“Even as Christ Himself…” The Two-Finger Sign of the Cross and the “Pinch”: Two Consciousnesses #

By George Neminuschy

In the mid-17th century after the birth of Christ, the Russian authorities, led by Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, undertook the infamous reforms of the Church order. According to some sources, these reforms were not without the influence of the Roman Catholic Jesuit order [15]. The goal of these reforms was to align the ancient Russian Orthodox liturgical tradition—established in Rus’ from the very beginning of its Christian enlightenment (9th–10th centuries)—with the new Greek rite. This was done in pursuit of an ambitious political plan envisioned by the authorities, prompted by the Greeks (and, evidently, under the watchful eye of the West), to create an “all-Orthodox” Greco-Slavic empire. However, the “Orthodoxy” of this future empire was to be such that, in cultural and civilizational terms, it could be oriented toward Europe. Consequently, it had to be prepared to adopt European models of development. In other words, this “Orthodoxy” was to be simplified and scholasticized.

The beginning of these “reforms” was marked by a decree from Nikon, issued on the eve of Great Lent in 1653 (1661). The document stipulated that henceforth, the sign of the cross was to be made by the people exclusively with a three-finger configuration. The ancient Orthodox two-finger sign, which had been practiced in Kievan Rus’ since the time of St. Prince Vladimir, was to be forcibly abolished. Additionally, a special new form of hand arrangement was introduced for episcopal and priestly blessings—so-called “naming” (именословие), in which the fingers of the right hand formed an elaborate figure. Those who introduced it interpreted this shape as a representation of the Greek monogram of Christ’s name.

These newly introduced symbols in Russia were part of the already existing post-Byzantine religious and ritualistic order, which had come to dominate the former Byzantine Empire and its neighboring lands. By the mid-15th century—at the time of Byzantium’s fall to the Ottoman Turks—this order had completely displaced the ancient Orthodox Tradition, which included the two-finger sign of the cross, the very same Tradition that Kievan Rus’ had once adopted. So completely had it been eradicated that among the Greeks themselves, a firm belief took root that their (new) rite was supposedly ancient and dated back to apostolic times.

By the mid-17th century, Greek embassies arriving in Moscow began to take note of the accumulated differences in ritual between Russian and Greek piety. They started pointing out these differences to the hierarchs of the Russian Church, subtly suggesting that Rus’ had seemingly “deviated” from “ancient” and “apostolic” piety and that it would be desirable for it to return to that “piety.” Troubled by these remarks and emboldened by them in their political plans, Patriarch Nikon and Tsar Alexei made the fateful decision to unify the Russian rite according to the model of the new Greek rite—a decision with tragic consequences.

However, the first written evidence of the three-finger sign of the cross does not come from apostolic writings at all, but from rather late Western sources. Pope Innocent III (12th–13th centuries) stated: “One should cross oneself with three fingers, for this is done in the invocation of the Trinity” [33]. This is one of the earliest recorded instances in the history of Christianity demanding the use of three fingers for making the sign of the cross. However, an even earlier reference can be found in the 9th century, during the trial of the deceased Pope Formosus, in which the corpse of Formosus had the palm of his right hand, with fingers arranged in a three-finger formation, cut off.

Yet, there is an interesting detail here: it is not entirely clear what kind of three-finger arrangement the deceased’s hand had. After all, it was the palm of the right hand that was cut off—the very hand with which popes bless their “flock.” The most probable gesture for a papal blessing from ancient times was an open palm, with all five fingers extended, but with the first three fingers held out more prominently while the last two were slightly bent—a gesture that closely resembles the two-finger sign of the cross! Thus, it is possible that the fingers of the deceased Formosus originally formed an open gesture at his burial but later, as the flesh decayed, curled into the so-called “pinch” (щепоть).

As for the “three-finger sign” of the later Innocent III, caution is also needed in interpreting his statement. His demand to cross oneself “with three fingers” in the image of the Trinity could very likely have referred to a gesture in which the first three fingers—the thumb, index, and middle finger—were extended (as they should be in a papal blessing). It is notable, however, that Innocent already interpreted this gesture as a representation of the idea of the Trinity (which will be discussed further in this study). In this case, both in the 9th and the 12th centuries, Western Christians were still using an open-handed gesture resembling those found in early Christian, and even pre-Christian, depictions (as will be discussed later in this work)—that is, a gesture referenced by the Old Believers as evidence of the antiquity of the two-finger sign of the cross.

In other words, in early Roman Catholic sources—which, from the perspective of Byzantine Orthodoxy, were already exhibiting clear signs of heretical influence—the references still described a gesture that outwardly bore more resemblance to the two-finger sign of the cross than to the “Nikonian” and modern Greek three-finger sign. However, we can imagine (and will demonstrate in this study) how, over time, within a particular mode of thought and a certain paradigm of piety, it became increasingly difficult to keep the first three fingers extended, and they gradually—like the decayed fingers of Formosus’ corpse!—began to curl inward, forming the closed gesture known as the “pinch.”

This raises a somber, even terrifying, question: did this mode of thought and this paradigm of piety become, for Christianity, something akin to a spiritual “corpse poison,” poisoning the original apostolic and patristic Tradition?

Western Influence and the Spread of the “Pinch” Gesture #

In this context, it must be noted that Byzantium and the Slavic world, even after Rome’s departure from Orthodoxy, continued to experience strong influence from Western Christianity—initially from Roman Catholicism and later from Protestantism. Thus, having originated in the Latin West, this new religious-ritualistic order, which included the finger arrangement in the form of the “pinch,” developed intensively and, as it spread, made its way into Byzantium—most likely through the Latin Crusades—and later, through cultural and political influence, into the Western and Southern Slavic countries.

For the first 300–400 years after Rus’ adopted Christianity, we find virtually no Russian written records of polemics concerning liturgical rituals—most likely because such debates were simply unnecessary. Among the Rus’, who practiced the two-finger sign of the cross, the Tradition was so naturally accepted that it did not require defense. The need for written affirmations of the two-finger sign arose in Rus’ precisely at the time when the “new rite” began its victorious march through Crusader-occupied Byzantium and then spread to the southwestern Slavs. Rus’ was perplexed by this unusual custom of forming the fingers into a pinch, which had already gained traction among neighboring peoples.

Among the most well-known historical sources from this period is the Slavic legend about St. Meletius of Antioch (with the earliest known Slavic manuscripts dating to the 13th century [33]). The legend describes a miracle that occurred during Meletius’ speech at the Council of Antioch when he blessed the listeners with the sign of the cross, forming his fingers into the two-finger configuration. Another important text is the so-called Theodoret’s Homily (Слово Феодоритово), first mentioned in the second half of the 15th century, which defended the two-finger sign of the cross by referencing the “miracle of Meletius.” This text emerged in the context of Rus’ rejecting union with the Roman Catholics.

Finally, by the mid-16th century, we see in Rus’ a kind of palladium of the two-finger sign. First, it is visually alluded to—quite explicitly, in fact—in the architecture of the Church of the Ascension in the princely (soon to be tsarist) estate of Kolomenskoye near Moscow. This masterpiece of stone tented-roof architecture exhibits a distinctive feature: a “three plus two” rhythm at the base of the tent, where three tiers of kokoshniks appear to elevate the octagonal structure, each face of which is crowned by two additional kokoshniks that, in turn, serve as the base for the tented roof. This is a clear architectural metaphor for the two-finger sign!

Secondly, in response to the emerging trends of weakened piety in Rus’, which led to increasingly frequent unintentional substitutions of the two-finger sign with the “easier” pinch gesture, the Stoglav Council (Hundred Chapters Council) definitively declared the two-finger sign as the only acceptable one for Rus’:

“If anyone does not bless with two fingers, even as Christ Himself, or does not form the sign of the cross with two fingers, let him be cursed, as the Holy Fathers have said” [32, 84].

Much later, in imperial Russia—where “Nikonianism” had already become dominant, and which itself was “captive” (according to most Nikonian historians) to Western influences, while ancient Orthodoxy was persecuted—academic scholars established that pre-schism Rus’ had preserved a liturgical order that had been practiced in Byzantium itself during the era of the Ecumenical Councils. Rus’ had retained this order precisely because it had not been affected by the process of ritual change that took place in the Byzantine Church, a process that began during the Crusades and culminated in the establishment of a new ecclesiastical structure after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in the mid-15th century.

Moreover, as the field of church archaeology developed, it became increasingly evident that the early Church, long before the time of Emperor Constantine, accompanied sacred rites with gestures that were either indistinguishable from the ancient Russian two-finger sign of the cross or bore close resemblance to it. This was attested by some of the oldest surviving works of liturgical art, such as frescoes in the Roman catacombs, reliefs on liturgical vessels known as ampullae, and carvings on sarcophagi. These ancient testimonies were frequently pointed out to the “Nikonians” by Old Believer apologists [5], [24]. The Nikonians, on the other hand, could not only claim no such wealth of ancient evidence in support of the three-finger sign, but they could not even produce a single clear and unequivocal historical argument in favor of its antiquity.

Nevertheless, the “broad way” (cf. Matthew 7:13) that Russia followed after the mid-17th century led to the acceptance of the Nikonian-Alekseian reforms and a transformation from a traditional society into a secular European-style state.

Is Another Study Necessary? #

Now, after this brief historical introduction, let us turn our attention to a detail that nearly all researchers of the Russian schism have considered insignificant. The ruling of the Stoglav Council, which states, “If anyone does not bless with two fingers, even as Christ Himself…”, has generally been treated in studies as merely a document reflecting the state of affairs in the 16th-century Russian Church. The common understanding has been: “Yes, at that time, Rus’ made the sign of the cross with two fingers, and the Stoglav ruling simply confirms this.” However, the actual meaning of the ruling—the claim that Christ Himself was the originator of the two-finger sign—seems never to have been taken seriously.

Scholars identified a Greek precedent for this ruling in a 12th-century rite of reception from the heresy of the Jacobites, which stated:

“If anyone does not seal himself with two fingers, as Christ also did, let him be anathema” (Ει τις ου σφραγιζει τοις δυσι δακτυλοις καθως και ο Χριστος, αναθεμα) [33].

They then placed this ruling within a supposedly consistent, evolutionary progression of finger configurations—from the one-finger sign to the two-finger sign, and finally to the three-finger sign [33], [11] (a model we will critique further below). However, no researcher has seriously considered the actual claim of the Greek and then Russian rulings:

“It is self-evident,” so the “enlightened” scholars reasoned, “that this is an ancient belief, and thus the mentality that produced the words of the conciliar ruling was still naïve, uncritical, and mythological—not yet far removed from a ‘primitive’ and ‘primeval’ state.”

But what if that is not the case? What if things are not so evolutionarily simple? What if our forefathers, regardless of how they thought, simply and firmly knew that “even as Christ” was the truth?

That is, what if ancient Rus’ truly believed and confessed that Christ, when He taught the people, when He rebuked, and when He blessed, accompanied His gospel proclamation with gestures, the closest resemblance to which is the two-finger sign?

If this is so, then it means that our ancestors knew that making the two-finger sign of the cross was an act of mimesis of Christ—a true “imitation of Christ.” It meant becoming one with Christ. And this knowledge, the Christians of ancient Rus’ carried with them through persecution; they simply could not renounce this knowledge, for how could one abandon what one knows to be true?

Thus, if Tradition—in the form of the ancient Byzantine rite of reception and later the ruling of the Stoglav Council—preserved the original, divinely revealed knowledge of Christ’s own two-finger gesture, knowledge imparted by Christ Himself, then the Old Believers’ insistence on the two-finger sign has the simplest—and most important—explanation.

It is simply standing for Christ—and more than that, it is standing in Christ.

For according to Orthodox doctrine, the Church is the “Body of Christ,” and Christians are the “members of the Body of Christ.” Therefore, in the Old Believers, it is Christ Himself who stands for the “old rite,” who is persecuted, mocked, and who ultimately triumphs. And in this case, their stance is a stance against the Antichrist, against the devil.

Thus, the issue is not, as is often claimed, about the so-called “historical truth of Old Belief”—not about the idea that the Old Believers’ cause is merely a conservative attempt to maintain a peaceful, evolutionary course of Church history and to avoid revolutionary upheavals that bring scandals and schisms. This is an interpretation with which all academic historians—Nikonians, Catholics, and even non-believers—would agree:

“The ignorant and stubborn Old Believers happened—somehow!—to be historically correct. Well, such things happen.”

No.

If “even as Christ” is true, then the matter concerns Eternal Truth.

But in that case, what need is there for me to write anything, to research anything? Have all the historical reconstructions of Church historians not simply collapsed in an instant? By undertaking yet another study—and knowing the fact of Christ’s two-finger sign—am I not merely grasping at the air? Has not everything that could be said on this matter already been said by Protopriest Avvakum?

No, it has not.

The confessors of the Old Faith spoke the most important truth—but not everything. They declared that a new “winter” of faith was approaching, another, and perhaps the final, stage of apostasy, a falling away from God. They said that these were the “signs of the times,” that the End was near, and that all of this was decreed from Above. Now, we, the descendants of these confessors, must say the same thing—only at a different level, using modern knowledge.

The “evolutionists” accuse the Old Believers of “naively believing” that Christ Himself “established the two-finger sign,” without considering historical complexities and dynamics. They argue that everything evolves and does not remain static, and thus, the two-finger sign should not have remained unchanged but should have been subject to modification. This study will demonstrate that it is actually evolutionism that is a simplification and a decline, whereas the two-finger sign is a testimony to an incredibly profound and rich Truth.

If the two-finger sign originates directly from the Lord Jesus Christ—directly from God—then for a Christian to cross oneself with two fingers does not merely mean “to depict the dogmas of faith,” but:

• Truly to clothe oneself in Christ;
• To reveal—now even on the physical level—oneself as a member of the Body of Christ (1 Cor. 12:27);
• To manifest oneself as a child of God (John 1:12);
• To unmistakably, epiphanically, express within oneself the dogma of Theosis, of deification.

For let us closely examine: what is the meaning of the ancient Byzantine definition, which the Russian Stoglav Council took as its decisive argument in favor of the two-finger sign?

The Church, as it were, speaks to the one who deviates from the true sign of the cross:

“If you voluntarily, deliberately do not receive the seal (ου σφραγιζει) of Christ, then this means that, in reality, Christ does not seal you. For in Christians—the members of the Body of Christ—Christ Himself is revealed, and the actions of Christians, the actions of the Church, are in fact the actions and presence of Christ Himself.”

Thus, this physical, practically familial and hereditary, truly blood-bound level of participation in Christ—preserved by the ancient Orthodox Christians—was lost by the “pinch-fingered” reformers. It disappeared from their Christian life.

Why?

What was the mechanism of this change?

This final question determines both the main thesis and the structure of this study. And so we shall begin with a general outline of the historical path of the sign of the cross.

The Historical Path of the Sign of the Cross #

The use of the sign of the cross in the early Church is a historical fact. For the purposes of this study, let us temporarily set aside the “tradition of Christ’s two-finger sign” (as we shall call the belief or knowledge that the two-finger sign originates directly from the Lord, which formed the core of the confessional stance of the Old Believers against Nikon’s reforms) and simply review the available, well-known material.

For clarity, we will limit ourselves to pre-iconoclastic iconography—the most visual material, which preserves the entire “database” of the early use of the two-finger sign.

What do we see?

On one hand, we find a vast number of images from the 2nd–8th centuries, showing that early iconography of Christ and the saints predominantly features gestures that are undeniably beautiful and majestic (this point is emphasized deliberately). These gestures are characterized by an open palm to some degree—ranging from a fully outstretched hand to forms in which only the index finger is extended. It is noteworthy that the predominance of open gestures persisted even after the era of iconoclasm.

An open gesture, an open palm (to any degree) always signifies openness to the Energy of God, the gift of human participation in God.

Among this vast array of gestures, we observe forms with two extended fingers. These seem to develop and transform from the open hand while becoming more complex in execution, requiring deliberate effort—both mental and physical—on the part of those performing the gesture, as well as on the part of interpreters and later researchers.

On the other hand, the author of these lines has yet to encounter a single Eastern Christian depiction—created before the 17th century—showing the three-finger “pinch” configuration, that is, a completely closed gesture with tightly pressed-together fingers.

It is also a fact that there exists a certain range of diversity in hand gestures within ancient Christian depictions. However, as we have noted, virtually all these gestures are open-handed.

Consider: nearly fifteen hundred years after the early Christian era, Protopriest Avvakum would describe the two-finger sign as “five fingers,” meaning that he understood the two-finger sign precisely as an open gesture.

Thus, the ancient Russian two-finger sign belongs to the ancient Christian spectrum of open-handed gestures.

For this reason, it is useful to identify within this spectrum a specific group of gestures that can be termed “two-finger-like” gestures.

Ancient texts [14] attest to the highly developed art of oratory, with its distinct aesthetics of preaching, which served as a tool for implanting words into the ears—and thus into the minds—of listeners. A crucial element of this aesthetic was gesture.

And let us recall: both Christ and His disciples proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God. Thus, ancient oratory reached its fulfillment and completion in Christian preaching.

Here is a striking example: Paul, led by Roman soldiers into a fortress through an enraged crowd ready to tear him apart, turns to the people from the steps of the fortress and makes a motion—a gesture—with his hand, seeking to address the crowd. Immediately, there is silence (Acts 21:40).

What was this gesture?

Undoubtedly, it was one of the many gestures from the ancient repertoire of oratory. And, judging by early iconography, which preserved contemporary practices, this gesture was analogous—practically identical—to the two-finger sign of the cross.

One must accept the following fact: the two-finger sign existed in very ancient times, even before the birth of Christ. Some studies (see [3]) show evidence of a regal “gesture of majesty” in ancient Roman imperial ritual, which is almost entirely identical to the two-finger sign. This is an important observation, which will be useful later.

Now let us turn to examples.

The Two-Finger Gesture in Ancient Art #

On a Greek krater (a large ceramic vessel) dated to the 4th century BC, there is an image of Hades (Aidēs, Aïdes, Adēs)—the god of the underworld—seated on a throne, with his right hand formed in a gesture indistinguishable from the “Russian” two-finger sign.

Does this mean that Hades (Hell!) is proclaiming the Gospel? Is he giving a blessing?

This is not as absurd as it may seem at first glance. The fact is that Hades only later became identified as the “god of the underworld of shadows.” In the most ancient periods, it is more likely that he represented a more comprehensive and unified concept—one that later became personified as Hades. This earlier concept is that of the initiatory cave within the Sacred Mountain—an image of the gates of initiation, the entrance into the womb of the Earth in order to emerge from it into the true, Heavenly, Divine Life.

But this is nothing other than the symbolism of death and resurrection.

“The gates of Hell shall not prevail”—this means that the cave of death is not the final destination; ahead lies the “emergence from the cave”, Eternal Life. The Great Initiation—the trial of resurrection—is an inevitable and all-encompassing Mystery, a Sacrament that includes death as a dialectical moment, just as the Whole includes its parts.

And we know that Christ is the One who “has power over the living and the dead.”

Therefore, I dare to say: it is He—still unknown to the ancient world, for He had not yet been born—who, through the ancient mystery depicted on this vase, conveys to the ancient mystēs (initiate) a secret esoteric knowledge about the coming Victory over death—that is, about Himself.

Another example:

A well-known bronze hand from Pompeii, dated to the 1st century AD, depicts the right hand in an open gesture—exactly the same as the gesture used by Roman popes to bless (with the thumb slightly extended; we have already mentioned this). The hand is covered with images of various mythological beings, which most likely indicate a very ancient myth, possibly one that was already misunderstood or unknown to the people of 1st-century Pompeii.

This hand—or more precisely, the body to which this hand belonged—represents the entire universe. Most likely, it is the hand of the First Ancestor and the First Sacrifice.

The First Ancestor and First Man, of Divine origin, offers himself as a sacrifice to the Divine Principle, and from his body—divided in sacrifice—the cosmos is formed. In this First Man and Universal Man, the entire world is destined—through the all-encompassing Mystery of the universal Sacrifice—to enter the Divine Sphere.

Another example:

Statuettes of the “Hand of Sabazios” depict the same gesture.

Sabazios was the supreme god of the Phrygian pantheon, identified by the Greeks with Dionysus, the son of Zeus, and sometimes with Zeus Himself. He was called the “Horned God”—and the horn, it is important to note, was a symbol of Heaven and Divine Power. Archaeologists confirm that this symbol was widely used and deeply established even in the Upper and Middle Paleolithic eras.

The terms “supreme god” and “pantheon” might lead the reader to think of polytheism. However, according to some serious studies [27], the term polytheism, in the sense of “belief in many gods,” only applies to relatively late, declining, and regressive phases of ancient civilizations. In the most ancient (higher) periods, the prevailing belief was rather a cult of the Many-Named One, meaning the One Supreme God—the First Principle.

Thus, the “supreme god” of a later pantheon is most likely what was, in earlier times, the most venerated Name, the most honored Energy or Manifestation of the One.

In this case, the name Sabazios (which is confidently linked to the Sanskrit root sabhadj, meaning “venerated”, and to the ancient Greek σέβειν, “to honor”, as in the name Eusebius—“the pious one”) can be identified as meaning “Venerated”, “High”, “Exalted”, “Worshiped”.

Notably, Dionysus and Zeus, with whom the Greeks identified Sabazios, were called, respectively: “The god who died and was resurrected” (Dionysus); “The Thunderer,” “Lord,” and “Father of the gods” (Zeus).

It is worth noting that the Dionysian Mysteries were centered on the hope of victory over death.

Among the numerous gestures (mudras) practiced in ancient Indian yoga (“yoga,” from Sanskrit—“union,” “oneness” with the Supreme First Principle—Brahman), there is, again, the two-finger gesture.

In yoga, this gesture is called “Life”.

Thus, “First Ancestor,” “First Sacrifice,” “Lord,” “Venerated,” “Exalted,” “Life,” “Resurrection”… The ancient world bears witness to its longing, the “longing of the nations” (cf. Haggai 2:7), bringing forth from the depths of millennia—just as the Magi did—the mysterious gesture to the threshold of the Bethlehem Cave: an open hand with two extended fingers, the index and the middle.

A Russian scholar of the late 19th century writes the following about ancient gestures in the Church:

“Images of Christ and the saints, which are traditionally called ‘blessing’ images… originate from ancient depictions of orators and philosophers. The ancients loved to accompany their words with gestures; pagan orators and philosophers, before delivering speeches or expounding their teachings, customarily made a variety of bodily motions, as if greeting their listeners or stirring their attention.

At a banquet held by a noblewoman, Hypatia Burrea, one of the guests, according to Apuleius, assumed the following posture before beginning his story: gathering the carpet around him on which he was seated, and slightly rising on his elbow, he raised his right hand and, in the manner of orators, skillfully formed a gesture by bending the two last fingers toward the palm while keeping the others free.

There is nothing more common than encountering this or a similar gesture in ancient paintings and sculpture. In classical paintings, this gesture is often accompanied by a scroll held in the hands of orators, philosophers, or learned men in general, with something like a small tub or basket (scrinium) containing several books or scrolls placed at their feet. One need only recall how many similar depictions exist in the catacombs, especially in portrayals of Christ as Teacher, and of the apostles and prophets as preachers, to be convinced—if not of their complete identity, then at least of the close connection between these historical-symbolic compositions and the traditional ways in which classical painters and sculptors depicted rhetoricians and philosophers.

Emerging and developing in an environment steeped in the traditions of the centuries-old life of the ancient world, early Christian art—this is well known today—borrowed everything it could from classical art, from standard artistic techniques to the wholesale adoption of pre-existing artistic models. Nor did it disregard the conventional gestures of pagan orators and philosophers, but rather adapted them for its own purposes, imbuing these once-foreign forms with new Christian content” [9].

We can supplement the scholar’s conclusion with the following thought: early Christianity made use of everything from antiquity that it could because it knew that it could do so. And this knowledge was based on the direct experience of being with Christ (cf. John 1:39).

With regard to gestures of blessing and the sign of the cross, this knowledge could be formulated as follows:

The Teacher accompanied His preaching with majestic, royal gestures. Among these gestures, those most frequently used by Him—and those most vividly remembered—were two-finger-like gestures.

Christ the Teacher renewed and revealed new—or rather, eternal—meanings in ancient gestures. (And early Christianity, through the apostles, repeated these gestures after the Teacher.)

But as the Logos, the Word and Wisdom of God, as the Providence of the Almighty over all creation, as the Meaning of God’s economy concerning mankind, Christ was also the Author, the Invisible Prompter and Director of the ancient art of oratory that existed before His birth—just as He is the Author and Artist of all beauty.

To Dwell in the Name #

In the Western tradition, the practice of marking the forehead with the cross using the thumb of the right hand has been preserved. This gesture is traced back to early Christianity, where it is called the “small cross” or the “small sign of the cross.” According to a hypothesis supported by many biblical scholars, including the Catholic theologian Cardinal Jean Daniélou in his book The Theology of Jewish Christianity, the “small cross” is the earliest form of the sign of the cross and may have a genetic link to an Old Testament symbol described in the Book of Ezekiel.

Let us examine this symbol.

In the prophetic vision of the future Temple, in chapter nine of the Book of Ezekiel, a girded Man in priestly garments appears, accompanied by six other men who bear “vessels of destruction” (making a total of seven figures, a number to which we will return later). The voice of the Lord commands the Man in priestly garments to pass through the city, through the midst of Jerusalem, and to inscribe a certain mark on the foreheads of the men who sigh and grieve over the iniquities of the people of Israel—that is, on the foreheads of the righteous men who remain faithful to God’s covenant.

The phrase “inscribe a mark” in Hebrew is literally “ve-etvita tav.” The six men accompanying him are then commanded to destroy all those who are not marked with this mysterious sign (tav). The name tav belongs to the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet, which, in ancient manuscripts, often resembles a small cross. According to Daniélou, it is possible that the sign to be inscribed on the foreheads of the righteous had the shape of a cross.

Daniélou’s hypothesis aligns with the prevailing scholarly view of a linear “progression” in finger configurations. The Catholic scholar assumes that this gesture evolved from smaller forms to larger ones, with single-finger usage being dominant in the earlier forms—something we still observe today in the form of the extended thumb in the “small sign of the cross.” We will now demonstrate the naïveté of this progressivist-evolutionist approach.

First, the existence of the “small cross” in antiquity does not mean that the larger form of the sign of the cross did not exist at that time. On the contrary, the cross was used to bless a wide range of objects, both small and large, and, alongside marking particular parts of the body, it was also used to sign the entire body (see our earlier footnote). Therefore, the discussion should focus on the original richness of the language of gestures and its complexity.

Christian antiquity possessed an entire “cosmos” of cross forms, one of which—widely practiced—was the “large” form of the cross, that is, the human body itself. At that time, it was believed that man is the “great world,” the archetype of the “small world”—the entire universe—so that the cosmos itself was also perceived in the form of a cross.

Second, the extended thumb, as we will show, belongs to the same semantic group of gestures as the two-finger sign, meaning that the “small cross” is merely a variation of the sign of the cross made with two fingers. Third, the Old Testament sign of tav, according to the unanimous testimony of the saints (which should not be disregarded even in scholarly inquiry), was a foreshadowing of the revelation of the Cross of Christ, that is, it was part of the Whole. Therefore, the sealing of the people with the sign of tav has a prophetic, prefigurative, typological meaning: the people are marked with the future Revelation of the Holy, with the true Name of God—the Revelation of His Love and Mercy, the Revelation of Salvation.

To this we add that from the most ancient times, there existed a ritual symbolism of the human body, in which the most important element was the raising of hands to Heaven or their extension to the sides—the so-called orans posture, which gives the human body the shape of a cross. The Lord Himself was crucified on the Cross with His hands lifted toward Heaven, and He, the Risen One, raised His hands in blessing and, blessing His disciples, ascended to Heaven (Luke 24:50–51). Thus, the archetype of the Christian sweeping motion of making the sign of the cross must be Christ Himself—Crucified and Ascended—imprinted in the memory of His disciples. This memory had no difficulty in recalling the Lord with His hands raised, for from the most ancient times, man had raised his hands to Heaven. This was Tradition.

Let us also note that the Man in priestly garments in Ezekiel’s vision can be mentally placed at the center of the six figures accompanying him, which can be depicted as six rays emanating from a single center. This observation will soon be useful: it points to the divine dignity of this Man. We should also note (as the saints have long recognized, see the footnote above) that the sign inscribed by the Man on the foreheads of the people is analogous or identical to the sign in the Book of Exodus (Ex. 12), which, by divine command, was marked on the doorposts and lintels of Israelite homes with the blood of the sacrificial lamb. This sign is identical, of course, in its salvific power as well: all those not marked by it were destroyed, while all who bore it were saved.

On the other hand, in the Apocalypse of St. John the Theologian, in the symbolic description of the visions of the last times, there appear one hundred forty-four thousand chosen ones, the servants of God, who are sealed by an Angel bearing the seal of the Living God (Rev. 7). In the final part of John’s Revelation, in the vision of the City of God, it is stated that those who dwell in the City bear the Name of God on their foreheads (Rev. 22). Let us note that in both Ezekiel and John, the divine sign marks eschatological fullness; it signifies the completion of this fullness.

Tav is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet. And just as in Greek, where alpha and omega—the first and last letters—metaphysically signify the Beginning and the End of all things, the fullness of the eschaton, the Hebrew aleph and tav bear exactly the same symbolism. Thus, tav represents the sealing of eschatological fullness. This fullness is sealed with the Name of God. The Name of God, therefore, is expressed by the sign of the Cross.

In the Book of Exodus, the revelation of the Name of God given to Moses in response to his question—what is the Name of the One who called him from the Burning Bush—was as follows: Ehyeh asher Ehyeh (Hebrew). The Slavonic text (Ostrog Bible) renders this as: Az esm’ Ezhe esm’ (Ex. 3:14), or in another reading, Az esm’ Syi, which is a precise translation of the Greek text of the Septuagint: Ego eimi ho on.

The divine answer from the Bush to Moses could literally be translated as: “I am the One Who is Present” [30, 66]. The Presence expressed in this Name, which constitutes its essence, cannot be spoken of in a descriptive, external sense.

“This refers to a Presence that can only be understood and experienced by following God. It cannot be spoken of—it must be entered into. Therefore, the answer is directed toward the future” [30, 66–67]. After all, neither the Israel of the time of the Exodus nor Moses, the leader of the people, yet knew what it meant to follow God, to live and abide in God.

In other words, to know the Name of God means to abide in God Himself, in His energy, in His Ineffable Glory.

But toward what “future” is “God’s answer to Moses” directed—that is, “I am the One Who is Present (and will be present)”?

Clearly, this answer is directed toward the future when the Presence of God will be revealed as absolute and unconditional, as “All in all.” But such a Presence was revealed as Theosis, the root and power of which lies in the Cross and Resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Thus, the Name of God can be hieroglyphically represented by the sign of the Cross, that is, by the sign of the cross made upon oneself. But the sign of the Cross is the oldest symbol in history; it was known to humanity long before the Crucifixion of the Lord, long before the time of the prophet Ezekiel, long before Moses. A round stone with a cross inscribed within a circle, covered by a plate made from the molar of a mammoth, found at the Neanderthal site of Tata in Hungary; the skulls of mountain goats—argali—with large pairs of horns placed in such a way that they formed a cross-like covering over the remains of a boy lying in a sleeping posture in the Neanderthal cave of Teshik-Tash in Uzbekistan; spiral labyrinths made of boulders, appearing to grow out of a cross-shaped figure also laid out in boulders at the center (Solovetsky Archipelago); the cross-shaped floor plans of burial chambers in the megalithic mounds of Newgrange, Ireland; the Ankh signs, “Life,” in the shape of a cross in ancient Egyptian funerary texts; the swastika (which is also a cross) as an ornament in Neolithic cultures around the world, later found in Hinduism and Buddhism, as well as in the Hellenistic world; the orientation of countless religious and burial structures in ancient Africa, America, Australia, and Eurasia according to the four cardinal directions—that is, in a cross-like manner. These examples could continue for dozens of pages.

The Divine First Principle, the Presence of God, the Life of the life of the world, the Wisdom and Power of God, the Word of the Father, as if declaring: “I am, I am present, and I will be present. And My Presence, which is destined to be revealed openly one day, is already witnessed by signs and symbols that typologically converge toward their central meaning—the Revelation of My Presence, My Goodness, Mercy, and Power”—that is, toward the Cross of Christ. The prophecy of Ezekiel and the entire Old Testament are but a part of the whole—the Tradition of the Church of Christ, proclaiming salvation in Christ to “all the generations of Adam.” The examples we have just enumerated (which are only a small fraction of a vast multitude) are also a testimony “from Adam.”

Of the One First Principle, humanity retained a memory—an Adamic memory, secretly inspired by the Spirit of God, “which bloweth where it listeth” (John 3:8). To Him, to the One First Principle, mankind has always longed to return, always knowing from the most ancient and hidden myth, from initiation rites, from the most terrifying mysteries, that in the beginning of time a mysterious catastrophe took place, and now death reigns in the world—and that a mysterious Liberation and Return to the One First Principle is to come.

The Book of the Prophet Ezekiel describes the prophet’s vision of the resurrection of God’s people—their restoration from dry bones—when, at the divine command, the prophet calls upon the Spirit of God from the four winds, that is, from the four cardinal directions. The Old Testament prophecy inherits the image of the all-encompassing Power in the symbolism of the “four winds,” the four directions of the world—that is, in the symbolism of the Cross, which contains within itself the highest knowledge of God’s Omnipresence. And this symbolism was known to humanity from the most ancient times.

Thus, the sign of the Cross—the sign of the Name of God—has always been the sign of God’s Presence, but it also expressed the hope of humanity’s reunion with God. This hope, this expectation, is inherent to humanity from the beginning and in all times; it continually testifies to the primordial experience of humanity’s connection with God.

This experience is fulfilled by bringing the entirety of creation, in the person of the forefather—“all generations of Adam”—into eternal participation in the Infinity of God, which is Theosis in Christ—the Revelation of the Name of God.

The prophecy of Ezekiel, with its reference to the seal of the Name of God in the form of a small cross, is a specifically highlighted fragment of the primordial universal Tradition concerning the deification of man. The Tradition of the Church of God once again reunites this fragment with the whole, revealing within that whole a new, higher level—the Crucifixion and Resurrection of the Son of God.

He, the Savior and Lord, has granted us to dwell in His Name—that is, in Himself. And this dwelling is expressed in the sealing of each of the “members” of His Holy Body with the sign of the Fullness of His Body—the sign of the Cross. For a part of the Whole belongs to the Whole, and in each of its parts, the Whole is present.

Below, we will show—thereby indirectly testifying to the authenticity of the “tradition of Christ’s two-finger sign”—that the most faithful arrangement of the fingers for depicting the sign of the Fullness, the sign of the Whole—the Cross—is the two-finger sign.

Critique of Evolutionist Views #

After the schism of the Russian Church, the reformers, in their attempts to justify the innovations, proclaimed the thesis of the “insignificance of ritual” compared to “dogma,” following the Western scholastic doctrine of the “primary” and the “secondary” in piety—a doctrine erroneous both in its fundamental conclusions and in its initial premises. The new-rite adherents assert that the verbal formulations of the ecumenical councils are the “primary,” while “ritual is secondary.” The Old Believers, however, are convinced that since both the verbal formulations of conciliar decrees (dogma) and the forms and sequences of sacred actions (ritual) are manifestations (though different) of the unified spiritual experience of the Church (a view entirely consistent with the collective voice of apostolic and patristic Tradition), it would be incorrect to introduce a hierarchy of “primary” and “secondary” elements in the Church.

In this chapter, we will conclude our critique of “evolutionism” as an approach to studying the sign of the cross. This approach, now widely accepted in the scholarly world (for example, the aforementioned concept of Daniélou, see also [33]), was initially developed in the academic scholarship of the Russian Empire as a doctrine asserting the possibility of adapting the “secondary” elements of Tradition to the phases of the Church’s dogmatic development—that is, to its “primary” elements. In its early form, this doctrine of “the development of Tradition” took the shape of a theory regarding “the legitimacy and permissibility of arbitrary changes in ritual” and was widely used as a tool of “Nikonian” missionary propaganda.

From the very beginning of the Russian schism, the followers of the Nikon-Alexei reforms claimed that the three-finger sign of the cross was “original” and even “apostolic.” We shall call this assertion “missionary.” The propaganda of the “originality” of the three-finger sign was spread among the “schismatics” by the Nikonian missionaries of the Baroque era—the most “flamboyant” period in this regard—starting with the characteristic and trend-setting figure of the Latinized graduate of the Kyiv-Mohyla Collegium, the scholastic Dmitry Tuptalo, who later became the metropolitan of the northern Russian city of Rostov, a place deeply foreign to him in spirit as a Latinized Little Russian.

However, it was only in the 19th and early 20th centuries, mainly as a result of the meticulous research of Russian scholars [12], that a completely different picture emerged for the general public: it turned out that the two-finger sign had a very ancient history, both in Rus’ (where it had existed since the beginning of Christianization) and in Byzantium, while the three-finger sign was a relatively late phenomenon.

Yet, since these Russian scholars themselves were, as a rule, from the Nikonian milieu, they could not avoid trying, in some way, to justify and substantiate—under the pretext of “bringing our schismatics back into the bosom of the Mother Church”—the transition from the two-finger to the three-finger sign.

Critique of Evolutionist Views #

According to the Russian historian N. F. Kapterev [11], the two-finger sign of the cross in the Orthodox Church of Byzantium replaced the original single-finger sign (see Daniélou’s concept above) due to the defamation or profanation of the latter by the Monophysites. The Monophysites, continuing to use the “most ancient single-finger sign,” began to justify it by interpreting in their own way (in a Monophysite manner) the words of Cyril of Alexandria about “the one nature of God the Word, incarnate and made man.” The two-finger sign, as a “representation” of the dogma of the two natures—divine and human—in Christ, was supposedly the Orthodox response to the heresy of Monophysitism, which is why, for some time, the gesture of the sign of the cross among the Orthodox was the same as that used by the Nestorians, whose doctrine also contained a dualism of natures—the divine nature in God the Word and the human nature in Christ.

Kapterev explained the long existence of the two-finger sign in the Orthodox Church of Byzantium as a result of the prolonged struggle against Monophysitism. He suggested that once this struggle subsided with the triumph of Orthodoxy, a tendency began to emerge toward the establishment of what he called “the most natural form of finger arrangement for a Christian”—that is, the three-finger sign, which was believed to symbolize “the primary Christian dogma,” the doctrine of the Holy Trinity. However, this tendency manifested fully and led to actual changes in the sign of the cross only when there arose a need for a visible distinction between Orthodox confession and Nestorianism, which, unlike Catholic Orthodox teaching, denied the Hypostatic unity of Christ in two natures—divine and human.

Thus, Kapterev asserted that the three-finger sign was the optimal form of finger arrangement developed by the Orthodox over the long history of Christianity, a form he considered the most perfect. To this day, this assertion serves as the justification for replacing the two-finger sign with the three-finger sign, both among the hierarchs of the post-Nikonian new-rite church and among historians and scholars (see, for example, [33, 103]).

New-ritualism (of which the Russian scholar in this case becomes an apologist), in developing the Western doctrine of the “primary” and the “secondary,” dismantles the unity of the Church’s liturgical life and activity. In doing so, it introduces the notion of “ritual” as a distinct, service-based, and therefore “secondary” institution—one that merely serves the dogmatic teachings formulated at the ecumenical councils in the patristic era.

In the ancient Church, however, there was no concept of “ritual” as something secondary; rather, there was the order or sequence of worship—that is, its structure, harmony, and beauty. This order was in no way “external” or “secondary” in relation to the Church’s faith [19]. The first Christians, through the words of St. Irenaeus of Lyons, affirmed: “Our teaching is in accord with the Eucharist, and the Eucharist, in turn, confirms our teaching.” Or, as Pope Celestine (3rd century) expressed it: “The law of prayer is the law of faith.” These words of the early Christian saints testify to the indivisible unity of the Church’s experience—the experience of communion with God, which serves as a foretaste and prelude to Theosis in Christ. This experience is unified in its essence and manifests itself in different ways throughout the life and earthly journey of the Church—in dogmatic formulations, in the ascetic experience of the saints, in the confession of faith by martyrs, and, of course, in the order of divine worship. All of this was the liturgy of the Church as the Body of Christ. All of this manifested Christ as present in the Church and as governing His Body—the Church—through the Holy Spirit. And the center of this experience was the Eucharistic service.

The attempt to provide a “scientific” justification for Nikon’s reform required the prominent scholar to abandon the idea of the unity of the Church’s experience. Kapterev, as a new-rite adherent, could not avoid repeating the worn-out stereotype that the Old Believers were schismatics who, having clung to “secondary” matters, had fallen into “ritualism” and error, believing in the “magical power of ritual.” This, it was argued, led them into disobedience to the decrees of the tsar and the patriarch (and to the subsequent council of 1666–1667). Accusations of ritualism continue to be directed at the Old Believers by Nikonian propagandists to this day.

The Restoration of Justice #

The task of restoring justice has already been undertaken in Old Believer thought—one example being the work of M. Shakhov [34]. We will not duplicate Shakhov’s work, nor will we engage in polemics with him on certain points in his apologetics concerning the “importance of ritual,” with which we cannot fully agree; this is a separate matter. We will affirm—and we do affirm—the unity of Revelation, the unity of Experience, the unity of the Manifestation of Divine Grace and Divine Power in Christ.

So what does Kapterev argue? He claims that the “primary Christian dogma” of the Holy Trinity, through a certain historical process, found its “natural expression” in the form of three fingers joined together in a pinch.

But what is more natural to the actual experience of communion with God and the knowledge of God, by which the Church of God has truly lived and continues to live? A figure formed by the fingers of a human hand (in this case, three fingers joined together)—in other words, an image of a human conception of God—or the very manifestation of the Presence of God itself? There is no doubt that from the perspective of the Church itself, as the Body of Christ, as a single God-human organism, it is the second “option” that possesses true and unconditional “naturalness,” while the first has virtually no real value.

A highly authoritative and well-known liturgist, who himself belonged to “Nikonianism” and spoke quite critically of the Old Believers, but who nonetheless often sharply and effectively criticized modern new-rite liturgical practices—often from positions close to those of the Old Believers—was Fr. Alexander Schmemann. In his work Eucharist: The Sacrament of the Kingdom, he wrote the following:

“The whole point is that the primary meaning of the word symbol is not at all synonymous with image. A symbol may not ‘depict’ at all, meaning that it may lack any external resemblance to what it symbolizes. The history of religion shows that the older, deeper, and more ‘organic’ a symbol is, the less external ‘representationality’ it contains. And this is because the original ‘function’ of a symbol is not to depict (which would imply the absence of that which is depicted), but to manifest and partake of that which is manifested. A symbol is not merely ‘similar’ to the reality it symbolizes, but partakes of it and thus allows others to truly partake of it as well.

The radical difference between the modern and the original understanding of a symbol is that today, a symbol is seen as an image or sign of something else—something that is not actually present in the symbol itself—whereas in its original understanding, the symbol is itself the manifestation and presence of something else, but precisely as something other, that is, as a reality which, in the given conditions, can only be revealed through the symbol.

The word symbol comes from the Greek σύμβαλλω—‘to bring together,’ ‘to unite.’ Unlike a mere image, a mere sign, or even a sacrament in its scholastic reduction, in a true symbol, two realities—one empirical or ‘visible’ and the other spiritual or ‘invisible’—are joined together epiphanically. One reality manifests the other, but—and this is crucial—only to the extent that the symbol itself partakes of the spiritual reality.

Is it necessary to prove that only this primary, ontological, and epiphanic meaning of the concept of a symbol is applicable to Christian worship? Not only is it applicable, but it is inseparable from it. For its very essence consists in overcoming the dichotomy between reality and symbolism as non-reality, revealing reality itself as the fulfillment of the symbol, and the symbol as the fulfillment of reality.

Christian worship is symbolic, first, because the world itself, all of creation, is symbolic and mysterious, and second, because the very essence of the Church, its mission ‘in this world,’ is to fulfill this symbol, to realize it as the ‘truest reality.’ Thus, a symbol reveals the world, man, and all creation as the matter of a single all-encompassing sacrament” [23, 233–234].

Thus, the entire universe, all of God’s creation—this “universal Adam”—is a single symbol, but it is a symbol only insofar as it was created in Christ (Christ is the Symbol of symbols), only insofar as it was originally destined to be fulfilled as the Flesh of Christ, to be fulfilled in Theosis.

The Cross of Christ, His Crucifixion and Resurrection, is the epiphany and revelation of Divine Grace, Divine Love (Agape), the true nature of God’s relationship to His creation, and the sign pointing to the Mystery of Divine Life. The liturgy of the ancient Church led the world to this mystery, it brought people into communion with it through the Eucharist. The Eucharist revealed “all generations of Adam” as bearers of the image of Ineffable Glory and united them to the Archetype—Christ, the Word made flesh (thereby enabling the creature to partake of the Divine). Christ, the Word, who was with God and who is God (John 1:1).

And the Word, made Flesh—Christ, the One of the Trinity—according to Tradition, blessed the world with an open gesture, the two-finger sign.

Therefore, the ancient Church had no need for “representational” symbols, because the symbol—the single epiphanic and ontological symbol in Christ—was the entire liturgy (which encompassed everything: architecture, iconography, ritual, and the Church’s teaching). And by participation in this liturgy, the whole world, in which the Church resided—like a priest in his parish (to use Fr. Schmemann’s fitting expression)—was also a part of this great symbol.

Kapterev, following—perhaps unwittingly—the dominant Cartesian paradigm of dualism between “spirit and matter” that prevailed in the 18th and 19th centuries, the so-called “Age of Enlightenment,” equated the “spiritual” primarily with the “intellectual” or “ideal” (deriving from human “ideas” and even “ideologies”), with the “philosophical”—something “constructed by the human mind.” In doing so, he separated the “material ritual” from the “ideal” dogma, assigning greater value to the “brilliant constructions of the thought of the Holy Fathers,” that is, to only one, and a rather one-sided, layer of the Church’s indivisible experience. The other layer—the “material ritual”—was, due to its arbitrary detachment from the fullness of the Church’s experience, denied the same degree of value that he attributed to the “ideal” formulations of the ecumenical councils.

Furthermore, following the long-established dominance of “representational symbolism” (as opposed to the forgotten ontological and epiphanic symbolism, discussed above), Kapterev placed supreme value on the “depiction” of the Trinity through the arrangement of three fingers and constructed a sequence of “progressively advancing representations”: the single-finger sign (a “representation” of monotheism), the two-finger sign (a “representation” of the two natures of Christ), and the three-finger sign (a “representation” of the Trinity). By extracting from the unified and indivisible experience of knowing God (cf. John 17:3) only the “idea” of the Trinity, Kapterev assigned primary value to the representation of this idea. His main error lay in his forgetfulness of the unity, indivisibility, and wholeness of the experience of the knowledge of God.

Interestingly, Kapterev’s concept of the “progression” of the sign of the cross coincided with the 19th century—the era of Auguste Comte, Charles Darwin, and Herbert Spencer; a century that set the intellectual course for such “pillars of Western science” as J. Frazer, E. Tylor, and S. Freud. It was a time when the European intelligentsia increasingly embraced ideas of deism, agnosticism, positivism, and atheism, as well as theories of the origin of life from “inanimate matter” and the spontaneous, “random” development of simple forms into more complex ones. It is possible that the rebellious spirit of the “Enlightenment,” along with the strong reductionist and materialist tendencies of the West during Kapterev’s time, influenced the mindset of this Russian scholar—as well as that of many others.

From the foregoing discussion, it is clear that we have not yet directly “defended” the two-finger sign—unlike, for instance, Shakhov [34]. We have not yet responded to its critics within the framework of scholastic debates about the “perfection of representations.”

Paying due respect to this debate (especially since it continues to this day), we shall note that the two-finger sign also “represents” both the two natures of Christ (with two extended fingers, one of which is slightly bent as a sign of Kenosis) and the triune Godhead (with the three folded fingers united together). The “pinch” gesture, however, involves only three fingers (to “depict” the Trinity), while the two remaining fingers pressed against the palm were originally perceived as “idle,” a fact noted in the conciliar decrees of the reformers.

Thus, the two-finger sign is, in essence, a five-finger sign (as all five fingers participate in conveying theological meaning) and, from a purely “representational” standpoint, is more comprehensive than the three-finger sign: it “depicts” not just one (as the three-finger sign does in its initial polemical interpretation) but two “fundamental dogmas.”

Having addressed the question of the “perfection” of the two-finger sign, we shall now proceed further.

In the following chapters of this work, we will present arguments that develop the author’s main premise: if we accept the thesis that Christ Himself used the two-finger sign, then there must exist certain data, certain patterns, or certain connections that would indirectly demonstrate the truth of this premise. It is precisely these data that we will now present.

The meaning of the two-finger sign lies in the fact that when a person extends two joined fingers, they bear witness to their faith in the two natures of Christ—Divine and human—united in one Person. This is an expression of the very ontological openness we discussed earlier: in this gesture, a person confesses their agreement with the mystery of the Incarnation, which is the key to salvation. For this very reason, the ancient Christians cherished this sign so deeply that they refused to abandon it, even under the threat of persecution.

Yet the two-finger sign is not merely a doctrinal testimony but also an action embodying an ancient liturgical meaning. It requires a person to make a conscious effort, an exertion of attention and will, to form the fingers correctly and, while making the sign of the cross, utter the words of prayer. This effort, combined with prayer, leads to the person’s participation in the great Mystery, making them not merely a spectator but an active participant in the liturgical act. Herein lies a profound significance: prayer, expressed through movement, becomes an act of sacrificial offering, manifesting the person as a royal priest.

By contrast, the so-called “pinch” gesture is one that requires almost no effort; it can be formed instantly and does not demand concentration or inner work from the person. In this lies its psychological nature: it reflects more of the praying person’s current emotional state rather than drawing them into deep theological and ascetical action. The Neo-Greek rite, having adopted this gesture, thus shifted the emphasis from ontological testimony to subjective experience, thereby altering the very nature of prayerful action.

The difference between these gestures clearly illustrates the theological concepts underlying the Old Orthodox and Neo-Greek traditions. Whereas the Old Orthodox two-finger sign affirms a sacred ontology, in which a person through prayer and sacred action truly partakes of Divine energy, the Neo-Greek finger formation tends toward a more individualized perception of prayer, where inner feeling prevails over outward expression. This distinction is especially evident in the understanding of the Liturgy: Old Orthodoxy continues to uphold the tradition of active participation of each member of the Church in the sacred act, while the Neo-Greek tradition places greater emphasis on contemplative presence and experience.

Thus, the two-finger sign is not merely an old gesture but the expression of an entire worldview, at the center of which stands the person who confesses the Incarnation and bears within themselves the dignity of the priesthood.

The symbolism of the two-finger sign: the gesture of Majesty as the Heavenly Vertical #

Earlier, we mentioned the reference to the ancient Roman imperial ceremonial, according to which the emperor, manifesting his greatness, would shape the palm of his right hand into a symbolic vertical—the two-finger sign, which in this case symbolized the Divine Presence, of which the emperor was a representative on earth. However, the Roman emperor was merely an institutionally and deliberately distinguished fragment of the true, God-intended nature of humanity—its royal dignity (as discussed in the previous chapter). Thus, the two-finger sign is a symbol of Heavenly height, and to this Height—so testifies the two-finger sign!—humanity belongs. Therefore, the two-finger sign is an open vertical gesture, a sign of man’s Divine dignity; and this dignity was fully revealed in Christ.

Now let us consider our liturgical practice. When, during the communal service, the bishop blesses the people—or rather, Christ Himself, the Great and Only High Priest and “Head of the Body, the Church” (Col. 1:18), through the bishop, the leader of God’s people, blesses the Church—the bishop raises his right hand with the two-finger sign vertically and then makes the sign of the cross over the people. In doing so, he manifests Christ as the central Pillar of the Church, as the Axis once again connecting Heaven and Earth.

Let us now recall the prophecy of Ezekiel, which we have previously mentioned. We spoke of Ezekiel’s vision of a Man in priestly garments and His six companions, to whom the Divine Voice commands to place a sign upon the foreheads of the people of God. We also noted that these seven figures can be envisioned as six standing in a circle, at the center of which is the seventh, the chief figure. Remarkably, the sevenfold symbolism of Ezekiel’s prophecy finds many mysterious parallels, which allow us to speak of the Divinity of the central, “Axial” Figure—He who is also the “Seventh” in this narrative, the Man in priestly garments.

Firstly, the Seventh Day in the Book of Genesis is the day of Divine Rest, that is, the perfection of creation as a whole, a “holos,” permeated by the Divine Presence; a day in which there is no longer any mention of created things as objects of observation, but only of the contemplation of Divine Immovability, Inviolability, Eternity. The Seventh Day, the “blessed Sabbath,” is thus central in relation to the entire Six Days of Creation.

Another example. It is known that early Zoroastrianism was a religion of the one God, Ahura Mazda (Ahura—Lord, Sovereign; Mazda—Wise, Wisdom, Thought; Ahura Mazda—Wise Lord, Sovereign of Thought). Ahura Mazda, in the aspect or mode of Spenta Mainyu, the Spirit of Holiness, or the Holy Spirit, is surrounded by six Amesha Spentas—Immortal Holy Ones: Good Thought, Truth, Dominion (the Kingdom of God), Piety, Wholeness, and Immortality. These six Amesha Spentas are manifestations or energies of Ahura Mazda Himself. The Holy Spirit is the seventh and central one; He is the source of these manifestations.

A third example. From early Christianity (as well as antiquity), the so-called “chrismon” is known—a six-rayed star inscribed within a circle; its vertical ray was often supplemented by a “curl,” making it resemble the Greek letter “Ρ” (rho), and therefore this figure was called a “chrismon,” or the monogram of Christ. Undoubtedly, the chrismon expresses the symbolism of “seven”: six rays radiate from an immutable central point. In three-dimensional space, this corresponds to the system of orthogonal, mutually perpendicular, and axonometric straight lines with a common center, schematically—and symbolically—representing width, length, height (depth), the so-called three-dimensional cross. “Clement of Alexandria said that from God, the ‘Heart of the Universe,’ infinite spaces extend—one upward, another downward, one to the right, another to the left, one forward, another backward; gazing into these six spaces, as a number always equal, He completes the world; He is the beginning and the end (Alpha and Omega); in Him, the six periods of time are completed, and from Him, they receive their infinite duration; in this lies the mystery of the number ‘seven.’”

Now let us recall—we are returning to Ezekiel’s vision—for what purpose these seven figures (who, in essence, are One) are sent: they are to place upon the people the “marks” of belonging to God—the signs of His Name, which take the form of the Cross. That is, the Mysterious Priest descends in order to reveal, through the imprinting of the Cross, those who truly belong to God, those who abide in His Name. We previously mentioned that there are variations in the reading of Ezekiel 9:2. According to one reading, specifically in the Ostrog Bible, which traces back to the Septuagint, the Man in priestly garments is girded with a sapphire belt. In another reading, evidently based on the Hebrew Masoretic text, this Man carries at his belt—not specified whether it is sapphire or not—a scribe’s instrument.

Thus, there are two variants: the first mentions a sapphire belt but is entirely silent on whether the Man possesses a scribe’s instrument; we may assume, for the sake of argument, that he does not. The second mentions that the Man carries a scribe’s instrument at his belt but says nothing about its nature; we may assume, again hypothetically, that in this case, the Man with the instrument does not have a sapphire belt. A certain interpretation exists regarding the post-reform three-finger sign, suggesting that it allegedly originates from Ezekiel’s vision: the fingers of the scribe’s hand, gripping a stylus, are folded into a pinch, and since this scribe is the priestly figure from Ezekiel’s vision, sent to inscribe the sign of God upon the people of Israel, the pinch gesture is imbued with the entire symbolic weight of Ezekiel’s vision—it becomes the sign of belonging to the people of God. Since the true people of God are the Church of Christ, the argument follows that the three-finger sign is a truly Christian and entirely correct symbol. Such, we repeat, is the “Nikonian” scholastic speculation. Let us engage in scholasticism ourselves.

Let us carefully examine the following. The justification for the post-reform three-finger sign follows the second variant of Ezekiel’s reading: in the hand, folded into a pinch, there is a stylus, and the belt is not sapphire.

But the Man who has a sapphire belt around His loins holds no writing instrument in His hand. How, then, will He inscribe the sign of God upon the chosen? Clearly, with His bare fingers, without any intermediary tool. How, then, will He arrange His fingers to trace the Divine sign? Evidently, in a manner that allows Him to dip them conveniently into an inkwell. And it is more natural to dip one or two extended fingers rather than three folded together. Thus, it turns out that the most probable gesture of this Man is an open one. This Man is the Axis of the cosmos. Therefore, the range of open gestures in this case is reduced to a gesture resembling the two-finger sign.

Thus, the mystically fuller and deeper reading of Ezekiel, according to the Septuagint, presents us with the image of the Divine Priest—the Center and Axis of the angelic sixfold order—whose hand gesture emphasizes His centrality: before touching the heads of the chosen, His fingers are arranged in a royal, vertical, Axial symbol, similar or identical to the two-finger sign.

To this, we must add that in both variants of Ezekiel’s reading, in the tenth chapter, there is mention of a sapphire throne (or a throne upon a sapphire stone) above the cherubim at the very summit of the Temple. The Mysterious Man in priestly garments and a sapphire belt, by Divine command, takes fire from the same sapphire Throne—to scatter it upon Jerusalem. Sapphire, a stone of blue or azure color, is a symbol of Heavenly Height, a symbol of God. Therefore, this Priest with the sapphire belt is a Heavenly, Divine Priest.

Thus, the Heavenly Priest, proceeding from God, inscribes the sign of the Cross upon the chosen ones by His direct touch, and His hand bears the two-finger sign.

By contrast, the three-finger sign corresponds to a lesser “mystical weight” of the priestly figure (lacking a direct connection to Heaven due to the absence of mention of a sapphire belt). Moreover, the presence of a writing instrument in his possession introduces, first, an element of servitude into this image (unlike the Heavenly Royalty in the first variant: in antiquity, scribes were typically slaves); and second, an element of mediation in the act of inscribing the sign (as opposed to the immediacy and intimacy of the first variant). However, it must be clarified—even the presence of some instrument, such as a brush or stylus, in the hand of a saint serving as an instrument of Divine Action does not necessitate (as the Nikonian speculation assumes it does) that his fingers be arranged in a pinch. A striking example can be found in certain ancient icons of St. Panteleimon the Healer, where the saint is depicted holding a small box of medicine in his left hand, while in his right hand, he holds a stylus with a spoon at the end (often designed in the shape of a cross), yet his fingers are arranged in the two-finger sign.

It should be noted that the name “Panteleimon” translates from Greek as “All-Merciful,” a name attributed only to God Himself. Moreover, the box and spoon in the hands of Panteleimon are associated with the vessel of oil and brush (Anointing with oil being a symbol and manifestation of Divine Mercy). Thus, St. Panteleimon the Healer is an “epiphany” of Christ the Merciful Himself, and the saint’s right hand, holding the spoon-stylus-brush, is the blessing hand of the Savior Himself. And it bears the two-finger sign.

As mentioned earlier, Ezekiel 10 describes the transmission of fire from the Heavenly Throne to the Priest for scattering upon Jerusalem. In the Gospel of Luke, we read Christ’s words: “I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?” (Luke 12:49). Thus, the Priest in Ezekiel’s vision is an image of the Savior. The intense longing of the Son of Man for the Heavenly fire to be kindled upon the earth signifies His unwavering desire for the fulfillment of the Divine Plan of Reunion—that is, the elevation of human nature (and all creation) to eternal life in God.

Therefore, from all that has been said, it follows that the two-finger sign, as a symbol of the Heavenly Axis, is the most complete and organically fitting representation within the entire symbolic array of Ezekiel’s prophecy, which finds its fulfillment in Christ.

Earlier, we mentioned J. Daniélou’s hypothesis regarding the sign of the cross as an evolutionary development of the interpretation of Ezekiel’s vision; as an example confirming his insight, Daniélou referred to the so-called single-finger gesture of the “small cross” as an early variant of the sign of the cross. For our part, we assert that the “single-finger” gesture of the “small cross” is nothing other than a slightly simplified version of the two-finger-like gesture. Let us explain.

The extended thumb is, among other things, an Axial symbol: when raised, this finger (well known to modern people, especially in Western culture, as a sign meaning “everything is great,” “keep it up!”) points to Heaven as the “place” with whose well-being a person wishes to equate their desired success. One variant of this gesture (its “lowly” interpretation is also well known—so-called “finger signs”) is when both the thumb and the little finger are extended; in this case, we have an “Axis” (the thumb and little finger aligned along a straight line), penetrating the three realms—“heaven,” “earth,” and the “underworld” (represented by the three bent middle fingers). Another version of the same gesture is similar, except instead of the thumb, the index finger is extended (in its lowly interpretation, this is also a “finger sign” but of a different kind). Yet, in both cases, the original meaning of the gesture is lofty, metaphysical. This very gesture forms what is known as “horns” (sometimes called “the goat”). However, the horn, or horns, as we have already noted (see above), is one of the most ancient symbols of the Heavenly God.

Finally, to conclude this section of our study, we will present another particularly striking example demonstrating the vertical and Heavenly symbolism of the two-finger sign.

In the ancient Russian Life of Saint Paul, the founder of the Monastery of the Life-Giving Trinity on the River Obnora, compiled in the 16th century, there is an extensive account of miracles and healings performed by Divine Power through the now-reposed saintly ascetic. Among the numerous miracles, one is particularly noteworthy due to its direct connection with the two-finger sign. A certain man named Simon, who had broken his vow to take monastic tonsure at the monastery of St. Paul, was struck with paralysis, and, as written in the Life, “his legs curled up against his stomach,” so that he could only crawl. Crawling to the tomb of St. Paul, Simon prayed to God for several days. Finally, he was vouchsafed a Divine Manifestation: the God-bearer appeared, accompanied by St. Paul, and with the words, “Arise, man, why do you lie there?” she extended her hand toward his hand, and, taking the paralyzed man by two fingers of his right hand, pulled him up and restored him to full health.

Let us take note of the profound symbolism of this Manifestation. The crippled and paralyzed wanderer, with his legs drawn up to his stomach, was in the posture of an embryo—a posture whose symbolism we will discuss later, but for now, we may already say that it signifies birth into Life, into True Life, into life in God. The Most Pure One, appearing to him, grasped the sick man by two fingers of his right hand and raised him up, lifted him toward Life—there is the vertical, and this vertical is marked by the two-finger sign! The man, curled into an embryonic position, rises by Divine Power along the Heavenly Axis, by the Ray of the Sun of Righteousness, toward Life—toward God. It is no coincidence that the God-bearer appears here, for she is the sign of the Kenosis of the Word of God, His Incarnation. Thus, the Word of God, “bowing the Heavens and descending,” saves man by raising him up toward Deification, and this great truth is manifested in an epiphany in which the two-finger sign participates.

The Symbolism of the Two-Finger Sign: Doubling #

We will now examine another mode of the metaphysics of the two-finger sign—one which, alongside the axial and vertical symbolism just discussed, seems to us to lie at the very foundations of the dogmatic interpretation known from Church tradition and defended by the Old Believers for several centuries.

This new aspect is doubling. The axial vertical, designated by the whole figure formed by the extended fingers, appears to be “double”—that is, two fingers participate in its composition. Why?

Let us attempt to answer this question.

Firstly. Let us recall the opening words of the Book of Genesis: “In the beginning, God created Heaven and Earth.” Heaven and Earth (I deliberately write them with capital letters) are, as we have already discussed in the chapter on the royal dignity of human nature, divine principles, divine boundaries of creation; they are the spiritual “place” where the possibility of all created existence emerges. They are a “pair of Poles,” within whose field of force alone any creature can exist. Consequently, from a metaphysical perspective, any created being, by virtue of its created nature, exists “between Heaven and Earth”: God is both its support and foundation (“Earth”) and its inaccessible, incomprehensible mystery (“Heaven”).

The revelation of this “duality” of Poles is a universal, all-encompassing truth, appearing in various forms across all serious metaphysical and later philosophical teachings, expressed through myth and depicted on the walls of sanctuaries, manifested in doctrines of “opposites,” in the “binary oppositions” of mythical texts, in teachings about light and darkness, about the “masculine and feminine principles,” as well as about the “right and left” and “good and evil.” This is the truth of primordial duality as the principle of created existence. Yet the very fact of this duality testifies to something beyond it—to the supra-primordial non-dual, the one, standing at the origin of being.

Thus, in ancient Chinese symbolism, the Yin-Yang symbol depicts two mutually opposing black and white teardrops, or “fish,” representing universal opposites, enclosed within a single circle, which represents Wuji, the “boundless.” Similarly, the most advanced and profound doctrine of Vedanta, after contemplating the metaphysical Poles of Purusha and Prakriti, of Heaven and Earth, ultimately leads them back to the one supreme principle—saguna Brahman, before halting in reverence before the absolute, indescribable nirguna Brahman. This doctrine is called Advaita, the non-dual.

Finally, what is the symbolism of the Cross if not the greatest and most profound revelation of fullness as the one that encompasses opposites? “Right and left,” “above and below”—all are united in the symbol of the Cross. Let us recall ancient Russian icons of the Crucifixion: often, on either side of the Crucified, the Sun and the Moon are depicted—metaphysical opposites; their presence on the icon indicates that the mystery of the Lord’s Cross unites both into one. It reveals the unity of all things in Christ, offering all creation to the unoriginate and almighty God. The same truth is testified by the outstretched hands of the Savior upon the Cross, embracing the fullness of all.

Thus, the metaphysical symbolism of the “two Poles” is a teaching about fullness as a manifestation or energy of super-fullness. And in describing fullness—the “two Poles”—it bears witness to the one principle of fullness, to the source and foundation of all things. Therefore, the two-finger sign, from this perspective, expresses not only the doctrine of God as the source and beginning of fullness, that is, of the beginning of all things, but also the fact that the divine economy has united all (symbolized by the two fingers—the “Poles”) and brought all things together under Christ (Ephesians 1:10).

Secondly. The primordial, or as we have called it, “Adamic” expectation of reunion has always contained within it the knowledge of God as the one first source of being. The symbol of God is Heaven, or the Sun (written with a capital letter, for these are spiritual, not aesthetic-empirical concepts). The ray of the spiritual Sun is the heavenly axis, the spiritual vertical. But here we find something unexpected: this vertical is complex—one finger is not enough to represent it. Something else is introduced into the symbolism of the axis. What is it?

Deep and fervent faith possesses the intuition of discovery, which expresses itself in the principle of doubling: knowledge of God, participation in him, always “opens the gates” into the unknown, into the mysterious chambers of the depths of God’s infinity, into new superhuman experience: “In thy light shall we see light” (Psalm 36:9). Therefore, in the very experience of unity, almost silently, through the extension of a second finger in addition to the already—let us assume—extended first finger, something else is confessed—something paradoxical, something that might seem to call into question unity as an idea internalized by man.

However, this “doubling” does not negate unity, but rather transcends the human tendency to confine unity to a rigid concept. It does so precisely to establish a unity beyond human comprehension—a unity that cannot be contained within the carnal human mind, but can only be revealed by the grace of God; a unity that can only be seen and known with the eyes given by God himself.

A believer clearly understands that God is the sole Author and Creator of all things, that nothing happens without His will and providence—neither the movement of a leaf on a tree, nor a human action, nor the constant fulfillment of any so-called “law of nature.” Everything is from the One and toward the One. As Islamic doctrine of Unity (tawhid) has ceaselessly proclaimed for over a thousand years, God has no “associates”; He alone is the Author, Doer, and Accomplisher of all things. Absolute and all-encompassing Unity:

From behind a mysterious veil,
Under all appearances, the forms of things arise,
So different in their outward aspect…
Everything you see is the work of the One,
Dwelling alone behind an impenetrable veil.
(Ibn al-Farid)

Accepting this axiom as self-evident and indeed as one of the principal truths of the primordial tradition, the Church, from its very inception, has confessed something further—something that, when revealed, places the experience of the One in a deeper and truly boundless context, the context of a greater truth about God. The revelation and experience of this “new” truth—though in reality simply the eternal truth forgotten through human fallenness—allow the Church to proclaim pre-tawhidic statements such as: “God became perfect man without ceasing to be perfect God,” a statement that, in human language, is truly shocking to the axiom of unity, expressed in the formula of “two natures and two wills—divine and human.” Or again: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Or: “Abide in the Son and in the Father” (1 John 2:24). In these early Christian “enumerations of two,” we see not merely an indication but rather a knowledge of the third—the Holy Spirit, for only in Him is faith and abiding in the Father and the Son possible. And thus—the Trinity.

If the post-reform three-finger sign is, as we have already seen, merely a representation—at best a human conception of the Trinity—then the two-finger sign is a mystical, silent indication of the mystery and experience of the Trinity.

Another example. In the Book of Genesis, the name of God, Elohim, is derived from the ancient Semitic El, or Ilu, which conveys the idea of primacy and sovereignty, power, and ultimately exclusivity (as seen in the later biblical form Eloah, and also in the Quranic form Allah). Written in Hebrew letters, this ancient name carries the numerical value of 13. The name of God revealed to Moses in the Burning Bush, recorded in Hebrew letters as the so-called Tetragrammaton (יהוה), has a numerical value of 26. But 26 is simply a doubling of 13. Here we see a doubling, for which everything said above applies. Indeed, Ilu appears here as a kind of testimony to the primordial, “Adamic” tradition of the One Principle. With the revelation of the Name at the Burning Bush, the primordial tradition acquires new dimensions, which nonetheless remain the true and, by divine providence, the “pre-eternal” fulfillment of the longing of all humanity.

Finally, one more example. In the Synaxarion for the Sunday of Antipascha, or the Sunday of Thomas, an interpretation is given of the name of the Apostle Thomas, the one who “doubted” the Resurrection of the Lord and, by divine command, extended his fingers to the Life-Giving Body of the Savior. We read:

“Twin is the meaning of Thomas, whether because he was born with another, or because he doubted the Resurrection. Or because from birth his two fingers were conjoined on his right hand. Others say, with greater certainty, that Thomas is interpreted as Twin.”

It has been noted that the repetition of the name “Twin” in this passage signifies not a mere restatement of the first interpretation, but a new and deeper meaning of the name. In other words, we are faced with a “doubling” of the name, which carries the significance of revealing a deeper truth. Yet this deeper meaning remains unspoken, as if honored by silence—an apophatic silence, undoubtedly.

Perhaps, then, the name of the Apostle Thomas means “Twin of the Risen One”? In other words, Christ, previously known to the disciples only “according to the flesh” (2 Corinthians 5:16), is now “doubled”—that is, revealed as One who includes within Himself “His other,” that which had previously seemed to the disciples as “not Christ,” as something outside of Him, limited—in their eyes—by His Body. Through Thomas’s “assurance,” we may thus say that the Resurrection of Christ reveals the Risen Savior as all-encompassing, as including within Himself all creation and making it a partaker of the divine nature (2 Peter 1:4), that is, divinizing the creation of God.

Thomas, from birth, had “fused” two fingers on his right hand, which he brought to the Flesh of the Crucified and Risen One, uniting himself with Him in one Body. The “twinship” of Thomas, his very name, is Antipascha—that is, the renewal of Pascha, the revelation of the divinization of creation, the revelation of the unity of all things under the Head—Christ, made possible by Pascha, by the Crucified and Risen Christ.

And thus, the two fingers of his right hand are the same as a single finger. Here we see the revelation of the Non-Dual through the symbolic depiction of Duality.

We shall conclude the discussion of this section of our study with a general reflection. The coming of our Lord Jesus Christ fulfilled and consummated all the “expectations of the nations,” revealing the true meaning of all the most ancient symbolism. The Chalcedonian definition—“without division, without confusion…”—clarified and grounded the entirety of this ancient anticipation: the long-awaited reunion of man with God, the deification of creation—in Him Who appeared to the world as the Perfect Man while ever remaining the Perfect God.

The Difficulty of the Two-Finger Sign and the Ease of the “Pinch” #

Let us now turn our attention to another crucial aspect necessary for fully grasping the depth of the difference between the two-finger and three-finger sign of the cross—an aspect we have previously mentioned in passing but will now develop further.

The “pinch” (щепоть), as we have noted, is very simple to perform, whereas the two-finger sign is complex and requires significantly greater physical effort.

This fact points to their respective affiliations with two distinct cultural paradigms:
a) The two-finger sign belongs to an archaic theocentric or hierocentric culture—a culture born of the intense metaphysical striving of ancient man, who deliberately expended his strength and time in this earthly life upon the symbolism of the epiphany of Heaven. In this culture, the absolute value was God, Whose nearness demands self-denial and self-sacrifice, and the empirical state of man and the world was seen as a deviation from the norm, requiring its overcoming.
b) The three-finger sign belongs to a modern anthropocentric culture, in which the absolute value is empirical, mortal—that is, fallen—man, whose earthly existence is regarded as normative, requiring no rejection or transcendence.

It is well known that the two-finger sign, as a gesture by which a person marks himself with the sign of the cross, was in harmonious unity with the practice of prostration. Russian Old Believers preserved and carried through persecution—first from the Nikonian reformers and later from the pressures of modern secular civilization—the ancient ritual of metania (метание), or full prostrations, rich in deep symbolism. Its principal meanings are the reverential awe before the Almighty God—that is, the “fear of God”—and participation in the Mystery of the Death and Resurrection of the Savior.

Scripture contains many episodes (we shall not enumerate them all here, but it is sufficient to recall the episode of Saul, the future Apostle Paul, on the road to Damascus) that describe man’s reverent dread and amazement before the Epiphany of Divine Presence and Power. Struck with awe, overwhelmed and pierced through by the Almighty Presence, man falls prostrate, “upon his face,” and then rises from the ground—but only by Divine Command, that is, again, by the Power of God. In the Presence of God, man dies to his “old,” “carnal” life and rises to new, true, Divine life. This “death and resurrection” constitutes the real participation of a “member of the Body of Christ” in the saving Passion of Christ and in His All-Glorious Resurrection.

Bowing the knees—more precisely, falling to the earth in full prostration—the believer assumes the posture of an embryo (as we have already mentioned when recounting an episode from the Life of St. Paul of Obnora): the very position of a fully formed human embryo, ready to be born into the world from its mother’s womb. It is noteworthy that the burial rites of the dead, practiced virtually since the dawn of human history, have often included interment in a fetal position. The same symbolism is found in the initiatory rites of ancient societies, in which those being initiated into the mysteries likewise assumed the posture of an embryo. Thus, throughout its history, the world has awaited the Victory over death.

…And rising from prostration, the Christian straightens himself, assuming an upright position—he thereby rises with Christ, or rather, in Christ, from the dead. Hieromartyr Avvakum wrote in his Life: “And thou, O true believer, edify thyself in the fear of the Lord: after making the sign of the cross, fall and bow thy head to the ground—this signifies Adam’s fall; and when thou risest, this signifies the rising of us all by Christ’s providence.”

To this we may add that in the ancient Church, at an early stage of its history, full prostrations were often accompanied by the worshiper’s body being spread out on the ground in the form of a cross, and upon rising, by the lifting of the hands outward and upward toward Heaven (the so-called orans posture).

Thus, as we see, this entire ancient ritual required the participation of the whole person in his entirety; it demanded considerable exertion of both mental and physical strength—just like the vast majority of archaic cults, which were centered around the epiphany of the Sacred. Whether it was Paleolithic hunting for cave bears, mammoths, or whales (all three species being sacrificial animals, symbols of the Divine One Principle and the Universal First Sacrifice), or the masterpieces of prehistoric art on the walls of cave sanctuaries—whose halls lay hundreds of meters deep within narrow, nearly impassable corridors—or the Egyptian pyramids, symbols of the Divine Mountain and at the same time of the eternal, spiritual body of the resurrected man, partaking of Divinity; or the megalithic burial mounds of Europe, symbols of the pregnant womb of the Spiritual Earth, ready to give birth to man into Divine life from the seed (i.e., the dead, lying in a fetal position) implanted in it by Heaven—all of this required immense human effort, not directed toward the sustenance of earthly life or anything utilitarian, but toward embodying the ancient faith, the ancient expectation of reunion with God.

It is to this cosmos of forms of ancient worship—continuing in succession and bringing them to fulfillment—that the Old Orthodox two-finger sign of the cross belongs, sanctified by the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Let us recall once again that this gesture, generally speaking, is actually a five-finger sign (and thus, inherently more “energy-intensive” than the three-finger sign), for all five fingers participate in the sacred act of prayer or blessing. And this is entirely understandable: for we make the image of our confession with our right hand—our desnitsa—and the right hand has always been an image of a person’s life activity, his way of thinking, his moral direction, and the inclination of his heart. And could it have been that any part of the hand, so heavily laden with symbolic meaning and intensity, would remain “idle”? “And as we have received baptism, so also shall we bless, by folding five fingers in our right hand.”

The Nikonian three-finger sign, on the other hand, with its “idle” fingers and ease of formation, gradually came into full harmony with kneeling—a posture entirely different in meaning from metania, one that is much easier to perform and psychologically and emotionally lighter for the worshiper. Over time, in the “dominant church,” a corresponding religious ethos emerged, aligned with the simplicity of the “pinch” gesture—one that included emotionally expressive, sometimes plaintive, sometimes almost laughter-like partesnoe singing, which replaced the ancient strict unison chant; Baroque painting and architecture, which took the place of hieratic, symbolic, and austere iconography and church construction; and many other elements that can be succinctly described in the words of the Apostle: in place of that which was “from the Spirit of God,” there came the “natural” (or soulish), incapable of comprehending the Spiritual (cf. 1 Cor. 2:14).

Two Paradigms #

The reformers of Nikon’s era adopted the three-finger sign from the Greeks, among whom it was considered so ancient that it was traced back to apostolic times. If the Greeks, who practiced the “pinch” sign, sincerely believed that their form of making the cross was the only correct one, established by the apostles, this was only because the Greeks themselves (as well as Europe, as we shall show below) had, by that time, become deeply embedded in a specific paradigm of thought, worldview, faith, and piety. At the very beginning of this study, we referred to this paradigm as the “spiritual corpse poison.” The triumph of this “poison” in the Greek consciousness was facilitated by the devastation of Byzantium by the Latin crusades in the 12th–13th centuries, the union with the Papacy, and ultimately, the fall of the Byzantine Empire in the 15th century under the onslaught of the Turks.

The main trajectory of development in the initially “Christianized” and later “post-Christian” world has been the gradual secularization of ecclesiastical consciousness—the movement from fervent, burning faith to lukewarmness, and finally, as the tragic culmination of this process, to anthropolatry, which arises and gradually establishes itself in place of the Theanthropy that was originally revealed. This is a process of the gradual replacement of the paradigm of human Divine Sonship with a paradigm of God-abandonment. Let us describe this process.

The reception of the Gospel by the nations of the Mediterranean gave rise to a magnificent new culture—one that was, at the same time, creatively continuous with prehistoric and ancient traditions. This was the early Christian culture, whose central axis was the Parousia, the Presence of Christ, the anticipation and experiential foretaste of the dawn of the Deification of creation. This culture then became the nucleus from which Byzantine, Russian, European, Transcaucasian, and other medieval cultures developed. All the great masterpieces of architecture, painting, and liturgical music bear traces of the early Christian symbolism of Deification. “As in the beginning, in the early Christian era, so now, in its best Byzantine or Russian expressions, the church is experienced and felt as a cathedral, as the gathering of heaven and earth and all creation into one—in Christ—which is the very essence and purpose of the Church… This is testified to by the form of the church building itself and by iconography,” wrote the already quoted Fr. Alexander Schmemann. “Standing in Thy Church of Glory, we seem to stand in Heaven…”—so we chant at Matins during Great Lent, according to the ancient Typikon. And the ancient forms of Christian churches manifested the Church of God as “Heaven on Earth.”

It suffices to recall masterpieces such as the Great Church of Hagia Sophia in Constantinople; the medieval domed katholikons of Greece, which are directly connected with it; the cathedrals of ancient Kiev, Smolensk, Novgorod, Ladoga, and Vladimir-on-the-Klyazma; or the strict and serene Romanesque cathedrals, such as the Abbey Church of St. Mary Laach or St. Martin’s Cathedral in Mainz—cross-shaped in plan, rooted in early Christian basilicas, and possibly carrying within them echoes of the ancient European megalithic tradition.

A modern composer and music theorist who has devoted much work to the study of ancient Russian liturgical singing, Vladimir Martynov, has used the term iconosphere to describe the principle that governed ancient Russian culture. The iconosphere is a transfigured world, a world as an icon of the new creation, forming—or rather, revealing itself—around “man in Christ,” the man who “no longer lives, but Christ liveth in him” (Gal. 2:20).

Gradually, among the majority of Christians, this sense of walking before God, of dwelling in Heaven, of living in the Presence of God, in the Sphere of Holiness, became unbearable: “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man” (cf. Luke 5:8). This may have occurred due to the accumulation of a critical mass of the awareness of one’s own sinfulness, an overwhelming sense of unworthiness to stand before the Face of God. The perception of Divine Presence was replaced by a sense of God’s remoteness: “God is in Heaven, and we are on Earth.” The gulf between God and man was less and less conceived as miraculously bridged by the Wonder of Divine Grace and Power revealed in the Cross and Resurrection of the Savior, and more and more as a fatal and seemingly self-evident absolute barrier. The miracle of overcoming this barrier was now spoken of only in scholastic exercises, far removed from the daily life of each Christian. God became a distant object.

At first, this process was accompanied by an impulsive human striving toward Heaven, growing ever more distant and objectified—hence, in the West, the emergence of the soaring, flame-like lines of Gothic architecture, which became increasingly pronounced over time. But if God is merely an object, then He is necessarily limited—and in that case, He becomes akin to an earthly ruler, in relation to whom man can only be a slave.

Yet, from this piety of the slave, there inevitably emerged, through dialectical necessity, the liberal-humanist ideal of the deification of man. In the era of the Renaissance and Baroque, the idea of the commensurability of earthly man and the distant God gradually took hold. The emblem of this idea became the dominance in architecture of characteristic ellipsoidal decorative rosettes, which replaced the medieval circular rosettes (the two foci of the ellipse representing two centers, indicating the commensurability of God and man, whereas the circle, with its single center, had corresponded to the absolute Unity of God).

In painting, this shift was marked by the emergence of figures such as Giotto, and later Raphael and Michelangelo. Liturgical chant, which had been a divine-inspired hymnody—an expression of the Church’s unified glorification of the Creator—was gradually replaced by composed, authored music. Around the same period (the 14th century), Western philosophical thought began leaning toward the conclusion that the particular takes precedence over the universal (the so-called dispute over universals and the rise of nominalist philosophy), a tendency that would ultimately lead to the prioritization, in human consciousness, of the atomic, the individual, the material over the collective, the holistic, the immaterial.

The sign of the cross (the great Cross) in the Western Church, which had previously been made in both directions—right to left, as in the East from ancient times, and left to right—was definitively standardized by the 16th century as left to right. This confirmed the Western Christian tendency to regard Christ as the object of prayer (a gaze from the outside upon the Crucified One, wherein His right hand corresponds to the left side of the supplicant), which had prevailed over the Eastern practice of being clothed in Christ (where the right side of the Crucified corresponds to the right side of the worshiper—hence, in Orthodoxy, the continued practice of crossing oneself from right to left). At the same time, Western sources began to mention the three-fingered sign of the cross as the preferred form.

Another definitive development was the solidification of a doctrine that had begun taking shape around the time of the Great Schism (11th century)—the idea that God delegates to the priest the power to bind and loose sins in the sacrament of confession. This replaced the earlier teaching that the priest was merely a witness (not the performer) of the actual forgiveness of sins, which was effected solely by God. This earlier understanding was preserved in the East—not fully among the New Ritualists, but almost completely among the Old Believers of the priestly tradition.

Russian ecclesiastical beauty also underwent changes. The domes atop cathedral churches, which had traditionally been hemispherical with a diameter matching that of the drum beneath, gradually took on the familiar onion shape, with a relatively slender drum below. This caused the dome to appear visually detached from the body of the church, thinning the connection between them. If the church buildings of ancient Kiev, Novgorod, Vladimir, and Moscow were perceived as an organic unity (a notion with profound theological significance) and were spatially characterized by a single volume—akin to a single megalith (“like a single stone,” as was said of the Cathedral of the Dormition in the Moscow Kremlin, built in the late 15th century)—by the mid-17th century, a tendency had emerged toward the visual perception of the church as a composition of multiple volumes, both large and small. Architectural and decorative details took precedence over the unity of the whole.

The interior of the cathedral was also changing. In iconography (both fresco painting and the iconostasis), stylistic elements that had already become widespread in the West were gradually introduced. These reflected a shift toward illustrative symbolization in the theological language of the icon, replacing the earlier epiphanic symbolism.

Early types of central under-dome chandeliers—choroses, which had a toroidal shape with a large open center or a filigree Cross at the center, and later, in some cases, a chalice—began to be replaced in the 17th century by another type borrowed from the West: stemmed panikadila chandeliers, whose forms reflected the characteristic styles of Gothic, Renaissance, or Baroque architecture.

Thus, here too, the symbol as epiphany (the open center as an apophatic emptiness—a paradoxical sign of the superabundance of the Presence of the Uncreated Light, and later the chalice, forming an ensemble with the Eucharistic Chalice) gave way to the symbol as image (the shining chandelier as a mere representation of the Uncreated Light). It is interesting to note that the replacement of the central chandelier in Russian cathedrals—from a choros with an open center to a stemmed chandelier—roughly coincided with the introduction of the Western type of iconography for the Descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. This newer depiction featured the Mother of God at the center, replacing the traditional Orthodox iconography with a vacant center, where the two symmetrical rows of seated apostles formed a focal point.

In Byzantium, manifestations of this process can be seen in the works of the Palaiologan era of “humanism,” and even more so in the Westernizing tendencies of Cretan iconography and painting of the 15th–16th centuries. The decisive moment, however, was the crisis of the 13th–15th centuries, directly linked to the conquest and plundering of Constantinople by the Crusaders, the final rupture between the Roman and Eastern Churches, the attempts at union in this context, and ultimately, the shock of Byzantium’s fall to the Ottoman Turks.

It was during this time, amidst the ongoing trauma and stress, that a tendency emerged favoring a more private, individualistic, and psychologically driven gesture of prayer—the “pinch” or three-finger sign—over the liturgical and metaphysical two-finger sign. During this period, the two-finger sign, which had been a deeply liturgical gesture, underwent a transformation, degenerating into an illustrative symbol to such an extent that it began to depict letters. It was “condensed” into a residual form, hardening into what became known as the “onomastic” or “hierarchical blessing,” a relic of ancient liturgical practice that was by then largely non-functional due to the clear division of the Church into the “teaching” and the “taught.” Paradoxically, however, this preserved the tradition of the “two-finger sign of Christ”: what had been a clear two-finger gesture—the sign of the Lord Himself—became a symbolic blessing forming a cryptic depiction of the name of Jesus.

The unity of liturgical church life was fracturing into a multitude of individualized devotional practices. This inevitably resulted in the establishment of an absolute dominance of psychological gestures, which were self-contained and reflected a person as a self-sufficient monad. This is precisely what the “pinch” gesture represented. Strangely, or perhaps entirely logically, the prevailing sense of divine abandonment among these “new” and “nominal” Christians not only gave rise to deism, agnosticism, and atheism among the European-educated elite, but also to a widespread fascination with external, sensory, and paranormal effects produced by various “elders” and “holy women,” which were classified as “supernatural.” The excessive interest in such phenomena has not only persisted over time but has even grown to this day, supported by easily accessible literature in church bookstores.

Thus, over a certain period—whose precise boundaries are somewhat fluid but can be roughly identified for each region of the Christianized ecumene—there occurred the worldview and spiritual shifts described above. These shifts culminated in a state of Christian self-consciousness whose natural expression, in the language of gestures, became the figure of the “small bent palm,” that is, the “pinch.” Due to the “naturalness” of this gesture for the “new” and increasingly narrow, entirely immanent self-consciousness of the time, people could no longer perceive it as something novel. Instead, they considered it ancient and even “apostolic.”

Outstretched and Bent: Strength and Weakness #

In Antioch—home of the so-called “Antiochian school of theology,” which meticulously emphasized the historical reality of Christ’s humanity, culminating in the definitions of the Fourth Ecumenical Council concerning the “two natures” of the Lord—the basilica of St. John the Baptist housed and venerated a relic: the right hand of the Forerunner. This relic was raised together with the image of the Holy Cross during the feast of the Exaltation of the Precious Cross of the Lord. As the “Narrative of the Honorable Hand that Baptized the Lord” records (see the Lives of the Saints for January 7, the Synaxis of the Holy Prophet, Forerunner, and Baptist John), at times, the hand was “outstretched,” while at other times it was “bent.” The first signified “abundance of earthly fruits” for that year, while the second indicated “scarcity” or even “famine.”

A second example might seem contradictory to the first, but this contradiction is only apparent, as will be shown.

The ancient Novgorodian Tale of St. Sophia recounts that in the dome of the newly built Cathedral of St. Sophia, a fresco of Christ Pantocrator was painted with a “closed hand” (the fresco has not survived, but its form can be approximately reconstructed based on similar depictions in other churches). The unusual depiction of the right hand of the Pantocrator caused consternation for Bishop Luka. In response to his concern, according to the tale, a voice issued from the image of Christ, commanding that the hand be left as it had been painted, for it held Great Novgorod, and as soon as the hand was outstretched, the city would come to an end. Some might argue that in this case, the closed hand was given a positive meaning rather than the outstretched one.

However, as is easy to see upon careful examination, the contrast between “straightness” and “curvature” is being made in an entirely different context. The Novgorodians perceived the unusually depicted divine hand (hence the origin of the legend) as containing within it their very lives, as the salvific space in which the existence of Novgorod was possible. For comparison, it should be noted that the “pinch” gesture a priori cannot be a vessel for anything, as it is a closed gesture, unlike the two-finger sign.

Analogous depictions are known in Byzantine art of the period. For example, the dome mosaic of the katholikon of the Monastery of Daphni near Athens, dating to the 11th–12th centuries, features a similar hand. Later, this technique continued to be used by artists, as seen in the dome mosaics of the katholikon of the Chora Monastery in Constantinople (now the Kariye Mosque) from the 14th century, and the dome mosaic of the Church of the Theotokos Pammakaristos (the “Joyous”), also from the 14th century. Even in Great Novgorod itself, in the dome fresco of Christ Pantocrator, the master Theophanes the Greek, evidently drawing on an established tradition, depicted the Lord’s right hand with curved fingers. It gives the impression that the artist was hinting at the heavenly status and nature of this image: the chalice-like, concave surface of the dome is curved, and so too are the fingers of the Blessing Hand of the Pantocrator.

It is possible that here we see an insight of the Byzantine and Russian artists—a vision captured in mosaic and paint—of the “curvature of space-time” in the Presence of Christ; more precisely, of the transfiguration of all creation into the Glory of Christ Pantocrator. In all the cases listed, it is evident that the right hand of the Lord is not depicted with the “pinch,” but rather with an open gesture, more akin to the two-finger sign, while also expressing the truth that the Hand of the Lord contains all creation.

Conclusions #

Now we can draw conclusions. The liturgical life of the early Church originally bore witness to the experience of Christ’s Presence in the Holy Spirit. This was the experience of divine sonship, of life with God and in God. Oral tradition preserved the memory of Christ not only as Teacher but also of His characteristic gestures—as the Evangelist, as the Blessing High Priest, King, and Father. These were majestic, beautiful, open, and royal gestures. Among them were those that could be described as “two-finger-like,” as well as the actual two-finger sign, as we see it in Byzantine and early Russian icons and in its present form as practiced by the Old Believers. The general characteristic of the cultural paradigm of this period can be described using the term of V. Martynov—iconosphere, a God-preserved and divinized cosmos striving to be transformed into the Body of Christ.

The three-finger sign, a weaker form of making the sign of the cross, replaced the stronger two-finger sign first in Western Europe, Byzantium, and the southwestern regions of Rus’. This occurred within the broader process of the decline of Christian culture, a process that consisted in the gradual removal of its core—the living experience of communion with God, of divine presence, and of man’s elevation toward deification in Christ.

In the consciousness of most Christians (who were becoming “Christians in name only,” nominal Christians), the tendency toward divine sonship was replaced by a tendency toward divine abandonment. This necessarily led to cosmic changes: the liturgical and cultural forms of the once-Christianized ecumene began to shift. The liturgical language was simplified, becoming closer to everyday speech. The unity of word and gesture, along with the overall internal logic of worship, required the emergence of a dominant gesture that, under the conditions of the iconosphere, had never before served a liturgical function.

This gesture—the “pinch”—was perhaps originally an oratorical gesture used by bishops from their cathedra to convey certain emotional states and intonations in speech. However, as the iconosphere collapsed and the tradition of Christ’s two-finger sign was forgotten, the “pinch,” which was much easier to perform than the two-finger sign, became the gesture of the sign of the cross. It was then given the artificial, invented interpretation that we know today—that of a “pictorial” symbol of the Holy Trinity. This illustrative and detailed symbolism signals the arrival of an era in which God is increasingly perceived as absent from the world, marking the onset of divine abandonment and paving the way for anthropocentrism and opposition to God.

In the early Christian era, knowledge of God and man’s participation in the supreme Mystery—God’s revelation as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—was achieved ontologically, through living experience. It was the experience of being wholly consumed by the Supreme Reality of the Mystery in Eucharistic communion with the Lord Jesus Christ, of the transformation of man and all creation into one Whole with Christ—in other words, simply into Christ. Through this communion, the Mystery of the Trinity was revealed precisely as an incomprehensible yet all-encompassing reality, as an Infinite Power and Depth that cannot be described by any external forms or symbols.

This was the liturgical and Eucharistic experience of the Church, and its natural expression in the world—Christ-like in its nature—was manifested in the iconosphere. This unity of magnificent forms and symbols encompassed all aspects of Church life: in the architecture of sacred buildings, in iconography, in the beauty of liturgical chant, in the harmonious and graceful gestures of sacred actions. The most important of these gestures was the two-finger sign of Christ—an open, regal, axial, and vertical gesture, which was naturally interpreted in the terms of the Chalcedonian Confession, that is, as a confession of the fullness of the Incarnation of God the Word. And in this confession lay the Mystery of the Trinity as the Revelation of the Pre-Eternal Divine Love—Agape.

Centuries later, the condition of the human spirit brought with it the dominance of the paradigm of divine abandonment. Along with it came the replacement of the priority of wholeness and unity with that of fragmentation and atomization. Inevitably, this resulted in the substitution of the ontological and mystical experience of knowing God—of liturgical entrance into and ascent toward the Heavenly Sanctuary of the Unknowable—with human imagination. This, in turn, led to an attempt to “depict” the Mystery of the Trinity by various means, including the interpretation of a rhetorical gesture in a “trinitarian” manner—namely, the gesture resembling the “pinch,” merely because it involves three fingers placed together.

From the 12th–13th centuries onward, a wave of transformation in the dominant Christian consciousness and worldview began to advance from the West. This shift was driven by the gradual forgetting of the “tradition of Christ’s two-finger sign,” which, in essence, meant the forgetting of Christ Himself as the One who “is with us always, even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 28:20). As a result, in the Christian West and Byzantium, a process of replacing the sign of the cross took place—moving from the more difficult and intense “two-finger-like” gesture, and the two-finger sign itself, to the simpler and more compact form of the “pinch.” Meanwhile, Rus’ preserved the two-finger sign up until the forced and tyrannical abolition of the entire ancient Orthodox church order by the tsar and patriarch in the 17th century. After that, this order survived only among Russian Orthodox Christians who endured the storm of trials brought upon them by unjust reforms.

The tragedy of the schism within the Russian Church, and with it the replacement of the two-finger sign with the three-finger sign by government decree, was one of the manifestations of the mysterious, universal process of history’s “harvest ripening”—the Divine Mystery in which the “signs of the times” (Matt. 16:3) are revealed, each at its appointed season, at the hour determined by the All-Encompassing Providence. “We see that winter approaches; the heart has grown cold, and the legs have begun to tremble. Nero ordered me to build a church, but he himself hid in Chudov Monastery, praying for a week in his chamber. And there, during prayer, a voice came to him from the icon: ‘The time of suffering has come; you must suffer unwaveringly,’” wrote Protopriest Avvakum, the martyr, in his Life.

In the course of implementing their ambitious political plans, the Russian tsar and patriarch in the mid-17th century imposed, through tyranny and terror, elements of a modernized, post-Christian culture borrowed from the Greeks, Latins, and Poles. Among these was the “pinch” sign, interpreted in a “trinitarian” manner. However, these changes met resistance from that part of the Russian Christian population who remained truly faithful, those who still desired to be in Christ and who knew that the Lord and Deliverer was always with them. These Russian Christians were ready to show the reformers, who had little faith and were forgetting Christ, the signs of His Presence and Protection.

Thus, Father Lazar, a priest from Romanov-Borisoglebsk, at the Moscow Council of 1666 (1672), in the presence of the Greek “ecumenical patriarchs,” proposed a trial to his opponents: he offered to be placed on a pyre, and if he remained unharmed, the innovations in Russia should be abolished. The authorities refused this proposal—clearly out of fear. Later, Saint Lazar composed a petition to Tsar Alexei Mikhailovich, in which he repeated his request:

“Order, O sovereign, that I be granted a face-to-face confrontation with the authorities and with the new-loving scribes—whoever among them wishes to debate their above-mentioned blasphemous heresies—before whomever thou, sovereign, shall appoint from thy council. And beyond that, sovereign, in addition to a confrontation, let thy divine royal power command that we proceed to the common trial, to the judgment of God, and let us, of our own will, ascend to the fire before all the realm, to reveal the truth; that the piety of thy fathers may be manifest, that all doubt may be removed from the souls of the devout, that the Holy Church may be united, and that with one voice the All-Holy Spirit may be glorified.”

In the example of the holy martyr Lazar, we can clearly see the Christian life within the paradigm of divine sonship. We see the iconosphere manifesting itself even in conditions of external triumph by the paradigm of divine abandonment.

The Russian Christians—zealots of ancient piety—conducted themselves in the face of the “appointed time” in a way that was entirely natural for any “member of the Body of Christ.” Sensing unmistakably the spirit of antichrist in the imposed “reforms,” they simply remained faithful to Christ. This naturally entailed, as a matter of course, their remaining within what could be called the mainstream current of the original tradition—the tradition of “all-borne Adam” concerning Creation, the Fall, and Reunification with God. This tradition, revealed in the Cross and Resurrection of Christ, became the Sacred Tradition of the Church of God in Christ.

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