The contribution of Priest Pavel Florensky to the idea of the renewal of the Church as a historical perspective

Abstract

At the beginning of the twentieth century in the midst of the Russian Orthodox Church, a movement was most clearly manifested, which set the goal of renewal at all levels of church life. On the one hand, public discussion and the idea of renewal of the Church took shape as a movement towards the return of the canonical church system, which was subsequently embodied in the holding of the Local Council of the Russian Church in 1917–1918, on the other hand, especially among the intelligentsia – “new religious thinking”. According to the conclusions obtained as a result of the analysis of the work of the priest Pavel Florensky, we can assert that by taking the dignity and participating in the philosophical and religious understanding of the church heritage through modern scientific philosophical analysis, through positivism and neo-Kantianism, he paved the way for the return of intellectuals to the “thinking and spiritualized Church”. On the basis of the research material, the author proves that the “thinking” Church has become an authority for many neophytes who came or returned to it in Soviet times.