Особливості трактування ідеї свободи в релігійно-конфесійній літературі

Abstract

The article attempts to consider the process of formation and evolution of views on the idea of freedom in christian religious and confessional literature. Special attention is paid to the interpretation of this value in the early stages of Christianity. The article emphasizes the importance of the Bible in formulating and justifying the specifics of the presence of freedom in people’s lives, values and evolutions of basic propositions regarding the role and place of this concept in the history of christianity. The main approaches to the interpretation of freedom in the Old and New Testaments are highlighted. The article reveals the peculiarities of understanding this formation by a number of prominent representatives of medieval and modern thought. The subject of the study in the article is the idea of freedom in the context of Christian theological thought. The material for the author’s understanding was the most important, significant religious texts, which formulate key provisions of the Christian understanding of the idea of freedom. The analysis of the works of Christian thinkers suggests that each of them made more or less significant attempts to understand the place and role of the idea of freedom in Christian creed and human life. At the same time, the very idea of freedom does not appear in them as a separate subject of cognitive search, but as an aspect, part, side of a complex set of issues and problems of the functioning of religion and the church. It is justified that: The fathers of the Church and the first Christian authors were actually engaged in the actualization of the idea of freedom in the Christian creed, adapting it to the Christian world understanding. For example, Bible scholars focused on the Bible’s understanding of freedom, which in one way or another manifests itself in the Bible in various places, but requires coordination with the given directions of Bible studies. Theologians understood the idea of freedom and formulated it depending on the doctrinal beliefs that they adhered to. Religious philosophers made attempts to expand their own version of understanding the idea of freedom, adding to the Christian understanding of it one or another segment of meanings, important, in their opinion, overlooked by traditional doctrines. With the strengthening of the status of Christianity, more and more works appeared in the world that are devoted to special studies of the idea of freedom. Philosophers of various eras and schools were engaged in understanding the idea of freedom and its actualization depending on their own ideas and the needs of the era.