Kovaliv P. Biblical and early patristic theology of redemption

The dissertation is devoted to the study of the doctrine of Christ 's redemption in biblical and early patristic soteriology. The paper analyzes the existing approaches to the formation of the doctrine of redemption and the forms of presentation of this doctrine, and points out their significant shortcomings. For a more accurate representation of biblical teaching, it is proposed to resolve a number of problems in areas that serve as the foundation and context of the doctrine of redemption, such as: the need for a holistic doctrine of salvation and place of redemption as part of this doctrine; the need to return to a holistic biblical understanding of sin and its consequences, to which redemption is the answer; the need to return to the foundational New Testament narrative of redemption; formation of principles of interpretation of biblical metaphors of redemption and their integration into a holistic coherent concept. The dissertation calls to pay attention to the often neglected ontological perspective on redemption, which according to the author not only correctly represents the biblical doctrine of redemption, but also the view of the early Church Fathers. For the first time, not only a clear formulation of the ontological view of redemption is presented, but also its foundation in the Scripture. In order to do that the dissertation have developed principles of metaphor analysis and principles of the concept representation. These principles have been used to model the biblical concept of atonement based on the ontological approach. In order to fill the gap in historical theology regarding the doctrine of redemption, this work also analyzes the teachings of the early Church Fathers and proves that the ontological perspective on redemption was at the center of their theology of redemption.