Theology and the Estern Ortodox Church Architecture - Interpretation of Triadological Principle

Abstract

Development of the doctrine and solving the questions about God as a Trinity featured the Christian thought dependent on the most significant Judaistic ideas and on those of Late Antiquity, as well as the philosophical conceptual constructions. In a quite significant theological and philosophical text, Corpus Areopagiticum, dating from the 6 th century, a triadological image of the universe was discovered and reconstructed. For purposes of better understanding, the concept of Trinity is compared with the concept of the Borromean Rings or Knot made of three interlocking circles or loops. The logic of the structure is that cutting any loop or ring frees all the other loops so that no two loops can be directly linked. In the Areopagite’s structure the three rings would be the three Persons: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the apophatic, symbolic and kataphatic theology, the celestial, the ecclesiastical and the earthly hierarchy, etc. In its centre, inside all the circles, is the Unity, the unity in multiplicity. As a subject of such research, the basic aspects of architecture come first – the form, the function and the structure. Each of them could be viewed separately, with its qualitative differences, but at the same time, they could not be separated, as they make architecture complete. By making theology and architecture mutually dependent, an area for recognising a triadological structure is created, which is in analytical terms a unifying factor in a vast field of semiotic meanings. Actually, a theological concept designs an architectural space, so the principle of triadology is manifested through an act of creation.