The study examines two closely related topics: the anthropological thought of the Antiochian patristic center and its role in the development of Slavic cultures and, above all, the Kyivan tradition. In the introductory Chapter I summarize the scholarly approaches to the School of Antioch, substantiate the methodology, and outline the multicultural landscape in which the school was formed. A brief historical sketch of the formation of the school compares the immanent views of the Antiochians on their own intellectual pedigree with the views of leading Patristic scholars. It is shown that heyday Antiochian theologians (in the 4th and 5th centuries), unlike some researchers, believed in the continuity of their center. And their constant orientation towards the position of their supposed predecessors – from Stt. Peter and Paul, St. Ignatius and St. Theophilus to St. Meletius, Flavian, and later Chrysostom –was itself formative for their thought.
The main Chapter II outlines the specific features of the Antiochian anthropology, exploring the binary oppositions related to the existence of each person: children and adults, workers and singers, dead and alive, slaves and free people, guests and hosts, etc. The uniqueness of the Antiochian approach is based on their understanding of the key anthropological category – the image of God, which determines human dignity. While the other schools, relying on the teachings of Origen, limit divinity to man’s spiritual life and exclude the body from imago Dei, the Antiochians, developing the idea of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, carefully draw the human body into the category of image – as a prototype of God's humanization. This is an expression of the "mystical materialism" inherent in Syrian Christianity, which affects all aspects of Antiochian vision of man. For example, it is graphic in their search for lay ideals of holiness and the introduction of marriage into the sacraments of the Church. It also affects asceticism, causing the transition from the "angelological" to the strictly anthropological monastic ideal. It encourages the understanding of labor not as a curse, but as a god-like transformation of the material world. It leads to a literal and sociocentric understanding of the Liturgy as the ground for the radical solidarity of the community, which, at the same time, gives place to gratitude for the welfare of the "outsiders" - the Antiochian form of ecumenism. It leads to equating spiritual health with cheerfulness and striving for life (euthymia, protumia, thumedia), linking spiritual illness with the lack of these qualities (atumia). As Theodoret’s work affirms, this ideal of euthymia is rather remote from the Stoical ideal of impassibility (apatheia), pertinent to the other schools.
Another core of Antiochian anthropology lies in the nuanced reflection on "the freedom we have inside". Antiochian preachers and scholastics thoroughly opposed it not only to physical slavery and other types of submission, but also to all psychological dependencies, destiny, and even God's Providence. The inner freedom is so inherent in the human that is not undermined even by enslavement; however, this conviction did not attenuate their radical critique of slavery. Following St. Irenaeus, the Antiochians emphasize that man was created free to choose mortality or immortality, and therefore associate the beginning of history with the uncertain state of childhood, open to the unpredictable co-creation of God and man. Successfully combining the two opposite pedagogical metaphors – the Aristotelian tabula rasa (actually, a palimpsest) and the Platonic “fortress of mind” – Antiochian Christians avoided the fruitless struggle between the ideals of introspection and social ministry.
Chapter III considers possible explanations of the immense influence of Syrian theology in the Cyrillic world, describes the ways of acquaintance of the Slavs with the heritage of the Antiochian school, gives examples of the influence of Antiochian thought on homiletics, art, hagiography, cosmology and ecology of ancient Kyivan tradition.
Finally, Chapter IV focuses on the role of the Antiochian heritage in the culture of Early Modern Ukraine. During this period, the irrational reverence for ancient Syria is replaced by live contacts between the two cultures and a mutual scholarly interest develops. Due to the central role of authentic Antiochian works in the early Ukrainian printing, the intuitions of this center are originally reflected in the work of leading educators and theologians of this time, such as St. Dymytriy Tuptalo, Stefan Yavorsky, Ivan Mazepa, Simon Todorsky, Paisiy Velychkovsky, Hryhoriy Skovoroda. Among others, Skovoroda’s theology of the “Spirit of freedom that is born inside us” is viewed in the context of what might be called the Antiochian “Liberation theology”.
