Церковь в современном обществе (на примере российской религиозной ситуации)

Abstract

The subject of this article is the concept of the Church in the context of the contemporary Russian religious situation and the understanding of the concept by the Russian philosophical ecclesiology. The current religious situation could be described as post-secular. The Church, which survived two waves of secularization in Russia, retained its social subjectivity. The description of the Church as a conglomerate of believers does not correspond with the self-understanding of the Church in Christian thought. The article reveals the ontological self-understanding of the Church in the works of S.L. Frank, A.S. Homjakov, Russian theologians. The mystical reality of the Church could be combined with the empirical expression of it as a social institution. V.S. Soloviev considered the Church as a part of his theocratic utopia. In it he reduced the Church to a simple political social force. And at present, communities of Christians are expected to be embedded in a certain social functional. Meanwhile, arch-presbyter Nicolas Afanasiev pointed to eschatological reality: to the Church as an eschatological subject, as to the City of God (according to St. Augustine) only dwelling in the city of the earth. It forms the social Church ontology on the basis of the Church and society interaction. The social subjectivity of the Church is implicitly present in the framework of social activity in interaction with secular society. The concept of social subjectivity helps to reveal in the social analysis the essence of the dualistic nature of the Church. As an eschatological subject, it is the Body of Christ and at the head of it is the Christ. Therefore, the Church is a divine-human unity. But in the temporal order of things, in the secular aspect, the Church appears as an organization that performs certain social functions, or as one of the parts of the social institution of religion. The article points out the risk of institutionalization for the Church in which it may lose the social dimension of its subjectivity, which does not correspond to the mystical self-consciousness. The risk is that the Church will fulfill the requests of society but will not be able to reveal its main function of being the “the pillar and ground of the truth” (1 Tim. 3:15). The article summarizes that in modern Russian society the Church must have its own social subjectivity in order to pass this point of choice and create a working model of interaction with society, including secular society. The subjectivity of the Church is one of the conditions for its sustainable existence in modern Russia.