In his moral sermon Seneca called for the creation of a special community between people, imbued with an invisible, but the most solid connection-a community of Holy saints, uniting the divine world and the human world. Such a community, in his opinion, can be created by people who have embodied the ideals of the wise man-stoic. They are men free from all kinds of passions and needs, true masters of themselves, possessing all the virtues, always doing the right thing, and attaining all these qualities by an attitude of non-resistance and religious submission to the providential order of the world. “We must imagine in our imagination two States: one which includes gods and men, in which our eyes are not limited to this or that corner of the earth, and the other is that to which we have been attributed by chance. There are people who serve both large and small state, there are those who serve only a small one.” “Undoubtedly,” says Seneca, “the right choice was made by the employees of the “big state”. This idea of religious cosmopolitanism was in tune with the expectations of deliverance, of the coming Kingdom of God, of a world-wide religious brotherhood, in the depths of which different tribes and Nations might find a place. Christianity was also consonant with Seneca’s teachings about the transience and deceptiveness of sensual pleasures, concern for other people, self-restraint in the use of material goods, the inadmissibility of rampant passions, modesty and moderation in everyday life.

Another equally important contribution to the formation and assimilation of Christian doctrine, especially among the intelligentsia, made the Jewish philosopher from Alexandria Philo. Philo’s philosophy was based on the idea of God as a Supreme being, standing outside time and space, transcendent to the world (being outside the world). Because of his transcendence, God cannot come into direct contact with the world; it requires an intermediary. On the mythological level, this problem was solved in Christianity through the image of the lamb-Jesus Christ, who accepted a sacrificial death for the sins of mankind in the name of his salvation. However, the emerging Christianity needed to give a solution to this problem on a theoretical level. On this basis the so-called Christological problem was formed, which with special force stimulated theological searches, opened a wide field for philosophical reflections.

In ancient philosophy, certain approaches have already been developed in solving the problem of overcoming the dualism of the world and its essence. The Pythagoreans, Plato and his followers laid down the basic methodological principles of the doctrine of the spiritual unity of the world. But neither the classics of ancient philosophy nor the neo-Platonists created the concept of God-personality. They interpreted the deity as a kind of abstract and impersonal first principle, which gave all the Genesis. The personal understanding of God was first given by Philo of Alexandria.

“That which is a person, unique and indestructible, is not composed of something impersonal,” Philo reasoned. The attempt to explain personality causally-genetically leads to a transition from one element to another, up to infinity. In this fragmentation, identity is lost. Therefore, in order to preserve the personality in all individuality, originality and unity, it is necessary to assume that it can be created out of nothing, without any preconditions. Personality, as well as God — is non-referential. If God is an absolute beginning, he cannot but be a person, for if he is not a person, something has preceded him, and therefore he is not an absolute beginning. Thus, God is a person and requires personal attitude and understanding.