The historical in the unhistorical: The Church as an Ontological structure in Patristic Thought of the II–V centuries

The article examines the ideas of key patristic authorities of the early 2nd — 5th centuries about the structure of the Church, its internal structure, which has three scales of an ontological nature: man, community, and the Catholic Church. This structure corresponds to the ecclesiological model of “one — part — whole”. The dynamics of these ideas and the gradual formation of the doctrine of the historical nature of this structure are shown. From the preservation of previous ecclesiological scales, such as man or community, in the subsequent structure of the Church of Christ as a universe, the problem of the existence of the structure of the Church as “historical in the nonhistorical” arises. The issue of the “ecclesiological nature” of communities that have broken away from the Church — paraassemblies, schisms and heresies — is also considered separately; including the problem of understanding historical destructive (retrospective) processes that mirror the processes of the historical formation of the Church.