| dc.description.abstract | The representation of Sophia – personified God’s Wisdom, based on the
text of old-testament Sapiental Books, took quite an important place in
the spiritual culture of Byzantium. What should be noted is the Empire
inhabitants’ striving to identify Wisdom with one of the persons of
Trinity. A vast majority of the Church Fathers and later East Christian
thinkers inclined towards christological interpretation of Sophian
images. The Second Hypostasis – the Word Incarnate, was identified
with Sophia by Justin Martyr, Athenagoras of Athens, Clement of
Alexandria, Origen, Methodius of Olympus, Eusebius of Caesarea, Cyril
of Jerusalem, Athanasius of Alexandria, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory
of Nyssa, Cyril of Alexandria, Theodoret of Cyrus, Anastasius of Sinai,
Patriarch Germanus of Constantinople, St. Theodore of Stoudios,
Symeon the Metaphrast, St. Simeon the New Theologian, and Philotheos
Kokkinos – author of three extensive educational works devoted to
Sapiental metaphors, presented in the Book of Proverbs. Several other
apologists preferred to identify God’s Wisdom with the Holy Spirit
(Theophilus of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyons, Paul of Samosata). At the
same time in the Byzantine theology emerged a completely abstract
interpretation of Sophia, based on the views of Saint Basil the Great,
Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor. Its
highlight was to be a theory, proposed by Gregory Palamas in the
fourteenth century, according to which Sophia should be understood
primarily as one of the uncreated energies of God. | pl_PL |
