review and interpretation of the basic philosophical ideas of outstanding theologians of the 4th century from Cappadocia — the saints Basil the Great, Gregory the Theologian and Gregory of Nyssa. The joint literary activity of these Ancient Church teachers gives reason to speak of the Cappadocian school as a special phenomenon in the history of patristics ‘golden age’. Having received education in Athens, the great Cappadocians linked the achievements of Christian theological thought with the tradition of ancient philosophizing as seeking answers to the most profound questions a human can ask.

The manual highlights the social and literary activities of the Cappadocian school, carried out in the paradigm of an acute ideological confrontation with the Arianism, which in the middle of the 4th century received official support of the Roman Empire. Representatives of the Cappadocian school became the ideological inspirers of the Novocenean movement and laid the foundations of the ‘Cappadocian synthesis’, selectively applying in their theological constructs the methods of Platonic idealistic dialectics.

For teachers, students and graduate students of philosophical faculties.